:: Running from the Thought Police ::

:: Monday, February 28, 2005 ::

White Lake Beacon Finally Pipes Up

The paper that serves Whitehall and Montague, MI, the two towns closest to Owasippe, has finally gotten around to printing an article on the sale. The first two-thirds of it isn't anything new for people who've been following the story, but since it's the local paper all we really want them to do is tell us what the Blue Lake township board is likely to do.

New information:

:: The OOEC, previously designated by the CAC as the preferred buyer for the property, was told to shove off in the middle of their presentation if they didn't have at least $18 mil. The current valuation of the property is merely $4 mil.

:: The Council owes the township a total of $14,000, and the township won't consider the rezoning request any further until that sum has been settled.

:: The township is now requiring traffic, water, fire, and soil impact surveys to be conducted before considering the zoning change. This'll add more time, as well as help build the case against development.

Here's to hoping that the township board votes our way.

:: The Squire 6:38 PM :: email this post :: ::
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Stirring The Liturgical Anthill

NOTE: Sorry - I went back to change a grammar error this morning and accidentally hit "Save as Draft" rather than "Publish Post." I'll be more careful in the future.

Matthew at Shrine of the Holy Whapping has, all by himself, proposed a revision of the Order of the Mass. Reguardless of the fact that he did not wait for the third edition of the Novus Ordo missal to be finalized and published (which, from what I've seen of it, may already be the step backwards in ecumenicalism and clarity of language he desires), I have a list of criticisms of his proposed order. I will admit that this response is on short notice and that I have not had a chance to spend gobs of time in the Newman Foundation's library and read up on the issue to the extent that Matthew has. Before I start, it should be noted that, in comparing this proposed order with the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, only Chapter II, section III of that document, The Parts of the Mass, is dealt with fully. For those wishing to actually read the Tridentine Mass for themselves and compare it to Matthew's text, a side-by-side Latin and English order is here.

Critique of the Ordo Karolingianus

On the title: I'll admit my Latin is a bit rusty. Even so, shouldn't it be, properly, the Ordo Carolus or some inflection thereof? This, though, may cause confusion with Carolus Magnus, the first Holy Roman Emperor, so perhaps Ordo Johannes Paulus Secundus or somesuch would be more appropriate.

Before proceeding further, it should be noted that a new order of mass is typically promulgated in Latin before being translated into the various vernacular languages. Since the Ordo Karolingianus was created without apparent recourse to the various forms of the Roman Missal in their original language, it was effectively created de novo.

General Rubrics

On "Of the Bows": "x is when y" isn't gramatically correct.

On "Of Concelebrants": Beyond the prohibition against concelebrants performing "servile tasks," this is merely a summary of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops document Guidelines for the Concelebration of the Eucharist. Would it be more profitable to include this (or a direct reference to it) in the text, as it covers more eventualities? Also, on the prohibition, it seems unneccessary to require an instituted Acolyte for "servile tasks" for situations where, for instance, the entire congregation is made up of ordained ministers.

On "Of the Other Sacred Ministers": I would agree with recent tradition that the presiding priest should, whenever possible, deliver the Homily himself. Separating the thanksgiving of the Word of God and the Lamb of God seems, to me, does nothing but disrupt the unity of the celebration. A "Gospeler" should thus be avoided whenever possible.

The Fore-Mass
(Introductory Rites)

Before getting nit-picky on this section, Matthew deserves credit for swapping out all the "thous" for "yous" in his proposed order.

On the inclusion of Psalm 42: Matthew leaves no footnotes to explain why he has added the Psalm back to the order of mass. While I, unfortunately, am no schollar of church history, I would hazard to guess that no references to this section of the Tridentine Mass could be found prior to the Middle Ages. I would like to see Matthew's rationale for its re-inclusion.

Also, Matthew doesn't use the New American Bible as the source for his text. The NAB is the translation currently approved for liturgical use in the United States. This, I believe, is an instance where a return to the source text (and direct translations thereof) would be more faithful to sacred scripture than to filter scripture through an additional language.

On the Inclusion of the Gloria Patri (Glory Be): First, as all other mentions of Jesus Christ in the mass merit only a head bow, why should the Gloria Patri? Secondly, this part of the mass seems to be redundant the Gloria, which is why I am not bothered by its removal. A better case needs to be made for its inclusion.

Salutation

In keeping with the Novus Ordo mass, this section has been moved relative to the Tridentine mass to preceed the Penitential Rite.

On the Translation of "Et cum spiritu tuo": Whether or not this will continue to be translated idiomatically as "And also with you" or literaly as "And with your spirit" in the next English revision of the Novus Ordo is currently up in the air. As such, I am open to both, especially since this proposed order of mass is attempting to cling close to the Tridentine mass.

Confiteor
(Penitential Rite)

This is the point at which everyone admits they are lowly sinners and go begging all and sundry for forgiveness. Kneeling as it is done in a pew has too much pius dignity attatched to it - I much prefer the "stand up and admit it" attitude encouraged by the currently indicated posture. This, though, is a matter of my opinion.

On the Inclusion of Michael the Archangel, et. al.: This is redundant with the subsequent phrase, "and all the angels and saints," as well as the litany of the Saints. The case for the reintroduction of this minor litany needs further justification.

On the Maintainence of the Second Instance of "Brothers and Sisters": I actually agree with this one, especially since the most recent English draft edition of the Roman Missal omits it.

Aufer a Nobis and Oramus Te

The first seems redundant to the end of the Penitential Rite, so a case for its inclusion must be made.

As most modern parishes do not include relics in their altar, and as the Priest's sins have just been forgiven in the Penitential Rite, the Oramus Te is also redundant. Again, explaination needs to be given for its inclusion.

On the Location of the Priest: Many newer and newly renovated churches make use of a basilica-style floor layout with the altar at the center. Other new, smaller chapels are simply an oval of chairs surrounding the altar, ambo, and presider's chair. While both have distinct areas for each of the three areas, such setups do not have a real "right" or "left." Perhaps this type of micromanaging is best left to the national conferences or to the Ordinaries.

The Kyrie Eleison

On the Inclusion of the Kyrie in the Penitential Rite: Just because something is old doesn't make it superior (unless, of course, it was instituted by Christ and practiced by his disciples, but that's a different case). Conversely, just because something is relatively new doesn't make it inferior. Why should innovations such as the Oramus Te be left to stand while the third setting for the Penitential Rite (which involves the Kyrie) is demeaned as "unhistorical"?

The Gloria

On Language: "You Who..." is archaic. Even the form of the Gloria found in the current English draft of the missal removes the word "who."

The Liturgy of the Word

The Lessons: Prophesy, Responsory, and Epistle
(First Reading, Responsorial Psalm, and Second Reading)

On the Inclusion of Lay Ministers in Reading Scripture: This is a practice that Matthew keeps and I applaud him for it.

The Gospel

On the Deacon Bowing or Kneeling While Recieving the Priest's Blessing: While, for a healthy person, a profound bow (from the waist) is not a problem, I can see where some older Deacons might have difficulties maintaining such a position. For those who cannot make a profound bow, an allowance for kneeling should probably be made. However, those who can make a profound bow probably should.

The Homily

On the Use of the Biretta: Matthew states that the "Biretta is a sign of authority." A sign to whom? To my pious, late grandmother, possibly. To my other grandparents and parents, an outside chance. To myself and most other Catholics of my generation, not at all. I didn't even know that it existed until a couple years ago, and have never seen one in person. Suddenly donning the things again during mass will not have the intended effect; instead, it'll merely look as if the Church is intentionally regressing. What's next, the maniple?

The Nicene Creed

On Language: The word "consubstantial" is archaic. I've had some Latin so I can puzzle it out, many/most aren't so lucky. A more modern form is needed for a creed so important to our faith.

On Ecumenicalism: We've finally gotten many of the mainline Protestant faiths to use the same version of the Creed and other commmon prayers. Before we change those things that we have in common with our Protestant brethren we must look long and hard to make sure that such changes are truely necessitated by lingual shifts and better fidelity to the original languages. If such changes are deemed necessary, expert representatives from those other denominations (with very good credentials) should be invited to develop the new translations along strict guidelines set down by the Vatican. Not only would this preserve and intensify the current level of ecumenicalism, but would also begin to re-habituate those denominations to the leadership of Rome in such matters.

On Kneeling vs. Bowing: In what I can find (though I don't have direct access to the missal itself) the congregation is only directed to bow, with no designation as to what type of bow is to be used. All the congregations I've been to use a simple head bow during the Nicene Creed. I fail to see how a head bow is awkward. Matthew's dismissal of a profound bow as awkward also needs some expaination, as a dismissal based on such a declaration seems arbitrary.

The Litany of Intercession
(The Prayer of the Faithful - formerly the General Intercessions)

As Matthew doesn't allow for intercession requests from the congregation, this order removes the non-general pettitions many Catholics try to insert here, including the wholly inappropriate "special intention."

On Language: As an example, "entreat" is archaic, as is "enkindle". While a different phrasing may be used to change the litany from a list of things the congregation prays for to a litany of requests of God, the language as used in the proposed order needs massive revision to be understood by most people.

The Liturgy of the Eucharist

The Offerotory
(The Preparation of the Gifts and Prayer over the Offerings)

On the Inclusion of the Veil: The use of the veil over the chalice is a holdover from the Tridentine mass and its modern use is exceedingly rare. The symbolism involved is poor at best, and the veil itself serves no practical purpose. Its inclusion for the sheer sake of continuing Roman tradition needs to be better argued.

On Language: While not as mind-bendingly archaic as the Intercessions, these too do not use clear, modern English.

On the Symbolism of Mixing Water and Wine: Ancient custom was to mix water with wine - in fact, considerably more water was used back then than is used in our mass today, as modern wines aren't nearly as concentrated. To this was added the symbolism of Christ's human and divine natures. While the symbolism's nice, it was added at a later date and shouldn't be a nominal focus of the prayer.

The Sanctus

On the Usage of "Lord God of Hosts": This turn of phrase is odd to the modern ear. Perhaps the ICEL draft version's "Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of mighty hosts," would be more appropriate to a modern setting.

The Roman Cannon
(The Eucharistic Prayer)

I'm going to largely leave this one alone, as I don't have the time nor the resources to properly delve into a line-by-line analysis of the form. I will, however, argue for the inclusion of other Eucharistic Prayers, as they can be better suited for different occasions. I agree, though, that those who revert to the shortest form by default without a pressing time constraint (like offering mass during a 20 minute homeroom period in a high school) are missing the point of having a variety of Eucharistic Prayers.

The Communion
(The Communion Rite)

On the Sign of Peace: Due to the Puritan history of our country and recent bouts of mass homophobia, many people have personal space issues that would make reinstituting the kiss of peace problematic after such a long time without it.

Also, as it is the Deacon's job to help direct the actions of the congregation, shouldn't he be the one to preferentially announce the sign of peace?

On the Striking of the Breast: This seems repetitive after the Penitential Rite, and the repetition does not seem justified beyond the continuation of the Tridentine Rite.

On the Neglecting of an Ordinary Minister of Holy Communion: The proposed rite does not allow for Deacons to distribute communion, as is expressly allowed today.

On the Communion Rail: Most churches have removed their altar rails, and many that still have them are kept so due to historical landmark status. Having been to mass as a church that still had its rail, I can say that one Priest serving communion alone to a congregation of any decent size will take an interminable time to distribute communion. This, combined with the Priest (and in some areas, Deacon) shortage, screams for the use of extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion.

On the Short Form of Corpus Christi: If multiple ministers, ordinary or extraordinary, are present to distribute communion to a large congregation, the Priest should have no reason to rush through the sacrament. I will agree that the response of "Amen" should be kept as an affirmation of the Real Presence.

Summary

The earlier parts of this proposed order of mass are borrowed heavily from the Tridentine Mass, with little/no updating of the language into modern, vernacular English. Latin clauses are quite complex and do not translate well into comprehensible English. The vocabulary from those parts borrowed from the Tridentine Mass is loaded with archaic words which need to be replaced so as to be understandable by the congregation. Laudably, the proposed order retains the use of lectors and other lay ministers (except, unfortunately, extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion). The communion rite itself is borrowed from the current Novus Ordo and is much more contemporary; however, the practice of having a single priest dispence communion to the entire congregation is encouraged under this rubric. With the increasing sizes of modern parishes and the decreasing number of priests, such a regression will easily double or treble the time it takes to dispense communion. Overall, the proposal takes much of the Tridentine Mass for granted and preserves it for the sake of preserving it rather than for its own merits.

:: The Squire 4:03 AM :: email this post :: ::
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A Rarity

A recent Darwin Awardee managed to earn the coveted award non-posthumously.

:: The Squire 2:04 AM :: email this post :: ::
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I Need To Read PeoriaPundit More Often

If I did, I'd have seen him, assisted by Archpundit, give Illinipundit and the Urbana GOP a decent smackdown over their whining about not being allowed to vote in another party's primary.

:: The Squire 11:21 PM :: email this post :: ::
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Yay For Voting Reform

Sen. Clinton (D-NY), Sen. Boxer (D-CA), and Rep. Tubbs Jones (D-OH) are sponsoring the Count Every Vote act, which goes a long way towards enacting the types of voting reform that Democrats want to see at a national level. Kos has a rundown on it, which I'll let everyone surf to on their own time.

:: The Squire 8:20 PM :: email this post :: ::
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The Long-Awaited Sasafrass Blast

Now that some of the dust has settled, Owasiron has sent out the latest edition of the Scarlet Sasafrass blast, dealing with news of the recent sale. Here's the lead summary.

CAC Board Votes To Sell ALL of Owasippe!
...but it has not yet been fully negotiated or sold and there has not yet been a transfer of ownership!

On Tuesday, February 22nd, Baden Powell's birthday, the CAC "Ad Hoc Properties Committee" recommend to the Executive Board which recommended to the full board that Owasippe be sold. These very critical meetings occurred at the Union League Club, 65 W Jackson Blvd in Chicago. The board meeting ran for over two hours with a great deal of debate and acrimony.

CAC board has voted to sell Owasippe by a count of 14 to 12. Three of those votes were permitted to be made by conference call and all three voted for the sale and all three were from the Ad Hoc Properties Committee headed by Dennis Chookaszian (BSA National Chrmn of Learning For Life). It may also be that this conference call option was not expressly delivered to all board members for the purpose of conducting today's vote. Reportedly, this option is allowed in the bylaws. Several known pro-Owasippe board members did not show up to vote, but we are not sure if they were also allowed the phone-in option for voting...this is being researched.

While CAC has voted to sell, the deal has not yet been sealed nor has it been closed because of pending contingencies.

Jesse White, Illinois Secretary of State and a CAC board member, could not attend today's board vote but did send in a signed letter, which was read, showing his opposition to the sale of the camp. His letter was not permitted as a proxy vote. We are not sure if Jesse White was presented prior to the meeting to conference call in his vote. We do know that he tried to reach out to Scout Exec Jim Stone prior to the board meeting.

The suggested sales price is $19.4 million to an investment group headed up by a West Michigan banker by the name of Benjamin Smith III. Allegedly, their intention is to develop the property into a resort-country club and possibly other commercial/residential purposes. The sale is still contingent on CAC being successful on changing its zoning in Blue Lake Township and Muskegon County as they had publicized last August. That zoning appeal may take awhile, is subject to public hearings, and is not necessarily guaranteed to be in favor of CAC.

Owasippe will open in 2005 and possibly in 2006 which is a bit uncertain at this point because of the pending sale and CAC's outstanding zoning appeal.

:: The Squire 4:31 PM :: email this post :: ::
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It's That Time Again!

Our local conservatives have taken back up the cause of discrediting the Daily Illini through insipid quad chalkings. These were all over the quad last spring, including a fake quote attributed to Karl Marx at a date before the founding of the university. In contrast to last year's plethora of anti-DI slogans, this semester I've only seen one. I'm sure there'll be more soon. The current one is, if I remember correctly, on one of the diagonals between the English Building and Davenport Hall, and it reads "You can't spell Idiots with the DI," with the "di" in idiots in a helpfully different color. For all its faults, the DI isn't that bad of a student newspaper, so I get mildly annoyed at these infantile attacks on it. I'd suggest to these people that if they dislike the DI so much that they make their own newspaper, but then I remember that they have one called the Orange and Blue Observer and its writers are complete moonbats.

:: The Squire 4:19 PM :: email this post :: ::
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For The Record

Based on news reports at the time, I had stated that the Pope had been put on a respirator. Those trusted sources, though, were in error, and so I'm posting this correction to make clear that the pontiff was not on a respirator. My guess is that news people assumed that putting someone on a respirator logically followed the tracheotomy. In any case, I regret the error.

:: The Squire 4:14 PM :: email this post :: ::
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EEEEEEWWWWWWWWWW

A Band-Aid was found in some french fries from the McDonalds in the basement of the Union. Eeewww. Not that I've eaten there since freshman year, but still, ewwww.

:: The Squire 1:16 AM :: email this post :: ::
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Brief Note

The OSA has gotten the Save Owasippe Legal Fund up and running.

Also, apparently according to this story on a Grand Rapids TV station's site, the buyer for the property is actually just one of an investment group.

Smith says the investors care about conserving a portion of the land. The current re-zoning proposal would preserve about 10-percent and allow homes on the rest.

"My concern is being able to get my investment back, a small return for the investors, and maintain the rest of it as near pristine as we can," Smith said.

Needless to say, having only 470 acres, hemmed in by development, isn't exactly the best situation for a summer camp.

:: The Squire 3:18 PM :: email this post :: ::
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More Reporting

The Muskegon Chronicle has its own article posted about the sale of Owasippe. It makes the first "official" mention of a possible challenge of the vote due to irregularities in the sale vote. It also confirms Blue Lake township's vested intrest not to see the property developed. The story leans on the press release from the Chicago Area Council, but also includes local reporting on the attitudes of the township board.

The sale of the 4,700-acre property for a reported $19.4 million to Benjamin A. Smith III, founder of Macatawa Bank, is contingent upon the township's rezoning of the camp to allow for houses and condominiums.

Township officials, now in the epicenter of this massive land deal, are being cautious. They have been studying the zoning issue for nearly a year but have not scheduled a vote on the matter.

But they know that an investment this size is likely to mean a development boom in their community. "How do you recoup $19 million? You build and build and build around lakes," said township Supervisor Don Studevan "Do they think we are dumb out here?"

...Blue Lake Township Supervisor Don Studevan said he is trying to stay out of the controversy over the sale of the land until decisions are made.

Studevan is largely staying mum on the subject because he has strong ties to Owasippe. It was his job as an executive with the Chicago council that brought him to Blue Lake Township where he fell in love with the land and settled into retirement.

He said any development could cause major problems for the township, which has no water and sewer service and limited fire and police resources, equipment, or the money to serve a development.

Fred Arbogast Sr., a Blue Lake Township board member, said the township really has no control over ownership of the property. The Chicago council owns it, and "they can sell it," he said.

As for public opinion: "By and large, the people don't want development," Arbogast said.

According to the article, the buyer has "no immediate plans" for the property, meaning that camp may continue for another few years while things get sorted out. The buyer also has no problems with CAC's current rezoning proposal, which would keep most of the area around Lake Wolverine intact but would mean kissing Camp Blackhawk goodbye.

Interestingly, the article mentions the back bills the council owes the township but doesn't say anything about the council paid them. Perhaps it hasn't been resolved yet.

Also, if anyone knows anybody with a few million dollars laying around in their pockets, now would be a good time to donate to the Owasippe Outdoor Education Center. If the sale falls through, they'll need to be able to swoop in with their own proposal rather quickly.

:: The Squire 2:26 PM :: email this post :: ::
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Pray For The Pontiff

He's back in the hospital with a relapse.

Note: The priests over at Catholic Ragemonkey have posted a Prayer for the Pope.

UPDATE: The Pope had a tracheotomy to relieve his breathing, and is currently on a respirator. Also, the Vatican's saying that the pontiff may end up being taken to the hospital on a semi-regular basis as his health continues to erode.

:: The Squire 1:30 PM :: email this post :: ::
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There Goes That Hope

From what I've heard, at some point since the beginning of the month the Council realized that a couple thousand dollars is a bit less than $19 mil and paid the bill assessed by Blue Lake Township for the previous zoning work. While that obstruction has passed, there's still hope that the township, who has opposed the sale of any part of Owasippe for development, will refuse to rezone the property to the buyer's liking.

Of note to those haven't been following the camp drama the past few years is the fact that Owasippe is the township's largest single landowner. Despite Whitehall being nearby, the township is entirely rural, with very little infrastructure. Developing Owasippe would put tremendous strains on the land, and would most likely require extensive sewer and water work in order to support the number of houses that are likely to be put up. The township has a vested interest in keeping the area rural and avoiding being socked with the cost of developing further infrastructure.

:: The Squire 1:17 PM :: email this post :: ::
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Online OSR Resources

For those who haven't seen it before, David L. Eby wrote a wonderful article on the oldest scout camps in the country. Owasippe, of course, has pride of place as the oldest, although he does identify 1912 as the start of camping near Crystal Lake, not the 1911 date currently used by the council. Troop 1, Park Ridge, has a photo posted from that first camping season.

In response to hearing the original news that the camp might be sold, a former Owasippe camper (Troop 935) and staffman at Camp Dan Beard tells about some of his experiences here (scroll down). He also has a "sample week at camp" posted here (scroll way down, you're looking for the August 1999 column).

A website with pictures of the ashes of the Carlen Dining Hall and Reneker Lodge is here. What did happen with the insurance money from the fires?

The Nature Conservancy still has the press release from the 2002 Owasippe Bioblitz report on their site. Knowing now how many rare species and ecosystems are on the property, it's almost criminal to let it be developed.

Nestled in among its many Owasippe forms and links, Troop 149 has been so kind as to redo the old Owasippe Songbook. It's got some new stuff in it, while still keeping a bunch of the old stuff we can't do anymore because it's not politically correct. (Link the last in the section, the songbook is in PDF format)

For the 45 weeks of the year that scouts aren't in camp, Owasippe is open to mountain bikers and, weather permitting, cross-country skiers. The Michigan Mountian Biking Association's trail guide has a small page about Owasippe's trails.

Winning the award for rank hypocrisy is the cover letter for CAC's 2005 Campership Request Form. The lead sentence: "The Chicago Area Council wishes to ensure that every youngster registered in the Chicago Area Council will have the opportunity to take part in the benefits of a Cub Scout, Boy Scout, or Venturer camp experience." The letter is dated February 2005.

The woefully inadequate White Lake Beacon article from this past summer on the potential rezoning of the property is still online, though I haven't been able to track down the Muskegon Chronicle one, with its helpful map of the zoning plan.

And, apparently, Camp Wolverine's 2004 "Scoutdoor Skills" area has gone all film noir. I kid you not.

:: The Squire 3:20 AM :: email this post :: ::
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Interesting Tidbit

According to an article in the Muskegon Chronicle from the beginning of the month, Blue Lake Township won't consider any more zoning requests from the Chicago Area Council of the BSA until it pays the bills for the work the township has already done to consider past rezoning attempts. At the time the article was written, CAC's lawyer wasn't too happy about this.

The Chroncle's search function is rather sucky. It may be the case now that the council has paid the bill. If not, then I would think they now have incentive to pay it. If they're dumb, they haven't paid it, in which case the deal may yet fall through.

:: The Squire 2:25 AM :: email this post :: ::
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Snicker

Napersville.

Too bad there's a grand total of five people in that city who read This Modern World.

Napersville.

:: The Squire 11:08 PM :: email this post :: ::
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It's Making More Sense Now

No wonder we invaded Iraq - the world appears to have maxed out its current oil producing capabilities. Even OPEC was running at full capacity last year, and they like holding back on production to keep prices up. Since invading another country is apparently easier than regulating industry and Detroit to lower oil and gas consumption, the obvious solution was to invade Iraq and occupy it in order to get our oil companies pumping out their crude. I mean, if all this was just a war for resource acquisition, why didn't they just come out and say that?

:: The Squire 3:17 PM :: email this post :: ::
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Finally, More Than Just Rumors

The story about the sale in today's Tribune confirms the rumor that the sale is contingent upon a major rezoning of the property. As noted below and in the story, the Township recently rezoned the property as Recreational/Institutional, which severly limits the potential to build on the property (for good reason). The property was sold for $19.4 million, but the Owasippe Outdoor Education Center's press release notes that the council's IRS filings show the camp's valuation to be only about $4 million, indicating that the buyer intends a major change of use at the site. The Owasippe Staff Association apparently is trying to scrape together a legal fund to save the camp as a near-last-ditch effort. Hopefully the Township board will not approve the zoning change - I'm sure there will be pressure on them from both sides in the next few months, especially when all the staff arrives at camp for what will hopefully not be its last year.

The word is still out on the irregularities of the board vote. It was very close, 14 to 12, and if some board members were prevented from casting votes against then the legal challenges to this will have a much better leg to stand on.

:: The Squire 2:21 PM :: email this post :: ::
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Brief Local News Break

Foleyma posts about why Urbana's current bout of development isn't the best-thought-out.

:: The Squire 2:46 AM :: email this post :: ::
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Waiting With Baited Breath

While rumors are fine and all and serve their purpose, I'm waiting for a) Council to actually disclose to the staff the details of the sale (ha!) or b) for all the insider information to make its way to the Scarlet Sassafras, the email newsletter and website started initially to spread news about the burning of the Camp Carlen Dining Hall. I'm sure more information will be posted as news filters down the council ranks to people who side with the OOEC, the Owasippe Staff Association, and scout camping in general.

Note: If anyone from camp finds their way here via search engines and the like, feel free to comment. I'm usually the last to hear things, so most news'll be new to me.

Also, I intend to post here when I find out more about what's going on with Owasippe. Rumors have it that the vote to sell the camp was of dubious legality (due to the selective taking of phone-in votes), but I'm not sure if that'll stop the council from steamrolling ahead.

I've also just noticed that whoever is updating the council site can't even spell the camp's name right. It's "Owasippe," not "Owassipe" or "Owassipee." (The latter is what often ends up decorating trees or in the KYBO.) Shouldn't the people making the hard decisions be involved enough with the program to spell it right?

:: The Squire 2:29 AM :: email this post :: ::
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What's Being Lost

Note: This is a description of Owasippe Scout Reservation, whose sale prospect is mentioned below.

Owasippe Scout Reservation was originally purchased in 1910 on lands near Crystal Lake (now called Owasippe Lake). The original purchase was partially organized by the nearby Whitehall Chamber of Commerce. The camp was built in 1911 and camping commenced in 1912. The camp has been in continual operation since that time. As the Chicago Boy Scout council acquired more property in the area, three section camps were set up around Owasippe Lake: Camp Stewart, Camp Dan Beard, and Camp West. Like many schools and universities, each camp had it's own cheer and set of camp songs. The Council continued to acquire more land in response to the growth of scouting and the properties on which Camps Wolverine North and South, Blackhawk, Wilderness, Family Camp (later Reneker), Sauger Lake (later Carlen), and Robert Crown were bought and built on. Two lone troop camps, Hiwatha Beach on Big Blue Lake and the imaginatively name Camp Bass Lake on Bass Lake, were also created for those troops who preferred to run their own summer camp program. A color-coded trail system was created to connect the various camps and, when Cleveland Creek was dammed to create Lake Wolverine, an additional trail ringing the lake was also made. In the late sixties, when Scouting was running at peak membership, the camps hosted over 16,000 scouts and leaders in the course of each summer.

Fifty years of use had taken its toll on the older camps, though. So, when numbers started to fall off, the Owasippe Lake camps were sold for development and the Reservation was consolidated around Lake Wolverine and the southern shore of Big Blue Lake. The money from the sale was, supposedly, put into an endowment for the camp. Numbers continued to decline, though, and Camps Carlen and Robert Crown were mothballed by the end of 1990. However, in the mid-nineties an upswing in numbers caused the council to re-open Camp Carlen in 1996 and to convert Crown into a High-Adventure base. Due to money problems, Carlen was closed again after the 2002 season, but is slated to reopen again this summer as a Venturing camp.

While much focus is placed on the camps themselves, the majority of Owasippe is undeveloped. Like most of western Michigan, the soil is very sandy. In the 1870s-'80s the area was heavily cut to provide wood for the rebuilding of Chicago after the Great Fire; the reagon was clear-cut again in the 1920s in response to the building boom after World War I. While a few areas survived both cutting events due to the nature of the local terrain, most of the forests on the reservation are relatively new, with areas of Oak and Maple interspersed with areas consisting largely of pines. Owasippe is home to many species, endangered and common, including the Karner Blue Butterfly. Other species include five-lined skinks, thirteen-lined ground squirrels, black bear, and a number of nesting pairs of bald eagles. Groundwater springs permeate the area, giving rise to Cleveland Creek, the Quaking Bog (which is really an alkaline fen), and Paradise Valley. The entire camp sits within the watershed of the White River, which drains into Lake Michigan via White Lake. Glacial action seems to have missed the area, leaving Owasippe as one of the only hilly areas in rural West-Central Michigan.

:: The Squire 12:50 AM :: email this post :: ::
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They're Selling My Camp!!!

Chicago Area Council has voted to sell Owasippe Scout Reservation, the oldest continuously operating Boy Scout camp in the nation. Since 1999, it's also been my summer employer, where I've risen through the ranks from Counselor-In-Training to Ecology-Conservation Director. The sale went through despite the fact that there was an understanding that the Owasippe Outdoor Education Center, a not-for-profit group organized by many current and former OSR staff, would have first crack at purchasing the property. The OOEC had recently found a business partner interested in building a single building on the site and leaving the rest of the 4,700 acre property untouched and available for Scouts and other youth groups to use. As I understand it, the OOEC was still in the process of finalizing the details on the proposal when the prospect of the other buyer was announced last week. The OOEC was given NO chance to put together a counter-proposal before today's vote, showing once again the council's committment to dollars over its outdoor camping program.

Current staff scuttlebutt says that the sale agreement in contingent upon a number of things, including a rezoning of the camp to allow for residential development. Blue Lake Township currently has Owasippe zoned as Recreational/Institutional, which means that only a camp of some sort, or a similar institution, could operate the property. The council tried to get sections of the camp (most notably on Big Blue Lake) rezoned residential this past summer, which managed to attract considerable local media attention. The township, supported by the five other camps in the township, denied the council's rezoning request. Council will have an uphill battle trying to rezone the whole property after being turned down for part.

Also of note in the Council's news release is the mention of the Arson fires that occured in 2000-2002. A series of fires burned down the Camp Reneker Lodge, Lake Cabin 1, and Camp Carlen's Dining Hall. Another fire burned a wall of Camp Blackhawk's Dining Hall, but was noticed and put out before engulfing the entire structure. The council claims these damages as part of the reason that they would have to sink $3-$5 million into the property in maintainence. However, the council had fire insurance and was awarded money to rebuild the structures. This has yet to happen, which raises the question of where the insurance money went, if not to rebuild the burned structures.

Scouting everywhere took a nosedive in numbers from the mid-seventies onwards, and that was when over half of the original reservation was sold off. In recent years, Owasippe's numbers have been climbing, slowly, as many troops gain numbers, suburban Scoutmasters who went to Owasippe as youths bringing their own units to the camp, and new out-of-council units discovering the camp for the first time. To claim that Owasippe is in decline is to mischaracterize the recent history of the camp.

:: The Squire 11:56 PM :: email this post :: ::
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Bushie Doesn't Like That Science Stuff

For some reason, it makes his faith-based and industrial friends mad. The less money that goes to scientists, the less they pipe up and say stuff that Bush's friends don't like. [/mocking]

Anyway, this is bad. If science isn't funded and scientists are discouraged from reporting findings that go against the party line, then society as a whole is hurt. Also, one must remember that all the research we don't do is done elsewhere around the globe, causing the US to further lose its leadership in the science world.

:: The Squire 6:29 AM :: email this post :: ::
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Public Service Announcement

If you live in Urbana, go vote in today's Mayoral primary election. It's at the same place you voted in November. Bring an ID or two, and/or your voter registration card.

If you live elsewhere, then disregard.

:: The Squire 4:35 AM :: email this post :: ::
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Power corrupts. Power failure corrupts absolutely.

My favorite reference, Wikipedia, has suffered a power-outage and resulting mayhem.

What happened?

At about 14:15 PST some circuit breakers were tripped in the colocation facility where our servers are housed. Although the facility has a well-stocked generator, this took out power to places inside the facility, including the switch that connects us to the network and all our servers.

What's wrong?

After some minutes, the switch and most of our machines had rebooted. Some of our servers required additional work to get up, and a few may still be sitting there dead but can be worked around.

The sticky point is the database servers, where all the important stuff is. Although we use MySQL's transactional InnoDB tables, they can still sometimes be left in an unrecoverable state. Attempting to bring up the master database and one of the slaves immediately after the downtime showed corruption in parts of the database. We're currently running full backups of the raw data on two other database slave servers prior to attempting recovery on them (recovery alters the data).

If these machines also can't be recovered, we may have to restore from backup and replay log files which could take a while.

Hopefully one of the slave databases isn't corrupted, so that they can get it back up soon.

UPDATE: Wikipedia is back up and running. Huzzah.

:: The Squire 7:58 PM :: email this post :: ::
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Pet Peeve LII

Bloggers who don't allow hyperlinking in their comments.

:: The Squire 6:21 PM :: email this post :: ::
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One-Party Rule Is Bad

Usually, a post with this title would be decrying the GOP stranglehold on the Federal government. Instead, my thoughts are on the Urbana mayoral race. While I'm not as well-versed in local political history as some of my fellow bloggers, I do know that Urbana is a staunch Democratic stronghold - so much so that its mayoral race isn't decided at the municipal elecions but during the Democratic primary. I currently live in Champaign, and since I won't vote in that election, I'm not following the race all that closely, so I won't endorse a candidate. That I'm saying anything about it at all is a result of this News-Gazette article, which discuss the implications of a state law that prohibits people who have signed a petition for a member of one party to then take a primary ballot for the other party. While, in normal circumstances, such a law prohibits crossover voters from screwing with a party's primary, it also keeps some Republicans from voting in what is in effect their city's mayoral election. Although nothing can be done in time for tomorrow's primary, the political makeup of the city of Urbana makes it likely that similar situations will arise in the future. Because of my opposition of all forms of systematic as well as intentional disenfranchisement, I think that some action needs to be taken to allow citizens to vote in elections where the primary, not the main election, is what counts.

Note: the DI also has coverage of this, with much of the same information.

:: The Squire 2:17 PM :: email this post :: ::
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Earth To Bush

You wouldn't need a "new era of trans-Atlantic unity" if you hadn't buggered-up the old one.

:: The Squire 2:13 PM :: email this post :: ::
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I'm Sure This Is Old News For Those Who Care

The local bloggers have probably already noticed this from their site traffic reports. However, for those who don't blog (or aren't local), the News-Gazette has linked to a number of local bloggers on its own blog page, myself included. Some of them you'll recognize from my own local blogs list, the rest either have been/will be dealt with in posts, added to the list, or just ignored. Still, kudos goes out to the News-Gazette for linking to us.

:: The Squire 10:43 PM :: email this post :: ::
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New Link Category

Before I go to bed, I'm going to introduce people (as is customary in the blogosphere) to some new links on the left. They're all Catholic in some way, not boring (to me, at least), and one doesn't feel like one's taking an acid bath while reading them.

I've linked to Catholic Ragemonkey before. It's a blog run by three Catholic Priests, who post their homilies, anecdotal stories about being a priest, and discussions on who is alpha male ragemonkey.

Shrine of the Holy Whapping is run by a bunch of Notre Dame University students. Their blog is apparently named after a noted transliteration in an old text. Among their sidebar links is a list of top ten orthodox catholic pick-up lines that are quite horribly bad.

Waiting in Joyful Hope is the daily blog of a Catholic Priest who lives round-abouts Montreal. His recent posts include some minor rejoicing at the news that the Greek Orthodox Church has restored the female Deaconate.

Catholic Girl calls herself a Bad Catholic because she's a Democrat. I'd disagree, but it is a good name for a blog. Like many people, her most recent focus is on sex, namely about the futility of abstinence-only sex education and the church's spreading of misinformation about condoms in Africa.

Unapologetic Catholic has had the misfortune to run into some extremist and shoddy apologetics work and now has the understandable position that apologetics are a bad thing. A recent focus on his has been refuting Intelligent Design.

With that, I'm going to bed.

UPDATE: Rather than make a new post while this one is still near the top, I'm instead posting a link here to Fr. Dowd's post on the various Rites of the church.

:: The Squire 2:48 AM :: email this post :: ::
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End Result

Since no one commented below, I have, upon further review of the columns in question, decided not to bring the charge of plaigiarism against DI columnist David Johnson. Instead, since my gf isn't in town to tell me this is a bad idea, I've decided to write my semesterly letter to the DI. Here's the text:

I usually skip over the columns on the DI opinion page, and last Friday I was reminded why. While there are many liberties with the truth that I could quibble with in David Johnson’s most recent column, his dismissal of the lefty blogosphere seems most outrageous. Not only does he ignore the equal/opposite pull rightward that conservative blogs exert over the media, and the fact that the most prominent liberal bloggers are really left-leaning moderates, but he also fails to mention the successes of left-leaning blogs. These have included the resignation of Trent Lott from the Majority Leadership of the Senate, the exposure of Jim Guckert/Jeff Gannon as a fraud and hypocrite, and their role in the fight to save Social Security. This, combined with his depiction of DNC Chairman Howard Dean as a rabid liberal, leads me to believe that David has done nothing but parrot standard talking points from the far-right blog echo-chamber. While I recognize the need for balance on the opinion page, I would hope that the editors could find someone more original for the job.

The Squire
Senior, College of LAS

Kudos for material go to my regular commenters.

:: The Squire 2:20 AM :: email this post :: ::
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In The Neighborhood

Ravings of John C. A. Bambenek hosts, quite imaginatively, the ravings of John C.A. Bambenek, a research programmer at the university and a local blogger. A conservative (who already has an anti-Hilary blogroll, a sign of either extreme preparedness or irrational disdain), his current project involves posting massive amounts of information about Terri Schiavo, the woman in Florida who is in a persistant vegetative state. Without court intervention, she'll have her feeding tube shortly removed and thus be consigned to a long, lingering death. What's interesting is his link to an article (warning: bias) that claims that Terri is able to communicate using simple words. If true, removing her feeding tube would move an already immoral act onto shakier ethical grounds.

After a perusal of the rest of John's archives, I've decided that his blog's title is quite correct and won't be adding him to my blogroll. Seeing that many of his posts were reactionary or inflammatory (multiply Illinipundit's ideological standings by about 25 and you'll have a good idea), I left only one comment on his blog and thought better of leaving more.

:: The Squire 1:36 AM :: email this post :: ::
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This'll Create Problems For The Ethicists

From CNN.com:

Abla el-Alfy, a consultant in pediatric intensive care, told Reuters at the hospital in Benha, near Cairo, that Manar Maged was in a serious but improving condition after the procedure to treat her for craniopagus parasiticus -- a problem related to that of conjoined twins linked at the skull.

...As in the case of a girl who died after similar surgery in the Dominican Republic a year ago, the second twin had developed no body. The head that was removed from Manar had been capable of smiling and blinking but not independent life, doctors said.

Video footage provided by the hospital, a national center in Egypt for children's medicine, showed Manar smiling and at ease in a cot with the dark-haired "parasitic" twin, attached at the upper left side of the girl's skull, occasionally blinking.

So, was the second, parasitic head a human being, and if so, was it ethically/morally right to kill it?

:: The Squire 1:19 AM :: email this post :: ::
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I Need To Read The Nation More Often

I just ran across an article heaping praise upon our own Senator Durbin.

When Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen, perhaps George Bush's most corporately compromised judicial nominee, appeared early in 2003 before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the most devastating line of questioning she faced did not come from one of the big-name inquisitors on a committee that includes a Kennedy, a Biden and a Leahy. Rather, Owen was taken down by a mild-mannered Midwesterner with a flair for discovering and exploiting the weaknesses of the Bush Administration and its judicial nominees. Could Owen identify any opinion she had ever written, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin inquired, "that was politically unpopular with the established power structure in Texas?" As Owen first asked Durbin to explain what he meant by "established power structure," and then stumbled through a non-answer that ended with her grumbling about political correctness, you could hear the wheels falling off the bandwagon the Administration had tried to create to win approval for their nominee. Even conservative Democratic senators recognized that they were dealing with a conservative judicial activist whose elevation to the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit would pose a genuine threat to justice in the Deep South, and joined a filibuster that ultimately led to the withdrawal of Owen's nomination.

How did Durbin know that Owen could not answer even the most basic questions about her subservience to political and economic special interests? Because, to a greater extent than any other senator, he has taken seriously the fight against Bush's most troubling judicial picks: carefully targeting the worst of them, mastering their records and developing lines of questioning meant to illustrate to other Democrats the necessity of rejecting them. "He doesn't just try to score points," says Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice, the coalition of progressive groups that has been at the forefront of challenges to the Administration's strategy for reshaping the nation's courts. "He zeroes in on the issues that matter most and then he just starts demanding answers."

This guy needs to be reelected in 2008.

...Speaking of Illinois senators, I've heard comments that "people won't like Obama so much when they find out how liberal he is." This is faulty in three respects. First, this is the state that sends Durbin, who has one of the most progressive voting records in congress, to the senate. Secondly, the opposite arguement, "(liberal) people won't like Obama once he has to cast a few votes," is occasionally heard on Daily Kos. Lastly, most people voted for Obama not because he was liberal or moderate, but because he wasn't certifiably insane.

:: The Squire 8:29 PM :: email this post :: ::
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This Can't Be Repeated Enough These Days

The Nation points out, repeatedly, how the US wasn't founded as a "Christian Nation," and how many of the founding fathers weren't even Christian at all.

:: The Squire 7:10 PM :: email this post :: ::
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The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

This weekend the university hosts the IHSA state wrestling championships. Normally, I wouldn't care about this, except for the fact that the high schoolers have a marked tendency to wander over from their hotel rooms on Neil street and, since the Six Pack are the only dorms they can find (the only ones close to Neil and obvious on their way to Huff Hall), do some vandalism here. One presumes that they're drunk since doing such things while sober seems contrary to the self-control they have to exert on the wrestling mat. Also, for at least the past two years, the little vandals have hit my own Forbes hall, once by breaking the security-glass window on the NW doors and the other by breaking a rather large window in the walkway between my dorm and its cafeteria, then pulling the fire alarm in that cafeteria. The area offices lock the doors throughout the entire weekend, as if it were a football weekend, but, since the vandalisms usually happen at night when the door are locked anyway, I don't see how this is supposed to help. I'm surprised that the university police don't just have someone patrolling the Six Pack the entire night.

:: The Squire 6:28 PM :: email this post :: ::
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Media Bias, Or Lack Thereof

Via Atrios, Media Matters has a post up that throws a lot of evidence against CBS having a liberal bias. Go take a look.

:: The Squire 4:10 PM :: email this post :: ::
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Attracting Attention

ILPundit and Illinipundit's back and forth over media bias has been noticed by Archpundit (again, enough with the "-pundits"), who has his own thoughts on the matter. Since you should read the post in its entirety, I'm not going to provide an exerpt. While setting out his views, Archpundit also hits on the "people are stupid" point, which makes me feel strangely vindicated.

:: The Squire 4:02 PM :: email this post :: ::
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Myopia

I usually don't read the regular columnists at the DI, and I've recently been reminded why. David Johnson (who, from a brief look at his published columns list, specializes in badly-rationalized regurgitations of neocon positions) has decided to tell the campus about blogs. Here's his rather biased thesis statement:

On one hand, conservative bloggers continuously discredit traditional adversaries of the Republican Party in TV media, immediately publishing rebuttals when TV media errs in judgment. On the other hand, left-leaning bloggers pull the Democratic Party to the left, therefore farther from mainstream America. With traditionally liberal TV sources illegitimized, and an ever more out-of-touch rival party, the Republicans face an increasingly favorable future.

As you can imagine, a screed that demonises the "Mainstream Media" and the left ensues, with the 101st Fighting Keyboarders winning the day. If I weren't writing a paper right now, I'd spend my time writing a rebuttal and synopsis of that which the lefty blogosphere has wrought over the past few years (Trent Lott, Delay rule coverage, There is No Crisis, and JimJeff Guckert/Gannon to name a few). I'd probably want to throw in a bit about how the right blogosphere has screwed up recently, and how they seem to like calling all liberals traitors.

:: The Squire 1:14 AM :: email this post :: ::
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Getting More Suspicious

I managed to snag one of the pettition sheets on the bus this evening. Here's the text:

Petition For Student Referendum
by signing below you are indicating your desire for the following question to be placed on the Spring 05 ballot as a student referendum question

I support the continuation of the CAMPUS TRANSPORTATION FEE. This plan will provide for unlimited use of campus bus routes and all existing community routes, and SAFERIDES. This is a non-refundable student fee assessed per semester: $12 for Summer Session I and $21 for Summer Session II beginning in the summer of 2006 and a $38 fee for FALL and SPRING semester beginning in the Fall Semester of 2005.

After that are four columns for Signature, Printed Name, Student ID#, and email address.

There is still no mention of the referendum on the MTD website. Looking up online at OAR's site, I see that the per-semester transportation fee is currently at $33, the Summer I is $10 and Summer II is $18. All of the fees on the referendum aren't continuations, but increases. If this was previously brought before the student senate, then this is cool, but since the referendum language is deceptively worded my worry is that MTD is trying to pull a fast one over the Student Senate and the campus at large. I, unfortunately, signed the referendum before I got suspicious about it. If this is a case of MTD being underhanded, I'll submit a statement to the senate that I was not properly informed about the referendum, and that my signature on it was threfore coerced. After that, the muckraking shall begin.

UPDATE: The Student Senate is aware of this and looking into it. Meanwhile, I intend on having fun telling people not to sign the referendum petition.

:: The Squire 8:14 PM :: email this post :: ::
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Will It Have To Fall Down First?

Funds for renovating the dilapidated Lincoln Hall, home of the LAS office and the lecture hall for the entire MCB core curriculum, fell through at the state capital.

After receiving $2 million in 2004 to begin planning the renovation, the University expected $3 million more in 2005, said Randy Kangas, the Assistant Vice President of Planning and Budget. But the Illinois General Assembly was unable to free up any capital for the project, Kangas said, and the University will receive nothing this year.

"During the summer they did not have any capital, and we were hoping that some would be available after the veto sessions, but there wasn't money for anything," Kangas said.

State Senator Rick Winkel, a University alumnus, said Gov. Rod Blagojevich had personally promised him the funds will be made available for the renovations.

"I'm still optimistic the governor will make good on his promise," said state Sen. Winkel. "These things take time ... I will be relentless."

Sen. Winkel said the delays were caused in part by a conflict between the governor and Speaker of the House Michael Madigan over where capital funding would come from.

The full cost of renovating Lincoln Hall would be near $52 million, Kangas said. He said the work would ideally start by the summer of 2007.

...Fixing the building has been one of the top campus priorities for several years, Kangas said. It sees the third most classroom hours of any building on campus, and still has all the original systems from when it was built in the early 1900s.

In the basement, broken desks and chairs are piled outside the grad students' office. Exposed pipes hang from the ceiling, less than six feet above the ground, and deeper in the tunnels, a sign even warns of asbestos.

For those who don't go to school here, let me make this clear - there is no other way than state funding to get Lincoln Hall renovated. This is a hall at the state's flagship university named after the state's greatest citizen - there is no chance in Hell that the hall could be renamed in order get the funding necessary. (Besides, there's already Smith Memorial Hall on the quad.) I've had classes in Lincoln for six straight semesters now, and many other LAS students have the same experience, as the building's ground floor is filled with general-purpose classrooms for many diferent departments. Since the building is so old, used by so many people, and named after our 16th president, one would hope that the state could be able to follow through on promises to provide the funds to renovate the hall.

:: The Squire 2:22 AM :: email this post :: ::
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But I Thought This Was A Public University

Tuition dollars now contribute more money than the state does to the university.

Al-Shawaf said as the state cut back its financial support, students voted to raise tuition in a survey sent out through a mass-mail.

According to Adam Blahnik, senior in LAS and member of the Illinois Student Senate Budget Committee, 8,800 students responded to the survey. Of those, 52 percent said they would support a 9 percent increase in tuition and 48 percent of the students said they would not. However, only 33 percent of the students who responded said they would also support an 11 percent increase in tuition, while 67 percent voted against it.

Continued decrease of state funding could have a negative impact, said Bill Adams, associate provost.

"It could cause us to become more reliant on tuition and I'm not sure that's real healthy," Adams said. "Historically, we have been partners with the state and that has helped build a stronger University. We are a better institution when the state partners with us. There are limits to what we can do without enough funding."

Al-Shawaf said he feels relying on tuition as the main source of funding makes the University less accessible to some students.

"It definitely would push students out from attending," he said. "We need to balance accessibility and quality. If state funding keeps decreasing, accessibility or quality will be sacrificed."

...This week, members of the Student Senate are also working to get more funding in the form of a letter campaign. Tables are set up in buildings around campus for students to sign letters that will be delivered to state senators, representatives and the governor, Rod Blagojevich.

"It's a great idea to stop by, sign a letter and let your voice be heard," Al-Shawaf said. "Our goal is to hit 3,000."

Find one of the tables and stop by. I got a letter back from my parents' state senator last year, and in part due to ISS's drive the university didn't see any funding cuts for this year. Hopefully ISS can help convince the state that it needs to at least keep up with inflation or else educational quality at the university will suffer.

:: The Squire 12:19 AM :: email this post :: ::
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Sweet Irony

Although it's been an open secret for a long while, Alan Keyes' daughter, Maya, has come out of the closet. Good for her. Too bad her father insists on calling homosexuals "Selfish Hedonists," especially since he was criticizing Dick Cheney at the time, who himself has a gay daughter. One has to (grudgingly) give Dick credit, though, since he at least hasn't disowned his own offspring. Keyes kicking his daughter out of the house because she came out also wasn't the most loving, Christian thing to do, either.

:: The Squire 11:56 PM :: email this post :: ::
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I Wish I Knew More About This

Apparently, due to a bylaw change in the Illinois Student Senate, the university's bus service, provided by the MTD, needs to be put to a referendum vote. I can't find any details about this on the MTD website, nor on the sparsely-updated ISS page. Perhaps someone can get me more info on this.

UPDATE: I've contacted one of the student senators that I know and he said that as far as he knows it's bull. This might be something worth looking into further...

:: The Squire 3:33 PM :: email this post :: ::
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Under The Linden Tree

Someone's actually taken the time to put subtitles in Romanian and English on the original webcam video of the dude singing along to Dragostea Din Tea. If you're so inclined, you can sing along now - though replicating the arm movements might not be advisable.

Oh, you can blame Windy City Lefty for this second round of Numanuma.

:: The Squire 2:29 AM :: email this post :: ::
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This Could Be... Interesting

Poking around the BlogShares index I found Catholic Ragemonkey, a blog run by three priests. One of their recent blog post was news to me - namely, that the English-language mass is in the process of being overhauled. As language constantly changes, this is periodically necessary, however, as noted by this (admittedly dated) National Catholic Reporter article, the changes include the Creed and the Gloria which, among other parts of the mass, currently have the same wording in all the mainline denominations. The stock response seems to be that, since the Catholic translations will be more faithful to the original Latin and Greek, where the Catholics go, everyone else will follow. Seeing as my girlfriend, a Methodist, still occasionally has problems with having the doxology separate from the Lord's Prayer, I'm not so sure about that. Anyhow, a side-by-side comparison between the current Order of Mass and the current draft can be found here.

:: The Squire 2:06 AM :: email this post :: ::
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I'll Bet These People Put Stickers On Biology Texts Too

Apparently there are schools in Virginia that haven't heard of the separation clause, and are teaching the Bible to elementary school kids during normal school hours. Interesting is how teaching the Bible in school as a religious exercize makes the students morally myopic.

"Christians don't have a monopoly on morality," says Renee Staton, a Staunton native whose husband is Jewish.

Beverly Ridell, who grew up going to the Staunton schools, teaches first- and second-grade Sunday school at church and opposes religious classes during school time.

"I asked them whether Jesus was a Christian and they said 'yes.' When I said, 'Jesus was a Jew,' one girl said, 'But Jesus was a good person,"' Ridell said.

"If Christians are good people, what are Jews? These are 6- and 7-year-old kids. This is an age where what's right and what's wrong are clear and unambiguous."

Yeah, that's great, teach them that anyone not Christian is evil. That'll increase tolerance, I'm sure [/sarcasm]. Pharyngula, who blogged about this before me because I was taking a nap, has this suggestion on resolving the solution.

I say we should throw this kind of thing back in the parents’ laps. If they honestly believe that an education in religion is an essential part of their kids’ early experience, than let them fund a non-denominational, objective course in world religions for their kids. Introduce the tykes to Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and Vishnu and Raven and Anansi and a few secular humanists and atheists. Actually talk about ethics rather than the usual Jesus-loves-you-if-you-memorize-these-bible-verses babble. I’d have encouraged my kids to attend that kind of class, if it had been available.

I suspect they’d shut up and shut the whole program down in a flash. I know how some of these people operate. They will piously declaim that “From a complete-education aspect, it’s important to have a basic Biblical knowledge of what some of the stories are from literature you read when you’re older”, putting it in terms of what’s best for the educational needs of the children, but I suspect that every educational levy in those districts meets closed wallets, and that the same people who insist on Bible classes are the ones most likely to begrudge the public schools every penny.

I, too, am not impressed with these efforts - I didn't have bible classes in my public school and I turned out just fine. Can't these districts find something more appropriate to teach, like science and evolution?

Note: Matt has a local angle on this story.

:: The Squire 10:23 PM :: email this post :: ::
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Help Yourselves Out

For the second (to my knowledge) year in a row, the Illinois Student Senate is organizing a letter campaign in support of state funding for the university. These will go out to the state representatives and senators in students home districts (usually not Jakkobsen and Winkel, they already have to deal with student voters). Supposedly they've got tables set up at Lincoln Hall, the Union, and DCL, though I only stopped by the Lincoln Hall location. I suggest that anyone who reads this and is involved in the university go and sign one of these letters. It is a form letter, but there is a section at the end where you are invited to add your own comments. Go sign one this week - it's in your own best interests.

:: The Squire 3:34 PM :: email this post :: ::
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Another Crappy Rationale Bites The Dust

Bush isn't doing so good with his rationales for invading Iraq.

Destroy the WMDs - that weren't there.

Take out Saddam's capabilities to manufacture WMDs - using samples of C. botulinum that I, myself, could isolate from an average clod of dirt and the chemical and biological weapons that we gave Saddam in the 80's that we didn't blow up the first time around in 1991-92.

Liberate the Iraqi people - while leaving literal tons of conventional weapons and explosives unguarded and thus allowing the insurgents and terrorists in the country to arm themselves nearly effortlessly.

Institute a Democracy elected government in Iraq - that now consists largely of people who sympathize with the Ayatollahs in Iran, thanks to the Sunni boycott and fears of violence at the polls.

Is there any other way the administration can screw this up, short of starting a civil war in the country before our forces leave?

:: The Squire 3:18 PM :: email this post :: ::
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Annoying A Local Blogger

Via Dave Neiwert, who lives out there, electoral irregularities in Washington cut both ways, as that state has a broken system for removing felons from the voter rolls that often disenfranchise innocent people. As those disenfranchised are, you guessed it, often not inclined to vote Republican, this is a means to deflate the Democratic vote totals.

Dave also takes the time to cite some other bloggers who point out how the GOP hoopla surrounding the King county vote is surreptitious at best.

Notice Spokane County. Rossi won this county easily. Total voters are fewer than one fourth of King County’s. But they have twice as many errors as King per voter. Moreover, their discrepancy represents more voters than ballots, a condition which Sharkansky claimed lacked plausibility as a type of honest error. However Spokane is apparently a Republican leaning county—is it therefore not worth mentioning? Are their errors not so egregious?

...We believe that the difficulties surrounding King’s effort reflect poor planning and inadequate training. But a natural tendency for error is also reflected when handling large numbers of ballots. Problems are further exacerbated by a record number of registrations, a record number of absentees, a compressed general election cycle, a first-ever manual recount in King, and registration management technology that was rushed into service and brand new to users.

Dave also notes the irregularities in both counting and the lack of recounting the touch-screen computer votes in two counties. Because Dave's big thing is the cooperation of the extremist right with mainstream republicans (seeing as he sharpened his journalistic teeth covering white-supremecist hate groups in the Pacific Northwest), the then goes on to state what he thinks is really going on in Washington.

What emerges from the bigger picture of the Washington vote is, in fact, almost a replica in miniature of the Republican strategy for the national vote. It has four essential components:

-- Undermine the legitimacy of any Democrat elected to office, regardless of the margin.

-- Undermine public confidence in long-established election procedures, particularly hand recounts, as well as confidence in the integrity of the officials conducting the elections.

-- Undermine the voting rights of minorities and lower-income voters, particularly by purging supposed felons from the voting rolls, thereby discouraging participation in the election process and underscoring their historic disenfranchisement.

-- Undermine the integrity of the voting process itself by introducing readily manipulable electronic voting technology that leaves no auditable paper trail.

If Howard Dean and the Democrats want to have any hope of turning around their fortunes, they're going to have to not just acknowledge these problems, but attack them aggressively.

When Republicans mount nasty misinformation and smear campaigns, they need to respond quickly and vigorously. Countenancing these attacks without a response only lends them legitimacy.

When the misinformation attacks established procedures and hard-working public officials who perform their work as well as can be reasonably expected, Democrats need to defend them with facts and figures, as well as a hefty dose of moral outrage.

They need to question the way felon voter-roll purges have been conducted, particularly pointing to the numbers of errors with which these purges have been riddled (since Republicans, in Washington at least, seem to have developed a recent attachment to absolute accuracy in election processes). They should also point out the enormous expense and effort that an effective and accurate felon purge would require, and contrast that with the actual effect a purge would have over the long term. Most of all, they need to point out that Republican agitation over this issue points to a real hostility to widespread public participation in the democratic process.

And they need to demand immediate implementation of a requirement for auditable paper trails in any voting technology, whether paper or otherwise. This cannot wait. Republicans are hoping to push these changes past the 2008 election, and they should not be allowed to do so.

Having demoted the Washington story from "Democrats steal election" to "Average screwed-up American election" (ala Florida and Ohio), I don't see any need to pay attention to further calls for an illegal revote in the state. Major election reform has to occur in this country, and it'll start with mandating a proper paper trail for all electronic voting machines, better training for election workers, and the reinstatement of voting rights of felons who have already paid their debt to society.

:: The Squire 2:28 PM :: email this post :: ::
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I Feel So Proud Of Myself

I included Fight Club as a citation in a paper for BTW 261.

Narrator: A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now: should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
Business woman on plane: Are there a lot of these kinds of accidents?
Narrator: You wouldn't believe.
Business woman on plane: Which car company do you work for?
Narrator: A major one.

:: The Squire 1:53 AM :: email this post :: ::
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Poking Fun At Other Departments

This came up recently: "Implicitly the laboratory psychologist still assumes that his college sophomores provide an adequate basis for a general psychology of man." - D. T. Campbell

By the way, I'd like to wish you all a happy feast of St. Valentine.

:: The Squire 1:21 AM :: email this post :: ::
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Nu Ma, Nu Ma, Iei!

Go watch this and rot your mind. If you're wondering, it's a snippet of a song named "Dragostea Din Tea" by O-Zone. The real music video for the song is here (and not appreciably better). The lyrics, and an English translation of the original Romanian, are here.

UPDATE: Since various people either link to this or find this page via Google, I'd like to say a few things. First: Hi. Sad that some peppy, near-nonsense dance song was required to bring you to my site, but I'll take the traffic anyway. Secondly, I've got another post with some more numanuma goodness, including a version of the video with both English and Romanian subtitles. Lastly, I actually spelled the name of the song wrong on the hyperlink. It's really "Dragostea Din Tei" but since it's getting me google hits from people who misspelled it, I'm not about to change it. Feel free to poke around the site and, as always, have fun.

:: The Squire 7:42 PM :: email this post :: ::
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Just Returned From My First Practice MCAT

Pardon me while I pick up my brain.

:: The Squire 7:00 PM :: email this post :: ::
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If Anyone Asks...

How Republicans are bad for average consumers, this (via Atrios) is a good answer:

Republican leaders in Congress began clearing the way yesterday for swift passage of legislation backed by the credit card industry and opposed by consumer groups that would make it harder for consumers to wipe out debt through bankruptcy...

Lobbyists for the credit card industry say the legislation is needed to close loopholes that make it too easy for people to wipe out their debts when they could repay some of them.

Consumer advocates say it would allow some rich debtors to continue to hide wealth through homeownership while bankruptcy relief would be denied to many people with low or moderate incomes who have fallen on hard times because of illness, job loss or divorce. They say credit card companies must share the blame for increased bankruptcies because they aggressively market products and inadequately disclose how interest rates and penalty fees mount up. For example, eliminating a $1,000 credit card balance paid off at a rate of 2 percent a month and carrying an interest rate of 17 percent would take 88 months, or more than seven years.

I'm sorry, but if you're dumb enough to lend money to anyone who has a pulse, you need to be willing to absorb the risk that they're not going to be able to pay up. I'm not advocating going heavily in debt, either. I, myself, don't own a single credit card and run everything through my checking account.

Note: I added a larger exerpt, cos I went back and re-read this post and saw that I hadn't really established what I was talking about.

:: The Squire 10:51 PM :: email this post :: ::
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Splitting The Party? Not Really.

Via Josh Marshall, Ed Kilgore of the DLC wishes Dean well as chairman of the DLC. Considering that the local blog scene, other than myself, seems abivalent or wary of Dean, I think some of what Ed has to say is important.

The Doctor's campaign for the party chairmanship focused on the need to broaden the party's financial base, tap the activist energy so evident in 2004, and rebuild threadbare state party infrastructures nationwide. And he has consistently said he won't engage in policy or ideological fights that will get in the way of that task, usurp the policy-making role of elected officials, or disturb party unity.

So I sincerely wish him well. And I join those Democrats who are steeling themselves to fight against a definite and long-planned GOP effort to drag up and exaggerate every controversial thing Dean said last year to paint Democrats as a party lurching towards the left. I'm sure the Doctor knows he will be playing by a different set of rules than previous party chairs--you might call them Hillary Rules, insofar as every word out of his mouth will be distorted and exploited by the GOP to reinforce right-wing stereotypes. [ed. emphasis mine] Like Sen. Clinton, he will have to measure his words far more than is rightly fair, and like Sen. Clinton, he might want to throw a few counter-stereotypical comments into his public utterances to surprise people and set the record straight.

I think Dean has the right idea - make the national party stronger by making the local party stronger. The only thing I worry about is what the party can do next if his plan doesn't work.

:: The Squire 7:46 PM :: email this post :: ::
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Do Not Try This At Home

Encouraged by the success of his breast-reducing spell, Foamy attempts to rid Germaine of her Inner Demons through a tad more violent method.

How's that for lowering the level of discourse on the blog?

:: The Squire 1:48 AM :: email this post :: ::
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Abstinence

No, this isn't another post about Birth Control, it's about Lent. Beyond the traditional fast and abstention from meat, Catholics are encouraged to give up relatively harmless habits and other small comforts. As with the past few years, I've given up the Dirty Seven in an attempt to slow the vulgarization of my vocabulary. This year, the gf has also convinced me to give up soda - we'll see how that goes, esp. since bottled juice costs more than bottled soda at Ala Carte.

As a public service, this year's Ash Wednesday services at St. John's will be at 8 am, 12:05pm, 5pm, 8:30pm, and 10pm. For those who prefer a Spanish-language service, that'll be at 7pm.

:: The Squire 1:10 AM :: email this post :: ::
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It's Official!

Via Josh Marshall and US News, CNN is officially whipped.

:: The Squire 10:06 PM :: email this post :: ::
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Defending Against Hyper-Reactivity

Our local PBS station, WILL, will be running the controvercial episode of the kid's show Postcards from Buster that, gasp, has a family with two moms and no dad. Oh, the horror! [/sarcasm] Seeing as we live in an enlightened society, I don't understand why a presentation of people with a non-standard family arrangement should be considered bad, especially when there's no value judgement made about it in the program. There are divorced and interracial families on TV all the time, as well as those with physical disabilities, yet I don't hear any squabling about how such presentations are subverting America's youth away from the status quo. By presenting people who are different in a children's show, and not treating them any differently, young children are taught to accept others that aren't exactly like them. How can that be wrong?

On a related note, when this whole thing came out there was a poll on CNN's front page asking if SpongeBob was promoting tolerance or a permutation of "advancing an immoral lifestyle." The popular answer, with over 95%, described SpongeBob simply as "Absorbant, Yellow, and Porous." This squabbling is a non-issue for most Americans, which suggests to me that people who oppose tolerating homosexuals need to move on and find some real concerns.

:: The Squire 3:20 PM :: email this post :: ::
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Empowering The Voters

The State of Illinois has cut the blackout period for voter registration in half, from 28 to 14 days before the election. This is great - more people can be registered, since many citizens don't think about elections until very late. There's a catch, though - it has to be in person at the County Clerk's office and those who register in the "grace period" have to vote at a special polling place or by mail. While I support extending the deadline, why not actually do it in a way that'll enfranchise more people and allow normal registrations in the two-week grace period.

I'll also be very upset if one of these "special grace period voting sites" isn't on campus - Shelden's people were spreading disinformation about provisional voting last Novemeber at on-campus polling places, I wouldn't put it past him to do other things to disenfranchise students.

However, Shelden does make a good point in the News-Gazette article, that it's much better to register before the original deadline. Voting normally is to be preferred.

Note: Sheldon, Shelden, who cares?

:: The Squire 2:04 PM :: email this post :: ::
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Not Enjoying This

I'm getting over my cold, except when I go to bed - which is when all the hacking and nose-running resumes. Though I know there's a rational reason for it, I feel like the disease is intentionally keeping me from sleeping so my immune system'll be run down and I'll get sicker again.

:: The Squire 4:19 AM :: email this post :: ::
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I'm Not Getting Too Heavily Involved In This One

But there's an effort afoot to turn the ragtag group of blogs that opposed Gonzalez's appointment as Attorney General into a more organized coalition called the Indie 500. The list of blogs that opposed the nomination is here, and the central blog for the group, Be Bothered, is here.

:: The Squire 5:51 PM :: email this post :: ::
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This Is Actually My Second Go At This

The first time I got Sudan.

You're Ireland!

Mystical and rain-soaked, you remain mysterious to many people, and this makes you intriguing.  You also like a good night at the pub, though many are just as worried that you will blow up the pub as drink your beverage of choice.  You're good with words, remarkably lucky, and know and enjoy at least fifteen ways of eating a potato.  You really don't like snakes.
Take the Country Quiz at the Blue Pyramid

:: The Squire 5:09 PM :: email this post :: ::
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Good Quote

"It is wrong when our neighbors work full time and still live in poverty." - John Edwards

Stuff like this is why I voted for him in the primaries.

:: The Squire 3:17 AM :: email this post :: ::
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The Strange Nation We Live In

Killing a pregnant woman counts as a double homicide due to the death of both mother and fetus, and parents can file wrongful death suits on behalf of discarded frozen embryos, yet abortion is legal (and, according to some people, justified) simply because the mother may not want the child. I'm reminded of primitive societies that practiced infanticide as a means of birth/population control.

:: The Squire 1:11 AM :: email this post :: ::
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Wearing A Seamless Garment

My small handful of regular readers know that I am a Molecular and Cellular Biology major, am pre-med, and am also a practicing Catholic. Even though I was raised Catholic and went to a Benedictine high school, I could've chosen to stop believing, and I knew many people who did. One of the major things that kept me in the church was its wide expanse of moral teaching, specifically the Consistent Life Ethic. It states that "All life is sacred, from conception to natural death." This one statement links church policies on war, suicide, the death penalty, euthanasia, abortion, and poverty. It also does the neat trick of tearing a "Seamless Garment" (another name for the ethic) Catholic between the policies of the two major political parties. I, obviously, side more with the Democrats. This is because I view war, the death penalty, and poverty, all things Democrats oppose, as societal sins as a direct result of our government being of, by, and for the people. Conversely, I view euthanasia, suicide, and abortion as individual sins, the effects of these evils are felt indirectly by society at large. For example, when an inmate is put to death it is the State of ______ who has killed him (or her) as a whole, not just the executioner. Similarly, when an abortion occurs, it is the mother and the physician who have committed the sin, not society at large. It is also my opinion that any ban on abortion will be ineffective until the overall "culture of death" evident in modern society is death with.

Within the issue of abortion lies the question of contraception. I've been thinking about it, having stumbled across the Catholic Carnival by way of a circuitous route, starting at Pharyngula. Before delving back into this topic, my opinion was that since Birth Control, i.e. hormonal contraception, creates a hormonal state like that which occurs when a woman is medically pregnant (more on that distinction in a bit) and thereby preventing ovulation. After years of listening to Loveline as a young teen, I also was under the impression that because of the hormonal levels present in a woman taking birth control (or emergency contraception) were like those of the second half of the menstrual cycle, that were a woman to conceive that she would likely get pregnant. Needless to say that when I came across pro-lifers calling the pill an abortifacient (something which causes abortion, learn your Latin people) I was both confused and wary. Upon running a google search a few things became apparent. First was that either Dr. Drew was misinformed or that subsequent research has shown that the endometrial lining changes in women on birth control, interfering with implantation. (By the way, if anyone can head me towards some studies on this, I'd appreciate it. Thanks.) Secondly, I found that both sides of the debate are apparently suffering from a vocabulary disorder, wherein they are using the word "pregnancy" to mean two different, yet overlapping, things. Medically (and therefore amorally), pregnancy for the woman begins when the embryo implants in the uterus and starts sending out all sorts of hormonal goodness to get the mother's body to maintain it. Under the consistent life ethic, though, pregnancy begins at conception. This is because that's the point at which the new human life is created, and since the child is defenseless and unable to fend for itself, the mother is morally responsible for the life of the child in her womb (or, technically, her fallopian tubes...).

So, I sit in a weird place. My current (trusted) information is that the pill doesn't cause a change in the endometrial lining, but that's now been called into question. I'm going to have to spend some time culling the scientific journals I have access to as a student to see if I can get a resolution to this. I really hate changing my positions on controversial topics, since I open myself to serious cries of hypocrisy and the like. Since I've done it before on stem cells to bring my thoughts in line with the church, I guess I'll have to do it again if I find definitive information. Anyone willing to point me towards specific studies/research will get great kudos.

:: The Squire 9:35 PM :: email this post :: ::
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Support Homeland Security?

Ha! Our president will do no such thing.

According to figures obtained by the AP, Bush would slice a $600 million grant program for local police agencies to $60 million next year. Grants to local firefighters, for which Congress provided $715 million this year, would fall to $500 million.

He would eliminate the $300 million the government gives to states for incarcerating illegal aliens who commit crimes. It's a proposal he has made in the past and one that Congress has ignored. Also gone would be assistance for police departments to improve technology and their ability to communicate with other agencies.

Fire Depts. and Police Depts. stand at the front lines within our country, yet Bush does nothing but weaken them. Why is it that conservatives are aghast when we assert that the "War on Terror" is more show than seriousness?

:: The Squire 6:31 PM :: email this post :: ::
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Ooooh.

I'm now a "Slithering Reptile."

:: The Squire 8:06 PM :: email this post :: ::
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Classic BOFH

Dealing with the lowest scum on the planet - users.

:: The Squire 3:41 PM :: email this post :: ::
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Disconnect

Today the Daily Illini ran a story about "Bitter cold weather." What's the temperature outside? 45°F, with a forecast high of 50°F. I don't normally complain about the DI's news coverage, but this time around all I can say is "Way to check the forecast on this one."

:: The Squire 3:34 PM :: email this post :: ::
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Don't Count Your Chickens

DHinMI over at Kos had been tallying up the turnout totals from Iraq as he's gotten ahold of them. They're not good. In al-Anbar there was a 7% turnout and at Mosul there was about 5%. Full results aren't in, but since the administration's not crowing about them, one can assume that the rest follow the pattern.

:: The Squire 3:27 PM :: email this post :: ::
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Are They Going To Pick A Fight With Everyone?

The Bush administration's rattling sabres in Iran's general direction. This is a country that fought it's last war against Iraq by sending waves of mostly unarmed people against the invading troops. Messing with Iran militarily can only be bad from my viewpoint. I'm more content with letting the population of the country that doesn't remember the Shah to grow until they get fed up with their Theocracy and overthrow it for something different.

:: The Squire 1:34 AM :: email this post :: ::
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