Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 251

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. Reli­gious ser­vices may low­er risk of ‘deaths of despair’ (Chris Sweeney, Har­vard Gazette): “After adjust­ing for numer­ous vari­ables, the study showed that women who attend­ed ser­vices at least once per week had a 68 per­cent low­er risk of death from despair com­pared to those nev­er attend­ing ser­vices. Men who attend­ed ser­vices at least once per week had a 33 per­cent low­er risk of death from despair.” Those are HUGE reduc­tions!
2. Pan­dem­ic Per­spec­tives
   • Amid the Coro­n­avirus Cri­sis, a Reg­i­men for Reën­try (Atul Gawande, The New York­er): “But, in the face of enor­mous risks, Amer­i­can hos­pi­tals have learned how to avoid becom­ing sites of spread. When the time is right to light­en up on the lock­down and bring peo­ple back to work, there are wider lessons to be learned from places that nev­er locked down in the first place.” This was quite good.
   • What African Nations Are Teach­ing the West About Fight­ing the Coro­n­avirus (Jina Moore, The New York­er): “Much of what Ger­ca­ma encoun­tered at the air­port had been designed to pre­vent Ebo­la. Since 2018, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of the Con­go, South Sudan’s neigh­bor to the south­west, has been strug­gling with the dis­ease. But local pub­lic-health offi­cials’ quick repur­pos­ing of Ebo­la pro­to­cols and infra­struc­ture impressed Ger­ca­ma, as did the work of rapid-response teams, whom she twice wit­nessed respond to sus­pect­ed coro­n­avirus cas­es dur­ing the week she spent in the coun­try.”
   • A Spec­tac­u­lar­ly Bad Wash­ing­ton Post Sto­ry on Apple and Google’s Expo­sure Noti­fi­ca­tion Project (John Gru­ber, blog): “A Wash­ing­ton Post sto­ry today on Apple and Google’s joint effort on COVID-19 expo­sure noti­fi­ca­tion project, from reporters Reed Alber­got­ti and Drew Har­well, is the worst sto­ry I’ve seen in the Post in mem­o­ry. It’s so atro­cious­ly bad — fac­tu­al­ly wrong and one-sided in opin­ion — that it should be retract­ed.” Ouch. Gru­ber backs it up. 
   • Coro­n­avirus Cri­sis: Ron DeSan­tis Got Flori­da’s COVID-19 Strat­e­gy Right (Rich Lowry, Nation­al Review): “A cou­ple of months ago, the media, almost as one, decid­ed that Gov­er­nor Ron DeSan­tis was a pub­lic men­ace who was going to get Florid­i­ans killed with his lax response to the coro­n­avirus cri­sis…. The con­ven­tion­al wis­dom has begun to change about Flori­da, as the dis­as­ter so wide­ly pre­dict­ed hasn’t mate­ri­al­ized.”
   • As more states reopen, Geor­gia defies pre­dic­tions of coro­n­avirus resur­gence. What’s the les­son for the rest of the coun­try? (Andrew Romano, Yahoo News): “That’s the bal­ance reopen­ing needs to strike if it’s going to work: few­er offi­cial restric­tions in exchange for more indi­vid­ual and com­mu­ni­ty respon­si­bil­i­ty.”
   • A con­trary per­spec­tive: It Sure Seems Like Flori­da And Geor­gia Lied About Their Infec­tion Rates (Luis Pra­da, Cracked): “Flori­da and Geor­gia are petu­lant, enti­tled quar­an­tine pro­test­ers embod­ied as states. Since this all start­ed, both states have been fran­ti­cal­ly search­ing for an excuse to end their quar­an­tines as fast as pos­si­ble and get back to life as usu­al despite a ram­pag­ing virus that’s killing peo­ple.”
   • Mis­sis­sip­pi church destroyed by arson was suing city over safer-at-home order (Ari­an­na Poindex­ter, WLBT TV): “A Mis­sis­sip­pi church at the cen­ter of an arson inves­ti­ga­tion is the same church cur­rent­ly in a bat­tle with city lead­ers over a COVID-19 safer-at-home order. First Pen­te­costal Church in Hol­ly Springs was destroyed by what inves­ti­ga­tors believe is an arson­ist. Inves­ti­ga­tors found graf­fi­ti on pave­ment in the church park­ing lot that reads, ‘Bet you stay home now you hypokrits (sic).’” 
   • Meet the ‘Gang Pas­tor’ Behind Cape Town’s Viral Coro­n­avirus Coop­er­a­tion (Jayson Casper, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “We reg­u­lar­ly stop while we are work­ing to invite peo­ple to fol­low Jesus. I’ve lost track, but maybe 5,000 to 10,000 have told us they’ve repent­ed and are turn­ing to fol­low Jesus. But I don’t call this suc­cess, it is just a small piece in the over­all cause of what we Chris­tians are called to do.”
   • Don­ald Trump Does­n’t Want Author­i­ty (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “Great men and bad men alike seek atten­tion as a means of get­ting pow­er, but our pres­i­dent is inter­est­ed in pow­er only as a means of get­ting atten­tion.”
3. Uncer­tain­ty (Howard Marks, Oak­tree Cap­i­tal): “The peo­ple who are always sure are no more help­ful than the peo­ple who are nev­er sure. The real expert’s con­fi­dence is rea­son-based and pro­por­tion­al to the weight of the evi­dence.” Shared by an alum­nus’ father.
4. China’s Plans to Win Con­trol of the Glob­al Order (Tan­ner Greer, Tablet Mag­a­zine): “As Bei­jing sees it, China’s suc­cess depends on dis­cred­it­ing the tenets of lib­er­al cap­i­tal­ism so that notions like indi­vid­ual free­dom and con­sti­tu­tion­al democ­ra­cy come to be seen as the relics of an obso­lete sys­tem.” I found this piece to be very insight­ful.
   
   • Relat­ed: In China’s Cri­sis, Xi Sees a Cru­cible to Strength­en His Rule (Steven Lee Myers and Chris Buck­ley, New York Times): “Mr. Xi, shaped by his years of adver­si­ty as a young man, has seized on the pan­dem­ic as an oppor­tu­ni­ty in dis­guise — a chance to redeem the par­ty after ear­ly mis­takes let infec­tions slip out of con­trol, and to ral­ly nation­al pride in the face of inter­na­tion­al ire over those mis­takes. And the state pro­pa­gan­da machine is aggres­sive­ly back­ing him up, tout­ing his lead­er­ship in fight­ing the pan­dem­ic.”
   • Relat­ed: Xi’s Regime Recasts Chi­na as the Good Samar­i­tan dur­ing Pan­dem­ic (Alan Dowd, Prov­i­dence): “Add it all up—the PR spin, the pro­pa­gan­da push, the pal­lets of aid, the preening—and in a very real sense, Xi Jinping’s regime is offer­ing a new, twist­ed ver­sion of the Para­ble of the Good Samar­i­tan. In Xi’s retelling, the road­side rob­bers who assault the trav­el­er lat­er return to res­cue him—and some­how expect to be hailed as heroes.”
   • An explo­sive sum­mer of dis­con­tent is brew­ing in Hong Kong (Shibani Mah­tani, Wash­ing­ton Post): “On Tues­day, Hong Kong author­i­ties extend­ed pan­dem­ic-relat­ed rules lim­it­ing pub­lic gath­er­ings to effec­tive­ly ban, for the first time, a June 4 vig­il mark­ing the anniver­sary of Chi­na’s mas­sacre of stu­dent demon­stra­tors in Tianan­men Square in 1989.”
   • Chi­na Push­es for New Hong Kong Secu­ri­ty Law (Kei­th Brad­sh­er and Austin Ramzy, New York Times): “The leg­isla­tive push in Bei­jing marks the most aggres­sive step by the par­ty to exert its influ­ence over the for­mer British colony since it was reclaimed by Chi­na in 1997.”
   • Seri­ous­ly — pray for Hong Kong.
5. A Mis­sis­sip­pi pas­tor with eight kids and no pro­fes­sion­al music back­ground won ‘The Voice’ — and made show his­to­ry (Emi­ly Yahr, Wash­ing­ton Post): ““‘I’ve lit­er­al­ly nev­er per­formed. I just sing at church,’ Tilgh­man explained, intro­duc­ing him­self as a pas­tor. This sparked an attempt to prove who was the biggest church fan; Leg­end revealed his grand­fa­ther was a pas­tor, and Jonas one-upped him by boast­ing his father was a pas­tor.”
6. Under the Rain­bow Ban­ner (Darel Paul, First Things): “In June 1999, Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton declared the first nation­al Pride Month. Twen­ty years lat­er, June is as teem­ing with rain­bows as Decem­ber is with rein­deer. The Pride flag flies above embassies, state capi­tols, and sta­di­ums. Rain­bow stripes adorn city cross­walks.”
   • In response: Queer Times (Carl True­man, First Things): “The debate over LGBTQ issues is not a debate about sex­u­al behav­ior. I sus­pect it is not real­ly at this point a debate with the L, the G, or the B. It is the T and the Q that are car­ry­ing the day, and we need to under­stand that the debate is about the rad­i­cal abo­li­tion of meta­physics and meta­nar­ra­tives and any notion of cul­tur­al sta­bil­i­ty that might rest there­upon.”
7. Since I Met Edward Snow­den, I’ve Nev­er Stopped Watch­ing My Back (Bar­ton Gell­man, The Atlantic): “Some­one had tak­en con­trol of my iPad, blast­ing through Apple’s secu­ri­ty restric­tions and acquir­ing the pow­er to rewrite any­thing that the oper­at­ing sys­tem could touch. I dropped the tablet on the seat next to me as if it were con­ta­giou” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. Grip­ping and dis­turb­ing.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Man Leaves The 99 Bible Vers­es That Con­tra­dict Him To Go Find The One That Does­n’t (Baby­lon Bee) — the best Bee head­line in some time
• The Mir­a­cle Sudoku (Crack­ing The Cryp­tic, YouTube): you’re going to spend 26 min­utes watch­ing a seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble puz­zle get solved. Way more sat­is­fy­ing than I expect­ed.
• Uni­ver­si­ty Reopen­ing (SMBC)
• New study finds vac­cine designed to pro­tect against dis­ease may actu­al­ly pro­tect against dis­ease (Stan­ford Dai­ly): satire
• Study Finds Any­one Who Makes A Dif­fer­ent Deci­sion To Wear A Mask Than You Is A Brain­washed Sheep (Baby­lon Bee)
• Masks Have Advan­tages (Dil­bert)
• What A Gamer Move (Red­dit)
• She Gets Calls And Texts Meant For Elon Musk. Some Are Pret­ty Weird (NPR)
• What A Real Smoke­screen Looks Like (Twit­ter)
• New Study Con­firms Cats Can’t Spread COVID-19, But Would If Giv­en Option (The Needling) 

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Ian McE­wan ‘dubi­ous’ about schools study­ing his books, after he helped son with essay and got a C+ (Han­nah Fur­ness, The Tele­graph): this is a real arti­cle. 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.