Double Blind

Scott Adams (author of Dilbert), as I have stated before, is a genius.

Anybody wanting to make a million (or billion) dollars has a generic blueprint for doing so, just by reading his latest article.

The future could be utopia, because everyone will easily find what they need, from love to careers. Or it might be the end of civilization because capitalism depends on barriers to entry, and those will disappear when everyone can find whatever resources they need.

It will likely be neither. The trend has been that wealth concentrates, so the people that get rich from these things will likely be able to live very well. The good news for the people that don’t create such services (or products) is that the information is very likely to be made available for nearly nothing. Just as an example, even if I was earning a minimum wage job, I still have very readily available access to Wikipedia and Google. You formerly had to pay about $100 to get Microsoft Encarta (a lesser encyclopedia for those that don’t remember) on a CD on your home computer.

All of these inventions serve to lift the economic boat for everybody.

It also rewards those people that are able to piece together disparate items of information – if Google can’t do it, then your own knowledge will be market-beating.

ICBC is apparently putting up approximately 100 new red light cameras that will automatically give tickets to those that go through intersections on red lights.

The revenues from such tickets will apparently go to municipalities.

“We looked at over 1,400 signalized inersections throughout the province and gradually winnowed that down,” said Mark Milner, manager of ICBC road safety programs.

He estimated there will be a six-per-cent reduction in serious injury and fatal crashes at intersections as a result of the cameras.

The amounts paid out in claims for crashes should go down accordingly, he said, covering the cost of the new cameras.

The ticket fine revenue will go to local municipalities, not to ICBC.

The digital system means tickets could go out in days, rather than the current four to six weeks.

Although the cameras could run all the time, Milner said each one will only be activated part of the time.

The aim, he said, is to maximize safety, not fine revenue.

ICBC will study which times of day and days of week it makes most sense to run the cameras.

Milner didn’t rule out further expansion of the red light camera system.

“It’s possible we may consider adding more further down the road,” he said. “Right now, we think we’ve got the optimal road safety benefit per site at 140.”

Citing safety, rather than revenues, is complete bullshit. The public knows it, and ICBC knows it. Red light cameras do nothing to prevent accidents. You could even make the argument that they cause accidents (people realizing there is a camera on the intersection and jam on the brakes whenever they see the yellow even if they are very close to entering the intersection), but I do not believe this either. Everything I have read (that wasn’t obviously funded by some special interest group) suggests that there is zero to trivial net effect in terms of traffic safety.

Instead, as is common in these instances that safety is cited, the real motive is profit.

Now that said, I have no problem with the concept of installing cameras at high-risk intersections to be used (by any parties involved) as evidence to determine cause and blame in automobile accidents. This would actually be a net positive because currently there is little incentive for participants to actually tell the truth about their inept driving habits to ICBC when they make an insurance claim. Objective footage, such as coming out of an intersection camera, would be a positive step by ICBC.

But using these cameras to ticket red light offenders is just purely a revenue grab, and bad public policy.

When the NDP finally get back in government in 2013, it is also highly likely that they will use these devices for the purposes of speed monitoring since that is where most of the money is to be made.

Apparently in Calgary and Edmonton, their system (with about 50 cameras each doing red light and speed) pull in about $30 million a year in fine revenues. I was shocked to find out when I was there a couple months ago I actually did not get a ticket in the mail (not that I was speeding or going through red lights or anything there), but I did notice that the majority of the traffic did the usual 10-20km/h above the posted limits.

I found this American’s post to be very interesting – he’s a lawyer, a US citizen, and knows a healthy dose about the legal rights at the border. His post has gone sufficiently viral over the internet.

Skimming the US law (which is a lot more different and difficult to my eye than skimming Canadian law), an alien (i.e. non-US Citizen) entering into America has virtually zero rights to pull off what US citizens can – i.e. the right to remain silent. So Canadians trying this stunt will likely end up in detention for a few hours, if not being kicked out of the country and blacklisted in the computer database as being a jerk.

At least US Citizens will only get blacklisted in the computer database for being a jerk.

Still, I commend the original poster for standing up for his rights. Not only does he not sound like a jerk (he is very well written, articulate and has his argument straight), not many people will do this since they will bow down and knuckle under authority in the name of expediency. As he subsequently pointed out, the interaction at the border is not a social one – you are entering in a different, parallel world where every word you say (or don’t say) counts and there is no concept of “rudeness” simply because the implicit social contract doesn’t exist at the border.

What is more depressing are the commenters to his post – a lot of anonymous people basically telling him he got what he deserved.

Now, we flip to the Canadian side – what rights do Canadian citizens have after they’ve done a couple days of cross border shopping in the USA and come back to Canada? I can speak of this with a little more authority than I can with the USA side.

The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, section 19(1) states:

19. (1) Every Canadian citizen within the meaning of the Citizenship Act and every person registered as an Indian under the Indian Act has the right to enter and remain in Canada in accordance with this Act, and an officer shall allow the person to enter Canada if satisfied following an examination on their entry that the person is a citizen or registered Indian.

The Customs Act, Section 11(1) states:

11. (1) Subject to this section, every person arriving in Canada shall, except in such circumstances and subject to such conditions as may be prescribed, enter Canada only at a customs office designated for that purpose that is open for business and without delay present himself or herself to an officer and answer truthfully any questions asked by the officer in the performance of his or her duties under this or any other Act of Parliament.

I do not believe this gives Canadians the right to refuse questions at the border when they re-enter Canada, at least in terms of the immigration side of things. For the customs side it appears they have blanket permission to ask whatever they want, and you are obligated by Section 11(1) to answer it.

I am sure there are court cases that clearly define the rights of Canadians at the Canadian border, but this is where we will need a real lawyer to chime in. I know of a Canadian immigration lawyer, so the next time I see him, I might casually ask him.

… has to be from Phil Davidson, a GOP candidate for the Stark County (Ohio) Treasurer.

This speech was given to my attention courtesy of my brother through email, who asked “Are any of your political speeches like this guy’s?”. I couldn’t get even a quarter of the way there with this guy’s energy, although mine probably win out on the content side.

Unfortunately, he lost the nomination.

My current main computer is a Dell Vostro with a 17 inch screen. For the most part, it has performed very well and hasn’t had any significant issues, much to my amazement. Usually I go through a notebook every three years or so.

Anyhow, I encountered my first real issue with the notebook – it would freeze anytime I inserted in a Secure Digital card that had file sizes that were above a certain length. Windows XP would just freeze – the mouse would not move and the keyboard was unresponsive.

I discovered that I had an outdated driver that operated the internal SD card reader, so I downloaded the latest copy and much to my surprise it no longer crashes my computer when putting in the SD card. I hope this is the only technical issue that I have with the notebook for a long time since I really prefer Windows XP over newer versions of Windows. Even though Windows 7 is much better than Vista, I prefer to navigate through the “old school” interface. It’s still a lot quicker.

Langley Township councilman Jordan Bateman made some headlines (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) recently with his comments regarding BC Finance Minister Colin Hansen. Bateman subsequently redacted the comments, and put up an apology instead.

The media is going nuts about the matter, but I am simply writing to express my support for Jordan, who is much better in office than outside. Not only is he a good writer, but from what I can see he is a quality individual.