An article I found in today's local news site was about a student who spoke out for his faith. I definitely urge you to read this badly-written, biased story.

What's wrong with it? Well, it seems to propose what Ben Kessler said was wrong. It only mentions people who were disgruntled with his statement. Was Ben Kessler the only one who has these opinions? Hardly.

If it were my graduation, I'd risk the boos and heckling to cheer Ben on. He was voted Tommie of the Year, so why not let him say his peice? Nobody would have given him trouble if he did the usual "y'all did good" speech. If you're not challenged at a graduation, then what good did the graduation speech do? The graduates certainly won't remember it in a couple years. It won't change their life.

Besides, this could be the start of the University of St. Thomas becoming a Roman Catholic university. For years, St. Thomas has been trying to be the most secular university possible without losing their Roman Catholic roots. If the administration was smart, they'd stop being the mediocre institution they have been for years and start being a real Catholic university. Support the students who represent the Roman Catholic church teaching well.

And if the Star Tribune wants to do a good job with their writing, why not talk to the head of the Vianney Seminary? Or, better yet, ask the Archbishop who was there was they thought? What did graduates who have Catholic Studies degrees think?

At least the President of the university, who has rarely had a thought of his own and usually just spends his 20 minutes reading from a book of quotes, said it was important "to treat one another with respect as we speak and as we listen, regardless of how controversial an issue may be."

Sheesh. I knew I should have gone to the U of M.

Last week found Google's release of Google Trends. It shows the popularity of a search term over time, plus allows you to plot more than one next to each other. If you're trying to set up a Google AdWords campaign, it might come in handy.

But what about us casual searchers? Don't worry, there's lots of fun to be found. My friend Bjorn found some really interesting comparisons. Of course, none of these are to be taken at face value. There's no game called "Virtue City" or a TV show called "God and the City". ;-)

Alright, so the title is possibly the antithesis of this post. The beginning of May found the return of the Derek Webb podcast. If you listened to the old podcast episodes, though, you knew it was nothing to get excited about. A couple of them were just audio versions of interviews off the How To Kill and Be Killed DVD. But it seems that Derek finally sees what podcasting is all about.

The new podcasts are not part of the label's promotional machine. They're Derek just talking into his audio recorder. And he's not talking about how great his latest CD is, either. He's taking real questions from real listeners. If the subsequent episdoes are half as good as this first one of May, then it's going to be amazing. In "Derek Webb episode 4", Derek talks about what "Christian music" is (and isn't) and why it can be acceptable to listen to non-Christian music. He goes over why it's not about the money or the fame but about bringing the truth. It's great. I can't wait to listen to the next one. Subscribe to it via iTunes to check it out.

So tonight I went to a meeting of Transit for Livable Communities at the nice Goowill building just off University and Fairview. The meeting was mostly about the Central Corridor project, and since it's hard to get information on the web, I decided the best way to find out about developments is by going to the meeting.

As usual, there were a decent share of those passionate, "I hate government" and "Our bus system sucks" people. I always sympathize with those people (because they're right), but they seem to be incapable of figuring out that following the political process is the only way to get this to change. And yelling at the choir rarely does any of that.

It was definitely better than the last community-related Metro Transit meeting. Of course, that's because the meeting last year was to complain about proposed budget cuts. Unlike last year's meeting, though, it was nice to see the concerned citizens for public transportation working on it instead of just the disabled and poor who cannot afford a car.

So what happened at the meeting? Well, they went over the fact that they have an Environmental Impact Study results or something and are looking for the public's reaction to that. Oh wait, the study was about the Central Corridor project, which is a stretch between downtown Minneapolis and downtown St. Paul. The results seem to be that a Light Rail system down the streets of University Ave. (and hopefully a tunnel under the U of M) is the best option to improve transportation in the area.

After a couple of short presentations, we broke into small groups of 10 or so and talked through the issues we found. Of course, a main issue was the money. Where the money is not the problem, it was more the idea of what else we could do with that money. I brought up the idea that I find it hard to believe that they'd find room for light rail and keep the 4 lanes of traffic on the road, but it seemed pretty well known among the rest of the group that it's one of the widest roads in the area. That's probably true, but still, the current Light Rail line on Hiawatha is in much more spacious areas, for the most part.

Apprently the big news of the area is that public transportation is attached to a current tax bill in the state legislature. The Star Tribune has coverage of it, but apparently the word from the meeting is that this half-cent regional sales tax would bring in about $110 million per year for the next couple years, and after the stadiums get paid off, all $220 million would go to public transit. This is the money that mass transit in Minnesota needs, but everyone at TLC was realistically not expecting the legislation to go through. (Plus, our insane governor will most certainly veto it.)

All in all, it was a great meeting to attend. Although I'm still a bit scared of all these political people who just sit around thinking about how to improve the city. They're just too social and weird.