Bear falls 30-feet from tree (#animalcruelty?)

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A huge black bear in Florida had a rough landing on yesterday after it was tranquilized in order to get it our of tree. The bear had climbed 30 feet  up the tree.  Animal welfare officials were waiting at the bottom of the tree with a large sheet of tarpaulin to catch it but the bear tore right through the sheet. Luckily the animal remained asleep. Animal control people seem to feel it will be okay. 

Midtown Yonge BIA meeting April 28 #TOpoli

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The Midtown Yonge Steering Committee, formed to help create a Business Improvement Area (BIA), will hold a public meeting for all area business and commercial property owners Monday, April 28, 2014 at 6.30 p.m. The proposed BIA would extend along Yonge Street between the Beltline Trail on the south and Soudan/Berwick Avenues on the north. The meeting will be at the  Mysteriously Yours Dinner Theatre, 2026 Yonge Street. With the assistance of Josh Matlow (Ward 22) the Steering Committee was formed in December 2013 and held meetings to establish a boundary for the BIA and identify how it might benefit local businesses. The recurring theme of inadequate parking has been raised by the Committee.  It is an issue that is usually  beyond the means of a BIA to manage. Nonetheless, the Steering Committee has held meetings with staff from the Parking Authority and Andy Byford, Chief Executive Officer of the TTC. Eighteen business owners have attended earlier sessions and are said to have seemed much in favour of proceeding with the public consultation process.

Leaside meeting hears of BIA changes #TOpoli

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John Kiru 

A meeting Monday evening at Leaside Library heard from advocates of the Business Improvement Area concept as a way of helping business on South Bayview. Among the gathering of about 30 people were long-time supporters of a Bayview BIA and members of a steering committee formed about two years ago. There were also skeptics of the BIA concept present. The meeting was convened by John Parker (Ward 26) and the main speaker was John Kiru, president of the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas (TABIA). His remarks were enlightening on the practices by which the BIA may be formed. A democratic reform has occurred in recent years by which the City requires a 50 percent plus one margin in favour to create a BIA. The previous, rather astonishing practice of creating a BIA with no votes in favour has been abolished. This, and the new requirement that both tenants and property owners be permitted to vote, seems like progress. Mr.Kiru surveyed the challenges and benefits of Toronto’s 77 BIAs. Some do much better than others and some are simply dormant. He offered advice on the businesslike operation of a BIA — merchant involvement, organization, frequent meetings and formalized areas of responsibility among members. He said those hoping for a BIA should prepare themselves to donate ten hours a month.  This insight touches on the chronic complaint of skeptics and even well-intentioned BIA supporters. There is frequent and often widespread apathy among merchants. The Bulldog is aware of a BIA vote in Wilson Heights last year. It failed because too few ballots were returned. That  is, there was no determinative outcome of “yes” and “no” votes — merely insufficient ballots returned overall. John Parker has scheduled another BIA information meeting for May 21 at which Alex Ling will attend. Mr. Ling is a rather legendary figure in the creation of the first BIA in Bloor West Village, where he operated a shop.  

Candidate sues Trudeau, party boss for libel

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Former Liberal candidate Christine Innes has launched a $1.5 million defamation lawsuit against party leader, Justin Trudeau, and provincial co-chair  David MacNaughton. The lawsuit alleges that Trudeau and MacNaughton defamed Ms. Innes by accusing her and her team of “bullying and intimidating” young Liberals during the campaign for the Liberal nomination in the downtown Toronto riding of Trinity-Spadina. The linked CBC story is a rich account of the party’s dirty laundry in Toronto. It describes a state of kind among Mr. Trudeau and the party brass that the Liberals have been  infected by “toxic infighting that almost destroyed the party” under previous leadership. Photo: Christine Innes and Mr. Trudeau in happier times. 

Premier Wynne has a plan #TOpoli #ONpoli

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The Premier has a plan to pay for the structures we need to get around in Ontario — subways, roads, bridges and tunnels.  Part of her idea is to somehow or other divert $29 billion in existing provincial gas and sales taxes to the job. It’s not clear what gets short changed in that bit of legerdemain. For the rest of it, Ms. Wynne promises to reveal further “revenue streams” in the budget expected within weeks. Ontario has released a long-term economic report showing the province’s economy is expected to grow “somewhat more slowly” over the next 20 years than in the past. It isn’t surprising. Like the rest of North America, the once robust industrial heartland of Canada has taken a 40-year whipping from the low-wage manufacturing miracles of Asia. In more recent years, free trade has caused the Americans to call home manufacturing they placed here in the 60s and 70s in order to make Canadian sales. None of this is belly aching. It’s just reality. We have no one to blame but ourselves.  Millions of us decided the strategic decision to buy goods from abroad and eliminate tariffs was the right thing to do. And maybe it was. We just didn’t know how much it would hurt.

South Bayview wind and rain a flapping challenge

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The midday wind and rain in South  Bayview were manageable but challenging on Monday. The flapping of the plastic sheathing on the new Davenport Garden Centre building at Bayview and Davisville Aves. was a touch alarming now and then. At Loblaws on Moore Ave. the automatic doors were unable to stop a load of dried leaves from blasting across the inside of the store. A special weather notice from Environment Canada says temperatures will be on a roller coaster ride in these strong winds. The low pressure system that has brought heavy rain to some and twenty degree temperatures to others will bring winter-like weather to most local areas before it exits the province Tuesday afternoon.

Brendan Shanahan newser nice but not newsy

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The Toronto Maple Leafs news conference Monday morning to introduce Brendan Shanahan as the team’s president and alternate governor was nice but not very informative. Who wants to explain, even if they could, why the leafs haven’t won for centuries. Shanahan, 45, will oversee all operations for the Maple Leafs, from both the hockey and business perspectives. Tim Leiweke, president and CEO of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment since June 2013, said he believed the NHL club lacked an identity and a direction. 

Big three mayoral hopefuls sink radio debate

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This year’s mayoral front-runners have backed out of a debate planned for Monday on a community radio station, citing a lack of organization, the Star reports. The debate was to be held on University of Toronto radio station CIUT 89.5. Many observers were surprised when long-shot candidate Sarah Thomson was invited but not Karen Stintz or David Soknacki. But Saturday night, the campaigns of mayor Rob Ford, Olivia Chow and John Tory issued a joint statement saying they were backing out. “After much consideration, we the under signed will not be participating in the CIUT debate planned for Monday,” the statement said. “After multiple attempts for clarification on which candidates would be attending the debate, our questions have still been left unanswered. Combined, we feel that we have been misled by the organizers of this debate. As always, we welcome opportunities to discuss the issues facing our city with other candidates and look forward to well-planned debates with transparent processes.” Station manager Ken Stowar said he learned of the withdrawal via media reports. 

Heartbleed theft is an unwritten media story

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The theft announced this morning of 900 social insurance numbers (SIN) from the Canada Revenue Agency computer system is a story about the Heartbleed bug, but it is also a media story. It appears clear that the theft of these numbers occurred after the enormous furore in the media alerted hackers to the opportunity for such theft, and before CRA responded by shutting down access to the machine. The whole thing occurred during a six-hour period after the security flaw was discovered. Andrew Treusch, Commissioner of Revenue at the agency, said in a statement the CRA is currently investigating the removal of other data, some of which “relate to businesses.” No other information was immediately available. The circumstances of the theft raise again the timeless question of just when the public good is actually damaged by the unrestrained broadcast of such news.  Historically, we always come down on the side of instant dissemination, and this may indeed be the right choice. But there is no doubt that the mad release of all information instantly can be a mixed blessing, related as much to making money as it is to the public good. The Heartbleed case is a good example of the former. This previous post notes how harmless the software flaw remained as long as it lay quietly unreported.  How much smarter it would have been to fix Heartbleed first, if possible, before announcing to the general public that the flaming disintegration of the cyber-world as we knew it was at hand. 

Heartbleed horror or just bleeding misleading?

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Listen, it’s alway good to take life seriously. But keep your baloney detector handy. There might be a problem — dare we say an attempt to terrify you — when the media quotes unknown experts as saying the Heartbleed bug is so catastrophic that on a scale of 10, Heartbleed is an 11. Such a useful point of reference. How about some facts. Lewis Leong, writing in Softonic, says content delivery network CloudFlare released a report which found that there have been no verified reports of the theft of private keys. CloudFlare received early notice of the Heartbleed vulnerability and patched its own servers twelve days ago. It then began testing to see if it was possible to use Heartbleed to exploit its own services. “After extensive testing on our software stack, we have been unable to successfully use Heartbleed on a vulnerable server to retrieve any private key data,” wrote CloudFlare software engineer Nicholas Sullivan. While the company says it could not exploit a vulnerable server, it does not rule out the possibility of an attack. CloudFlare does not “feel comfortable” saying the exploit won’t work but instead says it would be “very hard” to achieve. The company has set up a challenge for security researchers and hackers to exploit a vulnerable page using the Heartbleed bug. Software company Netcraft also followed up its initial report about 66% of the web being vulnerable. Of the 66% of the web using OpenSSL, only 17.5% of those sites actually use the Heartbleed extension. “Not all of these servers are running an HTTPS service, nor are they all running vulnerable versions of OpenSSL with heartbeats enabled,” writes web security tester Paul Mutton.