Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 172

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.

I did­n’t think I’d be able to send the email this week because I’m preach­ing in rur­al Alas­ka with­out reli­able WiFi, but I was able to grab a bit this morn­ing. As a result, this edi­tion feels a bit big­ger than nor­mal to me — com­pil­ing the list is quick because when­ev­er I read a good arti­cle I throw it on the pile, but edit­ing it down takes time I don’t have today. So here you go. Enjoy!

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. First, a bit about Supreme Court nom­i­nee Brett Kavanaugh. I’ve had less time than nor­mal for read­ing this week, so I am cer­tain there are inter­est­ing and insight­ful arti­cles I nev­er stum­bled upon. Send me things you think I missed! Of one thing I am con­vinced: the lev­el of fury on both sides over this nom­i­na­tion is off-the-charts, and both sides seem to under­es­ti­mate just how out­raged the oth­er side is.
   • Only the Truth Can Save Us Now (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “even more than before the hear­ings, my feel­ing after over eight hours in pur­ga­to­ry is that I still real­ly want to know the truth. And sur­pris­ing­ly, I left the long day of tes­ti­mo­ny con­vinced that for all the years that have passed since the sum­mer of 1982, the truth might actu­al­ly be acces­si­ble, and there are obvi­ous ques­tions and avenues of inquiry, unpur­sued by both par­ties, that could bring us clos­er to under­stand­ing which of the two wit­ness­es were telling the real truth.”
   • I Know Brett Kavanaugh, but I Wouldn’t Con­firm Him (Ben­jamin Wittes, The Atlantic): “Faced with cred­i­ble alle­ga­tions of seri­ous mis­con­duct against him, Kavanaugh behaved in a fash­ion unac­cept­able in a jus­tice, it seems pre­pon­der­ant­ly like­ly he was not can­did with the Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee on impor­tant mat­ters, and the risk of Ford’s alle­ga­tions being clos­er to the truth than his denial of them is sim­ply too high to place him on the Supreme Court…. As much as I admire Kavanaugh, my con­science would not per­mit me to vote for him.” This makes the most thought­ful case against Kavanaugh. See last week’s edi­tion for a sim­i­lar piece that comes to the oppo­site con­clu­sion.
   • The Rachel Mitchell Memo -“A ‘he said, she said’ case is incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to prove. But this case is even weak­er than that. Dr. Ford iden­ti­fied oth­er wit­ness­es to the event, and those wit­ness­es either refut­ed her alle­ga­tions or failed to cor­rob­o­rate them….I do not think that a rea­son­able pros­e­cu­tor would bring this case based on the evi­dence before the Com­mit­tee. Nor do I believe that this evi­dence is suf­fi­cient to sat­is­fy the pre­pon­der­ance-of-the-evi­dence stan­dard.” This is the report writ­ten by the sex-crimes pros­e­cu­tor who inter­viewed Dr. Ford on the Repub­li­cans’ behalf in the Sen­ate hear­ing.
   • A Non-scan­dalous, Non-ide­o­log­i­cal Case Against Brett Kavanaugh (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “I do wor­ry about a Supreme Court where lit­er­al­ly all nine mem­bers received their respec­tive legal edu­ca­tion at either Har­vard or Yale Law.”
   • Con­ser­v­a­tive Women Are Angry About Kavanaugh—And They Think Oth­er Vot­ers Are, Too (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “These women are infu­ri­at­ed with the way the sex­u­al-assault alle­ga­tions against the Supreme Court nom­i­nee Brett Kavanaugh have been han­dled. They are not con­vinced by Ford or any oth­er woman who has come for­ward. They resent the impli­ca­tion that all women should sup­port the accusers. And they believe that this scan­dal will ulti­mate­ly hurt the cause of women who have been sex­u­al­ly assault­ed. Above all, these women, and the women they know, are ready to lash out against Democ­rats in the upcom­ing midterm elec­tions.”
   • The Per­ni­cious Dou­ble Stan­dards Around Brett Kavanaugh’s Drink­ing (Megan Gar­ber, The Atlantic): “There’s been a lot of talk about dou­ble stan­dards of late—rightfully so—and here is one more: the assump­tion that alco­hol is one thing for men and anoth­er for women.” This one comes rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus. For the record, you should not get drunk regard­less of your gen­der. Eph­esians 5:18, “Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauch­ery. Instead, be filled with the Spir­it.”
   • Poll: Amid Kavanaugh Con­fir­ma­tion Bat­tle, Demo­c­ra­t­ic Enthu­si­asm Edge Evap­o­rates (Domeni­co Mon­ta­naro, NPR): “While Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans are now equal­ly enthu­si­as­tic about the midterms, the sto­ry is very dif­fer­ent for key Demo­c­ra­t­ic base groups and inde­pen­dents. While 82 per­cent of Democ­rats say the midterms are very impor­tant, that’s true of just 60 per­cent of peo­ple under 30, 61 per­cent of Lati­nos and 65 per­cent of inde­pen­dents.”
2. On the broad­er impli­ca­tions of the Ford/Kavanaugh dra­ma.
   • Six Broad­er Insights From the Kavanaugh Saga So Far (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg): “Most men are not abusers, yet very large num­bers of women have been abused. So if a man is an abuser, there is a good chance he has abused a fair num­ber of women. That means many well-mean­ing men expe­ri­ence sex­u­al abuse as a rel­a­tive­ly rare phe­nom­e­non. They haven’t done it, and most of their male friends haven’t either. At the same time, most women have abuse, rape or #MeToo sto­ries, and they expe­ri­ence these phe­nom­e­na as rel­a­tive­ly com­mon and often life-alter­ing. Prob­a­bly they also have heard mul­ti­ple such sto­ries from their female friends. This struc­tur­al asym­me­try of per­spec­tives is cru­cial to under­stand­ing the dis­course and the often fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ences in opin­ion.”
   • An Age Divid­ed By Sex (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “the cul­ture war as we’ve known it since has not been a sim­ple clash of con­ser­v­a­tives who want to repress and lib­er­als who want to eman­ci­pate. Rather it’s been an ongo­ing argu­ment between two forces — fem­i­nists and reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives — that both want to remor­al­ize Amer­i­can soci­ety, albeit in very dif­fer­ent ways.”
   • The Mer­i­toc­ra­cy Against Itself (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “the whole mer­i­to­crat­ic game… depends on a repro­duc­tion of priv­i­lege that pre­tends to be some­thing else, some­thing fair and open and all about hard work and just deserts. In this game the peo­ple whose priv­i­lege is par­tic­u­lar­ly obvi­ous, the board­ing school­ers and New York toffs and Bethes­da coun­try club­bers, play a cru­cial­ly impor­tant role. It’s not just that their par­ents pay full freight and keep the eco­nom­ics of tuition viable for every­one. It’s that the eliter-than-elite kids them­selves help cre­ate a pro­vi­sion­al inside-the-Ivy hier­ar­chy that lets all the oth­er priv­i­leged kids, the ones who are mere­ly upper-upper mid­dle class, feel the spur of resent­ment and ambi­tion that keeps us run­ning, keeps us com­pet­ing, keeps us sharp and awful in all the ways that mer­i­toc­ra­cy requires.” This is not real­ly about Kavanaugh, but it is cer­tain­ly about the world most of you inhab­it at Stan­ford.
   • See this insight­ful response: Brett Kavanaugh and the Lim­its of Social-Class Priv­i­lege for Con­ser­v­a­tives (David French, Nation­al Review): “The social bat­tles of the elite col­lege rep­re­sent the squab­bling of men and women at the tip of the priv­i­lege spear in the most pow­er­ful nation in the his­to­ry of the plan­et. But as real as these pet­ty resent­ments were and are, they pale in com­par­i­son to the most impor­tant thing. They miss the real roots of Ivy rage. Brett Kavanaugh’s true sin isn’t his con­nec­tions, his pop­u­lar­i­ty, or his prep school. His true sin is that he’s a con­ser­v­a­tive. And now he’s a par­tic­u­lar kind of con­ser­v­a­tive — a con­ser­v­a­tive who mat­ters, a con­ser­v­a­tive who will have the pow­er (and might actu­al­ly have the con­vic­tions) to threat­en one or more of the most sacred ele­ments of pro­gres­sive jurispru­dence. He can poten­tial­ly affect the law and the cul­ture in a pro­found way. So what we’re watch­ing is the sys­tem­at­ic revo­ca­tion of his elite priv­i­lege.”
   • One of the Best Speech­es You Will Ever Hear from the Sen­ate Floor (Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coali­tion): “I believe that we have a wide­spread lega­cy of sex­u­al assault in this coun­try. I believe we don’t have much of a shared sex­u­al eth­ic right now—and we haven’t for quite some time—and I think hor­ri­ble stuff has hap­pened, and con­tin­ues to hap­pen. I’ve wept with the vic­tims of sex­u­al assault, and I believe the advo­ca­cy groups’ data that between one-fifth and one-third of Amer­i­can women have been sex­u­al­ly assault­ed at some point in their lives. And giv­en that most women have many oth­er impor­tant women in their lives—a mom, and a daugh­ter, sis­ters, and a cou­ple of close friends—it means that the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of Amer­i­can women have been deeply affect­ed, deeply hurt, by the tragedy of sex­u­al vio­lence.” The speech is by Ben Sasse, a for­mer sem­i­nary pres­i­dent now serv­ing as a sen­a­tor from Nebras­ka.
   • Rage Pol­i­tics On The Left (R. R. Reno, First Things): “Of the utopi­an dreams of the 1960s, only the sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion has attained cul­tur­al dom­i­nance. To a great degree, we as a soci­ety believe in the promis­es of that rev­o­lu­tion: that sex can be safe; that men and women can enjoy sex­u­al free­dom to the same degree and in the same way; that sex need have noth­ing to do with chil­dren; that sex is pure­ly pri­vate. These promis­es are back­stopped by abor­tion, the con­sti­tu­tion­al sta­tus of which fuels the urgency sur­round­ing the Kavanaugh appoint­ment.”
     • In a sim­i­lar vein: Believ­abil­i­ty Is The Road To Nation­al Ruin (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “When pol­i­tics becomes sole­ly a mat­ter of ‘I believe’ ver­sus ‘I believe,’ it descends into a raw con­test for pow­er. His­tor­i­cal­ly, it’s been fas­cists, not lib­er­als, who tend to win such con­tests.”
   • I was sex­u­al­ly assault­ed and thought it was my fault. It’s past time for a 1980s reck­on­ing. (Kirsten Pow­ers, USA Today): “There is a prob­lem, though, and it’s this: The cul­ture failed to give us the lan­guage to describe such vio­la­tions, and made us feel that talk­ing about what hap­pened to an author­i­ty fig­ure would only make things worse for us. For­tu­nate­ly for women, what hap­pened in the 1980s isn’t stay­ing in the 1980s. It’s a reck­on­ing that is well over­due.”
3. Steel­man­ning the NIM­BYs (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “San Fran­cis­co is easy to hate. Even a lot of the peo­ple who already live there hate it. They hate the streets piled with dis­card­ed nee­dles and human waste. They hate the traf­fic (fifth worst in the world) and the crime (third most prop­er­ty crime in the US). They hate liv­ing five peo­ple to a three-bed­room apart­ment. They hate hav­ing aggres­sive peo­ple scream incom­pre­hen­si­ble things at them on the side­walk. They hate the var­i­ous mutu­al­ly hos­tile tran­sit sys­tems that inter­lock in a sys­tem I would call byzan­tine except that at least you could get around medieval Con­stan­tino­ple with­out check­ing whether the Muni and Cal­Train were mys­te­ri­ous­ly fail­ing to con­nect to each oth­er today. They hate that every­one else in the city hates them, from vis­i­ble KILL ALL TECHIES graf­fi­ti on their com­mute to work, to a sub­tle mood of seething resent­ment from every­one they meet. They hate the omnipresent bill­boards expect­ing them to have strong opin­ions on apps. I’m not say­ing every­one in San Fran­cis­co hates it. There are peo­ple who like all sorts of things. Some peo­ple like being tied up, whipped, and elec­tro­cut­ed by strangers. And a dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of these peo­ple live in San Fran­cis­co. I am just say­ing this isn’t a coin­ci­dence.”
   • Steel­man­ning refers to the oppo­site of attack­ing a straw man argu­ment. Instead of mak­ing your opponent’s argu­ment weak­er, you strength­en it as much as you can.
   • Coun­ter­point: YIMBY! (Scott Sum­n­er, Econ­Lib): “Think of it this way. Lots of par­ents don’t let their kids play out­side by them­selves, because oth­er par­ents don’t let their kids play out­side. If you choose to be the excep­tion, then (unlike dur­ing the 1960s) your kid is the only one avail­able for pedophiles to prey upon. Lots of the anti-NIM­BY feel­ing comes from a false per­cep­tion of what the real estate mar­ket would look like if com­plete lais­sez-faire were adopt­ed, based on the cur­rent dis­tort­ed mar­ket.”
4. The Dis­ap­pear­ing Con­ser­v­a­tive Pro­fes­sor (Jon A. Shields, Nation­al Affairs): “Pro­fes­sors are even less tol­er­ant of evan­gel­i­cals, whom they asso­ciate with social con­ser­vatism. Near­ly 60% of anthro­pol­o­gists, 50% of lit­er­a­ture pro­fes­sors, 39% of polit­i­cal sci­en­tists and soci­ol­o­gists, 34% of phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sors, and 29% of his­to­ri­ans say they would be less inclined to hire evan­gel­i­cals. Yancey fur­ther found that female pro­fes­sors expressed more anti-con­ser­v­a­tive bias than men, per­haps in part because female pro­fes­sors tend to be more pro­gres­sive than their male peers.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of gov­ern­ment at Clare­mont McKen­na.
5. The Big Hack: How Chi­na Used a Tiny Chip to Infil­trate U.S. Com­pa­nies (Jor­dan Robert­son and Michael Rieey, Bloomberg): “Nest­ed on the servers’ moth­er­boards, the testers found a tiny microchip, not much big­ger than a grain of rice, that wasn’t part of the boards’ orig­i­nal design. Ama­zon report­ed the dis­cov­ery to U.S. author­i­ties, send­ing a shud­der through the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty. Elemental’s servers could be found in Depart­ment of Defense data cen­ters, the CIA’s drone oper­a­tions, and the onboard net­works of Navy war­ships. And Ele­men­tal was just one of hun­dreds of Super­mi­cro cus­tomers. Dur­ing the ensu­ing top-secret probe, which remains open more than three years lat­er, inves­ti­ga­tors deter­mined that the chips allowed the attack­ers to cre­ate a stealth door­way into any net­work that includ­ed the altered machines. Mul­ti­ple peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter say inves­ti­ga­tors found that the chips had been insert­ed at fac­to­ries run by man­u­fac­tur­ing sub­con­trac­tors in Chi­na.”
   • This bit made me chuck­le: “Two of Elemental’s biggest ear­ly clients were the Mor­mon church, which used the tech­nol­o­gy to beam ser­mons to con­gre­ga­tions around the world, and the adult film indus­try, which did not.”
6. How Do Chris­tians Fit Into the Two-Par­ty Sys­tem? They Don’t (Tim Keller, New York Times): “Chris­tians are pushed toward two main options. One is to with­draw and try to be apo­lit­i­cal. The sec­ond is to assim­i­late and ful­ly adopt one party’s whole pack­age in order to have your place at the table. Nei­ther of these options is valid.”
7. Are You a Young Evan­gel­i­cal? We Want to Hear From You Ahead of the Midterm Elec­tions (Eliz­a­beth Dias, New York Times): “If you are an evan­gel­i­cal born after 1980, I’d love to hear about the rela­tion­ship between your faith and pol­i­tics today. And if you grew up evan­gel­i­cal and your views are shift­ing, feel free to share that, too. We may pub­lish a selec­tion of the respons­es.” Take a few min­utes and respond to this — you might get print­ed in the New York Times.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• How To Live Your Life (Pearls Before Swine)
• Rise of the Machines (SMBC)
• Every­one Waits Patient­ly For FBI Inves­ti­ga­tion That Will Def­i­nite­ly End All Con­tro­ver­sy (Baby­lon Bee)
• Sci­en­tists Pre­dict Globe Will Warm Sig­nif­i­cant­ly When Jesus Returns (Baby­lon Bee)

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have  Book Review: See­ing Like A State (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “Peas­ants didn’t like per­ma­nent sur­names. Their own sys­tem was quite rea­son­able for them: John the bak­er was John Bak­er, John the black­smith was John Smith, John who lived under the hill was John Under­hill, John who was real­ly short was John Short. The same per­son might be John Smith and John Under­hill in dif­fer­ent con­texts, where his sta­tus as a black­smith or place of ori­gin was more impor­tant. But the gov­ern­ment insist­ed on giv­ing every­one a sin­gle per­ma­nent name, unique for the vil­lage, and track­ing who was in the same fam­i­ly as whom. Resis­tance was intense.” This is long and amaz­ing. (first shared in vol­ume 95)

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). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent.

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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