Tuesday, April 29

Just two days of classes left at the UofA. It is always hard to believe it when the end of the school year arrives. Here are some random things that have come across my "desk" over the past few weeks ...

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Weather played havoc with the pole vault at the Drake Relays last weekend, which is often the case. It seems that the way the stadium is built produces a lot of swirling winds and cross winds on the vault runways, which all run north and south. The pole vault is dangerous enough in good conditions (running as fast as you can with a 16' pole, bending it, and letting it fling you almost 20' in the air), let alone with 20 mph winds blowing in your face or pushing you one way or another. So the heights for the college men and women and elite women weren't too good. For the elite men, however, we tried something different. Jeff Hartwig (American record holder) had a "plant box" in his truck from the mall vault earlier in the week. (The "plant box" is the medal container buried in the ground that the vaulters put the end of the pole in when they take off.) So we put it in the sand of one of the long jump pits, which allowed us to have a runway that ran west to east with a predominant tailwind. That made for a better vaulting situation! It was the first time I had ever seen that done.

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Here is an article from a recent issue of Christianity Today. The author makes the point that we don't live in "Jerusalem" (a culture comfortable and familiar with Christianity) and we don't live in "Babylon" (a culture far removed for Christianity and which doesn't much care what you believe as long as you keep the peace - see Daniel), but we live in "Samaria." The people of people of Samaria knew a lot about Jerusalem's religion (though some of their information was distorted and wrong) and held a grudge against it.

"So I sometimes find life in America. The problem is not that my religion is strange. The problem is that my religion is familiar. Like Samaritans and Jews, Christians and non-Christians have a partly shared worldview (our Western traditions, which include the Bible), a shared point of origin (Christendom), and well-defined points of contention (the exclusivity of Christ). We are familiar with what each other believes. We're suspicious of one another. So we start off with a grudge."

Read the rest of the article and let me know what you think.

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A recent study cited in USA Today reports that 1 in 4 teenage girls have a Sexually Transmitted Disease. I don't even know what to say to that. That is incredibly frightening and sad.

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Finally, if Dale Armstrong reads this would he please email me. Before I responded to your last email you switched jobs and now the email address I have for you doesn't work!

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