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.

The Interview With God

There’s a neat mul­ti­me­dia pre­sen­ta­tion called “The Inter­view With God” out there. Check it out.

Dis­claimer: yes, I think it cross­es the line into cheese a few times. I like it nonethe­less.

Cool Products Expo 2003

Just read a neat arti­cle about the Stan­ford Cool Prod­ucts Expo 2003. Lizard­like robots, hyper-cool bicy­cle seats, and a cus­tomized scooter–that’s some pret­ty cool stuff!

Just read a neat arti­cle about the Stan­ford Cool Prod­ucts Expo 2003.

Lizard­like robots, hyper-cool bicy­cle seats, and a cus­tomized scooter–that’s some pret­ty cool stuff!

A Unique Perspective On Housing Prices

A friend of mine (Jim­my Tate) just emailed me an arti­cle that offers a very unique per­spec­tive on the hous­ing prices in Palo Alto. It’s by Thomas Sow­ell and it’s called “Diver­si­ty” for Thee, Not Me.

A friend of mine (Jim­my Tate) just emailed me an arti­cle that offers a very unique per­spec­tive on the hous­ing prices in Palo Alto. It’s by Thomas Sow­ell and it’s called “Diver­si­ty” for Thee, Not Me. Here’s an excerpt:

Because hous­ing prices are so high in Palo Alto — and up and down the whole San Fran­cis­co penin­su­la.

This is not due to sup­ply and demand in a free mar­ket. It is large­ly due to rich busy­bod­ies who have pro­mot­ed severe restric­tions on the build­ing of hous­ing under a vari­ety of high-sound­ing names like “open space” or “envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion.” I don’t begrudge such peo­ple the inher­i­tances that have allowed them to live their whole lives with­out ever hav­ing to lift a fin­ger to sup­port them­selves. But it is galling that they are impos­ing huge costs on hun­dreds of thou­sands of oth­er peo­ple who have to work for a liv­ing.

Any­way, I found it inter­est­ing. I do think he over­states the case some­what (there is a huge demand), but he’s cor­rect that the sup­ply has been arti­fi­cial­ly supressed. Food for thought.

Reflections on Atheism and Amorality

In that class that I guest-lec­tured in I field­ed some ques­tions from athe­ists. I’ve been reflect­ing on athe­ism since then, and I’d like to offer a refine­ment of my thoughts.

First, a dis­claimer. It is pos­si­ble that some­one could find this hurt­ful or offen­sive. I do not seek to delib­er­ate­ly offend, but I do seek to be hon­est. It seems to me that athe­ism has sev­er­al seri­ous prob­lems, and I am about to address one of them: athe­is­m’s intrin­isic divorce from moral­i­ty. This is not a per­son­al attack on anyone–in fact, you can be an athe­ist and also be quite a moral per­son. But if you are an athe­ist you do not have a com­pelling rea­son to be moral (or even to believe that moral­i­ty is a mean­ing­ful con­cept), and that is what I want to address.

I can sum up what I’ve been think­ing in one phrase: athe­ism is amoral. Amoral­i­ty flows direct­ly from a rejec­tion of all non­ma­te­r­i­al real­i­ty.

Allow me to explain: a moral law is an entire­ly dif­fer­ent sort of thing than a law of physics. You can­not get a moral ‘ought’ from a mate­r­i­al ‘is.’

If all we are is a col­lec­tion of par­ti­cles arranged in a com­pli­cat­ed fash­ion, then there is no com­pelling rea­son to sup­pose that any motion of those par­ti­cles is log­i­cal­ly prefer­able to any oth­er. Say, for instance, a col­lec­tion of par­ti­cles dri­ving a knife through anoth­er col­lec­tion of par­ti­cles ver­sus a col­lec­tion of par­ti­cles nurs­ing anoth­er, small­er col­lec­tion of par­ti­cles.
Con­tin­ue read­ing “Reflec­tions on Athe­ism and Amoral­i­ty”