Category: Of Random Interest

Last-Minute Gift Ideas For Middle-Aged Dudes

This is my third year of post­ing gift ideas for hard-to-shop for guys the week before Christ­mas. The 2024 and 2023 lists are still full of good ideas (they’re both embed­ded below), so check those out if none of these items catch your fan­cy.

I’m not recy­cling some ran­dom lists I saw online. Every­thing below is stuff I got myself since I post­ed the last list, so I am giv­ing first­hand tes­ti­mo­ny that I as a mid­dle-aged dude (a) own and (b) am pleased as punch with all of these items. Btw, none of these are affil­i­ate links. This isn’t a side hus­tle, just an act of help­ful­ness.

  1. Col­lar Exten­ders are real­ly great if you have a dress shirt that feels tight when you but­ton the top but­ton. They’re kin­da mag­i­cal. About $8.
  2. An Anker Exten­sion Cord/Power Cube — this thing is great when you’re trav­el­ing. My hotel rooms nev­er have enough out­lets (or they’re in a weird place). I love this thing for how com­pact and use­ful it us. Has both reg­u­lar out­lets as well as USB ports for charg­ing devices. Around $20.
  3. Ear Wax Removal Cam­era — I love this device so much. It would be handy for any task that requires see­ing into a weird space (like try­ing to find a screw that fell into some machin­ery), but I use it for ear wax and it deliv­ers. About $10.
  4. Sil­i­cone Body Scrub­ber — I have long been annoyed with so-called “show­er-flow­ers” and I stum­bled upon this device. Works per­fect­ly and is way more durable than oth­er solu­tions I have tried. This is the one I bought, but scrolling down to “prod­ucts relat­ed to this item” I see lots of inter­est­ing alter­na­tive designs. Prob­a­bly a weird stand­alone gift, but it could be nice as a stock­ing stuffer. This one is about $6.
  5. Busi­ness For The Com­mon Good — I do a fair amount of read­ing in the faith & work space, and I don’t love most of what I read. It’s often super­fi­cial on either the busi­ness side or the spir­i­tu­al side. This is one of the books I had to read for my doc­tor­al pro­gram and it is sol­id on both fronts. I liked it more than any­thing else I’ve read on this top­ic. Around $12.
  6. A Rug With A Cus­tom Logo — you could put your fam­i­ly ini­tials or even a fam­i­ly or pet pho­to on here. I made the round one with the Chi Alpha cir­cu­lar logo and it sparks joy. The rug itself is not super high-qual­i­ty, but the vibe it cre­ates makes me hap­py. $17 and won’t arrive in time for Christ­mas, but file it away for an upcom­ing birth­day or some­thing.

I hope at least one of these helps you out with any last-minute shop­ping (or inspires you to buy a lil’ some­thing for your­self). Again, the last two years’ lists are still help­ful. See below. Also — Mer­ry Christ­mas!

Glen’s 2024 list:

More Last Minute Gift Ideas For The Mid­dle-Aged Man In Your Life

Glen’s 2023 list:

Last Minute Gift Ideas For The Mid­dle-Aged Man In Your Life

Giving Thanks is Christlike

I hope you’re on track for a won­der­ful Thanks­giv­ing! Paula and I are prep­ping to host a bunch of Stan­ford stu­dents who could­n’t get home for the hol­i­days.

Thanks­giv­ing is not a Chris­t­ian hol­i­day in the same way that Christ­mas is, but it is a hol­i­day that I am always delight­ed to cel­e­brate because grat­i­tude is one of the most impor­tant Chris­t­ian virtues. The phras­es “give/given/giving/gave thanks” occur 28 times in the NIV trans­la­tion of the New Tes­ta­ment. Half of those times it is Jesus Him­self giv­ing thanks, so to give thanks is Christ­like.1

So be grate­ful this week and always! This Thanks­giv­ing, I pray you feast upon delight­ful food while sur­round­ed by peo­ple you love and that the delec­table­ness of the desserts is only exceed­ed by the quan­ti­ty of the laugh­ter. May grat­i­tude fill your heart and ani­mate your mouth.

  1. Here are the four­teen times (scat­tered across ten pas­sages) the phras­es “given/gave thanks” are used in ref­er­ence to Jesus. Inter­est­ing­ly, they are all relat­ed to food.
    * Matthew 14:19 — And he direct­ed the peo­ple to sit down on the grass. Tak­ing the five loaves and the two fish and look­ing up to heav­en, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the dis­ci­ples, and the dis­ci­ples gave them to the peo­ple.
    * Matthew 15:36 — Then he took the sev­en loaves and the fish, and when he had giv­en thanks, he broke them and gave them to the dis­ci­ples, and they in turn to the peo­ple.
    * Matthew 26:26–27 — While they were eat­ing, Jesus took bread, and when he had giv­en thanks, he broke it and gave it to his dis­ci­ples, say­ing, “Take and eat; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and when he had giv­en thanks, he gave it to them, say­ing, “Drink from it, all of you.”
    * Mark 6:41 — Tak­ing the five loaves and the two fish and look­ing up to heav­en, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to his dis­ci­ples to dis­trib­ute to the peo­ple. He also divid­ed the two fish among them all.
    * Mark 8:6–7 — He told the crowd to sit down on the ground. When he had tak­en the sev­en loaves and giv­en thanks, he broke them and gave them to his dis­ci­ples to dis­trib­ute to the peo­ple, and they did so. They had a few small fish as well; he gave thanks for them also and told the dis­ci­ples to dis­trib­ute them.
    * Mark 14:22–23 — While they were eat­ing, Jesus took bread, and when he had giv­en thanks, he broke it and gave it to his dis­ci­ples, say­ing, “Take it; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and when he had giv­en thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank from it.
    * Luke 9:16 — Tak­ing the five loaves and the two fish and look­ing up to heav­en, he gave thanks and broke them. Then he gave them to the dis­ci­ples to dis­trib­ute to the peo­ple.
    * Luke 22:17, 19 — After tak­ing the cup, he gave thanks and said, “Take this and divide it among you.… And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, say­ing, “This is my body giv­en for you; do this in remem­brance of me.”
    * Luke 24:30 — When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them.
    * John 6:23 — Then some boats from Tiberias land­ed near the place where the peo­ple had eat­en the bread after the Lord had giv­en thanks. ↩︎

The Four Loves: Affection

The Four Loves by CS Lewis

Some of us are read­ing through C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves this sum­mer for the Chi Alpha Sum­mer Read­ing Project. Every oth­er week I’ll post some reflec­tions on the read­ings.

I have writ­ten about this chap­ter once before, back in 2018. My remarks here are fresh (although the open­ing sec­tion is very sim­i­lar).

YouTube has some­thing amaz­ing in rela­tion to this week’s read­ing: a 1957 record­ing of C. S. Lewis him­self giv­ing the lec­ture upon which this chap­ter is based. I’ve embed­ded the video, and you can read the tran­script as well. You should at least lis­ten to a few min­utes if you’ve nev­er heard the voice of Lewis before.

The chan­nel host­ing this video is worth check­ing out. It’s called CSLewis­Doo­dle and it “doo­dles select­ed essays by C.S. Lewis in order to make them eas­i­er to under­stand.” It’s got doo­dled treat­ments of Mere Chris­tian­i­ty, The Screw­tape Let­ters, and more. Con­sid­er sub­scrib­ing to it.

On to affec­tion. Lewis is dis­cussing the type of love described by the Greek word storge (στοργή), a love which we describe using the words affec­tion or fond­ness.

The word storge does not appear direct­ly in the New Tes­ta­ment, although it does appear as a root of oth­er words. In both Romans 1:31 and 2nd Tim­o­thy 3:3 the word astor­gos (ἄστοργος) is ren­dered by var­i­ous trans­la­tions as “heart­less” or “unlov­ing” or “with­out nat­ur­al affec­tion.” And in Romans 12:10 we find the word philostor­gos (φιλόστοργος) which means “devot­ed”.

I pro­vide this lin­guis­tic data mere­ly by way of back­ground. It does­n’t affect Lewis’ dis­cus­sion of affec­tion except to explain why he’s not quot­ing a bunch of Bible vers­es.

There is one sec­tion in this chap­ter that always strikes me:

If peo­ple are already unlov­able a con­tin­u­al demand on their part (as of right) to be loved—their man­i­fest sense of injury, their reproach­es, whether loud and clam­orous or mere­ly implic­it in every look and ges­ture of resent­ful self-pity—produce in us a sense of guilt (they are intend­ed to do so) for a fault we could not have avoid­ed and can­not cease to com­mit. They seal up the very foun­tain for which they are thirsty. If ever, at some favoured moment, any germ of Affec­tion for them stirs in us, their demand for more and still more pet­ri­fies us again.

What an arrest­ing phrase: “they seal up the very foun­tain for which they are thirsty.”

I once had a cat who became so obese that he could no longer lick him­self clean. And so for a sea­son he stank. Wher­ev­er he went, the smell of an out­house fol­lowed him. And yet he was des­per­ate for affec­tion. He would approach peo­ple to receive pats and his stench would dri­ve them away.

And here is where the sto­ry becomes fas­ci­nat­ing: in his sad­ness he devel­oped the habit of sleep­ing in his lit­ter box. I was amazed: the poor crea­ture had found a way to make his stench even worse. His habits made his desires unat­tain­able.

I am pleased to report that even­tu­al­ly his behav­ior changed, he lost weight, his stench decreased, and he received affec­tion. He became much hap­pi­er.

I have met peo­ple who do the equiv­a­lent of sleep­ing in their lit­ter box. They live odi­ous lives. In the most extreme cas­es they under­mine their friend­ships and are baf­fled that they find them­selves alone. In the pas­sage excerpt­ed above Lewis talks about peo­ple who are so needy it is repel­lent, and that is one way we can car­ry a stench around with us but it is hard­ly the only one. There are many milder cas­es. Con­sid­er a young woman who is unwill­ing to be vul­ner­a­ble beyond a cer­tain point and is sur­prised that her friend­ships lack depth. Or con­sid­er a young man unwill­ing to risk rejec­tion who is then dis­ap­point­ed that his friend­ships nev­er blos­som into romance. Or pic­ture some­one who comes late to church and leaves ear­ly and is frus­trat­ed that they lack com­mu­ni­ty. In each case, they “seal up the very foun­tain for which they are thirsty.”

Take a moment to eval­u­ate your rela­tion­ships. Is there an absence of affec­tion or cama­raderie which frus­trates you? It may sim­ply be that you haven’t found your peo­ple yet (and Lewis will talk more about friend­ship in the next chap­ter). But it is also pos­si­ble that you are doing the equiv­a­lent of sleep­ing in your lit­ter box.

If you are frus­trat­ed that you are not expe­ri­enc­ing the affec­tion you desire, spend some time in prayer­ful con­tem­pla­tion and ask God to reveal any self-lim­it­ing habits you have devel­oped and to guide you into bet­ter habits. Your now is not your for­ev­er — my cat changed and so can we.

And if you haven’t already, read the “affec­tion” chap­ter in The Four Loves and watch the Lewis doo­dle video above — they may pro­vide you with some insight.

Thoughts on This Fourth of July

The Four Loves by CS Lewis

Some of us are read­ing through C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves this sum­mer for the Chi Alpha Sum­mer Read­ing Project. Every oth­er week I’ll post some reflec­tions on the read­ings.

When I laid out the read­ing sched­ule for The Four Loves, I did­n’t real­ize that we would read Lewis’ remarks on patri­o­tism on the fourth of July. How delight­ful!

I’ve actu­al­ly writ­ten about this chap­ter of The Four Loves before, so I’ll take a slight­ly dif­fer­ent direc­tion today.

Lewis cel­e­brates the love of coun­try as one of the most basic of loves. He points out that the love of your nation is an indis­pens­able part of lov­ing all of human­i­ty.

As the fam­i­ly offers us the first step beyond self-love, so this offers us the first step beyond fam­i­ly self­ish­ness.… those who do not love the fel­low-vil­lagers or the fel­low-towns­men whom they have seen are not like­ly to have got very far towards lov­ing ‘Man’ whom they have not.

This wor­ries some peo­ple, because does­n’t lov­ing your coun­try lead to a dis­like of oth­ers? Not at all! One of the virtues of healthy patri­o­tism is that it allows you to love and respect peo­ple from oth­er nations.

[This kind of patri­o­tism] becomes mil­i­tant only to pro­tect what it loves. In any mind which has a pen­ny­worth of imag­i­na­tion it pro­duces a good atti­tude towards for­eign­ers. How can I love my home with­out com­ing to realise that oth­er men, no less right­ly, love theirs? Once you have realised that the French­men like cafe com­plet just as we like bacon and eggs—why, good luck to them and let them have it. The last thing we want is to make every­where else just like our own home. It would not be home unless it were dif­fer­ent.

By con­trast, a dis­dain for your own nation will lead to dis­dain for oth­ers. Part of cel­e­brat­ing diver­si­ty is real­iz­ing that you con­tribute to it. Your cul­ture can enrich a for­eign­er just as much as their cul­ture can enrich you, and so to deny them by pre­tend­ing there is noth­ing good about your cul­ture is cru­el.

This does­n’t mean that you need to ignore the flaws of your nation. Lewis devotes sev­er­al pages in this chap­ter to help­ing peo­ple sort through the fact that “the actu­al his­to­ry of every coun­try is full of shab­by and even shame­ful things.” Much of what he says reminds me of the way G.K. Chester­ton talked about patri­o­tism in Ortho­doxy chap­ter 5, “The Flag of This World.” Chesterton’s point is that patri­ots see the flaws of their nation and grieve them. It is because peo­ple love their nation that they want to fix it.

The fol­low­ing from the afore­men­tioned Chester­ton chap­ter is one of my favorite quotes of all time — I beg you to read through it slow­ly.

Let us sup­pose we are con­front­ed with a des­per­ate thing—say Pim­li­co [Glen’s note: Pim­li­co is part of Lon­don]. If we think what is real­ly best for Pim­li­co we shall find the thread of thought leads to the throne or the mys­tic and the arbi­trary. It is not enough for a man to dis­ap­prove of Pim­li­co: in that case he will mere­ly cut his throat or move to Chelsea. Nor, cer­tain­ly, is it enough for a man to approve of Pim­li­co: for then it will remain Pim­li­co, which would be awful. The only way out of it seems to be for some­body to love Pim­li­co: to love it with a tran­scen­den­tal tie and with­out any earth­ly rea­son. If there arose a man who loved Pim­li­co, then Pim­li­co would rise into ivory tow­ers and gold­en pin­na­cles; Pim­li­co would attire her­self as a woman does when she is loved. For dec­o­ra­tion is not giv­en to hide hor­ri­ble things: but to dec­o­rate things already adorable. A moth­er does not give her child a blue bow because he is so ugly with­out it. A lover does not give a girl a neck­lace to hide her neck. If men loved Pim­li­co as moth­ers love chil­dren, arbi­trar­i­ly, because it is THEIRS, Pim­li­co in a year or two might be fair­er than Flo­rence. Some read­ers will say that this is a mere fan­ta­sy. I answer that this is the actu­al his­to­ry of mankind. This, as a fact, is how cities did grow great. Go back to the dark­est roots of civ­i­liza­tion and you will find them knot­ted round some sacred stone or encir­cling some sacred well. Peo­ple first paid hon­our to a spot and after­wards gained glo­ry for it. Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.

When a lot of us tru­ly, sin­cere­ly, and earnest­ly love Amer­i­ca over time, our love (and the efforts that spring from it) will trans­form Amer­i­ca. That’s what has hap­pened in the past, and God will­ing it will con­tin­ue into the future.

Lewis writes about more than patri­o­tism in this chap­ter, and I com­mend the rest of it to you. But today is the Fourth of July, and love of nation seemed like the right theme to focus on. So from me, from C.S. Lewis, and from G.K. Chester­ton: hap­py Inde­pen­dence Day!

More Last Minute Gift Ideas For The Middle-Aged Man In Your Life

Christ­mas is one week away, and I’ve been told that men my age are hard to shop for. So if you still need to get a gift for the dad/husband/whatever in your life, I offer this list of afford­able pur­chas­es that have brought me joy.

Last year I sug­gest­ed 9 gift ideas for the hard-to-shop-for mid­dle aged guy in your life. Those are all still excel­lent sug­ges­tions, so also look there.

Here are some things I’ve got­ten in the last year that I’ve loved.

  • Get him a tie clip or socks for his fan­dom from Hero’s Armory — they don’t make licensed prod­ucts so you have to do a lit­tle decod­ing (“light laser sword” = light saber, “the hero’s sword” = Leg­end of Zel­da mas­ter sword, etc), but they’re high qual­i­ty and I’ve been very pleased with the stuff I’ve received from them. About $30.
  • I bought a dou­ble-boil­er on Ama­zon for mak­ing can­dy and I think it’s awe­some. Not for every guy, but if he likes can­dy and enjoys play­ing around in the kitchen it would be a sweet (heh) gift. About $15 (less if you get a small­er one).
  • I swear by these Grip­stic bag clips. They are 9000% bet­ter than the clothes­pin-style that we’re all used to. You’ll prob­a­bly need to watch a video to under­stand how they work, but I can’t look back. They’re sim­ply per­fect at what they do. About $25 for a 12 pack of assort­ed sizes. I’ve actu­al­ly been using these for years, but did­n’t include them on last year’s list for some rea­son.
  • I replaced the light switch in our laun­dry area with a motion sen­sor switch . 10/10 rec­om­mend if you ever get annoyed try­ing to turn the light on with your hands full. About $15.
  • Every once in a while I have to mess with elec­tri­cal stuff and get annoyed at those twist-on wire con­nec­tors. These lever nuts from Wago solve the prob­lem a dif­fer­ent way and they are great. Not all the guys in your life will need them, but if they ever have to rewire things they’ll find these con­nec­tors handy. About $25.
  • They make bean­ies with built-in head­lamps. Guys my age eat this kind of stuff up. Great for when you need to step out­side at night to deal with some ran­dom chore that will take both your hands. About $20.

I hope at least one of these feels right for the mid­dle-aged man in your life (and that you have time to get it before the big day). Mer­ry Christ­mas!

Also, after post­ing last year’s list I had sev­er­al ladies con­tact me to say they loved the stuff I shared as well and I should­n’t lim­it it to guys. I guess I would say I’m not lim­it­ing it to guys — I’m tar­get­ing it at guys. We are usu­al­ly con­sid­ered much hard­er to find gifts for than our female coun­ter­parts. If you’re a lady and want this stuff, put it on your wish list with­out shame or any judg­ment from me!

Last Minute Gift Ideas For The Middle-Aged Man In Your Life

Christ­mas is one week away, and I’ve been told that men my age are hard to shop for. So if you still need to get a gift for the dad/husband/whatever in your life, I offer this list of afford­able pur­chas­es that have brought me joy.

  • If your guy does­n’t like the Bat­tery Dad­dy, is he even a mid­dle-aged man? Stores near­ly all your bat­ter­ies in one con­ve­nient place. We got ours at Cost­co and I’ve seen them for sale at Home Depot and Ace Hard­ware. About $20.
  • Key­Catch mag­net­ic screws for hang­ing keys beneath light switch­es. These things are amaz­ing. They replace the exist­ing screw in your wall plate and I 10/10 rec­om­mend. At about $15 they’d be a great stock­ing stuffer.
  • The Bible Is Fun­ny card game is a hoot for a Chris­t­ian audi­ence. Think Apples to Apples but with Bible vers­es. I got it recent­ly and have loved it, but I do think it will have lim­it­ed replay val­ue. There just aren’t enough cards for long-term enjoy­ment, but plen­ty enough for play­ing with the fam­i­ly for the rest of Christ­mas break. About $20.
  • Gaffer tape is so much bet­ter than duct/duck tape for almost every­thing. It holds tight­ly but does­n’t leave a tacky residue when you pull it off. If your guy does­n’t know about this won­der­ful stuff, buy him a roll. About $20.
  • When we’re trav­el­ing, the Lec­tro­Fan EVO White Noise Machine real­ly helps cre­ate a rest­ful envi­ron­ment. About $40.
  • I love these Wig­far Bone Con­duc­tion Head­phones. For about $25 I can legal­ly lis­ten to pod­casts while I’m bik­ing: these don’t cov­er your ears at all but instead pump sound waves direct­ly into your face bones.
    • Side note: I had hoped to use them in the gym as well, but the back band loops out a lit­tle too far. There are oth­er com­pa­nies that make this tech­nol­o­gy, and per­haps one of them is bet­ter-fit­ting. Dig around. If your guy swims there are vari­ants that work under­wa­ter.
  • The scottchen Spray Can Paint Mix­er fits into your drill and quick­ly mix­es up a spray can. About $20.
  • The Niim­bot label mak­er prints labels quick­ly. It’s com­pact, there are lots of labels you can buy, and it does what I want. About $20.
  • Final­ly, some­thing Paula and I have been doing for a while is buy­ing Christ­mas tree orna­ments for places we’ve lived or been on vaca­tion. That way dec­o­rat­ing the tree becomes a fun cel­e­bra­tion of our his­to­ry togeth­er. If none of the oth­er gifts feel like a good fit, maybe buy your guy an orna­ment from his alma mater or from your favorite fam­i­ly vaca­tion.

I hope at least one of these feels right for the mid­dle-aged man in your life. Mer­ry Christ­mas!

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 394

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 394, which is a Schröder Num­ber (some­thing which I did not pre­vi­ous­ly know exist­ed).

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Stan­ford-relat­ed
    • Employ­ee charged with lying about Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty rapes that shook cam­pus (Robert Salon­ga and Jakob Rodgers, San Jose Mer­cury News): “A Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty employ­ee who author­i­ties say twice report­ed last year that she was vicious­ly dragged out of sight on cam­pus and raped — touch­ing off pan­ic about a ser­i­al preda­tor — is now accused of fab­ri­cat­ing the claims as part of a revenge plot against a co-work­er.”
      • This whole thing is so nuts on so many lev­els. This was by far the most shock­ing thing I read this week.
    • Law School activists protest Judge Kyle Duncan’s vis­it to cam­pus (Gre­ta Reich, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “In his open­ing remarks, Dun­can addressed these posters and chants. ‘I’m not blind — I can see this out­pour­ing of con­tempt,’ Dun­can said. With audi­ence inter­rup­tions con­tin­u­ing through­out the speech, he lat­er said ‘In this school, the inmates have got­ten con­trol of the asy­lum.’ ”
    • Pres­i­dent, law school dean apol­o­gize to Judge Kyle Dun­can for ‘dis­rup­tion’ to his speech (Gre­ta Reich, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “Tessier-Lav­i­gne and Mar­tinez apol­o­gized for this inci­dent, writ­ing, ‘Staff mem­bers who should have enforced uni­ver­si­ty poli­cies failed to do so, and instead inter­vened in inap­pro­pri­ate ways that are not aligned with the university’s com­mit­ment to free speech.’ The let­ter ends with a promise to pre­vent sim­i­lar inci­dents from hap­pen­ing in the future.”
    • Stu­dent Activists Tar­get Stan­ford Law School Dean in Revolt Over Her Apol­o­gy (Aaron Sibar­i­um, Wash­ing­ton Free Bea­con): “[The protest against the Dean] was even larg­er than the one that dis­rupt­ed Duncan’s talk, and came on the heels of state­ments from at least three stu­dent groups rebuk­ing Martinez’s apol­o­gy. The Stan­ford Nation­al Lawyers Guild said Sat­ur­day that Mar­tinez had thrown ‘capa­ble and com­pas­sion­ate admin­is­tra­tors’ under the bus. The law school’s Immi­gra­tion & Human Rights Law Asso­ci­a­tion issued a sim­i­lar dec­la­ra­tion on Sun­day, writ­ing to its mail­ing list that Stanford’s apol­o­gy to Dun­can ‘has only made this sit­u­a­tion worse.’ And Stan­ford Law School’s chap­ter of the Amer­i­can Con­sti­tu­tion Soci­ety expressed out­rage that Mar­tinez and Tessier-Lav­i­gne had framed Dun­can ‘as a vic­tim, when in fact he him­self had made civ­il dia­logue impos­si­ble.’ ”
    • Hat­ing Every­one Every­where All At Once At Stan­ford (Ken White, Sub­stack): “Stu­dents think that they should be able to dic­tate which speak­ers their peers invite, who can speak, what they can say, and who can lis­ten. They’re not sat­is­fied with the most free-speech-excep­tion­al­ist sys­tem in the world that lets them respond to speech by assem­bling, protest­ing, and revil­ing peo­ple of author­i­ty like Judge Dun­can. They demand the right not just to speak, but to con­trol the speech of oth­ers. That’s straight-up thug­gish, an aspi­ra­tion born of a fas­cist soul. These are law stu­dents. They are train­ing to express them­selves for a liv­ing. If their view is ‘we can’t respond to awful speech, we can only stop it from hap­pen­ing,’ then they’re going to be ter­ri­ble lawyers.”
    • EXCLUSIVE: US Judge Kyle Dun­can Inter­view (Rod Dreher, Sub­stack): “The attack was inti­mate­ly per­son­al and, frankly, dis­gust­ing. If I talked to a dog the way those stu­dents talked to me, I’d feel ashamed. (Actu­al­ly, there was a dog there, with paint on its fur in what is evi­dent­ly one ver­sion of a trans­gen­der flag. But I don’t blame the dog).”
  2. Black, Evan­gel­i­cal and Torn (Caleb Gayle, New York Times): “While start­ing out in the S.B.C. as a Black pas­tor may appear to be a fric­tion­less choice, for some­one like McKissic, as his expe­ri­ence sug­gests, con­tin­u­ing to remain with­in the fold as a Black pas­tor can amount to find­ing enough tech­ni­cal­i­ties to stay.”
    • I have unlocked the pay­wall on this arti­cle.
  3. AI-relat­ed
    • Can A.I. Treat Men­tal Ill­ness? (Dhruv Khullar): “I signed up for Woe­bot, and dis­cov­ered that using the app could feel cen­ter­ing…  Once, I told Woe­bot that I was feel­ing anx­ious about work. ‘Anx­i­ety can be a real mon­ster to han­dle,’ it wrote back. ‘I’m sor­ry that you’re deal­ing with it.’ Woe­bot gen­tly us inquired whether I want­ed to work  through my prob­lem togeth­er, then asked, ‘Do you think this anx­i­ety might be serv­ing you in some way?’ It point­ed out that stress has its ben­e­fits: it could moti­vate the some­one to work hard­er.… I knew that I was talk­ing to a com­put­er, but in a way I didn’t mind. The app became a vehi­cle for me to artic­u­late and exam­ine my own thoughts. I was talk­ing to myself.”
      • I high­ly rec­om­mend this arti­cle. It touch­es on men­tal health and sui­cide, dif­fer­ent styles of ther­a­py, and online chat­bots as ther­a­pists (Psy­chG­PT). Fun­ni­ly enough, the ini­tial cre­ator doesn’t even agree with A.I. as a mode of ther­a­py. The arti­cle also has some play­ful Gen X humor!
    • This Changes Every­thing (Ezra Klein, New York Times): “…‘as A.I. con­tin­ues to blow past us in bench­mark after bench­mark of high­er cog­ni­tion, we quell our anx­i­ety by insist­ing that what dis­tin­guish­es true con­scious­ness is emo­tions, per­cep­tion, the abil­i­ty to expe­ri­ence and feel: the qual­i­ties, in oth­er words, that we share with ani­mals.’ This is an inver­sion of cen­turies of thought, O’Gieblyn notes, in which human­i­ty jus­ti­fied its own dom­i­nance by empha­siz­ing our cog­ni­tive unique­ness. We may soon find our­selves tak­ing meta­phys­i­cal shel­ter in the sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ence of con­scious­ness: the qual­i­ties we share with ani­mals but not, so far, with A.I.”
    • Ope­nAI co-founder on company’s past approach to open­ly shar­ing research: ‘We were wrong’ (James Vin­cent, The Verge): “When asked why Ope­nAI changed its approach to shar­ing its research, Sutskev­er replied sim­ply, ‘We were wrong. Flat out, we were wrong. If you believe, as we do, that at some point, AI — AGI — is going to be extreme­ly, unbe­liev­ably potent, then it just does not make sense to open-source. It is a bad idea… I ful­ly expect that in a few years it’s going to be com­plete­ly obvi­ous to every­one that open-sourc­ing AI is just not wise.’ ”
  4. Review: The Best Minds, by Jonathan Rosen (Fred­die deBoer, Sub­stack): “He fin­ished his under­grad­u­ate edu­ca­tion at Yale in three years, then got a job with the pres­ti­gious (and well-remu­ner­a­tive) finan­cial firm Bain Cap­i­tal. But in his ear­ly 20s, Lau­dor was beset by hal­lu­ci­na­tions and para­noia, expe­ri­enc­ing some­times-vio­lent delu­sions that fright­ened his devot­ed par­ents. He was diag­nosed with schiz­o­phre­nia and spent eight months in a psy­chi­atric facil­i­ty. Unde­terred, he emerged to attend Yale Law School, where he became a favorite of the dean and cham­pi­oned by the fac­ul­ty. He was pro­filed in a glow­ing New York Times piece that rep­re­sent­ed his resilience as a sym­bol for the men­tal­ly ill every­where.… Then he hacked his preg­nant girl­friend to death with a kitchen knife.”
    • This book review is engross­ing and full of sub­stance.
  5. Q&A: Stu­art Schmill on MIT’s deci­sion to rein­state the SAT/ACT require­ment (Kathy Wren, MIT News): “It turns out the short­est path for many stu­dents to demon­strate suf­fi­cient prepa­ra­tion — par­tic­u­lar­ly for stu­dents with less access to edu­ca­tion­al cap­i­tal — is through the SAT/ACT, because most stu­dents can study for these exams using free tools at Khan Acad­e­my, but they (usu­al­ly) can’t force their high school to offer advanced cal­cu­lus cours­es, for exam­ple. So, the SAT/ACT can actu­al­ly open the door to MIT for these stu­dents, too.”
  6. Of Course You Know What “Woke” Means (Fred­die deBoer, Sub­stack): “As I have said many times, I don’t like using the term ‘woke’ myself, not with­out qual­i­fi­ca­tion or quo­ta­tion marks. It’s too much of a cul­ture war pin­ball and now deemed too pejo­ra­tive to be use­ful. I much, much pre­fer the term ‘social jus­tice pol­i­tics’ to refer to the school of pol­i­tics that is typ­i­cal­ly referred to as woke, out of a desire to be neu­tral in ter­mi­nol­o­gy. How­ev­er: there is such a school of pol­i­tics, it’s absurd that so many peo­ple pre­tend not to know what woke means, and the prob­lem could be eas­i­ly solved if peo­ple who sup­port woke pol­i­tics would adopt a name for oth­ers to use.”
  7. Evan­gel­i­cals Are the Most Beloved US Faith Group Among Evan­gel­i­cals (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “In a Pew Research Cen­ter report released Wednes­day, 27 per­cent of Amer­i­cans expressed an unfa­vor­able view of evan­gel­i­cals, com­pared to 10 per­cent who have a neg­a­tive view of main­line Protes­tants or 18 per­cent who have a neg­a­tive view of Catholics. About as many have a favor­able approach to evangelicals—28 percent—but that’s most­ly due to pos­i­tive sen­ti­ment from Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cals them­selves, about a quar­ter of the pop­u­la­tion.… (The worst rat­ings, though, went to Jehovah’s Wit­ness­es, Sci­en­tol­ogy, and Satanism.)”
    • Demog­ra­ph­er Lyman Stone respond­ed to the sur­vey results on Twit­ter with “The group most hat­ed in Amer­i­ca by peo­ple who aren’t mem­bers of it is.… evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians. More than Jews, athe­ists, or Mor­mons, we are hat­ed by our neigh­bors. We have legit­i­mate grounds to believe we are expe­ri­enc­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion. and nobody has more neg­a­tive and hos­tile atti­tudes towards their out­grap [sic] than athe­ists. the only peo­ple athe­ists don’t hate are Jews, and even then they’re the most luke­warm on Jews of any group. athe­ists: con­tin­u­ing a sto­ried tra­di­tion of being angry all the time at every­one”
    • His Twit­ter account is cur­rent­ly set to pri­vate because of all the blow­back he got, but he says will take it pub­lic again and this thread will be well worth read­ing — his crit­ics take some shots at him and he shoots back very effec­tive­ly.

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 ‘Hand­maid’ real­i­ty: Deeply reli­gious mar­riages have more spousal equal­i­ty (Nao­mi Schae­fer Riley & Hal Boyd, New York Post): “Reli­gious, home-wor­ship­ping cou­ples also report greater rela­tion­ship qual­i­ty and sta­bil­i­ty, and they are three times more like­ly than less-reli­gious peers to report a sex­u­al­ly sat­is­fy­ing rela­tion­ship. The women don’t appear to be repressed; in fact, they’re gen­er­al­ly more like­ly to say they’re hap­py and that their life has mean­ing and pur­pose.” And yet again research con­firms Bib­li­cal pre­cepts. Allow me to take his oppor­tu­ni­ty to offer a friend­ly pas­toral reminder to mar­ry anoth­er Chris­t­ian, should you mar­ry. From vol­ume 272.

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.

Grace For Bad Preaching

I found this sto­ry from one of the news arti­cles about the move of God at Asbury encour­ag­ing:

It all start­ed on Wednes­day, Feb­ru­ary 8, when Zach Meerkreebs, a vol­un­teer soc­cer coach who had addressed the stu­dent body only twice before, gave an impro­vised ser­mon about love.

“Some of you guys have expe­ri­enced rad­i­cal­ly poor love,” Meerkreebs, a tat­tooed 32-year-old with a pen­chant for kom­bucha, told the crowd. “Some of you guys have expe­ri­enced that love in the church. Maybe it’s not vio­lent, maybe it’s not molesta­tion, it’s not tak­en advan­tage of—but it feels like some­one has pulled a fast one on you.”

Then he uttered the invi­ta­tion that ignit­ed a move­ment: “If you need to hear the voice of God—the Father in Heav­en who will nev­er love you that way, that is per­fect in love, gen­tle and kind—you come up here and expe­ri­ence his love. Don’t waste this oppor­tu­ni­ty.”

In a final, kind of corny throw­away line, he said: “I pray that this sits on you guys like an itchy sweater, and you got­ta itch, you got­ta take care of it.”

Meerkreebs told me he was cer­tain that he had “total­ly whiffed” the ser­mon, and imme­di­ate­ly got off stage and texted his wife, “Lat­est stinker. I’ll be home soon.”

Why Stu­dents in Ken­tucky Have Been Pray­ing for 250 Hours (The Free Press)

I don’t know whether his preach­ing was actu­al­ly bad that day or not — I haven’t seen the video. But I know he thought it went bad­ly.

And here’s the encour­ag­ing thing for preach­ers: the move of God is not con­tin­gent on our rhetor­i­cal skills. Do your best to bless God’s peo­ple, but don’t despair if you “total­ly whiff” and lay your “lat­est stinker.” An amaz­ing out­pour­ing might fol­low!

Why? Because grace is as fun­da­men­tal a prin­ci­ple as you can find in Chris­tian­i­ty. It is well-known that God offers for­give­ness to sin­ners, free­dom for cap­tives, and joy in place of mourn­ing. More­over, His pow­er is made per­fect in our weak­ness! Why should we be sur­prised when God pours out His Spir­it gen­er­ous­ly in response to mediocre preach­ing?

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 384

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 384, which is 8!! (8 dou­ble fac­to­r­i­al). Dou­ble fac­to­r­i­al is a con­cept I learned today. Instead of mul­ti­ply­ing 8 · 7 · 6 · 5 · 4 · 3 · 2 · 1 you instead skip down by twos, so 8 · 6 · 4 · 2 = 384.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. My AI Safe­ty Lec­ture for UT Effec­tive Altru­ism (Scott Aaron­son, per­son­al blog): “If you had asked any­one in the 60s or 70s, they would have said, well clear­ly first robots will replace humans for man­u­al labor, and then they’ll replace humans for intel­lec­tu­al things like math and sci­ence, and final­ly they might reach the pin­na­cles of human cre­ativ­i­ty like art and poet­ry and music.The truth has turned out to be the exact oppo­site. I don’t think any­one pre­dict­ed that. GPT, I think, is already a pret­ty good poet. DALL‑E is already a pret­ty good artist. They’re still strug­gling with some high school and col­lege-lev­el math but they’re get­ting there. It’s easy to imag­ine that maybe in five years, peo­ple like me will be using these things as research assistants—at the very least, to prove the lem­mas in our papers. That seems extreme­ly plau­si­ble.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  2. How an Unortho­dox Schol­ar Uses Tech­nol­o­gy to Expose Bib­li­cal Forg­eries (Chanan Tigay, Smith­son­ian Mag­a­zine): “After­ward, the ama­teur archae­ol­o­gist, who would become an emi­nent schol­ar and a mem­ber of the Insti­tut de France, tried to nego­ti­ate with the Bedouin to acquire the stone, but his inter­est, cou­pled with offers from oth­er inter­na­tion­al bid­ders, fur­ther irked the tribes­men; they built a bon­fire around the stone and repeat­ed­ly doused it with cold water until it broke apart. Then they scat­tered the pieces.”
    • Inter­est­ing through­out. Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  3. GPT Takes the Bar Exam (Michael Bom­mar­i­to II & Daniel Mar­tin Katz, arX­iv): “For best prompt and para­me­ters, GPT‑3.5 achieves a head­line cor­rect rate of 50.3% on a com­plete NCBE MBE prac­tice exam, sig­nif­i­cant­ly in excess of the 25% base­line guess­ing rate, and per­forms at a pass­ing rate for both Evi­dence and Torts. GPT‑3.5’s rank­ing of respons­es is also high­ly-cor­re­lat­ed with cor­rect­ness; its top two and top three choic­es are cor­rect 71% and 88% of the time, respec­tive­ly, indi­cat­ing very strong non-entail­ment per­for­mance. While our abil­i­ty to inter­pret these results is lim­it­ed by nascent sci­en­tif­ic under­stand­ing of LLMs and the pro­pri­etary nature of GPT, we believe that these results strong­ly sug­gest that an LLM will pass the MBE com­po­nent of the Bar Exam in the near future.”
    • Source code: https://github.com/mjbommar/gpt-takes-the-bar-exam
    • One of the authors (Katz) is a law prof at Illi­nois Tech, and the oth­er (Bom­mar­i­to) is a tech dude as well as an assis­tant law prof (Michi­gan State).
    • Relat­ed: “Extra­or­di­nary new paper from Google on med­i­cine & AI: When Google tuned a AI chat­bot to answer com­mon med­ical ques­tions, doc­tors judged 92.6% of its answers right … com­pared to 92.9% of answers giv­en by oth­er doc­tors.” Source: https://twitter.com/emollick/status/1610261628607512576
  4. How the algo­rithm tipped the bal­ance in Ukraine (David Ignatius, Wash­ing­ton Post): “The pow­er of advanced algo­rith­mic war­fare sys­tems is now so great that it equates to hav­ing tac­ti­cal nuclear weapons against an adver­sary with only con­ven­tion­al ones,” explains Alex Karp, chief exec­u­tive of Palan­tir, in an email mes­sage. “The gen­er­al pub­lic tends to under­es­ti­mate this. Our adver­saries no longer do.”
    • Fol­low-up: A ‘good’ war gave the algo­rithm its open­ing, but dan­gers lurk (David Ignatius, Wash­ing­ton Post): “For the Army and oth­er ser­vices, the impe­tus for this tech­nol­o­gy push isn’t just the Russ­ian inva­sion of Ukraine, but the loom­ing chal­lenge from Chi­na — America’s only real peer com­peti­tor in tech­nol­o­gy.”
  5. The Con­ser­v­a­tive Who Wants to Bring Down the Supreme Court (Jean­nie Suk Ger­son, The New York­er): “One of Mitchell’s close friends from law school is a female lawyer who is mar­ried to a woman. She recent­ly told her teen-age daugh­ter that, if their fam­i­ly ever need­ed some­one to donate an organ, she knew they could call on him. ‘But, at the same time, his views, the results of his views, and his pol­i­tics felt not nice, to put it mild­ly,’ she said. ‘I always assumed that, since Jonathan is such a good per­son, that when he aged and knew more peo­ple, his views would evolve. I real­ly have trou­ble rec­on­cil­ing these two parts of him, giv­en my pol­i­tics and my view of the world, because I just find him to be such a kind, lov­ing per­son.’ But Mitchell doesn’t strike her as ‘a true believ­er who will mar­shal his argu­ments to jus­ti­fy the out­come,’ she said. ‘I think he actu­al­ly believes these legal argu­ments.’ ”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Coro­n­avirus and the Right’s Sci­en­tif­ic Coun­ter­rev­o­lu­tion (Ari Schul­man, The New Repub­lic): “That so many views tut-tut­ted as the irra­tional defi­ance of expert con­sen­sus actu­al­ly became the expert con­sen­sus in the span of just a few weeks vivid­ly sug­gests that we need to reex­am­ine just how our cul­ture talks about exper­tise. The prob­lem is not main­ly that the experts were wrong—that is to be expect­ed. It is, rather, that our lead insti­tu­tions and pub­lic infor­ma­tion out­lets con­tin­u­al­ly treat­ed the assur­ances of experts as neu­tral inter­pre­ta­tions of set­tled sci­ence when they plain­ly were not.” Inter­est­ing through­out and still rel­e­vant. From vol­ume 259

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.

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