Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 140

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. The gun debate has flared up again in the wake of a school shoot­ing.
   • Here is an excel­lent Twit­ter thread on school shoot­ings by jour­nal­ist Ari Schul­man: “Strate­gies with a chance of doing any­thing must, like past efforts to stop hijack­ing, ter­ror­ism, and assas­si­na­tions, under­stand mass shoot­ings as a dis­tinct form of self-per­pet­u­at­ing vio­lence, and strate­gi­cal­ly tar­get them as such.”
   • A Gun-Con­trol Mea­sure Con­ser­v­a­tives Should Con­sid­er (David French, Nation­al Review): “Just since 2015, the Charleston church shoot­er, the Orlan­do night­club shoot­er, the Suther­land Springs church shoot­er, and the Park­land school shoot­er each hap­pened after fed­er­al author­i­ties missed chances to stop them. For those keep­ing score, that’s four hor­rif­ic mass shoot­ings in four years where fed­er­al sys­tems failed, at a cost of more than 100 lives. In oth­er words, prop­er appli­ca­tion of exist­ing poli­cies and pro­ce­dures could have saved lives, but the peo­ple in the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment failed. And they keep fail­ing. So let’s empow­er dif­fer­ent peo­ple. Let’s empow­er the peo­ple who have the most to lose, and let’s place account­abil­i­ty on the low­est pos­si­ble lev­el of gov­ern­ment: the local judges who con­sis­tent­ly and reg­u­lar­ly adju­di­cate sim­i­lar claims in the con­text of fam­i­ly and crim­i­nal law.” This arti­cle has received notice from places like NPR and Slate and is worth read­ing what­ev­er you think about the fun­da­men­tal issues about guns.
   • Guns are some­thing I’ve shared links on before. Back in issue 54 I gave a hand­ful of facts which tak­en togeth­er make both sides uncom­fort­able: FBI homi­cide data by weapon,  vio­lence against gay peo­ple is com­mon, guns deter vio­lence against gay peo­ple, some gun con­trol laws do seem to reduce gun deaths, civil­ians with guns some­times stop mass shoot­ings, and the lead­ing caus­es of gun deaths are sui­cide fol­lowed by homi­cide with police shoot­ings and acci­den­tal shoot­ings com­ing in way behind (shock­ing­ly far behind if you extrap­o­late from what you see on the news). Also, I found clips of two come­di­ans tak­ing oppo­site views. Both are vul­gar, hilar­i­ous, and infor­ma­tive – Bill Burr buys a shot­gun and Jim Jef­fries on why Amer­i­cans are nuts.
2. Lying to Inves­ti­ga­tors Should­n’t Be a Crime (Stephen Carter, Bloomberg View): “Pros­e­cu­tors want to catch you in a lie because, when they can’t prove an under­ly­ing crime, it’s often easy to prove that you lied to them. That’s where the prob­lem aris­es. I’ve been telling my aston­ished law stu­dents for decades that except in cer­tain well-defined cir­cum­stances, lying to inves­ti­ga­tors shouldn’t be a crime.” Carter is a law pro­fes­sor at Yale. I strong­ly endorse this view.
3. Let’s Fix Peer Review (Ray Tru­ant, per­son­al blog): “When we apply for a grant or want to pub­lish our sci­ence, we secret­ly get the work reviewed by our peers, some of which are com­pet­ing with us for pre­cious fund­ing, or a bizarre ver­sion of fame. Under the veil of anonymi­ty, a review­er can write any­thing, includ­ed false state­ments, or incor­rect state­ments to jus­ti­fy a deci­sion. The deci­sion is most often, ‘do not fund’ or ‘reject’, even if the review is based off of inac­cu­ra­cies, lack of exper­tise, or even bla­tant slan­der. There are no rules, there are no reper­cus­sions.” Tru­ant is a bio­chemist at McMas­ter Uni­ver­si­ty in Cana­da.
4. Jane Stanford’s Speech (Jane Stan­ford, stanford.edu): A stu­dent had to read this for a class a while back, and was struck by how selec­tive­ly it is quot­ed by the uni­ver­si­ty. The orig­i­nal doc­u­ment is thor­ough­ly reli­gious. “An impres­sion has gone forth that we were indif­fer­ent to reli­gious influ­ences and instruc­tions being taught here. I am quite sure that if all could be made to under­stand that this project was born from a great sor­row, the great­est that par­ents can endure, that the Cre­ator has led us through the deep waters out into the sun­shine of faith and and belief in a future life; that we have whol­ly and entire­ly as far as pos­si­ble giv­en our lives to Him; and only ask that He will guide us to do His will; that every stone that has been laid into the build­ings of this Uni­ver­si­ty but num­bers the prayers that have been offered up to our Heav­en­ly Father for strength, guid­ance, and help. That we should for­get His love and mer­cy and be indif­fer­ent as to the Chris­t­ian influ­ence to be used among the stu­dents, it would be an impos­si­bil­i­ty.”
5. [Har­vard] Places HCFA On ‘Pro­ba­tion’ After Group Barred Stu­dent in Same-Sex Rela­tion­ship from Lead­er­ship (Car­o­line Engel­may­er & Michael Xie, Har­vard Crim­son): “The Office of Stu­dent Life has placed reli­gious group Har­vard Col­lege Faith and Action on ‘admin­is­tra­tive pro­ba­tion’ for a year after the orga­ni­za­tion pres­sured a female mem­ber of its stu­dent lead­er­ship to resign in Sep­tem­ber fol­low­ing her deci­sion to date a woman.… Col­lege admin­is­tra­tors told them HCFA is the first-ever cam­pus group to be placed on admin­is­tra­tive pro­ba­tion.”
6. Mean­while on the Farm, Lone­ly Men and Women of Faith: The Expe­ri­ence of Reli­gious Stu­dents at Stan­ford (Ben Simon, Stan­ford Review): “It may be unrea­son­able to expect a sec­u­lar insti­tu­tion like Stan­ford to ful­ly accom­mo­date each student’s reli­gious needs. With that said, Stan­ford goes far beyond the let­ter of the law when it comes to eth­nic or racial diver­si­ty, but it does lit­tle to go out of its way to help reli­gious stu­dents.”
7. As more jour­nal­ists report on Ice­land’s cir­cum­ci­sion saga, the coun­try gets a rab­bi (Julia Duin, GetRe­li­gion): “As Robert George of Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty – for­mer chair­man of the U.S. Com­mis­sion on Inter­na­tion­al Reli­gious Free­dom – not­ed in a series of tweets recent­ly, a coun­try ban­ning cir­cum­ci­sion effec­tive­ly bans Jews from liv­ing there. Dit­to for Mus­lims…. [How­ev­er] Gun­nars­dót­tir told the news­pa­per she ‘didn’t think it was nec­es­sary to con­sult’ with the island’s small Jew­ish and Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion before propos­ing the anti-cir­cum­ci­sion bill, adding ‘I didn’t see it as a reli­gious mat­ter.’” That last detail is telling. Reli­gious illit­er­a­cy caus­es real harms.
8. Read My Lips: No New Admin­is­tra­tors (Berber Jin, Stan­ford Review): “Though admin­is­tra­tive offices are obvi­ous­ly nec­es­sary for the university’s oper­a­tion, their self-serv­ing incen­tives should make us wary of their expan­sion. Unlike fac­ul­ty, who gain pres­tige through qual­i­ty teach­ing and inno­v­a­tive research, admin­is­tra­tors move up the career lad­der by expand­ing bureau­cra­cy.” The Review has been on fire late­ly.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Man Only Serv­ing In Church Sound Booth To Avoid Greet­ing Time (Baby­lon Bee): with the Bee the head­line is usu­al­ly suf­fi­cient. With this one, the full text is worth a read.  
• Dil­bert Lis­tens to a Mil­lenial — unfair, but fun­ny

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have a debate between two pas­tors on guns I shared back in vol­ume 48 – both are very thought­ful and are skill­ful debaters.  Here is the con­ver­sa­tion so far. All the posts are pret­ty short.

• Q Den­ver (Doug Wil­son)
• The Bible On Self-Defense: A Response To Doug Wil­son (Pre­ston Sprin­kle)
• The Apos­tle Peter and Open Car­ry (Doug)
• The Only Way To Stop A Bad Guy With A Gun Is A Good Guy With A Gun(Pre­ston)
• Who You Gonna Call? (Doug)
• The Only Way To Stop A Bad Guy With A Sta­tis­tic Is a Good Guy With A Sta­tis­tic (Pre­ston)
• Ring Up The Dev­il? (Doug)
• The Killer At The Door (Pre­ston)
• Guns and Covenants (Doug)
• Non­vi­o­lence: In Brief (Pre­ston)
• Your 2am NPR Voice (Doug)

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.