Author: Glen

We just got back from Chi Alpha’s Win­ter Con­fer­ence yes­ter­day. Wow!

It’s hard to sum­ma­rize a mul­ti-day con­fer­ence in a such a brief post­ing, so I’ll con­tent myself with observ­ing that the wor­ship and the teach­ing were both top-notch, and the camp­ground itself was stun­ning­ly beau­ti­ful. The over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of stu­dents that we talked with were hav­ing sig­nif­i­cant spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ences. It was very cool.

Also, I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to teach a work­shop called “Rea­son­able Answers to Hon­est Ques­tions” (in which we talked very frankly about han­dling doubts and intel­lec­tu­al chal­lenges to the faith) and I was also able to facil­i­tate a sem­i­nar called “the Idea Exchange” (in which we just shared neat ideas from one cam­pus to anoth­er).

Although the dri­ve back was near­ly eight hours and we were quite tired, we decid­ed to have a joint New Year’s cel­e­bra­tion. We met in one of the stu­den­t’s apart­ments and had a jol­ly old time!

P.S. Expect web­site updates to return to their usu­al fre­quen­cy (once or twice a week).

Bill Frist, who looks cer­tain to replace Trent Lott as Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader, stud­ied at med­i­cine Stan­ford.

At least, if I read his Sen­ate bio cor­rect­ly he did:

In 1978, he grad­u­at­ed with hon­ors from Har­vard Med­ical School and spent the next sev­er­al years in sur­gi­cal train­ing at Mass­a­chu­setts Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal; Southamp­ton Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, Southamp­ton, Eng­land; and Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty Med­ical Cen­ter. (source)

I’ve just dis­cov­ered the won­ders of Flash ani­ma­tion–pret­ty cool stuff!

As a result, the pic­ture of Paula and I on the top right of the page now con­tains a playable video. Just click on the green arrow in the pic­ture so I can greet you and explain our vision for min­istry!

I’m still try­ing to get this Flash thing fig­ured out. In par­tic­u­lar, I’d like to have a mes­sage pop up when your mouse moves across the pho­to, so if any­one out there is a Flash guru, I’d love to learn from your wis­dom!

In case you’re curi­ous about Flash your­self, the three most help­ful sites I’ve found are the offi­cial Macro­me­dia Flash site, Flash Kit, and Flash Com­po­nents.

For the record, I was shocked at how sim­ple it was to do.

1) I set up my handy Log­itech Web­cam.
2) I down­loaded the free beta copy of Win­dows Movie Mak­er 2 (which real­ly rocks, it’s a legit­i­mate com­peti­tor with iMovie).
3) I winged it and then edit­ed it.
4) I import­ed it into Macro­me­dia Flash MX.
5) I used the Satay Method to embed it in my page.

I was done! Now I just need to learn a lit­tle bit more about Flash (like how to ani­mate text) and reshoot my video to make it a lit­tle tighter (like I said, I winged the script–and I think it shows in one or two spots).

Over­all, though, I’m pret­ty hap­py.

UPDATE: I tweaked the video (and was able to trim its size by 33%), so now I just need to decide how much more I want to do before I leave well enough alone…

Wow. I woke up this morn­ing and saw all sorts of news arti­cles that sug­gest Stan­ford is about to engage in human cloning.

For exam­ple, there’s this sto­ry from the San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle: Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty announced plans Tues­day to cre­ate a $120 mil­lion insti­tute to study the over­lap­ping biol­o­gy of can­cer and stem cells, includ­ing a plan to start cloning new stem cells from human embryos. (source)

Here’s what Stan­ford has to say: Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty Med­ical Cen­ter is not engaged in human repro­duc­tive cloning. A sto­ry pub­lished Dec. 10 by the Asso­ci­at­ed Press incor­rect­ly char­ac­ter­ized the nature of research that would take place at the new­ly announced Insti­tute for Cancer/Stem Cell Biol­o­gy and Med­i­cine at the Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty School of Med­i­cine.

Cre­at­ing human stem cell lines is not equiv­a­lent to repro­duc­tive cloning. The first step in the process of cre­at­ing a stem cell line involves trans­fer­ring the nucle­us from a cell to an egg and allow­ing the egg to divide. This is the same first step as in repro­duc­tive cloning. How­ev­er in cre­at­ing a stem cell line, cells are removed from the devel­op­ing clus­ter. These cells can go on to form many types of tis­sues, but can­not on their own devel­op into a human. Future research in this field, which will also be pur­sued at Stan­ford, will attempt to pro­duce stem cell lines by trans­fer­ring the nucle­us into oth­er embry­on­ic stem cells rather than into eggs. (source)

It looks like the human cloning angle of the sto­ry was a lit­tle over-hyped in the news, and as far as I can tell, they’re going to be work­ing exclu­sive­ly with non-fer­til­ized eggs (although I guess in one sense they’ll be cre­at­ing their own).

I found this quote par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing: “Our avowed goal is to advance sci­ence,” said Stan­ford med­ical pro­fes­sor Dr. Irv­ing Weiss­man, who will direct the school’s stem cell effort. “For any group to stay out of the action and wait for some­one else to do it because of polit­i­cal rea­sons is wrong.” (news source, empha­sis added).

I don’t pre­tend to real­ly under­stand all the sci­ence, and so I don’t know how to eval­u­ate what they’re plan­ning to do from a moral stand­point. I do know that polit­i­cal rea­sons and moral rea­sons aren’t the same thing at all, although the two cat­e­gories fre­quent­ly over­lap.

In fact, Weiss­man inter­min­gles pol­i­tics and moral­i­ty in his own com­ment: the rea­sons for stay­ing out of the research would be polit­i­cal, but the rea­sons for engag­ing in it are moral. That seems a lit­tle convenient–almost by def­i­n­i­tion if doing one thing is polit­i­cal then doing the oppo­site is polit­i­cal as well. By and large the same obser­va­tion holds true with respect to moral­i­ty.

I know that it’s dif­fi­cult to choose the right words when you’re being inter­viewed and don’t have time to craft the per­fect response, but I found his word­ing reveal­ing. It does­n’t reas­sure me that peo­ple are think­ing through the eth­i­cal issues as rig­or­ous­ly as they are the sci­en­tif­ic angles.

The news arti­cles I read were pret­ty super­fi­cial, and so I hope I’m wrong.

Christ­mas is upon us. This year, I’ve been struck by the Christ­mas col­ors that Stan­ford flaunts on its logos. I sup­pose that makes Stan­ford sort of Christ­massy.

But in a more impor­tant sense, Stanford’s not Christ­massy at all. Christ isn’t at the cen­ter, and cel­e­brat­ing Christ­mas with­out Christ is like being mar­ried with­out a spouse. Some­thing essen­tial is miss­ing.

God has called us here to help a school with Christ­mas col­ors devel­op true Christ­mas spir­it. Christ­mas is about Jesus being born—not just born in a manger 2,000 years ago, but being born in each of our hearts. Until every heart becomes a manger, we’ll be pro­claim­ing the Christ­mas sto­ry to the stu­dents at Stan­ford, whether it’s Decem­ber or July.

So if you’re ever on cam­pus and you hear some fool yelling “Mer­ry Christ­mas” at a wild­ly inap­pro­pri­ate time of year, be sure to tell me hi.