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.

Never Bite The Hands You Feed

In a very biz­zarre sto­ry, some zookeep­ers have been caught eat­ing the ani­mals under their care.

When I read it, my mind flashed to Cain and Abel in the Gar­den of Eden. Cain killed his broth­er, and when asked about his broth­er said, “Am I my broth­er’s keep­er?”

I can just see these guys, “Are we the ani­mals’ keep­ers? Oh wait, yeah…”

Stanford: What An Amazing Campus!

Yes­ter­day Paula and I had the chance to get togeth­er with Stan­ford Law Prof Jeff Str­nad (who’s quite a swim­mer).

Any­way, we were walk­ing through White Plaza on our way to meet him, when all of a sud­den we were con­front­ed by a clip­board-wield­ing grad­u­ate stu­dent ask­ing us if we want­ed to ‘talk to a robot.’ We looked around and saw a Dalek-like con­struct sit­ting out­side, appar­ent­ly engrossed in con­ver­sa­tion with a stu­dent. I was extremem­ly inter­est­ed, but we were almost late for our meet­ing with Jeff and so we passed.

We had a great lunch at the Stan­ford Fac­ul­ty Club, which has great food a cheap prices (but you have to be a mem­ber or the guest of a mem­ber to eat there).

As we were leav­ing, Jeff men­tioned that the guy at the table next to us was a Nobel lau­re­ate in the field of eco­nom­ics. I did­n’t catch the name, but I fig­ured it would be easy to go online and fig­ure out which prof at Stan­ford had won a Nobel in the eco­nom­ic sciences–I did­n’t count on 8 lau­re­ates in one field!

Over­all, Stan­ford lays direct claim to 23 lau­re­ates (14 of whom are still liv­ing), and indi­rect claim to many more, among them nov­el­ist John Stein­beck, who attend­ed Stan­ford but got a C in his fresh­man Eng­lish class and dropped out before grad­u­at­ing.

Wow–what a school!

What Celebrities Think About God

Hmmm… The Onion has an arti­cle col­lect­ing the com­ments that many celebri­ties have made about God over the course of their inter­views.

Some were artic­u­late, some were stu­pid, most were puz­zled. A few were humor­ous, in a sad sort of way:

Chuck Palah­niuk wrote Fight Club and four oth­er nov­els, includ­ing the new Lul­la­by.
The Onion: Is there a God?
Chuck Palah­niuk: Yes.
O: Care to elab­o­rate?
CP: Boy. Let me get back to you when I’m dead.

and

Stand-up come­di­an Steven Wright is known for his dead­pan deliv­ery and absur­dist one-lin­ers.
The Onion: Is there a God?
Steven Wright: Ahhh… You’ll have to ask Jesus.

and the kick­er

Amer­i­ca’s great­est liv­ing writer, Neal Pol­lack is the author of The Neal Pol­lack Anthol­o­gy Of Amer­i­can Lit­er­a­ture.
The Onion: Is there a God?
Neal Pol­lack: God does not exist, unless you are my moth­er-in-law and are read­ing this, in which case I def­i­nite­ly do believe that He exists, and will raise my chil­dren accord­ing­ly. But if you’re not my moth­er-in-law, and she’s not read­ing this, then He does not exist.

Read them all.

Some People Have Entirely Too Much Free Time

Three Lego pages have caught my eye with their out­landish dis­play of inge­nu­ity.

The achiev­ing the impos­si­ble award goes to the Andrew Lip­son’s Lego Page, which fea­tures clever engines and repro­duc­tions of M. C. Esch­er works. That’s right–he’s recre­at­ed those impos­si­ble draw­ings in 3D.

The we could make beau­ti­ful music togeth­er award goes to Hen­ry Lim’s Lego sculp­tures for his func­tion­al Lego harp­si­chord. Wow!

Final­ly, the ser­vice to human­i­ty award goes to the Cool Lego Site Of The Week. Get your need for geeky Lego ideas met here!