Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 288

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.

This is vol­ume 288. The num­ber 288 is inter­est­ing in that it can also be writ­ten 4! â‹… 3! â‹… 2! â‹… 1!

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. How Long Can COVID Cas­es Keep Plum­met­ing? (David Wal­lace-Wells, NY Mag­a­zine): “It’s insane. It’s total­ly crazy. And so, you’re absolute­ly right, we have cho­sen that the best way for­ward is to live in a state of uncer­tain­ty rather than giv­ing peo­ple all the tools and infor­ma­tion, even if it isn’t per­fect. It turns out that in many cas­es we’d rather not engage with that knowl­edge at all than have any sources of error in what­ev­er it is we’re doing.“An inter­view with a Har­vard epi­demi­ol­o­gist. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed, although be warned that it will frus­trate you with how rea­son­able and yet under­im­ple­ment­ed his sug­ges­tions are. The title is poor­ly cho­sen.
   • The Vac­cine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired. (Dan Bar­ry, New York Times): “The Texas doc­tor had six hours. Now that a vial of Covid-19 vac­cine had been opened on this late Decem­ber night, he had to find 10 eli­gi­ble peo­ple for its remain­ing dos­es before the pre­cious med­i­cine expired. In six hours. [He did and for] his actions, Dr. Gokal was fired from his gov­ern­ment job and then charged with steal­ing 10 vac­cine dos­es worth a total of $135 — a shun-wor­thy mis­de­meanor that sent his name and mug shot rock­et­ing around the globe.” The doc­tor comes across as a hero and the pros­e­cu­tor as a vil­lain. Not even a real vil­lain — car­toon vil­lain. I am actu­al­ly a lit­tle worked up about this.
2. 10 Lessons of an MIT Edu­ca­tion (Gian-Car­lo Rota, Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty): “At cer­tain lib­er­al arts col­leges, sports appear to be more impor­tant than class­room sub­jects, and with good rea­son. A sport may be the only train­ing in ‘know­ing how’-in demon­strat­ing cer­ti­fi­able pro­fi­cien­cy-that a stu­dent under­takes at those col­leges. At MIT, sports are a hob­by (how­ev­er pas­sion­ate­ly pur­sued) rather than a cen­tral focus because we offer a wide range of absorb­ing ‘know­ing how’ activ­i­ties.” Appar­ent­ly one of an MIT pro­fes­sor’s advisees archived his fac­ul­ty web­site after his death.
   • Relat­ed: Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught (Gian-Car­lo Rota, Notices Of The AMS): “You have to keep a dozen of your favorite prob­lems con­stant­ly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dor­mant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve prob­lems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and peo­ple will say, ‘How did he do it? He must be a genius!’ ” This link is a PDF.
3. With a Star Sci­ence Reporter’s Purg­ing, Mob Cul­ture at The New York Times Enters a Strange New Phase (Quil­lette edi­to­r­i­al): “So what we’re left with is the spec­ta­cle of an acclaimed reporter being purged not for malev­o­lent actions, nor even malev­o­lent intent, but rather for mak­ing a cer­tain kind of sound. This is an impor­tant depar­ture from ordi­nary mob­bings because, even in their most dog­mat­ic form, the­o­ries of social jus­tice gen­er­al­ly are at least nom­i­nal­ly con­cerned with the improve­ment of human moral­i­ty, which, cru­cial­ly, is insep­a­ra­ble from the ques­tion of intent. McNeil, on the oth­er hand, is being judged accord­ing to a the­o­ry of wrong­do­ing that presents cer­tain words or phras­es as evil by their mere utter­ance, as with a Har­ry Pot­ter spell.” This is very clev­er­ly writ­ten. Also, extreme­ly cor­rect.
   • The Jour­nal­is­tic Tat­tle­tale and Cen­sor­ship Indus­try Suf­fers Sev­er­al Well-Deserved Blows (Glenn Green­wald, Sub­stack): “Just as the NSA is obsessed with ensur­ing there be no place on earth where humans can com­mu­ni­cate free of their spy­ing eyes and ears, these jour­nal­is­tic hall mon­i­tors can­not abide the idea that there can be any place on the inter­net where peo­ple are free to speak in ways they do not approve.”
4. All In One (John Tasioulas, Aeon): “If, for exam­ple, human rights are demands that are gen­er­al­ly high-pri­or­i­ty in nature, such that it’s sel­dom if ever jus­ti­fied to over­ride them, then we lose our grip on that impor­tant idea if we start includ­ing under the head­ing of ‘human rights’ valu­able objec­tives – for exam­ple, access to a high-qual­i­ty inter­net con­nec­tion – that don’t plau­si­bly enjoy that kind of pri­or­i­ty.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. The author is a philoso­pher at Oxford.
5. Ravi Zacharias Hid Hun­dreds of Pic­tures of Women, Abuse Dur­ing Mas­sages, and a Rape Alle­ga­tion (Daniel Sil­li­man and Kate Shell­nutt, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “A 12-page report released Thurs­day by Ravi Zacharias Inter­na­tion­al Min­istries (RZIM) con­firms abuse by Zacharias at day spas he owned in Atlanta and uncov­ers five addi­tion­al vic­tims in the US, as well as evi­dence of sex­u­al abuse in Thai­land, India, and Malaysia.” The full report is here (pdf).
6. We Need Bal­ance When It Comes To Gen­der Dys­phor­ic Kids. I Would Know (Scott New­gent, Newsweek): “So if we are now wak­ing up to the fact that gen­der dys­pho­ria is over-sim­plis­ti­cal­ly con­flat­ed with trans­gen­derism, med­ical treat­ments have under­stud­ied long-term con­se­quences, some are get­ting rich off trans­gen­der med­i­cine and de-tran­si­tion­ers are speak­ing up in sky­rock­et­ing num­bers, why are we only mak­ing it eas­i­er for chil­dren to unques­tion­ing­ly tran­si­tion? We now have the oblig­a­tion to work togeth­er to slow trans med­ical­iza­tion of minors until they are adults and have the capac­i­ty to tru­ly under­stand the life­long con­se­quences of tran­si­tion­ing. As a for­mer les­bian and cur­rent trans man, I main­tain this is not trans­pho­bic.”
7. How To Be Pro-Life in Joe Biden’s Amer­i­ca (David French, The Dis­patch): “There remains no bar­ri­er for pro-life Amer­i­cans to love their neigh­bor and direct­ly sup­port moth­ers and chil­dren who face dire need. There is even an oppor­tu­ni­ty to enact leg­is­la­tion that can fur­ther ease the fears of young moth­ers and increase their con­fi­dence that they can raise and sup­port a child… Pol­i­tics do mat­ter, cer­tain­ly, but there’s a deep­er truth. Chris­tians don’t need to win Sen­ate races to love their neigh­bors.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Genie In A Bot­tle (Pearls Before Swine)
• CDC: ‘Just Because You Got The Vac­cine Does­n’t Mean You Should Go Out­side Or Ever Expe­ri­ence Joy Again’ (Baby­lon Bee): “The new­ly revised guide­lines indi­cate that peo­ple who have not yet been vac­ci­nat­ed should stay home, masked, in a bub­ble, for­ev­er. Those who have been vac­ci­nat­ed should do the exact same thing, except they are allowed to have a smug look on their faces for being vac­ci­nat­ed. Except you can’t see the smug look. Because of the mask.”
• Samer Rec­og­nized A Fart Online (Defec­tor): “This after­noon in Slack, our work cha­t­room, Patrick shared a cute lit­tle viral video, as we do from time to time. None of us were pre­pared for what hap­pened next.” This gets extreme­ly fun­ny the more you get into it. It helps if you imag­ine this as a group chat at one of the South Car­oli­na hous­es.
• Valen­tine’s Day (Pearls Before Swine)
• Hunt­ing For Big­foot Is Eas­i­er Than It Looks (Brent Ter­hune, YouTube): five min­utes
• Yeki Joo Does A Card Trick (Penn & Teller Fool Us, YouTube): eight 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 The Impor­tance of Stu­pid­i­ty in Sci­en­tif­ic Research (Mar­tin A. Schwartz, Jour­nal of Cell Sci­ence): “At some point, the con­ver­sa­tion turned to why she had left grad­u­ate school. To my utter aston­ish­ment, she said it was because it made her feel stu­pid. After a cou­ple of years of feel­ing stu­pid every day, she was ready to do some­thing else. I had thought of her as one of the bright­est peo­ple I knew and her sub­se­quent career sup­ports that view. What she said both­ered me. I kept think­ing about it; some­time the next day, it hit me. Sci­ence makes me feel stu­pid too. It’s just that I’ve got­ten used to it. So used to it, in fact, that I active­ly seek out new oppor­tu­ni­ties to feel stu­pid.” The author is a pro­fes­sor at Yale. First shared in vol­ume 221.

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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.