Items

Vox Nova, a new group blog
Messrs. Iafrate and Wildermuth, who I often cite in this space, are contributing to Vox Nova.

Scientologists camp on the Commons
The Scientologists have set up big, yellow tents on Worcester Commons as part of a promotional effort. I’m told they’ll be there a week.

Scientologists on Worcester Commons

New William St park
Here’s the design.

First vigil at new Planned Parenthood location
Saturday June 9, 9AM, 470 Pleasant St. PP hasn’t moved yet; I haven’t even noticed any signage at the new location. I wonder what people driving past will think: “Why are they protesting a vacant building?”

Democracy/Miro news
This week WoMag has an update on Worcester’s own Participatory Culture Foundation and their flagship project, the Democracy Video Player (soon to be renamed Miro). For me, the key Democracy news this week is that they now have a package for Ubuntu Dapper. (For technologically-ignorant Linux users like me, this is key.)

MLK & JFK Streets, coming up
The T&G reports that the movement to rename short snippets of streets after JFK and MLK is nearing success; Worcester Magazine suggests that if we’re going to rename streets, they should have less-boring names.

Vegan Porn -> Taste Better
Vegan Porn, for many years the best vegan site out there (home of the mighty vegan beer list), has now morphed into Taste Better.

Worcester priest shakeup
The diocese is moving around a bunch of priests. Doesn’t really affect any parishes I’m connected to, but YMMV.

(It’s interesting to compare this press release with the T&G article on the same subject. This is a story in which the details are everything, and the press release does a good job getting the details out there in an easily-scanned format. The article, having to conform to the traditional article format, has no useful information until the fourth paragraph, buries some of the details in other paragraphs, and lists the rest of the info at the end. What an unhelpful mess.)

Talk about your blurbs
Dan Gillmor, on Andrew Keen’s The Cult of the Amateur: “A shabby and dishonest treatment of an important topic.”

Paying for the works of mercy
As part of a widely-blogged article, New York Magazine looks at the cost structure of various NYC businesses, including a soup kitchen. “Each meal costs $5.50,” not including rent and utilities. As most of the food is donated, and the article isn’t very in-depth, I’m not sure how this is calculated.

Tolkein and anarchism
Nate Wildermuth finds this snippet from his letters: “My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning the abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) — or to ‘unconstitutional’ Monarchy.”

Wal-Mart and irony
The family of smiley-face creator Harvey Ball has sold some land to the city that will be used to link trails in Broad Meadow Brook and the Blackstone River Bikeway. Pretty cool. The trail signs have smileys on them. Ironically, those following the trail through to the Bikeway would soon pass begin the proposed Worcester Wal-Mart, probably the most notable corporation to debase Ball’s creation.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.