2020vancouver

"This time it's different." Four words that should instill dread in even the most bullish investor.

The LA Times has a story about the anti-Olympic protest on Friday.

Even detractors have had to admit that the Burrard Bridge lane reallocation trial has worked. The sky did not fall in. Cars kept moving. Pedestrians enjoy the extra space on the bridge's West sidewalk. Cyclists have to admit that it's a fair compromise that makes crossing the bridge safer. At least, most of the time.

The opening ceremony is a fortnight away, but the Five Ring Circus is pretty much upon us now. The streets are already looking fuller, line-ups for groceries are twice as long as normal, and numerous roads and cycleways have been shut down. The MSM is providing a steady stream of Olympic trivia and the 2010 advertisements are everywhere to jolly us all along and divert our attention from the growing police presence.

As costume dramas go, The Last Station is perfunctory and it sags in the middle. Set in the last year of Leo Tolstoy's life, it dramatizes the battle between the author's wife Sofya and the leaders of the Tolstoyian movement that the writer founded, over the rights to his works.

Starting this Monday, drivers who are caught using a cell phone while driving in B.C. can get a $167 fine, and those found texting or emailing will also net three penalty points.

It was my turn to look after the baby today. I had to get him to have his all-important midday nap. Things were going great - I was walking along the street with him strapped in, snoozing away, when suddenly this pair of fighter jets flew over our heads trailing their sonic boom. Well, that was it. The eyes immediately opened and the nap was over.

It's not as big as the recent media storm over Tiger Woods' philanderings, but the English newspapers are leading with the decision by a judge not to uphold England soccer captain John Terry's right to privacy over his extra-marital affair with a former team mate's girlfriend.

I first took notice of cell phone scares when watching a television series based on former British Tory MP Alan Clark's Diaries. The then cabinet minister was convinced his terminal brain cancer (he died of a brain tumour in 1999) was down to his heavy cell phone use.

Vancouver notched up its second reported homicide of 2010, on the busy 10th Avenue bike path between Clarke and Commercial Drive. The CBC is reporting that an Asian male in his early 20s was shot in the torso shortly after 1pm and then crashed into a white commercial van. He was rushed to hospital, where he died a short time later.