Urban Onramps

Cory Doctorow:

It’s not just Facebook and it’s not just me. Every “social networking service” has had this problem and every user I’ve spoken to has been frustrated by it. I think that’s why these services are so volatile: why we’re so willing to flee from Friendster and into MySpace’s loving arms; from MySpace to Facebook. It’s socially awkward to refuse to add someone to your friends list — but removing someone from your friend-list is practically a declaration of war. The least-awkward way to get back to a friends list with nothing but friends on it is to reboot: create a new identity on a new system and send out some invites (of course, chances are at least one of those invites will go to someone who’ll groan and wonder why we’re dumb enough to think that we’re pals).

That’s why I don’t worry about Facebook taking over the net. As more users flock to it, the chances that the person who precipitates your exodus will find you increases. Once that happens, poof, away you go — and Facebook joins SixDegrees, Friendster and their pals on the scrapheap of net.history.

Did someone say Rolodex?

The Dark Night of Mother Teresa’s Soul:

Where is my Faith—even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness—My God—how painful is this unknown pain—I have no Faith.

Jesus has a very special love for you. [But] as for me—The silence and the emptiness is so great—that I look and do not see—Listen and do not hear.

The author has thoughts on faith without feelings.

Jules Critteden:

Big news out of Iraq where, ignoring Congress and its withdrawal proposals in the interests of common sense, the Shiite-led Iraqi government and the Bush administration have inked a deal for an ongoing U.S. military presence and strategic partnership. To ward off foreign threats and internal coups, and keep a lid on sectraian rivalries. That’s interesting….

Bush and al-Maliki signed the new U.S.-Iraq “declaration of principles” during a secure video conference Monday morning.

This is over at the TechMission site.

Gizmodo: XO Laptop Hacked to Remotely Run Roomba ‘Round Rooms:

This is probably not one of the uses Nicholas Negroponte had in mind when he thought up the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child)…

More on OLPC:

• The OLPC entry at Wikipedia (lots of specs and background info)
• Hands on with the XO Laptop (Laptop Magazine)
• A comparison of OLPC’s XO Laptop and Intel’s Classmate PC (Ars Tecnica)
• How the OLPC program is really rolling out - a fascinating read, again from Laptop Magazine
• An American 8-year-old reviews the OLPC - “Our kid tester found the groundbreaking XO machine to have plenty of shortcomings. But considering its mission as a children’s laptop for the developing world–and its ultra-low price–it has great potential.” (Laptop Mag)

“When given the choice between the XO and his current PC, Nicholas naturally chose the latter. When asked whether he would rather use the XO or his Leapster handheld learning system, he chose the Leapster. But when given the choice between the XO and nothing, he was okay with the XO. And since that’s the choice facing the potential recipients of the XO, that may be enough of a victory.”

These are some good folks: Tribal Generation (English)

They work with the emerging generations in Brazil and now all over South America.

Here’s the logo for their School of Church Planters

They are just starting up Tribal Generation Mexico

I’ll come clean: I really connected with them after (a) hearing the emerging generation samba music they use for worship, and (b) meeting one of their leaders, Olgalvaro Bastos, Jr. (a connection via Wolfgang Fernandez). Their new jingle mixes a little more hip hop r&b and pop. Here’s the jingle (download). If you know Portuguese, hit me back with the lyrics.

• People Evacuated from Ship in Antarctic Waters: Imagine being a passenger. But unlike the movie, evacuation was calm, the pumps kept the ship above water in time for the rescue ship to come, and - ! - a rescue ship was nearby.
• A Universe of Black Film: This festival goes for 17 days and starts today. Unfortunately for me, it’s in New York. I’m stuck in the mild-weather of Southern California.
• Megachurches Add Local Economy to Their Mission: Those mentioned include ChangePoint in Anchorage, LifeBridge in Colorado, Evangelical Christian Credit Union, a couple of churches in Charlotte, Windsor Village in Houston, T.D. Jakes and them, and a couple of AG churches. My guess is that reporters went fishing for scandals in the wake of the investigation of prosperity Gospel pastors, but instead found innovative churches that are investing in the community around them.
• Collapse of Rail, Subway Strike is a First Success for Sarkozy: The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy is comparing Sarkozy to Margaret Thatcher.
• New York City Homicides Still Dropping, to Under 500: This is amazing, especially in light of the hundreds of murders that have taken place in Philadelphia (roughly 1/10 the size of New York) in the same period of time.
• From World Wide Web to Giant Global Graph: The guy who invented the term “world wide web” is now talking “social graphs.” There’s oracle-of-delphi level web geekery in this post, numbs the mind after a while, but remember that this is how those Silicon Valley gajillionaires keep gas in the Infiniti.
• “We are just a few years away from the end of the shrink-wrapped software business. By 2010, people will not be buying software…”: What is it with these Stanford grads? Always trying to upend the world as we know it.
• The Backlash against Tithing: This is a discussion I’ve heard regularly in church circles. It’s good to see it on the pages of the Wall Street Journal.

Bonus Round-up: Thanksgiving on Navarro Avenue

Well, we had a great time yesterday. Kafi’s siblings and cousins and their friends and their friends friends showed up. We had a lot of people. 20-25, including kids. And we had even more food. And even more desserts than food. It was just fun times. My brother and I cooked huevos con chorizo on the grill at about 1030am. We washed it down with Miller Genuine Draft. At 11am these teens came over. They said their mom sent them to ask if we had any more turkeys. Think about that - at 11am on Thanksgiving Day, they come over asking for turkeys, not extra food or extra drink or plates or anything. Whole turkeys. That means they didn’t have anything to feed anyone. I know the family. Way too many mouths and not even the infrastructure to begin cooking for anyone. It take a few hours, but we connected the teens with a ministry effort to feed families and the teens went home (if it can be called that) with plenty for everyone. I’m grateful that the food ministry folks understood the unique situation (which I haven’t spelled out completely here) and allowed the food to leave the site. What else? All my whiffle balls are gone, because I turned my back on the little kids playing batting practice and they had smashed pure homers over the wall. I visited friends up the street and up the hill, and saw a chunk of that Transformers movie in the process. The house is mostly cleaned up, too. After all the good times, I thought the house would be a disaster, but only the room where the children play is unrecognizable. Here are a few pictures:

Here are Micah and Kafi at Sam’s celebration, Nov. 17. I don’t know if I blogged about this, but we had a special celebration service at my church, Pasadena Church, to commemorate the end of Sam’s chemo.

Here’s Sam’s cousin Shelby.

I dig this pic. It’s me reading my blog entry from the day Sam was first diagnosed. That’s how we opened the service.

That’s my niece Giovanna (red hair, front), my brother Andrew, and my nephew Andres.

Here is Sam’s celebration cake: “You are stronger than a power ranger!”

All the kids gathered around Sam and his cake.

Back home, it’s Micah and her daddy.

Grandma with the grandkids.

Micah with Kafi’s sister, Aziza. People say these two look alike.

Rudy and Kafi (who is carrying baby X - we still haven’t settled on a name). And that was yesterday’s Thanksgiving spread.

Those are not the words of shrill lefty Democratic Party-dead ender. They come from former Republican Senator Rick Santorum:

But the movement to help the poor by transforming our entire social-welfare system was snuffed out by a combination of hard-line conservatives who saw this as big-government conservatism and the hard left who wanted no changes at all.

It remains a dead letter with the leading Republican presidential candidates. That is one reason I joined with mostly left-leaning groups to invite candidates from both parties to debate - in Greenville, S.C., on Monday - the role of faith in fighting poverty. The forum was canceled because the only candidate who agreed to attend was Hillary Clinton.

Hillary Clinton just took a step up, in my book.

I’m listening to the Gospel of Matthew. The version is The Bible Experience put out by Zondervan and featuring a cast of African American voices. It’s excellent. There is now a widget for The Bible Experience. I have the New Testament only, but the complete Bible is now available (Angela Bassett as Esther, etc.).

via Fox News Philadelphia, the presidential candidate made a stop at Nueva Esperanza Academy, which is within Esperanza USA. Harambee is friends with the Esperanza folks, who are doing good work in Philly.

Yuval Levin at The Corner (not Bob Carlton’s Corner, the other corner):

Two prominent scientific journals—Science and Cell—are each today publishing papers that demonstrate extraordinary success with a technique called “somatic cell reprogramming….”

…for the stem cell debate, this really could mean the end, and the best possible end: a scientific way around the ethical problem, just as responsible people on both sides of the debate have long hoped might be possible… you get the cells scientists have said are so valuable, and you avoid the violation of human equality and dignity that so troubles some of us….

This kind of outcome has been the hope behind President Bush’s stem cell policy. In fact, the President spoke about this very same technique—reprogramming skin cells—in a speech back in July of 2006, and earlier this year signed an executive order to encourage this kind of work (Thomson’s team, in fact, was supported by the NIH). He should get credit for sticking to a crucial moral principle against immense and often quite irresponsible political pressure.

Time for one of these:

Good job, Dubya.

WaPo: Population With Virus Overstated by Millions:

JOHANNESBURG, Nov. 19 — The United Nations’ top AIDS scientists plan to acknowledge this week that they have long overestimated both the size and the course of the epidemic, which they now believe has been slowing for nearly a decade, according to U.N. documents prepared for the announcement.

AIDS remains a devastating public health crisis in the most heavily affected areas of sub-Saharan Africa. But the far-reaching revisions amount to at least a partial acknowledgment of criticisms long leveled by outside researchers who disputed the U.N. portrayal of an ever-expanding global epidemic.

The latest estimates, due to be released publicly Tuesday, put the number of annual new HIV infections at 2.5 million, a cut of more than 40 percent from last year’s estimate, documents show. The worldwide total of people infected with HIV — estimated a year ago at nearly 40 million and rising — now will be reported as 33 million.

Having millions fewer people with a lethal contagious disease is good news. Some researchers, however, contend that persistent overestimates in the widely quoted U.N. reports have long skewed funding decisions and obscured potential lessons about how to slow the spread of HIV. Critics have also said that U.N. officials overstated the extent of the epidemic to help gather political and financial support for combating AIDS.

“There was a tendency toward alarmism, and that fit perhaps a certain fundraising agenda,” said Helen Epstein, author of “The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West, and the Fight Against AIDS.” “I hope these new numbers will help refocus the response in a more pragmatic way.”

WashPost: State Department Tries Blog Diplomacy:

The State Department, departing from traditional public diplomacy techniques, has what it calls a three-person, “digital outreach team” posting entries in Arabic on “influential” Arabic blogs to challenge misrepresentations of the United States and promote moderate views among Islamic youths in the hopes of steering them from terrorism.

This guy is a good writer:

But Thanksgiving (excepting the premature and somewhat undernourished Canadian version) is unique to America. “What’s it about?” an Irish visitor asked me a couple of years back. “Everyone sits around giving thanks all day? Thanks for what? George bloody Bush?”

Well, Americans have a lot to be thankful for.

Europeans think of this country as “the New World” in part because it has an eternal newness, which is noisy and distracting. Who would ever have thought you could have ready-to-eat pizza faxed directly to your iPod?

And just when you think you’re on top of the general trend of novelty, it veers off in an entirely different direction: Continentals who grew up on Hollywood movies where the guy tells the waitress “Gimme a cuppa joe” and slides over a nickel return to New York a year or two later and find the coffee now costs $5.75, takes 25 minutes and requires an agonizing choice between the cinnamon-gingerbread-persimmon latte with coxcomb sprinkles and the decaf venti pepperoni-Eurasian-milfoil macchiato.

Who would have foreseen that the nation that inflicted fast food and drive-thru restaurants on the planet would then take the fastest menu item of all and turn it into a Kabuki-paced performance art? What mad genius!

But Americans aren’t novelty junkies on the important things. The New World is one of the oldest settled constitutional democracies on Earth, to a degree the Old World can barely comprehend. Where it counts, Americans are traditionalists.

We know Eastern Europe was a totalitarian prison until the Nineties, but we forget that Mediterranean Europe (Greece, Spain, Portugal) has democratic roots going all the way back until, oh, the mid-Seventies; France and Germany’s constitutions date back barely half a century, Italy’s only to the 1940s, and Belgium’s goes back about 20 minutes, and currently it’s not clear whether even that latest rewrite remains operative. The U.S. Constitution is not only older than France’s, Germany’s, Italy’s or Spain’s constitution, it’s older than all of them put together.

Getting coffee from the ‘bucks has indeed become Kabuki-paced performance art.

Anglican Mainstream:

The trial comes almost a year after the majority of congregants in 15 traditional Episcopal churches voted to leave the national church because of disagreements about the nature of God and salvation as well as whether gay men and lesbians should be fully accepted. Northern Virginia has since become one of the most active areas in the country for the conservative, breakaway movement. Clergy around the country are watching this trial to see what happens to Episcopalians who want to leave — and take church properties with them.

In Christ all things hold together.