Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 113

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. I Don’t Under­stand Chris­tians Watch­ing Game of Thrones (Kevin DeY­oung, Gospel Coali­tion): “Does any­one real­ly think that when Jesus warned against look­ing at a woman lust­ful­ly (Matt. 5:27), or when Paul told us to avoid every hint of sex­u­al immoral­i­ty and not even to speak of the things the world does in secret (Eph. 4:3–12), that some­how this meant, go ahead and watch naked men and women have (or pre­tend to have) sex?” I don’t always agree with every­thing I share here, but for the record I am 100% in agree­ment with the author. Soft­core porn doesn’t cease to be soft­core porn just because it has grip­ping dia­log and cool spe­cial effects. For anoth­er (unper­sua­sive to me) per­spec­tive, read Seri­ous­ly, ‘Game of Thrones’ made me a bet­ter Bible read­er (Caryn Rivadeneira, Wash­ing­ton Post).
  2. News­wor­thy Deaths (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): just a reminder that the view we have of  what’s hap­pen­ing in the world is always a dis­tort­ed one.
  3. You’ve no doubt heard about the Google memo sug­gest­ing new ways to pur­sue gen­der diver­si­ty in tech which got the author fired. There has been a TON of fas­ci­nat­ing com­men­tary. Here are a few pieces that stood out to me.
    • Here’s the memo itself: Google’s Ide­o­log­i­cal Echo Cham­ber (James Damore). It’s short and easy to read. Def­i­nite­ly skim it if you’ve only heard oth­er peo­ple describe it.
    • Google’s War Over The Sex­es (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “I strong­ly sus­pect that more than a few Sil­i­con Val­ley high­er-ups agreed with the broad themes of Damore’s memo. But just as tech titans accept some cen­sor­ship and oppres­sion as the price of doing busi­ness in Chi­na, they accept per­for­ma­tive pro­gres­sivism as the price of hav­ing nice cam­pus­es in the most lib­er­al state in the union and recruit­ing their employ­ees from its most elite and lib­er­al schools.” If you only read one thing this week, read this one. The last six or so para­graphs in par­tic­u­lar are quite good.
    • I’m a woman in com­put­er sci­ence. Let me ladys­plain the Google memo to you. (Cyn­thia Lee, Vox): “At the out­set, it must be con­ced­ed that, despite what some of the com­men­tary has implied, the man­i­festo is not an unhinged rant. Its qua­si-pro­fes­sion­al tone is a big part of what makes it so beguil­ing (to some) and also so dan­ger­ous.” The author is a CS lec­tur­er at Stan­ford.
    • As a Woman in Tech, I Real­ized: These Are Not My Peo­ple (Megan McAr­dle, Bloomberg View): “James Damore, an engi­neer at Google, wrote a memo sug­gest­ing that maybe there weren’t so many women at Google because women are less inter­est­ed in sit­ting around and star­ing at code all day. The inter­net erupt­ed. James Damore is no longer work­ing at Google. As a woman work­ing in the bro­tas­tic atmos­phere of IT, I ulti­mate­ly came to a con­clu­sion sim­i­lar to his.”
    • What the Google Engineer’s Man­i­festo Missed About Dis­crim­i­na­tion at Work (Paula Eng­land, Insti­tute For Fam­i­ly Stud­ies blog): “Damore’s memo missed one huge thing: Abun­dant and rig­or­ous sci­en­tif­ic studies—by soci­ol­o­gists, psy­chol­o­gists, and economists—have demon­strat­ed that gen­der and race bias­es adverse­ly affect women and peo­ple of col­or in the work­place.” The author is a soci­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sor at NYU.
    • The Google Memo: Four Sci­en­tists Respond (Quil­lette Mag­a­zine): four schol­ars with rel­e­vant exper­tise large­ly back up the memo author’s claims about gen­der dif­fer­ences.
      1. Lee Jus­sim, pro­fes­sor of social psy­chol­o­gy at Rut­gers: “The author of the Google essay on issues relat­ed to diver­si­ty gets near­ly all of the sci­ence and its impli­ca­tions exact­ly right.”
      2. David Schmitt, who has a Ph.D. in per­son­al­i­ty psy­chol­o­gy: “In the case of per­son­al­i­ty traits, evi­dence that men and women may have dif­fer­ent aver­age lev­els of cer­tain traits is rather strong.… But it is not clear to me how such sex dif­fer­ences are rel­e­vant to the Google work­place.”
      3. Geof­frey Miller, pro­fes­sor of evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of New Mex­i­co: “Grad­ed fair­ly, his memo would get at least an A- in any mas­ters’ lev­el psy­chol­o­gy course.”
      4. Debra W Soh, who has a Ph.D. in sex­u­al neu­ro­science: “With­in the field of neu­ro­science, sex dif­fer­ences between women and men—when it comes to brain struc­ture and func­tion and asso­ci­at­ed dif­fer­ences in per­son­al­i­ty and occu­pa­tion­al preferences—are under­stood to be true, because the evi­dence for them (thou­sands of stud­ies) is strong.”
    • The Google Memo: What Does the Research Say About Gen­der Dif­fer­ences? (Sean Stevens and Jonathan Haidt, Het­ero­dox Acad­e­my): A sum­ma­ry of meta-analy­ses on the sub­ject of gen­der dif­fer­ences. “Gen­der dif­fer­ences in math/science abil­i­ty, achieve­ment, and per­for­mance are small or nil.… Gen­der dif­fer­ences in inter­est and enjoy­ment of math, cod­ing, and high­ly ‘sys­tem­iz­ing’ activ­i­ties are large.”
    • Googling Moral Puri­ty (R.R. Reno, First Things):  “Our rul­ing class relies on ‘diver­si­ty’ and ‘inclu­sion’ to legit­i­mate its super­em­i­nence. This makes the atten­dant ide­ol­o­gy sacro­sanct. Any pub­lic dis­sent becomes explo­sive, because it threat­ens the legit­i­ma­cy of our cur­rent social sys­tem, which is char­ac­ter­ized by an increas­ing con­cen­tra­tion of wealth and pow­er among just a few at the tip­py-top.”
    • Quote of the week goes to Rod Dreher: “Gen­der non-essen­tial­ists are the young earth cre­ation­ists of the Left.” (source)
  4. Relat­ed in a weird way: The Tox­ic Dra­ma on YA Twit­ter (Kat Rosen­field, Vul­ture): “One author and for­mer diver­si­ty advo­cate described why she no longer takes part: ‘I have nev­er seen social inter­ac­tion this [messed] up,’ she wrote in an email. ‘And I’ve been in prison.’”
  5. Why Are There No New Major Reli­gions? (Joe Emont, The Atlantic): “State per­se­cu­tion, aid­ed by reli­gious author­i­ties, is in fact a major rea­son why new faiths fail in parts of the world where gov­ern­ment polices reli­gious doc­trine.” The author fails to acknowl­edge the potent new reli­gion in North Amer­i­ca that is a brew of envi­ron­men­tal­ism and sex­u­al auton­o­my with New Age super­sti­tion thrown in. Also, he doesn’t real­ly con­sid­er that maybe some reli­gions are legit­imized by miracles/divine sanc­tion. Inter­est­ing stuff nonethe­less.
  6. Hype­priests: The Grail-Wear­ing Pas­tors Who Dress Like Justin Bieber (Sam Schube, GQ): “I wish Justin Bieber the best. ‘Love Your­self’ is among the finest pop songs of this short cen­tu­ry, and I find his Insta­gram account deeply charm­ing in its utter lack of guile. But even if he weren’t Justin Bieber, he’d deserve the guid­ance, spir­i­tu­al or oth­er­wise, he’s seek­ing. We all deserve that. All I mean to say is this: It is rather remark­able that the men Justin Bieber has entrust­ed to deliv­er that guid­ance have decid­ed to dress like Justin Bieber.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have 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. (first shared in vol­ume 32)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

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 (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

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