Urban Onramps

India’s call center workers get pounded, pampered

Very interesting article in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal (link - PDF). It made me wonder if we’ll ever see American workers heading to India for jobs. There may be a demand for folks whose English really is American English. The pay would be much less, but perhaps the cost of living would be/is much less? Quien sabe? Of course, India might bar Americans from obtaining work visas, given that they are theoretically taking jobs away from Indians….

Where is Fernando Gros when you really need him?

If such a scheme were do-able, I could see myself sending urban youth from my program(s) to India for a year, to work, see a different side of life, and come back hungry for moving forward. They would attend church with our Global South brothers and sisters and learn some great stuff.

posted Feb 22, 2007, 8:57am by Rodolpho Carrasco

Jim Wallis dialogues with Daily Kos

…over at the God’s Politics blog - here’s a very short sample:

WALLIS: My post in response to yours was an effort at peacemaking, mutual respect, and better collaboration. That is has been interpreted otherwise makes me sad.

This is turning into a bit of a dustup, here and here and here.

posted Feb 21, 2007, 10:39pm by Rodolpho Carrasco

Bill Gates keeps close eye on kids’ computer time

45 minutes a day for games, one hour for games on the weekend.

posted Feb 21, 2007, 10:34am by Rodolpho Carrasco

still sunny

What an amazing group of people in this room. John Perkins. Wayne Gordon. Noel Castellanos. Mary Nelson. Jimmy Dorrell. Ruston Seamon. Kit Danley. Yvonne Dodd. H Spees. Gordon Murphy. Shane Claiborne. John Booy. Barbara Skinner. And that’s just the people who are still here. A group left early for the airport. I myself will be on my way home when this meeting concludes at lunchtime. It’s been good to dream about CCDA and initiate some strategic things (they’ll roll out later; you’ll hear about them in this space).

I had the munchies last night after room service had concluded (it was late). Down in the lobby at the Courtyard Marriott was this little section that was practically a 7-11. It was next to the check-in desk. They had almost everything. I truly had a late night meal, not snack. I hope more hotels adopt this approach. On the downside, there was no wi-fi in the hotel. One has to get an ethernet cord and hook up the laptop to the modem. You have to sit at the desk, and can’t sit on the bed or stand in the shower (what? i’m the only one? Joke!). Anyway…

posted Feb 21, 2007, 10:25am by Rodolpho Carrasco

It’s not raining in Seattle

But it is cloudy. I miss my family. This CCDA board meeting is going well.

posted Feb 20, 2007, 5:52pm by Rodolpho Carrasco

travel update

I’m in Seattle. It’s bright and sunny, if cold. We begin a CCDA board meeting in about a half hour. I’m trying to get net access here at Seattle Pacific University, but the decision maker is in a meeting. Such is life. We had a good time last night at the Fremont Abbey. Whew! I’m part of emerging church stuff, but nothing prepared me for the Abbey. They are doing some good things in an environment that is very, very different from my context in Northwest Pasadena. We had, what, over 40 people last night? At the Mustard Seed conversation, Tom Sine and Christine Sine and Eliacin Rosario and them. Tom Sine is a cook and a host, good man, him and Christine. I should have figured that out. But the burritos were good, Jefe. Julio Hernandez came down from Vancouver, Canada. Lou Carlo from NYC showed a face, as did John Booy from Grand Rapids (both in town for CCDA board). I’m rooming with Carlo. We had breakfast this morning with Nancy Murphy from Mars Hill Graduate School. We sat at a place called 5 Spot, not bad. At the end of the evening last night I had an interview with folks from The Other Journal. They bought pizza from Zeeks, so I endorse them fully (thought I should probably go read an issue of The Other Journal before I do so). Did I say Dwight Friesen was there? So now we are going into meetings with CCDA folks to do, you know, Carver-level policy stuff. It’s a drag when you can’t get internet on demand (I’m typing this on an SPU net computer here in a coffee shop, the guy next to me keeps looking to see what I’m typing).

posted Feb 20, 2007, 11:41am by Rodolpho Carrasco

Churches back plan to unite under Pope

The churches in question are the Anglican Church (Church of England) and the Catholic Church. It appears to be very preliminary stuff, but a fascinating development nonetheless. Times of London:

Radical proposals to reunite Anglicans with the Roman Catholic Church under the leadership of the Pope are to be published this year, The Times has learnt.

The proposals have been agreed by senior bishops of both churches.

In a 42-page statement prepared by an international commission of both churches, Anglicans and Roman Catholics are urged to explore how they might reunite under the Pope.

The statement, leaked to The Times, is being considered by the Vatican, where Catholic bishops are preparing a formal response.

It comes as the archbishops who lead the 38 provinces of the Anglican Communion meet in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in an attempt to avoid schism over gay ordination and other liberal doctrines that have taken hold in parts of the Western Church.

The 36 primates at the gathering will be aware that the Pope, while still a cardinal, sent a message of support to the orthodox wing of the Episcopal Church of the US as it struggled to cope with the fallout after the ordination of the gay bishop Gene Robinson.

Were this week’s discussions to lead to a split between liberals and conservatives, many of the former objections in Rome to a reunion with Anglican conservatives would disappear. Many of those Anglicans who object most strongly to gay ordination also oppose the ordination of women priests.

posted Feb 18, 2007, 11:50pm by Rodolpho Carrasco

let’s see

• Ryan from Ninth Street Records blog is out here for a few weeks, helping Harambee pull off our annual benefit.
• Orlando Crespo and Abner Ramos came by on Friday, for chit chat and plots and reconnects. We hung out at The Coffee Gallery in Altadena, my office away from the office.
• Received a service group from Intervarsity Christian Fellowship’s Surf & Turf division (central California plus Vegas). The group did a lot of work around Harambee this morning.
• Tomorrow morning we go to San Marino Community Church. We’ll have a table/booth and I’ll have five minutes during the service to give a “missions moment” type update.
• Monday I fly to Seattle. While in Seattle I’ll speak at Mustard Seed Associates sponsored event, do board meetings with CCDA, and meet up with some World Vision folks.
• Wednesday we’ll have an open forum for City Council District 1 candidates. The forum will be at Harambee.
• Kafi just got home from leading a bible study with Fina Arnold at church.

posted Feb 17, 2007, 10:05pm by Rodolpho Carrasco

Hey Boss

I got your message. Releases and Photos. I’m on it. Today some time. RC

posted Feb 16, 2007, 8:33am by Rodolpho Carrasco

Virgins Make The Best Valentines

That’s an empirical thought - it can be proven according to studies. It comes from Patrick Fagan. Here’s the article. Here’s the detail:

…women 30 or older those who were monogamous (only one sexual partner in a lifetime) were by far most likely to be still in a stable relationship (80 percent). Sleeping with just one extra partner dropped that probability to 54 percent. Two extra partners brought it down to 44 percent.

They give the study’s name in the article. This graf hit me between the eyes:

…America needs a real Valentine tradition precisely because the messages we give our teenagers pushes more and more young men and women to reject each other rather than to belong to each other. The vast majority of teenage young men putting on condoms and teenage young women taking the pill has no intention of marrying those whom they bed. They join in the embrace meant to last forever, knowing all the while that they will likely walk away from each other. Thus they reject — and get used to being rejected — in their intimate lives, and in the process build not a culture of belonging and romance but one of rejection and suffering. They pay a price bigger than most suspect.

Now I’m about to say something, and I might erase this post later, but it will be up until I pull it: I was a virgin when I got married. I’m proud of that, not ashamed. It feels weird to share that, though, in an age when our online lives can be googled and dredged through places like the Wayback Machine. You just saw the two Edwards bloggers get hammered for stuff they wrote online in the past. I don’t know. Like I said, I’m so very grateful for the choices I made as a young man. It was painful, very painful, especially when my Christian peers communicated that they thought I was weird because I was a virgin - yes, even my own Christian peers. They were the greatest disappointment of all. There was a lot of loneliness I experienced because of that choice. But I am glad I did. I share this because I figure there are people out there experiencing the rejection and loneliness that accompanies any choice for virtue (whether chastity or honesty, etc.) and I just hope you feel encouraged. You are doing the right thing, AND you are making the world a better place. Hang in there.

posted Feb 14, 2007, 12:52pm by Rodolpho Carrasco

Black is Beautiful

This post and thread over at Anthony Bradley’s site reminded me of something. When Kafi and I were engaged, a Black woman in the community came up to me with a big, big smile. She was gushing. She couldn’t get it out, what she wanted to say.

Finally she said, “You picked one of us.”

What do you mean, I said.

You picked a Black woman, she said. I’ve seen you with other women (I think she meant a White woman and then a Latina that I had seen before Kafi), but now you are really going to marry Kafi. You are going to marry her, right?

Yes, I said. And I felt it was an odd question, but I just let it go, let it slide. I understand now how deep of an issue it was for that woman. I also hope she understands, by now, 12 years later, that I also married Kafi because she was (and is) the one for me.

posted Feb 13, 2007, 11:33pm by Rodolpho Carrasco

about that federal deficit

With Bush’s tax cuts still in effect, federal tax revenue IS UP by 9%, and the federal deficit down by 57% (over a four month period), according to BizzyBlog: What happens if a deficit falls and almost no one reports it? The blogger, TBlumer, goes on to say this:

There is a very real possibility that the federal budget will be in a surplus situation when President Bush hands over the keys to the White House in January 2009.

Can that be possible? Could the federal budget be balanced by 2009 even with Bush’s tax cuts in effect and the price tag of the Iraq War hanging over us? Read the whole article, plus the comments sections, for comments and links to more folks who think it’s possible. One person thinks the budget could be balanced by June 2008. It’s information like this that makes me look askance whenever someone says that the tax cuts have hurt America and hurt our economy.

posted Feb 13, 2007, 7:58am by Rodolpho Carrasco

1 Greenpeace founder: What made him change his mind

“Him” is former Greenpeace director Patrick Moore:

Dr. Moore traces his metamorphosis to a day trip he took seven years ago to Devon in southwest England. There he met another controversial figure, British scientist James Lovelock.

“I had always been fascinated by [Lovelock's] Gaia hypothesis [which argues that the Earth functions as a kind of superorganism]…and when I found out he supported nuclear power I was even more intrigued,” Dr. Moore says. “We spent an entire day walking, lunching, supping and into the evening discussing Gaia, climate, nuclear energy.”

“Lovelock matter-of-factly said he would gladly take a bundle of used nuclear fuel, put it in his swimming pool and use it to heat his home,” Dr. Moore recalls. “This shook my brain into realizing that nuclear waste is no more dangerous than many other chemicals. The trick is to keep it contained and limit our exposure to it.”

Dr. Lovelock is considered by other scientists and environmentalists who favor nuclear energy as the pioneer who has helped pave the way for a movement, which sees nuclear power as a potential savior of the environment, as opposed to the dangerous poison it has traditionally been viewed as by mainstream environmentalists.

From the article “Fuel Fight” in today’s Wall Street Journal. The part about bundling used nuclear fuel, putting it in his swimming pool, and using it to heat his house, that caught my attention.

posted Feb 13, 2007, 7:48am by Rodolpho Carrasco

“We spend a fair amount of time talking about detainee treatment and Guantanamo. But there is no greater, or more common, human rights abuses in America than those occurring in our overcrowded, constantly expanding, jails.”

Ezra Klein writes about prison rape here and here.

Prison Fellowship has a wing, Justice Fellowship, that addresses this and other justice/incarceration issues.

Here’s the site for the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission.

posted Feb 12, 2007, 1:04pm by Rodolpho Carrasco

Vaclav Klaus about the IPCC panel

The President of the Czech Republic says global warming is a myth.

posted Feb 12, 2007, 12:42pm by Rodolpho Carrasco

Sam’s medicines, Feb. 10 2007

Check this out. Here’s a photo of what I had to give Sam last night as part of his chemotherapy. On the far right is a cup of cranberry juice. He likes the juice because it’s the way he washes down the meds. To the left of the juice is decadron, a steroid he takes every month for five days. It makes him very, very hungry. This morning was his last dose of decadron for the month. To the left of the decadron is Bactrim. He takes Bactrim every Saturday and Sunday, twice a day, morning and night. Bactrim prevents against a peculiar strain of pneumonia that is devastating and only seems to occur among cancer patients (docs don’t exactly know why, but they know how to prevent against it). The little blip next to the Bactrim is a tab of Pepcid. He actually takes the Pepcid with the decadron, since the decadron is pretty acidic and can hurt his stomach. He takes all of the forementioned at once. Then, an hour after his last meal, I give him the last med on the left, 6MP. I usually have to wake him up to give him the 6MP.

posted Feb 11, 2007, 5:41pm by Rodolpho Carrasco