SICA Secession

Local news!

Ten high schools are planning to secede from the South Inter-Conference Association at the end of the year: Andrew, Bradley-Bourbonnais, Bolingbrook, Homewood-Flossmoor, Joliet, Lincoln- Way Central, Lincoln-Way East, Lockport, Sandburg, and Stagg. If you know anything about the south suburbs, you'll see the pattern. These high schools represent the more affluent (and whitest) communities in the south suburbs.

"It takes a large group of white students out of the knockings and I think that is important to keep the conference balanced. So, there is a huge impact when they leave. They're taking the bulk of the white population out of SICA," said Robert K. Wilhite, Thornton Factional superintendent.

Black student athletes in lower income neighborhoods east of Interstate 57 are less likely, if ever to compete against more affluent whites west of the expressway. While the defecting superintendents concede that economics is part of the reason they will leave racial issues were not considered.

"Race in this whole thing is absolutely not a problem. It has never been a problem for the seven of us in our entire careers and as far as I'm concerned, it's never been an issue when it's come to a decision for me, whether it be racially motivated or not. Absolutely is not an issue," said Wyllie.

Wyllie says the new conference would be called the southwest suburban conference and would begin operating in all sports except football beginning next fall. Football will have to wait a while because of SICA contracts already in place.

The list of schools that will remain in SICA, according to this obviously outdated and badly-kept SICA website: Argo, Bloom Township (incl. Bloom Trail), Bremen, Crete-Monee, Eisenhower, Hillcrest, Kankakee, Oak Forest, Oak Lawn, Reavis, Rich Central, Rich East, Rich South, Richards, Romeoville, Shepard, Thornton Fractional North, Thornton Fractional South, Thornridge, Thornton, Thornwood, Tinley Park.

Hmm. Surprised Argo didn't bail with the rest.

Ace Troubleshooter Is No More

Dude, it stinks. John Warne, lead singer of Ace Troubleshooter, has left the band to be the new bassist for Relient K.

Now, coming off a two-month break, the band is refreshed and hitting the road on a headlining club tour. With Ace Troubleshooter singer John Warrant [sic] taking the spot of recently departed bassist Brian Pittman and with Jonathan Schneck joining existing members Matt Thiessen, Dave Douglas and Matt Hoopes, Relient K for the first time will be playing as a five-piece band.

Here's Ace Troubleshooter's official statement.

I guess John never got the memo that Ace was better than Relient K. . .

Crazy Happenings in Lebanon

Have you been following Lebanon at all? You should be. It looks like it might be solid evidence that Bush's domino effect hopes will be realized.

After the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri earlier this month, Lebanese citizens began to turn out in force to protest Syrian occupation of the country. Drawing explicit parallels to the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine from a few months back, the "Cedar Revolution" has won a major victory today: the Lebanese government, generally considered a puppet of Syria, has resigned en masse.

The Lebanese government abruptly resigned Monday during a stormy parliamentary debate, prompting a tremendous roar from tens of thousands of anti-government protesters in central Beirut.

The demonstrators, awash in a sea of red, white and green Lebanese flags, had demanded the pro-Syrian government's resignation -- and the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon -- since this month's assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Demonstrators in Beirut's Martyrs Square chanted, "Syria out! Syria out!" after Prime Minister Omar Karami announced his resignation in a speech aired by the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation.

In his speech, Karami said he would have won a no-confidence vote scheduled for later in the day, but was resigning to avoid making his government a stumbling block to peace.

The country's pro-Syrian president, Emile Lahoud, now must pick a prime minister to form a new government until scheduled elections in May.

Rock Rebel

Check this out -- my post about Christian Music Makeover has just been linked on the front page of rockrebel.com.

Seems like a very good site, probably deserving of a sidebar link.

NO AUTOLINKS HERE

I don't know whether you guys are keeping up on the latest target of bloggers' outrage (Blog Rage?). This time, it's an entity that usually gets tons of respect from the blogosphere -- Google.

Google has just released a new beta for its toolbar. What has bloggers (and many other web developers) up in arms is the bar's Autolink feature. Read about it on this page.

What Autolink does is automatically create links on a page where there are none. Great feature for users, right? Except it's messing with someone else's copyrighted content. This website here, Heroes from the Past, is my own house/poetry book/art gallery/phone book on the web. Google is now offering to 'help out' web surfers by turning my content into their adspace. I have no problem when my host (which is letting me put together this site absolutel free) packages ads around my content, such as you may see at the top of this page. But when you add links to my blogposts that are indistinguishable from the links that I have made myself, that's crossing a line.

So, for the moment, I've found a way to make it stop. The folks over at Searchguild have kindly written some Javascript that breaks Autolink for a page, and I've added the script to my template here.

I'm not sure how permanent this solution is, however. For one thing, the toolbar is still in Beta, and the Autolink feature is likely to be changed to combat this anti-autolink script. Secondly, I depend on Google in two ways -- hits through its search engine and hosting through its ownership of Blogger. If the company chooses to do so, it can easily detect the Javascript and either automatically remove anti-autolink pages from its search engine, or decide not to host me anymore.

We'll see where this goes. I don't think anything major is going to come of this, but maybe I should look into heroesfromthepast.com just in case.

CUBS TICKETS!

----------------------------------------------------------
The tickets you have purchased are:
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Cardinals at Cubs
Saturday, 8/13/05 at 12:20PM CDT
Terrace Reserved Outfield

Section Row Seat Price Type
237-3 17 107 $27.00 ADULT
237-3 17 108 $27.00 ADULT
237-3 17 109 $27.00 ADULT
237-3 17 110 $27.00 ADULT
237-3 17 111 $27.00 ADULT
237-3 17 112 $27.00 ADULT

MAN BITES DOG STORY

Literally.

The Other Extreme of Government Vs Property Rights

Instapundit and Professor Bainbridge have been pointing out one extreme of government abuse of property rights. Their posts talk about the use of eminent domain in contravention of the Fifth Amendment: "Nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." In these cases, governments are forcibly purchasing private property for questionable ends. For example, in the case of Kelo vs. City of New London, the city of New London has allowed a private non-profit organization to forcibly purchase the houses of Susette Kelo and neighbors for as-yet-unspecified private use.

But there's another extreme -- landmark status. When landmark status is invoked, a governmental body forces owners of property to continue to own and maintain such property in perpetuity, even if funds are not available or ownership is no longer desired. Stinks, don't it? And now Chicago politicians are thinking of forcing about 200 churches to accept it.

Owners of houses of worship currently are permitted to reject landmark designation, but a proposal co-sponsored by 10 aldermen would end their ability to opt out.

Experts say that at least 200 Chicago churches are of landmark quality, and the owners of any of them that were to win designation would lose the ability to tear down and be forced to maintain them in perpetuity.

"Our absolutely last choice is to demolish a building," said Jim Dwyer, a spokesman for the Catholic archdiocese. "But if we have no use for it, we are not going to spend money to keep a vacant building open at the expense of our ministries and our schools, even if somebody finds it aesthetically pleasing.

"I think [the new proposal] would be a concern to anyone who believes in religious freedom," Dwyer said.

You read it right. If this gets passed, churches could have landmark status forced upon them by the secular city government. And that means that the churches would not be able to tear down the church or make major changes without permission, and would be legally required to keep the property in good shape.

So what if the church is low on funds? Or, on the other hand, what if the church wants to build a new, larger sanctuary? They're stuck with the current property as a legally-mandated drain on resources and options.

Preservationists now are pushing to save St. Boniface, a shuttered Catholic church at Chestnut and Noble Streets, as Ald. Walter Burnett Jr. (27th) seeks to fashion a compromise in which a developer would purchase the building from the archdiocese, save the facade and construct condominiums on the site.

"I think we have to come up with a creative way of helping [religious organizations] out," Burnett said. "If they don't have the money to be able to fix the building, they can go to jail or be fined" if they failed to maintain a building with landmark status," he said.

"You are going to make someone do something they can't afford to do," Burnett said.

Korn Guitarist Becomes Christian, Leaves Band

MTV has the story here. God is amazing.

Guitarist Brian "Head" Welch, a founding member of Korn, has left the band and has rededicated his life to Christianity, according to the group's management.

"Korn has parted ways with guitarist Brian 'Head' Welch, who has chosen Jesus Christ as his savior, and will be dedicating his musical pursuits to that end," a statement from the band reads. "Korn respects Brian's wishes, and hopes he finds the happiness he's searching for."

Hat tip Israel from Staple, who are already targeting Welch for the band :P.

Yesterday's News

Dang, you'd think I'm a newspaper or something. This story happened yesterday, and I'm not getting to it until today.

Anyways, the story is further evidence that a liberal uprising will never be successful. The Kyoto Protocol went into effect yesterday, according to the story. Members of Greenpeace, not content with this drastic economic treaty, decided to take action on their own, and set their sights on the International Petroleum Exchange in London.

Greenpeace had hoped to paralyse oil trading at the exchange in the City near Tower Bridge on the day that the Kyoto Protocol came into force. “The Kyoto Protocol has modest aims to improve the climate and we need huge aims,” a spokesman said.

Was this a peaceful, non-invasive protest? You wish.

When a trader left the building shortly before 2pm, using a security swipe card, a protester dropped some coins on the floor and, as he bent down to pick them up, put his boot in the door to keep it open.

Two minutes later, three Greenpeace vans pulled up and another 30 protesters leapt out and were let in by the others.

They made their way to the trading floor, blowing whistles and sounding fog horns, encountering little resistance from security guards. Rape alarms were tied to helium balloons to float to the ceiling and create noise out of reach. The IPE conducts “open outcry” trading where deals are shouted across the pit. By making so much noise, the protesters hoped to paralyse trading.

So Greenpeace invaded the Exchange with tactics intended to disrupt trading. I'm not sure what they expected to occur, but I guess this wasn't it:

[T]hey were set upon by traders, most of whom were under the age of 25. “They were kicking and punching men and women indiscriminately,” a photographer said. “It was really ugly, but Greenpeace did not fight back.”

Mr Beresford said: “They followed the guys into the lobby and kept kicking and punching them there. They literally kicked them on to the pavement.”

Last night Greenpeace said two protesters were in hospital, one with a suspected broken jaw, the other with concussion.

This reaction may sound harsh, and may have been harsh. But I can only imagine what my reaction would have been if protestors invaded my workplace and tried to disrupt my coworkers and I in such a fashion.

Dogwood Is Still Alive!

So I'm starting to tell people that I think Dogwood might be dead. I WAS WRONG!

Just received this:

Dogwood Newsletter 02.17.2005...
WWW.DOGWOOD.WS




FEBRUARY SHOWNESS!!!
THIS SATURDAY!!!!



---
SATURDAY FEBRUARY THE 19TH 2005
THE GATE
900 22nd St (23rd and O Street), Bakersfield, CA
Bakersfield, CA
-ONLY $10


Wanna be our friend?
Check us out at http://www.myspace.com/dogwood

It's not like I'll be able to make it or anything, but it's great to see that they're still going.

BLOGGING ON THE SENATE FLOOR

No, not blogging from the Senate floor, unfortunately. Senator John Cornyn is advocating a reform of the Freedom Of Information Act that would, intentionally, give bloggers more power to collect information from the government.

BUT WE'VE ALSO SEEN IN RECENT YEARS THE EXPANSION OF OTHER OUTLETS FOR SHARING INFORMATION OUTSIDE THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA, TO ONLINE COMMUNITIES, DISCUSSION GROUPS AND BLOGS.

I BELIEVE ALL THESE OUTLETS ARE -- CAN AND DO CONTRIBUTE TO THE HEALTH OF OUR POLITICAL DEMOCRACY. BUT LET ME MAKE THIS CLEAR, MR. PRESIDENT, THIS IS NOT JUST A BILL FOR THE MEDIA, LEST ANYBODY BE CONFUSED. THIS IS A BILL THAT WILL BENEFIT EVERY MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WHO CARES ABOUT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, CARES ABOUT HOW THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OPERATES, AND ULTIMATELY CARES ABOUT THE SUCCESS OF THIS GREAT DEMOCRACY.

According to RedState, this is the first time that the word "blogs" has ever been uttered on the Senate floor. Not sure about that, but they have the full story here.

Another MSM Nosedive

The Tulsa World, the city's only newspaper, is now asking bloggers to stop infringing on its copyrighted material. The targeted bloggers' sin? Excerpting from articles, and also linking to the paper's online content.

Bates Line, one of the targeted bloggers, has a copy of the letter that he received from the World, as well as analysis, here. Here's an excerpt from the letter:

The Tulsa World copyrights its entire newspaper and specifically each of the articles and/or editorials at issue. The reproduction of any articles and/or editorials (in whole or in part) on your website or linking your website to Tulsa World content is without the permission of the Tulsa World and constitutes an intentional infringement of the Tulsa World's copyright and other rights to the exclusive use and distribution of the copyrighted materials.

Therefore, we hereby demand that you immediately remove any Tulsa World material from your website, to include unauthorizedlinks to our website, and cease and desist from any further use or dissemination of our copyrighted content.

That's right. A corporation is getting angry at people for linking to its website. I only wish I had tons of other blogs linking to me.

But the World? "Mr. Bates is looking at me! Mr. Bates is pointing at me! Make him stop, Big Brother!"

Mahna Mahna Update

I've updated the original post also, but I think this deserves to be at the top of the blog. The Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr Pepper Mahna Mahna commercial has finally been posted to ifilm.

I'll Be Sure To Be In Lynwood In An Emergency

Because Sauk Village 911 is incompetent.

DISPATCHER: 911.
CALLER: Yes, I'd like to report someone that's injured. Someone needs assistance. They're at the emergency hospital in Dyer.
DISPATCHER: Where are they at?
CALLER: They're in Dyer, and they're in a brown GMC Jimmy.
DISPATCHER: This is Sauk Village Police.
CALLER: Yes, I was wondering if you could put it through, please.
DISPATCHER: No, I can't.
CALLER: Oh, who do I call?
DISPATCHER: You probably have to call Dyer.
CALLER: All right.

e2 Ministries Announcement List

An announcement list for e2 Ministries has been created!





Click to join e2-music

Christian Makeover Update

Remember this? Well, one blogger is now being sent cease and desist letters over having posted articles critical of Christian Makeover (hat tip CCMBuzz).

Is Heroes from the Past next? Tune in next week to find out!

UPDATE: James, the blogger in question above, has left a couple comments clarifying his current status. First, the 'cease and desist' received was not formally so, but rather a document using such words. Second, the letter was written primarily regarding James's contacting certain editors within the CCM industry and asking them to cover the full story, without ignoring the critics. Check out his comments both on this post and on the one linked above.

And James, I bought the book through Amazon, and it looks like they haven't received it from the publisher yet, so they obviously haven't been able to pass it on to me. It was released by Relevant just a couple weeks ago, although Mark Salomon had self-published it before that time. I did read the first chapter online, and it asked some interesting questions. How is a 'Christian' band to react when a pastor at a church at which they are playing asks them to give a sermon during their set, when that band does not consider preaching its ministry? How is the band to react when that pastor confronts them in anger at their own place of ministry? How often do similar confrontations occur? What does it mean to be a Christian band?

I don't know if there are easy answers to any of these.

Business Cards!

Should be coming in the mail in two weeks or less.

WNBA In Chicago

The AP reports that a WNBA team has finally been approved for Chicago. Yahoo! has the story here.

New Protest Warrior Event

Who's interested in this? Seriously, I need to know who would be willing/able to go. If you can, please contact me.

Protest Warriors-This coming Saturday, at my church (Moody Church-Clark& North), at noon some lesbian organization will protest my church's opposition to gay-marriage. From what I hear, next Saturday is "right to marriage day" and there may be demonstrations going on throughout the city, or for that matter, the whole Country. I am sure that Moody Church was singled out because of our evangelical teachings, but there may be other churches on the list as well. So, just a heads up.

I do not know much more about the specifics of the protest- and I will be out of town Feb 12th, so I cannot help. Let me know if I can help find out more information, particularly if some warriors have time to confront these angry women.

Thanks,Mike Manning
******************************************************
From Indymedia: http://chicago.indymedia.org/newswire/rate/52310/index.php#52310
Please refrain from posting comments.

UPDATE: Just a notice -- there's a good chance that this isn't going to be an 'official' PW operation, but there should be PW'ers showing up in an unofficial capacity.