Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 96

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. A Face-to-Face Request Is 34 Times More Suc­cess­ful than an Email (Vanes­sa Bohns, Har­vard Busi­ness Review): “you need to ask six peo­ple in per­son to equal the pow­er of a 200-recip­i­ent email blast. Still, most peo­ple tend to think the email ask will be more effec­tive.”
  2. What Would Jesus Dis­rupt? (Mya Fra­zier, Bloomberg): “As the prod­uct takes shape and Foust pre­pares to move from the con­cept phase to fundrais­ing, a more explic­it­ly spir­i­tu­al ques­tion begins to nag at him: ‘How do you raise mon­ey like Jesus?’ Foust has attend­ed Cross­roads for five years, but his evan­gel­i­cal faith began when he was a child grow­ing up in a devout house­hold on a tree farm in Paris, a town in north­east Ohio. He’s heard from oth­er entre­pre­neurs how bru­tal fundrais­ing can be. You’re going to have to sell your soul, they warn. You’re going to have to lie.”
  3. Five Stages of Spir­i­tu­al Awak­en­ing (Dave Fer­gu­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): Inter­est­ing arti­cle, although I dis­like the labels he chose. I would term them (1) yearn­ing for mean­ing, (2) expe­ri­enc­ing regret, (3) acknowl­edg­ing need, (4) per­ceiv­ing Christ’s love, and (5) receiv­ing eter­nal life. It’s worth ask­ing where your friends are on this jour­ney and engage them on that top­ic.
  4. Why Prison?: An Eco­nom­ic Cri­tique (Peter Sal­ib, Berke­ley Jour­nal of Crim­i­nal Law): “If our jew­el thief must pay $100,000 to be opti­mal­ly deterred but has only $50,000 in cash, the cho­sen mon­e­tary sanc­tion must mere­ly be capa­ble of mak­ing him worse off by the equiv­a­lent of anoth­er $50,000. As such, this paper does not endorse any par­tic­u­lar non­mon­e­tary sanc­tion. His­to­ry presents a star­tling array of options, includ­ing: flog­ging, pil­lo­ry, run­ning the gaunt­lope, tar­ring and feath­er­ing, brand­ing, and many more. Mod­ern judges have con­coct­ed sim­i­lar­ly cre­ative sanc­tions, includ­ing: forc­ing crim­i­nals to pub­licly car­ry embar­rass­ing signs, man­dat­ing that they sleep in dog­hous­es, or requir­ing them to under­go unwant­ed hair­cuts. If one objects to all of these, as-yet unimag­ined pun­ish­ments could be sub­sti­tut­ed.” This is very long. Skim the table of con­tents and jump to any parts you find inter­est­ing.
  5. Social ecol­o­gy of sim­i­lar­i­ty (Bahns, Pick­ett & Cran­dall, Group Process­es & Inter­group Rela­tions): “Dyads were sig­nif­i­cant­ly more sim­i­lar on atti­tudes, beliefs, and health behav­iors in the large cam­pus than in the small col­leges sam­ple. Our find­ings reveal an irony—greater human diver­si­ty with­in an envi­ron­ment leads to less per­son­al diver­si­ty with­in dyads.” In oth­er words, small­er uni­ver­si­ties lead to more diverse friend­ships.

Things Glen Found Amusing

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.

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