Thoughts

A love’s reserved when wells are dry Whose dust reflects its soul Whose echoes sound the silent cry Of eyes’ unwatered shoal Now all that’s dried and thirsting ground Seeks some untempered truth From different streams seeks to be drowned In someone else’s youth But others’ love won’t breach these walls Nor heal its crumbling rock Till purer flow from purer falls Restores its absent stock A pallid love which seeks repair Can hope for nothing real Till truer love leaves hearts laid bare, Fills hearts which truly feel If here we gave enough of love To tame a cynic’s views I think there’d be still more above To fill the empty pews.

Our Haiti team took part today in a "Global Focus Sunday" at a church here in Stockton, a day devoted to missionary work. The theme of the day, for me, was that God works in and through those who act out their faith, those who put into practice what God teaches through Scripture. Francis Chan, a visiting speaker who grew up in Stockton, made this point as he spoke of the difference between the early church, on the one hand, and what he sees in today's church, on the other. One was willing to give all they had for their Savior, to live their lives in devotion to Christ; and the other looks more like a group of people who may cuss less, but whose lives otherwise remain unchanged. The sermon could be summed up in this way: Live out your faith passionately for Christ. Now passion isn't a popular notion in Western culture. Pico Iyer wrote of this in an essay called "The Nowhere Man." Here, he observed that we have become cosmopolitans, connected to nowhere and ...

Today, my student council and leadership class hosted a third- through fifth-grade dance. This was the first time we'd organized a dance for the younger students, and the first time student council and leadership worked together on a school activity. For some reason, that unity was the most triumphant part of all of this, even though they didn't really work together. The response to this dance was overwhelming. Never have we organized a dance with so many in attendance. There were throngs of kids dancing and playing and eating and hanging. We taught them a dance, played musical chairs, read them stories (okay, not this one), and led a dance-off. This doesn't mean there weren't problems. A few kids got hurt. One was hurt when someone threw bead necklaces into the crowd. A girl went after one and either stepped wrong or was stepped on, because she injured her foot. Another girl seemed to be hyperventilating, and had to wait outside to catch her breath. This was the scar...

One of my fondest memories of Haiti is early-morning soccer, when we got up at 5:00 to travel in a pickup truck to a large soccer field by the ocean. You would think it would be really cold at 5:00, but the weather in Haiti is so nice that you could wear shorts and a t-shirt and still not be cold. Part of the fun of these mornings was the trip to the field. Haitians don’t have the same driving rules that we do: they don’t have lanes or speed limits, so when we came on a slowly-moving motorcyclist, bicyclist, or tap-tap filled with people, we could honk our horn and speed around them. It isn’t always safe, but that and the bumpy road meant you had to hang on to the back of the truck. When we got there on one day, I volunteered to be the goalie for our side. At first, I did pretty well. I blocked two or three shots, but I think that only made a few of the kids on the opposite team mad, because they shot lots more, and most of their shots got past me. On another day, we played tag on ...

The Hunger Games , Coldplay, Starbucks, Facebook, P90x, and Doctor Oz are all a part of what we call popular culture. All of the innovators who brought these forms of entertainment, comfort, or healthfulness deserve their recognition. All have distinguished themselves by their ingenuity, and some have retained their novelty and usefulness in a culture that clamors always for something new. Set as an ashen background behind the throng of their followers, however, idles a smaller, ill-noticed group. They are the anti-followers, the indie rock fan, Facebook-coffee-shop boycotting, "read-it-before-it-was-famous" clan, those who thrive on being on the outside and set against joining in. They are the pop-culture refugees, who at once shun what others embrace and embrace what others shun. They are the brightly contrasting brush strokes on a cultural wall that seems to them painted one color. Some of them choose it while others are chosen by it. They are the artists, the innovators...

In Monkey Trials and Gorilla Sermons: Evolution and Christianity from Darwin to Intelligent Design , historian Peter Bowler makes it his goal to show that the history of the debate between creationism and evolution was not two-sided, as we are tempted to see it today, with atheistic Darwinism on the one hand and young-Earth creationism on the other. Instead, he shows that there was an array of alternative interpretations to earth and human origins, some of which represent what Bowler calls the “liberal synthesis,” or liberal theologians’ attempts to promote a compromise between Scripture and evolution. In the midst of his argument, he explains the two main issues that Christians have with naturalistic evolution, and attempts to show that there are ways to overcome them. The issues Bowler mention involved random variation on the one hand and the requirement of competition and death on the other. The idea that humans are a result of random variation implies there is no pur...

Last November marked the seventieth anniversary of the beginning of World War II. Because so many men were drafted to the military, many of the jobs that were thought of as “male-only” jobs had to fall to women. This happened both at home and in the military. At home, women could now be found working as heavy industrial workers, jobs previously given to men only (some were forced to leave their children at home, or even in the car for the entire workday due to lack of childcare). In the military, women began to act as test pilots and transport pilots for the airforce so that males were freed to fly as fighter pilots. The same happened in the army and navy: in the army, women served as control tower operators, parachute riggers, and bomb site maintenance specialists. They became mechanics, electricians, engineers; they would issue weapons to soldiers and make test tubes; they were used as surgical, X-ray, and dental technicians; and a few participated in the Manhattan Project that ...

An article from CNN not long ago highlighted a controversy surrounding the ban of Mexican-American history and perspective textbooks from classes in Tuscon, Arizona high schools. The school board believes that the classes and curriculum were teaching "in a biased, political, and emotionally charged manner" and pointed to a 2010 Arizona state law that prohibits the teaching of material that encourages the overthrow of the U.S. government, foments hatred of any class of people, is created for a specific ethnicity, or promotes unity among members of an ethnic group rather than treating students as individuals. Teachers of these courses argue that they balance the perspectives they teach and that don't teach racism. Concurrently, an independent audit found that although there exists an "overabundance of controversial commentary," nothing in the books violates the state law. The audit, instead, found that the courses promote an environment of acceptance...

My eighth-grade students were studying poetry awhile back. In the midst of this, I had each of them introduce and recite a poem that he or she liked. When one of my classes finished, someone asked if I would recite one from memory. Caught a little off-guard, I told them I would read one of my own (it was sitting in the room already because I'd told a student I would share one of my poems, but never got around to it). I can't tell you how nervous I was reading that poem to my students (my principal happened to be there, too). The nervousness was bad enough that I actually had to stop mid-poem to calm myself. I rarely feel this way in front of my classes anymore, but it was different here, and I know why. Despite the fact that I speak day in and day out, all of my words are mere recitations of academic concepts or commentary on events that involve other people. Very little of it-- and I try to keep it this way-- involves my personal life. This is a good thing. Teachers should...

Bucket lists reflect people's values, and I'm no exception. I can tell from what I want to do that I care about intelligence, being seen, and overcoming fear. Here is my bucket list so far: 1. Earn my master's degree 2. Be an actor or extra on a movie or show 3. Learn a language, an instrument, or a martial art 4. Get a poem published 5. Face my fear of rejection 6. Live in a new place for at least one year with no family or friends around. It doesn't consist of much, I know, but given that I've only accomplished one of them so far, it shouldn't be so easy to get through. I'm starting to think more seriously about number four.  I submitted a poem to a magazine almost two months ago, and was rejected. I tried again about two weeks ago. We'll see what the magazine thinks of it.

The idea of robots is not new, and mention of them goes back to at least classical Greek times. In Homer’s Iliad , for example, a Greek god named Hephaestus created armor for the hero Achilles. Later, around 1495, Leonardo Da Vinci created specifications for a robot that could wave its arms, sit up, and move its jaw and head. Still, use of robots has become widespread only recently. Among the more interesting types of robots we use today is one called the swarm robot. This type of robot was inspired by colonies of insects (like bees or ants), and is distinct from other types, in that the robots act together. Because of it, these robots are said to use what’s called “swarm intelligence,” wherein the individuals behave together as one superorganism. In much the same way birds will flock in a single group and ants will work collectively, these robots are employed to work together to complete one major task. The U.S. military, for example, was recently working with the idea of swarm intell...