"not enforcing"? The Obama administration continues to enforce federal anti-drug laws. Obama has said he "wouldn't go that far" (Barbara Walters interview) , meaning he wouldn't be in favor of legalizing marijuana. But he has said that the federal government wouldn't use resources to go after people in states where it has been legalized except in cases of minor use, or cases of sales to people in states where it's still illegal. Obama is not pro-pot at all. He simply likes to straddle the fence politically to pretend he's a friend of people on both sides of the issue.

If he were in favor of ending the prohibition, he would make statements to that effect. And he certainly could use the power of pardon to help many thousands of people.

First, I'll answer directly. If an American judge believed he/she had the authority to compel you to hand over the data, and you gave the *unable* excuse, the judge would simply assume you are able and rule against you until you found the ability. This may mean you stay in jail, you continue to be tortured, your girlfriend continues to be raped, your kid remains in foster custody, the state takes your money, or whatever.

This has already been thought of. And one answer is engineering some form of plausible deniable.

One idea is to make the existence of encrypted data invisible. Then you could try to claim everything is already visible. But that may not work with a dedicated inquisitor.

In a better designed system, you should be able to provide a password to your inquisitor (the government, perhaps) and it would appear to be successful. But in reality, yet another password would be needed to get at the hidden data.

If a vehicle is wide enough, it doesn't need to tilt. In that case, the tilting would only be for improvement of rider comfort. A bicycle or motorcycle tilts to be able make the turn at a higher speed. The concept is constantly discussed. Also see Max Hall's tilting site.

However, I don't mean to imply bicycle turning is a easily-understood phenomena. I don't claim to understand it, and I've been trying to for years.

If a person has a behavior that she or he keeps hidden publicly, they often assume other people are doing the same, dispite outward appearances to the contrary. For example, gay people think everybody is gay, perhaps in a repressed way, they may rationalize. And people who do particular popular illicit drugs believe most everybody does those drugs, naturally, not openly. There is certainly evidence to support their suspicions. Unlikely people get busted every day for drugs. But, regarding the drugs, the truth is many people really don't do those drugs. The drug user is simply projecting his or her own situation indiscriminately on others.

Now, I don't claim to be Mr. Clean. I would do heroin again if I could feel it. But I can't because I'm under a large dose of buprenorphine. However, I've never done ecstasy, ice, nor crack.

A legitimate defense to any accusation of a crime is the necessity defense. Basically, it means if you have to commit a smaller crime to prevent a greater wrong, then what you did is excusable and not even a crime. For example, if you have a passenger in your car who is bleeding to death, and while you are headed to the hospital you encounter a red light, legally, you can run the light and you would *not* be breaking the law.

That reasoning fails on two points.

• The government is frequently not logical. For example, many people naively assumed that although there were anti-pot laws, the state would never expend the resources to attack a little 'ol nobody like themselves. Thus, they concluded they were safe. Some people who had that attitude are now growing grey behind walls.
• Sometimes the motivation to attack somebody are the financial concerns of particular people in the government working under tangled rules. Because of the way funding laws are arranged, particular people in the government may get money if they prey on a particular nobody. So there really isn't a valid reason to target that someone. They just happen to be in the cross-hairs, and someone is getting paid to pull the trigger.

You don't have to be truly important or truly threatening for the state to persecute you. Indeed, if we could rely on the state always being correct in whom they attack, we wouldn't need individual rights.

By American standards, 8 months is a very light sentence. Lots of people spend that much time just awaiting trial, while they are technically innocent by law. My wife, for example, just finished 40 calendar months (lost all good time for tobacco smoking) for possession of a tiny quantity of crack (which I don't do, btw). I could go on with examples that are even worse, but I wanted to show something near to me to demonstrate prevalence.

The big filter (I don't like the term "great filter" but I'll include it to make search easier) is the point at which software programs itself (I don't like the term "singularity") - and so on. This point will soon arrive for our civilization, and it has already passed for the civilizations we are looking for. SETI is futile.

We must admit something is wrong after the current statistical failure to find detectable electromagnetic radiation (DEMR) from others. The best suggested answer is that civilizations hit the big filter at a point before having centuries of producing DEMR. So what comes early in DEMR production? Software intelligence. Right now, it's not a species killer, but tomorrow, when it can evolve itself, it will write our epitaph.

Regarding the article, it won't work. Civilizations will reach the big filter before they reach other planets.

There's no need to take offense at a legitimate correction. We all do ignorant things. It is how you recover that demonstrates your character.

Your rhetorical question ("How many...anyway?") indirectly stated you believed only a few people bike in the snow.

I didn't object to your anecdote, but if you re-read your post, you can see forming your opinion on that basis was your failing. With your newly-learned knowledge about the subject, you should realize your sample was inadequate to form a generalization.

I never claimed to have done a search; however, having had personal experience with the activity, seeing it, and having seen numerous articles, threads, vids, and pics of it, I felt confident that if you had made a search prior to your posting, you would have seen results that would have compelled you to write something different. Therefore, you didn't search.

There's no need for me to refine my use of "lots" to an definite statistic.

You're Incorrect, misread, borderline ridiculous and you must not ride a bike either.

I ride both an e-bike an a human-powered bike, and yes, I, personally, ride in the right *part* of the lane, but my policy is by no means universal, many people, particularly other e-bike riders, don't agree, and it certainly is not mandated by the law. Also, your interpretation of "Meaning on or to the right of the white solid lane marker" is something no one beyond you believes. Finally, in real life, if you ride a bike (even for just an hour in this town, Kansas City) keeping to the right part of the lane, and you go slower than traffic, many people will come dangerously close - certainly closer than 3 feet. Then, if you ride long enough (say, a few months), you'll have a side-swipe story to tell.

People in cars think because they are in bigger vehicle they have more *right* to be there. Many even believe a bike has no right. I see it as a basic inferiority complex. Someone with this complex gets an opportunity to bully, and they do - to feel more superior about themselves. It happens more frequently in less-civilized parts of the world. In Boulder, Colorado, the motor traffic is generally polite to bikes. In the blighted dirty cities, you get just the opposite. This is a well discussed subject. Every bike forum addresses it from time to time.

Very. In contrast to the UK, I don't know, though.

Enforcement is about money - not road safety.

You certainly didn't search on that one before you posted. Lots of people bike in the snow, particularly in Europe but in the US as well.

To those cagers who blame cyclists for ignoring laws, I point out in Kansas, a motor vehicle is supposed to give a bike 3 feet of clearance. They don't, and the law is never enforced.

Now, to address your post: The reason bikes should have more latitude than cars or trucks is that bikes, considering their smaller mass and lower power, are much less likely to cause injury to another road user. Bikes can safely ignore many traffic laws meant for cars and trucks.

This is an already worn subject, you know.

Agreed. It's amazing how people mindlessly parrot the government slant.
Pretty much if the government states something, the opposite is true. The "corrections" department does not correct people; it punishes them. The "defense" department is for offense. The Division of Family Services breaks up families. The Patriot Act is unpatriotic. The ones who "serve and protect" really take your money and your freedom. Etc.