Author: Glen

My Week At A Glance

Run­ning around with my head cut off.

Last week­end I promised my dad that I’d put some per­son­al news on the site, and I’ve been not doing that ever since. Sor­ry!

Last week­end was pret­ty neat: Paula and I got to share in two church­es: Cameron Park Chris­t­ian Cen­ter and Lake­view Assem­bly. They were both quite cool in dif­fer­ent ways. It was­n’t even that much driving–they’re with­in two hours or so of one anoth­er!

The work week was pret­ty busy: the stu­dents returned from spring break, and I real­ly felt that I need­ed to talk about the war head-on. What good is faith if it does­n’t inform your every­day view of the world?

At the same time, I don’t think it’s my job to tell peo­ple what to think; rather, I’m to help them learn to think in a Bib­li­cal way. So I opt­ed to talk about the sub­ject of war­fare in gen­er­al, what we should think about it, and what we should do in a time of war. All that to say, I had a lot of prep work to do!

I put my notes on the group web­site so they could fol­low up on some ref­er­ences I made.

As usu­al, we went to the Stan­ford Cof­fee­house after­ward and stayed up for far too long talk­ing.

Wednes­day I made a TON of phone calls. My ear still hurts (not real­ly).

Thurs­day Paula and I decid­ed to have some stu­dents over for a home-cooked meal and we stayed up entire­ly too late talk­ing (notice the pat­tern).

Fri­day I was sick (no doubt due to the afore­men­tioned pat­tern).

Which brings me to today. I got sun­burn on my ears. I hope they don’t peel too vis­i­bly while I’m preach­ing tomorrow–I bet that would be dis­tract­ing.

Genes and God: Contrasting Perspectives

Lon­don’s Tele­graph had an unusu­al­ly bal­anced arti­cle on how lead­ing sci­en­tists think about God.

The occa­sion? The 50th anniver­sary of the dis­cov­ery of DNA.
The play­ers? Wat­son & Crick (dis­cov­er­ers of DNA, both athe­ists) and Fran­cis Collins (head of the Human Genome Project, devout Chris­t­ian).

In Crick­’s mind, “The god hypoth­e­sis is rather dis­cred­it­ed.” Indeed, he says his dis­taste for reli­gion was one of his prime motives in the work that led to the sen­sa­tion­al 1953 dis­cov­ery.

“I went into sci­ence because of these reli­gious rea­sons, there’s no doubt about that. I asked myself what were the two things that appear inex­plic­a­ble and are used to sup­port reli­gious beliefs: the dif­fer­ence between liv­ing and non­liv­ing things, and the phe­nom­e­non of con­scious­ness.”

And accord­ing to Wat­son, “Every time you under­stand some­thing, reli­gion becomes less like­ly,” said Wat­son. “Only with the dis­cov­ery of the dou­ble helix and the ensu­ing genet­ic rev­o­lu­tion have we had grounds for think­ing that the pow­ers held tra­di­tion­al­ly to be the exclu­sive prop­er­ty of the gods might one day be ours.”

But Collins (who has suc­ceed­ed Wat­son as head of the Human Genome Project), believes that reli­gion and sci­ence “are nice­ly com­ple­men­tary and mutu­al­ly sup­port­ing”, he said. As one exam­ple, his research to find the faulty gene respon­si­ble for cys­tic fibro­sis pro­vid­ed sci­en­tif­ic exhil­a­ra­tion and “a sense of awe at uncov­er­ing some­thing that God knew before that we humans did­n’t”.

“The tragedy is that many peo­ple believe that, if evo­lu­tion is true, which it clear­ly is, then God can’t be true… God decid­ed to cre­ate a species with whom he could have fel­low­ship. Who are we to say that evo­lu­tion was a dumb way to do it? It was an incred­i­bly ele­gant way to do it.”

“Jim, who I know much bet­ter than Fran­cis, avoids bring­ing this top­ic up when we are hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion.”

The arti­cle con­cludes with what I found to be a sad­ly amus­ing sto­ry of Crick­’s antipa­thy to faith. You real­ly ought to read the whole thing.

Just a Little Botox For the Site Header

I just redesigned the site header–if I did it cor­rect­ly it should allow the page to load faster even though the head­er is larg­er and more com­plex.

I just redesigned the site header–if I did it cor­rect­ly it should allow the page to load faster even though the head­er is larg­er and more com­plex.

Please let me know if you have any prob­lems, because I’ve been doing some exper­i­men­ta­tion in Flash and I’m def­i­nite­ly at the begin­ning of the learn­ing curve.

UPDATE: I’m get­ting some weird results from the indi­vid­ual entries–I’m hop­ing it’s just a cache prob­lem. I’ll take a look at it again in the morn­ing. Even if it’s doing what it seems to be doing it does­n’t make the site unuse­able (just ugly).

The World Has Gone Crazy…

You know the world is going crazy when the best rap­per is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, The Swiss hold the Amer­i­ca’s Cup, France is accus­ing the US of arro­gance, and Ger­many does­n’t want to go to war.

I found this quote on Andrew Carea­ga’s blog, and I had to repeat it:

You know the world is going crazy when the best rap­per is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, The Swiss hold the Amer­i­ca’s Cup, France is accus­ing the US of arro­gance, and Ger­many does­n’t want to go to war.

We live in inter­est­ing times…

Some Remarkable Stanford Alumni In The News

Four Stan­ford alum­ni in news that has absolute­ly noth­ing to do with the war.

FYI: This has absolute­ly noth­ing to do with the war cur­rent­ly rag­ing in Iraq. Go to http://news.google.com/ if you want up-to-the-minute info.

I just ran across four Stan­ford alum­ni:

The Pres­i­dent of Peru Ale­jan­dro Tole­do is a Stan­ford grad who will be speak­ing at the 2003 Stan­ford grad­u­a­tion cer­e­monies. He has three degrees from Stan­ford: two mas­ters and one doc­tor­ate. read all about it

CNN anchor­woman Daryn Kagan grad­u­at­ed in 1985. She’ll be cov­er­ing the Oscars. read all about it

Two of Stan­ford’s own will be help­ing inves­ti­gate the Colum­bia space shut­tle explo­sion. Nobel lau­re­ate Dou­glas Osheroff and Sal­ly Ride (who also helped inves­ti­gate the Chal­lenger dis­as­ter). read all about it

They were once stu­dents here just as the stu­dents Paula and I min­is­ter to today. Touch a stu­dent, touch the future. Touch the future, change the world…

The Luck of the Irish

As you are no doubt aware, last night was St. Patrick­’s day. Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, we were in Dublin, CA talk­ing with the mis­sions board of Val­ley Chris­t­ian Cen­ter.

As you are no doubt aware, yes­ter­day was St. Patrick­’s day. Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, we were in Dublin, CA talk­ing with the mis­sions board of Val­ley Chris­t­ian Cen­ter.

Any­way, they blessed our socks off. Thanks so much to the the mis­sions board, the church they rep­re­sent, and to pas­tor Ray Noah!

And I did­n’t even have to kiss the blar­ney stone (although I did wear green–I fig­ured that in a town named Dublin with lit­tle sham­rocks paint­ed on every street sign it was prob­a­bly a good idea to wear green lest I be pinched mer­ci­less­ly).

Great Software For Missionaries

If you’re a mis­sion­ary respon­si­ble for rais­ing the funds nec­es­sary for your min­istry, down­load TntM­PD. It’s a free tool cre­at­ed by Cam­pus Cru­sade for Christ to help mis­sion­ar­ies reach full fund­ing. It’s remark­able, and I invite you to exper­i­ment with it your­self.

If you’re a mis­sion­ary respon­si­ble for rais­ing the funds nec­es­sary for your min­istry, down­load TntM­PD. It’s a free tool cre­at­ed by Cam­pus Cru­sade for Christ to help mis­sion­ar­ies reach full fund­ing. It’s remark­able, and I invite you to exper­i­ment with it your­self.

Jesus — A Level 5 Leader

If you’ve nev­er read any­thing by Jim Collins, he’s a for­mer prof at Stan­ford who’s hit it big (huge would be a more accu­rate term) in the world of busi­ness writ­ing. His two books Built to Last and Good to Great are devoured by busi­ness lead­ers hun­gry for an edge.

In the lat­ter book, Collins talks about the cru­cial­i­ty of lev­el 5 lead­er­ship. Lev­el 5 lead­ers com­bine humil­i­ty and strength in a sur­pris­ing­ly potent pack­age. I found this excerpt from an inter­view with him fas­ci­nat­ing:

I have absolute­ly no reli­gious back­ground at all, which gives me more con­fi­dence in the find­ings. If I had come from a strong reli­gious back­ground, I’d be more sus­pi­cious. After the book came out, I kept hear­ing peo­ple say to me, “There was this ulti­mate Lev­el 5 leader who lived 2,000 years ago. The things he talked about in the Gospel have great com­pat­i­bil­i­ty with what you say.” Of course I had heard about Jesus, but as a result of find­ing out about Lev­el 5, I was inspired to begin read­ing the New Tes­ta­ment to see for myself. read the whole inter­view

How Many Students?

I just ran across this infor­ma­tion and found it inter­est­ing: there are 6,636 col­leges in Amer­i­ca (2,543 are full four-year insti­tu­tions) [source].

I just ran across this infor­ma­tion and found it inter­est­ing: there are 6,636 col­leges in Amer­i­ca (2,543 are full four-year insti­tu­tions) [source].

Also, there are over 15.5 mil­lion col­lege stu­dents in Amer­i­ca [source]. To give that num­ber some per­spec­tive, con­sid­er that near­ly 75% of the nations in the world are small­er!

P.S. Hap­py St. Patrick­’s Day!

Another Online Accountablity Tool

I’ve men­tioned Covenant Eyes and X3watch before.

Now NetAc­count­abil­i­ty joins the pack of online account­abil­i­ty pro­grams.

If you’re strug­gling with pornog­ra­phy online, you should check it out. It’s not a filter–it just records where you go and reports it to some­one you choose. It’s a very slick solu­tion.