Author: Glen

Bored at 3am try­ing to get a paper done? Divert your­self with this smat­ter­ing of opti­cal illu­sions.

My favorite is the bio­log­i­cal motion illu­sion.

I just ran across a cool site: KwMap. In their own words KwMap.com is a com­plex key­word refin­ing tool, aim­ing to help you dis­cov­er new key­words. It is a fact that search engines can only help you in find­ing some­thing if you know the right key­words.

The results look pret­ty neat. Here’s a search on Stan­ford and here’s one on Chi Alpha.

If you pre­fer a more time­ly search, here’s one on Iraq.

The New York Times just ran an inter­est­ing arti­cle about how the same text­books you’re using at Stan­ford sell for half as much over­seas. As a result, some stu­dents have start­ed order­ing their text­books from Eng­land (or even Sin­ga­pore) and hav­ing them shipped here.

Many stu­dents, indi­vid­u­al­ly, have begun to com­pare the text­book prices post­ed on Amer­i­can sites like Amazon.com, with the low­er prices for the same books on for­eign sites like Amazon.co.uk.

The dif­fer­ences are often sig­nif­i­cant: “Lehninger Prin­ci­ples of Bio­chem­istry, Third Edi­tion,” for exam­ple, lists for $146.15 on the Amer­i­can Ama­zon site, but can be had for $63.48, plus $8.05 ship­ping, from the British one. And “Lin­ear Sys­tem The­o­ry and Design, Third Edi­tion” is $110 in the Unit­ed States, but $41.76, or $49.81 with ship­ping, in Britain.

Read the whole sto­ry.

It’s been a while since I’ve post­ed any­thing total­ly ran­dom, so pre­pare to be enter­tained and informed:

1) Hol­ly­wood Meets the Pews: In the mid­dle of it all was Jonathan Bock, a unique Hol­ly­wood pub­li­cist who keeps under­lin­ing one big sta­tis­tic for stu­dio lead­ers — week after week rough­ly five times as many peo­ple go to church as attend movies. In the past three years, his Grace Hill Media oper­a­tion has helped pro­mote 30 main­stream movies in reli­gious media, from small films such as “A Walk to Remem­ber” to epics such as “The Lord of the Rings.”

2) Mon­keys Con­trol Robot­ic Arm With Brain Implants (no, real­ly): At first, Nicolelis said, the mon­key kept mov­ing the joy­stick, not real­iz­ing that her own brain was now sole­ly in charge of the arm’s move­ments. Then, he said, an amaz­ing thing hap­pened.

“We’re look­ing, and she stops mov­ing her arm,” he said, “but the cur­sor keeps play­ing the game and the robot arm is mov­ing around.”

The ani­mal was con­trol­ling the robot with its thoughts.

“We could­n’t speak. It was dead silence,” Nicolelis said. “No one want­ed to ver­bal­ize what was hap­pen­ing. And she con­tin­ued to do that for almost an hour.”

3) Mar­tial Arts Expert Kills Two Raiders: Chi­nese mar­tial arts expert was in cus­tody yes­ter­day after turn­ing the tables on four bur­glars armed with knives, killing two of them and seri­ous­ly wound­ing a third. The 28-year-old man, known as “the doc­tor” for his prac­tice of acupunc­ture and tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese med­i­cine, man­aged to seize one of the two knives car­ried by his assailants and saw off the entire group with the feroc­i­ty of his reac­tion. The moral of the sto­ry: you just nev­er know whose house you’re break­ing into…

Any­way, I found those fas­ci­nat­ing. I hope you do, too.

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.

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?

The orga­ni­za­tions were the more than 50-year-old Har­vard-Rad­cliffe Chris­t­ian Fel­low­ship (HRCF) and the much new­er Har­vard Asian Bap­tist Stu­dent Koinon­ia (ABSK). Claus­es in their con­sti­tu­tions spec­i­fied that their leaders—though not their members—must affirm an evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian state­ment of faith.

Real­ly well-writ­ten arti­cle by a for­mer Inter­Var­si­ty staffer.