Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 135

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. Match Made in Mar­row (Jad Abum­rad & Robert Krul­wich, Radi­o­lab): this is a pod­cast fea­tur­ing some­one we’ve brought to cam­pus before: a magi­cian named Jim Munroe. Sev­er­al alum­ni emailed/texted me to ask if I had heard it. Jim is a good mod­el in this pod­cast of how to inter­act with the media — he is forth­right about his faith while remain­ing lik­able. He’s not per­fect in all of his respons­es, which in some ways makes him even bet­ter as a role mod­el.
2. Anoth­er pod­cast episode you might find inter­est­ing: Is mir­a­cle heal­ing for real? Ken Fish vs Frances Janusz (Justin Brier­ly, Unbe­liev­able): Unbe­liev­able is a week­ly radio pro­gram in the UK that brings two peo­ple, usu­al­ly a Chris­t­ian and a skep­tic, togeth­er in dia­log about a spe­cif­ic top­ic. FYI: I’ve post­ed a list of pod­casts I lis­ten to.
3. How ‘Cheap Sex’ Is Chang­ing Our Lives – and Our Pol­i­tics (Park Mac­Dougald, New York Mag­a­zine): “Vir­tu­al­ly no one… is hap­py with the state of male­ness today, and yet the male behav­ior we wit­ness today seems a ratio­nal, if short-sight­ed, response to their cir­cum­stances.”
   • See also Jor­dan Peterson’s inter­view on BBC Chan­nel 4 (YouTube). It’s long but quite inter­est­ing and parts of it are rel­e­vant to the state of mas­culin­i­ty in North Amer­i­ca. Peter­son is a clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to. He is con­tro­ver­sial — see What’s So Dan­ger­ous About Jor­dan Peter­son (Tom Bartlett, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “He’s also heard the crit­i­cism, includ­ing from some long­time col­leagues, that he fails to couch his lan­guage care­ful­ly and as a result naïve­ly wades into fraught con­ver­sa­tions about gen­der and race.”
4. Bolivia Makes Evan­ge­lism a Crime (Sarah Eekhoff Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today):  “As always, the lev­el of enforce­ment will deter­mine how harm­ful to reli­gious free­dom the new restric­tions prove to be.”
5. Today was the annu­al Ral­ly for Life in Wash­ing­ton, DC so there have been a lot of arti­cles about abor­tion this week.
   • Does the Pro-Life Move­ment Have Sci­ence on Its Side? (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “When Colleen Mal­loy, a neona­tol­o­gist and fac­ul­ty mem­ber at North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty, dis­cuss­es abor­tion with her col­leagues, she says, ‘it’s kind of like the emper­or is not wear­ing any clothes.’ Med­ical teams spend enor­mous effort, time, and mon­ey to deliv­er babies safe­ly and nurse pre­ma­ture infants back to health. Yet physi­cians often sup­port abor­tion, even late into fetal devel­op­ment. As med­ical tech­niques have become increas­ing­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed, Mal­loy said, she has felt this ten­sion acute­ly: A hand­ful of med­ical cen­ters in major cities can now per­form surg­eries on genet­i­cal­ly abnor­mal fetus­es while they’re still in the womb. Many are the same age as the small num­ber of fetus­es abort­ed in the sec­ond or third trimesters of a mother’s preg­nan­cy. ‘The more I advanced in my field of neona­tol­ogy, the more it just became the log­i­cal choice to rec­og­nize the devel­op­ing fetus for what it is: a fetus, instead of some sort of sub-human form,’ Mal­loy said. ‘It just became so obvi­ous that these were just devel­op­ing humans.’”
   • Trump Backs Health-Care Work­ers Who Object to Pro­vid­ing Abor­tions (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “All of these laws are already on the books. But now, HHS is promis­ing to enforce these statutes more aggres­sive­ly. ‘For too long, gov­ern­ments big and small have treat­ed con­science claims with hos­til­i­ty instead of pro­tec­tion,’ said Sev­eri­no in the press release. ‘But change is com­ing and it begins here and now.’”
   • Why Trump is tar­get­ing health work­ers’ reli­gious objec­tions (Sarah Pul­liam Bai­ley, Wash­ing­ton Post): “A con­cern among many is that reli­gious free­dom is becom­ing a par­ti­san issue depen­dent on who­ev­er sits in office, said Michael Wear, who did reli­gious out­reach for Oba­ma. The Trump admin­is­tra­tion, he said, has done lit­tle on reli­gious free­dom issues that will have much last­ing change. ‘The next admin­is­tra­tion could scrap this office their first day in,’ Wear said. ‘It’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly putting [reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives] in a bet­ter sit­u­a­tion when they’re not in a favor­able posi­tion polit­i­cal­ly.’”
   • No, Politi­co, Con­science Pro­tec­tions Are Nei­ther ‘So-Called’ Nor ‘Con­tro­ver­sial’ (Casey Mat­tox, The Fed­er­al­ist): “Gov­ern­ment shouldn’t force peo­ple to vio­late their con­sciences. Until recent­ly, that opin­ion hasn’t been par­tic­u­lar­ly con­tro­ver­sial, even where actu­al con­tro­ver­sial issues like abor­tion were involved. One can sup­port abor­tion and still think gov­ern­ment shouldn’t dis­crim­i­nate against med­ical pro­fes­sion­als who don’t per­form abor­tions.” This arti­cle is a response to Trump to over­haul HHS office, shield health work­ers with moral objec­tions (Dan Dia­mond And Jen­nifer Haberko­rn, Politi­co)
6. The Church Needs a Mas­ter­class in How to Apol­o­gize for Sex­u­al Assault (Abby Per­ry, Christ and Pop Cul­ture): “Abuse of pow­er, refusal to admit sin in its full­ness, and grasp­ing author­i­ty with clenched fists have no place in God’s king­dom. His is an econ­o­my of inter­twined jus­tice and grace, one that looks sin in the face and is repelled by it, not min­i­miz­ing its grotesque nature but cov­er­ing it with true grace. True grace does not thin­ly veil gross moral fail­ure and allow those who com­mit it to con­tin­ue wield­ing pow­er, but offers dis­ci­pline, dis­ci­ple­ship, care, wise coun­sel, and friend­ship as means of walk­ing with a per­son who has fall­en.”
7. Wow. Asiz Ansari. First a sum­ma­ry, then links to com­men­tary. The con­tro­ver­sy around Babe.net’s Aziz Ansari sto­ry, explained (Car­o­line Framke, Vox): “The Babe.net report is marked­ly dif­fer­ent from any of the oth­ers that have come out since the New York Times broke the sto­ry of Har­vey Weinstein’s decades of alleged abuse in Octo­ber. It is not about work­place harass­ment; nor does it inter­view mul­ti­ple vic­tims to por­tray a pat­tern of abuse. It is about a sin­gle woman who was excit­ed to go out to din­ner with a come­di­an she liked, before quick­ly becom­ing uncom­fort­able with the tenor of his aggres­sive advances once they went back to his apart­ment.”
   • The Humil­i­a­tion of Aziz Ansari (Caitlin Flana­gan, The Atlantic):  “I thought it would take a lit­tle longer for the hit squad of priv­i­leged young white women to open fire on brown-skinned men. I had assumed that on the basis of inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty and all that, they’d stay laser focused on col­lege-edu­cat­ed white men for anoth­er few months. But we’re at warp speed now, and the revolution—in many ways so good and so important—is start­ing to sweep up all sorts of peo­ple into its con­fla­gra­tion: the mon­strous, the cru­el, and the sim­ply unlucky.”
   • The Aziz Ansari deba­cle proves it’s time for a new sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion (Eliz­a­beth Bru­enig, Wash­ing­ton Post): “In fact, it seems we have these sorts of pub­lic air­ings of female sex­u­al mis­ery all the time now, which sug­gests to me that some­thing is wrong with our sex­u­al cul­ture that can’t sim­ply be explained by posit­ing that women are insuf­fi­cient­ly aware of their rights and lib­er­ties.”
   • Lis­ten to the ‘Bad Fem­i­nists’ (Megan McAr­dle, Bloomberg View): “How has the most empow­ered gen­er­a­tion of women in all of human his­to­ry come to feel less con­trol over their bod­ies than their grand­moth­ers did?”
   • Puri­ty and Prej­u­dice (Samuel D. James, First Things): “If noth­ing else, the fail­ure of con­tem­po­rary sex­u­al pol­i­tics to deliv­er a bet­ter expe­ri­ence for women should make us recon­sid­er our assump­tions about progress. Why have decades of porn and pills failed to snuff out male priv­i­lege?”
   • If I may inter­ject my unso­licit­ed opin­ion: boy, wouldn’t it be great if there were clear rules gov­ern­ing sex­u­al behav­ior? And imag­ine how much clar­i­ty would ensue if they were con­nect­ed to pub­lic dec­la­ra­tions of con­sent. That would be won­der­ful! #ifon­ly #ohwait #back­tothe­bible

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Offen­sive Tweet From Long Ago (Dil­bert)
• clever words (imgur)

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Alco­hol, Black­outs, and Cam­pus Sex­u­al Assault (Texas Month­ly, Sarah Hep­o­la): I think this is the most thought­ful sec­u­lar piece I’ve read on the issue. “Con­sent and alco­hol make tricky bed­fel­lows. The rea­son I liked get­ting drunk was because it altered my con­sent: it changed what I would say yes to. Not just in the bed­room but in every room and cor­ri­dor that led into the squint­ing light. Say yes to adven­ture, say yes to risk, say yes to karaoke and pool par­ties and argu­ments with men, say yes to a life with­out fear, even though such a life is nev­er pos­si­ble… We drink because it feels good. We drink because it makes us feel hap­py, safe, pow­er­ful. That it often makes us the oppo­site is one of alcohol’s das­tard­ly tricks.” (first shared in vol­ume 25)

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.