Some mischief from the National Review blog:
Democrats on the Economy in 1996:“Our economy is the healthiest it has been in three decades.” (President Bill Clinton, State of the Union Address, January 23, 1996)
Democrats on the Economy in 2008:
“The bottom line is that this administration is the owner of the worst jobs record since Herbert Hoover.” (Senator Charles Schumer, Press Release, March 7, 2008)
I was on a one-hour conference call this morning with the CCDA Youth Steering Committee, planning the national conference in October (in Miami! dig it). After that I transitioned immediately into a site visit with the Pasadena Community Foundation. We at Harambee have partnered up with Leadership Pasadena on a solar panels project, namely, installing solar panels on one of our Harambee properties. I did a bunch of stuff before these two meetings, plus we are trying to get a donated vehicle - a Ford Expedition, 8 passengers, yes - in full operation. If I catch these wannabe skaters without high school diplomas walking up the street, I’m going to tackle them and haul them in to the local employment office. Just keepin buys over here.
This is a hot issue in LA and it won’t go away anytime soon:
The black residents are seeking a decision by the council to enact the so-called Jamiel’s Law, named after Jamiel Shaw, a promising and law-abiding 17-year-old high school student allegedly shot by an illegal immigrant, 18th Street Gang member Pedro Espinoza. The noxious Espinoza, who has a massively long rap sheet, was arrested and then released by the LAPD shortly before he allegedly murdered Jamiel.
Via Jill Stewart at the LA Weekly
• Wordpress as a membership directory: Hmm… when I started Urban Onramps - 9 years ago - it was intended as a web directory ala original Yahoo. There may be hope yet…
• An enduring measure of fitness: The Simple Push-up
• U.S. In-Flight Broadband is A-gogo by Spring: The dream is not dead. American Airlines is on board. Dig it.
• Facebook Wordpress theme: All this stuff is just going to mash together one day…
• Goodbye, Book Advances: HarperCollins turns a page in publishing
• $10 from DC to NYC! You can bet I’m using this from now on: BoltBus
• College Isn’t Worth a Million Dollars: So says some guy
She’s got the little bumps on her body, but it’s a mild case. She has had all her vaccinations, so chicken pox has not flared up like it normally does. Nevertheless, we’re keeping her away from other children. She’s at Aunt Shirley’s in West LA right now. I miss her. She’s only three but she’s perceptive and grasps significant concepts, so I’ve always got to stay on my toes.
Here are some pictures of the kids:
(above) It’s Samuel feeding baby Gabrielle on my bed.
(above) Here’s Sam at City of Hope last week. He went for his monthly check up. It’s all good. He’s not only done with chemotherapy (he finished in November), he’s now officially done with Bactrim, too. This was the second hospital visit in a row where he did not scream bloody murder when the nurse drew blood by inserting a needle into his arm. All this time - more than three years - Sam got blood draws via a needle into his chest port. Psychologically, it’s a different thing to get a straight needle into the arm than to get one into his chest port. So I’m glad he’s getting stronger about regular blood draws.
(above) Here’s Micah on stage at my church’s Easter Sunday service. This was during rehearsal.
(above) I was in the backyard the other day, washing down the patio, and Micah wanted to play with the hose. She loves it. She would sit there for an hour if she could, just letting the water run.
(above) Here’s Micah at ballet class. They did a performance that was beyond simplistic, but hey, the kids are 3 and 4. Micah loves ballet, hip hop dance, writing her name on paper, painting, chalk drawing, singing along to Alicia Keys’ “No One” and U2’s “it’s all right, it’s all right” (i.e. Mysterious Ways), and slugging her brother in the back.
I torched this blog earlier today. After upgrading to Wordpress 2.5, it all went kerflooey. I went fishing for a way to find my sql database password, but nothing I tried - control panel, sql web searches, raw file code, calls to hotshot database programmers - helped. In the end, what worked was this: I created a new user, attached that new user to my sql database, used the new user info in the wp-config file, and the blog came roaring back to life. Then I had another problem: I couldn’t get into my admin panel. Went to Wordpress.org, into the forum, searched using my error message as the search parameter, and found someone who said to eliminate ALL WHITE SPACES from the wp-config file. It worked, perfectly. I like trying upgrades and am not too bothered when I encounter a problem, because that problem is an opportunity to learn something new about the interweb.
BBC News: Daily Caffeine “Protects Brain”: Coffee may cut the risk of dementia by blocking the damage cholesterol can inflict on the body, research suggests
“This is the best evidence yet that caffeine equivalent to one cup of coffee a day can help protect the brain against cholesterol.”
Check this out. I guarantee that this is the heaviest article you (will) have read in 2008.
RELATED: Muslims leaving Islam in droves. Interesting article, but the numbers and rapid impact seem a bit fantastic to me.
I changed the book cover only - the innards are the same. You can do this sort of thing when you use Lulu and don’t lock yourself in with an ISBN number.
PROTEST & INVEST
and other insights into urban and multiethnic ministry
It’s chaordic - over at the Emergent Village web site there’s a post naming a variety of Emergent subgroups that have, uh, emerged. They’ve got Luthermergents, Methomergents, Presbymergents, Reformergents, Submergents (Anabaptists), Anglimergents,Convergents (Quakers), AGmergents (Assemblies of God), and they are asking if there are more subgroups out there. Though the name doesn’t carry a “mergent” at the end of it, I think they should list La Red del Camino, a Latin America-wide network of Emergents.
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