Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 72

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. Some­one is Learn­ing How To Take Down The Inter­net (Bruce Schneier, per­son­al blog): Schneier is one of the most trust­ed voic­es in the field of com­put­er secu­ri­ty. For a fol­low-up, see this arti­cle which includes thought­ful mus­ings on the prob­a­bil­i­ty and con­se­quences of such a take­down.
2. Scan­dal? What Scan­dal? (Mark Hem­ing­way, The Week­ly Stan­dard):  “A recent NBC poll found that only 19 per­cent of Amer­i­cans approve of the media, a rat­ing well below that of Clin­ton or even Trump. And the mis­sives in Podesta’s inbox reveal good rea­sons for the medi­a’s rep­u­ta­tion to be in the dump­ster.” For a less alarmed take, see Wik­iLeaks and the Oily Wash­ing­ton Press (Jack Schafer, Politi­co).
3. Relat­ed: The Fact Check­ers Keep Destroy­ing Fact-Check­ing (Tim­o­thy Car­ney, Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er): “Lots of jour­nal­ists, includ­ing myself, wor­ry about what hap­pens when the pub­lic broad­ly los­es faith in the media.”
4. The Guilt-free Gospel of Don­ald Trump (Daniel Burke, CNN): a help­ful expla­na­tion of Trump’s reli­gious beliefs.
5. One third-par­ty can­di­date has a real shot at gain­ing elec­toral votes, and you may not have even heard of him: How Evan McMullin Could Win Utah And The Pres­i­den­cy (Ben­jamin Mor­ris, FiveThir­tyEight): for what it’s worth, I have heard a sur­pris­ing num­ber of peo­ple I respect say that they will vote for McMullin instead of Trump or Clin­ton. These peo­ple are gen­er­al­ly Chris­t­ian intel­lec­tu­als and are not at all rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion. As a result they know he will not win the elec­tion, but feel he is some­one they can vote for with a clear con­science.
6. How to Cut Cake Fair­ly and Final­ly Eat It Too (Eri­ca Klar­re­ich, Quan­ta Mag­a­zine): “Two young com­put­er sci­en­tists have fig­ured out how to fair­ly divide cake among any num­ber of peo­ple, set­ting to rest a prob­lem math­e­mati­cians have strug­gled with for decades. Their work has star­tled many researchers who believed that such a fair-divi­sion pro­to­col was prob­a­bly impos­si­ble.”
7. This Is The Most Under-Report­ed Con­flict In The World Right Now (Chris Blattman, per­son­al blog): Ethiopia is fac­ing tough times.

Things Glen Found Amusing

• The Best Sim­ple Sum­ma­ry of This Elec­tion I Have Seen
• Rat For Pres­i­dent (Pearls Before Swine)
• Guilt-Rid­den Tim Tebow Apol­o­gizes For Steal­ing Sec­ond Base (Baby­lon Bee): the title is bet­ter than the arti­cle.

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.