Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 156

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.

Also, 156 is three sets of 52, which means I’ve been doing this for a lit­tle over three years now (I some­times take a week or two off). Yay!

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Mr. Rogers Had a Sim­ple Set of Rules for Talk­ing to Chil­dren (Maxwell King, The Atlantic): “1. ‘State the idea you wish to express as clear­ly as pos­si­ble, and in terms preschool­ers can under­stand.’ Exam­ple: It is dan­ger­ous to play in the street. 2. “Rephrase in a pos­i­tive man­ner,” as in It is good to play where it is safe. 3. “Rephrase the idea, bear­ing in mind that preschool­ers can­not yet make sub­tle dis­tinc­tions and need to be redi­rect­ed to author­i­ties they trust.” As in, Ask your par­ents where it is safe to play.” There are sev­er­al more rules, most equal­ly good for talk­ing to adults.
  2. The Lifes­pan of a Lie (Ben Blum, Medi­um): “The appeal of the Stan­ford prison exper­i­ment seems to go deep­er than its sci­en­tif­ic valid­i­ty, per­haps because it tells us a sto­ry about our­selves that we des­per­ate­ly want to believe: that we, as indi­vid­u­als, can­not real­ly be held account­able for the some­times rep­re­hen­si­ble things we do.” The arti­cle claims, con­vinc­ing­ly, that the Stan­ford Prison Exper­i­ment did not hap­pen at all the way we have been taught. Wow.
  3. When Diver­si­ty Means Uni­for­mi­ty (Lionel Shriv­er, The Spec­ta­tor): “Will Nor­man, London’s ‘walk­ing and cycling com­mis­sion­er’, bemoaned the fact that too many cyclists in the city are white, male and mid­dle-class. ‘The real chal­lenge for Lon­don cycling,’ he declared, ‘is diver­si­ty.’ As opposed to build­ing more cycle lanes for every­body, or fix­ing pot­holes lethal to everybody’s wheel rims, Nor­man regards his prin­ci­pal func­tion as increas­ing black and minor­i­ty eth­nic rid­er­ship.” This anec­dote is not the focus of the arti­cle.
  4. Of Boys and Toys (Leonard Sax, Insti­tute For Fam­i­ly Stud­ies): “…they found that lit­tle children—boys especially—had bare­ly a clue which gen­der they belonged to, even when the psy­chol­o­gists used the sim­plest non­ver­bal prompts. Kids under two years of age score only slight­ly above chance in assign­ing them­selves or oth­er kids to the cor­rect gen­der. Nev­er­the­less, Serbin’s group found that children’s toy pref­er­ences are firm­ly in place by this age, espe­cial­ly among boys. When the exper­i­menters offered boys a truck or a doll, most boys chose the truck. In fact, boys pre­ferred trucks over dolls more strong­ly than girls pre­ferred dolls over trucks. That ought to be sur­pris­ing if you buy into gen­der schema the­o­ry because 18-month-old girls were more like­ly than boys to be able to clas­si­fy them­selves and oth­er chil­dren by gen­der. If gen­der schema the­o­ry is cor­rect, the girls should show a stronger pref­er­ence for gen­der-typ­i­cal toys because girls this age are more like­ly to know that they are, in fact, girls. But the real­i­ty is just the oppo­site.”
  5. Har­vard Rat­ed Asian-Amer­i­can Appli­cants Low­er on Per­son­al­i­ty Traits, Law­suit Says (Hadley Green, New York Times): “They com­pare Harvard’s treat­ment of Asian-Amer­i­cans with its well-doc­u­ment­ed cam­paign to reduce the grow­ing num­ber of Jews being admit­ted to Har­vard in the 1920s. Until then, appli­cants had been admit­ted on aca­d­e­m­ic mer­it. To avoid adopt­ing a bla­tant quo­ta sys­tem, Har­vard intro­duced sub­jec­tive cri­te­ria like char­ac­ter, per­son­al­i­ty and promise. The plain­tiffs call this the ‘orig­i­nal sin of holis­tic admis­sions.’” What are the odds they are the only high­ly-selec­tive uni­ver­si­ty to do this?
  6. Con­ser­v­a­tive Reli­gious Lead­ers Are Denounc­ing Trump Immi­gra­tion Poli­cies (Lau­rie Good­stein, New York Times): “A coali­tion of evan­gel­i­cal groups, includ­ing the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Evan­gel­i­cals and the Coun­cil for Chris­t­ian Col­leges and Uni­ver­si­ties, sent a let­ter to Pres­i­dent Trump on June 1 plead­ing with him to pro­tect the uni­ty of fam­i­lies and not to close off all avenues to asy­lum for immi­grants and refugees flee­ing dan­ger.”
    • Relat­ed: World Refugee Day 2018: ‘Wel­com­ing the Stranger’ Meets ‘Zero Tol­er­ance’ (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “For Chris­tians, the issue of fam­i­ly uni­ty for immi­grants shows signs of tran­scend­ing par­ti­san lines. Franklin Gra­ham, an evan­gel­i­cal advis­er to Pres­i­dent Trump, recent­ly spoke against fam­i­ly sep­a­ra­tion on CBN News, encour­ag­ing leg­isla­tive reform to rem­e­dy the new guide­lines for migrants at the bor­der.”
    • Relat­ed: She says fed­er­al offi­cials took her daugh­ter while she breast­fed the child in a deten­tion cen­ter (Ed Lavan­dera, Jason Mor­ris and Dar­ran Simon, CNN): “The undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grant from Hon­duras sobbed as she told an attor­ney Tues­day how fed­er­al author­i­ties took her daugh­ter while she breast­fed the child in a deten­tion cen­ter, where she was await­ing pros­e­cu­tion for enter­ing the coun­try ille­gal­ly. When the woman resist­ed, she was hand­cuffed…” Bear in the mind that this is an alle­ga­tion, not a sub­stan­ti­at­ed event. I find it plau­si­ble.
  7. A com­pelling series of arti­cles on Chi­na by a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at Johns Hop­kins (who also hap­pens to be a Stan­ford grad): China’s Mas­ter Plan: A Glob­al Mil­i­tary Threat, China’s Mas­ter Plan: Export­ing an Ide­ol­o­gy, China’s Mas­ter Plan: A World­wide Web of Insti­tu­tions and China’s Mas­ter Plan: How The West Can Fight Back (Hal Brand, Bloomberg). The mon­ey quote from the sec­ond arti­cle: “If the U.S. has long sought to make the world safe for democ­ra­cy, China’s lead­ers crave a world that is safe for author­i­tar­i­an­ism.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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): this is a reward­ing essay from way back in 1955. (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.

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