Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 109

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. How We Are Ruin­ing Amer­i­ca (David Brooks, NYT): “To feel at home in oppor­tu­ni­ty-rich areas, you’ve got to under­stand the right barre tech­niques, sport the right baby car­ri­er, have the right pod­cast, food truck, tea, wine and Pilates tastes, not to men­tion pos­sess the right atti­tudes about David Fos­ter Wal­lace, child-rear­ing, gen­der norms and inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty.” This col­umn spawned much deri­sion on social media, but I strong­ly agree with Brooks — and so do many com­men­ta­tors. Here are sym­pa­thet­ic reac­tions from Fred­die deBoer on the left and from Rod Dreher on the right. Dan Drezn­er takes it in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion, and the Mon­key Cage says “duh” while Alan Jacobs calls peo­ple unwill­ing to acknowl­edge Brooks’ obser­va­tion “will­ful­ly blind”.
  2. Luther’s Rev­o­lu­tion (The Nation, Eliz­a­beth Bru­enig): “The­ol­o­gy is moral­i­ty is pol­i­tics is law—and whether or not it’s imme­di­ate­ly obvi­ous, the world is steeped in the­ol­o­gy. In con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­ca, and espe­cial­ly in the more sec­u­lar precincts of West­ern Europe, it seems unlike­ly that one could look at a prop­er­ty deed or a gov­ern­ment bud­get and find, just beneath its explic­it rea­son­ing, traces of old the­o­log­i­cal dis­putes and their res­o­lu­tions. But they’re there…”
  3. I’ve Worked with Refugees for Decades. Europe’s Afghan Crime Wave Is Mind-Bog­gling. (Cheryl Benard, The Nation­al Inter­est): “Euro­peans were pre­dis­posed to be pos­i­tive towards Afghan refugees. But it quick­ly became obvi­ous that some­thing was wrong, very wrong, with these young Afghan men: they were com­mit­ting sex crimes to a much greater extent than oth­er refugees… It took a while for the pat­tern to be rec­og­nized because, until recent­ly, west­ern Euro­pean media delib­er­ate­ly refrained from iden­ti­fy­ing an assailant’s refugee or asy­lum sta­tus, or his coun­try of ori­gin.”
  4. Per­son­al­i­ty, Gen­der, and Age in the Lan­guage of Social Media: The Open-Vocab­u­lary Approach (Schwartz HA, Eich­staedt JC, Kern ML, Dzi­urzyn­s­ki L, Ramones SM, Agraw­al M, et al., PLOS One) — This one is from 2013. Pay par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to Fig­ure 6 and notice the clus­ter of words asso­ci­at­ed with emo­tion­al sta­bil­i­ty. #blessed #on_my_way to #church
  5. No Retreat: Lecrae’s Approach to “Cul­ture-Mak­ing” (Jemar Tis­by, Christ and Pop Cul­ture): “But Lecrae couldn’t ful­fill his mis­sion if his beats only banged in Chris­t­ian ears, though not because Chris­tians aren’t impor­tant to him. It was Chris­t­ian fans who pro­pelled him to pop­u­lar­i­ty and still con­tin­ue to sup­port him. Nev­er­the­less, hav­ing tes­ti­fied in Jerusalem, so to speak, Lecrae felt com­pelled to tes­ti­fy also in Rome (Acts 23:11).” This is relat­ed to what we’re cov­er­ing in our sum­mer read­ing project, and you’re wel­come to join us. 
  6. In Praise of Extreme Med­i­cine (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “It’s odd that we allow some crazy things and ban others—even more that the crazy things we allow are some­times social­ly use­less while the crazy things that we ban are some­times social­ly valu­able. The case for ban­ning extreme sports, for exam­ple, is much stronger than the case for ban­ning extreme med­i­cine.”
  7. ‘Born this way’? It’s way more com­pli­cat­ed than that (Alia E. Dasta­gir, USA Today): “Get­ting Amer­i­ca to believe that peo­ple are born gay — that it’s not some­thing that can be cho­sen or ever changed — has been cen­tral to the fight for gay rights. If some­one can’t help being gay any more than they can help the col­or of their skin, the log­ic goes, deny­ing them rights is wrong. But many mem­bers of the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty reject this nar­ra­tive…”
  8. Why Roman con­crete still stands strong while mod­ern ver­sion decays (Nico­la Davis, The Guardian): rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus. I some­times hear peo­ple state it like a self-evi­dent truth that we are smarter than the ancients. I see no evi­dence we are any more intel­li­gent than them. We just have more accu­mu­lat­ed knowl­edge in cer­tain domains.

Things Glen Found Entertaining

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have On Obsti­na­cy In Belief (C.S. Lewis, The Sewa­nee Review). Lewis explains why Chris­tians are jus­ti­fied in con­tin­u­ing to believe even when they encounter an argu­ment they can’t imme­di­ate­ly answer (first shared in vol­ume 6).

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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