Recreation

Congratulations to the News-Gazette and WDWS for thier new Illini sports-related online venture, IlliniHQ.com.  They're finally making their content free and accessible, and while it's taken too long for them to get to this point, I'm glad they're here.  Hopefully, their traffic will be huge, and their ad revenues will allow for even more coverage.

Also, in a cool unexpected twist, IlliniBoard.com is now a part of IlliniHQ.com.  IlliniBoard has been, honestly, the best place to get Illini basketball and football news for quite some time because its users would post more content, for free, than the NG or WDWS could generate.  For recruiting, game analysis, etc. IB was a gold mine.  Combining it with the institutional access given to the NG and WDWS should provide excellent coverage of all aspects of Illini sports.

This made me smile:

(The high-quality version is better, FWIW.)

And I'm always the last one to see these things.  Five million views is just amazing.

This link tells it all

Regardless of how you feel about Chicago and/or Illinois politics, bringing the Olypmics to Chicago would be great for Champaign County and the University of Illinois.  So this is good news:

The IOC has picked four finalists in the bidding for the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Making the cut are Chicago; Tokyo; Madrid, Spain, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Three cities were eliminated from the race -- Doha, Qatar; Prague, Czech Republic, and Baku, Azerbaijan.

I don't know which is worse:  an afternoon Cardinals baseball game, or WDWS' normal afternoon programming.

Thank goodness for iTunes.  And is it football season yet?

From today's News-Gazette:

The old Champaign municipal landfill would become a community park offering a mountain bike skills course and a BMX bicycle racing track, a sledding hill, a dog park, a model airplane field and an 18-hole disc golf course under a plan for reuse of the 90-acre site.

But development of the park, which would also include 3 miles of walking trails, probably won't even begin for seven to 10 years and then is expected to proceed in stages, according to Champaign Park District officials. The park will cost between $10 million and $15 million to develop.

Evidently, the United State House of Representatives has finished all of its important work, and has nothing better to do than this:

Bud Selig and Donald Fehr, the commissioner and union leader often at loggerheads, sat side-by-side Tuesday as Congress pressed them yet again with questions about baseball's doping problem.

At a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing in the same, wood-paneled room where Selig, Fehr, Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro and others testified three years ago, congressmen mixed criticism of baseball and its players with praise for progress on steroids.

That 2005 hearing was referenced right away when panel chairman Henry Waxman opened the proceedings by calling on the Justice Department to look into whether former AL MVP Miguel Tejada lied to committee staffers when questioned in connection to Palmeiro's perjury case.

Congressional approval ratings, by the way, are at about 25 percent.  And it's obvious why.

From yesterday's News-Gazette:

A new task force will explore over the next several months whether Champaign, Urbana and Savoy should require subdivision developers to provide land or cash for future parks.

The task force will also explore other ways park districts could acquire property in growth areas.

The creation of the nine-member task force comes some two years after the Champaign Park District board first asked the city council, in December 2005, to consider requiring land or cash donations from subdivision developers. During the interim, park district and city staff members put together a 52-page report detailing "issues and needs" for providing parks, trails and open space in new subdivisions.

We've discussed this before. Philosophically, I don't care for requiring land donation, but as a practical matter, it doesn't really bother me, as it would negotiated with developers as part of pre-annexation agreements.

I don't like this idea of relying on figures from the National Parks and Recreation Association, though, to determine how much green space a community should have per capita.  From the earlier post:

Champaign Park District Executive Director Bobbie Herakovich said the National Park and Recreation Association recommends that cities have at least 10 acres of park land per 1,000 residents.

They are hardly a fair source, and while I know people are loath to question the motives of the good people who run our parks, this organization's function is explicitly to advocate for more parks and greenspace.  Using their figures for a discussion like this is like basing the government's dietary recommendations for meat consumption on a standard set by the National Cattlemen's Beef Association.

I just finished Dungeon, Fire and Sword, a history of the Crusades and Knights Templar. It was a very entertaining and informative read without coming across as too conspiratorial.

I'm in the middle of April 1865, about the end days of the American Civil War, and The Fatal Shore, about the founding of Australia.

I've been on a non-fiction kick recently.  Any recommendations?

From today's News-Gazette:

The Urbana park board is expected to ask voters to increase the district's property tax rate by 25 cents per $100 of assessed valuation.

Park board members will decide tonight whether to place the question on the Feb. 5 primary ballot. The board meets at 7:30 p.m. at the Anita Purves Nature Center, 1505 N. Broadway Ave., U.

As proposed, the ballot question would ask to increase the district's tax rate from the current 70 cents to nearly 95 cents per $100 of assessed valuation.

The tax hike would generate an estimated $1.4 million in additional yearly funding for the district.

For the owner of a $150,000 home, the higher tax rate would translate into a $112.50 increase in property taxes, including the standard homestead exemption.

Yikes - that's a huge increase, whether you look at it by percentage or in actual dollars.

...Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond.

I've been looking for good ways to kill some time lately, and nothing kills time like a great book, so we spent an hour or so nosing around the bookstore last night, and I picked up this (which has been on my wish list for a while) and two others.

This one has really sucked me in, and the premise is awfully interesting:

History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves.

Anybody else read it?  Anybody reading anything good right now?

Nothing gets parents talking like discussing schools and athletics:

The Champaign school district needs to assert more control over how new sports programs are created and administered, say school board members.

The board on Monday night approved an exploratory baseball program for Edison Middle School students for the fall season – which began Monday – with the conditions that the program is evaluated by the district and the use of volunteer coaches complies with the district's teacher contract.

But several board members expressed concerns about how the program was established. Edison parents, Central High School baseball Coach John Staab and Edison Athletic Director Jackie Borchardt organized the program and raised money to cover its costs.

Board member Arlene Blank said the district needs to have more control over what booster clubs are doing.

Blank said the new baseball program raises many issues, including transportation, liability insurance, equity issues under federal Title IX legislation and who can collect gate receipts.

Discuss.

While chatting with Matthew last night, the subject of another Blogger Bash came up.  I know that some of you have been doing a semi-regular Tuesday night gathering, but we wanted to push for a larger gathering, beyond just IP.com bloggers and readers, while the weather was nice.

So how about Tuesday, July 31 at 5:30-ish at Esquire?  We'll sit outside, space and weather permitting.

My apologies for my light posting this morning.

I'm exhausted, and I have a great excuse.  That venue, by the way, while brand new and absolutely beautiful, is a terrible place for a concert.  Maybe the worst I've ever experienced - awful acoustics, miserable logistics, and parking/transportation nightmares.  It's even worse than Riverport.

One of the reasons I stayed away from last night's fireworks was because I thought the traffic would be a nightmare.

Here's some unexpected news for the thousands who endured the postfireworks traffic jam Wednesday night in Champaign:

It really wasn't as bad as you thought.

At least that's the perception of police agencies that coordinated traffic flow after the 9:15 p.m. fireworks show, which ended about 9:45 p.m.

Champaign police Sgt. Scott Friedlein said officers were released from duty about the same time as previous years – around 11 p.m. – when the show was held just outside Memorial Stadium.

"In terms of dealing with traffic, it really wasn't that much different from past years," Friedlein said this morning.

Public perception, he acknowledged, is something else.

I'm sure that next year won't be as bad, with Bradly no longer under construction and another year of planning under their belts.

I wonder how the crowd was this year, compared to previous years at the Stadium?

While I try not to clutter up IP.com with personal stuff, I'm going to make an exception this afternoon.  I'm leaving on a trip soon, and I need to hit the library before I go.  I need some recommendations for some vacation reading materials.  I love histories and biographies, but I enjoy just about anything that is well written.

What do you recommend?

From UI Alum and New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine.

Lecture me all you want about the hypocrisy of posting this reminder about a "nanny-state" law. But just because it's a law doesn't mean it's stupid.

Have a great, safe Memorial Day weekend.

From WILLblog:

This massive Bur Oak lives in the front lawn of the Natural History Building on the corner of Green Street and Matthews in Urbana. According to Geography Professor Bruce Hannon, it's the oldest living thing on the University of Illinois campus. Now 200 years old, the tree "was a sapling when the prairie fires swept easterly across what is now Champaign, routinely consuming everything before them," says Professor Hannon.

Read the whole thing.

One way or another, with the beautiful weather the weekend, I'm going to get out for a nice long hike with my camera in hand.  Maybe Allerton, Riverbend or Forest Glen, or or even a canoe excursion at Kickapoo.

It's been a hectic few weeks (you've probably noticed, too) and I need to re-charge.

John Foreman at the News-Gazette has been busy formulating The Wonders of Champaign County for awhile now, and in order to make the list more impressive, there is no requirement that the wonder actually be in Champaign County. The exact criterion, I believe, is that you be able to get there from Champaign County. With that important caveat, I have to nominate the wind farm going up east of Bloomington. I also have to thank Ed Scharlau for reminding me about the farm.
 
One of the most pleasurable aspects of being a lawyer in Champaign is going to the small courthouses that surround us. Last week I had the good fortune to appear in front of a fine jurist without the necessity of going through a metal detector. It is the only courthouse I know of where that is possible. The defendant, from whom I was collecting a smallish debt for a largish client, agreed to a judgment and payment arrangement and we recited it to the judge. When the judge finished handwriting the entry on the docket sheet he looked up at the defendant and said, "Are you working now, because I haven’t seen you at the grocery store lately."
 
That, for me, sums up a great day, so I was reluctant to return to my office right away. Instead, I headed west on Route 9 to see if I could find the windmills. As if they could be missed. Imagine they were building the Grand Coulee Dam thirty miles away and nobody ever saw or mentioned it. That’s what it’s like. I haven’t burdened myself with the facts, but I can tell you what I observed; about one hundred enormous towers each holding up a bus size turbine powered by blades that looked to be every bit of 150 feet in diameter. At their apogee, the blade tips appear to be over 400 feet in the air. About twenty percent of the windmills are operating, and their propellers took a lazy 4 seconds to turn around once. It looks very slow, but by my calculation the end of each propeller was going about 200 miles an hour.
 
So drive out there, and when you get to the first turbine, go south to the first county road heading west again and traverse the whole nine mile length of the complex. As you get closer to the end you will see some partly erected turbines accompanied by giant cranes.
 
What you don’t see is people. An occasional truck goes by on some mysterious mission, but the whole area is eerily quiet and empty. All in all, it is one of the most amazing things I have ever seen.
 
Think about this; on the next sunny weekend, plan a trip to Tobin’s Pizza in Bloomington (another Champaign County Wonder) by way of the most amazing secret billion dollar project you have ever seen.
 
John

If anyone is interested, I've created an IlliniPundit.com NCAA bracket pool.

The bracket is open to anyone, and the only prize is bragging rights.

The password for the bracket is "illini" without the quotes.

Enjoy!

UPDATE:  Link fixed!  Sorry.

ANOTHER UPDATE:  Bumped to beg for last-minute entries.

UPDATED AND BUMPED:  After the first weekend, Mr. Matt Gladney is all alone in first place, with 38 of 48 games picked correctly.  Matt got 13 of the Sweet Sixteen correct, and only one of his Elite Eight is out (Wisconsin).

UPDATED AND BUMPED:  After the Regional Finals, Matt Gladney is still in first place, but he's only one game ahead of me and I've gotten all four Final Four teams correct, while Matt has but one (Florida).  Everyone else is out of the running.

Thanks to everyone who participated.  Now we need to start an IP.com fantasy baseball league!  :-)

FINAL UPDATE:  It came down to me and Matt Gladney, with the winner of the pool decided by the National Championship game.  Florida won, and so did Matt.  Thanks to everyone who played, and congratulations, Matt!