Morning Brew: February 26th, 2008

Photo: "Danforth Looking West" by blogTO Flickr pooler Dipp.

Your morning news roundup for Tuesday February 26th, 2008:

During rush hour and on weekends, driving on highway 400 tends to be about as unfun as it gets. But late on a Monday night it can also be troublesome - especially when a driver decides to jerry-rig his car with propane tanks, stop on the road and threaten to blow up the next tanker truck that comes along. I guess the news hasn't made it to the folks at this crazy terror-tracking web site yet.

When you're riding the subway to daycare, do you get an uncontrollable urge to eat a bowl of sugary cereal and a pile of chocolate bars, while downing a 2L bottle of cola? Toronto's medical officer of health and some city councillors are pushing for a ban on junk food ads aimed at kids because we're on our way to extreme fatdom.

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Gentrification of the Junction continues, and the latest major rejuvenation project will see a massive old manufacturing building converted into movie studios, offices, and workshops. At a staggering 10-storeys, it was one of Canada's tallest buildings when it originally opened in 1919. Aside: I've lifted the brief moratorium on linking to the Toronto Star, but will keep the hyperlinks really small (can you see it?) as a form of admittedly futile protest.

If you build it, they will come (said James Earl Jones to Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams). Apparently condo developers are finally catching on to the fact that the land along the Sheppard subway line (which most of us think leads to nowhere and the city has previously threatened to shut down) can actually be a place for people to live, work, and play. A condo in Don Mills isn't my dream home, but for some it is.

If you use Facebook (especially if you're a Canadian soldier spreading freedom in Afghanistan), you may be contributing to terrorism. If the Department of Defense were smart about this, they would have pretended to be one of Al Qaeda's friends and planned their moves around Al Qaeda's status updates.