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Morning Brew: October 29th, 2007

Posted by Jerrold Litwinenko / October 29, 2007

5 Comments

blogTO Mornign Brew fallen leaves
Photo: "fallen" by blogTO Flickr pooler gardinergirl.

Your morning news roundup for Monday October 29th, 2007:

Crossroads Puzzles are back this week! Play the game after the jump.

Community housing advocates want bylaws that will make abandoned and neglected buildings easier to expropriate for affordable housing and community centre needs.

Police are looking for the tenants of a west end apartment where a man was shot and killed yesterday. Apparently they're not suspects, but the fact that they upped and disappeared has police concerned about their safety.

There's a critical flaw in the new Police-run online bike registry system which aims to curb theft. Anyone (including thieves) can register bikes as their own since no proof of purchase is required upon registry.

Dressing up the pet dog for Halloween may be fun (Darth Vader and Yoda are particularly popular costumes), but the Toronto Humane Society warns us to be cautious - dogs may try to eat their plastic disguise.

The USA have claimed all of Niagara Falls as their own! Views of the Canadian falls only possible from the Canadian side have been included in tourism videos commissioned by The State Department and Homeland Security Department's Customs and Border Protection agency. Maybe we should stop selling them weapons?

Today's Crossroad Puzzle after the jump...

blogTO Crossroads Puzzle
Recognize this part of the city? Post your answer in the comments, and check for the answer in tomorrow's blogTO Morning Brew.

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Discussion

5 Comments

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Ben / October 29, 2007 at 08:35 am
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Another problem with the bike registry: There is no way to contact them if you make a mistake on the form when you submit it.

They could have a preview button or something.
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Alison / October 29, 2007 at 09:12 am
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The crossroads are Heath St W & Tweedsmuir Ave by St. Michael's College School..!
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Graham / October 29, 2007 at 10:13 am
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That flaw has always existed. When the system was strictly paper-based, you didn't have to provide proof of purchase, either. And given the number of bikes legitimately sold second-hand and not through stores (i.e. yard sales, craigslist, etc.) it would be difficult to require proof of purchase. Furthermore, if your bike was stolen and the thief registered it in his name, that would mean that it wasn't already in the system, and therefore you didn't register it in the first place. So you couldn't have taken advantage of the registry anyway. Lesson being...register your bike immediately after purchase!
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chephy / October 29, 2007 at 10:37 am
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Graham makes all good points. If you did not register your bike and it got stolen... well, who's to blame for its not being registered? The only thing I wonder about is how the used bike market should operate. Suppose I buy a bicycle, register it, and later on sell it to someone else. If the other person now goes to register a bicycle in his name, what happens? Does the police just automatically assume that he is now a legitimate owner? If they do, how do you prove that a bicycle if yours if a thief reregisters it. And if they don't, how does a legitimate buyer prove that he is indeed a legitimate buyer if I suddenly decide to get nasty and claim that he stole the bike from me?

I think ideally there should be an easy (preferably online) way of unregistering bicycles, or transferring registration (as well as changing the details of any particular registration, such as your address, phone number, bicycle frame colour in case you get it repainted etc.). So you would actually have a password-protected account and manage bicycle registrations from there. Though I don't know if it's an economically feasible solution for the Toronto Police - perhaps they have no spare resources to develop and maintain such a system.
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Sean Galbraith / October 29, 2007 at 10:40 am
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That's my high school. :)

I'm surprised to read "The political boundary is not marked with a line through the Niagara River that divides the two countries and connects Lake Erie to Lake Ontario." I don't know if they were being cheeky, but there certainly is a distinct legal boundary between the 2 countries.
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