Author: Glen

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.

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.

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.

Interesting Thoughts on Evolution

I just ran across an engross­ing arti­cle car­ried by U.S. News and World Report: Divin­ing Nature’s Plan.

It’s about Con­way Mor­ris’ new book Life’s Solu­tion : Inevitable Humans in a Lone­ly Uni­verse, in which the renowned pale­on­tol­o­gist evi­dent­ly sug­gests that humans were pret­ty much the inevitable result of an evo­lu­tion­ary process and leaves open the pos­si­bil­i­ty that God could have designed us as we are with­out need­ing to specif­i­cal­ly cre­ate our species.

Wow.

What Good Is Christianity?

I just ran across a fas­ci­nat­ing com­pil­i­a­tion of the pos­i­tive influ­ence of reli­gion (and Chris­tian­i­ty in par­tic­u­lar) on soci­ety: Good Faith.

The author gives extreme­ly spe­cif­ic exam­ples of how faith helps with issues such as sub­stance abuse, mar­riage, par­ent­ing, altru­ism, sex, crime rates, health, hap­pi­ness, and free­dom.

It’s an impres­sive list.

So the next time a class­mate (or pro­fes­sor) begins talk­ing about all the evils that reli­gion is respon­si­ble for, be sure to men­tion all the good that reli­gion is respon­si­ble for as well.

College Rankings, Louie Giglio, and the Fall Launch

FYI: US News & World Report recent­ly released its 2003 col­lege rank­ings, and Stan­ford came in fifth over­all. Pret­ty neat!

I was more impressed, how­ev­er, by a brief chat I had with Louie Giglio (founder of Pas­sion Min­istries) today. No–I don’t know him per­son­al­ly. Yes, we actu­al­ly did have a chat.

Any­way, he told me that Stan­ford was his favorite cam­pus. He just loves this place! That made me hap­py.

Final­ly, Stan­ford starts school next week. That means it’s like we’re accoun­tants dur­ing tax sea­son. BUSY! If we fall behind on our emails or oth­er­wise fail to be respon­sive please for­give us.

A Perspective On The Greek System

Rel­e­vant Mag­a­zine just ran an arti­cle on the social Greek sys­tem (as opposed to the hon­ors Greek sys­tem) — Soror­i­ties and Fra­ter­ni­ties: Take Em or Leave Em?.

The Greek sys­tem isn’t very pop­u­lar here at Stan­ford, but if you’re con­sid­er­ing it you might want to read the arti­cle. It comes at the Greeks from a fair­ly pos­i­tive per­spec­tive: Fra­ter­ni­ty and soror­i­ty life has a rather noto­ri­ous rep­u­ta­tion and his­to­ry on many col­lege cam­pus­es, some good, most bad. They are rep­u­ta­tions dri­ven by the hor­ror of trag­ic head­lines and the laugh­able pranks of John Belushi in Ani­mal House. In fact, Greek life is often a tale of two lifestyles: one accept­able and one trag­i­cal­ly degen­er­a­tive.

P.S. Be sure to check out the read­ers’ com­ments at the bot­tom of the article–they’re real­ly inter­est­ing!

I Almost Laughed Out Loud

So Paula and I were dri­ving through Men­lo Park today (the town just north of Stan­ford) when we saw a house for rent. We decid­ed to call just to check on the price.

$9,500 a month.

It bog­gles my mind–whoever rents that house will wind up pay­ing $114,000 a year ON RENT!

Back in Lou­siana our min­istry BOUGHT a house and a six-unit apart­ment com­plex for almost $25,000 less.

Some­how, I was able to refrain from laugh­ing out loud on the phone.

Take Hope, Math Majors!

Aoc­c­drnig to rscheearch at an Eling­sh uin­ervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht ore­dr the ltteers in a wrod are, olny taht the frist and lsat ltteres are at the rghit pcleas. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a por­belm. Tihs is bcuse­ae we do not raed ervey lteter by ilstef, but the wrod as a wlo­he.

This is all over the net, and I don’t know who orig­i­nat­ed it (but I do know the author was clever).

Before you get tak­en in by it, notice that there are heavy con­tex­tu­al clues built into each sen­tence and that all words of three let­ters or less are left in cor­rect order. It’s inter­est­ing (and worth post­ing on the dorm bul­letin board), but I would­n’t cite it in any papers if I was you.

Any­way, wel­come to Stan­ford (or wel­come back, depend­ing on who you are).

If you’re a new stu­dent, you might want to check out our advice on liv­ing with a room­mate.

*sigh* When It Rains, It Pours

Today Paula and I are print­ing up a batch of newslet­ters and this after­noon we leave for the Dis­trict Min­is­ters’ Renew­al in Mon­terey (we’re look­ing for­ward to that), on Fri­day and Sat­ur­day we’ll be doing some work at the Des­ti­na­tion: Cam­pus con­fer­ence (we’re look­ing for­ward to that), on Sun­day we’re speak­ing at a church in San Jose (we’re look­ing for­ward to that).

And last night I learned that one of our stu­den­t’s room­mates is involved in a cult and is try­ing to recruit peo­ple and we have to help her deal with it (we’re not look­ing for­ward to that).

If any­one ever invites you to be a part of the Inter­na­tion­al Church of Christ (as opposed to the Church of Christ, which is a legit­i­mate Chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tion), please run.

That is all.