I don’t disagree. That shooting three times when nobody was in immediate danger of death could be considered reasonable is madness, but unfortunately it’s madness that is pervasive in Canadian society. The police in such circumstances do not have a strong duty to retreat in Canadian law; hopefully the new parliament…

The conviction for attempted murder is completely in line with the logic in R. v. Sarrazin [2011] 3 SCR 505, which is covering law set by the Supreme Court of Canada, so there is pretty much zero probability of a successful appeal on the basis of the added charge.

In Sarrazin, the defendant wanted the jury to be able…

The Crown Attorneys *did* see the blue wall closing in and decided to mirror the logic in R v Sarrazin, a 2010 case that reached the Supreme Court of Canada as 2011 SCC 54.

“Quantum entanglement seems to be an odd loophole around space-time”

It’s not. Sorry. We’ve tested it to increasingly exquisite precision in labs on earth and in orbit, and have even better observational evidence from astronomy; in the limit of our ability to measure (and our observational limits on distant objects’…

So what’s the answer?

SLBMs are easier to hide; presumably practically every national military knows where most fixed installations are, whether they’re silos or depots (heck, everything is liable to be in google maps eventually), however that probably only matters for the Russians for now, as none of the other…

You might be interested in this exploration of a highly similar fantasy: what happens if the most modern (as of 2000-2004) Japanese destroyer goes back in time to the Second World War?

The politics of the 21st century crew is mostly wholly and highly opposed to the politics of the Empire of Japan. They also want to…

No, but there is the Human Rights Act (1998), which came into force in 2000. It incorporates the European Convention on Human Rights into all UK law and requires the judiciary to act in manners compatible with the Convention. The Convention had already been in force (the UK was one of the principle authors and first…

Evolutionary biology concerns itself with the processes that lead to the diversity of life — in particular, the process of speciation. The tools and items studied are material and typically at the scale of molecules or sequences of nucleic acids.

Evolutionary biologists have nothing much to say about much-less-material…

There could have been. After Lougheed, Levesque and the others began insisting on watering it down or even abandoning it, Trudeau threatened a plebiscite, and the united front by the intransigent provinces fell apart: Levesque immediately rose to Trudeau’s bait, the others realized that [a] it would probably win by a…

Wow, like a superhero hiding by wearing glasses and changing hairstyles. Nobody sees through the disguise!

Trial? In reality he would simply waste his $40 entry fee for making a small claim in Massachusetts, and further costs upon accepting the amount in the claim (presumably $12) in full and final settlement. Refusing an offer to pay the full claim or proceeding with a claim that is unreasonably high risks an adverse…

Sure, but the right thing to do would be to talk it out — "sent from my iPhone" — and if that doesn't work, then never eat there again, tell your friends not to eat there again, review them on Yelp, and so forth. The walls-of-text are ridiculous, and are akin to belittling a waiter, demanding small changes to items…

It costs $40 to make a small claim (under $500) in Massachusetts. Even if he prevailed and was awarded $12, I cannot imagine that any small claims court judge would make a payment order on the entry fee or on any other costs incurred by the plaintiff, in light of the open offers to settle that we see in the emails. …

... and has no sense of proportion.

I'm not totally certain about how the Massachusetts Bar is administered, but I'm pretty sure that it's most likely concerned with the behaviour of lawyers acting for their clients, rather than lawyers not acting for anyone, or lawyers being pro se dicks before action. Being a dick to someone in one's spare time is…

In England and Wales, if it is printed on the menu and a copy of the menu is outside and easily read before entering a restaurant, you can be charged a mandatory service charge that is typically 12.5%. The restauranteur must pay value-added tax on the mandatory service charge, so it is common to add a…