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P&C’s Michael Paulukonis was part of the team behind Skipscreen, the red-hot “free Firefox add-on that lets you skip all the clicking and waiting on sites like RapidShare, Zshare, MegaUpload, and Sharebee.” 120,000 downloads this week–congrats!

Mozart: music pirate
Charming musical post about “Gregorio Allegri’s arrangement of Psalm 51″ from Rocco Palmo, just in time for Holy Week.

Are protests effective?
Management prof Brayden King says yes. I’m eager to dig into the research to see if any strategies seem to be more effective than others.
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Linda LeTendre, in DC this week to join the 100 Days Campaign, reviews the recent antiwar march in DC, which I skipped:

There was a “standoff” between some demonstrators and some police officers, with the demonstrators taunting the officers. This was high idiocy for two reasons: (1) It did not promote peace, and (2) The officers were armed, the taunters were not. The officers were called to some other part of the event and as they left the taunters cheered as if they had won some great victory — further raising their level on the idiocy scale.

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“The coming evangelical collapse”
Michael Spencer:

Being against gay marriage and being rhetorically pro-life will not make up for the fact that massive majorities of Evangelicals can’t articulate the Gospel with any coherence. We fell for the trap of believing in a cause more than a faith.

Michael Bell runs the numbers. As a New England Catholic, whose own church is in steep decline while local evangelical churches seem to be thriving, these articles were full of surprises for me.

During last summer’s Catholic Worker National Gathering it struck me that the Catholic Worker movement is one of the few things about my church that’s not either in decline or in a defensive mode–the CW communities are doing great, with a good mix of ages, marked by openness, faith, and courage. I wish I could say the CW is a good model for the “future of the Church,” but interest has waxed and waned over the decades, and most people number their association with the CW in years rather than decades, so I think we’ll have to look elsewhere for that.
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A personal note
The 100 Days is going great. Nice to be working so hard on something positive. Starting to think about what I should do (for money or for free) when I return to Worcester in May. Ideas? You know how to reach me.

I’ve been thinking about how we pick our causes, inspired by the following 2 articles about causes that have arguably not done well.

Save Darfur Can’t Save Darfur:

In all the activist rhetoric about genocide, one critical fact is lost – as bad as the situation is, it could be far worse. If you don’t understand this simple point, you don’t understand the stakes involved.

(See also Some Defend Save Darfur and The Janjaweed Speak, by the same author.)

Life For March:

At 36 years old, the pro-life movement is still energetic and indignant—and trapped. Every year of Republican rule has increased the suspicion that pro-lifers are the GOP’s useful idiots.

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Drew Wilson, Worcesterite and friend of this blog, was arrested September 1, 2008 in St. Paul in connection with the Republican National Convention. Yesterday, he and 6 others were the first RNC arrestees to get to the trial phase. The charges against him sounded pretty bogus, and sure enough they were dropped:

. . . Judge Michael Fetsch decided that no reasonable jury could find the defendants guilty even if all the testimony from police was accepted as true. The defendants did not have to present any defense and charges can not be re-filed in the future.

Standard Podcast [ 32:19 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Let’s celebrate by listening to Drew’s account of the arrest, from 508 #57: click here to download the mp3.

(Also: Very short Star-Tribune article.)

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First, a couple of buzzkill items. Don’t forget that Friday is Buy Nothing Day, a day to send the message that the Christmas season is not about money. (I guess it doesn’t have to be a downer: read Mark Dixon’s account of a crazy BND experiment.)

Also, casual turkey cruelty:

New York Times:

[PETA] released undercover videotapes taken at the nation’s premier poultry-breeding operation, showing turkeys being stomped to death and punched by workers.

[...]

The scenes show stomach-turning brutality. Workers are seen smashing birds into loading cages like basketballs, stomping heads and breaking necks, apparently for fun, even pretending to rape one.

It gets worse.

Now for some positive items.

Close Guantanamo Now
An interview about closing Guantanamo in which I repeatedly interrupt Mauro DePasquale and Claire Schaeffer-Duffy. Sadly, I do this to them off-camera, too.

Adam Villani beats Ben Stein’s ass, twice
Pie and Coffee contribuor Adam Villani won Ben Stein’s money, and correctly guessed that the housing market was over-valued. The score is 2-0.

How strong is the Worcester blogosphere?
Help me figure out how Worcester’s amateur news stacks up to the daily paper.

Tomorrow’s 508 podcast is pre-recorded, so I’m going to vent today about a sub-head in this week’s Worcester Magazine “Worcesteria” column:

ALL YOUR EMAILS BELONG TO US

Which is neither an elegant title nor an accurate reference to ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US. Overzealous copy-editing? Zoback nods?

City Council to Vote on Taxing Military Bases & Anti-War Resolution Oct. 28
Indymedia story.
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The whole Dianne Williamson-Rosalie Tirella thing
I didn’t find the Dianne Williamson column that started the latest round in this feud very interesting; strange, because so many of the elements would normally appeal to me.

I re-read the column, and when I got to this phrase I found part of the problem:

. . . InCity Times, a small newspaper that purports to speak for blue-collar folks but is actually a vehicle for Ms. Tirella to practice her peculiar brand of yellow, slash-and-burn journalism . . .

This is incorrect. InCity Times is a small newspaper that speaks for blue-collar folks and a vehicle for Ms. Tirella to practice her peculiar brand of yellow, slash-and-burn journalism. And a couple of other things as well.

Williamson’s take is disappointing. Why reduce a fascinating, three-dimensional character to one?

Too often local writers do this, and it drives me crazy. They start with a complex, flavorful, spicy reality, then dilute it way down, punching it up at the last stage with cheap adulterants (in this case, personal rancor).

Also: RT’s offensive response to this article has been posted and removed from several websites, the latest being Worcester Indymedia.
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St. Peter’s ministry fair

People will be tabling about parish ministries after every mass this weekend at St. Peter’s parish in Worcester.

I’ve avoided getting involved in parish ministry in Worcester because I move so much. But I’ve lived in the Greater St. Peter’s Area continuously for the past 11 months, and plan to be here until at least January, so I think it’s time to take the plunge and investigate becoming a lector. (Thanks to TN for a short conversation which convinced me I should get more involved in this way.)

On a related note, from last week’s bulletin:

* Special Notice: The Diocese of Worcester has mandated that every person who is involved in any kind of parish ministry – whether volunteer or paid – must complete a C.O.R.I. form and must participate in a Child Abuse Awareness training program.

I hate filling out government forms as much as anybody, and I have more than enough opportunities to serve the Lord in my daily life that don’t involve paperwork. I can understand a policy like this, but boy it’s annoying.
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St. Bernard’s against bottled water
Last week I mentioned an odd incident in downtown Worcester. A Poland Spring guy was making a delivery on the street, and the woman accepting the delivery told him that some churches were encouraging a boycott of bottled water.

He said, “I guess I’ll boycott church, how’s that.”

Turns out it wasn’t just any churches–the Telegram & Gazette ran a story that morning about Sister Rena May at St. Bernard’s:

In fact, if you attend Mass at St. Bernard’s or are a member of St. Joan of Arc Parish, she will ask you to sign a pledge card vowing to stop buying bottled water and drink from the tap. She says selling water for profit threatens the public’s access to fresh water and that safeguarding clean water for public use is integral to her calling.

“I’m a Franciscan, so I naturally go very well with the environment and trying to protect it,” Sister Gagnon said.

If you’re curious about Worcester tap water, watch this video by Dan Dick.

Darth Cheney
My fellow radical Catholic West Virginian Michael Iafrate thinks Dick Cheney’s stupid WV incest joke was part of a long pattern of “imperial” repression of Appalachia. I think it’s more from anxiety than malice; Cheney, the spawn of a demon and an evil robot, must be both fascinated and confused by human sexuality.

Good God, y’all
Whether you dislike war or love hiking, Edwin Starr has got the goods.

Making your own fun
I am really pleased with this week’s Snow Ghost Community Show, about “making your own fun” in Worcester.