Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 285

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.

Fun fact: 285 is the sum of con­sec­u­tive squares (1+4+9+16…+81).

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. We Will Get to Herd Immu­ni­ty in 2021…One Way or Anoth­er (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “By July it will all be over. The only ques­tion is how many peo­ple have to die between now and then? Youyang Gu, whose pro­jec­tions have been among the most accu­rate, projects that the Unit­ed States will have reached herd immu­ni­ty by July, with about half of the immu­ni­ty com­ing from vac­ci­na­tions and half from infec­tions. Long before we reach herd immu­ni­ty, how­ev­er, the infec­tion and death rates will fall. Gu is pro­ject­ing that by March infec­tions will be half what they are now and by May about one-tenth the cur­rent rate. The drop will catch peo­ple by sur­prise just like the increase. We are not good at expo­nen­tials.” I hope this is right!
   • Relat­ed: Unit­ed King­dom vs Unit­ed States Vac­cine Fight (Poli­math, Sub­stack): “The Unit­ed States has vac­ci­nat­ed more indi­vid­u­als by far than any oth­er coun­try in the world. One in four of all COVID vac­ci­na­tions in the world have tak­en place in the Unit­ed States. The three coun­tries that are doing the best per-capi­ta (Israel, the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, and Bahrain) are all incred­i­bly small and dense.” This is short and encour­ag­ing.
2. Failed Trump Prophe­cies Offer a Les­son in Humil­i­ty (Craig Keen­er, Chris­tian­i­ty Today):  “The failed prophe­cies of Don­ald Trump’s reelec­tion may have dam­aged the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the US inde­pen­dent Charis­mat­ic wing of evan­gel­i­cal­ism more than any event since the tel­e­van­ge­list scan­dals of the 1980s. They have led some out­siders to crit­i­cize Chris­tian­i­ty itself and right­ly call us to introspection.“Keener is one of my favorite NT schol­ars.
3. Two Worlds: So Much Pros­per­i­ty, So Much Skep­ti­cism (Mor­gan Housel, Col­lab­o­ra­tive Fund): “I want to tell you two of the biggest eco­nom­ic sto­ries that aren’t get­ting enough atten­tion. One is that house­hold finances might be in the best shape they’ve ever been in. Ever. That might sound crazy, and it’s easy to over­look because of the sec­ond sto­ry: Covid has dumped kerosene on wealth inequal­i­ty in ways we’ve yet to ful­ly grasp.”
4. The Case For Wood­en Pews (Yuval Levin, Deseret Mag­a­zine): “It is not exact­ly a cri­sis of belief in the teach­ings of tra­di­tion­al reli­gion [that under­mines faith], but rather a cri­sis of con­fi­dence in the insti­tu­tions that claim to embody them. In oth­er words, Amer­i­cans aren’t los­ing their faith in God. Eighty-sev­en per­cent of the pub­lic expressed belief in God last year in Gallup’s fig­ures, which is rough­ly the lev­el poll­sters have found for many decades. What Amer­i­cans do have trou­ble believ­ing, how­ev­er, is that our insti­tu­tions — our church­es, sem­i­nar­ies, reli­gious schools and char­i­ties — remain capa­ble of form­ing trust­wor­thy peo­ple who actu­al­ly exhib­it the integri­ty they preach.” Sol­id, although the title is mis­lead­ing.
5. Only Bib­li­cal Peace­mak­ing Resolves Racial and Polit­i­cal Injus­tice (Justin Giboney, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “In 2020, the pan­dem­ic forced Amer­i­cans to dis­tance our­selves phys­i­cal­ly. Our pol­i­tics, iden­ti­ties, and world­views forced us fur­ther apart too. We watch the same occur­rences and walk away not only with dif­fer­ent opin­ions, but with a dif­fer­ent set of facts. And yet, through social media, we’ve bridged our divides just enough to antag­o­nize one anoth­er.” High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. The author is pres­i­dent of the AND Cam­paign.
6. What Chris­t­ian Cit­i­zens Owe Gov­ern­ment Lead­ers (George P. Wood, Influ­ence Mag­a­zine): “In this new year, with a new pres­i­den­tial admin­is­tra­tion, let us renew our com­mit­ment to pray­ing for our gov­ern­ment offi­cials, to shar­ing the gospel with them, to obey­ing the law and respect­ing the law­givers, and to hold­ing them account­able while giv­ing them our good exam­ple! These are the basic duties of Chris­t­ian cit­i­zen­ship.” This is an excel­lent sum­ma­ry. Dis­claimer: the author is an acquain­tance of mine.
7. Rise of the zom­bie ants: why hype is creep­ing into sci­en­tif­ic papers. (Gem­ma Con­roy, Nature Index): “The review found that near­ly half of these stud­ies uncov­ered incon­sis­ten­cies between abstracts and their full text, with 19% cit­ing major dis­crep­an­cies. Two stud­ies cit­ed exam­ples where non-sig­nif­i­cant results were framed in over­ly opti­mistic terms in the abstracts.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• There’s Only One Option: Kill Pablo Esco­bar’s Hip­pos (Arden Dier, News­er): “Some see cas­tra­tion as an alter­na­tive. But cas­tra­tion is chal­leng­ing, not least because male hip­pos have retractable testes. Indeed, one cam­paign to cas­trate hip­pos found it could only suc­cess­ful­ly do so to one hip­po per year.”
• Errors (Pearls Before Swine)
• ‘Skynet Is A Pri­vate Com­pa­ny, They Can Do What They Want,’ Says Man Get­ting Curb-Stomped By Ter­mi­na­tor (Baby­lon Bee)
• Nurs­ery Rhymes Are Absolute­ly Ridicu­lous. (Mike Good­win, YouTube): four min­utes
• Couch Escape (Penn & Teller Fool Us, YouTube): sev­en and a half min­utes
• Go For The Jug­gler (Penn & Teller Fool Us, YouTube): nine and a half min­utes

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have A Study Guide For Human Soci­ety, Part 1 (Tan­ner Greer, The Scholar’s Stage): “…there are two meth­ods [for find­ing good his­to­ry books I find use­ful]. The first is to Google syl­labi. If you are inter­est­ed in the his­to­ry of the Roman Repub­lic, Google ‘Roman Repub­lic syl­labus’ and see what pops up. Read a few cours­es and see what books are includ­ed. Alter­na­tive­ly, if you just read a book you thought was par­tic­u­lar­ly good, put its title into Google and then the word ‘syl­labus’ after­wards and see what oth­er read­ings col­lege pro­fes­sors have paired with that book in their cours­es.”  First shared in vol­ume 217.

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.