Category: Links

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 448

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 448, an untouchable number. Which is an absolutely cool designation for a number to have.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Gossip is good, Stanford scientist suggests (Sarayu Pai, Stanford Daily): “Although gossiping is typically cast in a negative light, a study conducted by researchers from Stanford and the University of Maryland found that gossiping may be a beneficial practice, as long as information remains ‘reliable.’ Study co-author Michele Gelfand, who is a professor at the Graduate School of Business, estimates that people gossip an hour a day on average — defined as the ‘exchange [of] personal information about absent third parties.’ ”
    • Recommended to me by a student, who said “these people need a dose of the Kingdom principle of the week : gossip is corrosive!” [Glen’s note — the Kingdom principle of the week is a thing we do in our Chi Alpha, and “gossip is corrosive” is one of them]
    • Indeed they do, and this is useful launching point for a brief discourse on gossip. In this study, gossip is defined as “exchange [of] personal information about absent third parties.” But that’s not what we’re condemning when we condemn gossip! If someone tells you, “wow — that Caleb guy is super charming and handsome” and you reply, “You know he’s married, right?” then you’ve done nothing wrong — that’s not the sin of gossip. But if you spread a false negative rumor about Caleb “you know he does drugs, right?”, that is the sin of gossip. This study conflates those two very different conversations.
    • The sin of gossip can be described as bearing bad news behind someone’s back with a bad heart. The bad news can be bad in the sense of being untrue or it can be bad in the sense of unnecessary and unhelpful. For more on this helpful framing, check out What Is Gossip? Exposing a Common and Dangerous Sin (Matt Mitchell, Desiring God).
    • This is a recurring pattern, by the way: some researcher wants to study something interesting but needs to operationalize a variable in some unorthodox way to make the research feasible. Then they do their research and find something that would be counterintuitive relative to the original meaning of the word they’re using (although maybe not that surprising given their operationalization of the variable), and then the media repeats it as a commentary on the actual thing — a thing which the scientists never studied. In this case, the study didn’t actually analyze the sin of gossip, but nonetheless near the end of the article we learn that “some students with previously negative views of gossip report seeing it differently in light of this study.”
  2. Why We Fast (Ross Byrd, Mere Orthodoxy): “Fasting is no magic fix. In fact, it’s almost the exact opposite of a magic fix. It takes time, patience, and discipline—dare I say, suffering—to see its fruit. But the fruit is no less than the ability to see more of God. Here are three ways to understand Christian fasting: 1. Fasting makes space for God. 2. Fasting interrupts and reorients our unconscious patterns. 3. Fasting gives us eyes to see the unseen.”
    • Emphasis in original. Lots of good insights in this one.
  3. ‘Little Women’ and the Art of Breaking Grammatical Rules (John McWhorter, New York Times): “Curzan notes, for example, that the use of ‘literally’ to exaggerate is no recent anomaly but rather goes back to, for example, our ‘Little Women,’ in which Louisa May Alcott has it that at a gathering ‘the land literally flowed with milk and honey.’ The March girls, also, would have said ‘sneaked’ where, since just the 1970s, as Curzan charts, we have been increasingly likely to say ‘snuck.’ Are you a little irked by the youngs saying ‘based off of’ rather than ‘based on’? That one threw me when I started hearing my students saying it about 15 years ago; Curzan calms us down and demonstrates how ordinary and even logical it is. Curzan is also good on the use of ‘hopefully’ to mean ‘it is hoped.’ This became a punching bag only in the 1960s — until then, not even grammar scolds cared, too busy complaining that, for example, the ‘proper’ meaning of obnoxious is ‘subject to harm.’” Recommended by a student.
  4. Some more Israel/Hamas commentary
    • Fractured Are the Peacemakers (Sophia Lee, Christianity Today): “I spent a week in Israel and the West Bank meeting Palestinian Christians and Messianic Jews who are pastors, youth leaders, YMCA leaders, tour guides, lawyers, and students. Many of them aren’t professional peace activists, but all of them, from what I could tell, take seriously Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and strive to embody his proclamation that ‘blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God’ (Matt. 5:9). The problem is, I spoke to about two dozen individuals about what peacemaking means and got almost two dozen different answers.” Unlocked.
    • Israel Has Created a New Standard for Urban Warfare. Why Will No One Admit It? (John Spencer, Newsweek): “In my long career studying and advising on urban warfare for the U.S. military, I’ve never known an army to take such measures to attend to the enemy’s civilian population, especially while simultaneously combating the enemy in the very same buildings. In fact, by my analysis, Israel has implemented more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history—above and beyond what international law requires and more than the U.S. did in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
      • The author is the chair of urban war studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point. Recommended by a student.
    • There Shall Be None to Make Him Afraid: American Liberty and the Jews (Mike Cosper, Acton Institute): “Historically speaking, the emergence of anti-Semitism is always a sign of something poisonous taking root in a society. It doesn’t just spell danger for Jews; it spells danger for everyone. As Bari Weiss has put it, ‘What starts with the Jews never ends with the Jews.’ The rise of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and half a dozen Middle Eastern states was quickly followed by other forms of violence, tyranny, and authoritarianism.” This is a long and solid article that covers much more than anti-Semitism (although that is at its heart).
  5. Schools are using research to try to improve children’s learning – but it’s not working (Sally Riordan, The Conversation): “A series of randomised controlled trials, including one looking at how to improve literacy through evidence, have suggested that schools that use methods based on research are not performing better than schools that do not.”
    • British context, hence the spelling.
  6. The Anti-Fragile Brendan Eich (Andrew Beck, First Things): “I am not here to complain about cancel culture. Brendan Eich does not. He is too busy. He refuses to be defined by the evil done to him, or by the purported heterodoxy of his beliefs, but by the work he does and by his character, as known by those closest to him. Rather than taking to the airwaves and leaning into the role of martyr, as have so many others who have endured similar abuse, Eich never speaks publicly about the wrong done to him—not once even in private to me. Instead, he diligently pursues his vocation.”
  7. The Great Hypocrisy of the Pro-Life Movement (David French, New York Times): “The older I get, the more I’m convinced that we simply don’t know who we are — or what we truly believe — until our values carry a cost. For more than 40 years, the Republican Party has made the case that life begins at conception. Alabama’s Supreme Court agreed. Yet the Republican Party can’t live with its own philosophy. There is no truly pro-life party in the United States.”

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 447

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 447, which I kinda hoped would be prime. Alas, 447 = 3 · 149.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. One of the Most Overlooked Arguments for the Resurrection (Michael J. Kruger, blog): “…the earliest Christians came to believe, against all odds and against all expectations, that Jesus of Nazareth had been raised from the dead. Notice the distinctive nature of this claim. The claim is not that Jesus rose from the dead (though, I think he did). The claim is that the earliest followers of Jesus came to believe—and very strongly believe— that he did. And that is a wholly other matter. Why? Because it is a historical fact that is not disputed.”
  2. The Problem With Saying ‘Sex Assigned at Birth’ (Alex Byrne and Carole K. Hooven, New York Times): “Sexed organisms were present on Earth at least a billion years ago, and males and females would have been around even if humans had never evolved. Sex is not in any sense the result of linguistic ceremonies in the delivery room or other cultural practices. Lonesome George, the long-lived Galápagos giant tortoise, was male. He was not assigned male at birth — or rather, in George’s case, at hatching. A baby abandoned at birth may not have been assigned male or female by anyone, yet the baby still has a sex. Despite the confusion sown by some scholars, we can be confident that the sex binary is not a human invention.”
    • One author is a philosopher at MIT, the other an evolutionary biologist at Harvard. Unlocked.
  3. Rival perspectives on the war between Israel and Hamas
    • https://twitter.com/AGHamilton29/status/1775980849944539391 (Coleman Hughes, Twitter): a two and a half minute video sympathetic to Israel
    • Bomb First, Ask Questions Later (Andrew Sullivan, Substack): “To hit one car is a misfortune; to destroy three cars consecutively on a pre-approved route, not so much. The cars were clearly marked and in a deconfliction zone — but the IDF policy is to target anywhere Hamas could be present, even if some civilians were killed. As we’ll see, one dead Hamas member and seven dead civilians was well within the margin of error Israel had set for itself. So it appears they methodically took out each car to make sure they finished the job. No, I don’t believe that Israel deliberately murdered the aid workers; but I do think that, in context, the IDF’s effective rules of engagement — strike places like hospitals and schools because Hamas is there, even though there will be many civilian casualties — made this kind of indifference to human life possible.”
  4. The Church of Trump: How He’s Infusing Christianity Into His Movement (Michael C. Bender, New York Times): “The apparent effectiveness of such tactics has made Mr. Trump the nation’s first major politician to successfully separate character from policy for religious voters, said John Fea, a history professor at Messiah University, an evangelical school in Pennsylvania. ‘Trump has split the atom between character and policy,’ Mr. Fea said. ‘He did it because he’s really the first one to listen to their grievances and take them seriously. Does he really care about evangelicals? I don’t know. But he’s built a message to appeal directly to them.’”
    • Unlocked
  5. The Case for Marrying an Older Man (Grazie Sophia Christie, The Cut): “Very soon, we will decide to have children, and I don’t panic over last gasps of fun, because I took so many big breaths of it early: on the holidays of someone who had worked a decade longer than I had, in beautiful places when I was young and beautiful, a symmetry I recommend. If such a thing as maternal energy exists, mine was never depleted. I spent the last nearly seven years supported more than I support and I am still not as old as my husband was when he met me. When I have a child, I will expect more help from him than I would if he were younger, for what does professional tenure earn you if not the right to set more limits on work demands — or, if not, to secure some child care, at the very least?”
    • A well-written and unusual position. Not the only path to consider, but certainly a path to consider.
  6. Breakthrough in prime number theory demonstrates primes can be predicted (Michael Gibb, Phys.org): “Contrary to what just about every mathematician on Earth will tell you, prime numbers can be predicted, according to researchers at City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK) and North Carolina State University, U.S.”
  7. Are Members of the Clergy Miserable? (Ryan Burge, Substack): “I really wanted to key in on a few questions about job/life satisfaction. The survey replicates a question from ‘The Satisfaction with Life Scale.’ The statement is simply: In most ways my life is close to my ideal.… The mean score for this was 5.6 in the clergy sample. Among members of Israel’s Defense Force it was 4.7, among some university students it was found to 5.23. Among nurses it was 3.81. In a sample of people living in Colombia it was only 3.67. The long and short of it was this — I can’t find another population group that scores higher on this metric than clergy.… I’m pretty confident in saying that clergy seemed pretty content with their station in life (or at least this was the case before the pandemic).”
    • Maybe laypeople don’t hear this very often, but I am often in circles where they talk about an epidemic of ministerial dissatisfaction. But I’ve never seen it. I love my job and pretty much all my peers do, too. What we do is amazing. I’m glad to see a scholar vindicating my intuition.

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 446

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 446, which is equal to 92 + 102 + 112 + 122

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The War at Stanford (Theo Baker, The Atlantic): “At one point, some members of the group turned on a few Stanford employees, including another rabbi, an imam, and a chaplain, telling them, ‘We know your names and we know where you work.’ The ringleader added: ‘And we’ll soon find out where you live.’ The religious leaders formed a protective barrier in front of the Jewish students. The rabbi and the imam appeared to be crying.”
    • Full of gripping anecdotes, most new to me. 100% worth reading.
    • A response that caught my attention: Are the Kids Alright? (Robert Farley, blog): “Israel-Palestine is to international relations what St. Patrick’s Day is to an alcoholic; amateur night, when every idiot is not only entitled to an opinion but absolutely must tell you about it in the most abrasive terms possible. But the divide between elite and non-elite campus engagement with Israel-Palestine is deeply interesting to me, and I think that it’s a divide that has largely been missed by media institutions that a) are headquartered in places like Washington, New York, and San Francisco, and b) are populated by graduates of elite colleges and universities.”
    • The author is a professor of political science (I think that’s his department — the university website is a bit confusing) at the University of Kentucky.
  2. A Christian revival is under way in Britain (Justin Brierley, The Spectator): “All that our post-Christian society has delivered so far is confusion, a mental health crisis in the young and the culture wars. It’s not surprising then that a movement of New Theists has sprung up.… As a Christian I believe things that are dead can come back to life. That’s the point of the story after all. As G.K. Chesterton wrote: ‘Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.’”
    • The author did not choose the title of this column and stated on Twitter he does not consider what is happening a revival… yet.
  3. 101 things I would tell my self from 10 years ago (Leila Clark, blog): “10 years ago, I started my freshman year of college. This is the advice I needed to hear… I would trade half my current net worth for a world in which I had a stronger community of friends and had worked more on my own projects instead of someone else’s.”
    • A high percentage of this advice is good.
  4. The Online Degradation of Women and Girls That We Meet With a Shrug (Nicholas Kristof, New York Times): “The greatest obstacles to regulating deepfakes, I’ve come to believe, aren’t technical or legal — although those are real — but simply our collective complacency. Society was also once complacent about domestic violence and sexual harassment. In recent decades, we’ve gained empathy for victims and built systems of accountability that, while imperfect, have fostered a more civilized society.”
    • Unlocked
  5. The Quest for a New Vision of Sexual Morality (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “You can have a culture of hard moral constraint, a conservative order that imposes norms that intentionally limit human freedom — remain faithful to your chosen spouse, live with your given body. Or you can have the kind of freedom-maximizing culture that removes limits and strictures but creates new regrets, new kinds of suffering, new dangers for the vulnerable and weak.”
    • Unlocked
  6. Some thoughts about relationships:
    • Resentment Between Men and Women in the Church: 4 Observations (Samuel D. James, Substack): “…marriage creates empathy between the sexes in a way that platonic friendship or mere collegiality cannot. If this is true, in a society where fewer people are opting to get married, we should see evidence that men and women are becoming ideologically polarized and suspicious of one another. That’s what we see… there needs to be some kind of thought given to helping foster solidarity between Christian men and women that goes beyond marriage.”
      • Recommended by a student
    • How To Choose A Romantic Partner (Rob Henderson, Substack): “You can commit a lot of blunders in your life, but if you manage to get two things right, you will maximize your chance of long-term wellbeing. Our choice of job and our choice of spouse are central to our happiness because they are where we spend most of our lives—at work and with our families. Therefore, we should devote a good deal of time concentrating on how to make the best possible decision for these two sources of potential happiness.”
      • Advice aimed at men, but useful to ladies as well.
    • 11 Reasons Why Two Parents Are Better Than One (Aaron Renn, Substack): “There’s a massive outcome gap between children growing up in two parent vs. single parent homes. The differences are so large, and the attempts to help kids in single parent homes so limited in their impact, that if we don’t reduce the share of children in single family homes, we are not going to make a dent in many of our social problems.”
  7. Water isn’t normal (Derek Lowe, Chemistry World): “The next time you see the reflection of a white cloud in a puddle of water, one of the most familiar sights in all of human history, take a moment to realise just what a mystery you are really looking at, and how much about it we still have to understand.”
    • The author has his PhD in Organic Chemistry from Duke.

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 445

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 445, which feels like it ought to have many factors. But it’s just 89 * 5.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Harvard, M.I.T. and Systemic Antisemitism (David French, New York Times): “…what’s happening to Jewish students and faculty at several elite campuses is so comprehensive and all-consuming that it can only be described as systemic antisemitism.”
    • Recommended by a student. Worth reading. Unlocked.
  2. How To Save a Democracy (Quico Toro, Substack): “Watching videos of the protest now, what strikes you is that Bernardo Arévalo is seldom mentioned. K’iche’ leaders were at pains to emphasize they were not there to favor one politician or another. They were there to defend their votes. If Arévalo’s name was seldom uttered, the name of Jesus Christ was constantly invoked.”
    • A remarkable story. 
  3. Piety and Profanity: The Raunchy Christians Are Here (Ruth Graham, New York Times): “The partial embrace of vulgarity, Dr. Kobes Du Mez pointed out, is happening in a moment of deep conservative outrage, an often visceral disgust, at rising rates of nontraditional gender and sexual identities, particularly among young people. In that context, an indulgence in heterosexual lust, even if in poor taste, is becoming seen as not just benign, but maybe even healthy and noble. Part of the reason transgender identities are considered a threat is that they blur gender difference, Dr. Kobes Du Mez said. ‘Against that backdrop, it’s a wholesome thing for a boy to be lusting after a very sexy woman.’”
    • Unlocked.
  4. Steven D. Levitt (Freakonomics co-author and University of Chicago Economics Professor) on His Career And Decision To Retire From Academic Economics (Jon Hartley, Capitalism and Freedom): “I had always been the smartest kid or close to the smartest kid, but then I got to MIT and I realized my God these people are incredible. Not just what they know but how they think. So, I knew from day one I was the odd man out. I mean I’m not even exaggerating when I say that there was a group of people in the in-crowd. Austan Goolsbee, my good friend Austan Goolsbee was one of the in-crowds. And Austan told me that maybe a month into our first year at MIT, the in-crowd sat down and they made a list of the five people most likely to fail out. And I was on that list of five.”
    • An absolutely delightful interview. The above link is to the transcript, but I recommend the audio version.
  5. The Policy Stakes in this Election Are High (Josh Barro, Substack): “This presidential election is not very interesting, but it is important. And some of the reasons it’s important are the banal reasons that every presidential election is important: You get different policy outcomes depending on who gets elected.”
    • Written from a center-left perspective. Even if you disagree with Barro on your preferred policy outcomes, I think he does a nice job of summarizing some of the most important differences (although he leaves off a few big ones about which the two administrations have different track records such as religious freedom, DEI issues, etc).
  6. Are Drunk People in New Orleans More Sensible Than Congress? (Ben Meets America, YouTube): four minutes. If the quality continues, I will probably be sharing most installments of this series.
  7. Which Cities are the Least Religious? (Ryan Burge, Substack): “The least religious cities are at the top and there are two clear winners here: San Francisco and Seattle. In both cases, about seven in ten adults are attending religious services less than once a year. But I think that San Francisco make take the crown for most secular — just 12% of folks in that city are attending church at least once a month.”
    • Emphasis removed for readability

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 444

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 444, which is just the same digit repeated. I like that. Clean. Classy. Elegant.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Rant About Worship Songs (Jeremy Pierce, First Things): “Here are some of the things I really hate in a worship song.”
    • This is brilliant, from back in 2010.
  2. Top OnlyFans creator making $300,000 a month turns to Christ, walks away from porn industry (John Knox, Not The Bee): “From what I can tell, Nala here isn’t going through a Lil’ Nas X ‘Christian era’ where she’s aging out of porn and wants to rebrand herself as a good girl again before pivoting to another grift. All I see is genuine joy, like the prostitute who wept and was forgiven at Jesus’ feet.”
    • Includes a video of her sharing her testimony. I love this part: “The devil can truly give you things in this life. He has a budget, though. He can only go so far.… The devil has a budget, but God does not.”
  3. Latinos Are Flocking to Evangelical Christianity (Marie Arana, The Free Press): “In fact, some researchers project that by 2030, half of the entire population of American Latinos will identify as Protestant evangelicals. Compare that growth with white evangelical Protestants, whose numbers have declined from 23 percent of the American population in 2006 to 14 percent in 2020. With the Hispanic population’s projected growth, in less than a decade, we may see forty million Latinos—a congregation the size of California—heading to American evangelical churches every Sunday.”
  4. Is Rome a True Church? (Chris Castaldo, Mere Orthodoxy): “Protestants tend to answer the question of Roman Catholicism’s status in one of two ways. Looking through the lens of the early creeds (i.e., Nicene and Apostles’), some understand it to be fundamentally orthodox. The rationale is simple: because the creeds uphold the basic tenets of Christianity, and Rome upholds those creeds, her apostolicity is affirmed. Roman Catholicism is thus regarded as ‘inside the pale.’ An alternative reading, one that probably informed the Facebook comment, is to view the Roman Catholic Church through the lens of the sixteenth-century Reformation in which the Council of Trent anathematized (pronounced to be cursed) the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Because such faith is recognized as the driving center of the biblical gospel, and Rome forcefully repudiates the doctrine, the Roman Church is therefore considered incompatible with biblical faith.  I recognize the logic in these positions, but in my opinion, both are incomplete.”
  5. Journalism Has a Religion Problem (Andrew T. Walker, National Review): “Journalism has a religion problem. More specifically, journalists are either unaware or unwilling to admit that their own views, presumably untouched by ‘religion,’ are nonetheless passionately held convictions grounded, well, somewhere. What do I mean by that? Well, journalism that touches on religion and politics tends to see religious viewpoints as carrying a special burden. It goes something like this: ‘Tell me, Mr. Pious, why a diverse population should accept your views on morality, considering they come from religion.’ ”
  6. Harvard Tramples the Truth (Martin Kulldorff,City Journal): “…as I discovered, truth can get you fired. This is my story—a story of a Harvard biostatistician and infectious-disease epidemiologist, clinging to the truth as the world lost its way during the Covid pandemic.… Two Harvard colleagues tried to arrange a debate between me and opposing Harvard faculty, but just as with Stanford, there were no takers. The invitation to debate remains open. The public should not trust scientists, even Harvard scientists, unwilling to debate their positions with fellow scientists.”
  7. How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers (Abraham Wyner, Tablet Magazine): “If Hamas’ numbers are faked or fraudulent in some way, there may be evidence in the numbers themselves that can demonstrate it. While there is not much data available, there is a little, and it is enough: From Oct. 26 until Nov. 10, 2023, the Gaza Health Ministry released daily casualty figures that include both a total number and a specific number of women and children.”
    • The author is a professor of statistics at the Wharton School, and I find his analysis compelling.

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 443

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 443, is a prime number.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Four Ways of Looking at Christian Nationalism (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “…to chart the supposed reach of Christian nationalism, a survey from the Public Religion Research Institute asks respondents whether they agree with the formulation ‘U.S. laws should be based on Christian values.’ But someone who says yes might just be agreeing with King’s ‘Letter From Birmingham Jail’ or the Declaration of Independence, not endorsing a legal code based on Deuteronomy.”
    • Unlocked.
  2. Related: If It Were Me, I’d Try Not Helping the Christian Nationalists (Jake Meador, Mere Orthodoxy): “A democratic life is not the highest thing or the best thing. But as a way of living amongst our neighbors and seeking to live a life of conscience under the law, it is a very good thing. The Christian Nationalists, with their strong man politics, support for revolutionary violence, and obsession with racial solidarity would destroy all of that. What worries me now, though, is not the Christian Nationalists themselves. Frankly, many of them are too reckless, undisciplined, and reactive to be able to accomplish the revolutionary change they seek. What worries me is that there are a great many socially conservative evangelical voters who love the democratic life who are constantly being called ‘Christian Nationalists’ by the likes of Heidi Przybyla for believing things that are utterly unremarkable in Christian history. If our secular media outlets continue to tell them that ‘Christian Nationalism’ is the belief in things virtually all Christians across history have believed, I fear they will listen. And they will find these ethno-nationalist totalitarian aspirants and, not realizing what they are doing, they will make common cause with them.”
    • This is one of the most helpful pieces I’ve seen on Christian Nationalism. It’s a bit long, but easily skimmable to zero in on the parts you find most interesting.
  3. What happened after a man got 217 coronavirus shots (Rachel Pannett, Washington Post): “Going into the study, the researchers had speculated that having so many shots could cause his immune system to become fatigued. Vaccines create immune memory cells that are on standby, ready to rapidly activate the body’s defenses in the event of an infection. But in fact, the researchers found that the man had more of these immune cells — known as T‑cells — than a control group that had received the standard three-dose vaccine regimen. They also did not detect any fatigue in these cells, which they said were just as effective as those of people who had received a typical number of coronavirus shots.”
  4. Albania to speed up EU accession using ChatGPT (Alice Taylor, Euractiv): “The Albanian government will use ChatGPT to translate thousands of pages of EU legal measures and provisions into shqip (Albanian language) and then integrate them into existing legal structures, following an agreement with the CEO of the parent company, OpenAI, Mira Murati, who was born in Albania.… on 13 December, at the EU summit in Brussels, he will present the project and a successful test of ‘the Albanian model of artificial intelligence for the interposition of the legislation totalling 280,000 pages of legal measures of the EU.’”
  5. I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train (Steve Charnok, Metro): “While the 17-year-old does indeed live on trains, he does so entirely legally. And with a surprising amount of comfort. Lasse travels 600 miles a day throughout Germany aboard Deutsche Bahn trains. He travels first class, sleeps on night trains, has breakfast in DB lounges and takes showers in public swimming pools and leisure centres, all using his unlimited annual railcard.”

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 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 441

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 441, which is 212 and also the smallest square which is the sum of six consecutive cubes: 13 + 23 + 33 + 43 + 53 + 63

No amusing stuff at the end this week. I’ve been busy traveling and am vastly underamused.😅

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Blessed Are Those Who Mourn (T. M. Suffield, Mere Orthodoxy): “Pennington describes the beatitudes as ‘divine gold of priceless worth’ that ‘appears to be only darkness.’ Like wisdom sayings they don’t give up their gold immediately. They are supposed to shock us and I fear we have become overly familiar with them. Jesus is arguing that flourishing, the good life, requires mourning. The thing the modern world wants to avoid most, sadness, is somehow a key to a good life. To us this appears to be profoundly non-flourishing. The shock we should feel is part of how the beatitudes are meant to work.”
    • This is a wise and perceptive essay. 10/10 recommend.
  2. How Feminism Ends (Ginevra Davis, American Affairs Journal): “If the goal of feminism is to improve the lot of females, then there are dozens of changes, social and scientific, that could help alleviate their condition. But if the goal of feminism is perfect sexual equality—that no mind should ever have to make sacrifices, in productivity or love, because of its body—then the end of feminism must, necessarily, mean the end of females. There is no other way.”
    • A long but fabulous essay. It’s by a Stanford grad, incidentally — this is the same author who wrote about Stanford’s war on fun a while back. I don’t think we ever crossed paths when she was a student.
    • Vaguely related (but interesting enough in its own right that I would have included it regardless): Stanford Medicine study identifies distinct brain organization patterns in women and men (Stanford Medicine): “A new study by Stanford Medicine investigators unveils a new artificial intelligence model that was more than 90% successful at determining whether scans of brain activity came from a woman or a man. The findings, published Feb. 20 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, help resolve a long-term controversy about whether reliable sex differences exist in the human brain and suggest that understanding these differences may be critical to addressing neuropsychiatric conditions that affect women and men differently.”
  3. I’m a foster kid who went to Yale —and I think two-parent families are more important than college (Rikki Schlott, New York Post): “Even though I was always academically inclined, the level of disorder in my life was weighing me down so much that I wasn’t in a position to fully exploit my own capabilities.… I had a class where a professor administered an anonymous poll. Out of the 20 students, 18 of them had been raised by both of their birth parents. That just floored me because where I grew up it was zero.”
  4. Kinda Nice (Damola Morenikeji, Substack): “A kind person will help you understand reality as it is, prompt you to reflect, and nudge you to fine-tune your position till you get to a place where your resolution is helpful for you. A nice person will tell you what feels good — and often what you think you want to hear at that time — even if it doesn’t help you move past that situation.”
  5. Our Unhappy Youth (Anthony Esolen, Crisis Magazine): “Instead of asking why they are unhappy, we might ask why they aren’t happy,which might in turn lead us to ask what they have to be happy about. That might reveal to us in all its drabness what appears to be the most antihuman way of life that any civilization has ever settled into: becalmed without rest, somber without sobriety, abstracted without thought, licentious without even the animal vigor of license; ever shouting, but without good cheer.”
  6. Are ‘Islamists in Charge of Britain’? (Konstantin Kisin, The Free Press): “In one sense, the Speaker’s decision was not unfounded. MPs really are at risk. Only weeks prior, Mike Freer, a Conservative MP who represents a constituency with a significant Jewish population, announced that he would not be seeking reelection because of threats to him and his family over his support for Israel. Explaining his decision, he revealed that he had started wearing stab-proof vests when meeting constituents. In 2021 another Conservative MP, Sir David Amess, was stabbed to death by an Islamist at such a meeting. In 2017, an Islamist terrorist mowed down pedestrians before stabbing an unarmed police officer to death outside the gates of Parliament.”
    • Recommended by an alumnus.
  7. Gaza’s Past Is Calling (Sarah Aziza, Lux Magazine): “Coming up in the 1990s and 2000s, the word ‘Gaza’ was already synonymous with ‘Hamas’ — a term which, I quickly learned, rendered an entire population monstrous. I am ashamed I often mumbled the name — Gaza — when white Americans asked about my family origins. It hurt to watch them flinch, to see in their cold stares the impossibility that Gaza could ever mean mothers, banana, joy. The world they erased — and erase — my father’s fingers, drawing in the sand. My grandmother’s pigeons, her particular way of brewing tea. The thousand, thousand feet that have run into the Mediterranean, each laughter a different splash. Gaza, for me, means teeming — a cruel over-concentration of bodies, yes, but at the same time, one of the world’s densest points of human love.”

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 440

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 440, the sum of the first seventeen prime numbers. 440 = 2 + 3 + 5 + 7 + 11 + 13 + 17 + 19 + 23 + 29 + 31 + 37 + 41 + 43 + 47 + 53 + 59 and that fact makes me happy.

Also, I’ve had a busy travel schedule lately and haven’t kept us with as much stuff as I normally do, so this is a shorter compilation than usual.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Christian Super Bowl Ad They SHOULD Have Made | He Saves Us (Jamie Bambrick, YouTube): one compelling minute. I don’t have anything against the He Gets Us ads, but this is pretty great.
  2. Christians Are Not Ready for the Age of “Adult AI” (Samuel D. James, Substack): “All variables being equal, it is likely that within twenty years, most online pornography will not feature real human beings. Artificial intelligence systems are already sophisticated enough to fabricate entire bodies convincingly.… It simply won’t do anymore to try to elicit post-Christian outrage against porn by emphasizing the possibility of sex trafficking or exploitation. In the era of digitally-generated content, the question will no longer be, ‘Who was hurt in the making of this’ (for the practical answer to that question will be, ‘No one’). Rather, the question will be, ‘How am I hurt by consuming this,’ and, ‘Why is this objectively wrong for me to enjoy?’ ”
  3. How China Miscalculated Its Way to a Baby Bust (Liyan Qi, Wall Street Journal): “Following the data release, researchers from Victoria University in Australia and the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences predicted that China will have just 525 million people by the end of the century. That’s down from their previous forecast of 597 million and a precipitous drop from 1.4 billion now.” Recommended by a student.
  4. Marry Young (Kasen Stephenson, Stanford Review): “Although I’m now twenty-four, I got married as a twenty-two year old undergrad. I then bid farewell to my dorm in Roble and moved into a cozy apartment beyond EVGR with my wife. I have found that most of my classmates are convinced that marriage is in their future, yet they are quite surprised that I married so young. While it’s difficult to exercise control over any timeline, I’m a strong advocate for getting married young, especially at Stanford where young marriages are most uncommon.”
  5. The Lure of Divorce (Emily Gould, The Cut): “It began to seem like I only ever talked to friends who had been through divorces or were contemplating them. One friend who didn’t know whether to split up with her husband thought opening their marriage might be the answer. Another friend described the ease of sharing custody of his young daughter, then admitted that he and his ex-wife still had sex most weekends. In my chronically undecided state, I admired both of these friends who had found, or might have found, a way to split the difference.”
    • A wild and illuminating story, although I suspect I am taking away some different lessons than the author intended.

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 439

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 439, which is not only a prime number and the sum of three consecutive primes (139 + 149 + 151), but also the sum of nine consecutive primes (31 + 37 + 41 + 43 + 47 + 53 + 59 + 61 + 67). Which is, you know, a lotta primes.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. How Digital Apps Are Changing How We Read the Bible (John Dyer, Text & Canon): “I asked both groups to read the book of Jude and then tell me (1) what the point of the book was, and (2) how it made them feel. Interestingly, two opposite trends emerged. The print readers said they felt Jude was about God’s judgment while the phone readers tended to emphasize God’s faithfulness. But then, on the second question, their answers seemed to split. The print readers, who felt the book was about God’s judgment, said they were encouraged by the reading. The phone readers on the other hand who said Jude was about God’s faithfulness, said after reading it that they felt discouraged and confused. So what can account for that difference? Why is a judgmental God encouraging and a faithful God discouraging?”
  2. The Grand Canyon-Sized Chasm Between Elites and Ordinary Americans (Rob K. Henderson, Substack): “Perhaps the most striking divergence between elite and non-elite opinion: Although the majority of ordinary voters oppose the strict rationing of meat, electricity, and gas to fight climate change, 89% of Ivy graduates and 77% of elites overall are in favor of it.”
  3. What Happened When My Church Encountered Negative World (Patrick Miller, Mere Orthodoxy): “You can tell our church’s story in a way that makes us the victims of the progressives, but that’s not our full story. Nor is it the story of most non-coastal churches that refused to go pro-Trump or pro-Biden in 2020. Pastors at such churches will tell you the same story: The negative world bows before golden donkeys and elephants.”
  4. Sarah Isgur’s Majority Report (Kelefah Sanneh, The New Yorker): “Through the eyes of Isgur and French, the American legal system generally appears to be a place where smart people assess good-faith arguments and compose thoughtful essays explaining their decisions. Their underlying contention is that the Supreme Court is good, even, or perhaps especially, in its current incarnation.… In an era of aggrieved political discourse, Isgur is something unusual: a commentator who truly seems to love the government institution she covers.”
    • Advisory Opinions is one of my favorite podcasts and I’m not remotely a lawyer. Isgur and French are amazing.
  5. The Devil’s Face in Gaza (Gerald McDermott, First Things): “The minister of tourism, a rabbi, told an Israeli Christian leader, ‘We hope you send missionaries to the Arabs here.’ The Christian was shocked: ‘Don’t you hate missionaries?’ The government minister replied, ‘If you teach them what you believe, we will have peace in the Middle East.’”
  6. Some Stanford news:
    • Sit-in on Islamophobia replaces pro-Israel tent in White Plaza (Dilan Gohill, Stanford Daily): “Organizers set up the Sit-in to Stop Islamophobia on the White Plaza lawn — a space previously occupied by the Blue and White Tent. Tent organizers told The Daily they made an indefinite reservation through Cardinal Engage. According to Feigelis, University administration told the Sit-In to Stop Islamophobia that the space was reserved for the Blue and White Tent. He said as long as the sit-in refuses to relocate, the tent cannot reassemble. The Daily has reached out to the University for comment. ‘We did not move your stuff — the wind destroyed it, you cleaned it up. We saw an open space, we set up here, we’re happy to coexist.’ El Boudali said. He added that organizers set up in White Plaza due to its high traffic.”
    • Stanford students protest new ban on overnight sit-in camping (Lauren Irwin, The Hill): “Stanford said its level of concern has risen to a point that it can no longer support overnight activities.”
    • Read the official Stanford statement: Preserving free speech and safety on White Plaza (Stanford News): “Moving forward, any tents, tables, chairs, or other similar items will need to be removed from White Plaza between the hours of 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. Any overnight displays and/or camping items left unoccupied are subject to removal for health and safety reasons. Students who violate the no-camping policy will be subject to a disciplinary referral to the Office of Community Standards and may also be cited for trespass for failing to comply with a university directive.”
    • And not exactly Stanford news, but not not Stanford news: Law schools must adopt free speech policies to maintain ABA accreditation (Lexi Lonas, The Hill): “The new standard requires schools to adopt a policy that would allow faculty, students and staff ‘to communicate ideas that may be controversial or unpopular, including through robust debate, demonstrations or protests,’ and would forbid activities that disrupt or impinge on free speech. But it wouldn’t impose specific policy language,’”’ the statement added.”
  7. The Political Preferences of LLMs (David Rozado, Substack): “When probed with questions/statements with political connotations most conversational LLMs tend to generate responses that are diagnosed by most political test instruments as manifesting preferences for left-of-center viewpoints. This does not appear to be the case for base (i.e. foundation) models upon which LLMs optimized for conversation with humans are built. Though not conclusive, our results provide supporting evidence for the intriguing hypothesis that the embedding of political preferences into LLMs might be happening mostly post-pretraining. Namely, during the supervised fine-tuning (SFT) and/or Reinforcement Learning (RL) stages of the conversational LLMs training pipeline.”
    • In other words, the AI tools we see appear to have political preferences trained into them by the companies that are creating them, although it is not clear to what extent this is deliberately being done.
    • The author is a professor of data science in New Zealand — https://drozado.github.io/

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • History of Japan (Bill Wurz, YouTube): nine amazing minutes — genuinely worth your time if you have any interest in Japan at all. Or in how to teach history using video. He leaves a bunch out and definitely throws his opinion around, but it’s hard to see how he could have done anything else in nine minutes. Really good.

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.