From one of my favorite bands

"Ultimately, every revolutionary act is an act of love - it's about love for people. And so I think every song I've ever written has been a love song." - zach de la rocha

Beef, its what's for dinner (not anymore)

So i've been reading this book "rich Christians in an age of hunger" and I've been thinking a lot about the choices I make every day.

I blogged a little bit ago about gas, and if buying gas from certian companies has certian environmental or humanitarian effects. Well, this can spread to all sorts of things, clothing, food etc. A really usefull website a friend showed me is www.betterworldshopper.com On better world shopper, they rank companies on a variety of issues from 'A' to 'F'. It's not a perfect website, they don't really tell you how they got their data, but it's a start to making wiser choices.

I've also made the decision to stop buying beef. I'll still eat it if its being served to me, but the social and environmental implications in cattle raising seems to hard to justify without more knowledge. I'm not going to rant on this too much, or look down on people who still eat beef, but there are a couple of reasons:

1. With rising food prices and a global food shortage, its important to concsider how much the world can sustain, and what our crops are being used for. it takes 16 lbs of grains to produce 1 lb of edible beef.
2. With global warming, more intesnse storms and harsher droughts, water is beggining to be an issue for a lot of the united states. It is estimated more than half the water used in the united states is used to grow grains for beef consupmtion or in beef proccessing.
3. Finally, a recent study shows that producing 1 kG of beef produces the same amount of Co2 that is made driving a car for 3 hours while leaving all the lights on in your house.

so thats that!
peace.

Can you still see goodness in my heart?

Yesterday I was walking home from school around 9pm when I realize a man is following closely behind. Soon he is right next to me, just an inch from my elbow. This brief dialog followed:

"Excuse me." He says
"Yes?" I reply
"Can you still see goodness in my heart?" He asks
the question caught me a little off guard.
"What?" I asked.
"Can you still see goodness in my heart?" He repeated.
still a little woozy from a day in front of the computer i replied:
"yeah, i guess so..."

and with that he grinned, and ran off across Broadway.


The man haunted me all night. What did he mean? Then i sat down this morning to read the news.

Children in Africa are still being abducted as soldiers.

Can I still see the the goodness in their hearts?




Angry militants in Gaza continue to fire rockets at neighboring Israel, as Israel continues it's blockade and air strikes of the area.

Can I still see the the goodness in their hearts?



The news continues, war, oppression, corruption, greed. Sin. We are a fallen people, can I still see the goodness in our hearts? Yeah, i guess so. We are image bearers of God. Because He is good, i can't help but see good in all people. Despite the fall, I can still see goodness in our hearts.

I guess this means I have hope for humanity, but that hope can only prevail if the evil in our hearts is redeemed. Then goodness, our true image, will prevail. That's why I have to trust Christ. Without Him, there is no hope. there is no redemption. In him, there is hope. In him, there is peace.

Peace.
mike

Courage

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. "He that will lose his life, the same shall save it," is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes... A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water, and yet drink death like wine.

-G.K. Chesterton, orthodoxy

Envrionmentally friendly gas companies?

I was reading this article in the BBC about Nigeria flaring off natural gas from their oil wells, a wasteful and destructive practice. The oil companies (Shell oil) point their finger at the government while the government points their finger at shell. The whole thing makes me wonder, should I buy gas supplied by shell oil if they do this practice? I'm sure other companies are destructive as well. Are there any gas providers that strive for environmental excellence and fair humanitarian practices? How bought pushing for renewable energy and sustainable practices?
I just feel really uninformed, and the only decision that affects my gas buying is "what's at this exit." but maybe if i knew a little more, i could plan to buy my gas from "better" companies and maybe make a bit of difference in the world.
Peace.
mike

Happy Holidays!

Woo Hoo! I'm home for the holidays. My family is pretty much the bomb so i'm really looking forward to some R&R. un-lucky for me it was a whopping -20 with windchill yesterday, and it doesn't show promises of warming up much. Lucky for me i got a week trial gym membership, some good books to read, plus all the digital entertainment my heart could desire here @ home, so i'm prepared to weather this out...

On tap for the vacation:
-Quality Time with the Fam
-A family trip to Chicago
-Always some Illinois Basketball games (My dad and brother are HUGE fans)
-some spin classes (to keep my legs in shape)
-Plenty of food for eating
-and a trip to S.C. to watch Walt and Haley get hitched.

I'll be back in CO in the new year, I hope everybody has a restful and meaningful holiday season!
Peace.
mike

P.S. if you're on facebook you should check out our sweet hike we did on Friday

Before and After

Yo blog-o-sphere

So i got this bike off of Craigslist for $20 with the original intention of giving it to my bro for Christmas; but i found out it was too small and it'd be pretty expensive to ship it to Illinois.. So instead i fixed it up for a friend who had her bike stolen a couple of months ago. I'm pretty proud of how it turned out. Special thanks to sean for showing me how to re-build the headset and bottom bracket, william for teaching me how to draw flames, and jessie for helping me choose colors, and iris for getting the sweet basket!


I feel like this is where most people can stop reading, but if you ever care to try a project like this here's what I did and what I learned:

1. First i stripped the bike of all its parts and threw them in a big box. You'll need special tools to remove the bottom bracket and headset or you might damage them. My friend sean at the bike shop helped me with this for free.


2. I sanded the frame, primed it, and painted it. I put the flames on my covering the frame in masking tape and then cutting out where i wanted to paint flames. I finished the paint job with a protective enamel clear coat


3. Now comes the rebuild. For a singlespeed or fixed gear, you have two options:
   1. You can try keeping the old wheel, remove the cassette, and put spacers and a single cog on there (i did this on my singlespeed, and it works fine)
   
   
   2. Or you can get a new wheelset, either singlespeed of fixed gear. This is the route i went with this bike because the old wheelset was shot
   
   
   
   
4. It's important that you have good chainline and chain tension. the chain tension on this bike was easy because of the horizontal dropouts. If you don't have horizontal dropouts, you can play with gear ratios and use a "half link" to try to get the tension right. For chainline, you might have to change the bottom bracket you're using. I got lucky and was able to get by by shifting the large chainring from the outside to the inside of the crank bolts.


5. I also replaced some clutch parts (seatpost, grips, added the basket, and threw on a set of old mtn tires i had laying in the garage).

and Whamo, a finished bike! i'm a little jellous i can't cruise around on this baby!