Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 268

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.

After large­ly fin­ish­ing this email I learned that Supreme Court Jus­tice Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg died. I expect a TON of ink to be spilled on this and on what­ev­er devel­ops polit­i­cal­ly next week. Keep an eye out for thought­ful com­men­tary and send it my way. Please do pray for her fam­i­ly and for our nation — an already tense elec­tion sea­son just became even more fraught.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. Does the Bible Pass the Bechdel Test? A Data-Dri­ven Look at Women in the Sto­ry of Scrip­ture (John Dyer, per­son­al blog): “So does the Bible pass the Bechdel test? This short answer is: yes, there are scenes where two named women have a con­ver­sa­tion not about a man. The longer answer is more com­plex, but also, I think, rich­er.” This is REALLY well done.
2. Sev­en Dead­ly Sins, One Pres­i­den­tial Elec­tion (Bon­nie Kris­t­ian, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The sev­en dead­ly sins—wrath, sloth, pride, envy, greed, glut­tony, and lust—as we now list them came to us in the West­ern church through Thomas Aquinas in the 13th cen­tu­ry, Pope Gre­go­ry the Great sev­en cen­turies pri­or, and a mys­tic named Eva­grius two cen­turies before that…. The 2020 elec­tion gives occa­sion to deal with them all.”
3. Eco­log­i­cal insights ignored:
   • They Know How to Pre­vent Megafires. Why Won’t Any­body Lis­ten? (Eliz­a­beth Weil, ProP­ub­li­ca): “Aca­d­e­mics believe that between 4.4 mil­lion and 11.8 mil­lion acres burned each year in pre­his­toric Cal­i­for­nia…. We live with a death­ly back­log. In Feb­ru­ary 2020, Nature Sus­tain­abil­i­ty pub­lished this ter­ri­fy­ing con­clu­sion: Cal­i­for­nia would need to burn 20 mil­lion acres — an area about the size of Maine — to resta­bi­lize in terms of fire.”
   • Is Plas­tic Recy­cling A Lie? Oil Com­pa­nies Tout­ed Recy­cling To Sell More Plas­tic (Lau­ra Sul­li­van, NPR): “All of these prob­lems [with recy­cling] have exist­ed for decades, no mat­ter what new recy­cling tech­nol­o­gy or expen­sive machin­ery has been devel­oped. In all that time, less than 10 per­cent of plas­tic has ever been recy­cled. But the pub­lic has known lit­tle about these dif­fi­cul­ties.”
   • Nei­ther arti­cle is giv­ing us much new infor­ma­tion — I have heard knowl­edge­able peo­ple say sim­i­lar things for quite some time now. The fact that we have not changed is dis­ap­point­ing but not sur­pris­ing: politi­cians (like most peo­ple) “lis­ten to sci­ence” when the find­ings of sci­en­tists align with their self-inter­est. The con­tin­ued exis­tence of these and oth­er glar­ing prob­lems in Amer­i­can life make me sad.
4. EXCLUSIVE: Edu­ca­tion Depart­ment opens inves­ti­ga­tion into Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty after pres­i­dent deems racism ’embed­ded’ in the school (Tiana Lowe, Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er): “The Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion has informed Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty that it is under inves­ti­ga­tion fol­low­ing the school pres­i­den­t’s dec­la­ra­tion that racism was ‘embed­ded’ in the insti­tu­tion.”
   • I laughed out loud when I read the head­line.
   • In response: Uni­ver­si­ty state­ment on US Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion let­ter regard­ing nondis­crim­i­na­tion prac­tices (Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty): “It is unfor­tu­nate that the Depart­ment appears to believe that grap­pling hon­est­ly with the nation’s his­to­ry and the cur­rent effects of sys­temic racism runs afoul of exist­ing law.”
5. Sta­tis­tics, lies and the virus: five lessons from a pan­dem­ic (Tim Har­ford, per­son­al blog): “You can appre­ci­ate, I hope, my obses­sion with these two con­trast­ing accounts of sta­tis­tics: one as a trick, one as a tool.… Scep­ti­cism has its place, but eas­i­ly cur­dles into cyn­i­cism and can be weaponised into some­thing even more poi­so­nous than that. “ Very good insights from a British econ­o­mist.
6. Racism Is Real. But Is “Sys­temic Racism”? That Time I Was Pub­lished by Newsweek—For Two Hours (Matthew Franck, Pub­lic Dis­course): “If every­one in gen­er­al but no one in par­tic­u­lar is to blame, the few remain­ing actu­al racists among us are let off the hook. They’re no worse than the rest of us. Of course, unlike all of us who are invit­ed to affirm our col­lec­tive guilt for the ‘sys­tem,’ the tru­ly guilty won’t feel guilty.”
   • The author is the Asso­ciate Direc­tor of the James Madi­son Pro­gram at Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty. This one is includ­ed most­ly for the dra­ma of it being pub­lished and then unpub­lished by Newsweek. There is an unhealthy intel­lec­tu­al cli­mate at many of our major pub­li­ca­tions.
7. When you browse Insta­gram and find for­mer Aus­tralian Prime Min­is­ter Tony Abbot­t’s pass­port num­ber (Alex Hope, per­son­al web­site): “The point of this sto­ry isn’t to say ‘wow Tony Abbott got hacked, what a dum­my’. The point is that if some­one famous can unknow­ing­ly post their board­ing pass, any­one can.” Sur­pris­ing­ly enter­tain­ing and infor­ma­tive.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Day Jobs Don’t Make Any Sense (Robert Mac, YouTube): three and a half min­utes.
• Ran­dom break­out rooms per­fect place to unearth decade-old, nev­er-before-dis­cussed trau­mas (Stan­ford Dai­ly)
• New Net­flix Movie Actu­al­ly Mur­ders Pup­pies To Teach That Mur­der­ing Pup­pies Is Bad (Baby­lon Bee) — the arti­cle is worth read­ing on this one, not just the head­line.
• Net­flix Adds Warn­ing Before ‘Cuties’ That It Is A Prod­uct Of Its Time When Peo­ple Did­n’t Know Any Bet­ter (Baby­lon Bee)
• New Words (Dil­bert)
• Gov­ern­ment (SMBC) — the mouseover text is what took it over the top for me — read the whole thing first then mouseover

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have A (Not So) Sec­u­lar Saint (James K.A. Smith, Los Ange­les Review of Books): “Mill’s lega­cy was effec­tive­ly ‘edit­ed’ by his philo­soph­i­cal and polit­i­cal dis­ci­ples, excis­ing any hint of reli­gious life. One would nev­er know from the canon in our phi­los­o­phy depart­ments, for exam­ple, that Mill wrote an appre­cia­tive essay on ‘The­ism.’” First shared in vol­ume 190.

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.