Easter Sunday 2002
Our Sunday service in Spiritwood was tradition yet very multisensory and quite unpredictable. It was an amazing effort. I had high expectations for what they had planned but they sure beat what I was anticipating. The use of video and real-time interaction was amazing.

Some fairly random Saturday thoughts...

Slashdot | Announcing Slashdot Subscriptions Didn't it occur to Slashdot that it's subscription service hurts the users who use it the most. The ones who made Slashdot what it is? Slashdot is a site that has been created by its biggest users. To create a subscription system that makes your creators pay doesn't make a lot of sense.

Speaking of things that make no sense at all. Tombstone advertising in the U.K. They pay for your tombstone so they can advertise on it. Leave it up to the marketers to take bad taste to an all time new low.

Please Explain this Jacob Shwirtz asks the questions that need to be answered in this great post. What were they thinking when they made this... Jacob has really cool blog. You will want to blogroll on it.

ThomasPacheco.org I know I am link bombing Google but this site is worth it. The site sells art to help Thomas Pacheco to cover costs that his health insurance does not while he is getting cancer treatment. If you have a blog or a page, dust off your link canons and add a link to the site. Thanks to Gary Turner for letting me know.

Burning Question
Most of you know that I am a big Calgary Flames fan. The question burning around the league is will the Calgary Flames keep probable league MVP Jerome Iginla? This isn't about just Calgary but influences the Mike Comrie's, Markus Nasland's and other young stars playing in Canada. Will Canadian teams become the Montreal Expos on the National Hockey League. 2004 (collective bargaining agreement expires) can't come soon enough.

Good Friday
Jeb wrote this between services on Friday at Lakeview Church Enough said.

Congratulations to Andrew Jones for the birth of his baby girl today! (he even managed to blog about it)

A couple of new weblogs that you will want to check out. They have been blogrolled on my blog for a while but if you haven't discovered these yet, you will want to. John Wallis, publisher of seven magazine, John O'Keefe creator of ginkworld, and Andrew Careaga, author the books e-Ministry and e-vangelism.

All of them have built excellent corners of the web in their articles, books, and website, they are now sharing their voice with the rest of the web. You will want to check them out, add a link, make a bookmark or whatever it is to remind yourself to check back often. I am looking forward to see how their blogs and thinking evolves.

Some thoughts from today...

Great Performances in Cynicism The award ceremony that didn't get televised. The nominees, the NY Yankees, Chuck Colson, Billy Graham...

The evolution of the Christian Bible A cool time-line from USA Today showing the evolution of the Bible.

CBC News: Levant decision to stand hurts Canadian Alliance party: observers Different leader, same controversy. The Canadian Alliance is allowing internal matters to become public once again. Ezra Levent's website is www.loyaltocalgary.com but at what cost to his own party. The questions keeps getting asked of any party with internal problems. Can a party lead the country that can't even organize itself? (it's a fair question so hold off on the hate mail)

UPDATE

Levant decided to quit the nomination allowing Harper to run. I think Harper will win but it will be a hard fought battle. The Tories should not contest the seat and let him run as a sign of good will.

Amazon.com: Wish List
My Amazon.com Wish List, you may want to bookmark this.

Emergent, The Ooze,Allelon and ReImagine are coming together to host two get-togethers for the current leadership of new churches and those interested in new church development. These events are designed not to be a "conference", but rather an opportunity for people of similar intentions and hopes to share stories of their experiences and encourage one another in our journey. Teams of people from the same church are encouraged to attend.

Pundits 'Shocked' By Friedman's Peace Plan
No one else has a workable plan and seems to be content to keep hitting their heads against the same wall. A journalist comes up with an idea that can save countless lives and bring some peace to the region and he is criticized for it. As the article says, "a little old-fashioned journalistic jealousy may be at work here." I find it funny that people are so upset that one of them was actually listened to.

Ad Age Group Acquires Adcritic.com
This is some cool news. Of all the sites that have gone dot.bomb, I miss Adcritic the most. I hope it is as good in version 2.0 than the original.

UPDATE

Check that. Adcritic is going to be a subscription service for ad industry executives. Adcritic is back but just not for us little people.

Who Writes Charles Colson's Columns?
The LA Times was wrong when it said Colson just signs off on staffwriting, says CT's editor.

The Skinny on Postmodernity Series: Part I Postmodernism and Global Worldviews
Andrew Jone (of tallskinnykiwi fame) is writing an amazing series on understanding our postmodern culture at TheOOZE. You will want to check it out.

Dan Gillmor: Bleak future looms if you don't take a stand
Dan Gilmor asks the following questions. You need to read his article...
1. Do you care if a few giant companies control virtually all entertainment and information?

2. Do you care if they decide what kinds of technological innovations will reach the marketplace?

3. Would you be concerned if they used their power to compile detailed dossiers on everything you read, listen to, view and buy?

4. Would you find it acceptable if they could decide whether what you write and say could be seen and heard by others?

Four years ago today my mother died. She was 53. Brain cancer.

People found out at Lakeview. Had people trying to "be there" for me all day. I don't want a candy. I don't want to pray with you. I don't want to share my feelings and memories. I want to work and I want you to get out of my office. There I said it. Now I feel guilty. Great.

Leadership Network e-publications
Leadership Network is discontinuing their free Explorer-Lite and making their monthly Explorer free. All of Leadership Network e-mail publications are quite good (although geared for the larger church) and now that they are free, it is one less excuse not to sign-up.

I hard coded this post on the site here but I decided to post here as well. It is going to be published later in the month... enjoy.

Several months ago I wrote an article in Next-Wave that talked about evangelism and communicating to an increasingly net-literate lifestyle. Since then I downloaded a plethora of e-mail soliciting my opinion on their local church website. Many of those local church sites got posted on jordoncooper.com. Recently I took time to review the list and two things caught my attention. Almost all of them are very well designed but I never found myself being drawn back to check them out very often.

As I was thinking about this I started to go through my bookmarks and took another look at the sites that I go back to all the time. I started to look for the characteristics that kept drawing me back. As I was formulating what was surely going to be a best selling epic book, I picked up the now legendary book, The Cluetrain Manifesto. I got no further than the first paragraph of the introduction to see that my best-selling book had already been written (doh) and I had my answer for what drew me back to the web. The authors pose this question,

WHAT IF THE REAL ATTRACTION OF THE INTERNET IS NOT its cutting-edge bells and whistles, its jazzy interface or any of the advanced technology that underlies it pipes and wires? What if, instead, the attraction is an atavistic throwback to the prehistoric human fascination with telling takes? Five thousand years ago, the marketplace was the hub of civilization, a place to which traders returned from remote lands with exotic spices, silks, monkeys, parrots, jewels�and fabulous stories.

It hit me and thousands of others who have read this book that the reason we came online is that there was a conversation of millions of voices happening and we were missing out. It was reading The Cluetrain Manifesto that it came clear what so many churches were missing as we moved online, a voice.

So many churches have great graphics, a cool look and feel, and wonderful toys but I have no idea who the people that are behind the site are. Many churches have the obligatory "pastor�s page" which does its best to make their pastor sound cooler than First Church�s pastor but other than that, the sites have no personality at all. My own church, Lakeview suffers from that as well. Outside of hiding NHL legends Wayne Gretzky and Grant Fuhr in a couple of images, our site could be the corporate template for General Electric. The site is attractive but lacks a personality. Lakeview's graphic artist was asking about when are we going to start the annual redesign of the site. My response was that we are going to give some life to the design and content that we have.

One thing that got missed along the rush to the IPO and the revolutionary practice of selling Isotonergloves online is that we forgot why we came to the party in the first place. We came to tell stories, learn from others, and share our experiences. We came online to meet people. Not in chat rooms or on singles sites but while surfing the net, finding our hobbies and people who share them along the way. Information was cool and is useful but information alone didn�t make people tell everyone they knew all about the Internet. Connecting to people online, even if wasn�t in the flesh is what made it so cool.

The sites I have come to love and rely on during my journey are those sites that are published by real people with real lives and experiences. I read Next-Wave not because of its interface or look but because of the community of authors that I know of and interacted with. I check out ginkworld twice a week to see what John O�Keefe is up to. Connecting with John Wallis on a couple of discussion groups (and meeting him at Soularize) causes me to shamelessly promote his new magazine seven. People that I have referred to Andrew Jones� weblog are bookmarking the site and going back everyday. The opportunity to connect with other people is what is driving the web.

I also saw it first hand this year when talking out loud one day on my own weblog about relaunching jordoncooper.com and splitting off the postmodern ministry content to a another domain. Many of the sites 20,000 monthly visitors can�t seem to get their head around how a site that has so much about postmodern thought and the church can also have links to the Calgary Flames and the Saskatchewan Roughriders. It seems to confuse a lot of the Southern Baptists that complain when they write me (no offence to those it hasn�t confused but Southern Baptists always identify themselves as Southern Baptists). I had a domain already picked out when I started to get e-mail back saying, "wait a minute, it is knowing about you that gives the site some character and credibility. Postmodern ministry sites are everywhere". People went on to say that without the personal stuff, the site just became a collection of links posted by someone they don�t know. My stories about my life gave it some context and something to judge it by for good or bad.

It is that context that so many church sites are missing. For good and often bad, the personal stuff on jordoncooper.com lets people know if I am a loser or not and if they really want to trust the sites I am linking to or that have linked to me. The problem is that most church sites are without that context. Most people who are looking for a church online want to connect with people that they are comfortable with. They don�t care about the church logo or stance on an increasing number of doctrinal positions, they care about the people they will meet as they walk down the street and into the church. What do most sites talk about? Exciting and thrilling things like governance structures, doctrinal positions, historical facts about organs, and all the things that so many people don�t care about unless they are already part of your church. I am not saying that there isn�t a place for those things (preferably 8 or so layers down in your site) but to offer those over content that people would actually care about makes no sense at all.

The best way to enter that dialogue is not web content about someone but content that is by someone. For the last five years publishing on the Internet took some skill and effort, not to mention a copy of Adobe GoLive, Macromedia Dreamweaver or any one of the competing products. Today, free services like Blogger and Moveable Type lower the bar even further and allow anyone that has a Internet connection to post effortlessly to the web. This has prompted thousands of people who used to just surf the net to now interact and build their own corner of it. They do that by telling great stories and tales from wherever they are.

And great tales they have told. From the details of clueless executives, moronic co-workers, to commentary on news and current events these stories are told by thousands of people daily in the "blogs" (short for weblog). Blogger has made it incredibly easy for anyone to be published online and some of those blogs are seeing traffic numbers that rival all but a handful of the most popular sites online. You want updates on a conference or event, chances are someone is blogging about it as it happens. The attraction isn�t the design of the site but the real people who share their stories and thoughts with the masses.

Eventually conversations started between websites where one blog picks up on what another is saying and passes along the story and it keeps on building and going back and forth until the conversation is over or until something new captures the attention. It is the voice of individuals and conversation. Even online people want to hear that sound. It is the sound that we don�t hear enough of.

I think the larger the church and the more they have invested online, the less they understand this. The problem is that since we all steal our ideas from those large churches instead of thinking by ourselves, we give up our voice so we can more like people who don�t get it. We follow the model of disseminating information to the masses. The problem is that people don�t care what the institutional church says. At one time people at least pretended to care what the church, ministerial fellowship or their own denomination said about church and life. A word from the pulpit on a lot of issues carried some weight. As we live in an age where those influences matter little, the voices that do matter are our peers. As a Free Methodist I was amused a couple of years ago to hear of our denomination�s bishops speaking out against the movies that Disney was producing. It made no difference at all to me as I went to Disneyland a couple years later only to meet several Southern Baptists who apparently weren�t that bothered by their own denominations condemnation of the Magic Kingdom either. Postmoderns may not value those kinds of hierarchical relationships anymore but we do value peer based ones. I may not be interested in what Microsoft Corporation has to say on their homepage but I do care what my friends who work there say on their pages. The idea of a prophetic voice calling out in the wilderness is changing to a solitary voice with a readership in the tens of thousands. Participating in online conversations and online peer to peer relationships will be a leadership art that all churches will have to master in the 21-C.


I don�t have all the answers but hear are some of the things that we have been tossing around to help us get back our voice...

1. Stop talking like you are a Fortune 500 company. Noted usability guru Jakob Nielson complained of the horribly lifeless writing on the net in a recent C|Net interview. Fortune 500 companies don�t tell great stories, neither do churches. Individuals tell great stories. When a friend of mine shares about his life, he does not send me a press release or pen an article about it, he uses his own words, his own nuances. Churches tend to communicate stiffly, unimaginatively, and based around the facts. Which would I rather listen to. There is a reason why the Letters to the Editor and the Editorial page are the most read of major newspapers. That is where people share what they are thinking and feeling, not a formulaic press statement.


2. Find some places on our web where real people can share their stories on a continual basis. Using tools like Blogger, you can embed the code into your page and have someone add the conversation remotely without risking the rest of your site. It is remarkably easy to set-up and use a service like Blogger and really hard to mess it up once you got it going. It allows multiple people to share their voice and it is very simple to operate and maintain.. At Lakeview we are looking at a small group leader sharing their experiences, some of the staff and lay leadership reflecting on what they are learning, some devotional thoughts update a couple of times a week, and some ministry leaders talking about the ups and downs of leading their ministries. I would love to have a single parent share their journey for a year or even one of our seniors. I have no idea what they will write and outside of some ideas that people have written to write better blogs, who really cares. As long as it is real. There is a temptation to have a purpose defined before you start but as my life goes, so does my blog. If I am trying to make a goal for my blog, I am making it into a script, not a mirror of my thoughts and wanderings.


3. Create a place where people can connect online outside your page. While Lakeview Churches site draws thousands of people every month, there is this incredible global conversation taking place online between individuals and their sites. They aren�t going to interact with what a church site has to say they want to interact with other individuals. The nature of our site makes it hard to carry on conversations online but that doesn�t stop those that attend the church from having them. Lots of people around Lakeview enjoy those conversations. We started to get into this discussion but helping some of the staff set-up blogs of their own. Blogspot hosts them for free (or without ads for $12 a year) and they are free to talk about whatever they want to talk about. Our media creator at Lakeview Church is also a rabid Edmonton Oilers fan, devoted Photoshop user and one of the few people who actually watched the television show The Tick while it was on. His blog reflects not only his spiritual journey but also a journey through the NHL trading deadline, waiting for Photoshop 7, and comic book lore. It isn�t about Jeb pretending to be something he isn�t. People see that from miles away. It is about Jeb living his life. The same principle is what led my wife to go online with her blog. One of my favourite sites on the net for a long time was the homepage of recently waived major league baseball pitcher C.J. Nitkowski. C.J. was a below average reliever for the Detroit Tigers last year before being demoted to the minors and then sent to the Mets. He stunk last year and his webpage reflected his struggles. He went too far many felt in his criticism of team management but there something very real to his site. First of all it was done by him and contained his thoughts as he felt them. If it wasn�t for that site, I never would have heard of C.J. Nitkowski but here I am this spring training hoping for him and checking the boxscores and the Sporting News to see if he would make the opening day line-up (he didn�t). CJ Baseball.com is not a site about a superstar pitcher, it is about a average middle reliever. He is telling his stories. That is what gives it its appeal. Fox Sports or TSN can tell me all sorts of things about sports but it is someone else�s life they are reporting. They are not part of the game and aren�t part of the conversation.

A couple of years ago when Ford originally got the idea to get their employees on the internet, the world was shocked over the price tag but forgot the benefit. As Christopher Locke pointed out in Gonzo Marketing Winning Through Worst Practices, having 370,000 people who could talk about Ford products on the net, solve problems, and learn from the people they connected to online could be a powerful change agent as well as a sales agent. Chances are there isn�t 370,000 people that attend your church but having a place where people can talk and share can�t be that bad for the kingdom (although that could depend on the people).

Whenever I am foolish or brave enough to suggest these ideas to church leaders, they always seem to respond the same way and they always want to bring up objections about control. "Will people think they are speaking for our church?" "What if they say something that reflects bad on the ministry?" I always reply that these conversations are going on offline and probably even online as well so why not be a part of them. Condemning, ignoring, or even threatening Google won�t stop it. A discussion I have had often deals with the control of information in the church. I have always had the opinion that it gets out anyways and this way people have the right facts. Others feel that truth needs to be facilitated and people need to come to a consensus together. The second point of view leads to endless meetings, discussions and people go away and make up their own mind anyway. Fear over the opinions of those talking doesn�t stop the fact that people are talking. The best thing we can do is join the conversation.

Is the Web making the grade?
Web design guru Jakob Nielsen talks with News.com editor Charles Cooper about ways to improve the delivery of services on the Internet. Microcontent and payments, end of fre, and other things are being talked about.
You can find his site at www.nngroup.com.

Astros release LHP Nitkowski Ouch, what will happen to probably the greatest baseball page on the net, CJ Baseball? That page is probably responsible for me following the game again. I hope he catches on elsewhere.

Some Emergent and other events you may find worthwhile attending...

Seed Stories - May 2-4, Newport Beach California, $49 - A Forum for Church Planters in two year old and younger churches and a forum for those looking into missional church planting.

Search Party 2002 - May 15-18, St Louis, $199 (before March 31) - While this is not an official Emergent event, we are excited about what will happen in this roundtable discussion focusing on the practical issues of the Kingdom and an exploration of ministry methods in the postmodern context.

Emergent Summer Institute - June 3-7, Hosted by Brian McLaren and Cedar Ridge Community Church in the DC Area, $135 - This five-day experience of learning, spiritual formation, and community will become, we hope, an annual event. We think you'll be impressed with the plans for the week ... and we hope you and others will register ASAP. (We need to know for planning purposes who can attend as soon as possible.)

"Summer Get Together", August 1-5, Golden Gate Canyon Park, Colorado - A time of friendship, life building and camping for those in the emerging church. No cost other than campsite rental. See the Emergent website for more details

Who's Lost - Us or Them June 1, Portland OR, $49 - sponsored by Off the Map. Learn how to count conversations instead of conversions, evangelize without being evangelistic, connect naturally with your non-Christian friends, understand the people Jesus misses most...the people formerly known
as lost.

Yahoo! Sports: NFL - Bengals: Bledsoe says no
When Elvis Grbac turns down $10 million over four years to retire and when Drew Bledsoe would rather take his chances as a backup in New England than sign with the Bengals, you know you're in big time trouble as a Bengal fan. The article wonders if Jerry Krause is running the Bengals.

In other news... Rodney Peete Signs
Rodney Peete has been one of my favorite players since he was at USC. I think I still have his rookie card...

INSITEVIEW- - tom shugart's weblog Tom seems more than a little excited today that the Hoosiers won. I saw some depressed Duke blogs earlier. My NCAA picks are all out. So much for a Duke, Kansas, Gonzaga, Cinncinnati Final Four.

We are working towards doing a multimedia worship labyrinth at Lakeview next year during Lent. I don't know why but I started to think about it last night and everyone I talked to today started to think it was really cool. We would modify on that that YFC has been doing in the U.K. Jeb thinks it will take him a year to get the media together but it will be cool. There ain't enough Slurpees in the world to keep him awake over five days straight. I got some information about Labyrinth's from the YFC website...

Labyrinth is an interactive installation for spiritual journeys. It's for anyone who wants a break from surfing the surface of culture to contemplate the deeper things of life. Labyrinth reshapes a 12th-century ritual for the 21st century. Its maze-like path takes you on a symbolic journey, creates space to unwind and think - in particular about our relationships with ourselves, one another, our planet and God. Designed for young and old alike, it provides a mixture of rituals and visuals, of contemplative words and contemporary ambient music, of symbols and media to help guide the spiritual traveller. Labyrinths were a feature of many medieval cathedrals - one of the best remaining examples is found in Chartres Cathedral in northern France. Unlike a maze they have only one path - there are no dead ends. People walk the labyrinth slowly, as an aid to contemplative prayer and reflection, as a spiritual exercise, or as a form of pilgrimage. This contemporary version includes music, meditations, art, media and symbolic activities at intervals along the path.

The path has three stages - the 'inward' journey, the centre and the 'outward' journey. The theme of the 'inward' journey is letting go of things which hinder our wholeness and inner approach to God. The centre of the Labyrinth is a space of meditative prayer and peace. The theme of the 'outward' journey is relationship - with ourselves, with others and with the planet - seen in the light of our relationship with God.

About Labyrinths

Mazes and a range of labyrinth designs are found all around the world in many cultures and civilizations. They are found carved in rock, ceramics, clay tablets, mosaics, manuscripts, stone patterns, turf, hedges, and cathedral pavements. The earliest known designs are about 3000 years old. The significance of them for the various cultures they were part of and the story of how they developed from one place to another (or simultaneously appeared in several) is often mysterious and hard to fathom. The most ancient and widespread design looks complicated but can be drawn quite easily if you know the method.

The labyrinth has since ancient times been associated with the legend of the Minotaur, the monster half-man half-bull which dwelt in the heart of a labyrinth on the island of Crete. Theseus was able to get to the centre of the labyrinth, slay the Minotaur and find his way out again by following the thread he had trailed behind him on the way in. But the story has caused confusion ever since, because clearly the Minotaur's lair was a maze that you could get lost in, whereas a labyrinth, however confusing it looks, has only one twisting path that weaves its way to the centre and back out again. There is only one entrance and exit, no dead ends, and no crossing of paths with a choice of which way to turn.

I just shelled out $10 and bought an ad on the Blogger homepage (supporting Blogger!) and when I click on that ad or any other one I get a wonderful version of java.lang.Exception: Clicker.record(): java.sql.SQLException: String or binary data would be truncated. instead of the site that is advertising. I then realize that I just paid ten clams for a Pyrads technical error. I then e-mailed them and got a "delivery notice failure" from the form on the site. Oh well, at least the ad looks cool.


I am off to find another way to get in touch with the fine folks at Pyrads. The cool part is that they are upfront about just testing the service. I love the idea of the microad and I can't wait till they get it right!

CFL shoots itself in both feet... repeatedly.
The CFL has the best 15 months of its existence only to fire to commisioner for speaking the truth about the Toronto Arognauts. He shouldn't be fired, he should have been given a contract extension and something should have been done by a clueless Sherwood Schwartz. The model of the Montreal Allouettes needs to be followed by owners. Hire really smart football people and get out of the way. No wonder they call it the Clueless Football League.

Web site will feature Canadian documents This is way overdue... what I would love is something like the bookshop of the British Public Records Office. I got the one on Churchill during the war and it is amazing.

Harper wins Alliance leadership
As Joe Clark has proven before, you can't quit and the expect to be re-elected to a political party. The question is whether or not the Tories or the Canadian Alliance can get their act together to make the next election competetive.

Cool or Caring? Sony, Honda Mull Home Robots' Role Sony and Honda unveil the next step of robots in the workplace. $152,400 a year... You could afford ten of Lakeview's staff for that... Do you remember those really cool Omnibots that Radio Shack sold in the 1980's. Some were remote controlled and they looked so cool. That was in the day when we thought that robots would be our maids and servants by now. Still, I would love to find one of those robots today just to see if they were as cool as I remember them.

UPDATE

I found some on eBay. I would be bidding now but I just bought a PenCam so I will wait a while until I test Wendy's grace some more.

Attack of the Clones Review Review of leaked Star Wars movie, "Attack of the Clones". You saw it here first. I am looking forward to this movie when it comes out. Don't think I will be sleeping outside for tickets but I think Wendy and I will be going... Then again I said that about Blackhawk Down and I haven't seen that yet.

Microcontent News, a Corante.com Microblog
Corante has launched a very cool blog about blogging and micromedia. From the intro article, "The Personal Computing revolution was about the democratization of computing: the idea that anyone could have access to the power of a computer, without having to beg, borrow, and steal access to the mainframes and minicomputers owned by major corporations and universities. The Personal Publishing revolution seems like the inevitable follow-up: the democratization of publishing. It's another Promethean notion: the idea that anyone can start publishing anything to the world, using the Internet. And unlike the dot-com boom and bust, personal publishing is being driven by passionate hobbyists fueled not by greed, but by a burning desire to share their thoughts with the world."

I'll be back often to this site...

I cleaned my office on Monday. I didn't think it was that messy until today. I had people wandering in all day to admire the new layout and the how tidy it is. I didn't think it was that bad. The problem is that I have 1500 books in there and my office is only 8x10. It is a little cramped with five bookshelves, a desk, and a filing cabinent. I rearranged it so it "opened it up" as well. Wendy did a lot of tidying so I can't forget her contribution. Others just heckled. I am glad it is done.

This looks cool.

Fast Company is blogging.
Fast Company writer Dan Pink's weblog and John Ellis as well (this blogger thing could actually catch on)

As Scandal Keeps Growing, Church and Its Faithful Reel
Muliply the damaged lives and the lawsuits by almost every city in North America. I don't think this is a localized problem. It will keep snowballing and snowballing...

Jeb is off on a tangent about his cold and about eBay sellers who sell pirated warez. Jeb bought a CD/R off a schmuck who sold it to him telling him that he downloaded the software off the net. It was actually warez. Anyway, Jeb has reported this guy or girl to the authorities several times and eBay still lets him sell. Anyone know anybody at eBay that deals with software piracy and selling warez, let me know because something needs to be done and the current system doesn't seem to work.

Gary Turner is another word for Jeffery Skilling
You really can't say you were shocked were you? It appears that Blogstickers and Gary Turner have been misreporting their revenue by almost $3. Despite the fact that Blogstickers is the world leader in internet blogsticker commodity trading, jordoncooper.com analysts felt that something wasn't right about their business plan. Sources tell jordoncooper.com that Anderson accountants are shredding incriminating blogstickers right now.

Tom Shugart of INSITEREVIEW e-mailed and asked this troubling question, "Why would the NHL have smaller ice if it reduces the quality of the game?" [compared to the Olympics]. Talk shows and hockey experts across Canada (and this blog) have been pondering that for years so I thought I would post my opinion.

It is questions like this that drive hockey fans crazy because non-hockey fans can see how the larger ice surface made the game a better thing to watch (and play). I think the reason that the NHL doesn't make some rule changes is that they realize that the talent pool of hockey players to teams isn't that deep. A wide open surface allows the talented players to showcase it and I think you would see more blowouts. I remember being in Calgary in the 1980's and seeing 5-2 or 7-3 games all the time. If a team didn't show up, a more talented team like the Flames at the time would embaress them. The NHL is horrified that that degree of disparity could happen again so they settle for 2-1 or 3-2 games. The bad teams still lose but they have close games. The brass of the NHL says the closeness makes it exciting but I disagree. I would much rather watch a wide open freewheeling game than a closer boring listless game. The real problem is that expansion has watered down the league so much and there are so many poor skaters that opening up the ice surface would show that glaringly. People like to point to the defensive style that most team play but the reason that they play that way is because they don't have the talent to score. It just makes a bad situation worse.

The NHL needs to look at a bigger ice surface and if a league ever needed contraction, the NHL is one of them. Two teams in Florida? Nashville? Anaheim? They are all indifferent hockey markets. A dispersal draft could save the league.

Now that I got that off my chest, I am off to read some more of Tom's excellent blog.

International journalists' group attacks CanWest censorship
From the article, "At the Leader-Post, four reporters were suspended and six were reprimanded last week after they withdrew their bylines for a day. They were protesting the editing of a story critical of CanWest. subsequently, CanWest TV and print reporters across Canada were warned they faced suspension or dismissal if they staged similar protests."
I stand behind the Leader-Post reporters on this one.

Star Trek Online Canadian scientists are bulding a real life holodeck to help in training simulations. My office is a stinking disaster of huge proportions. It would be awesome just to say, "end program" and it would clean itself up. Sadly I now know what my Monday day off is going to look like.

As crazy as this sounds, jordoncooper.com is working perfectly while jordoncooper.sk.ca which directs to the same files won't work. Even more bizarre is that I can access jordoncooper.sk.ca from other ISP's but not from home. Shaw drives me crazy in that they don't offer real-time updates regarding system status. It could be SaskTel as well. Either way, I am calling it a night.

The reason i stopped going to football games! The Punk Monkey shares why he has stopped going to football games.

ginkworld; inside the mind of punk monkey This is ginkworld's new blog and gives you a look inside the mind of the Punk Monkey, something that has mystified us all for years. What makes the Punk Monkey tick? Is it true that he was involved in the Willi Plett incident? Forget the X-Files, the truth is in this blog.

ginkworld is one of those sites that carries the strong presence of an individual that gives it a great voice. I have seen a plethora of sites trying to be the next ginkworld or TheOOZE and they come up short because they don't have the passion and the voice of a person behind it. They end up being bland and lifeless and feeling kind of cold and commercial whereas ginkworld and other cool sites like it keep the personality of their architect.

Whenever someone asks me to review a site or a design, I keep telling them to keep it real and keep it personable... there are thousands of corporations out there, I prefer to hang out online with cool people.

Back in the Bloghouse A great article about the Cluetrain and the Locke - Dvorak chat. From the article, "Could it be that, as with the Manifesto, the only thing that's revolutionary is the proclamation that it's revolutionary? Once you burrow through the gonzo rhetoric from a pop-cultural polymath like marketing consultant Chris Locke (who transposes his own picture with that of Salvador Dali, and who sprinkles references to avant garde icons such as Roland Kirk, and anarchism) the only difference is that he says he's more revolutionary... than the next marketing consultant, or you, or me. And that isn't enough."

Yes there is a lot of hyperbole but once you deconstruct through that, there is some real things that have changed and are changing...

Lightning 3, Flames 2
That sound you heard tonight... that was the nail be pounded into the Calgary Flames playoff chances. Mike Vernon is 1-7-1 this year and needs to be cut loose. I hope Craig Button does something before Monday.

A Blogger Manifesto
Why online weblogs are one future for journalism. Andrew Sullivan reflects on the evolution of his own weblog and the future of blogging.

Reading, Writing, and Blogging
The weblog revolution just might change journalism for the better. TV talking-heads, beware.

Breaking up's not hard to do Divisions often center on 'Who makes the rules?' - article from the Dallas Morning News on denominational breakups.

Fallen fresco raises questions From the article, "Brian Hughes was one of three people in the chapel of St. Peter's Catholic Church shortly after 11 a.m. on a recent Wednesday, when the golden image of the resurrection of Christ suddenly peeled off the wall and shattered across the altar like a window pane, destroying a 13-year-old work of art meant to last centuries."
This backs up what I have been saying for years. Frescos aren't being built to last like they used to be. Sadly a three year work of art is gone for good.

Mike Sanders on time and blogging
He ponders and records why people blog today. My blog and blogroll are more a reflection of what I am thinking and some of the things, ideas, and events that influenced my thinking that day. My blog doesn't exist simply to give me a voice online (my site does that) but rather as a place where my wanderings are documented. My favorite part of using Blogger is "Blogger Post" and the right click menu that allows me to easily blog any page online that I see. It manages to capture my rambles and thoughts well.

Warp speed impossible "Warp speed, so called because it involves warping space to shrink distances before travelling them, is predicted by Einstein's theory of relativity. In 1994, with the concept firmly rooted in the Trekkie vernacular, a German scientist made headlines by describing the physics that would allow a space ship to travel at warp speed -- faster than light."

Next thing you know scientists will be saying there are no Jedi Knights.

Online diarists rule an Internet strewn with failed dot-coms MSNBC has a great article by someone that gets blogging (finally)...

Church using matchbooks to heat up attendance
Interesting article on the response to servant evangelism.