A couple of snippets from 1 John 5.

[14] And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us:[15] And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.

What I'm learning is that if God wants something done, He'll work it out if I trust Him enough to allow Him to. What I still wonder about is how to trust God with the things I'm not sure He wants. It's hard to step out in faith and expect God to come through when you're not convinced His plan is the path you've chosen.

[19] And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness.

This, to me, is a good definition of the world. Not "anything that's outside of explicit Christianity", but wickedness. Something is worldly if it's wicked, not if it's something that worldly (wicked) people do, because they often do plenty of good things.

That Sinking Feeling

You all know that drill, when you think something big has just gone wrong.

Yeah, it's no fun. BM and I had a couple of those sinking feelings today, because we stumbled across a problem with our research, a problem that may or may not be serious and may or may not have compromised a whole lot of work that we've done already and probably don't have time to do again. We don't know yet how it will turn out, if it's as big of deal as we first thought it might be, but it doesn't feel good.

No siree.

Here's an interesting study about how to more accurately rank undergraduate universities based on historical student preference. Essentially they measure, using a statistical model, which institutions are most desirable to students and theorize that their measure is less likely to be manipulated by universities to increase their apparent desirablility. I found this at an interesting blog I read, Statistics and Social Science.

Sleeping Optional

The same relatively stress-free claim could not be made by my research buddy, BM. Dude, the guy went 2 a.m., 4 a.m., 7 a.m., all night on consecutive days. That is not healthy! We tried to work last Friday after he pulled the all-nighter, but it did not last very long. I soon realized we wouldn't be very effective and he needed to get a nap before he had to go return a camera in an hour and a half.

But he says he's doing fine. He survived finals.

During dead week I think it was, all OSU students got an e-mail reminding us to take care of ourselves during the madness of studying. This included, of course, getting enough sleep. He said that he and his friends joked about that.

Good-bye ... Hello

This was my smoothest academic term in a long time. No big glitches, no super-crazy long nights, all this working 10 hours a week and hanging with my friends. That makes me happy. And I think next term will be even better. I think it might be more demanding, but I'm taking cool classes. Check this out:

Simulation
Applied Stochastic Models
Mathematical Statistics II
Senior Project

Sometimes systems are too complex and unpredictable to examine analytically. So you use your knowledge of the parameters of the system (arrival rates at a store can be described by a certain statistical distribution, for instance) to simulate it, which allows you to predict how it will run.

Stochastic just means "probabalistic." This is sort of anti-simulation, because stochastic modeling attempts to examine unpredictable systems analytically. This is really closer to an Operations Research subject than a statistics one, though they are most certainly linked through probability theory.

Math Stats II will be another class diving and delving into the foundations and basic applications of statistics. I expect that I will already have seen most of the stuff at some point or other, but I anticipate that we will go much deeper with it than I've gone before.

Senior Project has been really fun so far. It actually has re-enthused me somewhat about O.R., which is resulting in some interesting things happening in the grad school application front. That in another post, though.

Chief Illiniwek

There's a big uproar by some groups at the University of Oregon about the basketball game that's scheduled to be played on Saturday between the Duck men's basketball team and the Illinois Fighting Illini.

Essentially, Illinois' mascot is an Indian chief and some people, mostly university activists, are demanding that it be cancelled.

I admire the fact that people are so concerned about whether something is offensive to another group of people. That's very Christian in principle. It's the type of thing that, politically, liberals tend to emphasize more than conservatives, to their credit. Championing the little guy, the minority.

But in this case, it's ridiculous. There are not even statistics that show that most Native Americans are offended by something like this. In fact, according to this article, Chief Illeniwek is historically honoring and memorializing an indigenous Native American tribe, not disparaging them.

'Crastination

A friend, CG, is a missionary in Poland. She teaches English, and here's a conversation between two of her students:

"B: I know, I know exactly what you mean. I mean, sometimes, you know, what I do is, I'll, I'll just sit down, you know, I'll get myself all sorted out, get everything ready, and then something catches my eye in the room, like, I mean, I've got the telly on, you know, in the corner, you know, I have the sound turned down, but I just notice the picture -- and I'm like, well, I've got to see what that, I mean I've got to see that programme, you know, it'll only take twenty minutes, and then of course, then I'm off and I'm away and I'm here. Oh! It's terrible!

J: I know, just before I start, I'll go and make a cup of coffee and then I'll just have to sit down with my cup of coffee rather than work...

B: And you've got to make yourself, you know, a jam sandwich or something to go with it...

J: Absolutely.

B: To go with the coffee. Yeah, yeah, you can look around and think, "Well, actually it's more important that I tidy the flat."

J: Yeah, and you've got to wash up your cup of coffee."

She noted that she could really identify with this, and of course I can too.

An odd thing, though. When I buckle down and do "it", I often find myself ... gulp ... enjoying the very same activity that I was avoiding like orange jello.

I think I may have cracked the window on a door to Covell Hall. It gets stuck and the only way to get it open is to yard on it, hard. So I did and then I looked up and there was spiderweb-like cracks. But I don't know if they were there before.

First one down. Not too bad, but hard to tell.

All right, off to Final #1 (Math Stats).

Ah, what awesomeness. PB, a young man who's been coming to church, became a Christian! It's so great, what God has done, and I'm so happy for him. And he's happy too!

What is the Purpose/Function of the Christian Media?

Obviously, there's never been in the history of the world the world as it is today. I think that Christians, in every era, are presented with unique challenges.

In our country, it is the media's job to uncover truth, and there never seems to be a shortage of it to uncover. A good example of this is recent work the San Franciso Tribune has done in the Barry Bonds doping case. It's not nice to expose baseball players for their misdeeds, and the reporters even went so far as to report testimony they had procured via a leak that was not supposed to be public information. The media seems to be one of the checks and balances in our democracy, really they seem like a form of accountability for anyone who is involved in anything nefarious enough to be scandalous.

But there's that word: scandal. It's a fine line between hard investigation and digging for dirt. I mean, what's really the difference between uncovering a sex scandal involving the president or one involving a movie star?

Ah, but what about the Christian media? Like it or not (and I don't think I do), Christian institutions--particularly music, but really any large-scale ministry--are modeled after our society in that they play to the big-names. Within the parameters of the Christian Contemporary Music industry, for instance, the market is driven by specific artists. Billy Graham, Ken Ham, Bill Gothard. You go to a concert because of the name, you follow the groups, you follow the singers, you wait and snatch up new albums from your favorites, you go to a seminar because of a name. While I hope it stops short of hero worship (a sermon tonight was called "No Other Gods"), for better or for worse "common" people latch onto those who can make their spines tingle via their vocals or their playing or their preaching and this creates a culture in which these special people held up.

Now they're public figures, recognized by fans of theirs. Now media springs up to support these industry. You have CCM magazine, the Singing News, Christianity Today, etc. Now, with the internet, people from across the country and world anonymously discuss their favorites, and blogs give opinion and analysis.

But should the Christian media function as the secular one does? Scripture surely doesn't address this specifically. Perhaps it does in principle, though. If something is wrong in a large "ministry" or with a Christian performer, should they be held publicly accountable? Should they be called out?

See, all this grows out of this celebritizing of Christianity. I don't know how we can get around it, but I don't know if it's right.

But if a "minister" is a celebrity, and living sinfully, for instance, something needs to be done. I mean, the media's just searching for the truth, right? They just want transparency, supposedly. And those things are good. So ... what?