Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 116

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. The flood­ing in Hous­ton is crazy, and I say this as some­one who grew up fac­ing hur­ri­canes in Louisiana on a reg­u­lar basis. If you want to help, Con­voy of Hope is our rec­om­mend­ed dis­as­ter-relief orga­ni­za­tion. You can learn more about what they’re doing at Hur­ri­cane Har­vey Response. So far they’ve served over forty thou­sand peo­ple. More hur­ri­cane read­ing:
  2. 20 Argu­ments For God’s Exis­tence (Peter Kreeft, per­son­al web­site): “You may be blessed with a vivid sense of God’s pres­ence; and that is some­thing for which to be pro­found­ly grate­ful. But that does not mean you have no oblig­a­tion to pon­der these argu­ments. For many have not been blessed in that way. And the proofs are designed for them—or some of them at least—to give a kind of help they real­ly need. You may even be asked to pro­vide help.” I was remind­ed of this by a con­ver­sa­tion with an alum­nus. The author is a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor at Boston Col­lege.
  3. A Beat­ing In Berke­ley (Matt Labash, Week­ly Stan­dard): “One of them, Will John­son, announces that he is a black Amer­i­can and a Chris­t­ian. ‘This is not a neo-Nazi, white suprema­cist ral­ly,’ he says. ‘I don’t know where they got that from. I actu­al­ly called Nan­cy Pelosi’s office and asked her to change that. There’s no way I am a white suprema­cist.’” An amaz­ing arti­cle. Well worth read­ing.
  4. Some Thoughts and Advice for Our Stu­dents and All Stu­dents (an open let­ter from some Har­vard, Yale and Prince­ton pro­fes­sors): “Think­ing for your­self means ques­tion­ing dom­i­nant ideas even when oth­ers insist on their being treat­ed as unques­tion­able. It means decid­ing what one believes not by con­form­ing to fash­ion­able opin­ions, but by tak­ing the trou­ble to learn and hon­est­ly con­sid­er the strongest argu­ments to be advanced on both or all sides of questions—including argu­ments for posi­tions that oth­ers revile and want to stig­ma­tize and against posi­tions oth­ers seek to immu­nize from crit­i­cal scruti­ny.” Inter­est­ing­ly, at least four of the sig­na­to­ries (near­ly 20%) are peo­ple who have pre­vi­ous­ly made an appear­ance in these emails.
  5. Wait, Do Peo­ple Actu­al­ly Know Just How Evil This Man Is? (Nathan J. Robin­son, Cur­rent Affairs): “And I am wor­ried that even those who detest Trump and are appalled by this par­don do not entire­ly appre­ci­ate the depth of Arpaio’s evil, or under­stand quite how inde­fen­si­ble what Don­ald Trump just has done is. Frankly I think even Trump may not ful­ly real­ize the extent of the wrong­do­ing that he has just sig­naled his approval of.” Depress­ing read­ing.
  6. The Pre­mi­um Mediocre Life of Maya Mil­len­ni­al (Venkatesh Rao, Rib­bon­farm): “Pre­mi­um mediocre is the finest bot­tle of wine at Olive Gar­den. Pre­mi­um mediocre is cup­cakes and froyo. Pre­mi­um mediocre is ‘truf­fle’ oil on any­thing (no actu­al truf­fles are harmed in the mak­ing of ‘truf­fle’ oil), and extra-leg-room seats in Econ­o­my. Pre­mi­um mediocre is cruise ships, arti­san piz­za, Game of Thrones, and The Bel­la­gio. Pre­mi­um mediocre is food that Insta­grams bet­ter than it tastes…. pre­mi­um medi­oc­rity is cre­at­ing an aura of exclu­siv­i­ty with­out actu­al­ly exclud­ing any­one.” The arti­cle is far too long. Read the first few para­graphs and you’ll get the idea.
  7. My IRB Night­mare (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “We, as the patient’s doc­tors, would make the diag­no­sis and write it down on the chart. But we (as study inves­ti­ga­tors) need­ed a full signed con­sent form before we were allowed to access the diag­no­sis we had just made.” This is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly dis­turb­ing and enter­tain­ing, and so is the fol­low-up post.
  8. The Cost of Run­ning Har­vard (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): I assume broad­ly sim­i­lar sta­tis­tics are true of Stan­ford.

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 The Weight of Glo­ry (C.S. Lewis): orig­i­nal­ly preached as a ser­mon and then print­ed in a the­ol­o­gy mag­a­zine. Relat­ed: see the C. S. Lewis Doo­dle YouTube chan­nel – it’s real­ly good! (first shared in vol­ume 36)

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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