Humanize the Earth!

car v. trike

From Johnny Payphone:

car: 0
trike: 1

update on co-op and moving and Africa and such

Last week was a lot of hard labor at the Hub Housing Co-op, pulling up tile and plywood covering the original (over 100 years old) maple floors in John’s unit and mine. Then there was a lot of stress Monday over getting appliances ordered and getting a contract signed and initial payment made so our guy could sand and re-finish the floors in those two units (he estimated 5 day job so needed to start Tuesday) before John and I move on Sunday.

Speaking of that, who wants to help? Any time you want to come is good. Refreshments will be provided. We start at 2149 W. Ohio and finish at 2358 S. Marshall. Come over later even if we’re finished. Call if you think we might be in transit or want to confirm where we are. 312 371 6625.

So once everything got worked out Monday, I started to feel more calm. Still felt stressed about moving and getting packed for Africa and getting this condo sale finalized and all that jazz. So I decided to take the evening off from everything and just spent it with Regula at her place. The floor guy did get started.

Today I have felt even more calm. Part of that is it being slower at work and part of it is that people are helping out when I’ve asked and even when I haven’t. I don’t need to be in charge of everything. So I didn’t even go to the co-op today either. I came home after work and did some more packing of the house and some more packing for Africa. I feel that both tasks are now quite managable in the time I have.

So tomorrow night maybe I’ll go see how the floors look sanded. And I’ll pack some more. And spend some time planning what I need in terms of materials for Ghana. And that’s it. Friday is the next co-op meeting so I’ll see the floors again. Saturday is all-day packing, as long as it takes. Sunday is the move. Monday is carpet cleaning in the new place. Wednesday is cleaning of the old place. Thursday I leave for Africa.

It’s all good. :-)

mis-translation rectified by each of us

Chris Corrigan asks a great question from generationsit:

What, in your own words, is your deepest experience of this moment right now? What new spiritual theory could we synthesize if left to our own devices?

I’m not ready to answer this at the moment. I found the question important enough to post here anyway.

100 Days of Action to combat genocide in Darfur, Sudan

“If every member of the House and Senate had received 100 letters from people back home saying we have to do something about Rwanda, when the crisis was first developing, then I think the response would have been different.”

-Senator Paul Simon, after the Rwandan genocide

April 6 will mark the beginning of 100 Days of Action to combat genocide in Darfur, Sudan. This date was chosen because it marks the anniversary of the start of the 100 day genocide in Rwanda in 1994 where 800,000 people lost their lives. On this day, Senators Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Jon Corzine (D-NJ), primary authors of the Darfur Accountability Act, and Representative Donald Payne, author of the Darfur Genocide Accountability Act, will speak in Washington to kick off a campaign to bring awareness and attention to the atrocities occuring in Darfur. The bills call for several specific actions, including creating a new U.N. Security Council resolution with sanctions; supports increased presence of the African Union peacekeepers, freezing assets and denying visas to those responsible for the genocide and other war crimes; and making Darfur a military no-fly zone.

An estimated 350,000 people have been killed by the Sudanese military and janjawid militia in Southern Sudan. Another 3 million are displaced from their homes and in danger of starvation, illness, and continued harassment in temporary camps. Several hundred thousand more are in refugee camps in Chad.

We must be the voice for these voiceless people and I am asking for your help. We are urging our govenment to pass strong resolutions of support for the people of Sudan and against the genocide occurring there. I am including two links here which will give you more information about Sudan, ways to act by contacting your congress people, and other humanitarian and political ways to support the people of Darfur.

http://www.stopgenocidenow.org/ and http://www.genocideinterventionfund.org/

Please take the time to learn more about Darfur and let your Congress people know that you want them to act on your behalf to bring peace to the people of this devastated region.

Another way we can make an impact is to support divestment. On March 31st the California Assembly unanimously passed a resolution urging California’s $300 billion retirement funds for public employees to avoid investing in global companies that do business in Sudan. Nation-wide, public retirement funds have in excess of $91 billion invested in companies active in Sudan. You might want to bring this up to your legislators as well. Without our funds, it would be more difficult for the government to buy weapons to kill their own citizens. You can find a complete list at http://www.sudancampaign.com/sudaninvestments.htm

font sizes changed

Thanks to a discussion on the Information Systems Forum list, I started thinking again about how this site displays in your web browser window. When I set up the site originally, I was clear that I didn’t want to specify the width of the page since people view sites in all sorts of different screen dimensions. That’s why this page might look wider to you than some other blogs or web pages that only take up a portion of your screen. Or, if your screen is small, this site might actually fit on the page rather than be too big like some other sites.

Anyway, until today I was still using fixed text sizes. I had 39, 10, 15, 14, 12, 11 and 8pt fonts. This page explains that another way to specify sizes is xx-small | x-small | small | medium | large | x-large | xx-large so I converted the 39 into xx-large, the 15 and 14 into medium, the 12 into x-small and the 10, 11 and 8 into xx-small. This should give your browser more ability to re-size to fit your needs, rather that what I think things should look like.

Categories: blogging, css