disciple, husband, father, college minister
I went to go see Serenity with two students tonight.
It was really, really, really good. The audience burst into applause when it was over.
It was funny. The humor was MUCH more amusing than most comedies manage.
It was suspenseful. One girl in the audience screamed at one particular tense moment.
It was well-written. Very well-written. Every character was unique, made sense, and needed to be there.
I loved this movie.
Noah Riner, the student body president of Dartmouth, told incoming students that they should focus on developing morally as much as academically and that Jesus can bring moral transformation. A ruckus ensued, with the apparent justification being that student presidents shouldn’t use such occasions to promote their own idiosyncratic views of the world.
Oddly enough, a similar ruckus does not seem to have followed the then student body president’s call for the legalization of pot two years earlier.
Perhaps the issue isn’t that Mr. Riner propagated his own views, but that the message of Jesus still makes people uncomfortable after two millenia.
Just a theory, mind you.
Only a few readers will understand the reference, but for today Steffa is officially a turkey. One of her alumni works in the Stanford registrar’s office and she never told me! Consider yourself turkified, my friend.
While tabling on campus today I saw two t‑shirts that tickled me. The first was a Che Reagan t‑shirt. The shirt is delightfully ambiguous. Side note: the Che Jesus t‑shirts just don’t have that same vibe–the beret is just too much. The other was a Kerry/Gore t‑shirt. Kerry/Gore? What? They were never even running mates. It was Gore/Lieberman in 2000 and then Kerry/Edwards in 2004. I’m sure the shirt was supposed to be some sort of statement, but I can’t for the life of me figure it out.
Mark Batterson is about to launch GodiPod.com–it looks really interesting.
While working the contact table on campus Alan told me about a website a friend of his has set up called RunThere.com. Which I think is funny because it could also be RuntHere.com–a site to help you find short people like me. Anyway, it’s a great site for runners or for anyone else who needs to calculate distance as the crow flies.
Towards the end of our time on campus today, as the line to register bicycles extended into the dozens, three extremely curvaceous, bikini-clad upperclassmen began sunbathing in White Plaza in full view of the freshman bicycle registration line. I suppose they each wanted a fresh man. I would not be surprised to learn that they accomplished their goal–at the very least they gave the frosh gals eating disorders and the frosh guys neck cricks.
While at our contact table, I spotted a student wearing a shirt sporting the word Juventus. Alan Asbeck and I speculated as to its meaning, finally deciding that it was a composite of juvenile and momentous and was used to describe events of cosmic significance to young people–such as a prom theme. Alas, it turns out to be an Italian soccer team.
If you’ve never had the pleasure before, you owe it to yourself to read something by Terry Pratchett. He’s a humor fantasy novelist who actually makes me laugh out loud on a fairly regular basis.
I just finished his most recent book and stumbled across these two little snippets that tickled me.
[Nobby said,] “There’s a lot that goes on that we don’t know about.”
“Like what, exactly?” Colon retorted. “Name me one thing that’s going on that you don’t know about. There–you can’t, can you?” (page 42)
And later…
“War, Nobby. Huh! What is it good for?” he said.
“Dunno, Sarge. Freeing slaves, maybe?”
“Absol–well, okay.”
“Defending yourself against a totalitarian aggressor?”
“All right, I’ll grant you that, but–”
“Saving civilization from a horde of–”
“It doesn’t do any good in the long run is what I’m saying, Nobby, if you’d listen for five seconds together, ” said Fred Colon sharply.
“Yeah, but in the long run, what does, Sarge?” (page 50)
William Dembski was on the Daily Show tonight for a panel discussion on evolution. He did much better than I expected, although it was obvious that Jon Stewart didn’t really understand the differences between old-school creation science and the intelligent design camp (or perhaps he simply didn’t care about those differences). In addition, I found it interesting that Dembski and Edward Larson were basically agreeing with one another on most of the points and that Stewart didn’t seem to pick up on it.