Officials in the tony Silicon Valley town of Woodside, Calif. (population 5,600), recently debated compliance with a state law requiring that town to have at least 16 "affordable housing" units (maximum rent for a one-bedroom apartment, $870) in that otherwise-high-end real estate market, and the best they could come up with, according to a November Associated Press report, was to allow horse farmers to create "apartments" for middle-class residents inside their barns.

“Walking through White Plaza early on a Friday afternoon, one is likely to hear Hossam Fahmy's Arabic verses ringing through the air from the Old Union Courtyard. The age-old call that Fahmy, a doctoral student in electrical engineering, invokes is a variation of one that many Muslims know by heart. Fahmy invites fellow believers to join the traditional Friday congregational prayer. People trickle in, removing their shoes, to join other observers on the mats that cover this shaded corner of the courtyard. By the final prayer, there are upward of 110 people who have come, all facing the direction of Mecca. “ Overall, there are 250 students involved in the Muslim Society."

Hey, here's a quote from the Oct 17th Stanford Daily. Ehud Barak, the former Israeli Prime Minister, is a Stanford grad and spoke at the university last night. ------------------------------------------------------------- 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."

Stranger to Stanford student: "Can you tell me where the bookstore is at?" Stanford student: "At Stanford, we don't end sentences with prepositions." Stranger: "Can you tell me where the bookstore is at, bonehead?"

How many Stanford students does it take to change a lightbulb? One: he holds it up and the world revolves around him.

Near memchu A circle with roses and benches For the TROUBLED may you find PEACE For the DESPAIRING may you find HOPE For the LONELY may you find LOVE For the SKEPTICAL may you find FAITH Frances C Arrillaga 1941-1995

Alex Bradford, a junior majoring in public policy, has been selected as a member of USA Today’s “2004 College Academic All-Starts First Team,” a group of exceptional undergraduates from around the country. “I was very surprised when I got the call from USA Today,” Bradford said. “I thought, ‘Are you sure you have the right person?’” Bradford has already won the George J. Mitchell Scholarship, which he will use to pursue an MBA in Dublin after he graduates this year. Many of his achievements involve AIDS and AIDS policy research, including working for AIDS non-governmental organizations and hospitals in Latin America and Africa, teaching the student-initiated course “Global AIDS: Political, Economic and Social Issues of the Pandemic” and writing the founding proposal for the AIDS Treatment Access Initiative, a nationwide campaign that organized last year’s “Student Global AIDS Walk.” He is currently writing an honors thesis on HIV/AIDS in Uganda and U.S. Foreign Policy. He also has a 4.0 grade-point average, is on the Stanford hockey team, wrote and published the book “Generation Y for the Global Village,” founded the Stanford Undergraduate Research Journal (SURJ) and is one of the Junior Class Presidents. Bradford was raised by a single mother in one of Minneappolis’ poorest neighborhoods and has worked dozens of jobs growing up, including a delivering newspapers. When asked what spurred his interest in AIDS, he said, “One of my best friends, an immigrant from Africa, died of AIDS. That’s how I became entrenched in the fight against what is now the deadliest killer in Africa, and soon to be in Asia.” Bradford recalled that during one of his trips to Africa, he was attacked by a group of young men who held an AK-47 to his head. “They screamed, ‘Where are you from?’” he said. “The kicked me so hard that I spit blood. They asked me what I was doing there, and I told them I was working with AIDS orphans. “One of them was an AIDS orphan. There was a silence, and he had the group give my wallet back. That was another time when I was reminded of the importance of global consciousness.”

If you wish to smell envy in the very air, visit Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Chicago, Berkeley, or Stanford the morning after the Macarthur genius (so-called) grants are announced.

Many students have a teflon piety - no matter what you tell them they keep believing what they believe. (paraphrased)

frosh posed nude in a calendar to raise money for 2004 tsunami relief.

In the 1860s, on the western slope of California's Sierra Nevada mountain range, Colis Huntington and Leland Stanford won a government contract to build a railroad from San Francisco to the east. The government offered them, in incentives, $24 million in government financing and 9 million acres of land. They had then negotiated with the cities and towns of central California: if a town did not contribute funding to the railroad, the railroad would avoid that town--and it would in due course disappear. It was claimed that Huntington, Stanford--then also Governor of California--and their partners had built the railroad without putting up a dime of their own money (see U.S. Congress, 1873). By 1869 they had built the Central Pacific Railroad was built, from San Francisco out to Ogden, Utah, where it met the Union Pacific. The stockholders of the Central Pacific then discovered that the railroad was in horrible financial shape. Some $79 million of stocks and bonds (including the $24 million from the government) had been floated, and the cash had been expended. $79 millon in cost of materials and payment for construction had been paid to the Central Pacific Credit and Finance Corporation. The Central Pacific Credit and Finance Corporation had spent some $50 million in wages and materials costs to build the railroad, and its shareholders had pocketed the remaining $30 million. Who were these shareholders? Colis Huntington, Leland Stanford, and two of their other partners. Who were the Central Pacific executives who had approved this arrangement with the Credit and Finance Corporation? Colis Huntington, and Leland Stanford... Stanford University, in Palo Alto, California, is today a very nice place indeed. http://econ161.berkeley.edu/Econ_Articles/carnegie/DeLong_Moscow_paper2.html

Everything that is not nailed down is mine, and anything I can pry loose is not nailed down.

The few very rich can get their education anywhere. They will be welcome to this institution if they come, but the object is more particularly to reach the multitude—those people who have to consider the expenditure of every dollar.

"THE TRUSTEES ... SHALL HAVE POWER AND IT SHALL BE THEIR DUTY:... 14. To prohibit sectarian instruction, but to have taught in the University the immortality of the soul, the existence of an all-wise and benevolent Creator, and that obedience to His laws is the highest duty of man.

I was reminded how much our ministry matters as I reflected on two very different events at Stanford: the Veritas Forum and a campus Playboy shoot. The two played out like a real-life version of truth or dare. First, truth. We were delighted to co-sponsor the Veritas Forum at Stanford. We brought in leading Christian intellectuals such as Dallas Willard, Gary Habermas, and Michael Behe to engage students and faculty in discussions about life's hardest questions and the relevance of Jesus Christ. It was incredible! The highlight for me was observing Christian philosopher Dallas Willard debate Richard Rorty (one of the the most influential philosophers in America today). The whole week was a powerful reminder that the Christian faith is reasonable and worthy of careful investigation. But we went from truth to dare as Playboy came to town and students disrobed to pose for the magazine's annual college issue. The Stanford Daily urged readers to participate, saying that prejudice against pornography "is an unfortunate product of our society, and one that ought to be addressed." The editorial went on to make the case that Playboy was a high-class, upstanding literary magazine. The difference between the two events was inadvertently summed up a senior named Erica. When asked by a local paper about some consequences of her decision to pose, she said, "I guess I hadn't thought it out too thoroughly." And so we'll keep sponsoring events like the Veritas Forum, we'll keep hosting Bible studies in the dorms, and we'll keep talking about things like the reliability of the Bible, because today's students desperately need to be challenged to think.

Some fascinating research shows, however, that if you can convince people that smarts come from what people do, rather than what they were born with, performance improves markedly. In a study with Stanford undergraduates, randomly selected students were persuaded to believe that intelligence was malleable rather than fixed. Over two months later, they reported being more engaged in and enjoying the academic process more than students in control conditions. More impressively, students persuaded to believe that smartness was malleable got better grades the next term, especially African-American students. (<em>they footnote the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 22 (2001):1-13, available at http://www.atkinson.yorku.ca/~jsteele/files/04082317412924405.pdf</em>)