Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 189

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. Bio­hack­ers Encod­ed Mal­ware In A Strand Of DNA (Andy Green­berg, Wired): “…a group of researchers from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton has shown for the first time that it’s pos­si­ble to encode mali­cious soft­ware into phys­i­cal strands of DNA, so that when a gene sequencer ana­lyzes it the result­ing data becomes a pro­gram that cor­rupts gene-sequenc­ing soft­ware and takes con­trol of the under­ly­ing com­put­er.”
    • WHOA. Also, the term “bio­hack­er” is much cool­er than “hack­er.”
  2. The Nature of Sex (Andrew Sul­li­van, NY Mag­a­zine): “It’s no acci­dent that some of the most homo­pho­bic soci­eties, like Iran, for exam­ple, are big pro­po­nents of sex-reas­sign­ment surgery for gen­der-non­con­form­ing kids and adults (the gov­ern­ment even pays for it) while being homo­sex­u­al war­rants the death penal­ty…. If you aban­don biol­o­gy in the mat­ter of sex and gen­der alto­geth­er, you may help trans peo­ple live fuller, less con­flict­ed lives; but you also under­mine the very mean­ing of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty.”
  3. How A Demon-Slay­ing Pen­te­costal Bil­lion­aire Is Ush­er­ing In A Post-Catholic Brazil (Alexan­der Zaitchik and Christo­pher Lord, The New Repub­lic): “When Mace­do com­plet­ed his $249 mil­lion head­quar­ters in 2014, his point of com­par­i­son wasn’t John Hagee’s megachurch or Pat Robertson’s TV stu­dio. It was the Christ the Redeemer stat­ue atop Mount Cor­co­v­a­do, over­look­ing Rio de Janeiro, the sym­bol of Catholic dom­i­nance since 1921. In inter­views, Mace­do made sure to note that his Solomon­ic church was near­ly twice as tall.”
  4. E Pluribus Unum? (Stacey Abrams, For­eign Pol­i­cy): “…minori­ties and the mar­gin­al­ized have lit­tle choice but to fight against the par­tic­u­lar meth­ods of dis­crim­i­na­tion employed against them. The mar­gin­al­ized did not cre­ate iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics: their iden­ti­ties have been forced on them by dom­i­nant groups, and pol­i­tics is the most effec­tive method of revolt.”
    • I don’t see many straight­for­ward defens­es of iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics. Worth read­ing.  This is a rebut­tal to an arti­cle by Fran­cis Fukuya­ma. Fur­ther down the page a few oth­ers respond as well, and then he offers a rejoin­der.
    • Abrams is a Demo­c­ra­t­ic politi­cian, cur­rent­ly out of office. She was the one cho­sen to give the Demo­c­ra­t­ic response to Trump’s State of the Union address.
    • A  vague­ly relat­ed arti­cle by one of my stu­dents: Failed and Racist: Why Stan­ford Should Ditch Affir­ma­tive Action (Anni­ka Nordquist and Jose Anto­nio Ava­l­os, Stan­ford Review): “African Amer­i­can and His­pan­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion at elite uni­ver­si­ties is actu­al­ly low­er than it was 35 years ago, and the minor­i­ty stu­dents who attend appear to be pri­mar­i­ly upper class…. Elite uni­ver­si­ties are able to pat them­selves on the back and pad their pro­mo­tion­al mate­ri­als with pic­tures of a diverse stu­dent body, while leav­ing minor­i­ty stu­dents gen­uine­ly trapped in cycles of pover­ty almost untouched.”
    • Con­fes­sion: it’s not real­ly all that relat­ed, but I try to lim­it myself to 7 main bul­let points. I also have a com­mit­ment to post­ing stuff that my stu­dents get pub­lished. This is my best com­pro­mise. 🙂  Also, if you’re in Chi Alpha and get some­thing pub­lished be sure that I know about it.
  5. The Philoso­pher Redefin­ing Equal­i­ty (Nathan Heller, New York­er): “When she was three, her moth­er asked, ‘Why do you allow your broth­er to talk for you?’—why didn’t she speak for her­self? ‘Until now, it sim­ply was not nec­es­sary,’ Eliz­a­beth said. It was the first full sen­tence that she had ever uttered.” I think that’s the best first sen­tence I’ve ever heard of. A tad long, but rec­om­mend­ed.
  6. This Black His­to­ry Month, don’t pre­tend racism has dis­ap­peared from the church (Jemar Tis­by, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Many peo­ple, includ­ing Chris­tians, like to believe that if they were alive dur­ing the 1960s, they would have par­tic­i­pat­ed in the civ­il rights move­ment. If Chris­tians refuse to acknowl­edge racism and fight against it today, then it is clear where they would have stood half a cen­tu­ry ago, too.”
    • Tis­by is a Ph.D. can­di­date in his­to­ry and grad­u­at­ed from Reformed The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary.
    • Relat­ed: a thought­ful review of Tisby’s book by George P. Wood, an acquain­tance of mine.
    • Relat­ed: To All The White Friends I Could­n’t Keep (Andre Hen­ry, per­son­al blog): “I thought that if you heard from a black per­son you trusted—me—that racism is alive and well in our times, that you would come to under­stand that what hap­pened to Mr. Castile, to Mr. Mar­tin, Ms. Bland, Ms. Boyd, Mr. Ster­ling, Mr. Brown, Mr. Gar­ner, Mr Grey, Ms. Shirley, Ms. Gaines, and so many oth­ers were not unique, iso­lat­ed inci­dents but parts of a pat­tern.”
  7. The State of Amer­i­can Fact-Check­ing Is Com­plete­ly Use­less (David Harsanyi, The Fed­er­al­ist): “There are plen­ty of legit­i­mate­ly mis­lead­ing state­ments wor­thy of fact-check­ers’ atten­tion. Yet, with a veneer of impar­tial­i­ty, fact-check­ers often engage in a unique­ly dis­hon­est style of par­ti­san­ship.”

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 The Weight of Glo­ry (C.S. Lewis): It was orig­i­nal­ly preached as a ser­mon and then print­ed in a the­ol­o­gy mag­a­zine. Relat­ed: see the C. S. Lewis Doo­dle YouTube chan­nel – it’s real­ly good! (first shared in vol­ume 36)

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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