Author: Glen

The Facebook In The WSJ

Extreme­ly pop­u­lar web­site the Face­book seems to be alarm­ing some col­lege admin­is­tra­tors.

In The Dorms This Morning

I was on cam­pus this morn­ing strolling through Toy­on, and I noticed a lot of appar­ent­ly dorm-spon­sored fly­ers cel­e­brat­ing Hanukah and Kwan­zaa. I noticed some­thing was miss­ing, and so I asked a stu­dent if there were any dorm-spon­sored Christ­mas acknowl­edge­ments any­where in the dorm. She said no.

That Never Occurred To Me

As I was doing some read­ing in the Dic­tio­nary of the Old Tes­ta­ment: Pen­ta­teuch, a thought jumped out at me in the arti­cle Fam­i­ly Rela­tion­ships: ston­ing is a unique form of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment because it requires the entire com­mu­ni­ty to accept the respon­si­bil­i­ty for putting some­one to death and it pre­vents any one per­son from hav­ing to serve as the exe­cu­tion­er. It’s like a fir­ing squad that way. I won­der how the debate on the death penal­ty woud change if we each had to help exe­cute con­victs…

I Just Coined a New Word

Gum­nas­tics:
(1) as a noun, the fas­ci­nat­ing facial con­tor­tions of a tooth­less per­son
(2) as an adjec­tive (gum­nas­tic), of or per­tain­ing to the facial motions of the untoothed

College Factoid

“The aver­age age of an under­grad­u­ate stu­dent is 26, reports the Amer­i­can Coun­cil on Edu­ca­tion. But the aver­age age of an under­grad­u­ate liv­ing on cam­pus is 20, the group says.” (source: Alco­hol mak­ers on tricky path in mar­ket­ing to col­lege crowd)

Overwhelming Generosity

Paula and I loved our first microwave. It had this awe­some dial that did every­thing. You did­n’t need to punch a number–you just turned the dial and mag­ic hap­pened.

One sad day our microwave died. Food stopped warm­ing yet the microwave kept churn­ing, lead­ing us to sur­mise that radi­a­tion was seep­ing into our chro­mo­somes.

So we got a replace­ment microwave from a friend. It was great, but the light did­n’t work and the food did­n’t rotate. And we often sus­pect­ed that radi­a­tion was still seep­ing into our chro­mo­somes (but only half of them owing to the lack of rota­tion).

And that’s just one rea­son we’re so grate­ful for last night: many of the Assem­blies of God church­es in the South Bay threw a Christ­mas par­ty to cel­e­brate AG US Mis­sion­ar­ies. We and the Har­lows were the recip­i­ents of out­ra­geous gen­eros­i­ty. Dana got books, stuffed ani­mals, a play tea set, a stroller, some garb, and an enor­mous lady­bug pil­low (with match­ing sheets and cov­er).

And we got a ful­ly func­tion­al microwave. No more radi­a­tion-steeped DNA, no more inex­plic­a­ble tans, just hot tasty food on demand.

And the icing on the cake? Not too long ago an alum­nus of our min­istry gave me a PSP (a com­plete­ly unex­pect­ed and much appre­ci­at­ed gift).

We are blessed beyond mea­sure. Say what you will about the hier­ar­chy of the Assem­blies of God, the tremen­dous gen­eros­i­ty of our laypeo­ple is unmatched.

Because I Like Quoting Myself

Here is the thought that has been my eschat­a­log­i­cal anchor for at least five years: we will be just as sur­prised by the details of the Sec­ond Com­ing as were the Phar­isees by the details of the First.

Grownup School

Ama­zon has a fea­ture called Grownup School that I was total­ly unaware of. It’s an awe­some idea–ask experts what books they think are best in their field and let the rest of us in on the secret. Found via Freako­nom­ics blog.

Crooked Mile Band

Walk­ing across White Plaza today I noticed that heavy-met­al cov­er band Crooked Mile was per­form­ing. They were quite tal­ent­ed. And they were extreme­ly loud. And they had no audi­ence. That’s why we don’t do big musi­cal out­reach­es on campus–Stanford stu­dents just don’t stop and lis­ten.

The Genius of McDonald’s

I am shocked at the stag­ger­ing suc­cess that is McDon­ald’s mar­ket­ing.

Dana does­n’t watch tele­vi­sion yet. To my knowl­edge, she’s nev­er seen a McDon­ald’s com­mer­cial on tele­vi­sion.

We’ve been pre­cise­ly three times.

Once at a dri­ve-through. Dana got some french fries. She loved them.

Last week after church we took her to a play land with the pas­tor’s kids. She kept yelling, “french fries!” all the way over.

Last week on a rainy day Paula men­tioned that per­haps we should take Dana to McDon­ald’s to play since the ground was moist. Dana bolt­ed from her seat and yelled, “McDon­ald’s!”

I think they put hero­in in the ketchup.