David Akin

Potheads

Canada is getting ready to decriminalize small-time marijuana use. You can read the debate at your favourite site for news about Canadian national affairs. I suggest this site or this site.
One of the big angles in all of this is the reaction of the United States. Canada, of course, is the biggest trading partner of the U.S. and shares the world's longest undefended border with the U.S. of A. George Bush's America is not exactly thrilled that being caught with a few joints in your pocket in Canada will now result in about the same fine you pay if you get with a traffic ticket.

Vancouver (B.C., Canada, for those international visitors here at davidakin.com) pot activist Marc Emery has been arrested for simple possession in Canada plenty of times. As he's said before, if he lived in the U.S. he'd be facing life in prison for those charges and, in some U.S. jurisdictions, the crimes he's been charged with/convicted of in Canada come with a death sentence upon conviction in some jurisdictions in the U.S. Truckers say they're worried about border delays and traffic tie-ups.

Some good news, today, though on the U.S.-Canada relationship front: Prime Minister Chretien phoned up President Bush.

What's a blog?

Yesterday (below), I said I'd ask David Weinberger for his definition of a blog. From Vienna, where's he speaking at a conference on blogging, he sent me this:

Here's what I would say:

A blog is a Web page, updated daily (ideally), with relatively short (a
few paragraphs) entries, displayed in reverse chronological order, written
by an individual in her own voice about the things she cares about.
Preferably, the blog has links to other blogs and bloggers. Something that
does all those things is definitely a blog. Something that does some of
them is maybe kinda sorta a blog.

Note 1: There are all sorts of marginal cases. But that's ok. That's
pretty much how words work and doesn't count as an argument against the
definition of a paradigmatic blog.

Note 2: The above definition makes no reference to the technology used to
create a blog because I don't think the tech matters: If Dave Winer used
FTP to create his blog every day, he'd still be a blogger.

I hope that helps.

David Weinberger
self@evident.com
home: http://www.evident.com
book: http://www.smallpieces.com