Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 248

One of the best explanations of religious liberty I have read, along with articles about the pandemic, UFOs, the Chinese Communist Party, and a fascinating interview with a pastor.

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’m a little happy because the number 248 seems cool to me. If I ever reach 1248 I’ll think it’s even cooler.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Religious Liberty and the Common Good (National Affairs, William Haun): “Many of today’s progressives, conservatives, and libertarians [cannot] explain why religion in particular and religious exercise in particular should shape the common good, even when they go against the grain of secular visions adopted in law.” This is probably the most important link I’ve shared in quite a while. Not light reading but worthwhile. The author is a lawyer for the Becket Fund.
  2. Erwin McManus: The Peaceable Warrior (Paul J. Pastor, Outreach Magazine): “I talked to someone last Sunday who said, ‘I’m here because somebody invited me. I didn’t want to come.’ [Laughs] She actually said, ‘I’m mean, jaded and cynical. I don’t believe in God or religion. I think it’s all a sham.’ I said, ‘You’re really disappointed, aren’t you?’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because you like us,’ I said. ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘I don’t know what to do with that.’ ” (the excerpt is actually from part 2 of the interview and the story gets even better). I only stumbled upon this slightly older article because it won a Maggie award for best interview of 2019.
  3. Coronavirus News & Perspectives
    • Comparing COVID-19 Deaths to Flu Deaths Is like Comparing Apples to Oranges (Jeremy Samuel Faust, Scientific American): “When reports about the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV‑2 began circulating earlier this year and questions were being raised about how the illness it causes, COVID-19, compared to the flu, it occurred to me that, in four years of emergency medicine residency and over three and a half years as an attending physician, I had almost never seen anyone die of the flu. I could only remember one tragic pediatric case.” The author is an instructor at Harvard Medical School. Fascinating.
    • Photographer Takes Pics Of People In Public From 2 Perspectives And It Shows How Easily The Media Can Manipulate Reality (Liucija Adomaite and Denis Tymulis, Bored Panda): “‘The proximity of people has widely been debated in Denmark in the past weeks. Danish politicians and authorities have frequently referred to images which they believed to show members of the public behaving in disagreement with the general guidelines.’ As a national photo news agency that supplies visual coverage on the coronavirus pandemic, ‘we became aware that our contribution could be misread.’” A picture is worth 1000 words, not all of them honest.
    • Seattle’s Leaders Let Scientists Take the Lead. New York’s Did Not (Charles Duhigg ‚New Yorker): “Constantine told me, ‘Jeff recognized what he was asking for was impractical. He said if we advised social distancing right away there would be zero acceptance. And so the question was: What can we say today so that people will be ready to hear what we need to say tomorrow?’ In e‑mails and phone calls, the men began playing a game: What was the most extreme advice they could give that people wouldn’t scoff at? Considering what would likely be happening four days from then, what would they regret not having said?”
    • A Virginia preacher believed ‘God can heal anything.’ Then he caught coronavirus. (Peter Jamison, Washington Post): “In the days after Landon succumbed to covid-19, his death brought words of sympathy from people who knew him — and jeers from people who didn’t. The New York Post, the Daily Mail and an atheist blog published articles seizing on his March 13 Facebook post. Landon was posthumously attacked as a victim of misguided beliefs — in the assurances of his president and the protections of his God.”
    • Information Can Do What Lockdowns Can’t (Lyman Stone, The Public Discourse): “Americans, like people in almost every country, were quicker to understand the risks than most of the people who govern us. Alas, had our leaders taken the threat seriously a month earlier, and communicated the risks to Americans more explicitly, COVID could have been a flash in the pan. Instead, many thousands of Americans are going to die unnecessary deaths.”
    • Why Did YouTube Remove The Doctors’ Briefing? (Rod Dreher, The American Conservative): “…I absolutely believe that it’s wrong to censor what qualified medical professionals (read: not quacks) are saying about the crisis, which is so unique in our experience as a nation. A strong lockdown was necessary at first. If there is good medical evidence that the lockdown, and related public health strategies, might be doing more harm that good at this date, then let’s hear that argument.”
    • Related: The Inevitable Coronavirus Censorship Crisis is Here (Matt Taibbi, Substack): “The people who want to add a censorship regime to a health crisis are more dangerous and more stupid by leaps and bounds than a president who tells people to inject disinfectant. It’s astonishing that they don’t see this.”
    • With US Borders Closed by Covid-19, How Will I Afford Insulin? (James Stout, Undark): “During months when I teach as an adjunct professor and am covered by my university’s insurance plan, I stock up as much insulin as I can. During the remainder of the year, I do what thousands of others do: I cross the border to Mexico where, just 12 miles from my house in San Diego, I can buy the same medicine at one-tenth of the price.” Sent my way by a student.
  4. UFO Sightings: They Deserve to Be Taken More Seriously (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg): “The official release of some previously leaked UFO videos taken by U.S. navy pilots has sparked renewed interest in the bigger questions. For sure those flying objects are unidentified, but how much attention should we earthlings devote to this issue? I am struck by the contrast between those who see this as an important question and those who think the whole thing will turn out to be an error or some kind of optical illusion.”
  5. On the Chinese Communist Party: 
    • China Has a Post-Pandemic Dream for Hong Kong (Yi-Zheng Lian, New York Times): “But the recent developments actually are remarkable. For the first time, the traditional pan-dems are being treated as enemies just like the separatists. And for the first time, Beijing is violating the very letter of the Basic Law, which it itself has promulgated; the Chinese government typically only contorts the law and distorts its spirit.”
    • The End of the Harvard Century (Matteo N. Wong, Harvard Crimson): “Chinese officials regularly deliver complaints to universities hosting events on sensitive issues and even offer scholars money to modify research critical of China.… given Harvard’s status in the international academic hierarchy, Chinese authorities may be particularly interested in the University. ‘We’ve had Chinese citizens at Harvard, who are clearly doing the bidding of the Chinese state, coming and sitting in on talks and taking notes and reporting back,’ Perry says. She similarly suspects Chinese citizens of reporting on visiting Chinese scholars’ activities.” This article is quite long but fascinating.
    • America is awakening to China. This is a clarion call to seize the moment. (Mitt Romney, Washington Post): “China’s alarming military build-up is not widely discussed outside classified settings, but Americans should not take comfort in our disproportionately large military budget. The government of President Xi Jinping doesn’t report its actual defense spending. An apples-to-apples analysis demonstrates that China’s annual procurement of military hardware is nearly identical to ours; but because our military has missions around the world, this means that in the Pacific, where China concentrates its firepower, it will have military superiority.”
    • I was arrested in Hong Kong. It’s part of China’s larger plan.(Martin C. M. Lee , Washington Post): “Hong Kong people now face two plagues from China: the coronavirus and attacks on our most basic human rights. We can all hope a vaccine is soon developed for the coronavirus. But once Hong Kong’s human rights and rule of law are rolled back, the fatal virus of authoritarian rule will be here to stay.”
  6. My Native American father drew the Land O’Lakes maiden. She was never a stereotype. (Robert DesJarlait, Washington Post): “Mia’s vanishing has prompted a social media meme: ‘They Got Rid of The Indian and Kept the Land.’ That isn’t too far from the truth. Mia, the stereotype that wasn’t, leaves behind a landscape voided of identity and history. For those of us who are American Indian, it’s a history that is all too familiar.”
  7. By Biden’s Own Standards, He Is Guilty As Charged (Andrew Sullivan, New York Magazine): “On Friday’s Morning Joe, Biden laid out a simple process for judging him: Listen respectfully to Tara Reade, and then check for facts that prove or disprove her specific claim. The objective truth, Biden argued, is what matters. I agree with him. But this was emphatically not the standard Biden favored when judging men in college. If Biden were a student, under Biden rules, Reade could file a claim of assault, and Biden would have no right to know the specifics, the evidence provided, who was charging him, who was a witness, and no right to question the accuser.”
    • This article is about college Title IX proceedings using Tara Reade and Joe Biden as illustrations. If its inclusion comes off as partisan, bear in mind that the author intends to vote for Biden.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • Dolphins swim in bioluminescent waves in Newport Beach (YouTube): three minutes
  • Obviously Confused Amash Runs For President Even Though We Already Have Two Choices (Babylon Bee)
  • Unusually Heavy Call Volumes (Pearls Before Swine)
  • Latest Computer Model Predicts Between 0 And 12.6 Billion New COVID-19 Deaths By Summer (Babylon Bee)
  • Steve Harvey Gets Tie Stolen by Pickpocket Bob Arno (Steve Harvey Show, YouTube): seven minutes, recommended by a student

    • Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

    Every week I’ll highlight an older link still worth your consideration. This week we have the provocative read In Defense of Flogging (Peter Moskos, Chronicle of Higher Education) — the author is a former police officer and now a criminologist at the City University of New York. This one was shared back before I started sending these emails in a blog post called Punishment.

    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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