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artificially-produced images classified as child pornography. It opens the door to criminally penalizing people for something which must be judged based solely on opinion. There cannot be an objective judgment that an artificially-produced image constitutes "underage pornography," ... images which require (sometimes highly) subjective interpretation.

In Canada movies which contains only of legal age actors can still be classified as child pornography is any of the portrayed characters may be perceived as being underage. No more playing dress-up.

This in a nation where a former Prime Minister (then Justice Minister) famously noted that, 'There's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation' .

Getting the cheap/free cellphone in Canada often involves signing up for long 3 year plan with huge penalties if you quit early.

I'm not sure of all the provinces, but I know that both Quebec and Manitoba have new laws in place requiring better contract disclosure and limiting those penalties.

• Manitoba's
• Quebec's

I suspect that Rogers and Telus are afraid the other provinces will enact the same or stronger legislation.

Easy-Bake ovens are not designed to use heat lamps. Of course, these days, they don't use light bulbs at all.

• Certainly it is, if it was identified and treated as such by investigators, for example by maintaining and documenting the chain of custody. If it was in an evidence locker and then mysteriously ends up in the dishwasher then we could talk about destruction of evidence.
• Certainly it is not, if it's just one of the hundreds of coffee cups that the murderer has touched in the course of his lifetime. At that rate, the entire universe is evidence for something or other, and we mustn't destroy any of it.

It comes down to who gets to decide whether or not a specific item is evidence. In the first pass, that task usually falls to the police. Secondarily, it falls to the courts. Dozens of Perry Mason episodes notwithstanding, you can't usually just walk into the courthouse with a coffee cup and say, "This proves that the murderer was at the scene of the crime."

But interesting and significant exceptions do arise. In the case of Robert Dziekanski, a man who died after repeated Tasering while detained by police at Vancouver International Airport, a video shot by a bystander was confiscated by police and only reluctantly returned to its owner after intense media pressure. That video was treated as evidence by the inquiry, as were police emails that eventually surfaced. On the basis of this evidence, the inquiry concluded that officers deliberately misrepresented their actions during investigations into the incident and at the inquiry.

The authenticity of the video was not challenged. Ironically, this may have had something to do with the police having had it for some time in their custody.

trade in their 'love affair with the automobile' for a marriage to mass transit.

Mass transit is great until they go on strike.

I took the bus for a long time. It was always a miserable experience (crowded busses, never on time, routes that made no sense, etc..), and this strike was the final straw. Went out an bought a gas guzzling car.. and will probably never use the bus system again.

(Just felt like venting that...)

The fact that it also covers up government wrong-doing, like spying on American citizens

It is hard to understand why the government would ever engage in surveillance of American citizens, isn't it? You've got to wonder, what are they thinking? Are they stepping over the line?

And that's not all - at times it's almost like they are guided and operating according to something other than criminal law, almost as if they had a body of law that nobody else knows about that lets them do things like shoot dead large numbers of people, en masse, legally, with neither trial nor warrant. How could that be? Does Congress know about this? Does Congress approve?

The recruiter: Anwar al-Awlaki, portrait of an American jihadist CNN: Al-Awlaki threatens Americans
40 Americans Have Joined Al Qaeda Group
U.S.-educated Misunderstander of Islam pleads guilty to jihad war crimes, turns government witness

FBI’s Top Ten News Stories for the Week Ending January 27, 2012

Denver: Man Arrested for Providing Material Support to a Designated Foreign Terrorist Organization

Jamshid Muhtorov was arrested by members of the FBI’s Denver and Chicago Joint Terrorism Task Forces on a charge of providing and attempting to provide material support to the Islamic Jihad Union, a Pakistan-based designated foreign terrorist organization. Full Story

Baltimore: Man Pleads Guilty to Attempted Use of a Weapon of Mass Destruction in Plot to Attack Armed Forces Recruiting Center

U.S. citizen Antonio Martinez, aka Muhammad Hussain, pled guilty to attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction against federal property in connection with a scheme to attack an armed forces recruiting station in Catonsville, Maryland. Full Story

Washington Field: Man Pleads Guilty to Shootings at Pentagon, Other Military Buildings

Yonathan Melaku, of Alexandria, Virginia, pled guilty to damaging property and to firearms violations involving five separate shootings at military installations in northern Virginia between October and November 2010, and to attempting to damage veterans’ memorials at Arlington National Cemetery. Full Story

FBI’s Top Ten News Stories for the Week Ending January 13, 2012

1.Tampa: Florida Resident Charged with Plotting to Bomb Locations in Tampa

A 25-year-old resident of Pinellas Park, Florida was charged in connection with an alleged plot to attack locations in Tampa with a vehicle bomb, assault rifle, and other explosives. Full Story

2.Baltimore: Former Army Solider Charged with Attempting to Provide Material Support to al Shabaab

A man who secretly converted to Islam days before he separated from the Army was charged with attempting to provide material support to al Shabaab, a foreign terrorist organization, and was arrested upon his return to Maryland after traveling to Africa. Full Story

The recording is available at http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/Shows/1221254309/ID=1917988496 that specifically introduces the caller as Elections Canada. There is no mistake here. Even if this was directed at their own supporters based on an incorrectly entered postal code, the recording identifies itself as being an official call from a government agency.

Here is a link to one of the recorded robocalls: http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/Shows/1221254309/ID=1917988496

Before audio was made available, the Conservative spin team was saying that it was an administrative error and that they were trying to help people find their polling station but they incorrectly crosslinked some postal codes. When the audio became available, clearly and fraudulently stating that the call was from "Elections Canada" they started playing dumb.

So far one staffer has resigned as the allegations have landed, in what appears to be a case of falling-on-the-sword-itis. The scale of the scandal is actually pretty massive. As TFA points out, these calls have been confirmed to appear in 18 ridings, and others are being suspected. In those 18 ridings, the calls only hit households that were waffling Liberal (as per recent polling).

What this means is that someone had to plan the calls, get the party affiliation information on these 18 ridings (at least), hire RackNine, hire a bilingual voice actor, and see everything through. The likelihood of one person pulling all this off is next to nil, and it doesn't help that the Conservative party has a (rightly deserved) reputation for bullying and playing dirty pool with the rules.

And since it's going to come up, the Conservative Party of Canada is actually the result of a merger between two separate parties: the original Progressive Conservatives, who were the centre-right answer to the Liberal's centre-left, and the Canadian Alliance-née-Reform party, the country's (relatively)-far-right party. Prime Minister Harper was previously a member of the Canadian Alliance, and it's safe to say that his view, regardless of his party's, doesn't represent the overwhelming majority of Canadians. He's not all bad, but I will throw a party he is unceremoniously dumped from the Canadian political scene.

Some calls apparently were from people claiming to be with the Liberal party, acting rude, calling at very late/early hours, in an attempt to cause people who said they supported the Liberal party to not vote for them. These calls happened in multitudes of ridings (districts for you yanks) including Etobicoke Centre where the Conservative candidate won by only 26 votes.

Yes, because the UK is famous for its death camps. Oh ... wait ... no it isn't.

Actually, we invented them during the Boar war

Actual death camps tend to not leave any survivors. They fill up, kill everybody, and are filled up again to repeat. At least 75% survived the badly run, cruel camps that the British Army ran in the Boer War.

Africa Imperialism in the dock - the Boer War

The farms of Boers and Africans were destroyed and the Boer inhabitants of the countryside were rounded up and held in concentration camps.

The plight of the Boer women and children in these camps became an international outrage - more than 20,000 died in the carelessly run, unhygienic camps.

The commandos continued their attacks, many of them deep into the Cape Colony, General Jan Smuts leading his forces to within 80km (50 miles) of Cape Town.

But Kitchener's drastic and brutal methods slowly paid off. The Boers had unsuccessfully sued for peace in March 1901; finally, they accepted the loss of their independence by the Peace of Vereeniging.

While certain Afrikaners are calling for an apology from the Queen, Sussex University lecturer Dr Saul Dubow, an expert in modern South African history, told BBC News Online that their demands were "specious".

He said: "Overall, the British were the aggressors, but the primary blame for the deaths in the concentration camps has much more to do with incompetence and lack of medical care than a deliberate attempt to kill.

That is the difference - death camps are intended to kill the occupants, all of them. (Put the citizens of a town on a train, move them to the death camp, kill them. Put the citizens of another town on the train, move them to the camp, kill them. Repeat.) Concentration camps are meant to hold. That doesn't mean that the circumstances of the concentration camp won't result in many deaths due to privation, cruelty, incompetence, and even calculation. The camps were internationally condemned, and rightly so. But nobody should confuse the British concentration camps in South Africa that 75% survived with the extermination / death camps of the Germans in Poland and other places that killed nearly everyone that entered them to the tune of hundreds of thousands of people each.

Extermination camps

The extermination camp Belzec was established in May 1942 and continued to function until August 1943. 600,000 Jews fell victim to the merciless efficiency of the gas chambers at Belzec.

Sobibor also began its terrible business of mass murder in May 1942. The killings continued through October 1943, when an uprising among the prisoners put and end to the activities of the camp. 250,000 lost their lives in Sobibor’s gas chambers.

The extermination camp Treblinka was working from July 1942 to November 1943. In August 1943 an uprising destroyed many of the facilities. 900,000 Jews lost their lives in the terribly efficient extermination camp at Treblinka.

Canadian Boer War veterans look back

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, who introduced the bill to Parliament, had absolutely no idea what was in it or why people would be so upset about it.

So, you see, everything is okay. You trust the Public Safety Minister, don't you?

It's not like he's lying through his teeth or anything. Or hopelessly incompentant.

Well, technically he would have to be one or the other, but you can still trust him, right?

The provision that really gets under my skin is that the bill will Force internet providers and other makers of technology to provide a "back door" to make communications accessible to police to to those who are conducting surveillance. That sounds to me like all computers sold in Canada, not just the ISP's equipment.

That's the CBC headline after interviewing Toews about his own bill: Toews surprised by content of online surveillance.

It's worth listening to the interview that was aired on The House yesterday.

Water management comes down to, if you want more water available to use you need to have swamps, the natural way for the land to store (and clean) water without evaporative loses or unfairly keeping water from your neighbors. Ironically they are the very thing farmers have been doing their best to get rid of.

The loss of swamps, sloughs, and wetlands in Manitoba (and upstream), and the installation of drainage ditches everywhere was largely responsible for our flooding this last year; that flooding is no doubt occur again and again unless we find a way to fix our mess. It's all totally trashed Lake Winnipeg too.

In this case, Mister Toews is not at all actually interested in protecting children from pedophiles. He is simply playing the pedophile card to get this ridiculous legislation passed. The CBC made an interesting observation about the bill:

The bill includes no mention of children or predators except in the title, which appears to have been changed after it was sent to the printers.

Toews is a joke, and this country would be so much better off without him. The same goes for the rest of those idiots in the CPC.

Not to mention he got called out by the valedictorian while getting his honorary doctorate at the University of Winnipeg.

Oh yeah, most the hyper religious people in Manitoba live in the rural areas, like Steinbach where they just recently got their first liquor store. Don't lump us Winterpeggers in with them :P

while English and Greek speakers are statistically poorer and in worse health than Germans.

Greece is in serious financial trouble and Quebec (primarily french) is going the same way and has been called the Greece of Canada.....interesting....and of course Germany is a economic powerhouse of the EU.

It has to do with their stated primary purpose: Increase shareholders' equity. Anything else is secondary. Hence you can't really expect a corporation to be "ethical". If for a corporation being "right, ethical and lawful" are the best options to increase shareholders' equity, then it will be forced to behave.

However if it can get away with, say, throwing toxic waste directly in a river regardless of the danger to population and irreversible destruction to the environment, it will readily do it, because it serves the primary purpose. Where there are strong public institutions to force them to behave, their best bet is to subvert these public institutions.

Examples are countless, but one I found particularly telling, in CBC's documentary "Tipping Point: The Age of the Oil Sands," in which at one point a representative of a native nations who are suffering the oil sands exploitation addresses directly Statoil shareholders in Norway. They could not have been less bothered.

No, in America the company would actually pay its employees enough to afford homes, and they would buy land in the surrounding area (you've already stated that the factories are built in places where land is cheap), and next thing you know a nice, middle class community would spring up. More people would move in to run the various shops to support the community, and tens of thousands of people would get to enjoy a decent quality of life while making something of value.

Oh really?

TL;DR version: the American-owned company has locked out 500 union workers in Canada until they accept a 50% cut in wages (average $34/hr), benefits and pension. They've already gotten the 50% cut in an American plant, and are threatening to move all jobs there and close the Canadian plant if workers don't agree.

The American owners are Caterpillar, expected to post a 2011 profit of "near $6/share" or about $3.9 billion. If all of those 500 salaries are cut back 50%, they save a mere $17M.

Which America are you talking about?

We produce more than just generic and annoying superstars like Justin Beiber and Avril Lavigne. There are a lot of great Canadian musicians that may not be popular in the US and never needed to be. Here's a variety of good Canadian bands just off the top of my head:

The Arkells
The Arcade Fire
Constantines
Death From Above 1979
Elliott Brood
Hey Rosetta!
The Flatliners
Metric
The Weakerthans

I'm also a fan of Dine Alone Records and Deranged Records in terms of Canadian labels and the artists they represent.

I understand why people would be opposed to requiring a percentage of our media being purely Canadian content, but there are some great fringe benefits to it, like CBC Radio 3 which is arguably one the best radio stations in the world. And your ability to only cite shows and music that are successful in the US kind of gives these laws validity.

...they chose executives that won't chew through their restraints this time. That could be helpful.

CBC TV in Canada aired a show focusing on Autism and links to gut bacteria. http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/Shows/The_Nature_of_Things The episode is titled The Autism Enigma.

Well worth watching.

Considering that the bacteria in our bodies outnumber our own cells (numerically) it should not be a surprise that when they get messed with we get messed up.

No problem. The Hasselhoff Crabs will destroy them.

What makes you think the problem is that students are "out of spec"?

Because some have learning disabilities, some are poorly fed (hinders learning, attention, focus, etc.), some have drug-abusing, party-animal parents. There are a lot of problems without even bringing sheer stupidity (of some children (stupid adults start young)) or bad genetics into the discussion.

A well run school in the modern fashion with a good, well taught curriculum doesn't have this sort of problem even if its students tend to have issues at home.

That I don't believe. Take a well-run school, with a good curriculum, place it in the downtown-east side of Vancouver, and it will not be as productive as one placed on the west side:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2011/09/26/bc-poverty-kids-gelson-letter.html

An East Vancouver elementary school teacher has generated a surprising response after writing an open letter calling attention to the desperate poverty of some of her young students.
[...]
I have a little boy [student] who's like, 'Ms. Gelson you said you're getting me shoes right?' Because I said I could probably find them," she said. ... and it was raining.
[...]
Gelson said she also feels she has to bring snacks for some of her students [...] She dips into the snack drawer for the students several times a day.

Those kids were behind the 8-ball from the moment they were born (before that, in many cases: inadequate nutrition as fetus can have life-long effects, see Fetal Alcohol Syndrome).

Even if the school spends less per student than typical US schools do.

I don't doubt US schools are like US health care: a metric shit-tonne of money is spent yet many are without any benefits.

I'm not arguing for opening up the money faucets (though I can think of a lot worse things to spend money on), just that until teachers can pick & choose their students, they cannot be expected to have the same reliable output of an engineer, who gets to specify with great detail what he/she works with. Simple logic, really.

Cheers.

We've been doing this in canada for at least a year now, particularly regarding fisheries and lobsters.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/story/2011/07/01/ns-thisfish-tracks-diner-to-water.html

That's actually true of most mature markets. Aggregator websites that let you compare premiums have driven rates down and very few companies write profitable business anywhere.

Terry O'Reilly has a radio show on the CBC called "The Age of Persuasion", and it deals with the history of advertising. It's actually a lot more interesting than you might think, but I digress.

He's been doing commercials forever, and he swears that you can't set the volume in an ad. Here's one example.

Actually, my characterization is correct. The Liberals didn't do much to meet the targets, here's a time line of what they did do. They tried a few things, but Kyoto wasn't ratified in Canada until 2002, and the Kyoto protocol didn't actually take effect until 2005 and by then time the Liberals only had a minority government. At that time, further action on Kyoto was abandoned to appease the Conservative Party of Canada and get them to support the budget.

The Liberal Government did actually spend billions on trying to reduce emissions, however, it was not nearly enough to meet the targets. Maybe you're the one trying to score political points and not actually concerned about global warming. Let's look at the Conservatives instead, they've repeatedly promised that they would come up with a "made-in-Canada" solution to the climate change. The preferred conservative "solution" is to do nothing, but barring that they would tie pollution to GDP so as long as you're making money it's open season on the environment (and I'm not just talking green house gases here).

While the Liberals failed to live up to the challenge, the Conservatives failed to even try, so I see no reason I need to pillory the former Liberal government when discussing the ideological failings of the current Conservative government. The mere fact that you would insist that I must do so, indicates that you are, in fact, the one focused on scoring political points.

Testosterone also encourages fairness:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2009/12/08/tech-biology-testosterone-behaviour.html

It's been done.

Passing a bill, as the opposition, telling the government they have to somehow reach the Kyoto targets...

Yeah, that's real bold action there.

It's easy to say you want to achieve the targets, the problem is actually doing something to achieve those targets. That's the unpopular part that generally gets parties in trouble, that's why the other parties didn't propose any specific measures, they wanted the credit for achieving Kyoto, but they also wanted the Conservatives to take the political hit for taking the necessary action (and don't imagine the opposition would let them off easy).

The truth is since 1990 the only thing that's slowed emissions is the recession.

We actually did have one party actually try to take specific action to achieve Kyoto once, Stephane Dion ran on a platform of introducing a carbon tax, and then he lost the election because voters didn't want to pay for carbon (even though the tax was supposed to be revenue neutral and be offset by reductions in income tax).

We didn't cut our carbon because our economy and population were both growing. Now we could have done better than we did, more fuel efficient vehicles, starting to clean up our power generation, etc. However, since we had no shot at the Kyoto targets without major economic consequences we didn't have much motivation to do anything in between. I really think Kyoto was flawed that way and there needed to be some mechanism for countries with big primary industry, who obviously weren't going to hit Kyoto, to make gains from some intermediate action rather than volunteering to a giant slap on the wrist at the end.

As it is just yesterday we threw away an opportunity to clean up the oilsands, though in this case the environmental movement is probably more to blame.

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/oped-04y.html

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2007/06/the_economics_o.html

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1134/is_9_115/ai_n27050480/?tag=content;col1

http://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2009/06/12/space-power/

http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/episode/2011/01/08/january-8-2011/#Voyager+Launches+the+Third+Age+of+Discovery

http://www.economist.com/node/18897425

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the-high-frontier-redux.html

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/why-not-space/

Space Nutters generally also have an overabundance of blind, naive enthusiasm for almost anything vaguely sci-fi sounding, the limitless growth of the human species, that there will even BE a human species 100000 years from now, etc... But mention life extension research and all of a sudden they turn into the most rabid anti-technological, skeptical "don't mess with Nature" types.

We'll never understand biological processes that occur all over the planet and require little energy, but we'll have Martian colonies (entire COLONIES) and all the other space garbage that require stupendous resource-inputs for zero return, no problem.

Oh, and the absolute Bible for Space Nutters:

http://www.amazon.com/Millennial-Project-Colonizing-Galaxy-Eight/dp/0316771635/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323225862&sr=8-1

The amount of delusion and flat-out denial needed to believe in the claptrap that Space Nutters do makes it a religion to me.

If I understand the ruling correctly, it looks like we dodged the bullet this month.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2010/04/21/bc-andrew-weaver-national-post-lawsuit.html

When I look at the situation I see a lot of "skeptical" misinformation being propagated from the fossil fuel industry (aka the Denial Machine). The massive amounts of money that the fossil fuel industry has to throw at influencing the debate dwarfs the combined size of all the "green energy" business in the world.
It's part of why I'm skeptical of the "skeptics".

I think there are two different meanings of bandwidth colliding. From the CBC article they are purchasing pipe size not data amount. I have seen both used for bandwidth. It would be nice to know which the CRTC actually means. as they are completely different. http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/11/15/pol-crtc-ubb-decision.html

I heard about this on Quirks and Quarks on CBC (not often they beat Slashdot to a story). The big use of this on aircraft would be to prevent ice from sticking to the wings, which is a big safety hazard.

http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/

It's a radio show. So no, Bob McDonald doesn't happen to own a farm, he works for a radio station doing a weekly science news broadcast. He is Canadian, however, so he may own an igloo.

There would be a lot of talk, but very little done. Sure the world might try sanctions and such, but I assure you, no foreign military will be coming to your rescue against us.

"Fairly large demographic of canadians"

"An estimated 2.8 million Canadian citizens live abroad,......57 per cent of all overseas Canadians live in the United States, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom or Australia." from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2009/10/28/canada-emigration-c.html

I dont consider less then 1% of 350 million people a 'fairly large demographic"

YA!!! Coal is safer and cleaner than anything.

Bluff collapse at power plant sends dirt, coal ash into lake
Containing the damage at We Energies site
Collapsed bluff got pass from state regulators
Bluff collapse came weeks after Congress rebuffed EPA on coal ash rule

I used to consider myself a Republican. Now I'm embarrassed to admit that. I however am not a Democrat either. I belong to the party of "The Screwed."

The current political party that would like to call itself "Republican" is a party of and for the wealthy elitist businessmen. They have NO interest in the well-being of the general population. Their only concern is for a double-digit profit at the end of the quarter and they don't care how many resources they have to destroy or consume to get it.

The robber barons are back and this time they openly want it all. They're not making any secret of their intentions.

And just like all the spin selling and PR that has been going on for coal, the natural gas guys are starting up their own story-telling machine to support fracking.

With fresh water shortages developing all over the world, how is a technology that uses fresh water that is loaded with all sorts of nasty stuff (and thus rendered useless to any life form) and can destroy fresh water sources be a sensible solution?

And BTW, several fresh water wells have been contaminated by this WE Energies coal plant. WE Energies has bought the properties after the people have signed agreements to not sue them.

I'd rather take my chances with nuclear.

@Baloroth: thanks for "the facts" link.

The Mint isn't selling this coin, they just made it for funzies.

Anyone wanting to actually buy a huge gold coin will have to settle for a $1 million Canadian Maple Leaf.

In a one-hour look at Facebook and privacy, CBC's Doczone identified Facebook as the worlds #1 site for scammers and other illegal activity.

Facebook Follies is a one-hour documentary that takes a look at the unexpected consequences of people sharing their personal information on social media. Viewers meet people who lost their jobs, their marriages, their dignity, or who even ended up in jail - all because of their own or someone elseâ(TM)s Facebook posting. To give a broader context to the events, these stories are intercut with reflections from experts in the areas of social change, internet security and contemporary media.

If you missed it, it's also on again tomorrow night.

Other interesting points - researchers made an account for a plastic frog, and invited a couple of hundred random people to friend it - most did, sharing their contacts, personal info, etc., with a PLASTIC FROG! And they really do nail what facebook really is
For users - a large MMORPG where the object is to collect as many friends as possible
For facebook - a way of getting people to give it up to advertisers.

They are machines, and they carry weapons, No soldiers present.

Just for clarity, can you define just how much distance you need between the bullet and the person pulling the trigger before you can pretend that there are no people involved in the action?

Remote control assassinations from across the globe. Assassinations of American citizens abroad. Renditions to "friendly" countries for torture (And boy, one would think that Iraq now has "friendly" status, the infrastructure, and lots of trained experts in place to take on that role). Indefinite imprisonment of children without charges or trials.

Good thing you've got a President who takes the moral high ground.

They do all sorts of profiling all right -- where it makes sense. There aren't all that many suicide bombers with, say, nordic features.

But there are Nordic gunmen who like to use bombs, so that's perhaps an invalid argument.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/08/14/norway-gunman-visit.html

The case had nothing to do with his association to the Green Party, it was in relation to his private business. http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/10/19/pol-scoc-hyperlink.html?cmp=rss

It's illegal in BC, Canada as well. They do stings every once in a while and hand out hundreds of tickets at a time here.

Recently the police released a top 10 excuses list for using their cell phone while driving. They're pretty lame excuses.

As somebody who has crashed on a bike: Crashing on a bike is not that bad.

Well, we just had someone killed recently because someone flung open a door, nailed the cyclist, knocked them into traffic, and they got run over.

Oddly, your one data point doesn't necessarily cover all cases of crashing on a bike. There are plenty of circumstances where crashing on a bike is anything but "not that bad".

And, if you've ever seen the guys doing downhill ... well, tell them it isn't all that bad or damaging to fall off. Hell, at lower speeds on tight single-track I wear some body armor ... I won't even ride in traffic. The drivers more or less treat you like you're using their space, and will come awfully close to running you over without a second thought. In fact, they're probably cursing at you while they're inches away from killing you.

I wouldn't downplay the severity of crashing on a bicycle.

It's on the CBC News front page right now.

The watch list just requires that some paranoid somewhere doesn't like the look of you.

Or doesn't like your name.