Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 260

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. Chi­na’s Xin­jiang Province a Moral Quandary for the West (Michael Bren­dan Dougher­ty, Nation­al Review): “The attempt to place mod­ern slaves in the sup­ply chain of West­ern lux­u­ry goods is an attempt to impli­cate and moral­ly geld West­ern nations who would crit­i­cize or pun­ish the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty for its crimes.”
2. USS Uni­ver­si­ty (Scott Gal­loway, per­son­al blog): “There is a dan­ger­ous con­fla­tion of the dis­cus­sion about K‑12 and uni­ver­si­ty reopen­ings. The two are stark­ly dif­fer­ent. There are strong rea­sons to reopen K‑12, and there are stronger rea­sons to keep uni­ver­si­ties shut­tered.“ The author is a busi­ness prof at NYU. Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
   • Relat­ed: Col­leges Are Get­ting Ready to Blame Their Stu­dents (Julia Mar­cus and Jes­si­ca Gold, The Atlantic): “Stu­dents will get infect­ed, and uni­ver­si­ties will rebuke them for it; cam­pus­es will close, and stu­dents will be blamed for it. Rely­ing on the self-con­trol of young adults, rather than deploy­ing the pub­lic-health infra­struc­ture need­ed to con­trol a dis­ease that spreads eas­i­ly among peo­ple who live, eat, study, and social­ize togeth­er, is not a safe reopen­ing strategy—and yelling at stu­dents for their dan­ger­ous behav­ior won’t help either.” The authors are pro­fes­sors at Har­vard and Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, respec­tive­ly. 
   • Vague­ly relat­ed: Your State’s COVID Num­bers In Con­text (Poli­Math, Sub­stack): “Head­lines are aller­gic to con­text and the high-pop­u­la­tion states get all the atten­tion because they show big num­bers (because they are big states). When a small­er state gets any report­ing, it is entire­ly out­side any con­text. In Wash­ing­ton, it was report­ed that we had 754 new cas­es and 7 new deaths. Is that a lot? How does that com­pare to oth­er states?” Very detailed and insight­ful. 
3. Coro­n­avirus, Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ries, and the Ninth Com­mand­ment (David French, The Dis­patch): “Chris­t­ian teach­ing about our lives in our work­places is not pri­mar­i­ly about how to obtain a pro­mo­tion, how to invest our mon­ey, or how to start a busi­ness. In oth­er words, it’s not about the objec­tives of eco­nom­ic engage­ment, though those objec­tives are impor­tant. Instead, the focus is on min­is­ter­ing to col­leagues, cul­ti­vat­ing faith in adver­si­ty, and gen­er­al­ly learn­ing how to be salt and light even in some­times hos­tile or intim­i­dat­ing envi­ron­ments. [But we don’t do this with pol­i­tics.]” Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus, this one was real­ly good.
4. 8 facts about reli­gion and gov­ern­ment in the Unit­ed States (Dalia Fah­my, Pew Research Cen­ter): “While the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion does not men­tion God, every state con­sti­tu­tion ref­er­ences either God or the divine. God also appears in the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence, the Pledge of Alle­giance and on U.S. cur­ren­cy.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
5. Where is the nation­al news cov­er­age of cur­rent surge of van­dal­ism at Catholic church­es? (Clemente Lisi, GetRe­li­gion): “Who’s respon­si­ble for this anti-Catholic vio­lence? Is it Mus­lim ter­ror­ists? Neo-Nazis? Left-wing rad­i­cals? Are these iso­lat­ed inci­dents or part of a coor­di­nat­ed attack? We don’t know because the elite news­rooms with the tal­ent and resources to han­dle this kind of inves­ti­ga­tion are miss­ing in action, in this case.… One has to won­der how these inci­dents would have been cov­ered had they been mosques? What about pub­lic schools? Or say Planned Par­ent­hood facil­i­ties?”
   • Relat­ed: Roman Catholics: The Orig­i­nal Abo­li­tion­ists (Paul Ken­gor, Cri­sis Mag­a­zine): “Last week­end, one of Serra’s mis­sion church­es in Cal­i­for­nia went up in flames, with the cause of the fire not yet known. In the last few days, a stat­ue of Mary was set on fire in Boston and anoth­er was van­dal­ized in Brook­lyn (among oth­ers). As to what Mary has to do with the mod­ern anti-stat­ue-racism move­ment is anyone’s guess. Nonethe­less, if the issue is (right­ly so) a just con­dem­na­tion of slav­ery and racism, and if one is gen­uine­ly seek­ing accu­rate his­to­ry, then today’s activists ought to look back in admi­ra­tion at the impres­sive track record of the Roman Catholic Church.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at Grove City Col­lege. The his­to­ry of the Catholic Church on the issue of slav­ery is bet­ter than the Protes­tant church.
6. What You Need To Know About The Bat­tle of Port­land (Robert Evans, Belling­cat): “I report­ed on the fight­ing in Mosul back in 2017, and what hap­pened that night in the streets of Port­land was, of course, not near­ly as bru­tal or dan­ger­ous as actu­al com­bat. Yet it was about as close as you can get with­out using live ammu­ni­tion.“ A sig­nif­i­cant qual­i­fi­er at the end of that sen­tence, inter­est­ing nonethe­less.
   • Portland’s protests were sup­posed to be about black lives. Now, they’re white spec­ta­cle. (E.D. Mondainé, Wash­ing­ton Post): “We wel­come our white broth­ers and sis­ters in this strug­gle. In fact, we need them. But I must ask them to remain humbly attuned to the oppor­tu­ni­ty of this moment — and to reflect on whether any actions they take will tru­ly help estab­lish jus­tice, or whether they are sim­ply for show.” The author is pres­i­dent of the Port­land branch of the NAACP.
   • Out of Port­land tear gas, an appari­tion emerges, cap­tur­ing the imag­i­na­tion of pro­test­ers (Los Ange­les Times): “She emerged as an appari­tion from clouds of tear gas as fed­er­al agents fired pep­per balls at angry pro­test­ers in the ear­ly Sat­ur­day dark­ness. A woman wear­ing noth­ing but a black face mask and a stock­ing cap strode toward a dozen heav­i­ly armed agents attired in cam­ou­flage fatigues, lined up across a down­town Port­land street.” Port­land gonna port.
   • Tan­gen­tial­ly Relat­ed: Amer­i­can Crime and the Bal­ti­more Mod­el (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “Ide­al­ists may hope these changes will elim­i­nate police bru­tal­i­ty as com­mu­ni­ties find bet­ter ways to pre­vent crime than deter­rence and force. But on the hunch that human nature hasn’t changed, that isn’t going to hap­pen. Crim­i­nals, fear­ing less, will con­tin­ue to prey on oth­ers. Police, fear­ing more, will hold back from doing their jobs. Those with means to leave their neigh­bor­hoods, will. Those with­out the means will suf­fer.”
7. A new intel­li­gentsia is push­ing back against wok­e­ness (Batya Ungar-Sar­gon, For­ward): “The anti-woke Black intel­li­gentsia is lead­ing a counter-cul­ture to a woke hege­mo­ny and the online cul­ture that pop­u­lar­ized it. But their views hew more close­ly to those of most Black Amer­i­cans than the new antiracism. Polling has long indi­cat­ed that white lib­er­als express rad­i­cal­ly more lib­er­al views on racial and social issues than their Black and Lati­no neigh­bors.” Very inter­est­ing inter­views.
   • Relat­ed: The Left is Now the Right (Matt Taib­bi, Sub­stack): “Things we once despised about the right have been ampli­fied a thou­sand-fold on the flip. Con­ser­v­a­tives once tried to leg­is­late what went on in your bed­room; now it’s the left that obsess­es over sex­u­al cod­i­cils, not just for the bed­room but every­where. Right-wingers from time to time made head­lines cam­paign­ing against every­thing from The Last Temp­ta­tion of Christ to ‘Fuck the Police,’ though we laughed at the idea that Ice Cube made cops lit­er­al­ly unsafe… today Matt Ygle­sias sign­ing a group let­ter with Noam Chom­sky is con­sid­ered threat­en­ing.”
   • Relat­ed: When Wokes and Racists Actu­al­ly Agree on Every­thing (Ryan Long Com­e­dy, YouTube) : two min­utes of bril­liance

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Pan­dem­ic Per­spec­tive (Pearls Before Swine)
• Spe­cial omelettes (Imgur)
• Points for Not Cheat­ing On Me (Tay­lor Tom­lin­son, YouTube): two min­utes
• Bread and Cir­cus­es (SMBC)
• Man Who Just Reads News And Social Media All Day Unsure Why He’s So Depressed (Baby­lon Bee)
• Camp­fire Hab­it­able Zone (xkcd)

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Dis­solv­ing the Fer­mi Para­dox (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “Imag­ine we knew God flipped a coin. If it came up heads, He made 10 bil­lion alien civ­i­liza­tion. If it came up tails, He made none besides Earth. Using our one para­me­ter Drake Equa­tion, we deter­mine that on aver­age there should be 5 bil­lion alien civ­i­liza­tions. Since we see zero, that’s quite the para­dox, isn’t it? No. In this case the mean is mean­ing­less. It’s not at all sur­pris­ing that we see zero alien civ­i­liza­tions, it just means the coin must have land­ed tails. SDO say that rely­ing on the Drake Equa­tion is the same kind of error.”  First shared in vol­ume 159.

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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.