Author: Glen

Christians and College Athletics

If you’re an incom­ing fresh­man, trans­fer stu­dent, or grad­u­ate student–welcome!

I just ran across an inter­est­ing arti­cle talk­ing about the rela­tion­ship between Chris­tians and col­lege sports, a rela­tion­ship which can be summed up in the phrase [Recent scan­dals] may lead the faith­ful to ask a new ques­tion: Should a Chris­t­ian stu­dent think twice before get­ting involved in high-pro­file col­lege sports like bas­ket­ball or foot­ball? What kind of val­ues will he or she learn in that set­ting?

Dur­ing the late nine­teenth and ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, this ques­tion would have been unthink­able. Why? Because col­lege sports was imbued with an ide­al called “mus­cu­lar Chris­tian­i­ty.”

This was the belief that phys­i­cal activ­i­ty and sports, espe­cial­ly team sports, devel­oped char­ac­ter, fos­tered patri­o­tism, and instilled virtues that would serve their participants—and their par­tic­i­pants’ God—well in lat­er life. In oth­er words, team games taught their own high eth­ic, and that eth­ic could and should be a Chris­t­ian one.

Read the whole thing and learn about the ori­gins of the YMCA, bas­ket­ball and the Olympics.

Some Random News And Comments

If you’re a new stu­dent, wel­come! We peri­od­i­cal­ly take time to com­ment on fun­ny things hap­pen­ing in the world and on the web. God likes laugh­ter, and so we try to oblige Him.

1) Have you seen the pho­tos of whale flat­u­lence? I’m not kidding–you’ve got to check this out: Whale Flat­u­lence Stuns Sci­en­tists

2) Regard­ing the black­out in the NE: I expect to find a giant dead squir­rel when it’s all over (squir­rels are, I am told, the num­ber once cause of pow­er out­ages in Amer­i­ca).

3) If you’re not already a fan, you real­ly should check out the Strong Bad emails.

4) Final­ly, in case you were won­der­ing, Com­paq explains where to find the “Any” key.

We return you to your reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled web brows­ing.

Wow–thanks for the love!

I haven’t updat­ed since our last announce­ment because we were del­uged with near­ly 150 emails con­grat­u­lat­ing us on our repro­duc­tive prowess (or words to that effect). Thanks for all the love!

Peo­ple are won­der­ing about names.

So far, we’re think­ing of Gray Davis, Mavis Davis, April Fools Davis (say it out loud slow­ly), Raina Davis (like the last one, only less obvi­ous), and Dave Davis.

Also, we’re think­ing about fun­ny ini­tials: it’s not too hard to find names that spell out GOD, DUD, DED, or SAD.

For the humor-impaired, I would like to clear­ly state that these are, of course, all face­tious.

We have no names in mind, nor do we have a gen­der pref­er­ence.

If you think of any fun­ny names please do let us know!

Preggers

We got back in from D.C. last night, and Paula vis­it­ed the doc­tor today. She received con­fir­ma­tion of what we strong­ly sus­pect­ed while on the road–she’s preg­gers!

Based on what we know now (which isn’t a whole lot), the expect­ed deliv­ery date is April 3, 2004.

Per­son­al­ly, I’m hop­ing she deliv­ers a lit­tle ear­ly on April 1st (just so that no one believes me when I call them on my cell phone to deliv­er the good news)… 🙂

On The Road

We’ll be in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. for Gen­er­al Coun­cil.

This one will actu­al­ly be an impor­tant one–we’re decid­ing on some pret­ty vital inter­nal leg­is­la­tion (how we plant church­es, for exam­ple). Noth­ing should make nation­al news, how­ev­er.

All that to say this: if you send either of us an email, it may be a while before we get back to you. We’re not sure how sol­id our con­nec­tiv­i­ty will be on the road.

“It’s bulletproof, practically.”

I found this quite fun­ny: “It’s bul­let­proof, prac­ti­cal­ly.”

Cheryl Toep­pen, man­ag­er of design ser­vices for Res­i­den­tial & Din­ing Enter­pris­es, describ­ing the fab­ric she bought for seat­ing in the lounge of the new­ly ren­o­vat­ed all-frosh Bran­ner Hall. The mate­r­i­al is 10 times more durable than reg­u­lar uphol­stery fab­ric. [source]

Stanford On The Diamond

I just learned that there’s a web­site list­ing all 35 cur­rent pro base­ball play­ers who are Stan­ford grads: see the ros­ter.

Just found it inter­est­ing…

Mom’s Visit

I haven’t been updat­ing the site much late­ly because my mom has been vis­it­ing. It was a good visit–we went to some beach­es, ate at some restau­rants, and relaxed.

Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to my father (who stayed back in Louisiana) will be the fact that not only did we eat Dun­ge­ness crabs, but we cooked them our­selves (as good Cajuns ought). Here they are in the bath­tub await­ing their fate!

Another Little Way Stanford Is Changing The World

I was recent­ly informed by one of our XA stu­dents that 2 of the new 15 appointees to the New York Times edi­to­r­i­al board are Stan­ford grads: Philip Taub­man (deputy edi­to­r­i­al edi­tor) and Andres Mar­tinez (Eco­nom­ics, For­eign Affairs & Fed­er­al Reg­u­la­to­ry Issues).

You can read the full bios at http://nytimes.com/ref/opinion/editorial-board.html.

Why does this mat­ter? Because every­one in pol­i­tics reacts to and com­ments on what’s being said in the NY Times edi­to­ri­als.

Unexpected Support For An Obscure Biblical Aside

I noticed some­thing odd when I was read­ing some news recent­ly: [in response to claims of nigh-immor­tal­i­ty for humans in the near future] Out­side the con­fer­ence, many sci­en­tists who spe­cial­ize in aging are skep­ti­cal of such claims and say the human body is just not designed to last past about 120 years. Even with health­i­er lifestyles and less dis­ease, they say fail­ure of the brain and oth­er organs will even­tu­al­ly con­demn all humans.[source]

120 years? Inter­est­ing…

Then the LORD said, “My Spir­it will not put up with humans for such a long time, for they are only mor­tal flesh. In the future, they will live no more than 120 years.” Gen­e­sis 6:3, NLT

Noth­ing con­clu­sive here (we’re not talk­ing about data pub­lished in a peer-reviewed jour­nal or any­thing), but I did think it was wor­thy of com­ment.