Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 66

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. “Me too” social sci­ence is not fight­ing inequal­i­ty (Kevin T. Leicht, Work in Progress): an arti­cle about how aca­d­e­mics can improve soci­ety. The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois Urbana-Cham­paign.
2. U.S. inves­ti­gat­ing poten­tial covert Russ­ian plan to dis­rupt Novem­ber elec­tions (Dana Priest, Ellen Nakashima and Tom Ham­burg­er, Wash­ing­ton Post): “U.S. intel­li­gence and law enforce­ment agen­cies are inves­ti­gat­ing what they see as a broad covert Russ­ian oper­a­tion in the Unit­ed States to sow pub­lic dis­trust in the upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and in U.S. polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions, intel­li­gence and con­gres­sion­al offi­cials said.” The 2016 elec­tions will make an amaz­ing tele­vi­sion series a gen­er­a­tion from now. 
3. The Idle Army: America’s Unwork­ing Men (Nico­las Eber­stadt, Wall Street Jour­nal): the author doesn’t say it here, but video games and pornog­ra­phy are huge enablers of this phe­nom­e­non. This is one of those trends that every­one will be talk­ing about in 10–15 years.
4. You are not your brain: Why a head trans­plant is not what you think it is (Charles Camosy, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): this was mind-blow­ing. Pun intend­ed. With me, the pun is always intend­ed.
5. How A Cake­mak­er Became An Ene­my Of The State (David Harsyani, The Fed­er­al­ist): “Chris­tians are reg­u­lar­ly com­pared to South­ern seg­re­ga­tion­ists and racists, when in real­i­ty the com­par­i­son is best reversed. Yes, the pow­er of Jim Crow reflect­ed pop­u­lar will, but it was sanc­tioned by the state. The Col­orado Civ­il Rights Com­mis­sion is sim­i­lar­ly empow­ered by the state to use its arbi­trary pow­er to destroy the rep­u­ta­tions, busi­ness­es, and lives of those who hap­pen to offend their sen­si­bil­i­ties.” See also the alarm­ing com­ments of the US Com­mis­sion on Civ­il Rights Chair­man.
6. Reverse Voxs­plain­ing: Drugs vs. Chairs (Slat­eStar­Codex, the author is a doc­tor who writes under pseu­do­nym). This was a stim­u­lat­ing piece about the EpiPen con­tro­ver­sy to which Vox had a rejoin­der to which the author offered a sur­re­join­der.  Infor­ma­tive and full of provoca­tive state­ments such as “pre­scrip­tion drug price reg­u­la­tion would cost one bil­lion life-years, which would very slight­ly edge out Com­mu­nist Chi­na for the title of Worst Thing Ever.” For an inter­est­ing unre­lat­ed-yet-relat­ed com­pan­ion piece, see the brief Two “The Rest of the Sto­ry” Sto­ries (Alex Tab­barok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion).
7. What Does The Bible Say About Trans­gen­derism? (Kevin DeY­oung., Gospel Coali­tion): “We under­stand that fol­low­ing Christ means dying to our­selves (Matt. 16:24), being renewed in our minds (Rom. 12:2), and no longer walk­ing as we once did (Eph. 4:17–18). Being ‘true to our­selves’ is always a false choice when it means going against God’s Word.”
8. Porn Is Bad (Pas­cal-Emmanuel Gob­ry, The Week): “It took decades to rec­og­nize smok­ing for the pub­lic health dis­as­ter that it is, and to final­ly get a grip on it soci­etal­ly. Although porn does­n’t cause can­cer, there’s good evi­dence that it does destroy lives and fam­i­lies.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

• Ancient Doc­u­ments Con­firm ‘Selah’ Best Trans­lat­ed ‘Extend­ed Gui­tar Solo’ (Baby­lon Bee): “the term actu­al­ly instruct­ed Hebrew wor­ship bands to shred across all six-strings in a blis­ter­ing, melod­ic gui­tar solo.”
• A Jesus pun.
• That awk­ward moment when mis­sion­ar­ies tell you that you might be the antichrist and you get excit­ed. It actu­al­ly hap­pened.
• Jesus Vis­its Town, Trail­ing Con­tro­ver­sy (James Mar­tin, Amer­i­ca): if the media cov­ered Jesus the way they cov­er Moth­er There­sa. Spot on. Read a great rebut­tal to the debunk­ing arti­cles you may have seen.
• Dra­ma Still Trag­i­cal­ly Fol­low­ing Woman Who Just Hates Dra­ma (Baby­lon Bee): we all have that friend. If you don’t have that friend then ask all your friends if they have that friend. If they avoid eye con­tact and try to redi­rect the con­ver­sa­tion, look in the mir­ror and rebuke your­self.

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.