[PHOTO] Snow sliding from a shelter roof, 27 February 2013

Yesterday morning saw the end of an almost disappointing snowstorm, the temperature hovering around freezing. Instead of simple rain, or a dry snow, we got a wet snow that quickly became slush covering the sidewalks.

Snow slid inch by inch, off the downwards-curved roof bus shelter at Dufferin and Dupont, the snow lubricated by the water and encouraged by gravity. The regular thumps made interesting sounds as they hit the ground.



This is a close-up of the previous photo.

[URBAN NOTE] "Is Tim Hortons Spiking the Brew?"

Reading Edward Brown's post about the rumours that Tim Horton's spike its coffee to nicotine as my coffee perks, my first reaction is "That can't be so bad!". My second, well, Brown nails the unlikeliness of the myth and its probable genesis.

The yarn goes something like this: While visiting family in Toronto for the first time, an American tourist makes frequent trips to the nation’s most recognized coffee house, becoming inexplicably enamoured of Canada’s famous brew. In a tamer version of the legend, the sorry sod returns stateside green around the gills. A visit to the doctor reveals nicotine coursing through his veins. Since the tourist is a nonsmoker, his doctor is baffled. Further tests reveal that a copious amount of nicotine-laden coffee ingested during his romp north is the source of the health scare.

In a more sinister version, the American meets his demise in a Tim Hortons. Deathly allergic to nicotine, a single sip brings on cardiac arrest. Another version has a teenage girl’s heart bursting the instant her extra-large combines with the effects of a nicotine patch.

Tim Hortons is aware of the legend. They address it directly, here. Michelle Robichaud, public relations manager for Tim’s, told Torontoist unequivocally, “There is in fact nothing added to our coffee. We believe that our guests are addicted to consistency.”

[. . .]

It’s clearly implausible that Tim Hortons would deliberately poison its customers. So how did the rumour get started? Finding the source of an urban legend is impossible. Tracing its propagation, however, is easier. Urban legends relating to nicotine have a history. In the ’80s, there were tales about McDonald’s adding nicotine to hamburgers. In the ’90s, Pokémon cards were rumoured to be laced with the substance. Today in the U.S., Starbucks coffee has its own nicotine legend.

[LINK] "Brains of rats connected allowing them to share information via internet"

The Guardian's Ian Sample reports on a rather remarkable new technological development. The paper's title is "A Brain-to-Brain Interface for Real-Time Sharing of Sensorimotor Information", but I've seen people on Facebook talking about rat telepathy, too.

Scientists have connected the brains of a pair of animals and allowed them to share sensory information in a major step towards what the researchers call the world's first "organic computer".

The US team fitted two rats with devices called brain-to-brain interfaces that let the animals collaborate on simple tasks to earn rewards, such as a drink of water.

[. . .]

Led by Miguel Nicolelis, a pioneer of devices that allow paralysed people to control computers and robotic arms with their thoughts, the researchers say their latest work may enable multiple brains to be hooked up to share information.

[. . .]

The scientists first demonstrated that rats can share, and act on, each other's sensory information by electrically connecting their brains via tiny grids of electrodes that reach into the motor cortex, the brain region that processes movement.

The rats were trained to press a lever when a light went on above it. When they performed the task correctly, they got a drink of water. To test the animals' ability to share brain information, they put the rats in two separate compartments. Only one compartment had a light that came on above the lever. When the rat pressed the lever, an electronic version of its brain activity was sent directly to the other rat's brain. In trials, the second rat responded correctly to the imported brain signals 70% of the time by pressing the lever.

Remarkably, the communication between the rats was two-way. If the receiving rat failed at the task, the first rat was not rewarded with a drink, and appeared to change its behaviour to make the task easier for its partner. In further experiments, the rats collaborated in a task that required them to distinguish between narrow and wide openings using their whiskers.

In the final test, the scientists connected rats on different continents and beamed their brain activity back and forth over the internet. "Even though the animals were on different continents, with the resulting noisy transmission and signal delays, they could still communicate," said Miguel Pais-Vieira, the first author of the study, in a statement. "This tells us that we could create a workable network of animal brains distributed in many different locations."

[URBAN NOTE] Two notes on crime on the TTC

Late last evening, there was a stabbing on board a subway train approaching Davisville station by a man who has just been identified and charged.

Toronto police have identified and charged the man wanted in the unprovoked stabbing of a 45-year-old man on a subway train Wednesday evening.

Cassim Celani Cummings, 20, faces several charges including attempted murder and aggravated assault in relation to the incident, which took place as he was riding the Yonge Line, near Davisville station.

He has yet to be arrested.

[. . .]

The attack took place at about 10:20 p.m., police said. A passenger activated the alarm and emergency crews met the train at Davisville station. The suspect exited the train and ran away.

There was no significant interaction between the suspect and the victim before the stabbing, said Const. Tony Vella.

“The suspect was approaching [different] people on the train,” he said. “Then he went up to [the victim] and stabbed him.”

Toronto has also come up on the one-year anniversary of a thankfully non-fatal stabbing of a TTC collector at Dupont station.

Toronto police have chased down many leads, but have still not been able to find the person who shot a TTC collector at Dupont station a year ago.

Staff Insp. Mike Earl reminded reporters on Tuesday afternoon that the same suspect had actually robbed the subway station on two prior occasions before the shooting on Feb. 26, 2012.

But no shots were fired until the incident on a Sunday night last year when the on-duty collector was wounded.

"The collector had no cash, or provided no cash to the suspect, at which time the suspect turned, commenced to walk away from the victim and then turned and fired three shots," he said during a news conference at police headquarters.

Earl said the TTC collector was hit in the bicep and the neck.

The suspect then fled the station and went to a parking lot at Spadina Avenue and Macpherson Avenue and entered a silver vehicle.

Earl said the public has provided many tips to police, but none have resulted in an arrest.

There is not, as far as I can tell, any particular panic caused by yesterday's stabbing and the recent anniversary. Torontonians experience the TTC as frustrating, yes, but very rarely unsafe. It's being taken as just one of those random, but rare, things.

[URBAN NOTE] "With Loblaws a Possibility, Kensington Market Gets Anxious"

Steve Kupferman's Torontoist article revisits the possibility of a Loblaws chain grocery store near Kensington Market that I noted through Torontoist back in December.

Kupferman's coverage is quite good, not only--as here--noting the concerns that a chain grocery store might impinge on the smaller merchants of Kensington Market, but also noting that much of this protest seems ill-judged. For starters, right now there does not seem to be any commitment by Loblaws to the site in question on College west of Spadina, once home to a Buddhist temple. There also seems to be a sort of NIMBYism evidenced, in the opposition to bars or other entertainment venues appearing in a neighbourhood that has been dynamic. The commenters at Torontoist further suggest that there may not be much impact on small businesses like fruit sellers and fishmongers in the neighbourhood, since they cater to substantially different demographics than a hypothetical Loblaws would.

It’s an awkward situation. In October, city council, with the support of Councillor Adam Vaughan (Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina), approved a 15-storey condo at 297 College Street, to be developed by a company called Tribute Communities. Now, months after the fact, some residents and businesspeople in Kensington Market, just south of the site, are suddenly up in arms over the building, which they believe will include a neighbourhood-destroying element: a Loblaws supermarket, lodged in a planned 20,000 square foot second-floor retail space.

Sylvia Lassam, a seven-year Kensington resident who owns a home on Bellevue Avenue, is one of the people leading the fight against Loblaws. She believes that a supermarket would steal business away from the many green grocers and dry-goods merchants that line Kensington’s streets. “The raw food sales have been the constant that keeps it a real, honest-to-god market,” she said. “And if you get a Loblaws two blocks away, what’s going to happen?”

Lassam, an archivist by profession, believes that a supermarket would leave Kensington unrecognizable, erasing its century of history as a scrappy, eclectic immigrant district. There’s some reason to believe things could unfold this way. Ever since a Loblaws opened at Queen and Portland streets, about half a kilometre from the Market, neighbourhood merchants have complained of reduced sales. Fueling suspicion in Kensington is the fact that the Portland Street Loblaws is located in a condo building developed by none other than Tribute Communities, in partnership with RioCan.

“I just can’t see how that could be good for [Kensington's small grocers],” Lassam continued. “And I think what would probably happen is that they would eventually close up, and that those storefronts would turn into more of the entertainment kind of things.” In other words, bars.

[URBAN NOTE] "Village preserved in final riding-redistribution proposal"

Xtra!'s Rob Salerno shares the good news that a proposed redrawing of borders for federal electoral ridings in downtown Toronto in response to a growing population will not bisect Church and Wellesley.

The Federal Electoral Boundaries Commission for Ontario has listened to concerns from the community and maintained the integrity of the Church Wellesley Village in a single riding in its final report to be tabled to Parliament.

Previously, the commission had proposed that the part of the Village north of Wellesley Street would be swept into a new riding called Mount Pleasant that stretched up to Eglinton, capturing many wealthy neighbourhoods, such as Rosedale and Moore Park.

The old proposal had very little support and drew criticism from several people who appeared at a public hearing into the new boundaries last year. The new proposal leaves the Village entirely within Toronto Centre and leaves out the proposed Mount Pleasant riding.

Instead, the commission appears to have listened to the proposal made by several deputants, including several MPs and MPPs, that the new riding in downtown Toronto be created along the waterfront, capturing the booming new condo neighbourhoods that continue to grow south of the Gardiner Expressway.

The proposed new riding, called Spadina-Fort York, incorporates the section of the current Toronto Centre riding south of Front Street and The Esplanade and the section of the current Trinity-Spadina riding south of Dundas Street. The new riding currently has a below-average population, which should leave it room to accommodate the strong growth happening in the area.

Toronto Centre also loses territory to the proposed new University-Rosedale riding, mostly made up of the section of Trinity-Spadina north of Dundas, plus the section of Toronto Centre north of Charles Street East and the sections west of Bay Street that make up part of the University of Toronto campus and residences.

A precise description of the boundaries of Spadina-Fort York is here.

[DM] "Three notes on historical patterns of migration from Bulgaria"

I've a post up on Demography Matters expanding on three patterns of migration from Bulgaria that are noteworthy to me, concentrating on Muslim migration from modern Bulgaria, the attractiveness of Bulgarian citizenship to potential claimants in non-European Union countries, and Bulgaria's continued peripherality in Europe.