Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 7

In the time of King David, the Bible says that the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world.

To that end, I share articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al and soci­etal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). May these give you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar. Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

1. From the peo­ple-are-awe­some depart­ment: Is This New Swim Stroke The Fastest Yet? (Regan Penalu­na, Nau­tilus): how are we still dis­cov­er­ing stuff like this?
2. From the leviathan-is-scary depart­ment:
   • Crim­i­nal Law 2.0 (Alex Kozin­s­ki, George­town Law Jour­nal): it’s long but grip­ping. The prob­lems with America’s jus­tice sys­tem go way beyond the actions of offi­cers on patrol.
   • Wisconsin’s Shame: I Thought It Was A Home Inva­sion (David French, Nation­al Review): the gag orders are the most dis­tress­ing com­po­nent of this sto­ry.
   • The Injus­tice of Civ­il-Asset For­fei­ture (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): yet anoth­er depress­ing fea­ture of Amer­i­can law.
   • On the flip side, it’s still way bet­ter here than many oth­er places: The Hid­den Rea­son For Pover­ty The World Needs to Address Now (Gary Hau­gen, TED Talk): Hau­gen, inci­den­tal­ly, is a devout Chris­t­ian.
3. From the method­ol­o­gy mat­ters depart­ment: Tal­ly­ing Right-Wing Ter­ror vs Jihad (Megan McAr­dle, Bloomberg View) — I am not super-inter­est­ed in the top­ic itself, but I found this piece fas­ci­nat­ing as an exam­ple of how impor­tant research method­ol­o­gy is. Hone your craft!
4. From the grace abounds depart­ment: An Evan­gel­i­cal Revival In The Heart of New York (Liz Rob­bins, New York Times): this is about an event host­ed by Luis Palau, not an erup­tion of piety in the Big Apple, although the arti­cle notes that the num­ber of evan­gel­i­cals in NYC has increased by 20% since 2000. This relat­ed sto­ry adds fas­ci­nat­ing details: Saturday’s Big Evan­ge­lism Event In Cen­tral Park Fueled By Com­mu­ni­ty Ser­vice With A Bless­ing From A Gay May­or In Port­landia (Pauline Dolle, A Jour­ney Through NYC Reli­gions).

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles.