“Basil Pennington” response

A reader letter:

Mike,

While searching Father Basil Pennington I encountered an old posting you may have made on Pie and Coffee. The posting indicated you “stopped by the monastery last week to pick up a donation of food for some shelters and soup kitchens in Worcester, and they also gave me several boxes with Fr Pennington’s clothes. It was like being handed a crate of holy relics.”

Father Pennington is meaningful in my life. He influenced me with his teaching on Centering Prayer, his writings, and a personal chance meeting in the book store while on retreat at Saint Joseph’s Abbey many years ago. Feeling like a kid approaching a great athlete I asked him to autograph his book Centering Prayer.

Your feeling of holding a crate of holy relics is very understandable.

Coach Williams suspended

On today’s front page of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, there’s a front-page article headlined above the fold: “Central Mass. to become Old South for TV movie.”

Above that is another article: “Boy’s basketball coach suspended: South High’s Williams alleged racist referees.” From Jackie Reis’s article:

South High Community School boys’ varsity basketball coach Patrick Williams has been suspended for two weeks or four games, the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association announced yesterday.

The penalty comes after Mr. Williams alleged that two of three referees at a Division 1 semifinals game March 5 were racist and caused his team to lose to Holy Name Central Catholic Junior/Senior High School in double overtime. Mr. Williams apologized to the MIAA five days later for “bringing racism into the conversation” and for violating MIAA rule 50.1.1, which prohibits coaches from publicly criticizing game officials.

[…]

The MIAA suspended former Burncoat High School boys’ basketball coach Jim Diamantopoulos for one year for allegedly grabbing a referee in 1992. That suspension, however, was reduced to eight days upon appeal after the MIAA sportsmanship committee determined there was “no physical assault” by Mr. Diamantopoulos, who missed just one game.

The ruling doesn’t appear on the MIAA website. No idea if Mr. Williams was additionally reprimanded for being “uppity.”

Minimum Wage

The idea that minimum wages lead to unemployment is so ingrained in a lot of people who think they’re intelligent about economics that it’s essentially taken on faith from first principles rather than backed up with research. This article in the Knoxville News Sentinel isn’t a controlled scientific study, but it does present some data that suggest that a higher minimum wage correlates with lower unemployment and a healthier economy in general. Continue reading “Minimum Wage”

South Bend zoning news for May 2006

From today’s South Bend Tribune:

  • The Board of Zoning Appeals has approved of a request by the South Bend Catholic Worker to have their house at 515 S. St. Joseph Street be a group residence.
  • The BZA has denied a request by Opus Dei to raze a building, replace it with two smaller ones, and change the zoning. The article cites a laundry list of objections, but the one that leaps out at me is that the change would conflict with “neighborhood redevelopment plans.” Woe to anyone in South Bend who would make use of a lot in some way not envisioned by the neighborhood redevelopment plan. What would Jane Jacobs think of this foolishness?

Continue reading “South Bend zoning news for May 2006”

History of Immigration Laws

Mae M. Ngai had a commentary article in the L.A. Times a couple of days ago about the history of immigration laws in the U.S. Essentially, they came to be because people didn’t like Catholics, Slavs, or Chinese. But wouldn’t unskilled foreign labor cause economic havoc in the U.S.? I say let the market figure that out. If Americans are more skilled, then why are we worried about competition from Nicaragua, anyway? P&C administrator Mike, in a personal conversation, pointed out that all of this talk about free trade is really only talking about part of the equation— trade of goods. What about free trade of labor? I’m for both. And anyway, illegal immigrants are an essential part of the economy already. Legalization — the free trade of labor — is about treating people with basic human dignity rather than using them for their labor while keeping them as a permanent, illegal underclass.

“Copyright & Culture” June 8

Nick NassarNick Nassar will be giving a talk on “Copyright & Culture” June 8, 7:30pm, at 52 Mason St, Worcester, Massachusetts.

He’ll look at the ethics of copyright, and how current trends in copyright law hurt individual freedom and society.

This talk is free and open to the public. Spirited discussion and refreshments will follow. Sponsored by the Saints Francis & Therese Catholic Worker community.

Nick is the lead developer for the free, open-source Democracy video player, a project of the non-profit Participatory Culture Foundation.
Continue reading ““Copyright & Culture” June 8″

Seven more arrested for Darfur

Seven members of the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus were arrested yesterday for civil disobedience at the Sudanese Embassy to protest the ongoing genocide in Darfur. According to Reuters, they paid $50 and were released.

As far as I know, this is the second Congressional group, and third group overall, to commit civil disobedience at the embassy this year. (Thanks to Jim Fussell for the heads-up on this one.)

Technology items

Class: May 15 I’m teaching a free class called “HTML for Activists.” This will be an hour-long introduction to HTML, focused on practical matters. If you’re interested, meet at 7pm at the statue of Freud on the main quad of Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts.

Happy Birthday Mike LeslieFlickr: The new cool tag: happybirthdaymikeleslie.

Conference: As someone who doesn’t own a laptop, I’ll probably be the only person at tomorrow’s Beyond Broadcast conference doing less blogging than usual during the event.

Second Life and Darfur: The BB conference also has a presence in Second Life. Mr Paulukonis points out that there’s been some fighting in Second Life about Darfur, and that Ethan Zuckerman (who will be at BB) thinks the whole thing is irrelevant at best:

When I consider the issues I’m most interested in, collecting information – especially from people who are actually affected by these issues – is a much higher priority than presenting this data in a 3D format. Given that roughly 100,000 people log into Second Life in a given month – compared to roughly one billion using the Internet as a whole – I suspect people trying to call attention to global issues are better off making a website than a 3D space.

Nun: Nice article in Whispers about Sister Rose Thering, whose life work was “to promote greater understanding in the often-strained relationships between Christians and Jews.”

Dude: Through some Drupal site I found a microformats site, whereby I found this microformats podcast featuring Rohit. Dude, it is weird to stumble upon someone like that.