http://www.urbanonramps.com content and networking for urban-minded Christians around the world Sun, 04 May 2008 11:41:40 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Then don't read these: • Watch the Web for Climate-change Truths in the UK Telegraph • Climate Audit by Steve McIntyre • Watts Up With That? by Anthony Watts http://www.urbanonramps.com/if-you-believe-that-the-global-warming-debate-is-over-and-all-thats-left-is-to-decide-what-to-do-to-stop-man-made-global-warming/ #1 Song on this day in history http://www.urbanonramps.com/on-the-day-i-was-born-light-my-fire-by-the-doors-was-the-1-song-in-america/ I've given iTunes a bunch of my money. I get my music from there, I love the 99 cent per track structure, love it all. Last night, however, I downloaded some music from the Amazon MP3 store. The reason? I need DRM free tracks for some of the, uh, "things" ... http://www.urbanonramps.com/drm-free/ New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin made the pitch last week (according to Investor's Business Daily):The mayor of the hurricane-hit city made an impassioned plea to Congress to pass the Colombia free trade agreement for New Orleans' sake. He knows how badly his city needs every break it can get, three ... http://www.urbanonramps.com/want-to-help-new-orleans-support-the-colombian-free-trade-agreement/ Stuff I've seen around the web lately: • Freshman 15 theory takes a pounding • When Tech Innovation has a Social Mission: The article is about TechSoup. Harambee is a TechSoup member. • UrbanFaith.com is coming soon • Behold Wordpress, Destroyer of CPUs: geeky. informative comment thread. I'm off to install the wp-cache plugin. ... http://www.urbanonramps.com/round-up-428/ Word is that this initiative is about to take off (link is to the President's 2008 State of the Union speech, search the page for "pell grants for kids"):We must also do more to help children when their schools do not measure up. Thanks to the D.C. Opportunity Scholarships you ... http://www.urbanonramps.com/pell-grants-for-kids/ Meet Ryan. In small and large ways, brother is bringing it in to Ayuda Community Center. But you can't hire him away - he's committed to Hunting Park. http://www.urbanonramps.com/urban-ministry-fundraising-rainmakers/ Sam next to the Harambee F150, this afternoon. Sam will be 8 next month. This day was not promised: August 20, 2004 I thank God for Sam. http://www.urbanonramps.com/one-day/ 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 ... http://www.urbanonramps.com/heres-a-little-bit-of-right-wingery-to-brighten-up-your-day/ 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 ... http://www.urbanonramps.com/full-day/ 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 ... http://www.urbanonramps.com/woo-whee-the-testimony-was-riveting-this-morning-before-the-los-angeles-city-council-when-a-group-of-black-residents-pleaded-with-the-15-elected-council-members-to-rescind-special-order-40-the-lon/ • 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 ... http://www.urbanonramps.com/links/ 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. ... http://www.urbanonramps.com/micah-has-chicken-pox/ 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, ... http://www.urbanonramps.com/drama/ 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." http://www.urbanonramps.com/i-drink-lots-of-coffee/ 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. http://www.urbanonramps.com/the-mustard-seed-in-global-strategy/ 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 http://www.urbanonramps.com/sabes-que/ 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 ... http://www.urbanonramps.com/the-rise-of-the-mergents/ Wall Street Journal:The past 10 days will be remembered as the time the U.S. government discarded a half-century of rules to save American financial capitalism from collapse. On the Richter scale of government activism, the government's recent actions don't (yet) register at FDR levels. They are shrouded in technicalities and buried ... http://www.urbanonramps.com/ten-days-that-changed-capitalism/ Pasadena Star News on tomorrow's walk:For the past year, groups like El Centro de Accion Social, the Pasadena NAACP, the California Coaches Coalition, Amer-I-Can, the Neighborhood Outreach Workers and the Western Justice Center, among many others, have quietly chipped away at the problem, according to area activists. "We need to concentrate ... http://www.urbanonramps.com/peace-walk-to-stress-community-unity/ Interesting:The orange-flavored, sugar-free lollipop they devised is infused with a natural ingredient found in licorice that kills the primary bacterium causing tooth decay, Streptococcus mutans.... ...(there are more innovations) in the works to target bacteria wreaking havoc in the nose, ear and gut, to name just a few. http://www.urbanonramps.com/good-lollipop-kills-bacteria-that-causes-tooth-decay/ I'm only linking to this because that's an interesting phrase. I'm not sure what it's about, nor why I'm on the mailing list. But these appear to be some Christian brothers and sisters. Here's the link to their page explaining everything: www.wrf.ca/urban http://www.urbanonramps.com/stained-glass-urbanism/ Samuel Gregg @ Acton:Why then are so many business leaders ambiguous about markets? Apart from resenting market disciplines, many businessmen have not proved immune to the neo-Keynesianism still dominating much economic policy throughout the world. An example is some private bankers’ refusal in the present credit-crunch to contemplate letting any significant ... http://www.urbanonramps.com/it%e2%80%99s-not-enough-for-business-to-be-pro-business-business-leaders-need-to-be-pro-free-enterprise-pro-free-competition-and-pro-free-trade/ via Newsbusters:NB: All right, I've got just one more quick question for you. Last time I saw you, you'd just gotten an iPhone. How's that working out for you? ROVE: I love it. My life has changed. I have a shred of coolness. I've got my 3,500 people in my addressbook ... http://www.urbanonramps.com/karl-roves-iphone/ The Gratitude Campaign http://www.urbanonramps.com/say-thank-you-without-saying-it/ Pretty interesting:Whenever Ronald Reagan would mention his suspicion that Mikhail Gorbachev was a secret believer, everyone on the White House staff would scoff, thinking the president naive. When I had the opportunity to speak to Gorbachev a couple of years ago, however, I found myself concluding that Reagan had been ... http://www.urbanonramps.com/mikhail-gorbachev-is-a-christian/ Today we are saving a teenager's ear. A ENT doctor told him that he would lose the hearing in one ear if he did not have surgery by summer. A bevy of circumstances almost caused him to miss his scheduled surgery today. But he made it. As I write they ... http://www.urbanonramps.com/just-another-day-in-urban-ministry/ This post - How would free individuals handle climate change? - over at Samizdata.net has produced an interesting and helpful comment thread. It's a bunch of libertarians discussing what a properly libertarian approach to Global Warming would look like. A few people mention the standard "encourage poor Bangladeshis to get ... http://www.urbanonramps.com/libertarians-corner-themselves-on-the-global-warming-issue/ This morning I hired a guy in Argentina to do graphic design work (a very quick project) for the Harambee. He got paid up front, digital payment. I sent him the assignment via email. He just got back to me with the draft, which I will check out when I'm ... http://www.urbanonramps.com/globalization/ We raised over $36,000 at our annual Harambee Benefit that took place this past Saturday night. 200 images from the event are here (Thank you, photographer Michael Fernandez). http://www.urbanonramps.com/images-from-the-harambee-benefit/ I'm getting this book: I've heard about this book for a while. It was written anonymously by an MD who works at a university health center. Warren Throckmorton interviewed this doc back in late 2006:A superb storyteller, she describes patients who do all the right things: They eat well, exercise, and ... http://www.urbanonramps.com/casual-sex-is-a-health-hazard-for-young-women/ via ReadWriteWeb: "In 10 weeks, the 80 students had created 50+ applications and in total had over 20 Million installs - with 5 having more than 1 million users." The profs reported 10 learnings, some of which apply to urban ministry fundraisers (my comments in itals):1. It's never too late to ... http://www.urbanonramps.com/10-things-stanford-learned-building-facebook-apps-and-which-ones-apply-to-urban-ministry-fundraising/ Sramana Mitra in Forbes Magazine:India's $30 billion IT/ITES services industry, meanwhile, is slowly and surely losing its competitive advantage. Most of the 4 million people that the industry employs have now "arrived." They have breezed through the milestones that their fathers had to toil all their lives to reach. A phone. ... http://www.urbanonramps.com/the-coming-death-of-indian-outsourcing/ Church Times UK: They are unsuitable because of their Christian beliefs:Mrs Johns, aged 59, said on Monday that she and her husband had fostered more than 15 children, but had stopped for a number of years owing to work commitments. A year ago, they decided to apply to be weekend respite ... http://www.urbanonramps.com/unsuitable-foster-parents-to-appeal/ There will always be a point in the future when you can get that degree, serve on that board or committee, write that book, take that trip, make that career move. But your children will only be children for a very short time. http://www.urbanonramps.com/micah-happy/ That's Brian McLaren when he came to Harambee for one of our luncheons. That's me in the background. What you can't see is a group of 60 or so, mostly Fuller Seminarians, who came to the event. http://www.urbanonramps.com/i-dig-this-shot/ Kafi is with some girls from Harambee Preparatory School. http://www.urbanonramps.com/thats-my-beautiful-wife-kafi/ What a great shot. It's Albert Cuellar from Young Life Bay Area, moi, and Dr. Manny Ortiz from Westminster Theological Seminar in the City of Brotherly Love. http://www.urbanonramps.com/cuellar-carrasco-ortiz/ http://www.urbanonramps.com/i-need-more-cowbell/ I was a tenth grader lying on my bed Sunday afternoon alone in the house looking out the window at the clouds moving across the sky listening the holy spirit tutoring me as the synapses fired in my brain as I thought about things I had seen and heard and experienced the holy spirit explained these things to me "see, ... http://www.urbanonramps.com/in-the-beginning/