TGFI, Volume 579: snakes can cartwheel

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Inter­est­ing

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues like­ly to be of inter­est to Chris­tians in col­lege. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. Why Your Exis­tence is Hard to Explain (Joshua Ras­mussen, Sub­stack): “I want to share some of my lat­est thoughts on how, by your own pow­ers of analy­sis, I think you can see that your exis­tence is puz­zling (to say the least). Now I’m not talk­ing about the pur­pose of your exis­tence. I’m ask­ing about an expla­na­tion of how you could have come to be in the first place.… Con­sid­er a few famil­iar fea­tures of you. You are some­one who can think, some­one who can feel, and some­one who can do things. These fea­tures have some­thing in com­mon: you can expe­ri­ence them with­in con­scious­ness. You can con­scious­ly think some­thing, con­scious­ly feel some­thing, and con­scious­ly do some­thing. There is an expe­ri­ence of being you. David Chalmers famous­ly calls the chal­lenge of explain­ing con­scious expe­ri­ence, the hard prob­lem. To explain your exis­tence as a con­scious being, we need, at min­i­mum, to explain your con­scious­ness. But what could explain that?”
   • The author is a Chris­t­ian, although this arti­cle is not explic­it­ly Chris­t­ian.
2. Deep Dive Bible — a new Bible study web­site. Has some nice fea­tures. Worth a look.
3. In San Francisco’s A.I. Boom, a First Date Has Become an Inter­view (Emmy Mar­tin, New York Times): “In some cor­ners of San Fran­cis­co, young sin­gles are get­ting cre­ative with dat­ing. On a Sat­ur­day night at Kilo­watt, a bar in the Mis­sion neigh­bor­hood, peo­ple packed togeth­er for an event called ‘Date My Ex,’ where par­tic­i­pants on a stage pitch some­one they love in five min­utes or less, with a slide deck. Atten­dees wore name tags and waved paper hearts on sticks when­ev­er a pitch land­ed, like bid­ders at an auc­tion for oth­er people’s exes.”
4. Ear­ly Career Researcher Respons­es to AI in Math (Anna Bran­den­berg­er, Han­na Mula­rczyk, & Dora Woodruff, arX­iv): “…math­e­mati­cians are grap­pling with the fact that a core part of our jobs could soon be auto­mat­ed. How­ev­er, the lead­ing voic­es on the mat­ter have been Fields medal­ists and famous math­e­mati­cians, who can hypoth­e­size and ideate from the safe­ty of a secure job. Us ear­ly-career math­e­mati­cians do not have the same lux­u­ry, and our unique point of view was not as rep­re­sent­ed in these dis­cus­sions. Hence, we decid­ed to ask grad­u­ate stu­dents and post­docs how they felt direct­ly.”
   • The authors are grad stu­dents in math at MIT.
5. I am not super-inter­est­ed in the midterms per se. I am, how­ev­er, inter­est­ed in how they inter­sect with / reflect reli­gion in Amer­i­ca. Two reflec­tions that caught my eye:
   • I Wel­come the Blue Wave, Not the Blue Jesus (Tish Har­ri­son War­ren, Sub­stack): “Pol­i­tics, of course, should (and inevitably will) be affect­ed by one’s beliefs and con­vic­tions, but reli­gion must nev­er be a pawn in a polit­i­cal match. I do not want this 2000-year-old faith to become mere­ly the mas­cot for team red or team blue, but instead to trou­ble and chal­lenge both. I want it to chal­lenge plat­forms and pol­i­cy, but more cru­cial­ly, to chal­lenge the reign­ing ascen­dan­cy of pow­er and money—to rel­a­tivize and curb our devo­tion to pol­i­tics itself and to tem­per the hope that we find in it. I want it to chart out ter­ri­to­ry of the human heart where pol­i­tics can­not trav­el, to ask ques­tions that pol­i­cy can­not answer, and to pro­duce beau­ty that calls us out of our tribes and into our deep­est human­i­ty.”
   • The midterm revenge of the reli­gious left (James Shel­ton, World): “When the 120th Con­gress con­venes on Jan. 3, 13 mem­bers who stud­ied at a sem­i­nary or divin­i­ty school will take the oath of office. Tied with 2017, that is the largest class of elect­ed sem­i­nar­i­ans going back to the Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress. Nine of the 13 are Democ­rats, more than have ever served togeth­er in a sin­gle Con­gress.… Amer­i­ca already knows about Talarico’s claims that God is ‘non­bi­na­ry’ and that Chris­t­ian teach­ing on abor­tion is ‘just not root­ed in Scrip­ture.’ It will soon grow famil­iar with Trone Gar­riott, who helped offi­ci­ate a Satanist wed­ding, and Haynes, who con­clud­ed a ‘remix’ of Matthew 25 with ‘Amer­i­ca, go to hell’ and is more cor­rect than he knows when he calls him­self ‘a heretic in the name of Jesus.’ ”
     • The below graph­ic from the author (him­self a sem­i­nary grad) at x.com/jayshelt/status/2117941375668990278 is quite strik­ing.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• These Snakes Cart­wheel Out of Dan­ger­ous Sit­u­a­tions (K. R. Call­away, New York Times): “Dwarf reed snakes, tiny snakes native to South­east Asia, can launch into a series of cart­wheel-like move­ments to spin out of sight when preda­tors approach.… Now, a new team of researchers has ana­lyzed the mechan­ics of the move­ment, and found that when rolling, the snakes can trav­el about four times faster than when slith­er­ing.… Through­out the rolling move­ment, the snakes also kept their heads large­ly at the same lev­el and point­ing in the same direc­tion, which helps to explain how they stay ori­ent­ed despite the chaot­ic-look­ing motion.”
  • You are not ready for the video. It first shows actu­al speed then pro­gres­sive­ly slowed down until 16x slow-mo. Watch the slow-mo and then let it loop to the begin­ning. THEY ARE FAST!
• I actu­al­ly laughed when I read this about the Pope vot­ing x.com/damienredicamn1/status/2115973681201512481

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.