Author: Glen

Stanford Passwords

Just ran across this: More than 4 per­cent of dorm res­i­dents’ pass­words are eas­i­ly guessed, accord­ing to a Stan­ford pilot study. Ced Ben­nett, direc­tor of infor­ma­tion secu­ri­ty ser­vices, gives some high­lights: “user,” “beat­cal” and “four-let­ter-word-cal.” (source)

A Busy Season Winds Down

Whew–I spoke three times today and par­tic­i­pat­ed in a reli­gious dis­cus­sion group! I’m a lit­tle drained. Worst of all was that my first engage­ment was two hours away, and I only had about two hours between my first and sec­ond appoint­ment (which was back here at Stan­ford)! We real­ly had to book it.

For­tu­nate­ly, we’re at the end of a busy sea­son. Last week­end I was in Spring­field help­ing to script a minis­eries (no, real­ly) that Chi Alpha is going to burn onto CDs and dis­trib­ute to col­lege stu­dents all across Amer­i­ca. I got back and went to preach in Modesto that Sun­day. Mon­day Paula and I drove up to the Lake Men­do­ci­no sec­tion­al fel­low­ship, and today I had all those speak­ing engage­ments… *whew*

That makes it almost two months that Paula and I have been run­ning around like chick­ens with our heads cut off. It was real­ly start­ing to affect my speak­ing: I’d say that none of the pre­sen­ta­tions I gave today were A‑quality. They were all B‑range. Soon I should be able to recharge and do bet­ter.

I feel kind of guilty. I should be a bet­ter mod­el for my stu­dents, but this sea­son of hec­tic activ­i­ty was pret­ty much nec­es­sary… *sigh*

Oh well, at least it’s over (I think).

Jesus, Ethics, and Us

these are notes from a class pre­sen­ta­tion I gave in Ron Howard’s class The Eth­i­cal Ana­lyst about ethics in Chris­t­ian per­spec­tive

The Hid­den Dan­ger of Ethics Class­es
There is a great but hid­den dan­ger in class­es such as this. By spend­ing hours debat­ing moral issues we too often train our­selves for ratio­nal­iza­tion instead of right­eous­ness. There is no point in try­ing to under­stand good unless we also seek to be good!

Why Should We Care What Chris­tian­i­ty Says?
Today it is com­mon to regard Chris­tian­i­ty as moral­ly bank­rupt. This is naïve and rep­re­sents mas­sive prej­u­dice.
Con­tin­ue read­ing “Jesus, Ethics, and Us”

Great Day!

Today I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to go and just spend some time on cam­pus watch­ing stu­dents in their nat­ur­al habi­tat. I was expect­ing to just sit down and set up my lap­top and work on ser­mon prep and mak­ing some phone calls all day, but instead I bumped into stu­dents I knew every­where I turned around!

Kwasi biked by after I set up, and then I bumped into Shaowei upstairs, and short­ly after that I bumped into Jim­my and a friend of his named Winona I had­n’t met before. Jim­my and I talked for sev­er­al hours about all sorts of stuff, and then Song showed up.

Song and I talked about dif­fer­ent ways to raise mon­ey for missions–he’s plan­ning to bike across Amer­i­ca this sum­mer. I hope it works out, ’cause it sounds real­ly cool.

Yet Another Christian Nobel Laureate

Charles Col­son just brought anoth­er Chris­t­ian Nobel Lau­re­ate to my atten­tion: Arno Pen­zias. Dr. Pen­zias won the Nobel Prize in Physics for co-dis­cov­er­ing cos­mic back­ground radi­a­tion.

Dr. Pen­zias says, “The cre­ation of the uni­verse is sup­port­ed by all the observ­able data astron­o­my has pro­duced so far. As a result, the peo­ple who reject the data can arguably be described as hav­ing a �religious� belief.” That is, peo­ple who refuse to con­sid­er the evi­dence because it con­flicts with their pre­con­ceived ideas are fol­low­ing a “dog­ma” in the most stub­born sense of the word.

In an arti­cle in Per­spec­tives on Sci­ence and Chris­t­ian Faith, Pen­zias told Dr. Jer­ry Bergman of the Amer­i­can Sci­en­tif­ic Affil­i­a­tion, “I invite you to exam­ine the snap­shot pro­vid­ed by half a century�s worth of astro­phys­i­cal data and see what the pieces of the uni­verse actu­al­ly look like.… In order to achieve con­sis­ten­cy with our obser­va­tions we must … assume not only cre­ation of mat­ter and ener­gy out of noth­ing, but cre­ation of space and time as well.”

Pen­zias, a Nobel Prize win­ner, added, “The best data we have are exact­ly what I would have pre­dict­ed had I had noth­ing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, the Bible as a whole.”

Read the rest of Col­son’s com­men­tary…

I’m updat­ing the list of famous sci­en­tists who believe.

Wow, It Really Is Getting Harder

Stay­ing sex­u­al­ly pure in a pol­lut­ed world seems to be get­ting hard­er and hard­er. At least, that’s the impres­sion any­one speak­ing with Chris­t­ian col­lege stu­dents would get…

Turns out they’re right.

Then there’s the inter­sec­tion of biol­o­gy and cul­ture. Over the past 150 years, the aver­age for menarche—a wom­an’s first period—has dropped from near­ly sev­en­teen to twelve years of age with no signs of stop­ping. (Among African-Amer­i­cans in par­tic­u­lar, the fig­ure is clos­er to eleven!) His­tor­i­cal data for males is hard­er to come by but, with­out being too explic­it, Amer­i­can males, on aver­age, are “sex­u­al­ly func­tion­al” by twelve years of age. (Once again, the fig­ure is slight­ly low­er for African-Amer­i­cans.) At the same time the aver­age age for puber­ty and menar­che has been going down, the aver­age age for first mar­riage has been going up: from 22.8 for men and 20.3 for women in 1950 to 27 and 25 today. For the college-educated—the sta­tus to which most Amer­i­cans aspire, both per­son­al­ly and for their kids—the aver­age age is near­ly two years high­er. (Between 1970 and 1994, the per­cent­age of women aged thir­ty to thir­ty-four who had nev­er been mar­ried rose from 6 to 22 per­cent. For men, the fig­ures were 9 and 30 per­cent, respec­tive­ly.)

The bot­tom line of all these num­bers is that young Chris­tians are expect­ed to remain sex­u­al­ly con­ti­nent for a longer peri­od of time than prob­a­bly any gen­er­a­tion that has pre­ced­ed them. And they’re sup­posed to do this while liv­ing in the most sex­u­al­ly charged cul­ture ever seen.

Read the whole arti­cle at Break­point

You might be inter­est­ed to read the thoughts which prompt­ed Break­point’s arti­cle:
* There’s No Such Thing As Pre­mar­i­tal Sex launched it by claim­ing that once two peo­ple sleep togeth­er they’re mar­ried and seeks to sup­port his posi­tion from the Law of Moses.
* A Horse­less Car­riage rebutted the charge. She did an out­stand­ing job, and used a very per­sua­sive anal­o­gy: To cite the Exo­dus ref­er­ence requir­ing a man to make right his seduc­tion of a vir­gin (which, inci­den­tal­ly, falls in a long list of ways to make ret­ri­bu­tion when bad things hap­pen) as evi­dence that the act of sex, rather than a process of mar­riage and con­sum­ma­tion, made the two peo­ple mar­ried, makes about as much sense as argu­ing that a law requir­ing a thief to pay for the pie he has already con­sumed real­ly means that the pie was right­ful­ly and beau­ti­ful­ly his the moment the first bite crossed his lips. The author of the orig­i­nal arti­cle responds on the same page and clar­i­fies his posi­tion (and even makes a few inter­est­ing claims along the way).

All worth read­ing and reflect­ing on.

Another Unexpected Positive Impact of Christianity

This BBC report caught me off guard: A decline in Chris­tian­i­ty is tak­ing its toll on the num­ber of peo­ple will­ing to donate their organs for trans­plan­ta­tion, accord­ing to a doc­tor.

Evi­dent­ly the Chris­t­ian belief that this body is tem­po­rary com­bined with the Chris­t­ian eth­ic of doing good cre­at­ed many organ donors. Take either of those away and the pool shrinks rapid­ly.

Read the whole arti­cle…

Had A Great Birthday

I had a great birth­day, thanks every­one!

birthday_party_010.jpg
I had a great birth­day, thanks every­one!

I was one whipped pup­py after what felt like a month on the road (actu­al­ly, it was­n’t too far shy of a month). Tomor­row Paula and I head to Sacra­men­to and Wednes­day I fly to Vegas for a quick speak­ing engage­ment and then I’m home!

Any­way, we had a group of friends over to cel­e­brate and we had a great time. I think one of the parts I enjoyed most was watch­ing the ladies-only round of Halo on the XBox. It was pret­ty funny–I think only one of them had ever played before.

Speak­ing of XBox, I got XBox Live for my birth­day. If any of my friends are curi­ous my GamerTag is GTD. The only Live game I own is MechAs­sault.

I think that’s about it… I’ve caught up on the over 500 email mes­sages (most­ly junk) that I had wait­ing for me, so if you haven’t heard back from me yet it’s pos­si­ble that I delet­ed your mes­sage by mis­take.

Home Again!

If you’ve emailed me in the last three weeks I almost cer­tain­ly haven’t replied. Sor­ry about that, but I real­ly haven’t been able to keep up with my email del­uge. I should be get­ting caught up over the week­end and by the ear­ly part of next week I should be done.

I just returned from the North­ern California/Nevada Dis­trict Coun­cil of the Assem­blies of God. My hec­tic trav­els are near­ly com­plet­ed now (I do have to fly into Vegas next week, but it slows down after that for a while).

If you’ve emailed me in the last three weeks I almost cer­tain­ly haven’t replied. Sor­ry about that, but I real­ly haven’t been able to keep up with my email del­uge. I should be get­ting caught up over the week­end and by the ear­ly part of next week I should be done.

I might take tomor­row off, though. It’s my birth­day!

We’re Back…

We’ve returned from Springfield–it was a nice flight.

We’ve returned from Springfield–it was a nice flight (even if our flight path was a lit­tle odd–east from Kansas City to St. Louis and then back west to San Jose).

A severe thun­der­storm tore through the Spring­field area and both Kansas City and St. Louis were quite over­cast when we left, so we were real­ly look­ing for­ward to return­ing to sun­ny Cal­i­for­nia.

We got here and every­thing was wet. Evi­dent­ly there had been some pret­ty heavy rains just a lit­tle while ago.

I just found that fun­ny.