Author: Glen

Stanford Law Prof Tries to Rein in Copyright Laws

Stan­ford prof tries to lessen the dura­tion of out-of-con­trol copy­right exten­sions.

Lawrence Less­ing, Stan­ford law prof, will be argu­ing Eldred vs Ashcroft before the Supreme Court, ask­ing the jus­tices (four of whom are Stan­ford alum­ni) to lessen the dura­tion of copy­right pro­tec­tion.

[note–edited for usage (thanks to Andrew for catch­ing a homonym error!)]

And Now For Something Completely Different…

Check out this opti­cal illu­sion.

Pret­ty wild, huh?

And while we’re on the sub­ject of per­cep­tion, peruse this Nature arti­cle about the sub­lim­i­nal image hid­den in a Zen gar­den.

Today’s Students

Beloit Col­lege’s 2006 Col­lege Mind­set List: This year’s enter­ing stu­dents have grown up in a coun­try where the Pres­i­dents have all been South­ern­ers, and in a world with AIDS and with­out apartheid. Sat­urns have always been on the street, the Fox Net­work has always been on tele­vi­sion, and prom dress­es have always come in basic black. The evil empire is not earth-bound, the drug “ecsta­cy” has always been avail­able, and with the breakup of AT & T, nobody has been able to com­pre­hend a phone bill.

Beloit Col­lege has released its 2006 col­lege mind­set list.

From the intro: This year’s enter­ing stu­dents have grown up in a coun­try where the Pres­i­dents have all been South­ern­ers, and in a world with AIDS and with­out apartheid. Sat­urns have always been on the street, the Fox Net­work has always been on tele­vi­sion, and prom dress­es have always come in basic black. The evil empire is not earth-bound, the drug “ecsta­cy” has always been avail­able, and with the breakup of AT & T, nobody has been able to com­pre­hend a phone bill.

Some of the more humor­ous items:
11. Bar­bie has always had a job.
14. A “Hair Band” is some sort of fash­ion acces­so­ry.
15. George Fore­man has always been a bar­be­cue grill sales­man.
21. The Unit­ed States has always been try­ing to put nuclear waste in Neva­da.

Ladies and gen­tle­men, I give you my mis­sion field!

Faithfulness in Small, Smelly Things

I could­n’t help but laugh when I ran across this news arti­cle. I quote:

Count­ing toi­let roll sheets proved a suc­cess for a vig­i­lant British work­er who won his employ­er thou­sands of pounds in com­pen­sa­tion after he dis­cov­ered that some rolls were not as long as they should be.

Turns out the rolls were less than 2/3 the size they were adver­tised to be. When you use 40,000 rolls a year that adds up quick­ly! In this case, it added up to near­ly $30,000.

It put me in mind of Jesus’ para­ble of the shrewd man­ag­er, which he goes on to explain in Luke 16.10–12: “Unless you are faith­ful in small mat­ters, you won’t be faith­ful in large ones. If you cheat even a lit­tle, you won’t be hon­est with greater respon­si­bil­i­ties. And if you are untrust­wor­thy about world­ly wealth, who will trust you with the true rich­es of heav­en? And if you are not faith­ful with oth­er peo­ple’s mon­ey, why should you be trust­ed with mon­ey of your own?”

It’s great to be loved!

A cre­ative way to bless pas­tors.

Paula and I have been out of town the last three days, and it was great!

The Nor Cal / Neva­da Dis­trict host­ed a golf tour­na­ment.

No–we did­n’t play. We did some­thing much, much bet­ter.

We drove around in a golf cart all day both days and hand­ed out free ice-cold drinks to parched pas­tors! The tem­per­a­ture on the first day was around 102 F and set a new record for the area, which meant that the golfers were VERY hap­py to see us. There were around 80 golfers, and we gave away around 400 drinks over the two days of the tour­na­ment.

It was a great way to bless the pas­tors, and it was also a great way to build some name recog­ni­tion for Stan­ford Chi Alpha among this key con­stituen­cy. It was also a great way to become the most loved peo­ple on the golf course!

Stanford: A Wellspring of Innovation

Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty changes the econ­o­my of the whole world!

Yet anoth­er way Stan­ford is chang­ing the world: here’s a list of com­pa­nies found­ed by mem­bers of the Stan­ford com­mu­ni­ty. Among them:

Hewlett-Packard
Cis­co Sys­tems
Sil­i­con Graph­ics
Sun Microsys­tems
Elec­tron­ic Arts
Yahoo!
EBay
Nvidia

Turns out that 40% of the rev­enue in Sil­i­con Val­ley is gen­er­at­ed by com­pa­nies that emerged from Stan­ford, and the employ­ees earned around 6.5 bil­lion dol­lars in 1999. Wow!

By the way, that 6.5 bil­lion dol­lars would work out to $650 mil­lion dol­lars in tithes. For com­par­ison’s sake, the Assem­blies of God gave $350 mil­lion in 2001.

Give And It Will Come Back To You

In one of the most remark­able news items I’ve come across in a while, a sick African child receives an unex­pect­ed oper­a­tion.

Man­taine Min­is, 6, was liv­ing in a hut in a remote vil­lage in Kenya, in need of life­sav­ing heart surgery, when the improb­a­ble hap­pened one day in June. A group of stu­dents and par­ents from the Lan­g­ley School in McLean was on safari at the Masai Mara Nation­al Reserve, where Man­taine’s father is a game war­den.

That’s when some­one from the vil­lage told a Lan­g­ley teacher about Man­taine’s heart prob­lem. From there, things seemed to unfold quick­ly.

The teacher, Joseph Leku­ton, knew that one of the par­ents was a Fair­fax Coun­ty heart sur­geon. He also knew that peo­ple of the Masai vil­lage, who did­n’t own much, had sold 14 cows last year to raise mon­ey to donate to relief efforts in the Unit­ed States after the Sept. 11 ter­ror attacks.

So he helped launch a camp­fire dis­cus­sion about the Masai gift and about what a group of peo­ple from an Amer­i­can sub­urb could do to return a kind­ness.

I’ll let you read the rest of the sto­ry on your own, so I’ll close by quot­ing Jesus in Luke 6.38: If you give, you will receive. Your gift will return to you in full mea­sure, pressed down, shak­en togeth­er to make room for more, and run­ning over. What­ev­er mea­sure you use in giving–large or small–it will be used to mea­sure what is giv­en back to you.

Stanford’s Student Body

Stan­ford’s class of 2006 is very diverse!

In a recent arti­cle about the arrival of the fresh­men at Stan­ford was this lit­tle tid­bit:

For the first time in the uni­ver­si­ty’s his­to­ry, the major­i­ty of the mem­bers of the Class of 2006 are per­sons of col­or. Accord­ing to sta­tis­tics from Office of Admis­sion, 40.6 per­cent of the new class are white, 23.4 per­cent of the class are Asian Amer­i­can; 11.6 per­cent are African Amer­i­can; 10.3 per­cent are Mex­i­can-Amer­i­can; 5.5 per­cent are inter­na­tion­al stu­dents; 3 per­cent are oth­er Lati­no and 1.9 per­cent are Native American/Native Hawai­ian. In addi­tion to being the most eth­ni­cal­ly diverse, the class is the one of them most geo­graph­i­cal­ly diverse ever admit­ted.

Who Are The Davises?

Who are Glen & Paula Davis?

I first put this page online because a pas­tor asked me if there was some infor­ma­tion about us online, because he want­ed to copy our bio for the church bul­letin.

I thought about it, and real­ized that all the infor­ma­tion was scat­tered about and not in one place. It also occurs to me that vis­i­tors to the site might want to know a lit­tle bit more about me them­selves.

So here goes:

First, I should men­tion that we’re the Assem­blies of God mis­sion­ar­ies to Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. Now here’s some per­son­al stuff:

Full Name: Glen Tal­bot Davis
Born: May 3, 1974
Real­ly Began to Fol­low Jesus: at a sev­enth-grade chapel ser­vice
Bap­tized in the Holy Spir­it: as a col­lege sopho­more in UL Chi Alpha
Called to Min­istry: as a col­lege junior at a Chi Alpha con­fer­ence
Pre­vi­ous Min­istry Expe­ri­ence: five years on staff with Chi Alpha at South­west Mis­souri State Uni­ver­si­ty
Edu­ca­tion: Mas­ter of Divin­i­ty (AGTS, 1999)
Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence (Uni­ver­si­ty of Louisiana, 1996)
Strengths: preach­ing sim­ply about com­plex sub­jects, orga­ni­za­tion­al lead­er­ship, refut­ing false beliefs, using tech­nol­o­gy effec­tive­ly
Often Heard Say­ing: “Con­trast breeds clar­i­ty”
Deeply Influ­enced By: The Pur­pose-Dri­ven Church, The Spir­it of the Dis­ci­plines, Mere Chris­tian­i­ty, The Mas­ter Plan of Evan­ge­lism
Favorite Comics: The Far Side, Calvin & Hobbes, Dil­bert
Vision for Stan­ford: Estab­lish a cred­i­ble, con­sis­tent and per­va­sive Spir­it-filled gospel wit­ness on cam­pus.
Core Com­mit­ments (Val­ues):
     I must nur­ture inti­ma­cy with God.
     I must cul­ti­vate my char­ac­ter.
     I must build my mar­riage.
     I must hone my skills.
     I must main­tain healthy rela­tion­ships.
     I must rig­or­ous­ly ana­lyze my beliefs.

Full Name: Paula Kay Davis
Born: August 4, 1974
Real­ly Began to Fol­low Jesus: July 23, 1990 at a Bible Study
Bap­tized in the Holy Spir­it: August 1990 at a Bible Study
Called to Min­istry: Sum­mer 1992 at a youth con­fer­ence
Pre­vi­ous Min­istry Expe­ri­ence: five years with Chi Alpha at South­west Mis­souri State Uni­ver­si­ty, two years as board mem­ber of New Life Church (Spring­field, MO)
Edu­ca­tion: Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence (Uni­ver­si­ty of Louisiana, 1996)
Strengths: Orga­nized, hard­work­ing, good lis­ten­er, sen­si­tive to oth­ers, teach­able
Pas­sions: To see myself and oth­ers shaped more into the image of the Mas­ter; to help hurt­ing peo­ple expe­ri­ence the love of the Father.
Hob­bies: Enjoy sewing, cook­ing and spend­ing time with friends

And a recent addi­tion:
Full Name: Dana Marie Davis
Born: March 25, 2004
Often Heard: scream­ing incon­solably
Hob­bies: poop­ing, spit­ting up, and cry­ing

UPDATE: our anniver­sary is 12/21/1996.

Possible Email Glitch

In which I men­tion that my email serv­er might be drop­ping mes­sages.

Some­one just told me that they emailed me four times with­out ever hear­ing a response from me. I nev­er received any of the mes­sages.

I men­tion this in case you’ve sent me a mes­sage to which I’ve not replied. It’s pos­si­ble there’s a glitch with my email serv­er, although it’s equal­ly pos­si­ble that the per­son sim­ply made some mis­take on their end.

If I haven’t replied to a mesage, I apol­o­gize. Please resend it and I’ll get right back to you!