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Stanford Martial Arts
I was on campus today when all of a sudden the greenspace between Tresidder Union and White Plaza became a combat zone.
It was pretty cool.
The martial arts clubs were out recruiting by demonstrating their slickest moves.
I learned something important today–don’t mess with the Kempo Karate club at Stanford. They scare me.
The other groups were pretty impressive too, especially the Wushu Club.
Side note: people sometimes wonder why there are so many Christian organizations on your typical campus when they all agree on the basics. One might as well ask why there are so many martial arts organizations when they all focus on the same things (wearing funny clothes and fighting one another). We disagree on some techniques and a few philosophical premises. Differentiation is not a big deal, nor is it unique to religious organizations.
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The Vicissitudes of Organizational Life on Campus
In Campus Collisions, Christianity Today tells the story of the recent troubles Christian organizations have had on campuses.
The lead paragraphs: THE HARVARD UNDERGRADUATE COUNCIL was working its way through a night of routine business last November when sophomore Jason Lurie, an officer of the Harvard Secular Society and a member of the council, dropped his bombshell. Did the Undergraduate Council realize, he asked, that it was approving grants to openly discriminatory organizations?
Really well-written article by a former InterVarsity staffer.
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Disreputable Jesus
While I was preparing for this week’s message I came across this paragraph which I don’t think is going to make it in (doesn’t fit the flow), but it was so good that I feel compelled to share it with you:
Dorothy Sayers in her book Unpopular Opinions wrote:
Setting aside the scandal caused by His Messianic claims and His reputation as a political firebrand, only two accusations of personal depravity seem to have been brought against Jesus of Nazareth. First, that He was a Sabbath-breaker. Secondly, that He was “a gluttonous man and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners” — or (to draw aside the veil of Elizabethan English that makes it sound so much more respectable) that He ate too heartily, drank too freely, and kept very disreputable company, including grafters of the lowest type and ladies who were no better than they should be. For nineteen and a half centuries, the Christian Churches have laboured, not without success, to remove this unfortunate impression made by their Lord and Master. They have hustled the Magdalens from the Communion-table, founded Total Abstinence Societies in the name of Him who made the water wine, and added improvements of their own, such as various bans and anathemas upon dancing and theatre-going. They have transferred the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday, and, feeling that the original commandment “Thou shalt not work” was rather half-hearted, have added to it the new commandment, “Thou shalt not play.”
So there.
Now that I look at it again it may make it in after all… come and find out!
By the way, this week we’re continuing our “Jesus Is Asking You…” series of messages with the pivotal question Who Do You Say That I Am?
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Our New Apartment
We just signed a lease on a new apartment! We’ll be moving this month–I’ll update our contact information soon.
For now, you can see some photos we took of the new pad.
It’s a great place–3 bedrooms, 2 bath, nice patio, and a fireplace! The best part is that the rent is the same as what we’re paying now. Woohoo!
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Daily Bible Readings
I woke up early this morning and had this thought about daily Bible reading plans (namely, that it would be good to have one on our website).
So I added it on the top left of the screen. Just wanted to draw your attention to it.
I figured it would be pretty easy to set one up using PHP and MySQL, but I didn’t want to have to do a ton of data entry. Rather than reinventing the wheel, I searched for an online tabulation of Bible readings. I found a good one at Bible-reading.com.
I copied the plan into Word and used the search and replace features to format all the readings into 364 SQL INSERT statements (the number of readings in this plan). I added two more (thereby insuring that the database always has the data that I query for even in a leap year. Side note: I picked these somewhat at random and they’re probably not great choices, especially the Matthew reading).
Then I created some quick PHP code to take the current day of the year and look up the corresponding reading. I took the output and made it compatible with Bible Gateway and voila–an easy online Bible reading plan!
The code was very straightforward:
PHP:-
$day=$date[‘yday’];
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$passage=$line[“passage”];
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That’s pretty much it. It turned out to be a piece of cake!
The data entry would have been horrible–but I was able to avoid that hassle. If you need the SQL statements for any reason, you can use these:
SQL:-
CREATE TABLE ‘bible_reading‘ (
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‘day‘ int(11) NOT NULL DEFAULT ‘0’,
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‘passage‘ varchar(255) NOT NULL DEFAULT ”,
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PRIMARY KEY (‘day‘)
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) TYPE=MyISAM;
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#
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# Dumping data for table ‘bible_reading‘
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#
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INSERT INTO ‘bible_reading‘ VALUES (66, ‘Ruth’);
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INSERT INTO ‘bible_reading‘ VALUES (160, ‘Lamentations’);
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INSERT INTO ‘bible_reading‘ VALUES (218, ‘2 Thessalonians’);
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INSERT INTO ‘bible_reading‘ VALUES (251, ‘Joel’);
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INSERT INTO ‘bible_reading‘ VALUES (253, ‘Titus’);
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INSERT INTO ‘bible_reading‘ VALUES (260, ‘Philemon’);
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INSERT INTO ‘bible_reading‘ VALUES (272, ‘Obadiah’);
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INSERT INTO ‘bible_reading‘ VALUES (279, ‘Jonah’);
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INSERT INTO ‘bible_reading‘ VALUES (286, ‘Micah’);
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INSERT INTO ‘bible_reading‘ VALUES (293, ‘Nahum’);
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INSERT INTO ‘bible_reading‘ VALUES (300, ‘Habakkuk’);
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INSERT INTO ‘bible_reading‘ VALUES (307, ‘Zephaniah’);
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INSERT INTO ‘bible_reading‘ VALUES (314, ‘Haggai’);
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INSERT INTO ‘bible_reading‘ VALUES (323, ‘2 Peter’);
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INSERT INTO ‘bible_reading‘ VALUES (335, ‘Malachi’);
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INSERT INTO ‘bible_reading‘ VALUES (344, ‘2 John’);
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INSERT INTO ‘bible_reading‘ VALUES (351, ‘3 John’);
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INSERT INTO ‘bible_reading‘ VALUES (358, ‘Jude’);
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My College Roomie & Books
One of the things that bound my college roomate Dave Rainey and I together was our mutual love of books–especially old books.
That’s why I’m so happy to announce David’s new website: Christian Book Finder.
It’s an annotated bibliography organized by subject–very useful! The only thing I don’t like about it is that he doesn’t link directly to online book vendors… that would make it easier to act on one of his recommendations!
By the way, Dave is well-qualified for this venture. In addition to being a lover of books, he has a Master of Library and Information Science. How cool is that?
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Pornography?
I just ran across a great website called Erase the Dark which builds a strong case against pornography.
If you ever need some solid research and arguments come here.
Also, if you ever play the rationalization game with yourself (I’m not really hurting anyone and this isn’t what Jesus was talking about anyway) you should check out the site.
It’s quite good.
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Pregnancy Update: We Have a Heart
Today Paula and I stopped by the doctor’s office for a routine checkup and got to hear Baby Davis’ hearbeat.
That was cool.
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California, California, California…
This is just a crazy state. The gubernatorial recall is in full swing, Jesse Jackson showed up on the Stanford campus today to denounce one of our ballot initiatives, and I just read an eye-opening article about the cost-of-living in the Bay Area.
Don’t get me wrong, I love this place.
It’s still crazy.
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