Hillary

I think most Christians hold Bill Clinton against Hillary. Within the church, Bill was the most vilified president in decades. I still remember my mother being upset when he won in 1992 and when he repeated in 1996, it was the end of the world, even though the alternative was Bob Dole. The whole Monicagate thing made it worse and Hillary is paying the price, at least in part. To be honest, her personality wouldn't endear her to Christians anyway. I remember my New York relatives being so upset when she ran for the Senate, despite the fact that she'd barely been a resident there at all. I think a lot of people have seen her whole post-First Lady career as being one long march to the presidential race and a lot of the reaction against her now is an effort to stop that march. It's not so much that she's a woman, but that she's Hilary Clinton. It speaks volumes that Christians are willing to vote for a Mormon, or even a Baptist pastor with zero chance of appealing to anyone but evangelicals, than to even entertain the idea of voting for Hilary. I'm not saying I will vote for her, but I don't know enough yet about the candidates yet to completely rule her out, myself.

Cornerstone in GR

I generally get the feeling that Cornerstone is not seen in the best light. I think a lot of people in the area remember the fact that it used to be a primarily Baptist institution and still hold it against anyone from CU. I think people in the community love to accuse Cornerstone of hypocrisy when it backs down from a stance it historically held, such as the dancing ban. They watch intently when something like the debate over the lifestyle statement becomes an issue on campus and hope the school'll have to eat its words again. Remember that whole thing about the Catholic tech worker? That went over like a lead balloon in the community, just reinforcing our image as intolerant "fundies."

I find that opinion even among our brothers and sisters in Christ down the road at Calvin. When I last went to Hekman Library, the clerk asked me, "Oh, you go to Cornerstone?" with the kind of inflection normally reserved for a question like, "Is that a swastika on your forehead?" I'm always more self-conscience when I'm wearing a CU sweatshirt around town than when I'm wearing something else.

Maybe I'm just imagining things, though.

environment/disease

Which is a bigger deal, environmental degradation or disease? I'm going to have to go with the environment, if for no other reason than that the loss of biodiversity resultant from pollution and our reckless behavior with nature could mean the loss of possible cures for the world's diseases. We already get many key medicines from plant sources and that's just the tip of the iceberg. It may sound idealistic to say we can find cures to something like AIDS by keeping rain forests intact, but it's not such a crazy idea. Given the possible medicinal value of nature, we should work to preserve as many species as possible.

Besides, what's the point of curing someone of a disease if they have nowhere to live because their home has become a desert or has become submerged? We Americans and Westerners can rest confidently in the fact that our money and mind-power will allay the bulk of the effects of environmental damage, but the rest of the world won't be so lucky. People are going to die faster for lack of food or water than because of a disease and the more we put off making changes to how we treat the environment, the more we doom them to a brief and miserable life.

cheating/plagiarism

As a grader for one of the history professors, I was sure I'd run into obvious evidence of cheating, but so far I have not. I'm not sure it would make a difference as nearly all of the tests I have graded thus far have been almost uniformly mediocre. If someone is cheating off someone else who is getting a 28% on a test, they've received their reward. That said, I'm sure cheating is pretty prevalent on campus. I guess I don't have a lot of faith in people's integrity.

As for plagiarism, I know that's a problem here. The mere fact that there is a push to use Turn It In indicates that the professors are concerned about it. As a former writing tutor, I know that many people here have trouble putting together a coherent sentence, let alone a paper, so it wouldn't surprise me if people were pulling paragraphs from un-cited sources. One professor has told me how a student copy-pasted a Wikipedia article and handed it in as their paper. As ridiculous as that sounds, it doesn't really surprise me.

As someone who has been an active member of a blogging community for over four years, I run into plagiarism occasionally, other sites pull my content and tout it as their own. More often than not, however, there is proper citation (or what the blogging community considers proper citation). So, I think there is something to be said about having an open publishing community, where observers and content owners can spot issues like that so easily. In an academic circle as small as Cornerstone, that's much harder.

The wider world has mechanisms for catching plagiarism and one that is rising in importance is the internet. It makes it possible to type a phrase, hit enter, and get a list of places that phrase is found. As more and more print content goes online, catching plagiarism from previously non-internet sources will be much easier.

Me and TV

I'm only periodically big on TV. Over the summer, for example, I got hooked on Scrubs because it was, conveniently enough, on when I got home from work. It's obviously an incredibly goofy show, but it has its serious side as well, which is one of the reasons I like it. I now own Seasons 1 and 3, but only because my fiancé gave them to me as gifts.

I used to be big into Lost but I couldn't watch every episode of Season 2 and have since fallen hopelessly behind. Maybe someday I'll catch up. I got roped into watching the last season finale and it got me interested in the show again, though I haven't yet put that interest into action.

I never watched Friends growing up, but my fiancé owns all 10 seasons and we've slowly been working our way around them. I've also had to watch Grey's Anatomy on occasion and if you've seen one episode of that, you've seen them all.

As far as currently running shows, I don't have one that I have to catch. The only "show" I watch a Detroit Red Wings game and that's really all I have time for, since it's a time commitment of up to 9 hours a week. As far as originality within a storyline goes, you can't beat a hockey game.

foreign films

I've seen a number of foreign films. Two that stand out are The Seventh Seal and Lola Rennt. I watched the first in a Doc Carroll class and enjoyed it, for the most part. Its pace was far different from what we're used to seeing in American films and it was deeper, somehow. Of course, Ingmar Bergman is known as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time and directors of shoot-em-up action flicks don't generally get those kinds of titles. Swedish is such a strange language, which an entirely different cadence than I'm used to, though I kept having to remind myself it wasn't German.

Lola Rennt is an entirely different movie. Aside from the fact that it's one of my favorites, I remember watching it the first time because it was what I was doing on 9/11. Anyway, it's in German, with the English title being Run, Lola, Run and it stars Franka Potente (Marie in the Bourne series). It's got this thumping soundtrack and a unique storyline I won't spoil here. It was one of the first foreign films I ever saw and is definitely one worth watching.

Another memorable foreign film was Downfall, a German movie about the final days of Hitler. It's very well-done and pretty disturbing at the same time. It's told in part from the perspective of his personal secretary and shows Hitler in his private life, where he is shown to be a quiet, at times protective, yet still evil, man. Somehow, that was more distburbing than if he'd been portrayed as a wild-eyed demon-possessed screamer. Also, the scene where Magda Goebbels poisons her six children is one of the most horrible I've seen.

I've found foreign films to be more thoughtful and slower-paced than our American ones, which is generally a good thing. There are times, though, where you just want to see fast-paced action!

Christians in politics

My thoughts on Christians in politics have changed over the years. I used to believe that Christians should be heavily involved in high-level national politics and that if we had enough of us in high places, we could right the ship of America via legislation. I now believe that it is more important for Christians to be involved on the ground level in changing people's hearts rather than in making efforts to force people to change by law. If we did that, we wouldn't need to be so concerned with national politics. I've recently felt that Christians, if they are honest with themselves, represent a third way in America, something different from both Republicans and Democrats. There are aspects of both parties that should be repugnant to us, but all too often we align ourselves along wordly lines and that's something I'd like to see less of.

Still, I don't have much against Christian politicians, who could do great things if they stayed true to who should have their real loyalty: Christ, not the flag or Uncle Sam. I would like to see someone whose faith is truly genuine and not just a facade for the public put up in an effort to get more votes. Someone who is honest about what they can and cannot do in office, and doesn't campaign on inflammatory issues that play on people's hearts. Is there such a person? I don't know.