Here are the three most-consulted English-language cases on CanLII for the week of February 1 – 7.

♨ 1. Reece v. Rumney et al 2012 ONSC 780

[1] This is a motion by the Plaintiff for an Order setting aside the verdict of the jury delivered on December 8, 2011 on the basis that there was no evidence to support the jury’s findings and for an Order that:

(a) the action be retried with another jury; or

(b) a verdict be delivered by the trial judge (the plaintiff acknowledged at the motion that this likely was not a realistic solution).

♨ 2. Howell v. Yourk 2012 ONSC 766

[1] After a thirteen day jury trial on a pedestrian motor vehicle accident case, the plaintiff was awarded damages totalling $481,000. The jury verdict exceeded the amounts set out in the plaintiff’s offer to settle. The plaintiff seeks his costs, inclusive of disbursements, totalling $431,353.12, relying in part on an offer served pursuant to rule 49 of the Rules of Civil Procedure.

♨ 3. Merck Frosst Canada Ltd. v. Canada (Health) 2012 SCC 3

[3] . . . . [These appeals] arise out of requests for information which had been provided to government by a manufacturer as part of the new drug approval process. In order to get approval to market new drugs, innovator pharmaceutical companies, such as the appellant Merck Frosst Canada Ltd. (“Merck”), are required to disclose a great deal of information to the government regulator, the respondent Health Canada, including a lot of material that they, with good reason, do not want to fall into their competitors’ hands. But competitors, like everyone else in Canada, are entitled to the disclosure of government information under the Access to Information Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. A-1 (the “Act” or “ATI”).

The most-consulted French-language decision was R. c. Sault Ste. Marie [1978] 2 RCS 1299

Dans le présent pourvoi, la Cour doit examiner des infractions diversement appelées infractions «statutaires», «réglementaires», «contre le bien-être public», «de responsabilité absolue» ou «de responsabilité stricte». Ces infractions ne sont pas criminelles au plein sens du terme, mais sont prohibées dans l’intérêt public. (Sherras v. De Rutzen[3]) Bien qu’appliquées comme lois pénales par le truchement de la procédure criminelle, ces infractions sont essentiellement de nature civile et pourraient fort bien être considérées comme une branche du droit administratif à laquelle les principes traditionnels du droit criminel ne s’appliquent que de façon limitée. Elles se rapportent à des questions quotidiennes, telles les contraventions à la circulation, la vente de nourriture contaminée, les violations de lois sur les boissons alcooliques et autres infractions semblables. Le présent pourvoi a pour objet la pollution.

Early this year, the Department of Justice released, seemingly for the first time, a report titled "Costs of Crime in Canada, 2008" by Ting Zhang [PDF version]. Given the impending omnibus bill on crime and the likely large increase in the costs to the provinces from their associated responsibility for corrections, this report might be of some interest.

It consists, essentially, of a series of "appendices" that set out cost tables for, respectively, the criminal justice system, the victims of crime, third parties, and finally intangible costs (pain and suffering, value of loss of life) associated with crime. The overall costs are conservatively estimated as follows:

In 2008, the total (tangible) social and economic costs of Criminal Code offences in Canada were approximately $31.4 billion.1 This amounted to a per capita cost of $943 per year. . .

In the present study, it is estimated that the total intangible costs were about $68.2 billion in 2008, which increased the total costs of crime to $99.6 billion.

I've been meaning for a while now to do a fillip on Issuu, the online magazine creation tool; and when I saw yesterday that CanLII had done up its strategic plan using Issuu, that gave me the push I needed.

As I said, Issuu is a digital publishing platform that lets you create a glossy online magazine, brochure, or report that can be read on pretty much any digital device. All of which is cool if you're into self publishing. I'm pointing it out to you, though, as a source of a lot of fancy and free content — it is Friday, after all, and consumption, not creation, is the proper "c" word at week's end, is it not?

So what's available once you've read the CanLII report? Start on the main Publications page. From here you can drill down by facets such as popularity or "recency." Or you can browse through one of the 15 named categories (none of which is "law" by the way). You'll see that there's a lot of corporate and marketing dross, but here and there a nugget shines.

For example, I found Spenser, a new bimonthly food and drink magazine that looks as though I could waste half an hour or so flipping through. (Don't forget to use full screen mode; much more enjoyable.) Or for something more tried and true in the food realm, there's Jamie Oliver's magazine. Here are some other finds that might appeal (though hunting on your own could be half the fun):

• Little White Lies – "a bi-monthly, independent movie magazine that features cutting edge writing, illustration and photography"
• "Design by Nature: Using Universal Forms and Principles in Design" (sample chapter)
• Cyprus, 10000 years of history and civilization
• On Snow Magazine
• Electronic Beats – "Electronic Beats Magazine delivers features and interviews with artists from the music and other creative industries…" (Deutsche Telekom)

And if you can't be bothered to hunt and peck for yourself, simply let Issuu parade its "featured" magazines down there at the bottom of the home page.

CanLII President Colin Lachance has just now released his plan for that organization's next three years. "Strategic Priorities 2012 to 2014" is available in a variety of formats: HTML, PDF, and large print PDF. Versions in French are also available, of course.

The report elaborates on four strategic priorities for CanLII:

1. Secure permanent role as foremost source of free law in canada.
2. Continually enrich content to meet the needs of public and professional users.
3. Deliver easy to use professional grade tools and a compelling site experience.
4. Continuously promote and defend free access to law

As readers will likely know, CanLII receives from Canada's courts and justice departments a welter of documents under a variety of terms and conditions:

CanLII will seek to bring as much of that content as possible within a common contractual or policy framework guided by principles of open access and fair dealing.

In addition, CanLII will, among other things:

• seek "supplementary funding" to add to the $34 per lawyer base it currently receives;
• consider incorporating secondary sources and facilitating searches of materials hosted elsewhere;
• improve access to the service for users of mobile phones;
• develop "tools, tips, and training" to make research easier;
• continue to support free access to law here and elsewhere.

Lachance is seeking feedback and can be reached at clachance @ canlii.org

I have a tendency to want to keep my gravy out of my peas — control issues, I know. This makes me work to keep my social media in silos as much as possible, fearing, I suppose, the further loss of privacy if Facebook gossips to Twitter about me and vice versa. The devil — or the deity, if you prefer — is in the intersections, the linkages, the relationships.

This desire for some crafted anonymity or at least a tad of privacy is a forlorn hope, I realize, if I'm online and tweeting, blogging, "plus"-ing and the like, whether or not the right hand knows what the left hand is doing. And it seems that folks younger than me, which is to say most folks by far, are blithely uncaring about privacy when it comes to social media: the more the merrier and let it all connect.

In that spirit, IFTTT ("if this, then that") has launched an intriguing set of functionalities that allow you to explicitly establish linkages among your online activities to suit your particular needs. These linkages are, in effect, simple programs established on the coding model "if this, then that." So, for example, I can tell IFTTT that if I star an item in Google Reader, then send a note of that item to my Evernote account; or, if my Facebook profile picture changes, then change my Twitter photo to the new one also.

The units that you get to control are your social media accounts, which IFTTT calls "channels," and there are some 40 of them (Twitter, Facebook, email, LinkedIn, your telephone, etc. etc.). Channels are connected via "recipes," IFTTT's term for the condition and action parts of the program. There's no list of which actions are available or permissible, so far as I can tell, though there's a long list of "recipes" cooked up by others that will give you a pretty fair idea of what's possible. As you build your own recipe, the site offers you the various options available. When you've done, you've created a "task" that will execute itself.

I've only begun to explore what might be useful to me or, indeed, to those in the legal professions. But off the top of my head, it seems that you might want to keep a record of your tweets (which Twitter won't do for you); in which case a task that archives your tweets to another app so that you've got a good record of what you've said and when you said it might make sense. (As might the ability to trigger your phone to ring when you send a text message — if you find yourself in a lot of meetings.)

Take a look at see what you can come up with. Let us know by way of a comment if you cook up a recipe that might be of interest to others. Peas can taste good with gravy on them.

Here are the three most-consulted English-language cases on CanLII for the week of January 24 – 31.

♨ 1. Jones v. Tsige 2012 ONCA 32

[1] Does Ontario law recognize a right to bring a civil action for damages for the invasion of personal privacy?

♨ 2. Pottruff v. Don Berry Holdings Inc. 2012 ONSC 311

[1] The defendant brings this motion to have two documents, and any copies in the possession of the plaintiff, returned to it. As well it seeks a declaration that the documents cannot be referred to in this litigation because of solicitor and client privilege.

[2] The plaintiff brings a cross motion seeking a declaration that the documents are not privileged and can be utilized as the plaintiff sees fit.

♨ 3. Dale v. The Toronto Real Estate Board 2012 ONSC 512

[1] This is a motion to strike out a Statement of Claim. The plaintiffs have commenced an action for damages in the amount of $540 million against the 49 defendants. Essentially, the plaintiffs claim that the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) and its officers and directors (collectively the TREB defendants), together with the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) and its officers and directors (collectively the CREA defendants), breached the terms of an earlier settlement agreement, violated the provisions of the Competition Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-34, unlawfully conspired together to injure the plaintiffs, and wrongfully interfered with the plaintiffs’ economic and contractual relations. This was all done, according to the plaintiffs, in an effort to drive Realtysellers out of the real estate business and punish the plaintiffs for making complaints about them to the federal Competition Bureau. The plaintiffs also seek punitive, aggravated and/or exemplary damages in the amount of $10 million against the defendants.

The most-consulted French-language decision was Crevette du Nord Atlantique inc. c. Conseil de la Première Nation malécite de Viger 2012 QCCA 7.

[1] L'appelante se pourvoit contre un jugement rendu le 18 juillet 2008 par la Cour supérieure, district de Kamouraska (honorable Claude Henri Gendreau), qui a accueilli en partie la requête introductive d'instance de l'intimé en revendication, en injonction et en dommages-intérêts.

It just so happened that as Slaw columnist Ed Prutschi's "Crime & Punishment in 2012" appeared today, I received the latest emailed copy of Criminological Highlights from the University of Toronto's Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies. I thought I'd pass on the link to those of our readers who are interested in criminal law or the intersection of law and social behaviour.

Criminological Highlights is a digest of selected academic articles,

designed to provide an accessible look at some of the more interesting criminological research that is currently being published. Each issue contains “Headlines and Conclusions” for each of 8 articles, followed by one-page summaries of each article.

The current issue, for example, addresses the following questions:

1. Are long sentences more effective than shorter sentences in reducing reoffending?
2. Why do western countries vary in their imprisonment rates?
3. Do intensive foot patrols reduce crime?
4. Does being apprehended and arrested for a crime act as a deterrent?
5. Why aren’t people deterred by harsh sentences?
6. Will new and better community sanctions reduce imprisonment?
7. How is a period of imprisonment more punishing for Blacks than Whites?
8. Do trustworthy looking people have an advantage at trial?

These are the sorts of issues, I think, that it might be useful to learn about as we proceed with the contentious omnibus crime bill in Parliament.

Who are these guys and why are they so happy? You're looking at Clio co-founders Rian Gauvreau on the left and Jack Newton (Slaw blogger) on the right; and they'll be smiling right now because they've just announced at Legal Tech that Clio has raised six million dollars in its Series B round of financing. From the Clio press release:

Clio will use this new funding to extend its product leadership position, aggressively developing new functionalities and supporting its growing customer base. In addition, the company aims to expand its footprint beyond the U.S. (which currently represents 95% of Clio’s sales) into other markets including Europe, Canada and Australia.

As the story in the Vancouver Sun explains,

Clio targets the majority of lawyers — those working solo or in small-scale firms — who want a reliable, convenient, low-cost method for managing their work flow. . . It is designed to streamline an array of tasks . . .

Our congratulations to Clio. It's great to see a company in the legal industry getting it right in these difficult times.

A number of months ago (but unremarked here on Slaw) The Canadian Judicial Council released a "Reference Guide for Judges Appointed to Commissions of Inquiry," [PDF] those investigative, often palliative, and sometimes corrective events with which all Canadians are familiar. This acts as a resource guide to accompany the Protocol [PDF] governing appointments of judges that the Council released back in August of 2010.

Part I serves as an Introduction to orientate the reader and briefly describe the purpose of the Protocol.

Part II offers a checklist of the types of things any commissioner will likely wish to consider as critical first steps in undertaking the inquiry and ensuring its smooth and effective operation.

Part III provides a list of past commissioners and information relating to the inquiries over which they presided.

Part IV includes sample provisions from previous Orders-in-Council (OIC), which are intended to assist the commissioner in determining whether the enabling OIC contains the necessary powers and authority to complete the commission’s mandate or whether revisions will be required.

Part V provides a list of reference materials including textbooks, academic journals and case law to which the commissioner might refer, when needed.

Most interesting, perhaps, for those of us not on the bench, is the Appendix which contains a "summary of key elements" of nearly 40 past federal and provincial inquiries, the names of which read like a "Who's Who" of Canadian disasters: Ipperwash, Walkerton, Dziekanski, Pickton, Neil Stonechild, and on and on. Surprisingly—or perhaps not—a number of the summaries of earlier inquiries consist of the repeated phrases "Unknown at present," "Terms of reference not available," or simply "Unknown."

Which points up the lack in the Council guide of any hyperlinks to inquiry materials online. As far as federal inquires go, the Privy Council Office and Library and Archives Canada have done a great job of putting a very large number of these reports online, even scanning earlier ones as graphic PDFs. For a semi-relevant blast from the past, you might enjoy looking at the inquiry into Canada's earlier spy scandal, the Gerda Munsinger affair.

3D keeps coming (and going). It's here now in the movies and threatens to poke itself (John-Candy-like) out of our TVs. It was there for a while about sixty years ago also at the movies and in the glories of Viewmaster. And just before the turn of the century before this one, stereographs or stereograms were popular, those almost double photographs that were viewed through a device that look rather like a small library card catalogue drawer.

Well stereographs have been brought back, this time by the New York Public Library, and thanks to the "miracles of modern science" you're able to see them with their pairs of pics nearly conjoined in pretty much 3D splendour. Stereogranimator lets you create animated GIFs (pronounced "jifs") or anaglyphs from the library's stock of old stereograph images.

The trick is to align the two photographs such that the animation flicks back and forth between them so rapidly that you lose a sense of motion and instead see three dimensions. You can find the latest efforts from the rest of the world on the site, observing that most people do a lousy job of it: the results flicker like jumping jack flash in a truly annoying way. An anaglyph would be easier on the eye, but then you'd have to have a pair of 3D glasses at the ready—which you might. (Instructions here on how to make your own 3D glasses, if you'd like to turn this into a winter weekend project with the kids.)

I've tried my hand at making depth, using the waterfall picture that you see below (click on the image to enlarge). And I've tucked the animated GIF result away below the fold so that Slaw's front page doesn't strobe like a broken neon sign.

Click on image to enlarge.

Now, prepare to be amazed . . . in a mild and gentle way:

GIF made with the NYPL Labs Stereogranimator

Globalization takes its toll. This time the toll is to be paid by Americans who want to use works that had, according to US law at the time, entered the public domain but that have been removed from that status and place back under copyright by a 1994 act of the US Congress in order to bring that country into line with the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. As you might imagine, a number of disappointed users sued the US government, arguing that according to the intent of the Copyright and Patent Clause of the American constitution once a work was in the public domain it could not be withdrawn from it. Last week the case was ruled on by the US Supreme Court in a 6-2 decision, Golan v. Holder, No. 10-545 [PDF]. Justice Ginsburg, writing for the majority, ruled that the law in question:

does not transgress constitutional limitations on Congress’ authority. Neither the Copyright and Patent Clause nor the First Amendment, we hold, makes the public domain, in any and all cases, a territory that works may never exit.

As always, the SCOTUSblog is an excellent source for material surrounding the decision. To learn more about the musician, Lawrence Golan, who challenged the law, take a look at a couple of articles on the issue in The Chronicle: 1, 2.

The works affected in 1994, judged to number in the millions, are largely works by non-Americans that, as foreign works, were not as protected by copyright as were native works. The "recaptured" works included music by Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and Stravinsky; and:

books by H.G. Wells, Virginia Woolf, and C.S. Lewis; films by Alfred Hitchcock, Federico Fellini, and Jean Renoir; and artwork by M.C. Escher and Pablo Picasso.

Canada ratified the Berne Convention in 1931, signed it in 1948, and acceded to current forms in 1970 and 1998.

Here are the three most-consulted English-language cases on CanLII for the week of January 17 – 24.

♨ 1. Jones v. Tsige 2012 ONCA 32

[1] Does Ontario law recognize a right to bring a civil action for damages for the invasion of personal privacy?

♨ 2. R. v. Rose 2012 ONSC 350

[1] Mr. Rose is charged with four counts of possession of a controlled substance for the purpose of trafficking, four counts of possession of a controlled substance, and possession of property obtained by crime. He brings this application pursuant to section 24(2) of the Charter for an order excluding from evidence the controlled substances found on his person in violation of his rights guaranteed by sections 8, 9, 10(a) and 10(b) of the Charter.

♨ 3. Cannon v. Funds for Canada Foundation 2012 ONSC 399

[1] When Michael Cannon heard about the Donations for Canada Gift Program – an opportunity to obtain a $10,000 charitable tax credit in return for a $2,500 donation – he thought it was “too good to be true”.

[2] It was.

[3] A few years later, his tax returns were reassessed by Canada Revenue Agency (“C.R.A.”) and he had to repay his deductions, with interest. The only thing he received for his “donation” was a tax bill.

The most-consulted French language case was Droit de la famille — 102866 2010 QCCA 1978 [English translation available]

[11] Les conjoints de fait au Québec sont-ils victimes de discrimination au sens de l'article 15 de la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés de la personne (Charte) parce que le Code civil du Québec (C.c.Q.) ne leur accorde pas de droit à des aliments, au partage du patrimoine familial, à la protection de la résidence familiale, à la société d'acquêts et à la prestation compensatoire[1]?

[12] La question est importante puisque, au Québec, en 2006, 34,6 % des couples étaient conjoints de fait, soit 1,2 million de personnes, alors que dans le reste du Canada 18,4 % des couples vivaient en union de fait[2]. En outre, en 2002, 60 % des enfants naissaient hors mariage[3].

In this regard see the good summaries from Educaloi:
English: http://www.educaloi.qc.ca/en/publicforum/story127/
French: http://www.educaloi.qc.ca/placepublique/dossier127/

And, finally, some aggregate data. After just over three weeks into the new year CanLII has had >500K visits from >than 150K unique visitors, generating >5M pageviews over the course of >100K hours of usage.

English news sources reported yesterday that a three-judge panel of the High Court found Theodora Dallas, until recently a university lecturer in psychology, guilty of contempt of court and sentenced her to six months imprisonment. She will serve the first three in jail and "be on license" for the second three.

Dallas was on a jury trying a case of grievous bodily harm. The trial judge had given jurors clear instructions not to look up matters connected to the trial. At home, she searched the term "grievous bodily harm" and then put it in conjunction with "Luton," producing a result that showed the defendant had once been charged with (and acquitted of) rape. Dallas told other jurors during their deliberation what she had found in this way, with the consequence that, when this breach was reported to the trial judge, the trial was stopped.

A written judgment is not yet available online, so far as I can find. However, lengthy excerpts are available in a story in the Guardian. The story is also carried by the BBC, and The Register, among others.

This is not the first time an English court has dispensed a stiff penalty for disobeying instructions to a jury to stay off the internet. In June of this year a juror who used the internet to contact a defendant who had been acquitted earlier in the large trial was sentenced to eight months in prison.

As might be imagined, this case has once again raised concern and comment about the difficulty of conducting jury trials in this day and age of ubiquitous internet access. It will be difficult if not impossible, I suspect, to persuade obstreperous or "Bolshy" jurors that they mustn't do what they can so easily do in fact — and with little fear of getting caught if they keep their mouths shut.

The Library of Parliament's Information and Research Service has released a background paper, "Legal Status at the Federal Level of Assisted Human Reproduction in Canada" [PDF] by Sonya Noris and Marlisa Tiedemann. The paper takes the reader though the recent history (1990 – present) of federal attempts at the regulation of this set of developing medical practices, culminating in a brief analysis of the Quebec constitutional challenge to the Assisted Human Reproduction Act culminating in the ambiguous / ambivalent response of the Supreme Court (4-4-1, so to speak) in Reference re Assisted Human Reproduction Act 2010 SCC 61.

According to the backgrounder, "the federal Minister of Health’s office simply noted that they would 'take the necessary time to review the decision.'" Nothing has been forthcoming since that time, though it may be that the existence of the background paper bespeaks a revival of government interest. For, if the legal situation isn't busy developing, the technology certainly will be, bringing with it trying ethical and legal questions.

Just to remind you about what that technology might entail, here's a list of practices from the backgrounder that have at one time or another been forbidden or heavily frowned on:

• cloning of human embryos;
• commercial preconception or “surrogacy” arrangements;
• buying and selling of eggs, sperm and embryos;
• egg donation in exchange for in vitro fertilization services;
• germ-line genetic alteration (genetic alteration that can be passed to subsequent generations);
• ectogenesis (creation of an artificial womb);
• sex selection for non-medical purposes;
• creation of animal/human hybrids;
• retrieval of eggs from cadavers and fetuses for donation, fertilization or research;
• transfer of embryos between humans and another species;
• research on embryos beyond 14 days of development;
• creation of embryos solely for research purposes;
• use of human eggs, sperm or embryos for a reproductive procedure or for medical research without the informed consent of the donor; and
• offers to provide or pay for any prohibited practices.

"phantosmia" means smelling bacon when there's no one cooking breakfast.

That's my definition. But don't trust me. Take a look at wordnik, where, as the about page explains, you'll find a better definition of this or any word, examples of its use, lists of (somewhat) related words, brief discussions of the phenom, and more. Indeed, I only came across "phantosmia" because I hit the random word button.

Now that site alone could lead to hours of harmless amusement, but this is your lucky day. I'm piling on. Here are three more word-ish sites that belong on your reference list, if only for the times you defend your world champion status at Scrabble. ("phantosmia" is not a valid Scrabble word, apparently. Huh.) Herewith, then, the promised trio:

• The Virtual Academic is "a random sentence generator" from the University of Chicago Writing Program. Why play with just one word when a clot of them is readily available? For example:
  

  The fundamental principle of humanist organicism is often found in juxtaposition with, if not in direct opposition to, the legitimation of the enigmatic.

  To which proposition by Pootwattle, Smedley, the Virtual Critic, responds:

  Pootwattle's ironic reference to the relationship between the fundamental principle of humanist organicism and the legitimation of the enigmatic revives the often neglected field of poststructuralist semantics.

  Can't you just see tweets like this?

• Word Spy offers a neologism a day, pretty much. You know, those cant phrases you hate but wind up using a year after you've first heard them. Ones that seem immediately useful to me are "ineptocracy", "fat-finger problem", and "hopium" (for which what-are-you-smoking coinage there are actually tweets).
• More Words is the last word today. It's a search tool that lets you use wild cards for that elusive word and then lists all results by length, for that stubborn crossword. So, for instance, you could search for a three-letter word ending in "r" [--r], words containing the sequence "sswo" anywhere within them [*sswo*], or words starting with "ab" that don't contain an "e" or an "o" [ab* ^eo]—just the sort of quasi-Boolean stuff to get your heart racing.

  As the help page says, More Words draws from the Enhanced North American Benchmark Lexicon's supply of 173,528 words, which, as it happens, you can download as a simple list in very long text file.

  Sadly, perhaps, "phantosmia" is not in the list.

Apple may have done it yet again.

The iBooks system launched today puts a powerful but easy-to-use authoring system into the hands of anyone who wants it, presaging the publication of dynamic ebooks by the millions—texts that will, of course, range in quality from the wretched to the superb—and, I should add, from the free to the expensive. Apple, being Apple, has tied this software in pretty tightly to its own iPad: books made by iBooks Author are made to be viewed on an iPad and may only be sold on Apple's iTunes Store. (There is also an ability to export a book from Author into PDF or TXT format, though how much functionality survives the transition to PDF I haven't yet discovered.)

Apple's video ad for this system—"Apple in Education," because the system is aimed ostensibly at writers of textbooks — gives you a decent sense of what's possible, once you get past the somewhat saccharine and trite testimonials about teaching.

At first glance, which is all I've given it, iBook Author seems to offer a great deal of promise. It looks about as easy to use as Keynote or PowerPoint, though I imagine some of the more dynamic elements will take a bit of getting used to; and the business of designing for touch instead of mouse clicks will require practice.

I see a big future here for the use of iBook Author in law firms as a creator of teaching / reference tools, and, indeed, to make promotional and explanatory material for clients. Of course, everyone will need to have an iPad. Which is the plan.

Given the recent news about the arrest of Sub-Lieutenant Jeffrey Paul Delisle, Slaw readers may want to visit the Security of Information Act (SOIA) under which he has been charged, according to reports. Government officials and the RCMP have refused to identify the section of the legislation involved, however.

I say "visit" the Act in part because it is a nearly indigestible tangle, a true failure, perhaps, of the draftsperson's art. This lack of clarity, which could be seen as a sympathetic reflection of the espionage world I suppose, has been the subject of judicial criticism. Readers may recall O'Neill v. Canada, the 2006 case of the Ottawa reporter who had documents pertaining to Maher Arar removed from her home pursuant to search warrants obtained on the basis of s.4 of SOIA, an older section in this much-updated "palimpsest" of a statute, in part dating back it seems to 1889. O'Neill challenged the validity of the warrants and, in so doing, the validity under the Charter of section 4(1)(a), 4(3) and 4(4)(b). Justice Ratushny of the Ontario Superior Court found these "inelegant" sections did in fact violate sections 7 and 2(b) of the Charter, being both overbroad and vague; neither was saved by s.1.

Though the heart of s.4 has been found unconstitutional, it remains in the legislation; I suspect however that Delisle will be charged under another section.

I'll reproduce s.4(1)(a) and (b) here, so you can see the sort of drafting I'm talking about:

4. (1) Every person is guilty of an offence under this Act who, having in his possession or control any secret official code word, password, sketch, plan, model, article, note, document or information that relates to or is used in a prohibited place or anything in a prohibited place, or that has been made or obtained in contravention of this Act, or that has been entrusted in confidence to him by any person holding office under Her Majesty, or that he has obtained or to which he has had access while subject to the Code of Service Discipline within the meaning of the National Defence Act or owing to his position as a person who holds or has held office under Her Majesty, or as a person who holds or has held a contract made on behalf of Her Majesty, or a contract the performance of which in whole or in part is carried out in a prohibited place, or as a person who is or has been employed under a person who holds or has held such an office or contract,

(a) communicates the code word, password, sketch, plan, model, article, note, document or information to any person, other than a person to whom he is authorized to communicate with, or a person to whom it is in the interest of the State his duty to communicate it;

(b) uses the information in his possession for the benefit of any foreign power or in any other manner prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State;

The more modern sections, introduced in 2001 after the attack on the World Trade Center, are better written, I'm glad to say. Though their number and the breadth of the definitions of some critical terms — "Prejudice to the safety or interest of the State" in s.3, for example — make for difficult analysis.

I don't know about you, but when I'm confronted with a new chunk of complicated legislation and need to get some understanding of it, I begin to chart it out, typically re-doing the order in which modern drafting practice dictates things be laid out. I wonder whether it wouldn't be possible and desirable to have each act accompanied by one or more flow charts as a guide from the framers and possessing the same lack of authority as the helpful side notes now used in legislation. I suppose that in this day and age I should be asking for a computer program that could do this charting automatically; but I'd settle for a graphic layout of what the draftspeople had in mind.

(This may not be such a wacky idea. More than a decade ago a graphic designer, David Berman, proposed to a Justice Canada pilot project that Canada move "Toward a New Format for Canadian Legislation: Using graphic design principles and methods to improve public access to the law" [PDF]. Our ability to manipulate information has come a long way since 2000; it may be time for a later version of this proposal.)

Here are the three most-consulted English-language cases on CanLII for the week of January 10 – 17.

♨ 1. Zefferino v. Meloche Monnex Insurance 2012 ONSC 154

[1] . . . The claim is based on the alleged negligence of the defendant insurance broker in failing to properly offer optional income replacement benefit coverage to the plaintiff as part of a policy of automobile insurance.

♨ 2. Williams v. Toronto (City) 2012 ONSC 102

[1] This is a motion by the defendant the City of Toronto (the “City”) for an order under subrule 56.01 (1)(a) for security for costs against the plaintiff Elfreda Williams (“Ms Williams”) on the ground that she is ordinarily resident out of Ontario, namely in Jamica in the West Indies.

♨ 3. Cowles v. Balac 2005 CanLII 2038 (ON SC)

[150] I conclude that ALS [African Lion Safari] is strictly liable to the plaintiffs Balac and Cowles for the damages sustained [in the tiger attack].

The most-often consulted case in the French language was Bamba c. Association générale des étudiantes et étudiants de l'Université du Québec en Outaouais 2011 QCCS 6730 (CanLII)

[1] Suite à une élection tenue en vue d'élire les dirigeants étudiants du conseil central de l'association générale des étudiants de l'Université du Québec en Outaouais, Le Tribunal est saisi d'une requête visant à faire annuler une décision du comité des élections ayant eu pour effet de disqualifier le demandeur le jour de l'élection, ce qui a eu pour conséquence que son adversaire a été élu par acclamation.

[2] Il demande aussi au Tribunal d'ordonner, par l'émission d'un bref de mandamus, la tenue d'une nouvelle élection.

JSTOR—Journal Storage, I think—keeps a good portion of English language scholarship, a thousand journals and more, in digital form to serve up to subscribers. Some have felt that corralling scholarship so assiduously behind a paywall is wrong, wrong as antithetical to the fundamental principle of disinterested scholarly inquiry, and wrong as creating a barrier to knowledge that the relatively poorer members of society can't afford to cross. See, for example, this talk by Larry Lessig at CERN, and the politically motivated "hacking" of JSTOR by Aaron Swartz talked about here on Slaw.

But JSTOR, a non-profit venture aimed at taking some of the financial burden off libraries, has made a couple of steps towards open access, the first not quite six months ago and the second scheduled for a couple of months from now. Back in September of 2011, JSTOR made freely available something on the order of half a million journal articles that have entered the public domain, specifically those published in the US from before 1923 and those from Europe published before 1870.

Now JSTOR has announced its intention to institute Register and Read, a program to let anyone have reading access to articles from a small selection (70) of its journals. A viewer can select up to four articles each fortnight and will be unable to print or copy from them. This is explicitly said to be a test, and one presumes that if publishers' revenues don't plummet as a result, some cautious expansion of the program will come about in time.

A list of the participating journals is available in spreadsheet format. Though lawyers are interested in everything, potentially, the journals in the program that are most clearly of interest are: American Society of International Law, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Modern Law Review. (Various publishers appear on the list as such, so it's hard to tell at this point which of their journals will be made available.)

Small as this advance appears to be, for what it's worth Professor Lessig has felt the announcement important enough to merit a tweeted "BRAVO."

This is a small part of a stretch of ocean that's being talked about a lot lately in connection with the Northern Gateway pipeline and the possibility of using Prince Rupert as an alternative western terminus. But this isn't a fillip about pipelines, oil, or even oceans. It's about those little coloured shapes that look like old-fashioned pen nibs — and even more about a website that tracks them. Some thousands of them all around the globe.

MarineTraffic.com gets data about ships' positions and movement from AIS (automatic identification system) transponders on board vessels via VHF signals, the kind we use for some radio and TV transmission, and a network of volunteer relayers. A computer then coordinates the data and plots the positions of the ships on a Google map. The image below shows the regions around the world that are actively "covered" by this process, and the numbers in the green regions tell you how many vessels are in that region. Zooming in gives you the sort of graphic detail you see in this image of the traffic in a part of the East China Sea.

Click on image to enlarge.

All this is simply voyeuristic, of course, for a person who isn't near an ocean, which is to say most of us. Yet there's something fascinating about being able to see a tiny model of one of these great behemoths and know that its location on the sea is less than an hour old. You can find vessels by name (track your family on that cruise); distinguish passenger ships from tankers and yachts, etc.; or focus on the port of your choice (such as Halifax or Vancouver) for details as to what's in, arriving, or departing. And if ships are your thing, there's a gallery where you can find thousands of photographs of them and the harbours they ply between.

Oh, and for the two of you out there who are at full anorak, train-spotting level, there's even an iPhone app version of the site.

It's been a great long time since I claimed any expertise in family law, but the fuss over today's Globe and Mail front page headline (see the story here) concerning the availability of divorce to foreign same-sex couples married here in Canada has tempted me to put a toe in the waters again, just to check with Slaw readers that my understanding is correct or off base.

And that understanding is the following:

The law of marriage is governed by two sets of rules, one dealing with formal validity and the other with essential validity, or capacity to marry. Just to make things wonderfully difficult, that split is mapped onto another, the Canadian constitutional division of powers, with Parliament getting capacity and the provincial assemblies getting form. Going abroad to marry adds a third duality to the analysis, because conflict of laws rules say that lex loci—the law of the place where the marriage is performed—governs the proper form of marriage, and the law of the parties' domicile governs their capacity to marry.

What then is the situation of a same-sex couple that comes from Florida, let's say, to Ontario (or any other Canadian province) in order to marry here?

First, they must meet provincial licence requirements, set out in the Marriage Act (and interpreted on the City of Toronto website, for example). This does not present a problem for the couple, and they go through the ceremony. Are they then "married"? The answer depends, at least initially, on an analysis of the various dualities outlined above. It would seem that their sex, and whether it is required to be "opposite", is a matter of personal capacity, i.e. essential validity, and hence governed by their domicile. In the simple example I'm using I've not complicated the domicile issue, and it's clear, ex hypothesi, that Florida is their domicile. Florida law does not currently permit same sex marriages. The consequence of this is that the couple is arguably not married: no amount of formal ratification can overcome an essential stumbling block.

The "logic" of this is that the couple can't be "married" here and "not married" there. And the consequence is that, not being married, they aren't able to get divorced—here, there, or anywhere. The federal Parliament has nothing to do with it; and the provincial laws and bodies are constitutionally unable to make capacity an issue, so they don't do an investigation of capacity at the time of marriage. It's caveat marrier so far as we're concerned.

Yes but.

What legal "buts" may there be? Perhaps a Canadian court would be willing to say that Florida law is so uncivilized that we choose not to recognize it insofar as it forbids same-sex marriages. Our courts have done similar things when shoes were on other feet, so to speak, and we were appalled by polygamous marriages from non-Western countries, declining to recognize their jurisdiction over capacity. That would be interesting indeed.

A drier approach might be to call on a fourth duality, that between marriages void ab initio and those voidable only. The argument here would be that this lack of capacity renders a marriage voidable only, with the upshot that it can only be challenged by one of the parties and is valid until successfully challenged by an annulment proceeding. The inability to consummate a marriage, i.e. lack of sexual capacity, only makes a marriage voidable, as does the lack of age and, probably, lack of mental capacity at the time of the ceremony. But I'm doubtful that this approach would have much success for a bunch of reasons I'm going to spare you.

None of this produces a good or happy result, perhaps. And it may be that a court will find a way to salvage something out of these "exilic" marriages, even if, ironically, it's only a divorce (which gives rise to corollary relief, after all).

Site news for those who read Slaw only via RSS or email

1. Comment Watch:

In the last week there were 32 comments. You might be particularly interested in these:

• the discussion about using GPS tracking on company vehicles following the post by Yosie Saint-Cyr, "Employer Monitoring Employees With GPS Tracking"
• the lengthy exchange—15 comments extending into the prior week—on Shaunna Mireau's post, "Queen's Counsel Appointments."

You can subscribe to the comments on Slaw either as a separate matter (RSS, email) or as part of a subscription combining posts and comments (RSS, email).

2. SlawTips

This week's tips on SlawTips are:

• Tuesday: Technology: How Come My Digital Camera Pictures Are Always in a Folder Named DCIM?
• Wednesday: Research: Look Far as Well as Near
• Thursday: Practice: Top 10 Financial Errors: #5 Don’t Track Your Time

You’ll find a brief excerpt of this week’s tips on Slaw, but the links above will take you to the full versions, along with 100 more tips. Advice you can use — short and to the point — every Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday.

You can get to SlawTips at either tips.slaw.ca or slawtips.ca and you can subscribe by RSS or email. You can also follow SlawTips on Twitter: @slawtips

3. Maritime Law Book Selected Summaries

This week's Maritime Law Book case summaries are in precis on Slaw and full at cases.slaw.ca.

• Stemijon Investments Ltd. v. Canada (Attorney General) 2011 FCA 299 [Corporate taxation]
• R.P. v. R.C. 2011 SCC 65 [Divorce maintenance]
• Quebec (Attorney General) v. Canada (Minister of Human Resources and Social Development) et al. 2011 SCC 60 [Paramountcy doctrine]
• Lumba v. United Kingdom (Secretary of State for the Home Department) [2011] UKSC 12 [Duty to promulgate policies and rules]
• L.M.P. v. L.S. 2011 SCC 64 [Divorce maintenance]
• Copthorne Holdings Ltd. v. Minister of National Revenue 2011 SCC 63 [Income tax on non-residents]
• Combined Air Mechanical Services Inc. et al. v. Flesch et al. 2011 ONCA 764 [When summary judgments appropriate]

Thus far, 176 summaries in total are available on cases.slaw.ca. You can subscribe to MLB-Slaw Selected Case Summaries via RSS or email.

Here are the three most-consulted English-language cases on CanLII for the week of January 1 – January 9.

♨ 1. Bouzari v. Iran 2004 CanLII 871 (ON CA)

[1] From June 1993 to January 1994 Houshang Bouzari was abducted, imprisoned and brutally tortured by agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Shortly after his release, he escaped from Iran and eventually came to Canada as a landed immigrant in 1998. He now seeks to sue Iran for the damages he suffered.

♨ 2. Saskatchewan (Social Services) v MS 2011 SKQB 481

[1] T.J.E.S. . . . was apprehended by officials from the Ministry of Social Services (the "Ministry") from the hospital the day following his birth. The Ministry subsequently applied under The Child and Family Services Act . . . for an order permanently committing T.J.E.S. to its care . . . . [T]he learned trial judge found no basis to support the Ministry's warrantless apprehension of T.J.E.S. . . . The Ministry appeals that decision.

♨ 3. Guest v. Hirst 2012 ONSC 86

3] The plaintiff brings this action asserting that the defendant was negligent in the manner in which he performed the surgery [viz. the extraction of four wisdom teeth]

The most often consulted decision in French was R. c. S. (R.D.) [1997] 3 RCS 484

La question litigieuse dans le présent pourvoi consiste à savoir si les commentaires faits par le juge ont suscité une crainte raisonnable de partialité.

In late December the Law Society of England & Wales issued a practice note setting out a number of guidelines for solicitors concerning social media.

The note, clearly aimed at tyros in the social media scene (which will likely include most lawyers, whether there or here, I'd guess), begins by asserting that social media offer the professional benefits of marketing, interaction with clients, networking, and public education, and present risks such as "the blurring of the boundaries" between professional and personal lives. As well, social media activity is seen as possibly testing the principles of integrity, independence, and maintaining public trust.

Much of what follows in the note seems trite and trivial from the perspective someone who's been as involved with social media as I have been; but, as I say, the target appears to be lawyers who are only now considering putting a toe into the water, and for them this may have some value, if only as a formal recognition by the Society that media such as Twitter and Linkedin exist and may be useful for lawyers.

Perhaps most value can be found in the ultimate recommendation that a firm considering engaging in social media should "consider having a policy in place" (I would have said, simply, "should") that addresses a number of key points such as "strategy", rules of "engagement", training and the like. At the end of the day, the note might be described as a recommendation that lawyers and firms think before they act publicly, which is no bad thing.

[hat tip: @jordan_law21]

Now that Christmas and New Year's are safely tucked away, we can move on to things less ritual, less structured. But before we do, I'm going to take one last kick at the cans—because that's the nature of the ghosts of Christmas past and auld lang syne, is it not? to linger nostalgically for a bit.

Click on image to enlarge

I seem to recall that as an adolescent I used to get a lot of shirts from Santa. Imagine my delight. And then one year my parents (yes, I knew by then: I was always sharp as a tack) gave me an LP with the cover you see to your left. I remember to this day my extreme puzzlement at this. What made them think that these old and, frankly, not very attractive penguins could make music that would interest me in the least? By the end of Christmas Day I had, Alice-like, fallen down the rabbit hole into the wonder of folk music, as she was then known. And labour songs. And protest music. And, indeed, protest.

If, by any chance, you've never heard (or heard of) the Weavers, here's a not very good clip of one of their more popular songs: This Land is Your Land.

Which leads me to New Year's. Because the writer of that song was Woody Guthrie, the very model of the American folk-singing, pro-labour protester; and I've just come across his "New Years Rulin's" (sic) from 1942, which recommend themselves to me more than most of the resolutions that get batted about. For one thing, as you'll see below (click on it to expand), there are some 33 of them, which gives you lots of room for successes. And for another, they're an affecting mix of light-hearted and serious, ranging from "Drink very scant if any" to "Wake up and fight."

Click on image to enlarge.

You'll find this and the lyrics to all of Woody's dozens and dozens of songs on the official site.

#26. Dance Better.

Because of the possible protections afforded "freedom of religion" under the constitutions of many countries, we've seen various groups or individuals seek to exempt their activities from the normal operation of the law by claiming to be or belong to "churches" or "religious organizations." The use of certain otherwise proscribed drugs, for example, has been claimed to be an important part of "religious practice" (see, e.g. Holy Light of the Queen and the drug ayahuasca; and the amazingly prolific Church of the Universe, involving marijuana). More commonly, perhaps, people attempt to form churches or to become recognized as ministers of churches in order to avoid taxes, whether on property or income. Negotiating the rendering interface, so to speak, between caesar and god, is not easy.

Now we learn that in Sweden, official recognition has been given to the Church of Kopimism. After knocking on Kammarkollegiet's door twice before, Isak Gerson's Missionerande Kopimistamfundet got third-time-lucky as the gates to status opened.

What do they believe in? Information. Yep. Information. This, from their official site—which may or may not be available when you try, having been Slashdotted:

For the Church of Kopimism, information is holy and copying is a sacrament. Information holds a value, in itself and in what it contains, and the value multiplies through copying. Therefore, copying is central for the organisation and its members.

Being recognized by the state of Sweden is a large step for all of kopimi. Hopefully, this is one step towards the day when we can live out our faith without fear of persecution . . .

I suspect this is more a direct attack on copyright than it is a critique of (official) religions. But it points up once again the incompatibility, in my view, of an empirical system open to argument and evidence (whether or not it comes anywhere near that "ideal") and a belief-based system holding inarguable premises—or, to put it another way, perhaps, parliamentary supremacy versus supreme being supremacy. j

Those of us in Canada who delve and spin in the world of information may find it harder to persuade the revenue folks of our deserving sanctity. But according to Gerson, we are probably already members of his church:

The community of kopimi requires no formal membership. You just have to feel a calling to worship what is the holiest of the holiest, information and copy. To do this, we organize kopyactings – religious services – where the kopimists share information with eachother through copying and remix.

Skål.

I'm feeling lazy this Friday — something to do with too much holiday merriment, I'm certain. So today's fillip is pretty much a do-it-yourself flip to the week's end. All I'll do is point you to a site that gathers sites, some of which in turn gather sites. . . .

My target website is Open Culture, and, as you might suspect from the name, it's a place where you can find free access to a lot of interesting stuff. As Dan Colman, site founder (and incidentally Director & Associate Dean of Stanford's Continuing Studies Program), says:

Open Culture brings together high-quality cultural & educational media for the worldwide lifelong learning community. . . . Our whole mission is to centralize this content, curate it, and give you access to this high quality content whenever and wherever you want it.

But don't let the "high quality" thing put you off. And as for the "learning," there's no exam. There are, however, links to: hundreds of audio books, 450 free movies, hundreds of ebooks, language lessons, college courses, and more.

That's enough to keep you occupied for a while, I trust. Oh, and happy new year!

Teaching and learning are pretty constant activities for legal professionals. Some of the learning — most, perhaps — takes place when you're alone, and the teaching when you're with one other person; and at the other end of the scale, a lot is now managed by professional societies, responsible for providing CPD to large groups. But there are also times when a course of instruction is needed for a group that falls somewhere in between the very small and the very large. It's with that middle-sized, ad hoc occasion that Coursekit might be helpful.

Post-secondary education makes fairly consistent use of online courseware nowadays, the two main products being Blackboard and Moodle, both quite sophisticated, not to say complex. Now Coursekit provides a third choice: it's open access software that's beautifully straightforward (and quite visually attractive), offering anyone who wishes to build a course the ability to do the essential online elements with ease — and have the data hosted on the Coursekit site, again for free. You'll find modules for online student discussion, sharing resources, calendaring, grading. and so forth.

As you might imagine with a courseware site, there's ample explanation of the software, the obligatory FAQ, and the opportunity to play with a demo version.

Even if you don't need to mount courses or formal lessons, you may find that this product can lend itself to becoming a decent, free collaborative tool for that project or problem-solving task.

Much of the time when I enter WolfamAlpha I feel the way archeologists must have felt confronting Egyptian hieroglyphics before the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone or—to cast things the other way and into the future—the way the scientists in 2001, A Space Odyssey felt in the presence of the monolith. I know it's magnificent but I don't know how to work it—not properly, at least.

The latest instance of my admiring frustration has been caused by WolframTones, which, as the tagline has it, is "an experiment in a new kind of music." It's a sonic working out of the principle that wonderfully complex objects can be created from the interplay of a few remarkably simple mathematical rules. (Shades of chaos theory, Mandelbrot fractals, and, I suppose too, natural selection.)

The music appears visually as rectangles containing a pattern of coloured squares, looking rather like an embroidery or knitting pattern. Clicking on it causes music to result. But this isn't just a matter of passive appreciation: you can create and manipulate the rules that govern the patterns. To help innumerates like me, WolframTones offers you 15 basic styles – classical, hip-hop, world, etc., along with controls that let you choose timing, scales from hundreds of possible mappings, and the "instruments" from among dozens and dozens of midi possibilities. The possible combinations and permutations are astronomical. You can then download a link to your particular composition—which can be played online at the WolframTones website or emailed as a midi attachment. Here, for example, is my utterly unremarkable, maundering bit of "ambient" music and, following the sound file, the visual pattern that "generated" it.

fodden-wolfram

If you're interested in the hows and wherefores of this, there's a fair bit of explanation available, a portion of which follows:

How does one take a pattern generated by a cellular automaton, and render it as music? The key idea of WolframTones is to take a swath through the pattern:

and tip it on its side, and treat it as a musical score:

And for the truly curious, at the bottom of the "Generate a composition" screen there's a modest link offering "information about controls," which will go into some detail about the mathematical rules and structures.

If you do whip up a cantata over the holidays, send us the link by way of a comment.

The judgment of the Supreme Court of Canada in the Reference re Securities Act 2011 SCC 66 has just been released. The opinion of the Court—a single judgment—finds, in sum, that:

This is not a case of a valid federal scheme that incidentally intrudes on provincial powers. It is not the incidental effects of the scheme that are constitutionally suspect; it is rather the main thrust of the legislation that goes beyond the federal power. . . .

The Securities Act as presently drafted is not valid under the general branch of the federal power to regulate trade and commerce under s. 91(2) of the Constitution Act, 1867.

In paragraph 132 (underlined in the online version at scc.lexum.org) the Court offers advice:

It is not for the Court to suggest to the governments of Canada and the provinces the way forward by, in effect, conferring in advance an opinion on the constitutionality on this or that alternative scheme. Yet we may appropriately note the growing practice of resolving the complex governance problems that arise in federations, not by the bare logic of either/or, but by seeking cooperative solutions that meet the needs of the country as a whole as well as its constituent parts.

This will be a serious blow to the federal government and, quite likely, to other legislation that walks close to the line of provincial powers, such as PIPEDA perhaps. It leaves Canada as one of the few countries in the world without a single, national act regulating securities.

This entry merely reports the fact of the release of the opinion and its conclusion. We'll do a follow-up soon, collecting the views of commentators from around the country.

Here are the three most-consulted English-language cases on CanLII for the week of December 13 – 19.

♨ 1. Ontario Korean Businessmen’s Assoc. v. Seung Jin Oh 2011 ONSC 6991 —for the third week in a row.

♨ 2. Combined Air Mechanical Services Inc. v. Flesch 2011 ONCA 764—for the second week in a row.

♨ 3. Morabito v. DiLorenzo 2011 ONSC 7379—700 views since release on December 12.

[1] The defendants move for an order to compel the plaintiff Jeffery Morabito to produce the contents of his Facebook and MySpace pages.

The rest

Significant SCC decisions came in at #5 (Alberta (Information and Privacy Commissioner) v. Alberta Teachers' Association 2011 SCC 61); #10 (Quebec (Attorney General) v. Canada (Human Resources and Social Development) 2011 SCC 60), garnering over 300 views even so; and #12 (Newfoundland and Labrador Nurses' Union v. Newfoundland and Labrador (Treasury Board) 2011 SCC 62) released less than a week ago.

Two opinions tied for the top French language spot: Rodriguez c. Colombie-Britannique (Procureur général) [1993] 3 RCS 519 (the noted case concerning Sue Rodriguez and euthanasia) and Baker c. Canada (Ministre de la Citoyenneté et de l'Immigration) [1999] 2 RCS 817 (concerning humanitarian and compassionate considerations respecting immigration and a child's interests).

Here's the scenario: you're retained to argue an appeal in the tough U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit; there's a precedent from that very court that appears clearly to stand in your way; you're about to prepare your brief for filing. What do you do about the obstinate precedential obstacle?

I'd be willing to be that if you took a poll of appellate advocates, something on the order of 99.4 percent of them would say that, whatever you do, you don't just ignore it. But that's exactly what counsel did in Gonzalez-Servin, et al. v. Ford Motor Company, et al. (No. 11-1665, Decided November 23, 2011 [PDF]), decided together with another similar case. And, as luck would have it, the case drew Judge Posner, noted, among other things, for his willingness to speak out plainly about what he sees as mistakes.

And speak he did.

When there is apparently dispositive precedent, an appellant may urge its overruling or distinguishing or reserve a challenge to it for a petition for certiorari but may not simply ignore it. . . .

[M]aybe appellants think that if they ignore our precedents their appeals will not be assigned to the same panel as decided the cases that established the precedents. Whatever the reason, such advocacy is unacceptable. The ostrich is a noble animal, but not a proper model for an appellate advocate.

Whereupon he included in the opinion a pair of photographs that graphically reinforced his point — and, I'd say, revealed what in his view was the most obvious feature of the counsel involved.

Of course, Posner being Posner, hastened to inform us that ostriches don't really stick their heads in the sand. Then he singled out the counsel by name. Ouch.

[Hat tip: Joel Kohm]

What does the Byzantine musical symbol kai apothes look like? Unicode knows. Because we human beings do love to "scribble, scribble, scribble" that computer industry standard boasts "more than 109,000 characters covering 93 scripts," according to the Wikipedia entry. Fear not, however: I'm not about to regale you with tens of thousands of squiggles. No, I'm going to let you do it yourself.

Actually, I'm pointing you to Shapecatcher, a modest little website that invites you to draw any shape you like and promises to find you the unicode character nearest in outline. So, for example, I gave Shapecatcher the drawing you see below:

(Yes, I know. Other people have told me the same.)

This most closely matched the kai apothes I referred to above — — which is a kind of neat lightning bolt thingy. (I have to use a graphic to show it to you because your average computers/browsers/websites will only make a limited selection of the unicode trove available to you, and it doesn't include Byzantine material for some reason.)

Does this have any utility? I should hope not. It does, I hope, give you a chance to waste a little time and to be gently surprised by the wealth of characters that are out there, even in Shapecatcher's very limited collection of 10,000 or so elements. I'm particularly taken with the various Tai Xuan Jing tetragrams I discovered this way. There's one for "contrariety", one for "ease", another for "bold resolution", etc. Draw a rectangle with maybe another line or two inside and see what happens.

Scribble, scribble, scribble.

Lexpert Magazine has just launched a blog. It's early days yet—the blog only launched last week—so it's hard to say how it will fare. The editorial staff (Jean Cumming, Tim Wilbur, David Dias, and Gena Smith) will do the blogging, likely filling in the "blanks" and doing follow-ups between issues of the magazine. One to follow, in any event.

Welcome to the blogosphere Lexpert.

Here are the three most-consulted English-language cases on CanLII for the week of November 14 – 21.

♨ 1. Ontario Korean Businessmen’s Assoc. v. Seung Jin Oh 2011 ONSC 6991

[1] A dispute exists amongst the members of the Ontario Korean Businessmen’s Association (the “Association”) as to which group of members is entitled to govern the Association.

(Second week in a row at #1. Unclear what's driving this.)

♨ 2. Combined Air Mechanical Services Inc. v. Flesch 2011 ONCA 764

[5] In the months following the amendments to Rule 20, it has become a matter of some controversy and uncertainty as to whether it is appropriate for a motion judge to use the new powers conferred by the amended Rule 20 to decide an action on the basis of the evidence presented on a motion for summary judgment. Judges of the Superior Court of Justice have expressed differing views on this and other interpretative issues raised by the amendments. Both the bench and the bar have turned to this court for clarification on what the amended rule does, and does not, accomplish.
[6] To provide some guidance to the profession, this court convened a five-judge panel to hear five appeals from decisions under the amended rule.

♨ 3. Canadian Taxpayers Federation v. Ontario (Minister of Finance) 2004 CanLII 48177 (ON SC)

[1] This is an application by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (“CTF”) and its federal director, John Williamson, against Her Majesty The Queen in right of Ontario as represented by the Ministry of Finance, Greg Sorbara and against Dalton J. P. McGuinty. The applicants seek to declare that the legislation establishing the Ontario Health Premium is invalid or ultra vires. The applicants also seek a declaration that a promise made in writing by Mr. McGuinty on September 11, 2003, is a contract with the CTF and that Mr. McGuinty is in breach of this contract or, in the alternative, that this promise was a negligent misrepresentation.

This item is notable because it became prominent very quickly on the strength of a single tweet (retweeted): http://topsy.com/canlii.ca/t/1jh71

The most-consulted French-language decision is Martineau c. Société Canadian Tire ltée 2011 QCCA 2198.

[6] Martineau soutient que l'intimée (Canadian Tire) a commis un dol par réticence au moment de proroger son contrat de marchand en octobre 1999[2]. Il prétend que, à l'époque, Canadian Tire lui a caché ses projets d'implantation de deux magasins dans le même secteur commercial où est située son entreprise.

Remember the "new math"? Everything you knew and the way you knew it were wrong. You had to be able to calculate in base 3 or base 7. You either couldn't do your homework or couldn't help your kids with theirs.

Well, this isn't that.

New Math is a website where Craig Damrauer makes language sub for numbers and comes up with some wry products. For instance:

Or, to pick something likely even closer to our hearts:

More of a hmmm than a haha. But there are funny equations, true equations, and truly odd equations, and because

you should go and see for yourself. And if you get inspired, share your equations in a comment.

When John Palfrey was appointed vice-dean of library and information services at Harvard Law School a couple of years ago, one of the first things he did was create the Harvard Library Innovation Laboratory. Under the direction of Kim Dulin and David Weinberger (also of Berkman Center fame), HLIL explores the ways in which software can "hack libraries…in the good sense of discovering and delivering more capability and value." Specifically, as they say on the FAQ page,

1. We think in public.
2. We build software that demonstrates how libraries can bring yet more value to scholars and researchers.
3. We amplify our effect by eagerly partnering with other groups with similar passions.

Though they're more interested in proof of concept than in the development of generally usable code, there are two interrelated projects that I think Slaw readers would be interested in having a look at, ShelfLife and LibraryCloud. These might be best understood by starting from the point of view of the Digital Public Library of America, an online place, as it were, to demonstrate the power of these tools used in collaboration with a number of institutions. LibraryCloud is a meta-data server that aggregates circulation data, among other things, from participating libraries, making it available through APIs. In the service of the DPLA it makes available millions and millions of bibliographic records. ShelfLife then provides a cunning, visual front end for this mountain of data.

The best way to understand, of course, is to "do." There's a ShelfLife DPLA Demo that offers a video (also reproduced below), a guided tour, and also the chance to thrash about unguided.

Among the many smaller projects that are still in the works, the most useful perhaps is Library News, a simple stream of material (à la Hacker News) on technology and libraries, available on the web and via RSS and contributed by anyone who wishes to create an account.

ShelfLife Welcome from David Weinberger on Vimeo.

Here are the three most-consulted English-language cases on CanLII for the week of November 28 – December 5.

♨ 1. Ontario Korean Businessmen’s Assoc. v. Seung Jin Oh 2011 ONSC 6991

[1] A dispute exists amongst the members of the Ontario Korean Businessmen’s Association (the “Association”) as to which group of members is entitled to govern the Association.

♨ 2. Ornstein v. Starr 2011 ONSC 4220

Seven Words of Discovery
1. Q. Please state your full name for the record
A. Joseph Auby Starr.
2. Q. And you are a doctor
A. I am.
3. Q. And do you have a specialty?
A. Plastic surgery.
4. Q. And how long have you been carrying on as a plastic surgeon?
Counsel: Don’t answer that.

♨ 3. R v Spencer 2011 SKCA 144

[17] Given Mr. Spencer was using his computer inside his home to access child pornography, Mr. Spencer undoubtedly held a subjective expectation of privacy in the Disclosed Information; but was his expectation objectively reasonable, having regard for the totality of the circumstances?

See also R v Trapp 2011 SKCA 143, the associated case. These are likely to incur some media commentary and analysis, dealing as they do with privacy, computers and the criminal law search power.

The most-consulted French-language opinion was R. c. Bouchard-Lebrun 2011 CSC 58.

[1] Dans ce pourvoi, la Cour doit décider si une psychose toxique résultant d’un état d’intoxication dans lequel un accusé s’est volontairement placé en consommant des drogues chimiques constitue un « troubl[e] menta[l] » au sens de l’art. 16 du Code criminel, L.R.C. 1985, ch. C-46 (« C. cr. »), et permet ainsi à l’appelant d’échapper à sa responsabilité pénale pour une infraction comportant une atteinte à l’intégrité physique d’autrui.

John Ruskin, the "leading English art critic of the Victorian era," didn't simply opine and judge; he drew and painted as well. The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford has put online his collection of drawings meant to help students of art learn to draw according to his principles. The drawings, often coloured with water colours, are made available in a way that lets you zoom in to investigate and appreciate the details of his technique.

But I thought that rather than this somewhat passive involvement with Ruskin, you might prefer some classes on how to draw, using Ruskin's drawings. The Ashmolean has made available eight video lessons by Stephen Farthing, a former Ruskin Master of Drawing at Oxford: 1. Tip of the pencil; 2. The edge of the pencil; 3. Toned paper; 4. Drawing with a brush; 5. Measured drawing; 6. With colour; 7. Field notes; and 8. Creativity.

The lessons are brief: they won't turn you from dauber to da Vinci all by themselves. But they might help you see things that wouldn't otherwise be noticed. And, I find, it's always intriguing to watch experts and specialists do their thing, even in areas I'm ignorant about.

When you search for flights between two cities Google now provides you with a chart of options as the first (non-paid) result, making the peripatetic aspect of a lawyer's life just a little bit easier. Thus, for example, a search for flights from Winnipeg to Vancouver yields the result you see below:

Click on the image to enlarge it.

And perhaps I haven't noticed, but new to me is the fact that when you mouse over the chevron beside a result of a Google search, you not only see a thumbnail of the found page, a feature that's been around for a while, but a callout as well that shows you where on the page a sought-for phrase occurs. For instance, my search for definitely not the last time turns up a result from trip advisor.co.uk with the relevant phrase emphasized (on a black background) and shown in context:

Click on the image to enlarge it.

I thought that Slaw readers might be interested in this observation by BLG partner, Norman Letalik, as a result of his recent exchange with Apple Canada's regional counsel. (The following quotation is from an email thread in a group to which I belong and is reproduced with Norm Letalik's permission.)

Note that I have now had a telephone conversation with Ms. Famulak, who is regional counsel for Apple Canada. She confirms that the information that is dictated on the Apple iPhone 4s using the Siri dictation feature is sent to servers that reside in the US and that Apple, its related companies and agents have access to the contents of what is dictated. She did not wish to opine on whether Apple's ability to access dictated client communications would breach legal privilege in Ontario or elsewhere. So, the best practice would be not to use the dictation feature on an iPhone 4s for any dictated information to which you intend legal privilege to attach. Note as well that Apple's dictation servers are located in the US, so the dictated information may also be scanned for national security purposes by the US Government pursuant to powers given to it under the Patriot Act.

In his request to Ms Famulak, Mr. Letalik noted that lawyers "likely did not read your 364 pp user agreement document carefully enough to understand the implications of the above terms and conditions."

The problem with privilege in this context is explained by Professor Adam Dodek, a new contributor on Slaw, in his February 2011 discussion paper for the Canadian Bar Association, "Solicitor-Client Privilege in Canada: Challenges for the 21st Century":

As the House of Lords has stated, the sine qua non of privilege is confidentiality: “Unless the communication or document for which privilege is sought is a confidential one, there can be no question of legal advice privilege arising. The confidential character of the communication or document is not by itself enough to enable privilege to be claimed but is an essential requirement.” The CBA has issued “Guidelines for Practicing Ethically with New Information Technologies,” which declares that “Lawyers should exercise the same care to protect the confidentiality and privilege of electronic communications as is normally expected of them using any traditional form of communication.”
PDF, at p.48 (footnotes omitted)

Certain knowledge that a communication is open to others to read may ipso facto prevent the attachment of privilege.

Here are the three most-consulted English-language cases on CanLII for the week of November 14 – 21.

♨ 1. Batty v. City of Toronto 2011 ONSC 6862 [The occupy TO injunction case, #1 by a large margin]

[3] Since October 15, 2011, the applicants and other protesters (the “Protesters”), have encamped overnight in St. James Park (the “Park”) as part of the “Occupy Toronto” movement which, as a branch of the Global Occupy Movement, has posed, in its own way and in many cities, the questions: How do we live together in a community? How do we share common space? In Toronto the expression of those questions has assumed a specific form – the creation of an encampment in the Park in downtown Toronto at which the Protesters express a variety of political views and from which they sally forth in periodic demonstrations to take their messages to other parts of this city.

♨ 2. Reference re: Section 293 of the Criminal Code of Canada 2011 BCSC 1588

[5] I have concluded that this case is essentially about harm; more specifically, Parliament’s reasoned apprehension of harm arising out of the practice of polygamy. This includes harm to women, to children, to society and to the institution of monogamous marriage.

♨ 3. Elfarnawani v. International Olympic Committee 2011 ONSC 6784

[1] The plaintiff, Mahmoud Elfarnawani, has commenced an action against the defendants, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and its internal Ethics Commission (EC), claiming damages for the torts of defamation, breach of a duty of good faith, and abuse of process. The action flows from the decision of the IOC, acting on the recommendation of the EC, to declare the plaintiff personae [sic] non grata within the Olympic Movement and to recommend that the members of the Olympic family not grant him any accreditation or have any dealings with him. The IOC posted this decision on its internet website. The defendants now move, under rule 21.01(3)(a) of the Rules of Civil Procedure, R.R.O. 1990, Reg. 194, for an order staying the plaintiff’s claim on the basis that the court has no jurisdiction over the action. Alternatively, the defendants contend that the court should decline jurisdiction on the basis that Switzerland is the more convenient forum for a trial of this action. For the reasons that follow, I agree with the defendants, and grant the motion staying the plaintiff’s action.

The most-consulted opinion in French was Bande indienne des Lax Kw'alaams c. Canada (Procureur général) 2011 CSC 56, originally delivered in English at 2011 SCC 56.

[1] This appeal involves the claim of the Lax Kw’alaams First Nation and other First Nations listed in the Appendix to these reasons (herein collectively referred to as “Lax Kw’alaams”), whose ancestral lands stretch along the northwest coast of British Columbia between the estuaries of the Nass and lower Skeena Rivers, to the commercial harvesting and sale of “all species of fish” within their traditional waters.

Every so often there's nothing for it but to resort to words. I know these are our stock in trade and as such can overstay their welcome. It's for that reason that the Friday Fillip usually paints you pretty pictures or invites you into some silly but entertaining time-waster of a game—the equivalent of the "Ohne Wörte" [without words] caption that gets put at the bottom of cartoons in Germany that, well, have no words (apparently so that you don't blow your entire day hunting for the explanatory text). But, as you'll likely have guessed, I'm veering into the word zone today. To make it interesting, however, I'm taking you out of your comfort zone and into foreign languages.

It'd be too easy (for you, I mean) if I simply went straight to Mandarin or Dutch, for instance. So I'm going to unusual words, words that foreigners have that English doesn't possess—because I know that Slawyers are a skeptical lot (thank goodness) and will likely have some fun challenging this assertion.

My starting place is the article 15 Wonderful Words With No English Equivalent in Mental Floss (tagline: "Where Knowledge Junkies Get Their Fix"—so some of you are bound to wander away from the tour at this point.). We learn here, for example, that the Turkish word "Gumusservi" means "means moonlight shining on water" and that "Vybafnout" in Czech means to "jump out and say boo." There's a baker's dozen more of such words.

I took a crack at decoding Gummusservi using Google search and Google Translate. The first problem is to put it into Turkish script. I think that it's gümüş servi — two words, note—which Google Translate tells me means "silver cypress" and which happens to be the title of a poem, unsurprisingly. Hmm.

The Mental Floss list comes from a book by Adam Jacot de Boinod (for which, one is tempted to say, there is no word in English) titled The Meaning of Tingo. Thanks to Amazon's "Look Inside" feature, we can roam around a little within this source. Here I became distracted for a while. Eventually I searched for Gumusservi (have to log in to do a search) and found exactly what Mental Floss had promised. But I was now in the "weather" section of the book, where I learned that serein in French means "fine rain falling from a cloudless sky." My battered old print dictionary tells me, though, that serein can mean either "calm" (sky) or "evening dew".

By then, however, I'd discovered that my search within The Meaning of Tingo had landed me just above the Meteorological Metaphors section, so because "aven solon har fläckar" as the Swedes say—"even the sun has got spots" meaning that no one is perfect—I wandered off course myself. You will have noticed, I suspect.

Here are the three most-consulted English-language cases on CanLII for the week of November 14 – 21.

♨ 1. Association of Justice Counsel v. Canada (Attorney General) 2011 ONSC 6435

[1] Much has been and will continue to be written about the constitutionality of the Expenditure Relief Act (the “ERA”).[1] This application involves a challenge by the Association of Justice Counsel (the “AJC”). It was initiated because the ERA impedes efforts by lawyers in the federal public service to address long existing concerns about salary.

♨ 2. Bedford v. Canada 2010 ONSC 4264

[538] I find that the danger faced by prostitutes greatly outweighs any harm which may be faced by other members of the public. I, therefore, do not consider that a temporary suspension of a declaration of invalidity is appropriate in this case.

♨ 3. Goma v. Raghunandan 2011 ONSC 6598

Realizing that the limitation period for advancing a claim for contribution and indemnity set out in section 18(1) of the Limitations Act, 2002[1] (“Limitations Act”) had passed and that a separate action or counterclaim for contribution could not be advanced, the defendants seek to advance such claim by way of equitable set-off and assert that the limitation period in section 18(1) does not apply.

The most-consulted decision in French is Chocolat Lamontagne inc. c. Humeur Groupe-conseil inc. 2010 QCCS 3301 [English translation]

[La demanderesse] reproche à la défenderesse, Humeur Groupe Conseil inc. (Humeur), une entreprise faisant affaire dans le même domaine et une compétitrice commerciale directe, d'avoir utilisé sa marque de commerce auprès du moteur de recherche de Google pour détourner sa clientèle vers son site Internet, ce qui constitue, selon elle, une forme de concurrence déloyale et illégale.

[See also Private Career Training Institutions Agency v. Vancouver Career College (Burnaby) Inc. 2011 BCCA 69 (which cracked the top ten) on the same issue.

Reading some posts and tweets (p&t's?) on standards for legislation and opinion metadata lately, I was surprised to bump into a side-issue, "side" at least in this context, on whether the US Bluebook can have copyright in its citation styles. Apparently some development of legal style at Zotero has been hindered because of objections from Bluebook. See this contribution to a discussion on the Zotero forum on September 18, 2011:

Hi, I'm the author of the "Bluebook 19th ed." style. The style itself is incomplete, which is the cause of the "bb-periodical-subsequent" string that you're seeing in the output.

I was at the point of putting in further work on the project when, in connection with negotiations over access to Bluebook Online (or so I thought), the Bluebook editors expressed the view that a full implementation of the style, even if based on a paper-printed copy of their manual, might be a breach of their rights. Needless to say this came as a complete surprise, but legal risk being what it is, I've suspended work on the style for the present.

To prevent frustration (such as you have just experienced) I will soon be asking that the style be removed entirely from the CSL repository. Meanwhile, you will either have to cope with an earlier version of the style, or do your Bluebook citations by hand.

I'm very sorry about this situation, but it's not entirely within my control.

Frank Bennett

It would seem from a tweet yesterday that Bennett, an Associate Professor of Law at Nagoya University, Japan, is in fact going ahead. He says of the Bluebook people:

They growled at us, without clearly staking a copyright claim. On good advice from a friend, I'm ignoring them.

I don't think a style or a standard such as that developed by the Bluebook editors could be copyrightable, under Canadian law at least, though I'd welcome correction on this score. It strikes me as more akin to a process for which patents have been given. But in either case, it would be odd indeed, because the point of a standard is to be used, taught and otherwise promoted, no?

This is a little like the problem with taxonomies, in which copyright has in fact been claimed.

There's a new source of stimulating sound this month: Audiofile.es. "Great radio," says part of its tagline, and they want you to be a programmer as well as a listener.

The idea is simple crowdsourcing: If you come across an interesting audio file while you're browsing the web, tweet the link with the tag #audiofiles and Audiofil.es will automatically add it to their database. Not only can you feed your finds into the mix, but you can also easily create playlists for yourself when you're on the Audiofil.es site.

What sort of things are already there? The topmost "producer pick" today is "The hidden world of girls," a two hour special hosted by Tina Fey; then there's "Charles Darwin and the Racing Asparagus" from NPR, "Listening to The Doors," or "Have you heard about B flat?".

Go have a look and a listen. It's early days yet for Audiofil.es, but I've got you in at the start; now you can add to the mix.

On ReadWriteWeb there's an interesting map of the metadata that accompanies every one of your 140 character messages on Twitter, which I've reproduced below. (The map is the work of Raffi Krikorian. Click on the image to enlarge it.) There's nothing terribly shocking here, perhaps: much of this metadata can be learned from visiting the Twitter page of the person sending the message. Even so, it's sensible for those of us who are privacy conscious to be reminded from time to time that what seems to us to be a very minimal exposure to the unblinking glare of the internet carries with it a large amount of "body language," so to speak.

Click on image to enlarge.

[Here's the link to the same file as a PDF, so that you can enlarge it even more if you wish.]

These extras—this metadata—is of considerable interest to corporations that want to know which way the winds of commerce are blowing and how best to trim their sheets to capture them (and you) for profit. The ReadWriteWeb post talks about DataSift, a company that can consume the giant Twitter flow along with other gushings and extract information of an aggregate nature that might be useful to corporate clients. One imagines that governments, too, are mining this spate for purposes of their own.

We've talked a bit before on Slaw about Matthew Butterick's great book, Typography for Lawyers, copies of which should be found wherever lawyers' thoughts are committed to print (digital or otherwise). Now Butterick's created Equity, a typeface specifically for lawyers. He says, in an article in Co. Design, that he designed Equity:

to be every bit as space-efficient as TNR [Times New Roman], but eminently more readable—and a tad sexy. “I wanted Equity to be like a navy-blue Armani suit: a classic updated with contemporary virtues.”

The typeface includes 24 fonts—a face is a design and a font enables the expression of that design, in this case in two weights and six styles: regular, italic, bold, bold italic, regular caps, bold caps. As important, it comes with proper small caps to let you avoid the terrible result of using Word's "small caps" feature.

You can see Equity in action in a PDF of various documents that use it.

If nothing else, considering whether or not to use this font in your work will mean that you're paying attention to the fine details of your printed work, something that can only benefit those who want to read it.

Here are the three most consulted English-language cases on CanLII for the week of November 8 – 14.

1. Bedford v. Canada, 2010 ONSC 4264

[1] There has been a long-standing debate in this country and elsewhere about the subject of prostitution. The only consensus that exists is that there is no consensus on the issue.

2. EJH (Re), 2011 SKQB 404

1) This is truly a remarkable story. The story of AH, a mother who has escaped a life of prostitution and squalor and bested addictions so that she might have the ability to parent her two children, five‑year‑old E and three‑year‑old KR. Despite the odds and the recommendation of the Ministry of Social Services, she will have the opportunity to do so.

[Colin Lachance notes: Over 20% of the views of this case can be directly attributed to the link published in this CBC article.

3. R. v. Sarrazin, 2011 SCC 54

[2] The question raised by the present appeal is whether this Court should relax the requirements for the application of the proviso, and whether, relaxed or not, the proviso [—"provided it is satisfied that no substantial wrong or miscarriage of justice has occurred" —] applies in this case to deny the respondents the new trial ordered by the Ontario Court of Appeal.

The most consulted French-language decision is R. c. Sarrazin, 2011 CSC 54, the translation of case #3 above.

How are hockey, poutine, and philosophy related?

The answer to this and all manner of other "connect the dots" sorts of questions is provided by xefer's cunning use of Wikipedia. On the xefer-Wikipedia site, you simply enter one or more words or phrases, and provided that they're Wikipedia article titles, xefer finds the paths in Wikipedia that will link up the concepts. The result is a map of logically related nodes each of which is an article title, making the whole look rather like a way finder for a subway system.

If you're stumped for notions—and it's surprising how empty the mind goes when you've got to come up with a few crazy unrelated things—you can hit the random button. (If your map is still evident, the randomizer will simply add its own terms to those you've already put in, which is how I learned how to marry hockey, poutine, philosophy and Kyrgyzstan national futsal team.

As with any transit system, some trips are more worth taking than others. And to get from one point to another when they're widely separated, you have to pass through some fairly bland abstractions (or, to switch metaphors somewhat, some very dense railyards), particularly because all roads must lead to Philosophy in the end.

Once you're tired of this game, you can turn to others of xefer's projects, among which you'll find the Maze Generator, Twitter Charts, and Conway's Game of Life (which I talked about here hundreds of fillips ago).

Hockey and poutine and philosophy? Click here to see the map—and notice that the main "switch point" is Life—and that there's no shortcut through Canada.