I was scrolling through Slate Magazine over my lunch hour today, as I am wont to do, and found an interesting entry in their Hot Document section. The Hot Document is a Smoking Gun type feature that brings readers an interesting document, often related to something in the news (a recent entry featured Canada’s fact sheet on BPA, for example). The key thing is that the documents in question are usually posted directly on the page (see the BPA link).

The most recent feature (the contract one must sign before becoming a Scientologist), however, has this mysterious note at the bottom of the article:

[Editor's note: Slate posted the contract in this space earlier today, but subsequently removed it.]

The preceeding paragraph contains a link to the document (in pdf form) on another site. Glaring questions about why Slate removed the contract notwithstanding (threats from the Good Ship Scientology?) it made me wonder if simply linking to another site really covers one’s ass.

If this is a legal issue, is Slate really covered just by linking externally? In the conventional sense the document is not on their property but as Web 2.0 unfolds, and form disassociates from content, what will the ramificaitons be for this sort of issue? To the user, a link is a link is a link, whether it be to your own site or someone else’s.

Any experts out there want to bring clarity?

This is great. Why didn’t I know this existed earlier?

John. Hodgman.

If you haven’t read The Areas of My Expertise you are missing out on comedic gold. Like this.

“It’s a biggie,” said Rob Kuhn, a severe weather meteorologist with Environment Canada’s Ontario storm prediction centre.

That’s my ’05 Jetta Wagon under there. For the record, less than 24 hours earlier I had been driving around town.

Remember, when parking one’s crane in downtown Ottawa, one must remember to the feed the meter.

I have been feeling more and more compelled to post here lately but I have been hesitant about posting before I had something really profound to say – a way to make up for the disrespect I’ve been showing all 42 points as of late.

But I’ve been short on profundities lately, so instead, a few quick thoughts and random musings:

• All of these stories about the rising Canadian dollar have really forced photo editors to be creative, haven’t they?
• Why does YouTube need a Canadian site? Isn’t the whole point of YouTube the fact that you can reach international audiences? Transcending boundaries in the digital realm and all that? Oh wait. I just read the subhead on that article. I get it now.
• This book looks interesting.
• This podcast makes my commute much easier to deal with. So does this one. My wife, on the other hand, swears by this one. All are worth subscribing to.
• Oh yea, and I got married. It was awesome.

Let’s hope this is the beginning of a new era of posting here.