Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 131

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 West­ern Elite from a Chi­nese Per­spec­tive (Puzhong Yao, Amer­i­can Affairs): “Cer­tain beliefs are as ubiq­ui­tous among the peo­ple I went to school with as smog was in Shi­ji­azhuang. The doc­trines that shape the world­views and cul­tur­al assump­tions at elite West­ern insti­tu­tions like Cam­bridge, Stan­ford, and Gold­man Sachs have become almost reli­gious. Nev­er­the­less, I hope that the per­spec­tive of a can­did Chi­nese athe­ist can be of some instruc­tion to them.” This is quite fun­ny in places, espe­cial­ly his expe­ri­ences at the Stan­ford GSB.
   • From a sort-of-reverse per­spec­tive: How Trust Shapes Nations’ Safe­ty Rules (Veronique Green­wood, The Atlantic): “By the end of my first year in Chi­na, I feel as if I am a one-per­son FDA.”
2. Uni­ver­si­ty evicts Chris­t­ian club over lead­er­ship faith require­ment (Caleb Parke, Fox News): “‘The [Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa] knows that what it is doing to BLinC is unfair, ille­gal, and uncon­sti­tu­tion­al,’ the com­plaint pre­pared by the firm says, adding that, while BLinC only requires adher­ence to their beliefs for their lead­ers and not their mem­bers, uni­ver­si­ty pol­i­cy is that cam­pus orga­ni­za­tions can require mem­bers to believe a cer­tain way.’” Read the actu­al legal com­plaint — it’s straight fire. I was espe­cial­ly tick­led by para­graph 76.
3. How Cul­ture Affects Depres­sion (Mar­i­an­na Pogosyan, Psy­chol­o­gy Today): “How­ev­er, teach­ing peo­ple that this very com­plex social, cul­tur­al, and bio­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non is entire­ly bio­log­i­cal can back­fire. It encour­ages peo­ple to ignore envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors, and instead, essen­tial­ize depres­sion as a char­ac­ter­is­tic of them­selves and their biol­o­gy.” An inter­view with a George­town psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor.
4. The War­lock Hunt (Claire Berlin­s­ki, The Amer­i­can Inter­est): “Giv­en the events of recent weeks, we can be cer­tain of this: From now on, men with any instinct for self-preser­va­tion will cease to speak of any­thing per­son­al, any­thing sex­u­al, in our pres­ence. They will make no bawdy jokes when we are lis­ten­ing. They will adopt in our pres­ence great def­er­ence to our exquis­ite sen­si­tiv­i­ty and frailty. Many women seem pos­i­tive­ly joy­ful at this prospect. The Rev­o­lu­tion has at last been achieved! But how could this be the world we want? Isn’t this the world we escaped?”
5. Evan­gel­i­cals and Domes­tic Vio­lence: Are Chris­t­ian Men More Abu­sive? (Brad Wilcox, Chris­tian­i­ty Today):  “…church­go­ing evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tant hus­bands were the least like­ly to be engaged in abu­sive behav­ior…. Although the empir­i­cal sto­ry of reli­gion and domes­tic vio­lence looks good for prac­tic­ing believ­ers, it’s much less rosy for oth­ers. My research sug­gests that the most vio­lent hus­bands in Amer­i­ca are nom­i­nal evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tants who attend church infre­quent­ly or not at all.” Brings to mind Rev 3:15–16 — be hot or cold, not luke­warm. The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at UVA.
6. I read many arti­cles about the Alaba­ma elec­tion — these stood out.
   • Roy Moore and the Invis­i­ble Reli­gious Right  (Ben­jamin Wal­lace-Wells, The New York­er): “…what was most notable about the pas­tors on Moore’s list was their obscu­ri­ty. I found a list of the pas­tors of the thir­ty-six largest church­es in Alaba­ma, assem­bled this sum­mer by the Web site of the Birm­ing­ham News; no pas­tor on that list appeared on Moore’s. I called lead­ers with­in the deeply con­ser­v­a­tive South­ern Bap­tist Church—the largest denom­i­na­tion in Alaba­ma and, for decades, the core of the reli­gious right—and was told that not a sin­gle affil­i­at­ed South­ern Bap­tist pas­tor in the state was open­ly allied with Moore.”
   • Roy Moore Had Low­est White Evan­gel­i­cal Sup­port Of Any Alaba­ma Repub­li­can In The 21st Cen­tu­ry (Lyman Stone, The Fed­er­al­ist): “Exit polls from the Alaba­ma Sen­ate spe­cial elec­tion on Tues­day show that Roy Moore got 80 per­cent of the white evan­gel­i­cal vote, but nonethe­less went down to defeat. This is shock­ing, because white evan­gel­i­cals are a big share of Alabama’s pop­u­la­tion…. So if it’s a big vot­ing bloc and they’re 80 per­cent for a can­di­date, shouldn’t that can­di­date win?”
   • For a crit­i­cal take on the above claim: Is it pos­si­ble that white evan­gel­i­cals swung the Alaba­ma elec­tion against Roy Moore? (Scott Clement, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Moore’s sup­port among white evan­gel­i­cals is his­tor­i­cal­ly low for a Repub­li­can. At the same time, the drop-off in Moore’s sup­port among oth­er white groups from pre­vi­ous elec­tions (par­tic­u­lar­ly non-evan­gel­i­cals, white women and whites with col­lege degrees) is far larg­er, indi­cat­ing that evan­gel­i­cals were far less like­ly than oth­er typ­i­cal Repub­li­can vot­ers to alter their par­ty sup­port with Moore as a can­di­date.”
   • And more gen­er­al­ly: Pro-life Vot­ers and Pro-Choice Politi­cians (Michael Wear, per­son­al blog): “The way some invoke con­science in pol­i­tics reflects an odd moral­i­ty that puts one’s con­science at risk for sup­port­ing a can­di­date who oppos­es Roe v. Wade, but ratio­nal­izes away moral respon­si­bil­i­ty for a can­di­date who inten­tion­al­ly seeks to dis­en­fran­chise African-Amer­i­cans or restrict the right of wor­ship for Mus­lims or wan­ton­ly breaks up fam­i­lies through depor­ta­tion or mass incar­cer­a­tion. Per­haps abor­tion as a polit­i­cal issue car­ries greater moral weight than these oth­er issues—an idea some pro-lif­ers seem a bit too eager to accept, I have to say—but is there no con­flu­ence of evil that can affect the vot­ing cal­cu­la­tion of the pro-life per­son who believes their con­science requires them to vote for who­ev­er the pro-life can­di­date hap­pens to be?” Wear, an evan­gel­i­cal, was an Oba­ma White House staffer.
   • Also more gen­er­al­ly: Why I Can No Longer Call Myself an Evan­gel­i­cal Repub­li­can (Peter Wehn­er, New York Times): “the events of the past few years — and the past few weeks — have shown us that the Repub­li­can Par­ty and the evan­gel­i­cal move­ment (or large parts of them, at least), have become what I once would have thought of as lib­er­al car­i­ca­tures. Assume you were a per­son of the left and an athe­ist, and you decid­ed to cre­ate a cou­ple of peo­ple in a lab­o­ra­to­ry to dis­cred­it the Repub­li­can Par­ty and white evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tian­i­ty. You could hard­ly choose two more per­fect men than Don­ald Trump and Roy Moore.” (this one came rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent)
7. Is Alp­haZe­ro real­ly a sci­en­tif­ic break­through in AI? (Jose Cama­cho Col­la­dos, Medi­um):  “I am a researcher in the broad field of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (AI), spe­cial­ized in Nat­ur­al Lan­guage Pro­cess­ing. I am also a chess Inter­na­tion­al Mas­ter, cur­rent­ly the top play­er in South Korea although prac­ti­cal­ly inac­tive for the last few years due to my full-time research posi­tion…. How­ev­er, there are rea­son­able doubts about the valid­i­ty of the over­ar­ch­ing claims that arise from a care­ful read­ing of AlphaZero’s paper.”  I was recent­ly hyp­ing this to some­one and clear­ly did not know as much about it as I thought. Inter­est­ing push­back.
8. And last but not least : Want to raise employ­ee morale? Treat every day as an exper­i­ment (Chris­tos Makridis, Medi­um): our very own Chris­tos con­tin­ues to put his work out into the pub­lic square. Go, Chris­tos!

Things Glen Found Amusing

• Watch­ing this gif makes me won­der how cats sur­vive in the wild (imgur)
• I know Stan­ford stu­dents like As, so check this one out (imgur)
• This may describe some of you dur­ing finals (Pearls Before Swine)
• This is an amaz­ing Christ­mas sweater (imgur)
• If you ever played role-play­ing games you will think this site is super cool: donjon.bin.sh

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have a provoca­tive read: In Defense of Flog­ging (Peter Moskos, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion) — the author is a for­mer police offi­cer and now a crim­i­nol­o­gist at the City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York. This one was shared back before I start­ed send­ing these emails in a blog post called Pun­ish­ment.

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.