Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 32

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, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal 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. This Is What Makes Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats So Dif­fer­ent (Vox, Ezra Klein): I was skep­ti­cal of this piece, but it’s insight­ful.
2. Recog­ni­tion: How A Trav­es­ty Led to Crim­i­nal-Jus­tice Inno­va­tion In Texas  (New York­er, Paul Kix): this is a pow­er­ful arti­cle with a heart­break­ing sto­ry at its cen­ter.
3. North Korea Gets Com­pe­ti­tion: The Top 50 Coun­tries Where It’s Now Hard­est To Be A Chris­t­ian (Chris­tian­i­ty Today, Sarah Zyl­stra). Sober­ing and sad­ly unsur­pris­ing. “2014 was the world’s worst year for the per­se­cu­tion of Chris­tians in the mod­ern era. Until 2015 sur­passed it.”
4. Col­lege Par­ty Cul­ture and Sex­u­al Assault (NBER, Lin­do, Siminksi, Swensen): “We find sig­nif­i­cant and robust evi­dence that foot­ball game days increase reports of rape vic­tim­iza­tion among 17–24 year old women by 28 per­cent. Home games increase reports by 41 per­cent on the day of the game and away games increase reports by 15 per­cent.” They pro­pose par­ties asso­ci­at­ed with the game as a causal mech­a­nism.
5. Inside Grad­u­ate Admis­sions (Inside High­er Ed, Scott Jaschick): if you plan to apply to grad school, read this. There is one reveal­ing anec­dote about how an admis­sions com­mit­tee treat­ed an appli­ca­tion from a Chris­t­ian col­lege stu­dent. My take­away: the pro­fes­sors tried to be fair but found it hard to do, and their stat­ed con­cerns were most­ly about the qual­i­ty of the insti­tu­tion rather than the faith of the appli­cant. Trou­bling nonethe­less.
6. Short­er Pieces:
   • I nev­er under­stood why going to church made you a hyp­ocrite (Rich Mullins): this is a short, beau­ti­ful obser­va­tion.
   • This is actu­al­ly what Amer­i­ca would look like with­out ger­ry­man­der­ing (Wash­ing­ton Post, Christo­pher Ingra­ham)
   • The fastest way to defog your car win­dows (and why it works) [YouTube, Mark Rober] not a ton of use here in mild Cal­i­for­nia, but some of you will live else­where before you die.
   • Why researchers keep cit­ing retract­ed papers (Quartz, Kei­th Collins): dis­tress­ing.

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.

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.