Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 21

In the time of King David, 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, on Fri­days I’ve been shar­ing 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

With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

1. How big of a deal do you have to be for POTUS to inter­view you? Pres­i­dent Oba­ma & Mar­i­lynne Robin­son: A Con­ver­sa­tion In Iowa (NY Review of Books). You might recall that Robin­son is speak­ing at Stan­ford soon and also that I men­tioned her essay “Fear” a few emails back.
2. Won­der­ing why peo­ple are flee­ing Syr­ia? Check out Syria’s War: A Five Minute His­to­ry (a Vox video). This is real­ly well-done. 
3. There is also vio­lence erupt­ing in Israel. For­eign Pol­i­cy asks Can Any­one Pre­vent A Third Intifa­da?  Inci­den­tal­ly, if you won­der why peo­ple are skep­ti­cal of the way news con­cern­ing Israel is report­ed, take a look at Return­ing to the Copy Desk, Briefly (Kevin Williamson, Nation­al Review). It is a take­down of a NY Times arti­cle show­ing how much bias can creep into an appar­ent­ly objec­tive arti­cle (this is from the right cri­tiquing the left — for coun­terex­am­ples search for clips from the Dai­ly Show). Bot­tom line: it’s real­ly hard to find trust­wor­thy news about Israel.
4. Lying About Our Reli­gion, and Oth­er Prob­lems With Polling (Reli­gion Dis­patch­es). There real­ly is a prob­lem devel­op­ing with polling, which is bad news because we rely upon polling in our nation­al life to tell us what the pub­lic thinks. Nate Sil­ver is also wor­ried about this — Polling Is Get­ting Hard­er, But It’s A Vital Check On Pow­er (FiveThir­tyEight).
   • An insight­ful obser­va­tion from the “Lying About Our Reli­gion” arti­cle: “In a democ­ra­cy with hun­dreds of mil­lions of peo­ple, how do you know what the pub­lic thinks and wants? How do you fig­ure out what binds them togeth­er, besides an annu­al oblig­a­tion to the IRS and a love of fire­works? In short: how do you know what the pub­lic is? Like many hard ques­tions, these prob­lems have been ren­dered large­ly invis­i­ble, in no small part because “The Pub­lic” and “The Amer­i­can Peo­ple” are favorite fic­tion­al char­ac­ters for politi­cians and jour­nal­ists, who speak of them with­out a trace of pre­ci­sion. So let’s indulge in a quick real­i­ty check. The Super Bowl—that nation­al spec­ta­cle that unites us around the flick­er­ing LCD hearth—had 115 mil­lion view­ers in the Unit­ed States last Feb­ru­ary; in oth­er words, near­ly two-thirds of us weren’t watch­ing it. The most-viewed polit­i­cal spec­ta­cle of the year, the State of the Union address, draws around 10% of the pop­u­la­tion. Barack Oba­ma won the 2012 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion with 62 mil­lion votes, mean­ing that few­er than 20% of us vot­ed for him. The peo­ple have spoken…kind of.”
5. Quick links:
   • Did you see Fran­cis Owusu’s catch? Stan­ford Still In Dis­be­lief After Fran­cis Owusu’s Spec­tac­u­lar Catch (ESPN)
   • Catch­ing Cheat­ing Stu­dents (NBER work­ing paper). 10% of stu­dents in a top uni­ver­si­ty appar­ent­ly cheat­ed on an exam. “When seat­ing loca­tions are ran­dom­ly assigned, and mon­i­tor­ing is increased, cheat­ing vir­tu­al­ly dis­ap­pears.” Who would have guessed?.
   • State­ment Call­ing For Con­sti­tu­tion­al Resis­tance To Oberge­fell v Hodges (the Amer­i­can Prin­ci­ples Project). I have not heard of this think­tank before. Sig­na­to­ries include pro­fes­sors from Har­vard, Oxford, Cambridge, Notre Dame, UT Austin, Van­der­bilt and many more. 
   • How Har­vard Fights Unions… By Con­ced­ing The Union’s Most Basic Claims (the blog Crooked Tim­ber).
   • Did Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er The Bib­li­cal City of Sodom? (Huff­in­g­ton Post). Pieces like this are very spec­u­la­tive. Inter­est­ing, but take it with a grain of salt.

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.