We're not a superpower but we act like we are. If our system is so much fairer than the States then why was a Canadian Muslim detained by the Quebec Provincial Police (and no cracks about, "well, it was in Quebec, then.") his house searched, his wife browbeaten with statements that her husband was a terrorist just because he tweeted a "let's blow up the competition" rah-rah statement to the rest of his sales team before heading to some sort of trade show in New York. We're all going to have to learn to communicate in passive politically correct phrases or find ourselves being arrested for things we might do not for things we've done.

Oh, yeah, it is post 1984, after all.

No, we're just as paranoid, just as terrified and just as over reactive as the folks in the States. God help the whole damn world. With any luck, the paranoia will finally lead someone to press the big red button and we'll have an end to all this. People, if there are any left, can get back to just scratching out a living without worrying about what someone is thinking on the other side of the planet.

Hey, how about getting some qualified people in so that you can be probed for contraband and get your prostate checked at the same time? What a great service that would be.

Apparently, Steppin Fetchit. See post above.

Never been to Britain, never heard this expression before but with the slight knowledge that "fag" is British slang for a cigarette the expression "murder a fag" seems very clear. The obvious way to murder a cigarette would be to burn it. In other words, smoke it.

The usual condition to financing basic research would be that any resulting patents would go to the company that provided the financing, not that they'd be placed in the open source community. Someone has either had a stroke or needs their meds checked. Likely both.

The only thing you're missing is that we live in a world where the lawyers, in order to justify their positions and salaries (both undeserved), go out of their way to find things to create legal matters about. As said, the app was, if anything, a wonderful homage to Star Trek, didn't detract from the series, gave the fans a little bit of something that they associated with Star Trek to carry around in their pocket and (pay attention CBS) kept the Star Trek franchise front and centre in some people's minds.

There was the suggestions to create a Steampunk version of the app. If done so and themed on Agatha Hetrodyne, Girl Genius, (Look it up, it's a real winner (Hugos, three years running)) I doubt you'd find Phil Foglio issuing take down notices. He knows a good bit of PR and free advertising when he sees it.

(sorry, if I just got you slashdotted, Phil.)

I'd put up with such bumps if they were designed to keep the bicycles off the sidewalks. Sorry to sound so negative but we have a bike riding mayor so everyone and everything else is being crushed under the wheels of his bicycle crowd. He physically partitions lanes for bicycles only on key streets and bridges all over the city and against the recommendations of the city engineers and emergency services responders, designates side streets as bike routes (sometimes three of them between each pair of major streets and we only have 6 to 8 side streets running parallel between the major streets) and puts bicycle permeable barriers up so that cars have to drive through a maze to get to where-ever they want to get in a neighbourhood (they call that local traffic calming). And, lately, despite all the partitioned bike lanes and side streets being designated as bike routes now they're starting to put up signs at key points where some of the new curb slumps have gone in that direct bicycles to yield to pedestrians. In other words, even the sidewalks are being turned over to the bicycles because, by my observations and you could look it up in our local paper's letters to the editor's section for confirmation, bicycles aren't yielding to anything. Why should they when the mayor rides in the middle of the local Critical Mass rides providing an example of how to behave; no helmet, no hands on the handlebar, no safety equipment beyond brakes on the bike?

I guess I'm just an old curmudgeon but if you're going to use bicycles as the cornerstone of your transit plan and such can be done in a small place like Vancouver, you'd also want to make sure the bicycles are going to be used properly and still leave room for some people that cannot use them. And, that's where all this started, wasn't it?

I was just about hit the other night by a boy about 16 or 17, old enough to get a driver's license in our area, riding his bike on the sidewalk. He stopped in time and I asked why he was on the sidewalk instead of the road. He said that it was too dangerous in the road since he wasn't wearing a helmet, and didn't have lights or reflectors for his bike and he was listening to his iPod while riding. He might be lucky he stopped. I only gave him what for verbally. dr2chase says he's big. I'm 6' 3" and 250 lbs. (yeah, I used to cycle commute 5 or 6 miles each way at one time at that weight. The guy who sold me the bike tried to sell me a lightweight kickstand to save a few ounces on the weight of the bike. I asked him to look at me and figure out if a few ounces on the kickstand would make a difference.) Anyway, if the boy had actually hit me, he might have ricocheted off into traffic anyway. I know I would have done whatever I needed to stay upright and off the road

Okay, this is going to seem terse now because it looks like you've decided that I'm either ill-informed, uncaring or just plain stupid. I happen to believe that I'm none of the above but let's get some things out of the way.

If you think I was blowing him off, you haven't seen me blow someone off yet. He mentioned the idea that I must not have seen these wonderful things that he and other (and he labeled himself this) nutjobs were doing to make the world a better place for bicycles and getting around on them. Conversely I could say that he hasn't seen my neighbourhood and the things I'd have to deal with on a daily basis to get my handicapped mom around and how long the bicycle commutes are here.

Racks on buses in my city, where the typical cyclist commute is less than 10 miles, as is the typical bus route, doesn't make sense to me. If you're a determined cyclist, you do the ride. My commute was about 6 miles. Weather permitting, I rode it. Weather not permitting, I rode the bus. The longer commutes haven't got enough buses on them to accommodate enough bike racks for the type of usage suggested.

We do have an electric cart for the handicapped but the neighbourhood isn't well setup for them. The sidewalks were laid down anywhere from 90 to 60 years ago with accompanying trees that have heaved the pavement. The trees are now labeled as over mature and starting to fall apart (happily crushing people's cars in the process. The latest I saw landed on a specially equipped minivan for a handicapped fellow that lives up the street.) Curbs were added in the sixties when handicapped could count on the family to take them where they needed to go or to bring them the things they needed. Slumps in the curbs for things like electric carts or wheelchairs (and they are popular with cyclists, too, for riding on the sidewalk) are only placed when some other work has to be done and the corner curb has to be replaced. This makes taking Mom up to the doctor on the ranger cart a bone jarring trek that takes a good 45 minutes of going on a circuitous route to find the slump in curbs and sidewalks where the cart won't get high centered and that's why I'd rather be able to give Mom a 5 minute ride in our own car on roads, for the moment, still maintained by the evil, or errant, take your pick, car culture that everyone seems to be ready to ditch.

Once those roads are closed to people who need them, and, yes, Vancouver had closed roads, guaranteeing that any closure or barrier would produce no more than a two block diversion, and they've already been proved wrong in that if you want to look at the road closure at 37th and Fraser in Vancouver, this will produce a new group of shut-ins. Ah, yes, without re-writing all this I'll just mention the partitioning of a street down town to produce a bike only lane that closed access from a seniors complex to the pick up point in front of their building for the local Handi-Dart (door to door bus service for those who qualify.) No one thought to look and the requirements of the residents in the area when they decided to put in a bike only lane so they just closed them in.

You just don't get it.

There are humans that cannot provide enough power on their own or even with a little assistance motor to be able to get around. They can still manipulate the controls on a vehicle with an engine that provides enough power to get them around but once you take that vehicle away from them they become shut-ins. Such a vehicle will not meet your demand of being lightweight enough to be totally human powered and still be able to provide enough power for someone who cannot provide the power on their own to use it. Your photo example is not new. I've seen a similar thing here in the neighbourhood, usually with a couple of small kids in the front. I don't see anyone taking Granny to her doctor's appointment in it, though.

As for safety, the way I see it the cyclists simply haven't hit the critical density yet to start crashing into each other. If they were safety experts they wouldn't be riding without helmets, lights, reflectors, on side walks, through stop signs and red lights. Ah, but you've just agreed with the people here that bicycles don't have to adhere to the same set of laws as the cars. So, if a bike route and a non-bike route met at an intersection it would be the bike route that would have the right of way? What about my corner where two bike routes meet? Who has the right of way if the bikes don't follow the same rules as the cars? How do you assign fault if two bikes collide?

Which reminds me of a column in the local paper called the Roadie Scholar written by a fellow who started well over weight and used cycling to get back into shape. No problem with that but his column was dropped a couple of weeks after he responded to a call for cyclists to carry insurance like any other vehicle. Here was his analysis. There were only two type of accidents. The first was when a cyclist was inattentive and ran into a fence or a tree. Simply, that was the cyclists fault and he had to take care of his own medical bills. His only other case was when a cyclist and a car collided. His solution was that the car driver's insurance had to take care of the cyclist's medical bills. He didn't allow for the idea that an inattentive cyclist could run into a car as easily as running into a tree and so be at fault and he didn't account for the idea that two cyclists could run into each other. Who would pay the medical bills in that case? If the bicycles are not expected to follow any rules of the road then there's no way to assign blame in a two bicycle accident so each should bear their own cost. Or, do we follow the Roadie Scholar's suggestion that in any accident with bicycle involved a car driver's insurance must pay the bills. In the two bicycle accident, do they just find a car that happens to be passing by or parked nearby and make a claim on that car's insurance?

We're just going to have to agree to disagree on this one. I still see the possibility of the banning of cars creating or re-creating a class of shut-ins and I've already heard the rattlings of people saying that cars should be banned not just in Vancouver but in many cities around the world.

Ironically, I saw a letter to the editor asking for a ban on bicycles. It seems a woman had the green light, walked out into her crosswalk and then had to jump aside in order to avoid being hit by a bicycle running the red. The net result was that she suffered a broken ankle, missed going on vacation and no one could/would identify the cyclist so she could sue for damages. So, as far as she's concerned, from her personal experience, the cyclists are not the safest driver's on the road and need to be banned. I don't want to see them banned. I just want to see them following the rules of the road.

I might resent the fact that you're calling me a pessimist but the only thing I can actually infer from your statement is that you're an optimist. I'm a realist. Have been all my life so I look like a pessimist to the optimist and an optimist to the pessimist.

But, you've missed the point. The bicycle is more efficient than the bus or the train so it's a poor choice for people with bikes to put the bike on the bus or the train. I've seen commuters in our city go from one end of town to the other and have to cross bridges and go through down town to do it without resorting to putting their bikes on a bus or train. Before I injured my back I used to do the same thing. What's the matter with these other people that they have to put their bicycles on a bus to cross town? It's simple, they're as lazy as all the rest of the people who ride the bus or the train.

As for me, after so long my back is probably pretty much calcified so I could probably go back to riding some sort of adult trike for short trips but, to be honest, I wouldn't want to be associated with the cyclists in this town. They have a sense of entitlement that results in them running red lights, stop signs, ignoring the 30 Kmph speed limits on their much fought for bike routes and even starting a campaign to have the provincial laws re-written so that bicycles are legally exempt from any traffic control signals or signs. Unfortunately, I've seen indications that the lawmakers in the area are starting to go along with the idea. There are already plenty of signs up indicating where the bicycles can abandon the street and compete with the pedestrians for space on the side walks. The day that happens I really will hand in my driver's license and just sit on the front porch, watch the bicycles crash into each other ( I live at the intersection of two bike routes. ) and make bets on who can get up and dial 911 for help first. (if no one moves after three or four minutes, I might call 911 myself.) I've already seen too many near misses. We just need a few more riders coming at the intersection with the belief that they have the right of way since they're on the bike route for the collisions to really start happening.

Oh, yeah, and an electric assisted bicycle is going to be just the method of transportation for my 76 year old mom with osteoporosis (a crumbling back) to get to her doctor's appointments. She can't even walk around the block but, with the car, we can get her out for her appointments and she can see some sights. All that would stop when the car is finally banned from Vancouver. She and many like her, some who still can drive for themselves would become shut-ins.

AS for whether or not there are serious movements to eliminate the car from the urban landscape I might point to these sites.

http://www.peopleforbikes.org/blog/entry/bicycle_cities_a_plan_for_car-free_communities
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/creating-a-car-free-community/
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/12/how_to_build_a_1.php
http://www.bikeradar.com/news/article/south-carolina-to-build-car-free-community-26499/
http://www.worldcarfree.net/resources/free.php

and these are only a few of the things you'll find if you google "car free city".

And, of course, there is the planned future jewel in the sustainable city crown, Masdar City, http://www.masdar.ae/en/home/index.aspx , where you couldn't even bring your privately owned electric car. There won't be any roads to accommodate it.

So, you'll have to pardon me when I say that here seems to be a movement to eliminate the car from the possible selections of transportation in the future and that this will create a new, or perhaps I should say will recreate an old, class of shut-ins.