It appears that Facebooks woe-some privacy controls are going to be the least of Mark Zuckerberg's concerns.

The Register reports that a Pakistani lawyer has opened proceedings to have Mark Zuckerberg tried for violating Section 295-C of Pakistan's penal code. Section 295-C makes it a crime punishable by death to make derogatory remarks about Mohammed.

This saga originates with the 'Everybody Draw Mohammed Day' Facebook group which was started. Drawing Mohammed is considered blasphemy so Pakistani authorities responded by blocking access to Facebook within Pakistan for a few days.

Apparently the proceedings are moving along and Pakistan's United Nations representative plans to bring the issue forward at the UN General Assembly. I wonder what the reaction of the other representatives will be?

As always the comments at the Register are entertaining;

Last year I mentioned an article that debunks some of the outrageous statistics used by lobbyists fighting for stronger piracy controls. Well, it took a year and a half since that article was published, but now the US government has dismissed those figures as inaccurate.

Today I came across the website OpenParliament.ca which will soon become my primary news source for federal politics. OpenParliament provides an easy way of browsing the federal hansard (minutes of the house) and vote records.

All the hansard and vote records are already available online, but they are very burdensome to use. OpenParliament allows you to browse the hansard by member of parliament or by topic of discussion. They also provide a listing of recent quotes and votes for each MP so you can see what your MP is up to.

If you are looking for debate regarding Canada's role in Afghanistan, visit the site and click on the link Afghanistan. If you want to know what your member of parliament is up to, just do a search for your postal code and view their profile. You can also see all the current bills before the house and the votes for each bill.

This seems like an excellent way to summarize and digest what's happening in Ottawa. While it doesn't solve the problem that there is far to much information to absorb, it does take a big step forward in filtering that information and making it more accessible.

Charles Burchill has a great website which shows all the best places in Winnipeg to launch a canoe. If you're looking to go for a paddle, this is the place to start.

Here is an interactive map he created of all the locations.

View Larger Map

With the needless introduction of millimeter wave body scanners at airports many people have raised some concerns over the privacy issues. Most people would rather not be viewed naked by another person, regardless of whatever safety controls and procedures are instituted to mask identities or prevent the images from being saved.

I was thinking about this the other day and came up with a potential method to retain your privacy at a scan - conductive clothing. While conductive fabrics aren't quite ready for the task yet, in theory you could make a shirt out of conductive fabric. When scanned the shirt would show as opaque and hide your body underneath it.

Naturally this will likely lead to a more personal and invasive search, but that's why I titled the post "How To Prolong Your Privacy" and not "How To Maintain Your Privacy". If anyone would like to try this out, there are a number of suppliers of conductive fabrics online. Let me know how your next trip to the airport goes.

Wired has an excellent article online entitled Art of the Steal, which details the exploits of Gerald Blanchard - a master thief. The article is well written and very interesting, but what I found most interesting was the bank that his trouble with the Winnipeg police started - the Polo Park CIBC.

Many years ago I went dumpster diving in the industrial area along the east side of Waverly street. I found a few interesting things, a desk at Manitoba Hydro, some computer chassis, but the real winner was a set of blue prints. You can probably see where this is going, but I had found a full set of blueprints for the soon to be built CIBC Polo Park branch.

When I found them I thought "I could plan the perfect heist with these!" but ended up putting them up on my bedroom wall for several years. It's really funny now to think that someone at that time was actually planning to rob that bank and did a fairly good job of it.

Last night I found out that the commenting system on my blog was broken. It looks like reCAPTCHA and Wordpress were not talking to each other. I've upgraded reCAPTCHA and everything seems to be working again. Let me know if anything is still acting funny.

On Friday I came home from work, and as usual, checked the mail. Sitting in the basket below the mail slot was a large-ish white envelope with what was clearly a book inside.

I wondered who would be sending me a book and tried to remember any circumstance that would lead to one sitting in my porch. Alas, I couldn't figure out why it came or who it came from, so I ripped the paper open to reveal this.

Huh. I guess I really am going to be spending my summer studying.

If summer just happened to come right now, I'd be totally cool with it.

(Written from my porch)