Prairie Fire Festival

Prairie Fire Festival in Cottonwood Falls, KS

Article in the Emporia Gazette April 5, 2008

Eyewitness Account, Lawrence Daily Journal World, April 28 2008

news video – Burning Flint Hills is a new revenue option for ranchers

I guess I missed it this year 😦

 

 

 

Barack Obama’s Hebrew Blog

Here is Barack Obama’s an article about Obama’s Hebrew Blog.

Here is an interesting article on Obama’s religious views:

http://austinmayor.blogspot.com/2007/01/for-record-barack-obamas-christian.html

 

 

 

John McCain’s Pastor speaks

After all we know about Barack Obama’s Pastor Jeremiah Wright – I have been looking for similar insights from Hillary Clinton and John McCain’s Pastor. I just assumed one reason the media wasn’t covering McCain’s Pastor is because he simply doesn’t have one – but then I found this:

April 25 (Bloomberg) — John McCain‘s pastor ends his sermons with an altar call, beckoning any stirred souls to the front of his 3,500-seat“worship center” to publicly dedicate their lives to Jesus Christ. In McCain’s 15 years of attending Dan Yeary’s North Phoenix Baptist Church, the pastor says, the Arizona senator has never made that walk.

“All I can tell you is that John and I have had some interesting conversations” about faith, said Yeary, a 69-year- old Texan. “And we’ll have more.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aHH18X6Vsqzk&refer=home

It looks like two of the three people left in the running for President of the United States are committed Christians, and the other one is a seeker.

The first World Wide Web Page

I typed in the first http: web address ever – not expecting it to work – but it did!

Here it is:

http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html

It now takes you to a page that explains the beginnings of the World Wide Web in 1990. There is a 1992 replica of the content of the orginal web site here.

I found this by looking at the FAQ of the man who originally thought up the WWW, html, and http: (but not the internet) – Tim Berners-Lee.

 

Russia becomes a “Christian” Nation

Here is an interesting article concerning freedom of religion in today’s New York Times – At Expense of Others, Putin Picks a Church.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, a deeply religious man, believes that being Russian means being Russian Orthodox. In 988, the entire nation was baptized as Christian by imperial decree. It was called the baptism of ancient Russia. The government wants to do a similar thing now. Now the bad news – all other forms of Christianity are regarded as sects. Proslytizing by Protestants and Catholics is strictly prohibited.

On local television last month, the city’s chief Russian Orthodox priest, who is a confidant of the region’s most powerful politicians, gave a sermon that was repeated every few hours. His theme: Protestant heretics.

“We deplore those who are led astray — those Jehovah’s Witnesses, Baptists, evangelicals, Pentecostals and many others who cut Christ’s robes like bandits, who are like the soldiers who crucified Christ, who ripped apart Christ’s holy coat,” declared the priest, the Rev. Aleksei D. Zorin.

Such language is familiar to Protestants in Stary Oskol, who number about 2,000 in a city of 225,000.

Aren’t you glad that we don’t live in a “Christian” country like Russia?

Bob Dylan’s “If Not For You” done by Derek Webb and Sandra McCracken

Christian folk singer Derek Webb (one of my favorite Christian singers) just came out with a new EP of songs with his wife Sandra, which covers the Bob Dylan song “If Not For You”. Here is the Christianity Today review:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/music/reviews/2008/ampersandep.html

Ironically, it’s their simple acoustic cover of Bob Dylan’s “If Not for You” that sounds sweetest of all—these two could follow his example in writing a straightforward love song of their own.

I downloaded Derek Webb and Sandra McCracken creative rendition of this Bob Dylan song dating back to the 1970 “New Morning” album. This is a wonderful folk love song. Bob Dylan’s song is classic and cannot be improved on.  I never realized how great this song was before.

http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/notforyou.html

Maybe we could all benefit by writing husband and wife love songs and poems like Bob Dylan’s “If Not For You”!

If not for you,
Babe, I couldn’t find the door,
Couldn’t even see the floor,
I’d be sad and blue,
If not for you.

If not for you,
Babe, I’d lay awake all night,
Wait for the mornin’ light
To shine in through,
But it would not be new,
If not for you.

If not for you
My sky would fall,
Rain would gather too.
Without your love I’d be nowhere at all,
I’d be lost if not for you,
And you know it’s true.

If not for you
My sky would fall,
Rain would gather too.
Without your love I’d be nowhere at all,
Oh! What would I do
If not for you.

If not for you,
Winter would have no spring,
Couldn’t hear the robin sing,
I just wouldn’t have a clue,
Anyway it wouldn’t ring true,
If not for you.

Because He listens to me

 1-6 I love God because he listened to me, listened as I begged for mercy.
   He listened so intently
      as I laid out my case before him.
   Death stared me in the face,
      hell was hard on my heels.
   Up against it, I didn’t know which way to turn;
      then I called out to God for help:
   “Please, God!” I cried out.
      “Save my life!”
   God is gracious—it is he who makes things right,
      our most compassionate God.
   God takes the side of the helpless;
      when I was at the end of my rope, he saved me.

Psalm 116:1-6 (the Message)

 

one hundred million women are missing

Statistically, there should be 105 females for every 100 males. However, at exactly the same time that ultrasound devices were able to determine the sex of the fetus in the womb, this statistic changed dramatically. In 1997 in China, there are now 117 male births for every 100 female births.

According to Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen – one hundred million women are missing from the world population.

Source: I am not a social activist: Making Jesus the Agenda by Ronald Sider (2008) p 103.

This article made me think of this.

Dogs rescues baby abandoned by mother

 

Cornerstone Audio

Here is the brand new link to Cornerstone Church’s sermons (my church):

http://www.cornerstonewestchester.com/audiomain.html

The African Green Revolution

Food yields in Africa are about the same as they were 50 years ago – one metric ton of grain per hectare. Almost everywhere else in the world, farmers are getting three metric tons per hectare. India experienced a Green Revolution when poor farmers started using modern farming techniques – but this has not happened yet in Africa. By using high-yield seeds, fertilizer, and small scale irrigation, crop production could be increased and farmers could go from subsistance farming to commercial farming.

Jeffery Sachs, in an editorial in the Scientific American, (May 2008, p 42) says that poverty could be greatly reduced if farmers had the capital and the know-how to increase their agricultural production. It would be very possible to double grain production in Africa by 2012,  make 3/4 of the subsistance farmers into commercial farmers in a decade, and cut the ranks of the hungry by at least half  by 2015. It would only cost 10 billion dollars a year from the rich countries of the world – which amounts to only $10 per person in donor countries.