Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 442

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.

This is the 442nd edition of these emails. 442 is the sum of eight consecutive prime numbers: 41 + 43 + 47 + 53 + 59 + 61 + 67 + 71

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The State of the Culture, 2024 (Ted Gioia, Substack): “The tech platforms aren’t like the Medici in Florence, or those other rich patrons of the arts. They don’t want to find the next Michelangelo or Mozart. They want to create a world of junkies—because they will be the dealers. Addiction is the goal.”
    • Highly recommended. Includes an anecdote about a Stanford undergrad near the end.
  2. Men Are From Mercury, Women Are From Neptune (David French, New York Times): “…if there are pre-existing political differences between men and women — and it’s true that in aggregate men are more conservative than women — then those differences will be exacerbated as men spend more time with men, and women spend more time with women. The more that men and women live separate lives, the more we would expect to see separate beliefs.”
    • Recommended to me by a student, and I highly recommend it to you.
  3. My Mom’s Rules For Cults (Ben Landau-Taylor, Substack): “…when I was 25 years old I told my parents I was moving to San Francisco to join a new-wave radical movement and a self-development psychology I‑swear-we’re-not-a-cult group. And she sat me down and gave me three things to check before I went: 1. Are the members of the group in contact with their families? 2. How does the group react when members are close with friends who don’t share the group’s beliefs and ideology? Is this discouraged? Is it seen as normal and healthy? 3. How does the group relate to former members who have left? Are they old friends who are welcome at parties, or are they vile traitors, or what? In my experience this is the best and fastest way to tell the difference…”
  4. ‘I Said, ‘What’s Your Plan About Marriage and Dating?’ And There Was Silence.’ (Jane Coaston, New York Times): “I was talking to a graduate student recently. He had a very clear sense of his plan for schooling and work, and then I said, ‘What’s your plan about marriage and dating?’ And there was silence. He didn’t really have a plan. I think that’s part of the challenge — that people are not being intentional enough about seeking opportunities to meet, date and marry young adults in their world.”
    • An interview with Brad Wilcox, who is often cited in these updates. Recommended by a student.
  5. The Rise of the Non-Christian Evangelical (Ryan Burge, Substack): “Nine percent of Republican Jews self-identify as evangelical, compared to 3% of Democratic Jews. For Muslims, the gap is huge: 32% vs 11%. It’s also fairly large for Buddhists (16% vs 6%) and Hindus (18% vs 10%). You can even see it among nothing in particulars. 19% of the Republicans are evangelicals; it’s just 9% of the Democrats.”
    • Wild and interesting.
  6. The Takeover (Neetu Arnold, Tablet Magazine): “…even in the vanishingly rare event that universities attempt to cultivate an environment of academic freedom and free speech on campus, it will never fully apply to sponsored international students from countries with authoritarian governments. In many ways, this defeats the main purpose of having international students on American campuses in the first place: the free and open cultural exchange that occurs between them and American students. What kind of skewed cultural education will American students receive about Saudi Arabia and China if their friends from those countries aren’t even allowed to criticize their own governments, and if the main source of teaching and scholarship on such countries comes out of ‘centers’ funded by those governments?”
    • This is an odd article. Lots of interesting stats framed strangely, but definitely interesting.
  7. Academia’s “Pretendian” Problem Stems From a Few Very Obvious and Basic Realities (Freddie deBoer, Substack): “You’ve created a fiercely competitive process in which a segment of people are given a very large advantage, there are few if any objective markers that can disprove that someone is a member of that segment, and you’ve declared it offensive to question whether someone really is a member of that segment, outside of very specific scenarios. (When I was in academia people spoke very darkly about the concept of ever questioning someone’s indigenous identity, called it the act of a colonizer, etc etc.) The obvious question is… what did you think was going to happen? Humanities and social sciences departments have, through the conditions described above, rung the dinner bell for people pretending to have indigenous heritage. They now act shocked when such people show up. I find it disingenuous and untoward. This behavior is the product of the incentives that you yourself built.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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). And to the extent you can discern my opinions, please understand that they are my own and not necessarily those of Chi Alpha or any other organization I may be perceived to represent. 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. If this was forwarded to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 432

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.

This is volume 432, a number pleasant to look at because of the smoothly decreasing digits. Also, 432 = 4 · 33 · 22, which is kinda cool.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Why Two Parents Are the Ultimate Privilege (Bari Weiss, Substack): “Two parents combined have more resources than one. Two parents in a home bring in the earnings—or at least the earnings capacity—of two adults. And so, in a very straightforward way, we see that kids growing up in single-mother homes are five times more likely to live in poverty than kids growing up in married parent homes. (Kids in single-father homes are three times as likely to live in poverty.) Some of that reflects the fact that people with lower levels of education or income are more likely to become single parents. But even if you compare across moms of the same education group, you see that kids who grow up in a household with two parents have household incomes that are about twice as high. That means that those parents are paying for things like a nicer house in a safe neighborhood with good school districts. But they also spend more time with their kids. We see that kids who grow up with married parents have more parental time invested in them: reading to your kid, talking to your kid, driving your kids to activities. If there are two parents in the household, there’s just more time capacity.”
    • The interviewee, Melissa Kearney, is an economist at the University of Maryland.
    • This part near the end also caught my attention: “You write that you would speak to your fellow scholars about your plans for writing this book, and they would say things along the lines of, ‘I tend to agree about all of this, but are you sure you want to be out there saying this publicly?’ How many areas of research, inquiry, and basic curiosity about the most important things in our lives and culture are third rail now? If it’s taboo to write a book saying two parents in a house are better materially than one, what else is off-limits, and what can we do to combat that?”
  2. Some links related to academia, congressional testimony, and speech in general:
    • You Could Not Pay Me Enough to Be a College Administrator (Dan Drezner, Substack): “Why are these horrible, no-win positions? Because the primary job of any college dean or university president is to deal with the most spoiled, entitled, pig-headed interest groups imaginable. First, there are the students…”
    • Freedom of speech for university staff? (Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution): “Freedom of speech for university staff is a harder question than for students or faculty. Students will move on, and a lot of faculty hate each other anyway, and don’t have to work together very much. Plus the protection of tenure was (supposedly?) designed to support freedom of speech and opinion, even ‘perceived to be offensive’ opinions. As for students, we want them to be experimenting with different opinions in their youth, even if some of those opinions are bad or stupid. Staff in these regards are different.”
    • What the University Presidents Got Right and Wrong About Antisemitic Speech (David French, New York Times): “I’m a former litigator who spent much of my legal career battling censorship on college campuses, and the thing that struck me about the presidents’ answers wasn’t their legal insufficiency but rather their stunning hypocrisy. And it’s that hypocrisy, not the presidents’ understanding of the law, that has created a campus crisis.”
    • Penn’s Leadership Resigns Amid Controversies Over Antisemitism (Stephanie Saul and Alan Blinder, New York Times): “The president of the University of Pennsylvania, M. Elizabeth Magill, resigned on Saturday, four days after her testimony at a congressional hearing in which she seemed to evade the question of whether students who called for the genocide of Jews should be disciplined.… Ms. Magill, a former Stanford Law School dean and University of Virginia provost, had come to the university as part of a wave of women to lead Ivy League colleges.”
  3. Some reflections on the war between Israel and Hamas:
    • Who’s a ‘Colonizer’? How an Old Word Became a New Weapon (Roger Cohen, New York Times): “The clash over purported Israeli colonialism is part of something larger, a profound movement in people’s minds. The Palestinian national struggle has become the cause of the justice-seeking dispossessed throughout the world. At the same time, the quest of the Jews to find refuge in a national homeland as the only answer to being the perennial outcast has become a battle to demonstrate that, far from being colonialist, Israel is a diverse nation largely formed by a gathering-in of the persecuted.”
      • Covers a lot of ground, broadly helpful.
    • What Justice Requires in Gaza (Jack Omer-Jackaman, Persuasion): “How much injustice can a war contain before it is no longer a just war? History is certainly replete with wars we consider just on the whole, but which were littered with gross violations of human rights and decency. What was true on October 7th is true today: Hamas is a mass-raping, civilian-slaughtering, baby-kidnapping evil, whose defeat should be supported by all friends of Israel and all friends of Palestine. But I cannot be silent when my own reason and my own heart conclude that Gazan civilians are not being sufficiently protected. In the failure of Israeli strikes to distinguish between civilian and terrorist, and in the hampering of humanitarian aid efforts, too much of this war is being fought unjustly.”
  4. In 2024, the Tension Between Macroculture and Microculture Will Turn into War (Ted Gioia, Substack): “The clash has reached some kind of brutal tipping point. I believe it’s about to turn into war. The fact that 2024 is an election year will escalate the conflict. Just wait and see. But even right now you can feel the ground shaking.… [alternative platforms are outperforming Hollywood.] This seems impossible. A single individual living in Greenville, North Carolina defeats enormous global businesses with tens of thousands of employees and decades of experience—and does it repeatedly every month. But that’s exactly what’s happening.”
    • Fascinating stats in here.
    • Related (at least to me): When the New York Times lost its way (James Bennet, The Economist): “This is a bit of a paradox. The new newsroom ideology seems idealistic, yet it has grown from cynical roots in academia: from the idea that there is no such thing as objective truth; that there is only narrative, and that therefore whoever controls the narrative – whoever gets to tell the version of the story that the public hears – has the whip hand. What matters, in other words, is not truth and ideas in themselves, but the power to determine both in the public mind. By contrast, the old newsroom ideology seems cynical on its surface. It used to bug me that my editors at the Times assumed every word out of the mouth of any person in power was a lie. And the pursuit of objectivity can seem reptilian, even nihilistic, in its abjuration of a fixed position in moral contests. But the basis of that old newsroom approach was idealistic: the notion that power ultimately lies in truth and ideas, and that the citizens of a pluralistic democracy, not leaders of any sort, must be trusted to judge both.”
    • This one is very long but I found it compelling.
  5. Conservatives are suing law firms over diversity efforts. It’s working. (Julian Mark and Taylor Telford, Washington Post): “Kenji Yoshino, a law professor and director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at New York University, said targeting law firms is effective because it can serve as a warning to other industries. ‘If you sue a law firm, then the law firm gets up to speed very, very quickly on what is permissible and what’s impermissible,’ Yoshino said, noting that many law firms advise Fortune 500 companies, government agencies and nonprofits. ‘It’s a way of getting the message out about people needing to flip over their policies in a wide variety of domains — not just fellowships, but hiring, recruiting retreats and the like.’”
    • Interesting. I don’t remember having seen this strategy (sue law firms to bring about broader cultural change) used by either the left or the right before. Is it an innovation or am I just not remembering something in history?
  6. How 1 in 4 Countries Restrict Religious Conversion (Jayson Casper, Christianity Today): “The USCIRF report grouped the laws into four categories. First, anti-proselytizing laws restrict witnessing of one’s faith in 29 nations, including in Indonesia, Israel, and Russia. In Morocco, for example, it is illegal to cause a Muslim to question his or her religion. The second category of interfaith marriage is restricted in 25 nations, including in Jordan, the Philippines, and Singapore. In Qatar, for example, if a wife converts to Islam but the husband does not, a judge may annul their marriage. Identification document laws—the third category—in 7 nations restrict the right of an individual to formally convert to another religion, including in Iraq, Malaysia, and Turkey. Myanmar, for example, requires converts to submit an application and be subject to questioning about the genuineness of the conversion. And finally, apostasy laws in 7 nations make conversion illegal, including in Brunei, Mauritania, and Saudi Arabia. In Yemen, for example, the punishment is death.”
  7. A Korean Sect Targeted New Zealand Christians. Did Churches Respond Effectively? (Willliam Chong, Christianity Today): “Shincheonji instructors eventually convinced their recruits that God permits lying if it is done for ‘God’s will.’ Before Josh’s sessions commenced in January 2019, his mentor warned him to keep them a secret, pointing to Abraham’s silence before heading out to sacrifice Isaac in Genesis 22. Josh concocted a story about teaching private guitar lessons three mornings a week, a lie he told his parents, his girlfriend, and Student Life colleagues. When church leaders and a campus staff worker confronted Josh with evidence that he was attending Shincheonji classes, his Shincheonji instructors gave him step-by-step instructions on how to deny his involvement. They even gave Josh pre-written letters expressing ‘inexplicable hurt and confusion’ about his family and friends’ accusations and claiming that he was no longer involved in Shincheonji activities. Josh sent the letter to the church yet continued his classes, and in May 2019 he ‘passed over’ into the group.”
    • Related: Escaping High-Control Religious Groups (William Chong, Christianity Today): “[If a friend is in a cult,] try to maintain the relationship and communication at all costs. Making direct statements like ‘You’re in a cult!’ or ‘You’re deceived!’ are not helpful. Cult members have often been warned that ‘a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household’ (Matt. 10:36), so to confront their group will be to fulfill prophecies given to them by their leaders and further prove the group to be correct. It’s important not to drive them further into the group. Ask yourself what need the group is fulfilling in your loved one’s life.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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). And to the extent you can discern my opinions, please understand that they are my own and not necessarily those of Chi Alpha or any other organization I may be perceived to represent. 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. If this was forwarded to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 431

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.

This is volume 431, a prime number.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Is South Korea Disappearing? (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “[South Korea currently has] 0.7 births per woman. It’s worth unpacking what that means. A country that sustained a birthrate at that level would have, for every 200 people in one generation, 70 people in the next one, a depopulation exceeding what the Black Death delivered to Europe in the 14th century. Run the experiment through a second generational turnover, and your original 200-person population falls below 25. Run it again, and you’re nearing the kind of population crash caused by the fictional superflu in Stephen King’s ‘The Stand.’ ”
    • Unlocked. The declining birthrate is truly one of the world’s most important long-term stories. One of the reasons is that it will self-correct, but the way that it will self-correct will transform societies.
  2. Soft Occultism (Patricia Patnode, The American Mind): “The new, default spiritual identity for young people in the West is soft occultism, or casual witchery. This identity can easily accompany an existing religious affiliation, and often does since it is so obviously integrated in most aspects of modern Western culture.… Surveys and scientists have repeatedly found that people who have religious beliefs, especially those who attend a formal house of worship, tend to be happier than those who don’t. Despite this, soft occultists prefer to buy purifying green juices and participate in pseudo-religious gatherings. They go to Pilates class but not church, meditate on personal energy but don’t pray. Take vitamin supplements but not communion. Sit through therapy but not confession.”
  3. The Forgotten Dispute that Could Ignite a War in South America (Francisco Toro, Persuasion): “Yesterday, Venezuelans voted in a non-binding referendum to annex the Essequibo territory, a stretch of jungle that makes up around two-thirds of the landmass of Venezuela’s eastern neighbor, tiny Guyana. Desperate for a win amid a newly united opposition and a chronically sick economy, the leftist dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro dusted off a musty old dispute to fan the nationalist flames. As a matter of international law, Maduro has no leg to stand on. A military adventure into Essequibo is improbable—Venezuela’s military remains laser-focused on the one thing it does well, and that’s trafficking cocaine, not fighting wars. But dictatorships are inherently unpredictable, and the prospect of a military adventure is sending jitters around the region.”
    • Some helpful backstory.
  4. Santos’ Cameo Earnings Exceed His House Salary (John Johnson, Newser): “Santos’ House salary stood at $174,000, and Semafor reports he has ‘lined up more than that sum’ in just his first 48 hours on the Cameo platform.”
    • This story seems to summarize something important about the societal moment we are living in. I invite you to draw your own conclusions about what that important something is.
  5. What The Algorithm Does To Young Girls (Freya India, Persuasion): “…I believe we have some personal agency. But I also believe that a 12-year-old’s mind is no match for a giant corporation using the most advanced AI to manipulate her behavior. Gen Z were the guinea pigs in this uncontrolled global social experiment. We were the first to have our vulnerabilities and insecurities fed into a machine that magnified and refracted them back at us, all the time, before we had any sense of who we were. We didn’t just grow up with algorithms. They raised us. They rearranged our faces. Shaped our identities. Convinced us we were sick.”
  6. The University presidents (Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution): “Overall this was a dark day for American higher education. I want you to keep in mind that the incentives you saw on display rule so many other parts of the system, albeit usually invisibly. Don’t forget that. These university presidents have solved for what they think is the equilibrium, and it ain’t pretty.”
    • You can find the video of the Harvard, MIT, and Penn presidents’ Congressional testimony easily with a search if you haven’t seen it yet. Here is the specific snippet Cowen is commenting on.
    • Related: Stanford condemns calls for genocide of Jews (Caroline Chen, Stanford Daily): “Stanford ‘unequivocally’ condemned ‘calls for the genocide of Jews or any peoples’.… The statement opened with acknowledgment of ‘the context of national discourse,’ amid national controversy over a Wednesday congressional hearing where the presidents of Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania appeared to evade questions on disciplining students who called for the genocide of Jewish people.”
  7. The Problematic Inklings (G. Connor Salter, Mere Orthodoxy): “Of course, seeing someone as a saint makes it hard to believe the person had flaws. It’s not easy to admit that the Inklings—Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and their friends who met weekly to share their writings—weren’t the perfect heroes revered in Christian homeschool guides. But eventually, we must recognize that everyone’s life is complicated.”
    • Surprising details I did not know, mostly about some of the less famous Inklings.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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). And to the extent you can discern my opinions, please understand that they are my own and not necessarily those of Chi Alpha or any other organization I may be perceived to represent. 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. If this was forwarded to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 429

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.

This is volume 429, a sphenic number (i.e, a number with exactly three distinct prime factors).

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Classical liberals are increasingly religious (Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution): “Not too long ago, I was telling Ezra Klein that I had noticed a relatively new development in classical liberalism. If a meet an intellectual non-Leftist, increasingly they are Nietzschean, compared to days of yore. But if they are classical liberal instead, typically they are religious as well. That could be Catholic or Jewish or LDS or Eastern Orthodox, with some Protestant thrown into the mix, but Protestants coming in last. The person being religious is now a predictor of that same person having non-crazy political views. Classical liberalism thus, whether you like it or not, has become an essentially religious movement.”
    • Related: Why Tyler Cowen Doesn’t Meet Protestant Intellectuals (Aaron Renn, Substack): “You would think that after decades of bemoaning the ‘scandal of the evangelical mind,’ we would be heavily promoting the world class scientists and other intellectual figures we have. But that isn’t the case. I’m not a scientist but I’m not chopped liver either. I was a partner in a consulting firm, a senior fellow in a major think tank, and have written for and been cited in most of the major publications in the country (NYT, WSJ, Guardian, Atlantic, etc). But the institution that’s done the most to promote my work is the Catholic-centric First Things magazine. Undoubtedly the best career move I could make as a writer on culture, men’s issues, and public policy would be to convert to Catholicism. That would probably open doors to opportunities I will not otherwise get.”
      • Renn left out some important pieces of the puzzle. It also has to do with the way that decentralized church authority operates in the Protestant world and the lack of intersection between someone like me and someone like Andy Stanley. We just move in completely different circles. I’m not saying I’m the intellectual in this equation, by the way. I am saying I know a bunch. I have baptized people who are now professors at Stanford, but pick-your-favorite megachurch preacher has no idea that they exist. And that lack of intersection extends to groups like Veritas and the Trinity Forum which are doing the kind of work Renn describes, but independently of Saddleback Church or any other evangelical center of influence. Most influential preachers are niche celebrities who are also populist intellectuals, and that is a very different thing from an academic or institutional intellectual. There really isn’t any straightforward way to bring the two together. And I haven’t even talked about the role of Christian universities in this situation, their relationship to evangelical influencers, and their joint relationship to secular scholars. It would take a whole essay to bring all the pieces together, and I’m not sure it’s a good use of my time.
    • Related: She found meaning where she least expected it — her childhood faith (Rachel Martin, NPR): “Hurwitz: But I think what makes me nervous about the spiritual buffet is that what you’re saying is, ‘I’m going to take this thing from Buddhism that’s so me and this thing from Judaism that’s so me and this from Catholicism.’   Martin: One-hundred percent. That’s what I’m doing. Hurwitz: This is what so many of us do, and at the end of the day you’re reinforcing yourself. You’re kind of deifying yourself. Martin: Wow. Hurwitz: You’re saying, ‘What reinforces my preexisting beliefs?’ This is how we consume social media, right? But it’s not the purpose of these great spiritual traditions.”
    • Also related: Where Does Religion Come From? (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “Some sort of religious attitude is essentially demanded, in my view, by what we know about the universe and the human place within it, but every sincere searcher is likely to follow their own idiosyncratic path.”
      • A fascinating essay that wanders into weird places.
  2. How this Turing Award–winning researcher became a legendary academic advisor (Sheon Han, MIT Technology Review): “Former students describe Blum as unwaveringly positive, saying he had other ways besides criticism to steer them away from dead ends. ‘He is always smiling, but you can see he smiles wider when he likes something. And oh, we wanted that big smile,’ says Ronitt Rubinfeld, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT. Behind the general positivity, Rubinfeld says, is a fine taste for interesting ideas. Students could trust they were being guided in the right direction. Come up with a boring idea? Blum, who is known for his terrible memory, would have mostly forgotten it by your next meeting.”
    • I quite liked this one.
  3. There’s another Christian movement that’s changing our politics. It has nothing to do with whiteness or nationalism (John Blake, CNN): “The Social Gospel was a Christian movement that emerged in late 19th-century America as a response to the obscene levels of inequality in a rapidly industrializing country.… The Social Gospel turned religion into a weapon for economic and political reform. Its message: saving people from slums was just as important as saving them from hell. At its peak, the movement’s leaders supported campaigns for eight-hour workdays, the breaking up of corporate monopolies and the abolition of child labor. They spoke from pulpits, lectured across the country and wrote best-selling books.… The Social Gospel movement is making a comeback. Some may argue it never left.”
  4. You Are the Last Line of Defense (Bari Weiss, The Free Press): “I am here because I know that in the fight for the West, I know who my allies are. And my allies are not the people who, looking at facile, external markers of my identity, one might imagine them to be. My allies are people who believe that America is good. That the West is good. That human beings—not cultures—are created equal and that saying so is essential to knowing what we are fighting for. America and our values are worth fighting for—and that is the priority of the day.”
  5. UK infant baptized before being forced off life support, father says ‘the devil’ was in the courtroom (Timothy H.J. Nerozzi, Fox News): “Dean Gregory, Indi’s father, said before her death that he was inspired to baptize his daughter by Christian legal volunteers who fought to keep her alive. Dean said he became convinced of the existence of the devil by his family’s treatment in the courtroom. ‘I am not religious and I am not baptized. But when I was in court, it felt like I had been dragged to hell,’ Dean Gregory said in a Nov. 6 interview with New Daily Compass. ‘I thought, if hell exists then heaven must exist. It was like the devil was there. I thought if there’s a devil then God must exist.’ ”
    • Heartbreaking. Recommended by a student.
  6. Some Israel/Hamas perspectives:
    • There Should Be More Public Pressure on Hamas (David French, New York Times): “I’m not naïve. I don’t for a moment believe that defeating Hamas and removing it from power solves the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel cannot live up to its own democratic promise or its own liberal ideals if, for example, it indulges its own dangerous radicals. But I do know that placing more pressure on Israel than Hamas to end the conflict and save civilian lives is exactly backward. The international system depends on opposing the aggressor and punishing crimes. Protests that aim their demands more at Israel than Hamas impede justice, erode the international order and undermine the quest for a real and lasting peace.”
    • This War Did Not Start a Month Ago (Dalia Hatuqa, New York Times): “To many inside and outside this war, the brutality of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks was unthinkable, as have been the scale and ferocity of Israel’s reprisal. But Palestinians have been subject to a steady stream of unfathomable violence — as well as the creeping annexation of their land by Israel and Israeli settlers — for generations. If people are going to understand this latest conflict and see a path forward for everyone, we need to be more honest, nuanced and comprehensive about the recent decades of history in Gaza, Israel and the West Bank, particularly the impact of occupation and violence on the Palestinians.”
      • A fairly straightforward presentation of the Palestinian perspective.
    • The Struggle for Black Freedom Has Nothing to Do with Israel (Coleman Hughes, The Free Press): “There is yet another inconvenient fact for those who want to reduce the Israeli-Arab conflict to a competition between European settlers and people of color: the majority of Israeli Jews are not European. They are Mizrahi Jews—hailing from the Middle East and North Africa. What’s more, it is not the European Jews but the Mizrahi Jews—who are difficult to visually distinguish from Palestinians—that form most of the voting base of the right-wing parties that Israel’s critics consider to be the truly racist ones.”
    • Three articles from The Gospel Coalition about the various ways Christians think about the promises to Israel in the Old Testament. It’s worth sorting through your own perspective. These three essays are from well-respected Christian academics who present their positions concisely and well.
      • Why the Land Promises Belong to Ethnic Israel (Gerald McDermott, The Gospel Coalition): “First, if the land promise was ended with the coming of Jesus, then God is not trustworthy. For he promised to Abraham and his seed that the land would be theirs for an everlasting possession (Gen. 17:8). Second, if the land promise to Israel is broken, then so might be God’s promise to renew and restore the heavens and the earth. The land promise’s partial fulfillment—by bringing Jews from the four corners of the earth back to the land starting in the eighteenth century—is down payment on the promise of a new heaven and a new earth. Third, it is a deep theological reason why we should support Israel in this new war against the new Nazism.”
      • The Expected Universalization of the Old Testament Land Promises (G. K. Beale, The Gospel Coalition): “The land promises will be fulfilled in a physical form when all believers inherit the earth, but the inauguration of this fulfillment is mainly spiritual until the final consummation in a fully physical new heaven and earth. The physical way these land promises have begun fulfillment is that Christ himself introduced the new creation by his physical resurrection.… Therefore, none of the references to the promise of Israel’s land in the Old Testament appears to be related to the promises of ethnic Israel’s return to the promised land on this present earth.”
      • Israel’s Role in the Land Promise (Darrell Bock, The Gospel Coalition): “It’s often claimed the New Testament moves the land promise from being about Israel as a people in the land to being about God’s people in the world. That’s an oversimplification. The question is whether that universal expansion neuters the specific promise made to Israel of a people in a land.”
  7. The Imprudence of ‘Dump Them’ (Clare Coffey, Christianity Today): “As prudence has fallen out of favor as an aspiration, it’s hard not to see the hole it has left. On social media, we try to fill that hole with an endless proliferation of abstract rules to govern human decisions. We try to outsource the basis of individual judgment to overly simplistic moral equations, and more often than not, we find the math works out to ‘dump them.’ ”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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). And to the extent you can discern my opinions, please understand that they are my own and not necessarily those of Chi Alpha or any other organization I may be perceived to represent. 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. If this was forwarded to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 428

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.

This is volume 428 and I, being an easily amused man, am pleased that 4*2=8.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. C.S. Lewis and T.S. Eliot: How Rivals Became Friends (Joel J. Miller, Rabbit Room): “Did Charles Williams know what would happen when he invited his mutuals, C.S. Lewis and T.S. Eliot, to tea? One suspects. Lewis had long registered disapproval of Eliot’s work. But surely they’d get on in person, no? No. It was 1945 and the trio convened at the Mitre Hotel in Oxford. The first words out of Eliot’s mouth? ‘Mr. Lewis,’ he exclaimed, ‘you are a much older man than you appear in photographs!’ The meeting deteriorated from there.”
  2. Abundance: The Deepest Reality (Bethany Lorden, Stanford Review): “It is true, I have never lacked food or shelter or any necessity; yet every day, I see the most privileged people in the world live as though they are impoverished. As students, we hoard our time, fear our midterms, and dread the future. But what if the blessings that landed us at Stanford continue into our future? What if our classes were not a burden, but a gift of learning? What if our lives and our society mirror nature, where alpine sunflowers reemerge every spring on the harshest tundra, where a square foot of dry prairie nourishes three dozen species of plants, where no tree or animal dies without sustaining new life?”
    • Disclaimer: Bethany is a student in Chi Alpha. Also, I especially liked this bit: “R&DE seems to assume that student satisfaction is a zero-sum game: the website states that ‘Direct swaps between students are not permitted, as the housing assignment process is meant to be equitable, and not based on who you know.’ If a roommate switch makes one student better off, then the trade must have exploited another. Yet by dealing with relationships as if they were a limited resource, R&DE has made them so. Instead of creating community (by definition, a network ‘based on who you know’), R&DE has made everyone ‘equitably’ miserable.”
  3. Why I Ran Away from Philosophy Because of Sam Bankman-Fried (Ted Gioia, Substack): “It’s true, of course, that a philosophical system is not disproved if its advocates are criminals and tyrants—but this linkage must be a cause for alarm and suspicion. The burden of proof is on those who want to separate a person’s core principles from the results they produce in actual life.”
    • I sometimes bag on utilitarianism generally (and sometimes specifically the effective altruism movement). This essay may help you see why. Utilitarian/consequentialist ethical systems are just wrong. Not merely wrong in the sense of being incorrect, but also wrong in the sense of being immoral.
  4. Some Israel / Hamas war articles:
    • Behind Hamas’s Bloody Gambit to Create a ‘Permanent’ State of War (Ben Hubbard and Maria Abi-Habib, The New York Times): “Thousands have been killed in Gaza, with entire families wiped out. Israeli airstrikes have reduced Palestinian neighborhoods to expanses of rubble, while doctors treat screaming children in darkened hospitals with no anesthesia. Across the Middle East, fear has spread over the possible outbreak of a broader regional war. But in the bloody arithmetic of Hamas’s leaders, the carnage is not the regrettable outcome of a big miscalculation. Quite the opposite, they say: It is the necessary cost of a great accomplishment — the shattering of the status quo and the opening of a new, more volatile chapter in their fight against Israel.”
      • Unlocked and well worth reading.
    • “No parent is going to do that”: Shafai family from Massachusetts trapped in Gaza told they can leave without their children (Christina Hager, CBS News): “They had the names of my brother and his wife on the list, but they didn’t have the kids,” said Hani Shafai. His brother Hazem and his wife Sanaa were excited to see their names on a list customs authorities put out naming people who could cross into Egypt to safety. The problem was, there was no mention of their three children. “They were told they can cross, but they have to leave the kids behind. And, as you know, no parent is going to do that, and he said no,” said Hani Shafai.
      • Bro. Database errors happen, I get it. But it seems to me this is the kind of situation where instead of turning them away you ask them to step to the side, offer them some water and snacks, and have someone investigate to figure out what happened so they can leave with their kids.
    • Inside a Gaza bedroom, soldiers searching for tunnels find how low Hamas can go (Emanuel Fabian, Times of Israel): “In terms of its size, where it led and what it was intended for, the tunnel was much like the other 90 found in the area. What set it apart, though, was its location. The shaft had been uncovered by soldiers of the Combat Engineering Corps’ 614th Battalion as they carried out a second round of sweeps in a single-family home — with an outdoor swimming pool — in an upscale beachside neighborhood. Inside a bedroom scattered with brightly colored clothes, underneath one of three child-sized beds, soldiers had found a portal to where monsters were hiding.”
    • The “Genocide” Canard Against Israel (Andrew Sullivan, Substack): “…if Israel were interested in the “genocide” of Palestinian Arabs, it has had the means to accomplish it for a very long time. And yet, for some reason, the Arab population of Israel and the occupied territories has exploded since 1948, and the Arabs in Israel proper have voting rights, and a key presence in the Knesset.… And real genocide is happening elsewhere in the world right now as well, but it receives a fraction of the attention. In Darfur, between 2003 and 2005, around 200,000 members of the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups were murdered in a clear case of genocide that has recently revived. This year, some 180,000 civilians have fled to Chad, pursued by the Janjaweed — the Einsatzgruppen of central Africa. If your view is derived from critical race theory, you should be particularly concerned about this genocide, since it is directed at black Africans by Islamist Arabs. But the campus left is uninterested.”
    • ‘I Feel a Human Deterioration’ (Lulu Garcia-Navarro, New York Times): “And when I see people watching the horrible tragedy that is happening here as if it were a Super Bowl of victimhood, in which you support one team and really don’t care about the other, empathy becomes very, very selective. You see only some pain. You don’t want to see other pain.”
  5. Died: Frank Borman, Apollo 8 Astronaut Who Broadcast Genesis from Space (Daniel Silliman, Christianity Today): “On December 24, as a camera showed the lunar surface passing below a window, the three astronauts read the Scripture from a piece of paper. Borman went last, closing with verses 9 and 10: ‘And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.’ Then he said, ‘From the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas and God bless all of you—all of you on the good Earth.’ ”
  6. Critical Grace Theory (Carl Trueman, First Things): “Isaiah, Paul, and Augustine are far better sources of social criticism than Horkheimer, Marcuse, or Crenshaw. Yes, the world is imperfect and unjust and filled with strife. Sadly, such are the wages of sin. Acknowledging the fall of man does not entail a passive acceptance of injustice or evil. The doctrine of original sin does not entail the conclusion that nothing can ever be improved and that efforts of social reform are pointless. But a recognition that sin underlies unjust social systems means that our critical theorizing must be shaped by our belief in God’s grace and the healing power of forgiveness, both for ourselves and for others. No critical theory that fails to place these theological truths at the center of its analysis and proposals is compatible with Christianity.”
  7. How Early Morning Classes Change Academic Trajectories: Evidence from a Natural Experiment (Anthony LokTing Yim, SSRN): “Using a natural experiment which randomized class times to students, this study reveals that enrolling in early morning classes lowers students’ course grades and the likelihood of future STEM course enrollment. There is a 79% reduction in pursuing the corresponding major and a 26% rise in choosing a lower-earning major, predominantly influenced by early morning STEM classes. To understand the mechanism, I conducted a survey of undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory course, some of whom were assigned to a 7:30 AM section.”
    • Disclosure: I only skimmed the article. I find it plausible enough to pass on and am not skeptical enough of its claims to feel motivated to read it thoroughly. The author is an economist at Brigham Young University, and the study is about students at Purdue University.
    • Bottom line: avoid early morning classes.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • God vs Nothing (Pete Holmes, YouTube): one minute, language is a bit crude but this is brilliant at points
  • Hardball Questions For The Next Debate (Scott Alexander, Astral Codex Ten): “Hello, and welcome to the third Republican primary debate. To shore up declining voter interest, we’ve decided to make things more interesting tonight. In this first round, each candidate will have to avoid using a specific letter of the alphabet in their answer. If they slip up, they forfeit their remaining time, and the next candidate in line gets the floor. Our candidates who have qualified today are Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, and Donald Trump.”
    • This gets increasingly absurd and amusing and I actually laughed out loud at the end.
  • “Octobunk” stacks up fun at Stanford (Anna Yang, Stanford Daily): “In the early hours of Oct. 20, a group of around 20 freshmen assembled on the Oval, ready to begin the construction of the ‘Octobunk.’ Their plan was to stack eight dorm beds on top of each other in the Oval, making a tower that created a large bunk bed. Nearly 100 students showed up to observe the event at around 2 a.m. — a combination of people who had heard of the tremendous feat by word-of-mouth, or people who had simply been walking past.”
    • This is glorious and the students who organized it should automatically be elected to ASSU and only displaced by people who spark equal or greater joy.

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). And to the extent you can discern my opinions, please understand that they are my own and not necessarily those of Chi Alpha or any other organization I may be perceived to represent. 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. If this was forwarded to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 425

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.

This is volume 425, the sum of 3 consecutive primes. 425 = 137 + 139 + 149

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. I’m going to start today’s roundup off with an explanation of why this email is the way it is. First read this brief article by Nate Silver: It’s easy to screw up on breaking news. But you have to admit when you do. (Nate Silver, Substack): “This morning, Gallup published its annual poll on trust in the media. Overall, only 32 percent of Americans say they trust the mass media ‘a great deal’ or ‘a fair amount’ to ‘report the news fully, accurately and fairly’ — tied with 2016 for a record low. ”
    • Silver’s article made me reflect on how I think about modern journalism and then made me want to explain it. First, I do believe journalists try to get things right. Places like the NYT and the Washington Post rarely publish false information and generally correct falsehoods when they become aware of them. The more specific a claim is the more likely it is to be true.
    • Journalists do, however, frequently fail to report true information they are not interested in or excited about. This is rarely a conscious choice — it’s just a byproduct of the way they think about reality. This comes up especially on so-called “culture war” issues. Many top-notch reporters are simultaneously unaware of and strangely incurious about many of the facts and stories around transgenderism, marriage, religious liberty, and so on.
    • In fact, newsrooms are so ideologically monocultural that there are often massive holes in what is reported. Not only are reporters blind to inconvenient facts, they are often blind to entire stories and trends. An excellent historical example of this is whenever the 60s and 70s are remembered. America legit experienced a Great Awakening (the Jesus People movement) that happened in parallel with the Sexual Revolution. We only ever talk about the second not because reporters/commentators are suppressing knowledge of the Jesus People but because they genuinely are not even aware that they existed or that what happened then is still shaping our culture today.
    • And so when I want a fact, I turn to someplace like the NYT, WaPo, WSJ, Reuters or to a credible expert who writes directly to the public (Ryan Burge is a good example of this). But when I want an analysis, I look for credible, sane voices both within and without the confines of the media establishment. I frequently look to places like Substack or niche websites like Mere Orthodoxy or to mainstream media commentators like Ross Douthat or David French or Megan McArdle who have a track record of synthesizing information accurately and forming opinions wisely.
    • And when I’m reading something, I often ask, “Does this perspective seem plausible in light of my experience?” Especially when it is a claim about evangelicalism or charismatic/Pentecostal Christianity — I likely know more about that world than 98% of the staff of the New York Times (and after reading some articles I think I know more about it than all their staff put together). Sometimes they take an oddball church or religious leader and put their story forward as representative when it is not at all.
    • Anyway, there is probably a lot more to say about modern media, but what I just said is pretty much why this weekly update features the mix of content that it does: mainstream media sources for facts and a diverse array of experts for analysis, all filtered through evangelical sensibilities.
    • A related thought on news consumption: periodicity (Alan Jacobs, personal blog): “The more unstable a situation is, the more rapidly it changes, the less valuable minute-by-minute reporting is. I don’t know what happened to the hospital in Gaza, but if I wait until the next issue of the Economist shows up I will be better informed about it than people who have been rage-refreshing their browser windows for the past several days, and I will have suffered considerably less emotional stress.… If you’re reading the news several times a day, you’re not being informed, you’re being stimulated.”
  2. Moving on, here are some articles that give context for the Israel war on Hamas:
    • Palestinian right of return matters (Matt Yglesias, Substack): “Because it seems to me that whatever you personally think about [the Palestinian right of return], it is absolutely central to how the Arab world and diaspora Jews and secular Israelis all view the conflict. Which in turn means that it’s central to the collapse of the Two-State Solution as a political construct and to the collapse of the peace camp in Israeli politics that might have been inclined make a deal that was favorable to Palestinian interests. There is, in fact, a whole school of thought associated with Bill Clinton and American negotiator Dennis Ross that holds the right of return almost single-handedly responsible for scuttling the Camp David talks and preventing the emergence of an independent Palestine. Of course, many other well-informed people deny that’s the case or believe it’s an oversimplification. But even if you think it is factually incorrect to say the resolution of this conflict hinges on the right of return, its centrality to so many of the narratives around this issue makes it an important concept to understand.”
    • The Forgotten History of the Term “Palestine” (Douglas J. Feith, Mosaic): “The term ‘Palestine’ was used for millennia without a precise geographic definition. That’s not uncommon—think of ‘Transcaucasus’ or ‘Midwest.’ No precise definition existed for Palestine because none was required. Since the Roman era, the name lacked political significance. No nation ever had that name.”
      • This is from back in 2021. Super interesting stuff.
    • Hamas does not yet understand the depth of Israeli resolve (Haviv Rettig Gur, Times of Israel): “That enemy is not the Palestinian people, of course, even though support for terror attacks is widespread among Palestinians. The enemy is not exactly Hamas either, though Hamas is part of it. The enemy is the Palestinian theory of Israelis that makes the violence seen on October 7 seem to many of them a rational step on the road to liberation rather than, as Israelis judge it, yet another in a long string of self-inflicted disasters for the Palestinian cause.… A tragedy is about to unfold in Gaza made worse by the long learning curve it will take for Hamas to grasp the depth of Israeli resolve. It has robbed Israel of any other interest but its destruction. In the Israeli mind, any brutality Hamas can commit it will commit. And so it cannot be allowed to ever commit any act ever again.”
  3. Some Christian perspectives
    • Antisemitic Violence and Its Shameful Defense (Mike Cosper, Christianity Today): “To be horrified by the slaughter of Israeli innocents doesn’t require denying the suffering of the Palestinian people. And caring for Palestinian innocents doesn’t require being cold or numb to the horrors of antisemitism and Hamas. We can condemn Hamas while demanding accountability from Israeli leaders who have fomented violence, elevated right-wing extremists, and excused violations of international law. Indeed, Christians should be marked by our willingness to oppose all injustice and to care for Israeli and Palestinian victims alike. And while that includes understanding that Palestinians have suffered great injustices from the government of Israel—as well as neighboring states of Egypt, Jordan, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, as well as Hamas and the Palestinian Authority itself—it must also include active rejection of antisemitism.”
    • Wither the Poisonous Plant of Hamas (Tamir Khouri, Christianity Today): “In this environment of hatred, racism, and violence, Hamas has exploited young people with false promises. With no horizon of hope, Hamas’s adherents in Palestine sank into darkness and helped Hamas victimize Israelis too. But it does not have to be this way. As Christians, we believe in the power of redemption. With real hope for the future of this land, these hateful movements will wither. For a lasting peace, we must respect the image of God in Israelis and Palestinians alike. Is it too much to ask that we don’t see this as a zero-sum game? Shouldn’t both Israelis and Palestinians live in the dignity God intended for us?”
      • The pseudonymous author is a Palestinian Christian who is an Israeli citizen.
  4. Some articles about modern academia:
    • Why Big Money Can’t Easily Change Campus Politics (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “…donors should find ways to give money to the actual students — through the Hillel or other Jewish or Israeli student groups if you’re especially concerned with the Jewish place on campus, but more generally through political or religious groups that promise to work against the school’s dominant assumptions, or through student associations that seem to foster free debate, or through campus-adjacent institutions that serve students but are independent of the schools. But not with the goal of using such student groups as a means of conflict with the administration or the faculty. Rather, with the goal that such groups can become microcosms of the university you loved once and fear no longer exists, cells in a body yet to be restored, whose health and flourishing within the large world of Penn or Harvard or wherever is an end unto itself.”
      • Ross Douthat speaks nothing but truth throughout this essay. If you know any gazillionaires who want to influence the trajectories of elite universities have them read this essay and then tell them about Chi Alpha. Mention we’d like a building near campus.
    • The War Comes to Stanford (Pamela Paul, New York Times): “Alma Andino, a Jewish senior at Stanford University, spent the day of Hamas’s attacks against Israel crying and distraught. Like many Jews around the country, much of the weekend passed on the phone with family members, fearing for the safety of friends and extended family in Israel. Andino’s fellow students in Columbae, the social justice and antiwar residential house where she is a residential assistant, held her through her panic attacks. ‘I felt so powerless,’ she recalled when we spoke this week. On Monday, a friend asked if she’d seen the banner some of her housemates were preparing to hang on the front of Columbae, the house she considered to be her community and her home. The sheet bore the slogan ‘Zionism is genocide’ in red letters, styled to look as if they were dripping with blood.… For Alma Andino, events on campus have already reached a breaking point. After begging her housemates not to hang the banner, she said the group debated for hours, with the implication they would desist only if a suitable justification for Israel’s existence could be given. They told her they felt that as student activists, they needed to display a message that would put them on the right side of history. We should be advocating for marginalized communities, they said. ‘Except for Jews?’ Alma replied. The group scoffed.”
    • What Conservatives Misunderstand About Radicalism at Universities (Tyler Austin Harper, The Atlantic): “The tension bursting into view right now—between a majority of scholars, for whom ‘decolonization’ means putting fewer white Europeans on their syllabi, and a small minority who believe it entails anything-goes violent revolution—is the unwelcome and unsurprising result of universities wanting to cosplay rebellion while still churning out Wall Street–executive alumni who will one day pad endowments that are larger than Israel’s annual defense budget.”
      • The title makes this sound more partisan than it is. 100% worth a read and ponder.
    • Students for Pogroms in Israel (Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic): “Looking back on the Manson killings, Joan Didion wrote, ‘Many people I know in Los Angeles believe that the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969, ended at the exact moment when word of the murders on Cielo Drive traveled like brushfire through the community, and in a sense this is true. The tension broke that day. The paranoia was fulfilled.’ A few people I know believe last Saturday’s attack on Israel and the responses from leftist student groups mark the end of the ‘Great Awokening.’ Although it is too early to evaluate the accuracy of that hypothesis, campus politics have certainly transformed in recent days. Now we are left wondering whether what comes next is better or worse than what preceded it.”
      • He makes specific mention of Stanford at one point, although it is hardly his focus.
    • Moral controversies and academic public health: Notes on navigating and surviving academic freedom challenges (Tyler VanderWeele, Global Epidemiology): “I think that there needs to be more open discussion in academia, and in society, about these matters. Most people, even those who are deeply concerned, seem very uneasy discussing these issues, for fear of being attacked for simply raising them. Colleagues at Harvard, ranging from an expert in child development to a clinician providing mental health care for teenage girls, have told me that they are uncomfortable sharing their concerns on these matters in many or most settings at Harvard. An evolutionary biologist at Harvard likewise recently came under attack because she explicitly stated that sex was biological and binary, even though she also noted that we can nevertheless respect a person’s gender identity. The attack was sufficiently severe, and the administration’s response sufficiently weak, that she eventually felt she had no choice but to resign. Rather than open discussion, it seems we are often now relying on anonymous articles, or brave, and subsequently vilified, authors and whistle-blowers to raise alternative viewpoints. One may strongly disagree with their positions, but it is not unreasonable to raise the questions.”
      • I removed hyperlinked footnotes from this excerpt for readability. This is worth reading as a model of maturely and wisely responding to academic intolerance. Not many scholars have comported themselves with as much class as VanderWeele when their views came under attack. Also, I learned in this article that VanderWeele is Catholic. I had assumed he was an evangelical based on something I heard elsewhere.
  5. Thinking about the moral dimensions of the war
    • The Moral Questions at the Heart of the Gaza War (David French, New York Times): “This is the problem Israeli soldiers and commanders face. They must protect their citizens from savagery. They must comply with the laws of war. And they must make a series of moral choices, under extreme duress, that can define them and their nation — all while they face a terrorist enemy that appears to possess no conscience at all.”
      • Worth reading. As I mentioned when I shared French’s previous article, he is more qualified than any other columnist I know to weigh in on this.
    • This Way for the Genocide, Ladies and Gentlemen (Chris Hedges, ScheerPost): “I spent seven years reporting on the conflict, four of them as the Middle East Bureau Chief of The New York Times. I stood over the bodies of Israeli victims of bus bombings in Jerusalem by Palestinian suicide-bombers. I saw rows of corpses, including children, in the corridors in Dar Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. I watched Israeli soldiers taunt small boys who in response threw rocks and were then callously shot in the Khan Younis refugee camp. I sheltered from bombs dropped by Israeli warplanes. I climbed over the rubble of demolished Palestinian homes and apartment blocks along the border with Egypt. I interviewed the bloodied and dazed survivors. I heard the soul crushing wails of mothers keening over the corpses of their children.… it is not Israel’s assault on Gaza I fear most. It is the complicity of an international community that licenses Israel’s genocidal slaughter and accelerates a cycle of violence it may not be able to control.”
      • Recommended by an alumnus.
  6. Smartphones Have Turbocharged the Danger of Porn (Mary Harrington, Wall Street Journal): “It should come as no surprise that the personalized, tactile, portable smartphone would be the digital portal of choice for something as intimate as porn consumption. But of the new compulsive behaviors enabled by smartphones, few have as intense and immediate a reward cycle as porn—or as many far-reaching consequences.”
  7. Is It Wrong to Cure Blindness? (Francesca Block, The Free Press): “The National Institutes of Health, the $40 billion-endowed funding arm of the Department of Health and Human Services, recently took a stand against ableism by proposing a change to its mission statement, which promises to ‘enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability.’ An advisory committee within the NIH took issue with the phrase ‘reduce… disability,’ writing in a 66-page report published last December that it ‘could be interpreted as perpetuating ableist beliefs that disabled people are flawed and need to be ‘fixed.’ ”
    • There are legit insane perspectives being normalized in the world right now. Curing blindness is an unequivocal good.

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 What The Media Gets Wrong About Israel (Mattie Friedman, The Atlantic): “…one of the most important aspects of the media-saturated conflict between Jews and Arabs is also the least covered: the press itself. The Western press has become less an observer of this conflict than an actor in it, a role with consequences for the millions of people trying to comprehend current events, including policymakers who depend on journalistic accounts to understand a region where they consistently seek, and fail, to productively intervene.” This is an old article I share periodically, I think I first shared it way back in my fifth Friday email. Helpful in parsing media coverage in the current war.

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). And to the extent you can discern my opinions, please understand that they are my own and not necessarily those of Chi Alpha or any other organization I may be perceived to represent. 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. If this was forwarded to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 424

lots of articles from an emotionally draining week

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.

This is volume 424, which is symmetrical and also the sum of 10 consecutive primes. 424 = 23 + 29 + 31 + 37 + 41 + 43 + 47 + 53 + 59 + 61.

Things Glen Found Interesting

Today’s roundup was difficult to assemble. First, there are the obvious emotional challenges of reading too much about the horrific raid by Hamas. If you are wondering whether you should dive deeply into original sources (Instagram stories from on the field, etc), no you should not. It will harm your soul. Second, there is a whole sea of information and opinions and I have a very small bucket. Third, it was a busy week (and today in particular was quite hectic for me). All that having been said, if you find other interesting stories about the unfolding situation in Israel, please send them my way.

  1. The best/most interesting stories I’ve seen about the Hamas attack on Israel.
    • ‘We’re Going to Die Here’ (Yair Rosenberg, The Atlantic): “First I’m hearing this gunfire from the fields. But then I hear it from the road, then I hear it from the neighborhood, and then I hear it outside my window. I’m in the room with my wife, and I hear the gunfire directly outside my window, as well as shouting. I understand Arabic. I understood exactly what was happening: that Hamas has infiltrated our kibbutz, that there are terrorists outside my window, and that I’m locked in my house and inside my safe room with two young girls, and I don’t know if anyone is going to come to save us.”
      • This is an amazing story. 100% worth reading.
    • The attacks on Israel, and the response. (Isaac Saul, Tangle): “Am I pro-Israel or pro-Palestine? I have no idea. I’m pro-not-killing-civilians. I’m pro-not-trapping-millions-of-people-in-open-air-prisons. I’m pro-not-shooting-grandmas-in-the-back-of-the-head. I’m pro-not-flattening-apartment-complexes. I’m pro-not-raping-women-and-taking-hostages. I’m pro-not-unjustly-imprisoning-people-without-due-process. I’m pro-freedom and pro-peace and pro- all the things we never see in this conflict anymore. Whatever this is, I want none of it.”
      • This is a well-done roundup featuring diverse viewpoints.
    • Darkness Visible (Andrew Sullivan, Substack): “The more I’ve thought and read about Israel, the more it seems that its founding was both a moral necessity and a practical insanity. The moral necessity is proven by last weekend. If Jews can be subject to a medieval pogrom in their own country in 2023, what hope could they ever have without a country at all? The practical insanity lies in the simple fact that the state of Israel was created on land laden with deep religious symbolism, where much of the existing population did not give consent, and despite the early promise, no country for the Palestinians was ever constructed alongside it.”
      • A more comprehensive essay than many I’ve read so far.
    • What It Would Mean to Treat Hamas Like ISIS (David French, New York Times): “…Israel’s goal is not to punish Hamas but to defeat it — to remove it from power in Gaza the way the Iraqi military, the United States and their allies removed ISIS from Mosul, Falluja, Ramadi and every other city ISIS controlled in Iraq. That can’t be accomplished by air power alone. If removing Hamas from power is the goal, then that almost certainly means soldiers and tanks fighting in Gazan cities, block by block, house to house in an area of roughly two million people. The purpose of this newsletter is to give you a primer on both the military difficulty of the task and the humanitarian constraints on it, along with the limitations that are unique to Israel.”
      • Unlocked — a thorough article from an author with highly relevant expertise.
    • Hamas practiced in plain sight, posting video of mock attack weeks before border breach (Michael Beisecker &  Sarah El Deeb, Associated Press): “A slickly produced two-minute propaganda video posted to social media by Hamas on Sept. 12 shows fighters using explosives to blast through a replica of the border gate, sweep in on pickup trucks and then move building by building through a full-scale reconstruction of an Israeli town, firing automatic weapons at human-silhouetted paper targets. The Islamic militant group’s live-fire exercise dubbed operation ‘Strong Pillar’ also had militants in body armor and combat fatigues carrying out operations that included the destruction of mock-ups of the wall’s concrete towers and a communications antenna, just as they would do for real in the deadly attack last Saturday.”
    • As Deaths Soar in Gaza From Israeli Strikes, Egypt Offers Aid, but No Exit (Declan Walsh, New York Times): “Egypt has long insisted that Israel must solve the Palestinian issue within its borders, to keep alive aspirations for a future Palestinian state. Allowing large numbers of Gazans to cross over, even as refugees, would ‘revive the idea that Sinai is the alternative country for the Palestinians,’ said Mustapha Kamel al-Sayyid, a political scientist at Cairo University. A related scenario that worries Egypt is that it could end up as the de facto administrator of Gaza.”
      • Egypt, of course, is the only nation besides Israel that shares a border with the Gaza Strip. It is often overlooked by Americans because we don’t know our geography very well, but Egypt is equally involved in preventing the migration of the Palestinians in Gaza.
    • How Hamas breached Israel’s ‘Iron Wall’ (Samuel Granados, Ruby Mellen, Lauren Tierney, Artur Galocha, Cate Brown and Aaron Steckelberg, Washington Post): “The fence was breached at 29 points, according to the Israel Defense Forces. Though there wereIsraeli guard towers positioned every 500 feet along the perimeter of the wall at some points, the fighters appeared to encounter little resistance. The border was minimally staffed, it soon became apparent,with much of Israel’s military diverted to focus on unrest in the West Bank.”
      • Detailed and quite interesting. Also not very long to read.
    • The Progressives Who Flunked the Hamas Test (Helen Lewis, The Atlantic): “In the fevered world of social media, progressive activists have often sought to discredit hateful statements and unjust policies by describing them as ‘violence,’ even ‘genocide.’ This tendency seems grotesque if the same activists are not prepared to criticize Hamas, a group whose founding charter is explicitly genocidal… Fitting Israel into the intersectional framework has always been difficult, because its Jewish citizens are both historically oppressed—the survivors of an attempt to wipe them out entirely—and currently in a dominant position over the Palestinians, as demonstrated by the Netanyahu government’s decision to restrict power and water supplies to Gaza. The simplistic logic of pop intersectionality cannot reconcile this, and the subject caused schisms within the left long before Saturday’s attacks.”
      • This one is especially worth reading for university students. It highlights weaknesses in a perspective you are often taught from.
    • A wounded, weakened Israel is a fiercer one (Haviv Rettig Gur, The Times of Israel): “Hamas seemed to do everything possible to shift Israeli psychology from a comfortable faith in their own strength to a sense of dire vulnerability. And it will soon learn the scale of that miscalculation. A strong Israel may tolerate a belligerent Hamas on its border; a weaker one cannot. A safe Israel can spend much time and resources worrying about the humanitarian fallout from a Gaza ground war; a more vulnerable Israel cannot. A wounded, weakened Israel is a fiercer Israel. Hamas was once a tolerable threat. It just made itself an intolerable one, all while convincing Israelis they are too vulnerable and weak to respond with the old restraint.”
  2. Some theological/Christian perspectives:
    • The Way Out is Through: Peace Must Start with the End of Hamas (Marc LiVecche, Providence): “Israel must do everything possible to minimize the toil on the innocent, and to multiply hell on the monsters.”
      • The author is a research fellow at the Naval War College and is writing about just war theory as it applies to the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
    • Amid Israel-Hamas War, Local Christians Seek Righteous Anger and Gospel Hope (Jayson Casper, Christianity Today): “Nothing about this situation is right or good,” said Lisa Loden, a Messianic Jewish member of the Bethlehem Institute of Peace and Justice. “But there is a strong desire to see the Lord use these events to draw people to himself.”
    • Israel’s 9/11: The Need for Moral Clarity (Bernard N. Howard and Ivan Mesa, The Gospel Coalition): “Moral clarity also allows for suitably one-sided prayer. It’s right to pray for the swift defeat of Hamas. The murderous operations room of Hamas will never provide good leadership for the Palestinians living in Gaza. We should by all means pray for both-sided things too: the salvation of people on both sides; the protection, healing, and comfort of people on both sides; and the growth of the church that lives inside the borders of both nations. Even as we pray for these both-sided things, let us boldly call on our God to thwart, frustrate, and defeat the one side that is hell-bent on terrorism.”
    • American Christians Should Stand with Israel under Attack (Russell Moore, Christianity Today): “Sometimes, especially in the early moments of any war, we may be uncertain about who is right and who is wrong. There is no such moral confusion here. Hamas—and its state sponsors—attacked innocent people, as they have done repeatedly in the past, this time employing a force and brutality previously unseen.… As Christians, we should pay special attention to violence directed toward Israel—just as we would pay special attention to a violent attack on a member of our extended family. After all, we are grafted on to the promise made to Abraham (Rom. 11:17). Our Lord Jesus was and is a Jewish man from Galilee.”
  3. Some Stanford-connected articles:
    • This Was Never Supposed to Happen (Amichai Magen, Persuasion): “Analysts keen to convey the magnitude of October 7th to American audiences have already tagged it Israel’s Pearl Harbor or 9/11. Neither label adequately captures the day’s true significance. A more accurate name might be something like ‘Israel’s civic Yom Kippur.’ Why? Because the very existence of the State of Israel was supposed to guarantee that a day like this would never happen. In the Yom Kippur War of October 1973—when Egypt and Syria launched a surprise assault—Israel lost some 2,700 soldiers, but it managed to effectively protect its civilian population. No Israeli towns or villages were ever breached. The social contract was honored, albeit at a terrible price. On October 7, 2023, it was primarily civilians who were killed, maimed, and kidnapped. This was the day when the IDF wasn’t there to defend the people it was created to protect.”
      • The author, himself Israeli, is a Visiting Professor and Fellow in Israel Studies at the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.
    • The impact of Hamas’ devastating attack (Matthew Wigler, Stanford Daily): “Like most Jews, I seek the peace and security of Israel as a Jewish state in the indigenous homeland of the Jewish people, a safe haven after millennia of persecution where Jews can finally claim control over their own destiny. Likewise, like most Jews, I also dream of a future of dignity and freedom for the Palestinian people, who, by the very same principles of self-determination, deserve a state of their own in a land that they too have called home for many centuries. However, Hamas’ ideology of hate and methods of terrorism are contrary to that vision.”
  4. Other interesting stuff not related to the war:
    • 5 Reasons Gen Z Is Primed for Spiritual Renewal (Kyle Richter & Patrick Miller, The Gospel Coalition): “Our last meeting of the year was bigger than the first. We started with 300 students and ended with 400. That never happens. Then in the fall of this year, it happened again: 500 students attended our first meeting; 600 showed up the next week. This doesn’t happen.But it did. And it’s not unique to us. As we talk to campus ministers and pastors from San Francisco to Jacksonville, Billings to Atlanta, DC to Dallas, we know we aren’t alone. Some will urge caution before drawing conclusions. Isn’t this the era of dechurching, deconstruction, and rising “nones”? But data lags behind reality and we don’t want the church to miss what may be happening.”
    • The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics (Jai, Substack): “The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics says that when you observe or interact with a problem in any way, you can be blamed for it. At the very least, you are to blame for not doing more. Even if you don’t make the problem worse, even if you make it slightly better, the ethical burden of the problem falls on you as soon as you observe it. In particular, if you interact with a problem and benefit from it, you are a complete monster. I don’t subscribe to this school of thought, but it seems pretty popular.”
      • A few years old, but really good.
    • Reproducibility trial: 246 biologists get different results from same data sets (Anil Oza, Nature): “In a massive exercise to examine reproducibility, more than 200 biologists analysed the same sets of ecological data — and got widely divergent results. The first sweeping study1 of its kind in ecology demonstrates how much results in the field can vary, not because of differences in the environment, but because of scientists’ analytical choices.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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). And to the extent you can discern my opinions, please understand that they are my own and not necessarily those of Chi Alpha or any other organization I may be perceived to represent. 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. If this was forwarded to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 423

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.

This, volume 423, is the sum of 13 consecutive prime numbers: 11 + 13 + 17 + 19 + 23 + 29 + 31 + 37 + 41 + 43 + 47 + 53 + 59.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. How Family Breakdown Hits Girls (Freya India, Substack): “Ours is a culture obsessed with trauma! We think we can get PTSD from university speakers and stupid jokes and election results. And yet it’s also a culture which largely ignores and even glamorises what seems to me one of the most obvious traumas of all?? If anything qualifies as traumatic—as in, an emotionally distressing event that leaves a lasting impact—surely it’s family breakdown, which really does seem to stay with people, shape their view of love and life and just keep playing out, over and over?”
  2. All About That Tenor: Why Men Don’t Sing in Worship (Kelsey Cramer McGinnis, Christianity Today): “The lower rate of musical participation among men… has a lot to do with the male voice itself—its range and patterns of development—and socialization in a culture where so many men are uncomfortable with their own voices…. Men hear higher, wider vocal ranges from popular singers and worship leaders; Chris Tomlin and Phil Wickham have famously impressive tenor ranges, far out of reach for most male voices.”
    • Unlocked, recommended by a student.
  3. The Real Problem With the Superrich (J. Budziszewski, personal blog): “Other than from sheer jealousy, why should anyone object to some people having far more wealth than others?… wealth is a means to political power, and those who crave wealth tend to be the sorts of persons who crave power too. You can run an oligarchy if some people are superrich – and some oligarchies are better than others — but if you try to run a republic that way, you will lose it.”
    • A thoughtful article from a Christian philosopher at UT Austin.
  4. Andy Stanley’s ‘Unconditional’ Contradiction (Sam Allberry, Christianity Today): “I have always been single. On the whole, it has been deeply joyous. But I am not immune from temptation, and when any leader suggests to me that chaste obedience to Christ in singleness is not sustainable, he is saying the very same thing to me that the Devil says.”
    • Unlocked. The whole thing is worth reading for context.
  5. America is now paying more in interest on its record $33 trillion debt than on national defense — here’s who holds the IOUs (Serah Louis, Yahoo Finance): “America’s gross national debt hit an eye-watering $33 trillion for the first time in September — mere months after eclipsing the $32 trillion mark earlier in the year. The U.S. is also currently spending more to pay interest on the national debt than it does on national defense, according to the Treasury’s monthly statement.”
    • What a stunning statistic.
  6. The Labor Market Returns of Being An Artist: Evidence from the United States, 2006–2021 (Christos Makridis, SSRN): “First, I find a decline in the relative earnings of artists to non-artists from zero to a 15% disadvantage. After controlling for demographic differences, the decline is sharper, declining from a 15% earnings disadvantage to 30%. That the inclusion of demographic controls raises the earnings gap suggests there is positive selection into the arts. Second, these differences decline in magnitude to 4.4%, but remain statistically significant, after exploiting variation among artists and non-artists in the same industry-year and major occupation. Third, when restricting the set of individuals to those with at least a college degree, those with a fine arts degree also incur an earnings and employment penalty even if they work in the arts. These results highlight the increasing financial precariousness of artists over the past decade.”
    • The excerpt is from the abstract. Christos is an alumnus of our ministry.
  7. Unbiblical Scholarship (Alan Jacobs, The Hedgehog Review): “If we can insist—as many (though not enough) graduate programs still do—that students learn languages other than English in order to pursue the study of English writers, then we can also insist that they acquire biblical literacy. Every graduate student in the humanities should be required to take a course in the English Bible, a course that, among other things, requires the memorization and recitation of large chunks of the biblical text.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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). And to the extent you can discern my opinions, please understand that they are my own and not necessarily those of Chi Alpha or any other organization I may be perceived to represent. 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. If this was forwarded to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 421

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.

This is volume 421, a twin prime number (cf 419) which is also the sum of five consecutive primes: 421 = 73 + 79 + 83 + 89 + 97.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Hundreds of students baptized after Unite Auburn worship service (Brady Talbert, WSFA News): “Auburn University senior Michael Floyd said he will never forget what he witnessed on campus Tuesday night. ‘I’ve seen Auburn basketball beat Kentucky, I’ve seen Auburn football beat Alabama, but I have never seen something like I did on Tuesday night,’ Floyd said. Thousands packedNeville Arena for a night of worship. When it was ending, one student wanted to be baptized. Without a tub, crowds started gathering at the lake at Auburn’s Red Barn, where roughly 200 people ultimately gave their lives to Christ.”
  2. Gender, Sexual Orientation and Religion Among American College Students (Ryan Burge, Substack): “What really kicked this off was a report from Brown University that indicated that 38% of their student body identifies as homosexual, bisexual, queer, asexual, pansexual, questioning, or other. When that same poll was conducted ten years earlier, that share was just 14%. Is Brown an outlier here? Or are huge percentages of college students not straight and/or not cisgender? The survey gave seven total options for gender. The first thing that needs to be pointed out is that the vast, vast majority of young people identify as man or woman. In fact, this was the choice of 98.2% of all respondents in the survey. In other words, about one in fifty college aged students identifies as nonbinary, genderqueer/genderfluid, agender, unsure, or prefer not to say.… 72% of the sample identifies as straight. Another 12% says that they are bisexual and 5% indicates that they are gay/lesbian. These three response options encompass about 90% of all respondents in the sample. About two percent identify as pansexual or queer or unsure.”
    • Full of interesting data, emphasis in original. I believe Brown is accurately reporting its data, and I also believe Brown (and Stanford) are outliers in this regard.
    • Of particular note: “The groups that are the least likely to say that they are straight are atheists at 55% and agnostics at 53%. It’s pretty staggering to consider that nearly half of young atheists/agnostics are not heterosexual. Nothing in particulars are not far behind, either, at 62%. The nones are much less likely to be straight compared to their religious counterparts.” (emphasis removed for readability)
  3. The Huddled Masses At The Border (Andrew Sullivan, Substack): “Lampedusa is a picturesque, rocky Italian island in the Mediterranean between Tunisia and Sicily, with gorgeous beaches and a small population of around 6,000. In just five days last week, its population tripled, as 11,000 migrants showed up in at least 199 boats, overwhelming resources. The center for accommodating migrants was designed for 600.”
    • Amazing statistics. The essay touches on Europe but focuses on America. Overall a worthwhile read whatever your instincts on immigration.
  4. The Woman Who Stood Up to the Porn Industry—and Won (Nancy Rommelmann, The Free Press): “While Schlegel attends a nondenominational Christian church and describes her faith as ‘very important to me,’ she had no desire to impose her morality on others over the age of eighteen. ‘Adults have rights, so I get it,’ she says, explaining that all she wanted was to craft a bill making it harder for kids to access videos like.…”
    • I’ve shared stories about this Louisiana law before, but I particularly liked this one.
  5. Is ‘Peak Woke’ Behind Us or Ahead? (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “…the spread of diversity statements isn’t really a mechanism to flush out and cancel noncomformists. It creates conformity more invisibly, by training would-be academics to advertise themselves as ideological team players and by screening out job candidates who don’t quite understand the rules of progressive discourse — who imagine, for instance, that advertising their desire to ‘treat everyone the same’ is an adequate anti-racist commitment.”
  6. Multiply by 37: A Surprisingly Accurate Rule of Thumb for Converting Effect Sizes from Standard Deviations to Percentile Points (Paul T. von Hippel, preprint PDF):  “Educational researchers often report effect sizes in standard deviation units (SD), but SD effects are hard to interpret. Effects are easier to interpret in percentile points, but conversion from SDs to percentile points involves a calculation that is not intuitive to educational stakeholders. We point out that, if the outcome variable is normally distributed, simply multiplying the SD effect by 37 usually gives an excellent approximation to the percentile-point effect. For students in the [20%-80% range], the approximation is accurate to within 1 percentile point for effect sizes of up to 0.8 SD (or 29 to 30 percentile points).”
    • Don’t have an intuition for stats? This is a useful rule of thumb. The author is a professor of public policy, sociology, statistics and data science at UT Austin.
  7. In a first, scientists light up blue LED with an AA battery (Ameya Paleja, Interesting Engineering): “Conventionally used blue LEDs have a high turn-on voltage of 4V for a luminance of 100 cd per square meter (cd/m2). This might not sound very high, but at the industrial level, it brings about issues since the voltage is beyond what can be supplied by a typical lithium-ion battery.”
    • This legitimately sounds cool and could be very useful long-term: “An RGB LED module can produce any color for the display by using three colors: red, green, and blue. While red and green LEDs work well, the blue LED has been tricky from an energy efficiency perspective.”
    • However, this headline reminded me that we used to go to the moon. Now we celebrate blue lights.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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). And to the extent you can discern my opinions, please understand that they are my own and not necessarily those of Chi Alpha or any other organization I may be perceived to represent. 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. If this was forwarded to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 419

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.

This is volume 419, a twin prime number (paired with 421).

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. I Left Out the Full Truth to Get My Climate Change Paper Published (Patrick T Brown, The Free Press): “In theory, scientific research should prize curiosity, dispassionate objectivity, and a commitment to uncovering the truth. Surely those are the qualities that editors of scientific journals should value. In reality, though, the biases of the editors (and the reviewers they call upon to evaluate submissions) exert a major influence on the collective output of entire fields. They select what gets published from a large pool of entries, and in doing so, they also shape how research is conducted more broadly. Savvy researchers tailor their studies to maximize the likelihood that their work is accepted. I know this because I am one of them.”
  2. Texting With AI Jesus (Casey Chalk, First Things): “Text With Jesus represents the age-old human vice of pride. Through our creativity and brilliance, we seek to ascend to God’s level, to be like him, and even to dictate terms to the divine. Or rather, the app is a diabolical inversion of this: Instead of being transformed into God’s image, we aim to make him into our own.”
  3. Baptized Bronze Age Pervert (Brian Mattson, Substack): “So-called ‘Christian Nationalism’ is a renaissance of 19th century ‘blood and soil’ nationalism with some ‘Christiany’ language sprinkled on top.… They are baptizing the language, ethos, and ethics of a Nietzschean pagan—a literal antichrist. An awful lot of ‘Christian Nationalism’ sounds to me like Baptized Bronze Age Pervert. Perverse, is right.”
  4. Who Has The Best Food? (Zvi Mowshowitz, Substack): “It is a fun question going around the internet this past week, so here we go. In particular, people focused on the question of France vs. America. As one would expect, those on the French side think those on the American side are crazy, it is insulting to even consider this a question. Those on the American side like food.… What I love most about American food, and eating in America in general, is that it is the opposite of the French mistake of trying to impress you or waste your time. American food wants you to be happy, it wants to give you the experience you want and not hold back, it values your time and it does not much care how it looks doing it.”
  5. Burning Man is a capitalist lie (Mary Harrington, UnHerd): “Sometimes described as an experiment in ‘radical self-sufficiency’, Burning Man is perhaps more accurately an experiment in creating a radical post-scarcity society by having done all your shopping ahead of time.”
  6. How to actually win back trust in news. (Isaac Saul, Tangle): “Now, there are a few things worth noting here. One is that a reporter who is liberal is not definitively a biased liberal reporter. There are fair journalists and there are hacks. I know a lot of journalists with liberal political beliefs who are harder on Democrats precisely because they care about fairness and about how Democrats act. I know a lot of liberal journalists whose politics you’d never spot by reading their reporting.…  This, in some ways, actually creates an unexpected imbalance in the media: Conservative journalists and pundits, sensing that they are the minority in the space, are far more reluctant to criticize ‘their side.’ Liberal journalists and pundits, understanding that they can ‘stick out’ or earn credit by being hard on both sides, are more willing to do so. It’s complicated. Just because The New York Times is overwhelmingly made up of people who probably vote for Democrats doesn’t mean that it’s always going to play nice with Democratic politicians. My favorite example to cite is that it was The New York Times that broke the ‘Hillary emails’ story, which effectively ruined her political career.”
    • Recommended by an alumnus.
  7. The Misogyny Myth (John Tierney, City Journal): “Gender disparities generally matter only if they work against women. In computing its Global Gender Gap, the much-quoted annual report, the World Economic Forum has explicitly ignored male disadvantages: if men fare worse on a particular dimension, a country still gets a perfect score for equality on that measure. Prodded by the federal Title IX law banning sexual discrimination in schools, educators have concentrated on eliminating disparities in athletics but not in other extracurricular programs, which mostly skew female. The fact that there are now three female college students for every two males is of no concern to the White House Gender Policy Council. Its ‘National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality’ doesn’t even mention boys’ struggles in school, instead focusing exclusively on new ways to help female students get further ahead.”
    • Long, worth the read especially if you’re unfamiliar with the arguments that modern society is structured to advantage women over men.
    • Related: How Then Should Men Live? (Mike Cosper, Christianity Today): “The new social script for women is at once purposeful and libertarian. Girls can do anything, as the slogan goes, including—if they want—pursuing a traditional model of marriage and family. Meanwhile, Reeves says, men have yet to find our new social script. The old role of breadwinner, protector, and spiritual head of the household isn’t merely viewed as quaint; it’s often seen as paternalistic or worse.”
    • I also believe this to be related: Secularization Begins at Home (Lyman Stone, The Institute For Family Studies): “By now, it should be clear that childhood, including before age 13, is the key battleground for religious formation, not adulthood. By the time a child goes to college, much of the religious question has already been settled.… For parents to keep their kids in the faith, they must recapture their influence. Shield children from schooling environments that relegate faith to a second-class topic, deny access to unsupervised online communities and pornography, and have daily, parent-led activities centered on family solidarity around shared faith. Families that do these things still have extremely high rates of successful religious transmission, but families who trust that children will ‘pick it up along the way’ fail to transmit their religious beliefs, and suddenly find to their great surprise that their 20-something children categorically reject their faith.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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). And to the extent you can discern my opinions, please understand that they are my own and not necessarily those of Chi Alpha or any other organization I may be perceived to represent. 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. If this was forwarded to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.