Yes…

…we just vot­ed.

Now you go do your part and togeth­er we’ll make some deci­sions about our gov­ern­ment, trust­ing in the Wis­dom of Crowds.

Seriously, How Much?

Bill Sny­der from the Chi Alpha nation­al lead­er­ship team is stay­ing with Paula and I right now. On the way back from pick­ing him up we stopped at the local super­mar­ket so that he could buy some snacks.

He bought one two-liter bot­tle of Diet Coke and a bag of grapes.

$10.02

I looked over and Bill was lit­er­al­ly frozen in shock, hand halfway towards his wal­let, as the price reg­is­tered in his brain.

Prices in the Bay Area real­ly are out of con­trol, but I found that hilar­i­ous. I’m still laugh­ing out loud even as I type this.

Bumped to Room 200–015 this week (Oct 20, 2004)

We’ve had a sched­ul­ing break­down, and so Chi Alpha will be meet­ing in 200–015 instead of our reg­u­lar 300–300 this week only (Oct 20, 2004).

That’s in the base­ment of Lane His­to­ry Cor­ner.

The time and dura­tion are the same: Wednes­day from 8:00pm to 9:30pm.

This week we’re talk­ing about What To Do When You’re Over­whelmed based on Psalm 46.

You Know You’re From Silicon Valley When…

I usu­al­ly hate these, but I ran across this and just had to post it here. Some of them don’t apply to Paula and me, but I found the list pret­ty fun­ny.


You Know You’re From Sil­i­con Val­ley When…

Your com­bined house­hold income is $140,000 and you can’t afford shoes for the kids

You think any­thing slow­er than DSL is bar­bar­ic, but can’t get it in your neigh­bor­hood

You know what DSL stands for

You and your spouse almost come to blows decid­ing to hit Peet’s or Star­bucks

You think that Amer­i­can food includes sushi, naan, pho, pesto and pad thai

You met your neigh­bors once

When asked about your com­mute you answer in time, not dis­tance

Even though you work 80 hours per week on a com­put­er, for relax­ation you read your email and peruse eBay

You have worked at the same job for a year and peo­ple call you an ‘old-timer’

The T‑shirts you val­ue most were for prod­ucts that nev­er made it to mar­ket

You can name four dif­fer­ent pro­gram­ming lan­guages and you are not a pro­gram­mer

You remem­ber the names of the three clos­est cheap sushi joints, the loca­tion of all the Fry’s in the area and which com­pa­nies your friends work for that are going pub­lic in the next year, but don’t know the name of the may­or

Stand­ing in line at Star­bucks you won­der why the employ­ees don’t call a head hunter

You work 6 miles from your home and spend two hours a day com­mut­ing and $40 a week on gas

Win­ter is when your lawn grows too fast and sum­mer is when it dies

The medi­an price of a house is $500,000…for 1200 sq. ft. with no yard because it’s a town house

You live on some of the rich­est farm land in the world but most of what you eat comes from South Amer­i­ca on a boat

Your best friend lives across town but you hard­ly ever see each oth­er because after your com­mute you’re too pooped to spend anoth­er hour dri­ving to their home

You have a mas­ter’s degree in engi­neer­ing but half the peo­ple in your depart­ment either did­n’t go to col­lege or have his­to­ry degrees, except if you have a mas­ter’s from Stan­ford, in which case every­one in your depart­ment has a mas­ter’s degree from Stan­ford

You cringe when you see peo­ple in suits at your office, won­der­ing if some­one in man­age­ment will make you stop wear­ing bun­ny slip­pers

You plan your vaca­tion so that you don’t have to dri­ve back from the air­port in com­mute hours

You don’t go to sport­ing events unless you are giv­en tick­ets by your employ­er

You could sell your home and live like a king in 99% of the rest of the world, but don’t because it would be dif­fi­cult to move back.

You have at least three com­put­ers at home.

You own at least one domain on the Inter­net, prob­a­bly sev­er­al.

You think it’s nor­mal to see chip-design soft­ware or rela­tion­al data­bas­es adver­tised on free­way bill­boards.

You know that Cal­i­for­nia isn’t just one big beach.

You know that not every­one in Cal­i­for­nia surfs.

You know there’s lots of ski­ing in Cal­i­for­nia.

You know your rotat­ing out­age block num­ber at home and at work, and lis­ten for them when­ev­er there are rolling black­outs.

If some­one refers to “Sun­ny­to­gaDeAn­zavale Road”, you laugh and know what they’re talk­ing about.

You take your out-of-town friends to see the techie gad­gets at Fry’s. But you don’t let them buy any­thing.

You know how to rec­og­nize re-sealed returned elec­tron­ics at Fry’s.

You don’t ask the staff any ques­tions at Fry’s. You know they hire idiots and pass the sav­ings on to you.

You watch dot-com boomers go back to the states they came from, and the traf­fic gets bet­ter by the month. But you are home so you’re not mov­ing.

You own a Sport Util­i­ty Vehi­cle and have nev­er tak­en it off-road. You would­n’t know what to do if you tried. Same with all your friends.

You don’t know how to dri­ve in snow. You’re a road haz­ard when you vis­it the moun­tains.

You think bicy­cles don’t belong on the road.

You think any car ahead of you does­n’t belong on the road.

Your out-of-state friends are impressed at how much mon­ey you make… until you tell them how much you pay for hous­ing.

You know that a “fix­er-upper” home could cost a half-mil­lion dol­lars.

You do a “Cal­i­for­nia stop” at stop signs. And you think it’s only Cal­i­for­ni­ans who call them that.

You aren’t both­ered much by earth­quakes because you’re ready for them. But the thought of tor­na­does and hur­ri­canes ter­ri­fies you.

You clear­ly remem­ber where you were when the Loma Pri­eta quake hit.

You know sev­er­al fun­ny sto­ries about swim­ming pools in the quake.

You can’t rec­og­nize a thun­der­storm with­out see­ing light­ning first.

You cringe when a South­ern Cal­i­forn­ian refers to high­ways like “the 101”. It’s just “101”. No “the”.

You call low clouds “fog” even if they’re hun­dreds of feet off the ground.

At least once you have gone to San Fran­cis­co for the day wear­ing shorts and a t‑shirt because it was a warm clear day in San Jose. And you froze your lit­tle *@#!% off in the fog, driz­zle and wind.

You say you’re from Sil­i­con Val­ley because no one knows where San Jose is.

You actu­al­ly get these jokes and pass them on to oth­er friends from Sil­i­con Val­ley.

Stanford’s Medal Count

Stan­ford racked up 17 medals at the Athens Olympics.

Not too shab­by.

Relevant Network — September 2004

I’ve receive yet anoth­er ship­ment from Rel­e­vant Net­work. I keep telling peo­ple it’s one of the best val­ues I’ve ever seen in min­istry.

Here’s what I got in this mon­th’s kit (slight­ly delayed due to Flori­da hur­ri­canes).

Books:

  1. Blue Like Jazz, by Don­ald Miller ( Dick Staub inter­view)
  2. Face­down, by Matt Red­man
  3. The Rel­e­vant Church, edit­ed by Jen­nifer Ash­ley (came with study guide)
  4. God’s Relent­less Pur­suit, by Phil Strout
  5. The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Com­mu­ni­ca­tor, by Jedd Medefind and Erik Lokkesmoe

DVDs

  1. High­way Video Vol­ume 9
  2. Ignit­er Video’s Togeth­er Team Hoyt

CDs

  1. Plan­et­shak­ers: My King
  2. Water­mark: The Purest Place
  3. Shawn McDon­ald: Sim­ply Noth­ing
  4. Derek Webb: The House Show
  5. Jami Smith: Wash Over Me

Plus I got the usu­al five issues of Rel­e­vant Mag­a­zine and the Rel­e­vant Leader mag­a­zinelet.

Not too shab­by.

Stanford Band At It Again

The noto­ri­ous Leland Stan­ford Junior Uni­ver­si­ty March­ing Band has struck again. Per­haps their most famous pre­vi­ous per­for­mance was a rou­tine fea­tur­ing a pre­gant nun while Stan­ford played Notre Dame.

Actu­al­ly, their most famous stunt was prob­a­bly The Play.

Any­way, they’re at it again:

Stan­ford ath­let­ic direc­tor Ted Leland apol­o­gized Mon­day to Brigham Young Uni­ver­si­ty and its fans for a half­time show by the Car­di­nal band that poked fun at polygamy with five dancers wear­ing wed­ding veils.

(source)

Research­ing the band, I noticed that their web­site is cat­e­go­rized accord­ing the sev­en dead­ly sins. Charm­ing.

At least we won the game.

Dawkins Dubiously Debunks Divinity

I stum­bled across a link to an arti­cle by renowned athe­ist Richard Dawkins titled What Use is Reli­gion?.

With a title like that, how could I not read it?

I was dis­ap­point­ed. Dawkins is a skilled essayist–even though I usu­al­ly dis­agree with him I enjoy his writ­ing style. He throws in the most fas­ci­nat­ing illus­tra­tions, and his log­ic is engag­ing.

This arti­cle, how­ev­er, fell flat.

The key para­graph:

Nat­ur­al selec­tion builds child brains with a ten­den­cy to believe what­ev­er their par­ents and trib­al elders tell them. And this very qual­i­ty auto­mat­i­cal­ly makes them vul­ner­a­ble to infec­tion by mind virus­es. For excel­lent sur­vival rea­sons, child brains need to trust par­ents and trust elders whom their par­ents tell them to trust. An auto­mat­ic con­se­quence is that the “truster” has no way of dis­tin­guish­ing good advice from bad. The child can­not tell that “If you swim in the riv­er you’ll be eat­en by croc­o­diles” is good advice but “If you don’t sac­ri­fice a goat at the time of the full moon, the crops will fail” is bad advice. They both sound the same. Both are advice from a trust­ed source, and both are deliv­ered with a solemn earnest­ness that com­mands respect and demands obe­di­ence.

So reli­gious faith is a byprod­uct of child­hood naivete?

The prob­lem with his argu­ment is that it does­n’t explain why so many adults con­tin­ue to believe this spe­cif­ic “bad advice” received in child­hood.

After all, we reject both spe­cif­ic mytholo­gies (San­ta Claus) and spe­cif­ic beliefs (bad peo­ple always have bad things hap­pen to them). Why then do so many keep believ­ing in God (espe­cial­ly so many smart ones) if it’s just anoth­er piece of bad advice?

Also, I’m not sure his the­o­ry could account for adult con­verts from athe­ism.

His argu­ment, intrigu­ing though it is, does­n’t hold water.

Dawkins hatred of reli­gion is fair­ly well known, and has always inter­est­ed me. It’s one thing to not be reli­gious, it’s anoth­er thing to hate reli­gion utter­ly.

That’s why I was struck by this anec­dote:

I have nev­er for­got­ten a hor­ri­fy­ing ser­mon, preached in my school chapel when I was lit­tle. It was hor­ri­fy­ing in ret­ro­spect: at the time, my child brain accept­ed it as intend­ed by the preach­er. He told the sto­ry of a squad of sol­diers, drilling beside a rail­way line. At a crit­i­cal moment, the drill sergeant’s atten­tion was dis­tract­ed, and he failed to give the order to halt. The sol­diers were so well schooled to obey orders with­out ques­tion that they car­ried on march­ing, right into the path of an oncom­ing train. Now, of course, I don’t believe the sto­ry now, but I did when I was nine. The point is that the preach­er wished us chil­dren to regard as a virtue the sol­diers’ slav­ish and unques­tion­ing obe­di­ence to an order, how­ev­er pre­pos­ter­ous.

I don’t know Dawkins, but I can’t help but won­der if that sto­ry (and oth­ers like it) help account for his zeal­ous athe­is­tic con­vic­tions.

While try­ing to explain away adult beliefs via child­hood expe­ri­ences, it seems that Dawkins inad­ver­tent­ly does the same to him­self.