Author: Glen

It’s Not Lycanthropy That Threatens Stanford

In which Stan­ford stu­dents dis­play that wis­dom and intel­li­gence are not syn­ony­mous.

Well, tonight will see the annu­al prac­tice of a par­tic­u­lar­ly dev­il­ish Stan­ford tra­di­tion: Full Moon on the Quad.

In most of our minds, the only cul­tur­al ref­er­ence we have to full moons involves lycan­thropy (that’s a 50 cent word refer­ring to were­wolves).

At Stan­ford, Full Moon means some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent (and I’m not sure the metaphor of man turn­ing into beast is entire­ly inap­pro­pri­ate).

For Stan­ford stu­dents, Full Moon on the Quad is a major cul­tur­al ini­ti­a­tion: fresh­men head to the quad and get roy­al­ly smooched (kissed with­in an inch of their lives) by seniors. As you might imag­ine, the evening has more than a hint of debauch­ery about it.

Here’s an excerpt from the Stan­ford Dai­ly: In the­o­ry the very idea of it is quite roman­tic — lovers kiss­ing under the gen­tle moon­light amidst a sea of end­less stars, a beau­ti­ful church hangs as a back­drop, and all around you frol­ick­ing naked peo­ple dance drunk­en­ly to tech­no music. Well, on sec­ond thought, Full Moon on the Quad is devoid of all romance. (full arti­cle)

FMOTQ is a true Stan­ford tra­di­tion… and one more evi­dence that Stan­ford needs Jesus!

There are lots of web links relat­ed to this fes­ti­val, includ­ing a poem, tame pho­to gal­leries (here’s one and here’s anoth­er), and a mild­ly humor­ous essay enti­tled Got Mono?.

Cool Archaelogical Discovery Corroborates the New Testament

In yet anoth­er case of archael­o­gy con­firm­ing the bib­li­cal record, schol­ars recent­ly announced the dis­cov­ery of an ancient ossuary bear­ing the inscrip­tion James, son of Joseph, broth­er of Jesus.

The rel­ic has been dat­ed to just before 70 A.D., which jives with the bib­li­cal dat­ing of the death of James.

You can read the details at Chris­tian­i­ty Today (very pro), Nation­al Geo­graph­ic (pret­ty neu­tral), and the New York Times (slight­ly skep­ti­cal).

Inci­den­tal­ly, you might be intrigued to note that the inscrip­tion pro­nounced pho­net­i­cal­ly sounds like “Yacob son of Yussef broth­er of Yeshua.”

Yacob? Who’s Yacob?

James and Jacob are both legit­i­mate Eng­lish equiv­a­lents of the Hebrew Yacob.
Betcha did­n’t learn that in Sun­day School…

I’ve heard that this dates back to trans­la­tion of the King James Bible. As you prob­a­bly know, names are often rad­i­cal­ly changed when Angli­cized, and often for non­pho­net­ic rea­sons. The sto­ry I heard claimed that the trans­la­tors of the King James Bible decid­ed to dub the broth­er of Jesus James as a thank-you to their spon­sor. It sounds like an urban leg­end to me, but stranger things have hap­pened.

Who Are The Best and Worst People Of All Time?

I just ran across a very inter­est­ing web­site by Clif­ford Pick­over which pur­ports to rank the best and worst peo­ple in all of his­to­ry.

Here are his picks:

Evil Peo­ple
1. Tomas de Torque­ma­da
2. Vlad Tepes (Vlad the Impaler)
3. Adolph Hitler
4. Ivan the Ter­ri­ble
5. Adolph Eich­mann
6. Pol Pot
7. Mao Tse-tung
8. Idi Amin
9. Joseph Stal­in
10. Genghis Khan
11. H. H. Holmes
12. Gilles de Rais

Good Peo­ple
1. Bud­dha
2. Baha’u’l­lah
3. Dalai Lama
4. Jesus Christ
5. Moses
6. Moth­er There­sa
7. Abra­ham Lin­coln
8. Mar­tin Luther King
9. Mohan­das Gand­hi

Obvi­ous­ly, we as Chris­tians would rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer in his assess­ment of Jesus, and I per­son­al­ly have ques­tions about the rel­a­tive rank­ing of many indi­vid­u­als on his list. Still, the exer­cise is an intrigu­ing one: who would you rank as the most right­eous and most vile peo­ple of all time?

A Stanford Homecoming

In which I learn that the cur­rent FBI direc­tor and the for­mer U.S. Sec­re­tary of State are Stan­ford alum­ni.

This week­end was Stan­ford’s home­com­ing cel­e­bra­tion, high­light­ed by a vic­to­ry over the Ari­zona Wild­cats!

Read­ing the Stan­ford Dai­ly news arti­cle about this home­com­ing, I was once again struck by how influ­en­tial this school is. I already knew that four of our nine Supreme court jus­tices are Stan­ford alum­ni, but I did­n’t know that Stan­ford could also boast of Robert Mueller (the F.B.I. direc­tor) and for­mer U.S. Sec­re­tary of State War­ren Christo­pher.

What a mis­sion field–today they learn, tomor­row they lead!

Ehud Barak Spoke at Stanford last night

for­mer Israeli prime min­is­ter and Stan­ford grad pon­tif­i­cates at Stan­ford’s Memo­r­i­al Audi­to­ri­um

Ehud Barak, for­mer Israeli Prime Min­is­ter and Stan­ford grad, spoke in Memo­r­i­al Audi­to­ri­um last night.

Read the school paper’s write-up, which con­tains sev­er­al inter­est­ing anec­dotes, such as this one about how Barak, who served in the Israeli Defense Force for over 30 years and is often described as Israel’s most dec­o­rat­ed sol­dier, illus­trat­ed the need for ruth­less resolve as he recount­ed some of his most mem­o­rable oper­a­tions against Pales­tin­ian mil­i­tants. He told the audi­ence about a suc­cess­ful raid he led on a hijacked air­plane, and he described the exe­cu­tion of a Hamas leader he car­ried out while dis­guised as a female brunette — “with every­thing in place,” he laughed, ges­tur­ing toward his chest.

of course, such an event could not pass with­out protest (albeit peace­ful)

and in an inter­view before­hand he made an obser­va­tion that I found par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant to my call­ing as a cam­pus mis­sion­ary: Though Barak ulti­mate­ly left his mark on the world not through acad­e­mia but rather through the mil­i­tary and pol­i­tics, he said that he con­sid­ers uni­ver­si­ties to be at the fore­front of inter­na­tion­al lead­er­ship.

“Some­how, the uni­ver­si­ty is the place where the lead­er­ship of the future in all areas of life is formed,” he said. “Since the best and the bright­est are com­ing through … these insti­tu­tions, they have a great influ­ence on the lead­er­ship of this nation and nations as a whole.” (source uni­ver­sal remote divx )

Wallace And Gromit Return!

Who are Wal­lace and Gromit, you ask? They’re wacky, they’re British, and they’re back! Find out all about them at the Wal­lace and Gromit Appre­ci­a­tion Page (or see the offi­cial W & G site).

One of the films is avail­able online (the film is about two min­utes long)!

Elements, My Dear Watson!

Vic­to­ri­an super­sleuth Sher­lock Holmes has become the first fic­tion­al char­ac­ter to be grant­ed an hon­orary fel­low­ship by Britain’s pres­ti­gious Roy­al Soci­ety of Chem­istry… The Soci­ety award­ed Holmes a medal, which they hung around the neck of a stat­ue of the detec­tive. The man cho­sen to con­vey the hon­or was Doc­tor John Wat­son, a present day fel­low of the soci­ety and name­sake of Holmes’ hap­less side­kick. (full sto­ry)

Inter­est­ing, but I won­der how the flesh-and-blood chemists who can’t gain entry feel now…

Sounds Like They Were Members of the Stanford Band

The Pope is out­raged that a Russ­ian indi­vid­ual rent­ed church prop­er­ty and turned it into a broth­el, com­plete with pros­ti­tutes dressed as nuns.

For some rea­son in puts me in mind of the LSJUMB and their rela­tion­ship with Notre Dame. In case you did­n’t know it, Stan­ford’s band has been banned from many cam­pus­es: at one time includ­ing the entire state of Ore­gon, Notre Dame (in per­pe­tu­ity), and our own cam­pus. That’s right–Stanford’s band was even banned from Stan­ford in 1997! (source)

Cougar Trumps Cardinal

Stan­ford gets stomped by Waz­zu, 36–11.

Wow–the Car­di­nal was just trounced by the ignobly-named Waz­zu, with a final score of 36–11.

Paula and I were able to attend because I did the morn­ing devo­tion­al for the Waz­zu team (the team chap­lain is the Steve Barke, the Chi Alpha direc­tor up in Pull­man, and he asked me to fill in for him while his team was on the road).

In any event, they gave me a pair of comp tick­ets right in the mid­dle of the fan Cougar sec­tion. Not only did we see Stan­ford get spanked up and down the field, but we did it while sit­ting in front of a for­mer cheer­leader and her slight­ly ine­bri­at­ed com­pan­ions who let the whole world know what they thought of Stan­ford’s lack of prowess.

It was a sad, sad day for Car­di­nal fans, but the Cougar fans must be ecsta­t­ic.

On the up side, the oppos­ing coach had a nice com­ment to make after the game: I feel like this Stan­ford team is about ready to explode and do real­ly well on offense, so I think our defense did a nice job of keep­ing them at bay. It won’t be too long before Stan­ford gets their offense going. I think their penal­ties were a result of a lot of frus­tra­tion on their part. They’re going to spoil some­body’s Sat­ur­day real soon, and I’m just glad it was­n’t ours. (source)

Talk About Having No Stones To Throw

UPDATE: this is an urban leg­end! Read the debunk­ing.

A man suf­fered a heart attack when he hired a pros­ti­tute from an agency and his daugh­ter showed up at his door. His wife was quite upset when he got home and explained the whole sor­did affair. Read it online: “Hi Dad, Says Call-Girl At The Door”.

Broad­en­ing out from the imme­di­ate sto­ry; remem­ber, it’s always some­one’s daugh­ter (or son).

UPDATE: this is an urban leg­end! Read the debunk­ing.