Reflections on Christian Scholarship

One of our chief goals is to inte­grate our bib­li­cal and aca­d­e­m­ic per­spec­tives on life. If you think it’s hard as an under­grad, just wait for grad school!

To help you out, Leader U has a spe­cial set of arti­cles relat­ed to Chris­t­ian schol­ar­ship.

Some that caught my eye:

Check out On Inte­grat­ing Your Faith for a brief set of relec­tions on com­bin­ing your schol­ar­ship and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. I liked the inno­vat­ed idea of tithing your research.

I was also struck by The Call­ing of a Chris­t­ian Pro­fes­sor (mean­ing a Chris­t­ian pro­fes­sor at a sec­u­lar school). If that’s what God is call­ing you to do, check it out!

Also con­sid­er The Out­ra­geous Idea of Chris­t­ian Schol­ar­ship. George Mars­den argues that “Chris­t­ian per­spec­tives should make at least as much dif­fer­ence as fem­i­nist per­spec­tives.” Hear, hear!

Final­ly, you might want to check out Toward Inte­grat­ing Your Life and Work for a chal­lenge towards view­ing schol­ar­ship as a voca­tion that mat­ters to God.

Dogs Can Do Math

This is sort of an off­beat post that caught my eye: dogs have rudi­men­ta­ry math abil­i­ties (CNN).

That’s right: Fido knows the dif­fer­ence between one and two. The research will be pub­lished in an upcom­ing issue of Ani­mal Cog­ni­tion final fan­ta­sy vii advent chil­dren divx down­load . For more details, check out the report on New Sci­en­tist.

Lunch with the Pastor of Glad Tidings Church

Brief notes about my lunch with For­rest Beis­er, pas­tor of Glad Tid­ings Church.

Today I had the good for­tune of meet­ing with Pas­tor For­rest Beis­er of Glad Tid­ings Church for lunch.

It was a great meet­ing! I’ll be speak­ing at their Wednes­day evening ser­vice August 14th, build­ing up to their big evan­ge­lis­tic ral­ly with Bub­ba Paris of the San Fran­cis­co 49ers. How fun!

Inci­den­tal­ly, Glad Tid­ings has a long and dis­tin­guished his­to­ry of min­istry in San Fran. Among the many notable events that caught my eye, I thought it par­tic­u­lar­ly cool that Bethany Bible Col­lege had its hum­ble ori­gins in this church.

God is faith­ful­ly bring­ing us into con­tact with peo­ple with whom we can part­ner to see Stan­ford reached with the gospel!

Stanford in The Movies

Movies about Stan­ford or fea­tur­ing Stan­ford.

Here’s anoth­er win­dow on Stan­ford’s influ­ence: Stan­ford in Hol­ly­wood. Dis­claimer: I haven’t seen these. I got them by search­ing for Stan­ford at imdb.com

.

Steal­ing Har­vard is about one man’s life of crime to pay for his neice to attend the exor­bi­tant­ly priced Stan­ford. Lat­est totals: $27,204 tuition + $4,450 room + $4,230 board. That’s $35,884 a year!

Inva­sion: Stan­ford 1991 A. D. fea­tures two alien jan­i­tors try­ing to take over the world after cloning two fresh­men. It got a rat­ing of 8.7 on the Inter­net Movie Data­base, but I’m think­ing that with only sev­en votes the direc­tors and pro­duc­ers cast them all. 🙂

In Orange Coun­ty a bright stu­dent tries des­per­ate­ly to get into Stan­ford after his guid­ance coun­selor sends in the wrong tran­scripts by mis­take. (thanks to Brad Lauster for notic­ing that I mistyped the movie name).

Inter­est­ing­ly enough, I could­n’t find ref­er­ences to any of these movies on Stan­ford’s web­site. I guess they’re not too proud of their movie rep­re­sen­ta­tion…

Still, yet anoth­er (admit­ted­ly minor) way that Stan­ford is influ­enc­ing our cul­ture!
Check out the more sig­nif­i­cant rea­sons Stan­ford is one of the world’s most sig­nif­i­cant mis­sion fields!

The Message: Bono’s Favorite Bible Translation

Yes, that’s right. Bono (of U2) has a favorite Bible trans­la­tion. It’s The Mes­sage trans­lat­ed (some would say para­phrased) by Eugene Peter­son.

Sur­prised Bono reads the Bible? Don’t be. Bono pro­fess­es to be a Chris­t­ian (albeit an uncon­ven­tion­al one).

Look At My New Tree!

My favorite gift of all time–a three­fold cit­rus tree!

tree.jpgToday I got one of the best birth­day presents I’ve ever received–a cit­rus tree! Actu­al­ly, it’s three cit­rus trees in one. I’ll name it trin­i­ty. A com­pa­ny named Willits & New­comb spe­cial­izes in cit­rus trees, and make these “cock­tail” trees by graft­ing two or three vari­eties onto one trunk. Quite cool!

This one will bear Valen­cia Oranges, Eure­ka Lemons, and Bearss Limes!

This is one real advan­tage to hav­ing your moth­er-in-law come for a vis­it right before your birthday–you get great gifts!

Hanging Out In Palo Alto

Mus­ings on the eco­nom­ics of apart­ment com­plex­es.

This is almost the last bit of news on my mom’s vis­it: she’s leav­ing Tues­day morn­ing…

Today we went to church at Penin­su­la Chris­t­ian Cen­ter, the church Paula and I have been attend­ing since mov­ing here.

After­wards, we came home, had some PBJ sand­wich­es, and passed the after­noon lis­ten­ing to the Penin­su­la Sym­pho­ny play a free con­cert at our apart­ment com­plex! Evi­dent­ly Oak Creek apart­ments are a big spon­sor of the sym­pho­ny, so once a year they come do a free con­cert for us. Pret­ty cool.

That made me start think­ing, how­ev­er. How can an apart­ment com­plex afford to spon­sor a sym­pho­ny? The answer: pret­ty eas­i­ly. Oak Creek Apart­ments has 759 units. Rent­ing those at Bay Area prices means they’re tak­ing in around 1.5 mil­lion dol­lars each month. Even if they had 50 employ­ees and paid them $100,000 a year they still would clear around a mil­lion each month. Pret­ty neat busi­ness, that.

We wrapped up the day by grilling some steaks. Fun stuff.

Visiting Monterey and Santa Cruz

A brief descrip­tion of one of the most amaz­ing aquar­i­ums in the uni­verse.

Today we took my moth­er to vis­it Mon­terey Bay Aquar­i­um and San­ta Cruz Wharf.

As far as I’m con­cerned, Mon­terey Bay Aquar­i­um is the best aquar­i­um in the uni­verse. It’s amaz­ing! If you ever get a chance to vis­it it, you have to go. If they ever put the sev­en won­ders of the world to vote, I’ll serous­ly con­sid­er cast­ing my bal­lot for this attrac­tion. It is sim­ply breath­tak­ing.

After spend­ing four hours in the aquar­i­um, we were quite ready for sup­per at the Bub­ba Gump Shrimp Com­pa­ny (yes, like in For­rest Gump). It was pret­ty neat, and the food was good. We even got our pic­ture tak­en with a For­rest Gump imper­son­ator!

Final­ly, we vis­it­ed the San­ta Cruz Wharf at the north end of Mon­terey Bay. It was pret­ty neat, although the sea lions weren’t too frisky.

Over­all, it was a pleas­ant day spent roam­ing North­ern Cal­i­for­nia.

More On The Madhouse Called San Francisco

“San Fran­cis­co is a mad city, inhab­it­ed for the most part by per­fect­ly insane peo­ple…” Rud­yard Kipling

I found out I’m not alone in my opin­ions about San Fran­cis­co’s san­i­ty. No less an author­i­ty than Rud­yard Kipling is square­ly in my cor­ner: “San Fran­cis­co is a mad city, inhab­it­ed for the most part by per­fect­ly insane peo­ple…”

Ken­ny Worth­ley (a friend from Spring­field) wrote in with a mar­velous obser­va­tion: San Fran­cis­co seems to be con­fused about pot and pots. I quote:

“My ques­tions is: what if you were on pot, med­ical­ly nec­es­sary of course, and need to use the pot, but were not in a spot with a pot because you were grow­ing pot on a pub­lic lot? You would have to put down your pot, run to anoth­er pot spot, and pri­vate­ly poop.

So here is the scoop on poop — I think you should be able to claim med­i­c­i­nal pot poop­ing — so you could pub­li­cal­ly poop on the spot in a pot lot.”

Well said, Ken­ny: that would make an excel­lent let­ter to the edi­tor!

Acting Like Tourists in San Francisco

Vis­it­ing Fish­er­man’s Wharf and the Explorato­ri­um.

We took my mom to do the tourist thing in SF today: we took the Cal Train from Palo Alto into SF, and then the Muni bus­es (which take for­ev­er) to Fish­er­man’s Wharf (over­rat­ed), the Explorato­ri­um (San Fran’s best-rat­ed muse­um), and a Blue and Gold Bay Cruise (there were so many peo­ple we could bare­ly see any­thing, and the noise from the engine drowned out the audio pre­sen­ta­tion for a good por­tion of the tour). We ate lunch at the Expo Fam­i­ly Restau­rant (no web­site), and at the Rain For­est Cafe (which was quite an adven­ture: the food was decent, but the atmos­phere was excel­lent)!

We also had a chance to drop by Ghi­rardel­li Square (yes, like the choco­late com­pa­ny). It’s a mall area, but they do promi­nent­ly fea­ture choco­late! Very tasty.