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

• How to turn a bal­loon into a lid (ani­mat­ed gif)
• Russ­ian Ortho­dox Church Accused Of Inter­fer­ing With Doc­trine of Elec­tion  (Baby­lon Bee): this is a genius head­line
• What Men Are Real­ly Think­ing (ani­mat­ed gif)
• The Six Stages of Mar­riage (Pearls Before Swine)
• I Would Watch This Show (image)
• Con­firmed: Miss­ing FBI Text Mes­sages Either Huge Scan­dal Or Noth­ing At All, Depend­ing On Your Polit­i­cal Lean­ings (Baby­lon Bee)
• 5 Movie Stunts That Looked Even Cra­zier Behind The Scenes (Jim Avery, Cracked)

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)

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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.