Month: January 2018

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 136

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. Trump has been pres­i­dent for about a year now. Here are some per­spec­tives (if you only read one, read the one you think you’ll dis­agree with most):
    • Trump’s first year was even worse than feared (Eugene Robin­son, Wash­ing­ton Post):  “Many of us began 2017 with the con­sol­ing thought that the Don­ald Trump pres­i­den­cy couldn’t pos­si­bly be as bad as we feared. It turned out to be worse.”
    • I wasn’t a Trump sup­port­er. I am now. (Mol­lie Hem­ing­way, Wash­ing­ton Post): “My expec­ta­tions were low — so low that he could have met them by sim­ply not being Pres­i­dent Hillary Clin­ton. But a year into this pres­i­den­cy, he’s exceed­ed those expec­ta­tions by quite a bit. I’m thrilled.”
    • ‘Vision, Chutz­pah and Some Testos­terone’ (New York Times): “Grant­ed we have the most unpres­i­den­tial pres­i­dent of our time. Crude, rude, clue­less dude — but I believe, with the help of his friends, he’s stum­bling through one of the most effec­tive pres­i­den­cies in mem­o­ry.” This is from a col­lec­tion of let­ters to the NY Times by Trump sup­port­ers.
    • This one trick explains the pat­tern of con­ser­v­a­tive praise for Trump’s first year (Dan Drezn­er, Wash­ing­ton Post): “All of this is con­sis­tent with assess­ments that Trump’s first year, even from a con­ser­v­a­tive per­spec­tive, has been pret­ty mediocre.”
    • Trump So Far Is More Farce Than Tragedy (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “A vast gulf between the things Trump says he wants — which are, indeed, often author­i­tar­i­an — and the things that actu­al­ly hap­pen is the essen­tial char­ac­ter­is­tic of his presidency’s first year.… his cab­i­net looks a lot like a gener­ic Repub­li­can admin­is­tra­tion, whose efforts lib­er­als under­stand­ably oppose and some­times deplore, but which are not remote­ly like the work­ings of a fas­cist cabal cir­ca 1935.”
    • Pres­i­dent Trump’s First Year, in 14 Met­rics (Mike Niz­za, Blomberg View): “Last year our colum­nists select­ed a range of con­ven­tion­al and whim­si­cal met­rics by which to judge the suc­cess of the new pres­i­dent. We revis­it them here. Bot­tom line: By these mea­sures, he’s doing bet­ter than his oppo­nents will admit and worse than his sup­port­ers believe.”
  2. Is every­thing you think you know about depres­sion wrong? (Johann Hari, The Guardian): “Once you set­tle into a sto­ry about your pain, you are extreme­ly reluc­tant to chal­lenge it. It was like a leash I had put on my dis­tress to keep it under some con­trol. I feared that if I messed with the sto­ry I had lived with for so long, the pain would run wild, like an unchained ani­mal. Yet the sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence was show­ing me some­thing clear, and I couldn’t ignore it.”
    • This reminds me of an arti­cle that made an impres­sion upon me back in 2003: The Pur­suit of Hap­pi­ness (Ben­jamin Healy inter­view­ing Carl Elliott, The Atlantic): “On Prozac, Sisy­phus might well push the boul­der back up the moun­tain with more enthu­si­asm and more cre­ativ­i­ty. I do not want to deny the ben­e­fits of psy­choac­tive med­ica­tion. I just want to point out that Sisy­phus is not a patient with a men­tal health prob­lem. To see him as a patient with a men­tal health prob­lem is to ignore cer­tain larg­er aspects of his predica­ment con­nect­ed to boul­ders, moun­tains, and eter­ni­ty.”
    • See also Stay­ing Awake Is A Sur­pris­ing­ly Effec­tive Way To Treat Depres­sion (Lin­da Ged­des, Digg):  “‘Sleep depri­va­tion real­ly has oppo­site effects in healthy peo­ple and those with depres­sion,’ says Benedet­ti. If you’re healthy and you don’t sleep, you’ll feel in a bad mood. But if you’re depressed, it can prompt an imme­di­ate improve­ment in mood, and in cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties.”
  3. Fol­low up to last week: Bolivia’s Pres­i­dent Revokes Evan­ge­lism Restric­tions (Mor­gan Lee, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Pres­i­dent Evo Morales Ayma announced that he will tell the South Amer­i­can nation’s Leg­isla­tive Assem­bly to repeal the entire penal code in the wake of recent changes that, among oth­er tweaks, intro­duced severe restric­tions on reli­gious free­dom.”
  4. Of Mon­ey and Morals (Alex Mayyasi, Aeon): “Today, a banker lis­ten­ing to a the­olo­gian seems like a curios­i­ty, a cat­e­go­ry error. But for most of his­to­ry, this kind of dia­logue was the norm.” I was reluc­tant to read this piece because I’ve read oth­ers that were off-putting­ly ill-informed, but I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised.
  5. It’s the (Democ­ra­cy-Poi­son­ing) Gold­en Age of Free Speech (Zeynep Tufek­ci, Wired): “The most effec­tive forms of cen­sor­ship today involve med­dling with trust and atten­tion, not muz­zling speech itself. As a result, they don’t look much like the old forms of cen­sor­ship at all. They look like viral or coor­di­nat­ed harass­ment cam­paigns, which har­ness the dynam­ics of viral out­rage to impose an unbear­able and dis­pro­por­tion­ate cost on the act of speak­ing out.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Chris­t­ian Mis­sions and the Spread of Democ­ra­cy (Greg Scan­dlen, The Fed­er­al­ist): This is a sum­ma­ry of some rather won­der­ful research Robert Wood­ber­ry pub­lished in The Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Review back in 2012: The Mis­sion­ary Roots of Lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy. If it looks famil­iar it’s because I allude to it from time to time in my ser­mons and con­ver­sa­tions. (first shared in vol­ume 14)

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 135

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. Match Made in Mar­row (Jad Abum­rad & Robert Krul­wich, Radi­o­lab): this is a pod­cast fea­tur­ing some­one we’ve brought to cam­pus before: a magi­cian named Jim Munroe. Sev­er­al alum­ni emailed/texted me to ask if I had heard it. Jim is a good mod­el in this pod­cast of how to inter­act with the media — he is forth­right about his faith while remain­ing lik­able. He’s not per­fect in all of his respons­es, which in some ways makes him even bet­ter as a role mod­el.
  2. Anoth­er pod­cast episode you might find inter­est­ing: Is mir­a­cle heal­ing for real? Ken Fish vs Frances Janusz (Justin Brier­ly, Unbe­liev­able): Unbe­liev­able is a week­ly radio pro­gram in the UK that brings two peo­ple, usu­al­ly a Chris­t­ian and a skep­tic, togeth­er in dia­log about a spe­cif­ic top­ic. FYI: I’ve post­ed a list of pod­casts I lis­ten to.
  3. How ‘Cheap Sex’ Is Chang­ing Our Lives – and Our Pol­i­tics (Park Mac­Dougald, New York Mag­a­zine): “Vir­tu­al­ly no one… is hap­py with the state of male­ness today, and yet the male behav­ior we wit­ness today seems a ratio­nal, if short-sight­ed, response to their cir­cum­stances.”
    • See also Jor­dan Peterson’s inter­view on BBC Chan­nel 4 (YouTube). It’s long but quite inter­est­ing and parts of it are rel­e­vant to the state of mas­culin­i­ty in North Amer­i­ca. Peter­son is a clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to. He is con­tro­ver­sial — see What’s So Dan­ger­ous About Jor­dan Peter­son (Tom Bartlett, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “He’s also heard the crit­i­cism, includ­ing from some long­time col­leagues, that he fails to couch his lan­guage care­ful­ly and as a result naïve­ly wades into fraught con­ver­sa­tions about gen­der and race.”
  4. Bolivia Makes Evan­ge­lism a Crime (Sarah Eekhoff Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today):  “As always, the lev­el of enforce­ment will deter­mine how harm­ful to reli­gious free­dom the new restric­tions prove to be.”
  5. Today was the annu­al Ral­ly for Life in Wash­ing­ton, DC so there have been a lot of arti­cles about abor­tion this week.
    • Does the Pro-Life Move­ment Have Sci­ence on Its Side? (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “When Colleen Mal­loy, a neona­tol­o­gist and fac­ul­ty mem­ber at North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty, dis­cuss­es abor­tion with her col­leagues, she says, ‘it’s kind of like the emper­or is not wear­ing any clothes.’ Med­ical teams spend enor­mous effort, time, and mon­ey to deliv­er babies safe­ly and nurse pre­ma­ture infants back to health. Yet physi­cians often sup­port abor­tion, even late into fetal devel­op­ment. As med­ical tech­niques have become increas­ing­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed, Mal­loy said, she has felt this ten­sion acute­ly: A hand­ful of med­ical cen­ters in major cities can now per­form surg­eries on genet­i­cal­ly abnor­mal fetus­es while they’re still in the womb. Many are the same age as the small num­ber of fetus­es abort­ed in the sec­ond or third trimesters of a mother’s preg­nan­cy. ‘The more I advanced in my field of neona­tol­ogy, the more it just became the log­i­cal choice to rec­og­nize the devel­op­ing fetus for what it is: a fetus, instead of some sort of sub-human form,’ Mal­loy said. ‘It just became so obvi­ous that these were just devel­op­ing humans.’”
    • Trump Backs Health-Care Work­ers Who Object to Pro­vid­ing Abor­tions (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “All of these laws are already on the books. But now, HHS is promis­ing to enforce these statutes more aggres­sive­ly. ‘For too long, gov­ern­ments big and small have treat­ed con­science claims with hos­til­i­ty instead of pro­tec­tion,’ said Sev­eri­no in the press release. ‘But change is com­ing and it begins here and now.’”
    • Why Trump is tar­get­ing health work­ers’ reli­gious objec­tions (Sarah Pul­liam Bai­ley, Wash­ing­ton Post): “A con­cern among many is that reli­gious free­dom is becom­ing a par­ti­san issue depen­dent on who­ev­er sits in office, said Michael Wear, who did reli­gious out­reach for Oba­ma. The Trump admin­is­tra­tion, he said, has done lit­tle on reli­gious free­dom issues that will have much last­ing change. ‘The next admin­is­tra­tion could scrap this office their first day in,’ Wear said. ‘It’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly putting [reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives] in a bet­ter sit­u­a­tion when they’re not in a favor­able posi­tion polit­i­cal­ly.’”
    • No, Politi­co, Con­science Pro­tec­tions Are Nei­ther ‘So-Called’ Nor ‘Con­tro­ver­sial’ (Casey Mat­tox, The Fed­er­al­ist): “Gov­ern­ment shouldn’t force peo­ple to vio­late their con­sciences. Until recent­ly, that opin­ion hasn’t been par­tic­u­lar­ly con­tro­ver­sial, even where actu­al con­tro­ver­sial issues like abor­tion were involved. One can sup­port abor­tion and still think gov­ern­ment shouldn’t dis­crim­i­nate against med­ical pro­fes­sion­als who don’t per­form abor­tions.” This arti­cle is a response to Trump to over­haul HHS office, shield health work­ers with moral objec­tions (Dan Dia­mond And Jen­nifer Haberko­rn, Politi­co)
  6. The Church Needs a Mas­ter­class in How to Apol­o­gize for Sex­u­al Assault (Abby Per­ry, Christ and Pop Cul­ture): “Abuse of pow­er, refusal to admit sin in its full­ness, and grasp­ing author­i­ty with clenched fists have no place in God’s king­dom. His is an econ­o­my of inter­twined jus­tice and grace, one that looks sin in the face and is repelled by it, not min­i­miz­ing its grotesque nature but cov­er­ing it with true grace. True grace does not thin­ly veil gross moral fail­ure and allow those who com­mit it to con­tin­ue wield­ing pow­er, but offers dis­ci­pline, dis­ci­ple­ship, care, wise coun­sel, and friend­ship as means of walk­ing with a per­son who has fall­en.”
  7. Wow. Asiz Ansari. First a sum­ma­ry, then links to com­men­tary. The con­tro­ver­sy around Babe.net’s Aziz Ansari sto­ry, explained (Car­o­line Framke, Vox): “The Babe.net report is marked­ly dif­fer­ent from any of the oth­ers that have come out since the New York Times broke the sto­ry of Har­vey Weinstein’s decades of alleged abuse in Octo­ber. It is not about work­place harass­ment; nor does it inter­view mul­ti­ple vic­tims to por­tray a pat­tern of abuse. It is about a sin­gle woman who was excit­ed to go out to din­ner with a come­di­an she liked, before quick­ly becom­ing uncom­fort­able with the tenor of his aggres­sive advances once they went back to his apart­ment.”
    • The Humil­i­a­tion of Aziz Ansari (Caitlin Flana­gan, The Atlantic):  “I thought it would take a lit­tle longer for the hit squad of priv­i­leged young white women to open fire on brown-skinned men. I had assumed that on the basis of inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty and all that, they’d stay laser focused on col­lege-edu­cat­ed white men for anoth­er few months. But we’re at warp speed now, and the revolution—in many ways so good and so important—is start­ing to sweep up all sorts of peo­ple into its con­fla­gra­tion: the mon­strous, the cru­el, and the sim­ply unlucky.”
    • The Aziz Ansari deba­cle proves it’s time for a new sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion (Eliz­a­beth Bru­enig, Wash­ing­ton Post): “In fact, it seems we have these sorts of pub­lic air­ings of female sex­u­al mis­ery all the time now, which sug­gests to me that some­thing is wrong with our sex­u­al cul­ture that can’t sim­ply be explained by posit­ing that women are insuf­fi­cient­ly aware of their rights and lib­er­ties.”
    • Lis­ten to the ‘Bad Fem­i­nists’ (Megan McAr­dle, Bloomberg View): “How has the most empow­ered gen­er­a­tion of women in all of human his­to­ry come to feel less con­trol over their bod­ies than their grand­moth­ers did?”
    • Puri­ty and Prej­u­dice (Samuel D. James, First Things): “If noth­ing else, the fail­ure of con­tem­po­rary sex­u­al pol­i­tics to deliv­er a bet­ter expe­ri­ence for women should make us recon­sid­er our assump­tions about progress. Why have decades of porn and pills failed to snuff out male priv­i­lege?”
    • If I may inter­ject my unso­licit­ed opin­ion: boy, wouldn’t it be great if there were clear rules gov­ern­ing sex­u­al behav­ior? And imag­ine how much clar­i­ty would ensue if they were con­nect­ed to pub­lic dec­la­ra­tions of con­sent. That would be won­der­ful! #ifon­ly #ohwait #back­tothe­bible

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Alco­hol, Black­outs, and Cam­pus Sex­u­al Assault (Texas Month­ly, Sarah Hep­o­la): I think this is the most thought­ful sec­u­lar piece I’ve read on the issue. “Con­sent and alco­hol make tricky bed­fel­lows. The rea­son I liked get­ting drunk was because it altered my con­sent: it changed what I would say yes to. Not just in the bed­room but in every room and cor­ri­dor that led into the squint­ing light. Say yes to adven­ture, say yes to risk, say yes to karaoke and pool par­ties and argu­ments with men, say yes to a life with­out fear, even though such a life is nev­er pos­si­ble… We drink because it feels good. We drink because it makes us feel hap­py, safe, pow­er­ful. That it often makes us the oppo­site is one of alcohol’s das­tard­ly tricks.” (first shared in vol­ume 25)

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 134

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. ‘Walk­ing a line’: The shrewd tac­tics of the White House’s evan­gel­i­cal gate­keep­er (Michelle Boorstein & Sarah Pul­liam Bai­ley, The Wash­ing­ton Post):  “The Sen­ate race in Alaba­ma and Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist Roy Moore? ‘I’m not involved.’ Trump’s pen­chant for lying? ‘I don’t want to get into it. Because I don’t focus on those things.’ The GOP tax law that bit­ter­ly divid­ed reli­gious lead­ers? ‘I don’t think there’s an answer.’ ‘For me, that’s all noise,’ he said. ‘It’s not that it isn’t impor­tant, but I don’t have time for all that… If I did dig into it, I might have stronger opin­ions, and that would be a dis­trac­tion for me.’”
  2. The Top 50 Coun­tries Where It’s Most Dan­ger­ous to Fol­low Jesus (Sarah Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “For decades, North Korea has clear­ly been the world’s worst per­se­cu­tor of Chris­tians. But now, anoth­er nation near­ly match­es it.” Spoil­er alert: Afghanistan.
  3. Clas­si­cal Lib­er­al­ism Strikes Out (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Thus, the irony: indi­vid­u­al­ism and sta­tism are not oppo­sites, but grow togeth­er in tan­dem. In our dai­ly par­ti­san pol­i­tics, we have tend­ed to pit indi­vid­u­al­ism against sta­tism – Ayn Rand against Karl Marx – with con­ser­v­a­tives claim­ing to be indi­vid­u­al­ists and pro­gres­sives claim­ing to sup­port an expan­sive state. But what we have wit­nessed is the simul­ta­ne­ous growth of both the state and the rise of indi­vid­u­al­ism, not as oppo­sites, but as nec­es­sary part­ners. The world has nev­er seen a more indi­vid­u­al­is­tic soci­ety nor a more encom­pass­ing state. The state has empow­ered itself by claim­ing to empow­er the indi­vid­ual.” This is a very stim­u­lat­ing inter­view with Notre Dame pro­fes­sor Patrick Deneen. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
  4. High­er Edu­ca­tion Is Drown­ing In BS (Chris­t­ian Smith, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “Ideas and their accom­pa­ny­ing prac­tices have con­se­quences. What is formed in col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties over decades shows up for bet­ter or worse in the char­ac­ter and qual­i­ty of our pub­lic ser­vants, polit­i­cal cam­paigns, pub­lic-pol­i­cy debates, cit­i­zen par­tic­i­pa­tion, social cap­i­tal, media pro­gram­ming, low­er school edu­ca­tion, con­sumer pref­er­ences, busi­ness ethics, enter­tain­ments, and much more. And the long-term cor­ro­sive effects on pol­i­tics and cul­ture can also be repaired only over the long term, if ever. There are no quick fix­es here.” Side note: I’ve met Dr. Smith, who is a soci­ol­o­gist at Notre Dame, before. He’s a smart cook­ie. 
  5. Oprah: Prophet, Priest­ess … Queen? (Ross Douthat, New York Times):  “Amer­i­can cul­ture is divid­ed between three broad approach­es to reli­gious ques­tions: one tra­di­tion­al, one spir­i­tu­al and one sec­u­lar. The tra­di­tion­al approach takes var­i­ous forms (Catholic and Protes­tant, Mus­lim and Ortho­dox Jew­ish) but its instincts are creedal, con­fes­sion­al, dog­mat­ic; it believes in a spe­cif­ic rev­e­la­tion, a spe­cif­ic author­i­ty and a spe­cif­ic holy book, and seeks to con­form itself to teach­ings hand­ed down from the reli­gious past. The sec­u­lar approach is post-reli­gious, sci­en­tis­tic, con­vinced that the lab­o­ra­to­ry and the micro­scope will ulti­mate­ly account for every­thing that mat­ters, while hope­ful­ly jus­ti­fy­ing a lib­er­al society’s still-some­what-Chris­t­ian moral com­mit­ments along the way. But in between sec­u­lar­ism and tra­di­tion­al­ism lies the most Amer­i­can approach to mat­ters of faith….”
  6. Can We Teach Our­selves to Believe? (Agnes Callard, New York Times): “Pas­cal seems to con­cede that try­ing to believe is a mat­ter of wish­ful think­ing, self-decep­tion or self-manip­u­la­tion. He thinks we should do it any­way. But I think our hope of becom­ing bet­ter peo­ple — whether in respect of reli­gion, friend­ship or jus­tice, or in any num­ber of dif­fer­ent ways — rests on the pos­si­bil­i­ty that there is a more straight­for­ward and less self-abas­ing way to try to believe.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go. 
  7. The Legion Lone­ly (Steven Thomas, Hazlitt): “Friend­ship in adult­hood is a chal­lenge for a lot of peo­ple. On aver­age, both men and women start to lose friends around age 25, and con­tin­ue to lose friends steadi­ly for the rest of our lives.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have On Obsti­na­cy In Belief (C.S. Lewis, The Sewa­nee Review): this is a reward­ing essay from way back in 1955. (first shared in vol­ume 6).

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 133

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. Frac­tured West (Michael Tot­ten, City Jour­nal): “…I inter­viewed a gay Native Amer­i­can who sports an ‘I Stand with Stand­ing Rock’ T‑shirt on his Face­book page. You might think that a gay Native Amer­i­can must have vot­ed for Hillary Clin­ton, but you would be wrong.” This is a tremen­dous­ly fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle about Ore­gon pol­i­tics.
    • Speak­ing of Ore­gon: Col­lec­tive Action Kills Inno­va­tion (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Most of the rest of the America–where peo­ple pump their own gas every­day with­out a sec­ond thought–is hav­ing a good laugh at Oregon’s expense. But I am not here to laugh because in every state but one where you can pump your own gas you can’t open a bar­ber­shop with­out a license.”
  2. The Hard­est Work­ers Don’t Do the Best Work (Jer­ry Useem, Bloomberg View): “It turned out that some peo­ple who did less just accom­plished less. But the top per­form­ers also did less, and seemed to have a knack for fig­ur­ing out how to side­step inessen­tial tasks to obsess on a few impor­tant things.”
  3. Real­i­ty Has A Sur­pris­ing Amount of Detail (John Sal­vati­er, per­son­al blog): “The impor­tant details you haven’t noticed are invis­i­ble to you, and the details you have noticed seem com­plete­ly obvi­ous and you see right through them. This all makes makes it dif­fi­cult to imag­ine how you could be miss­ing some­thing impor­tant.”
  4. Why you can’t blame mass incar­cer­a­tion on the war on drugs (Ger­man Lopez, Vox): “It’s not drug offens­es that are dri­ving mass incar­cer­a­tion, but vio­lent ones. It’s not the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment that’s behind mass incar­cer­a­tion, but a whole host of prison sys­tems down to the local and state lev­el. It’s not sole­ly police and law­mak­ers lead­ing to more incar­cer­a­tion and lengthy prison sen­tences, but pros­e­cu­tors who are by and large out of the polit­i­cal spot­light.”
  5. “Oh My God, This Is So F—ed Up”: Inside Sil­i­con Valley’s Secre­tive, Orgias­tic Dark Side (Emi­ly Chang, Van­i­ty Fair): “Rich men expect­ing casu­al sex­u­al access to women is any­thing but a new par­a­digm. But many of the A‑listers in Sil­i­con Val­ley have some­thing unique in com­mon: a lone­ly ado­les­cence devoid of con­tact with the oppo­site sex.”
  6. Two Tax­pay­ers, Two Def­i­n­i­tions of ‘Pro­gres­sive’ (Ramesh Pon­nu­ru, Bloomberg View): “…lib­er­al analy­ses of the tax cut empha­size that it gen­er­al­ly rais­es after-tax income more for high earn­ers than for low earn­ers. Con­ser­v­a­tive analy­ses tend to point out that low­er earn­ers will gen­er­al­ly see their tax bills decline by the same per­cent­age that high­er earn­ers will (and some­times will see them drop more). Nei­ther side is dis­tort­ing the truth. They’re look­ing at the same thing from dif­fer­ent angles.”
  7. When Democ­ra­cy Hinges On a Sin­gle Vote (Stephen Carter, Bloomberg View): “…it turns out that we don’t count votes ter­ri­bly well. A 2012 study found that although some meth­ods of tab­u­lat­ing bal­lots are bet­ter than oth­ers, we can gen­er­al­ly expect an error rate of 1 to 2 per­cent. Although we can’t pre­dict which way the errors will fall, it’s unlike­ly that they will sum pre­cise­ly to zero – in oth­er words, there will always be mis­takes. So each time we count, we can expect a dif­fer­ent result.” The author is a law pro­fes­sor at Yale.
  8. Mak­ing Chi­na Great Again (Evan Osnos, The New York­er): “For years, China’s star­tups lagged behind those in Sil­i­con Val­ley. But there is more par­i­ty now. Of the forty-one pri­vate com­pa­nies world­wide that reached “uni­corn” sta­tus in 2017—meaning they had val­u­a­tions of a bil­lion dol­lars or more—fifteen are Chi­nese and sev­en­teen are Amer­i­can.” Also, I found this bit very amus­ing: “In the city of Shen­zhen, the local gov­ern­ment uses facial recog­ni­tion to deter jay­walk­ers. (At busy inter­sec­tions, it posts their names and I.D. pic­tures on a screen at the road­side.) In Bei­jing, the gov­ern­ment uses facial-recog­ni­tion machines in pub­lic rest rooms to stop peo­ple from steal­ing toi­let paper; it lim­its users to six­ty cen­time­tres with­in a nine-minute peri­od.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Land of We All (Richard Mitchell, The Gift of Fire), an essay built on this insight: “Think­ing can not be done cor­po­rate­ly. Nations and com­mit­tees can’t think. That is not only because they have no brains, but because they have no selves, no cen­ters, no souls, if you like. Mil­lions and mil­lions of per­sons may hold the same thought, or con­vic­tion or sus­pi­cion, but each and every per­son of those mil­lions must hold it all alone.” (first shared in vol­ume 2)

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.