Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 55

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues, with a pref­er­ence for con­tent from aca­d­e­mics and influ­en­tial voic­es. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Articles I Found Interesting

1. Britain vot­ed to leave the Euro­pean Union.
   • I was intrigued to learn that Chris­tians were par­tic­u­lar­ly like­ly to vote to leave, and so I found R. R. Reno’s  the­o­log­i­cal ratio­nale for leav­ing fas­ci­nat­ing (First Things): “…the impulse to opt out of ever-greater union reflects an intu­ition, not a ratio­nal plan. The intu­ition is that loy­al­ty, not pros­per­i­ty, is the foun­da­tion of a healthy soci­ety. To my mind, it’s a sound intu­ition.”
   • Relat­ed: Faith mat­ters as UK votes on whether to remain in EU (Arthur Keefer, Reli­gion News): skim down to the bit that begins “In June 2013”
   • Cit­i­zens Of the World? Nice Thought, But… (Megan McCar­dle, Bloomberg): “In many ways, mem­bers of the glob­al pro­fes­sion­al class have start­ed to iden­ti­fy more with each oth­er than they have with the fel­low res­i­dents of their own coun­tries. Wit­ness the emo­tion­al melt­down many Amer­i­can jour­nal­ists have been hav­ing over Brex­it.”
2. Relat­ed To Orlan­do:
   • Omar Mateen’s Mul­ti­ple Motives (Kirsten Pow­ers, USA Today): “Almost as quick­ly as the mas­sacre of inno­cents in Orlan­do unfold­ed, Amer­i­cans retreat­ed to their ide­o­log­i­cal cor­ners to inter­pret the moti­va­tions of the mass mur­der­er, Omar Mateen.”
   • FBI Inves­ti­ga­tors say they have found no evi­dence that Orlan­do shoot­er had gay lovers (Mol­ly Hen­nessy-Fiske, LA Times): huh. This is still a devel­op­ing sto­ry, do not assume this is the final word.
   • The Gun Con­trol We Deserve (Patrick Blanch­field, n+1): “As many crit­ics have observed, we would be naïve to think that heavy-hand­ed gun con­trol mea­sures would not involve the same dis­pro­por­tion­ate racial tar­get­ing and police vio­lence we right­ly con­demn in the War on Drugs and in every­day encoun­ters in places from Bal­ti­more to Fer­gu­son to Cleve­land to Oak­land.” A very thought­ful piece.
3. Elon Musk Is Wrong. We Aren’t Liv­ing In A Sim­u­la­tion (Ric­car­do Man­zot­ti and Andrew Smart, Vice): “The world we live in is made of real stuff. Sim­u­la­tions are things made of the same stuff. Musk’s argu­ment does not show that we are get­ting any clos­er to pro­duc­ing an alter­na­tive real­i­ty. Rather it shows that we are get­ting bet­ter and bet­ter at shap­ing the phys­i­cal world.” The authors take unwar­rant­ed pot shots at dual­ism, but make very good points over­all. Relat­ed: SMBC “Heap Prob­lem.”
4. The Sotomay­or and Kagan Dis­sents in Utah vs Stri­eff (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “If out­stand­ing war­rants were few and far between and dis­trib­uted more or less ran­dom­ly the case would have been wrong­ly decid­ed but of lit­tle prac­ti­cal impor­tance. Out­stand­ing war­rants, how­ev­er, are com­mon and much more com­mon in some com­mu­ni­ties than oth­ers. As I wrote in 2014, in Fer­gu­son, MO a major­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion had out­stand­ing war­rants and not because of high crime:”
5. Ban the Box or Require the Box? (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Sad­ly, a pol­i­cy that was intend­ed to raise the employ­ment prospects of black men ends up hav­ing the biggest pos­i­tive effect on white men with a crim­i­nal record…. Poli­cies like ban the box try to get peo­ple to do the ‘right thing’ by blind­ing peo­ple to cer­tain types of infor­ma­tion. But blind­ed peo­ple tend to use oth­er cues to achieve their inter­ests and when those oth­er cues are less infor­ma­tive that often makes things worse.”
6. I’m A Sin­gle-Issue Vot­er On Mul­ti­ple Issues And So Are You (Den­ny Burk, per­son­al blog): “Sin­gle-issue vot­ing is not the idea that being right on any sin­gle issue qual­i­fies a can­di­date for office. Sin­gle-issue vot­ing is the idea that being wrong on a sin­gle issue may dis­qual­i­fy a can­di­date from office.”
7. My Holy Land Vaca­tion (Tom Bis­sell, Harpers): “I excuse myself and stroll out­side. I notice that some­one else has also walked out ear­ly: Pas­tor Mar­ty. He tells me that he was trou­bled by the vio­lence of the Israeli Redneck’s speech. I tell Pas­tor Mar­ty that I don’t fault a man who’s fought in four wars for sound­ing like a lunatic. What both­ers me is the way peo­ple were applaud­ing him.” High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.

A Quote To Ponder

“Stan­ford stu­dents are good at being good at things. Your Chris­tian­i­ty can’t just be one more thing you’re good at. To be good miss­es the point. The point is not what you do but what Jesus has done.” Seth Vil­le­gas

Something Amusing To End On

• Con­tem­po­rary Sein­feld show ideas (imgur)
• A fun­ny Chris­t­ian joke (red­dit)

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).

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.