Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 250

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, this is the 250^th of these week­ly roundups I have pub­lished. Even though last week was num­ber 249, I was still sur­prised to type in 250 this week. Some­day I’ll remem­ber a spe­cial num­ber is com­ing up and do some­thing dif­fer­ent for it. But not this day.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. Are the Wages of Sin Real­ly Death?: Moral and Epi­demi­o­log­ic Obser­va­tions (David Lyle Jef­frey and Jeff Levin, Chris­t­ian Scholar’s Review): “So, are the wages of sin real­ly death? As far as pop­u­la­tion-health research sug­gests, the answer is a guard­ed yes.” The authors are pro­fes­sors at Bay­lor, one of epi­demi­ol­o­gy and the oth­er of lit­er­a­ture. 
2. Kids’ TV has a porn prob­lem (Brazy­Day, Medi­um): “In a very real way, the ‘hyper­sex­u­al and tox­ic’ cul­ture that has sprung up around children’s TV car­toons is of com­pa­nies’ own mak­ing. They active­ly allow it to hap­pen sim­ply by doing noth­ing — cre­at­ing a law­less vac­u­um where any­thing goes and porn coex­ists with harm­less fan cre­ations.” This arti­cle was much bet­ter than I expect­ed it to be. 
3. How We Got the Bible (Dirk Jongkind,Desiring God): “…by under­stand­ing what God had done over the ages, we will see that it is rea­son­able and jus­ti­fied to trust that the Bible in our hands is a trans­la­tion of the trust­wor­thy words of Scrip­ture.” The author is a research fel­low in New Tes­ta­ment text and lan­guage at Tyn­dale House, Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty. 
4. The real Lord of the Flies: what hap­pened when six boys were ship­wrecked for 15 months (The Guardian): “The kids agreed to work in teams of two, draw­ing up a strict ros­ter for gar­den, kitchen and guard duty. Some­times they quar­relled, but when­ev­er that hap­pened they solved it by impos­ing a time-out. Their days began and end­ed with song and prayer. Kolo fash­ioned a makeshift gui­tar from a piece of drift­wood, half a coconut shell and six steel wires sal­vaged from their wrecked boat – an instru­ment Peter has kept all these years – and played it to help lift their spir­its.“ Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
   • Fas­ci­nat­ing Twit­ter thread in response by Tan­ner Greer: “Lord of the Flies is one of those nov­els that peo­ple remem­ber wrong. Peo­ple remem­ber its cen­tral theme as ‘take away civ­i­liza­tion, and we all turn into Hobbe­sian lit­tle mon­sters.’ But if you read the book as an adult, instead of an 8th grad­er speed­ing through, you find a dif­fer­ent mean­ing.”
5. Should Reli­gious Con­ser­v­a­tives Aspire to Noto­ri­ety? (Jake Meador, Mere Ortho­doxy): “You don’t go look­ing for pow­er and pres­tige. You aspire to be faith­ful. If pres­tige finds you, then you allow your­self to be extrud­ed into it and pray that God pro­tect you from the spir­i­tu­al dan­gers.” This is essay is part of a swarm of inter­net arti­cles about the tra­jec­to­ry of the mag­a­zine First Things, but you don’t have to read any­thing else about that (or even care much about that) to find this essay worth­while. 
6. Pan­dem­ic Per­spec­tives
   • “Our reg­u­la­to­ry state is fail­ing us” Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “When the CDC pooh-poohed masks ear­ly on, or botched their test­ing kit there­by delay­ing U.S. test­ing by weeks or maybe months, did the per­ma­nent staff of the CDC rise up and rebel and leak howl­ing protests to the media, real­iz­ing that thou­sands of lives were at stake? That is sure­ly what would hap­pen if say the cur­rent FDA announced it was going to approve thalido­mide.” This is a link to a search result on his blog, keep scrolling after you fin­ish the main arti­cle to see sev­er­al exam­ples of what he is describ­ing. 
   • Coro­n­avirus Pan­dem­ic: A Plea for Gen­eros­i­ty (Michael Bren­dan Dougher­ty, Nation­al Review): “There is a good rea­son to hes­i­tate to judge, name­ly our igno­rance. Plagues are a time for scape­goats and blame-shift­ing pre­cise­ly because they deal out suf­fer­ing such a seem­ing­ly unjust and ran­dom fash­ion. Our lead­ers say they will fol­low the sci­ence, but they can’t, real­ly. With a hereto­fore-unseen virus such as this one, the sci­ence is more like inher­it­ed wis­dom and intu­ition from pre­vi­ous, sim­i­lar mal­adies, at least at the start. What fol­lows is a con­fused rush to catch up through tri­al and error.“
   • The Risks — Know Them — Avoid Them (Erin Bro­mage, per­son­al blog): “I reg­u­lar­ly hear peo­ple wor­ry­ing about gro­cery stores, bike rides, incon­sid­er­ate run­ners who are not wear­ing masks.… are these places of con­cern? Well, not real­ly. Let me explain.” The author is a biol­o­gy pro­fes­sor at U Mass who teach­es cours­es on immunol­o­gy and infec­tious dis­ease. Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus. 
   • No, the super­spread­er choir in Wash­ing­ton does­n’t prove church is dan­ger­ous (Tim­o­thy P. Car­ney, Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er): “It’s hard to blame the choir for not tak­ing more pre­cau­tions, as this was March 10, before stuff real­ly hit the fan (and when our gov­ern­ment was still telling peo­ple NOT to wear masks).”
     • This op-ed is based on a CDC inves­ti­ga­tion: “The March 10 choir rehearsal last­ed from 6:30 to 9:00 p.m. Sev­er­al mem­bers arrived ear­ly to set up chairs in a large mul­ti­pur­pose room. Chairs were arranged in six rows of 20 chairs each, spaced 6–10 inch­es apart with a cen­ter aisle divid­ing left and right stages.”
   • Lock­down is over. Some­one tell the gov­ern­ment (Dominic Green, Spec­ta­tor USA): “Every soci­ety has react­ed to COVID-19 accord­ing to its prin­ci­ples or, if no prin­ci­ples were to hand, its habits. It has been America’s mis­for­tune that its prin­ci­ples and habits are ill-suit­ed to man­ag­ing an epi­dem­ic.”
   • Take the Shut­down Skep­tics Seri­ous­ly (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “The gen­er­al point is that min­i­miz­ing the num­ber of COVID-19 deaths today or a month from now or six months from now may or may not min­i­mize the human costs of the pan­dem­ic when the full spec­trum of human con­se­quences is con­sid­ered. The last glob­al depres­sion cre­at­ed con­di­tions for a cat­a­stroph­ic world war that killed rough­ly 75 to 80 mil­lion peo­ple. Is that a pos­si­bil­i­ty? The down­side risks and costs of every approach are real, fright­en­ing, and depress­ing, no mat­ter how lit­tle one thinks of reopen­ing now.”
   • Coro­n­avirus and The Myopia of Amer­i­can Excep­tion­al­ism (Brad Lit­tle­john, Mere Ortho­doxy): “Rather than prov­ing our­selves excep­tion­al, we sim­ply assume that we are. The ordi­nary rules do not apply to us, because we are Amer­i­ca. We make things bet­ter here, we run things more effi­cient­ly here, we live more hap­pi­ly here, because we are Amer­i­ca. There is no need to look at OECD rank­ings, because we already know that they are wrong if they show us any­where but #1…. this way of think­ing, far from mak­ing Amer­i­ca great, is almost cer­tain to make her the oppo­site. After all, the only way to improve is to learn, and the chief way we learn as human beings is from the exam­ples of oth­ers.”
   • The Mir­a­cle of the Inter­net (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “The surge in traf­fic, on the inter­net as a whole and on AT&T’s part of the net­work, is extra­or­di­nary in a way that the phrase 20 per­cent increase doesn’t quite cap­ture. AT&T’s net­work is car­ry­ing an extra 71 petabytes of data every day. How much is 71 petabytes? One com­par­i­son: Back at the end of 2014, AT&T’s total net­work traf­fic was 56 petabytes a day; in just a few weeks, AT&T has accom­mo­dat­ed more new traf­fic every day than its total dai­ly traf­fic six years ago. (Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, the AT&T net­work has been car­ry­ing about 426 petabytes a day—one petabyte is 1 mil­lion giga­bytes.)”
   • Stan­ford’s $27.7 bil­lion not enough to house stu­dents in need amid pan­dem­ic (Sheikh Sri­jon, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “Har­vard is allow­ing those on cam­pus with demon­strat­ed need to stay for the whole sum­mer for only $200. MIT is offer­ing free hous­ing and meals. Duke is offer­ing free hous­ing and par­tial com­pen­sa­tion for lost sum­mer earn­ings to those with sub­stan­tial finan­cial aid.… Com­pare Stanford’s pol­i­cy to these insti­tu­tions’ poli­cies. Though it has a $27.7 bil­lion dol­lar endow­ment (as of Octo­ber 2019), it is charg­ing stu­dents near­ly $6,000 for sum­mer hous­ing and meals in times of such finan­cial uncer­tain­ty.”
7. The New York Times Sur­ren­dered to an Out­rage Mob. Jour­nal­ism Will Suf­fer For It. (Pamela Paresky, Jonathan Haidt, Nadine Strossen And Steven Pinker, Politi­co): “…for the Times to ‘dis­ap­pear’ pas­sages of a pub­lished arti­cle into an inac­ces­si­ble mem­o­ry hole is an Orwellian act that, thanks to the newspaper’s actions, might now be seen as accept­able jour­nal­is­tic prac­tice. It is all the worse when the edi­tors’ pub­lished account of what they delet­ed is itself inac­cu­rate. This does a dis­ser­vice to read­ers, his­to­ri­ans and jour­nal­ists, who are left unable to deter­mine for them­selves what the con­tro­ver­sy was about, and to Stephens, who is left unable to defend him­self against read­ers’ worst sus­pi­cions.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• How to Live To Be 100 (red­dit)
• Preprint (xkcd)
• ‘I Am A Depraved Wretch,’ Says Calvin­ist Smug­ly (Baby­lon Bee)
• Seek­ing Approval (Pearls Before Swine): the­o­log­i­cal­ly inac­cu­rate
• ‘The Car­ri­er is Vul­ner­a­ble and Obso­lete’ accord­ing to 100 years worth of mil­i­tary jour­nals (Dirk Dig­gler, Duf­fel Blog): most of you will not find this piece all that fun­ny. The rest of you will laugh out loud.
• The Shop­ping Cart The­o­ry (Imgur, but I think orig­i­nal­ly from 4Chan)

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have If I Were 22 Again (John Piper, Desir­ing God): “There have been about 18,340 days since I turned 22, and I think I have read my Bible on more of those days than I have eat­en. I have cer­tain­ly read my Bible on more of those days that I have watched tele­vi­sion or videos.… Read your Bible every day of your life. If you have time for break­fast, nev­er say that you don’t have time for God’s word.” This whole thing is real­ly good. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. First shared in vol­ume 151.

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.