From Canada's National Post, with thanks to Fark:
Are you a scofflaw? You may be, and not even know it. Canada's Criminal Code contains all sorts of obsolete laws that authorities haven't enforced for decades. ...
Perhaps you've had the decidedly uncomfortable experience of having to explain to a child the meaning of those impossibly upbeat but decidedly vague commercials broadcast on U.S. television channels for such "performance enhancing" pharmaceutical products as Viagra and Levitra. You can try to dodge the question next time around by pointing out that section 163(2)(d) of the Criminal Code makes it an offence to advertise "any means, instructions, medicine, drug or article intended or represented as a method for restoring sexual virility." ...
Another intriguing section of the Criminal Code is 228, which stipulates that you aren't committing "culpable homicide" if you cause someone's death "by any influence on the mind alone." So if you scare someone to death — by, say, prowling around their house — you may have killed them, but you can't be charged with their murder. Unless, that is, you do it to children or the infirm ("this section does not apply where a person causes the death of a child or sick person by wilfully frightening them").
It's worth pondering how many asinine laws are put on the books today, only to befuddle and amuse future generations.
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