Six In The Morning

1 CHANGE OF HEART Roughrider's general manager Eric Tillman pleads guilty to a summary charge of sexual assault after pleading not guilty last year. Apparently Tillman told the victim's family he can't remember what happened because he was on painkillers. (Globe And Mail)

2 SECURITY SCARE Passengers flying into the United States from countries including Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria and Algeria will be subject to gropey-pokey lookie-peepy inspections at American airports. Oh, and Cuba's on the list because we all know what an al-Qaeda hotbed that is. (Guardian)

3 TODAY IN PHALLIC SYMBOLS Dubai opens the worlds tallest tower. (New York Times)

4 OF DOWNTOWN, GARBAGE, SPORTS AND BUSES L-P City Hall writer Joe Couture recaps four plans shaping Regina.

5 DEMENTIA BOOM Canada could have one and a quarter million sufferers within 30 years. Not fun. (CBC)

6 A FACEBOOK GROUP PROROGUES ALL Mmm-hmmm. Looks like this group's been busy keeping everything prorogued since fall 2008. Can I prorogue work this week until Thursday? (Facebook)

No no no no

Singer Lhasa de Sela has died. (CBC Media Blog)

Danish Cartoonist Threatened in Home

Super Best Friends Club, you guys

Remember when some Danish newspaper published a bunch of cartoons depicting Muhammad in September 2005? Well, some people are still pretty pissed off about it.

One of the cartoonists involved, Kurt Westergaard, was threatened in his home on Saturday.

And by threatened, I mean a man broke into his home and tried to confront Westergaard and his granddaughter with an axe and a knife. (CBC)

Did I mention that Westergaard is 75 years old? Or that his visiting granddaughter is only 5?

The cartoonist and his granddaughter fled to his panic room (a must for his line of work, apparently). Police then showed up and shot the attacker in the knee.

Police say that the incident was 'terror-related', which either means that the attacker is a terrorist, or that Westergaard and his granddaughter were terrified because they were almost killed with a knife and an axe.

Disdain for those who hide behind religious beliefs as a means of justifying hatred and violence is a recurring theme in prairie dog, and it's not hard to see why. It's pretty sad if the greatest threat to your beliefs is an old man who makes funny little drawings.

That said, as someone who holds a great deal of affection for cartoons and the cartoonists who cartoon them, I can't help but feel a little satisfied that in an age of spectacular CG special effects and Sham-Wow-miracle products, a few inked lines can still hold so much power to provoke.

Pick of the Day: Avatar

We don't have 3-D capacity here at Dog Blog, but we're working on it. Certainly, it's a revoluntionary technology that has taken the movie indstry by storm in recent years. To give you a sense of what it's like, just lift your eyes from the screen for a sec and look at what's around you. That, in a nutshell, is what viewing a 3-D movie is like. And you don't even have to wear special glasses to experience it. Nor shell out $10 or so. Neat, eh?

Of course, the view you just took in probably can't compare with what star director James Cameron offers up here. So by all means check this flick out. Shane Hnetka, prairie dog's movie listings guy has seen it, and he apparently thought it was pretty good; same with prairie dog's editor Stephen Whitworth. Here's a link to the Dec. 20 post he did (Dog Blog). Jorge though, had a different opinion. Here's a link to a Jan. 3 post he did trashing the flick. (Dog Blog) Finally, here's a link to the trailer (YouTube)