Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 234

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. Reflec­tions on Inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty (Cole­man Hugh­es, Quil­lette): “I don’t know what pro­por­tion of stu­dents at elite schools are part of the inter­sec­tion­al sub­cul­ture. But it is com­mon enough that I nev­er go more than a few days with­out encoun­ter­ing it. As a crude point of com­par­i­son, I’m more like­ly to meet a com­mit­ted inter­sec­tion­al­ist on any giv­en day at Colum­bia than I am to meet a com­mit­ted veg­e­tar­i­an, and much more like­ly than I am to meet a com­mit­ted Chris­t­ian.”
  2. The Unit­ed States is Starved for Tal­ent (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Over­all, get­ting (approx­i­mate­ly) one extra high-skilled [H1‑B] work­er caus­es a 23% increase in the prob­a­bil­i­ty of a suc­cess­ful IPO with­in five years (a 1.5 per­cent­age point increase in the base­line prob­a­bil­i­ty of 6.6%). That’s a huge effect. Remem­ber, these star­tups have access to a labor pool of 160 mil­lion work­ers.”
  3. Why Bad Things Must Hap­pen to Good Peo­ple (Nathaniel Givens, Pub­lic Square): “It’s also fair to say that when we know in advance the bound­aries of the bad that can hap­pen, we can hedge our bets and selec­tive­ly choose our course through life to opti­mize risk and reward. The prob­lem isn’t that we will make dif­fer­ent deci­sions under con­di­tions like these. The prob­lem is that we will make them for dif­fer­ent rea­sons.” A Mor­mon take on theod­i­cy, quite inter­est­ing and not con­tin­gent on Mor­mon dis­tinc­tives.
  4. Aus­tralian rap­tors start fires to flush out prey (John Pick­rell, Cos­mos): “Black kites (Mil­vus migrans), whistling kites (Halias­tur sphenu­rus) and brown fal­cons (Fal­co berig­o­ra) all reg­u­lar­ly con­gre­gate near the edges of bush­fires, tak­ing advan­tage of an exo­dus of small lizards, mam­mals, birds and insects – but it appears that some may have learnt not only to use fire to their advan­tage, but also to con­trol it.”
  5. Big Data+Small Bias « Small Data+Zero Bias (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Sup­pose you want to esti­mate who will win the 2016 US Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. You ask 2.3 mil­lion poten­tial vot­ers whether they are like­ly to vote for Trump or not. The sam­ple is in all ways demo­graph­i­cal­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the US vot­ing pop­u­la­tion but poten­tial Trump vot­ers are a tiny bit less like­ly to answer the ques­tion, just .001 less like­ly to answer (note they don’t lie, they just don’t answer).” I was stunned.
  6. Coach O. Vs. The Acela Grad­grind (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “You’d think that the media elites would by now have learned the cost to their own cred­i­bil­i­ty of not under­stand­ing this coun­try. But they keep being sur­prised. Nobody expects a New York Times edi­to­r­i­al writer to agree with the deci­sion to can­cel col­lege class­es because of a foot­ball game. But one would like to think that a man of the world such as him­self would have enough sense to think about why this deci­sion might have been made, and what it says about cul­tur­al dif­fer­ence. I sus­pect if the LSU Board of Super­vi­sors had can­celled class­es for Trans­gen­der Day Of Remem­brance, the New York Times edi­to­r­i­al board would have wet its col­lec­tive pants with delight.”
    • Relat­ed: Where Ivy Mat­ters: The Edu­ca­tion­al Back­grounds of U.S. Cul­tur­al Elites (Brint et al, Soci­ol­o­gy of Edu­ca­tion): “We find that the lead­ing U.S. edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions are sub­stan­tial­ly more impor­tant for prepar­ing future mem­bers of the cul­tur­al elite than they are for prepar­ing future mem­bers of the busi­ness or polit­i­cal elite. In addi­tion, mem­bers of the cul­tur­al elite who are rec­og­nized for out­stand­ing achieve­ments by peers and experts are much more like­ly to have obtained degrees from the lead­ing edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions than are those who achieve acclaim from pop­u­lar audi­ences.”
  7. See­ing Both Sides (Andrew Bunt, Think The­ol­o­gy): “One of the things I find most dif­fi­cult about being a celi­bate gay/same-sex attract­ed Chris­t­ian is when I feel a strong attrac­tion to a spe­cif­ic guy.”

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. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

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