Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 289

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 289, which is a Fried­man num­ber because 289 = (8 + 9)²

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. Why will the impor­tant thinkers of the future be reli­gious ones? (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Fourth, if you live amongst the intel­li­gentsia, being reli­gious is one active form of rebel­lion. Rebel­lious­ness is gross­ly cor­re­lat­ed with intel­lec­tu­al inno­va­tion, again even if the vari­ance of qual­i­ty increas­es.” Cowen is not reli­gious him­self.
2. Book Review: The Cult Of Smart (Scott Alexan­der, Astral Codex Ten): “DeBoer recalls hear­ing an immi­grant moth­er proud­ly describe her old­er kid’s achieve­ments in math, sci­ence, etc, “and then her younger son ran by, and she said, off­hand, ‘This one, he is maybe not so smart.’ ” DeBoer was orig­i­nal­ly shocked to hear some­one describe her own son that way, then real­ized that he would­n’t have thought twice if she’d dis­missed him as unath­let­ic, or bad at music. Intel­li­gence is con­sid­ered such a basic mea­sure of human worth that to dis­miss some­one as unin­tel­li­gent seems like con­sign­ing them into the out­er dark­ness.”
   • Nor­mal­ly the best thing about Alexan­der’s blog is his book reviews. This one was just okay (smart and well-writ­ten but not astound­ing) and then all of a sud­den he turned his rant up to 11. Hang in until you reach the phrase “child prison.” If you’re not sold at that point, stop read­ing.
3. The “Major­i­ty-Minor­i­ty” Myth (Andrew Sul­li­van, Sub­stack): “Most demo­graph­ic esti­mates of the ‘white’ pop­u­la­tion are based on the Cen­sus def­i­n­i­tion: ‘non-His­pan­ic white.’ But what of ‘His­pan­ic whites’ — those whose lin­eage may come from South or Latin Amer­i­ca in eth­nic­i­ty but who also iden­ti­fy racial­ly and social­ly as white? If you include them in this cat­e­go­ry, Amer­i­ca remains two-thirds ‘white’ all the way through 2060 and beyond.” A fas­ci­nat­ing read.
4. ‘Hor­ri­ble’: Wit­ness­es recall mas­sacre in Ethiopi­an holy city (Cara Anna, Asso­ci­at­ed Press): “Bod­ies with gun­shot wounds lay in the streets for days in Ethiopia’s holi­est city. At night, res­i­dents lis­tened in hor­ror as hye­nas fed on the corpses of peo­ple they knew. But they were for­bid­den from bury­ing their dead by the invad­ing Eritre­an sol­diers.… some 800 peo­ple were killed that week­end at the church and around the city.”
5. The Dou­ble­thinkers (Natan Sha­ran­sky with Gil Troy, Tablet Mag­a­zine):  “Step by lib­er­at­ing step, I was run­ning toward free­dom. By the time I was impris­oned in 1977, I had been free for at least four years. As thrilling as it was to be released from prison after nine long years in 1986, leav­ing the prison of dou­ble­think years ear­li­er made me even more euphor­ic.” The author has had quite the life — begin­ning as a sci­en­tist in Sovi­et Rus­sia, becom­ing a dis­si­dent, and then even­tu­al­ly reach­ing Israel and becom­ing a politi­cian.
   • Relat­ed: Fir­ing Actors for Being Con­ser­v­a­tive Is Anoth­er Hol­ly­wood Black­list (Jonathan Chait, New York Mag­a­zine): “What’s most strik­ing about the news cov­er­age of Carano’s defen­es­tra­tion is the utter absence of any scruti­ny of her employ­er or her (now-for­mer) agency. The tone of the report­ing sim­ply con­veys her posts as though they were a series of pet­ty crimes, the pun­ish­ment of which is inevitable and self-evi­dent­ly jus­ti­fied. The prin­ci­ple that an actor ought to be fired for express­ing unsound polit­i­cal views has sim­ply fad­ed into the back­ground.”
   • Also relat­ed: Gina Cara­no and Crowd-Sourced McCarthy­ism (Bari Weiss, newslet­ter): “Things have got­ten so ridicu­lous so quick­ly — Bon Appetit is cur­rent­ly going back and edit­ing insuf­fi­cient­ly sen­si­tive recipes in what they call (I kid you not) an ‘archive repair effort’ — that my base­line assump­tion is that 99 per­cent of can­cel­la­tions are unwar­rant­ed. In oth­er words, peo­ple are los­ing their jobs and their rep­u­ta­tions not for vio­lat­ing gen­uine taboos but for sim­ple mis­takes, minor sins or absolute non­sense.”
   • And a dif­fer­ent relat­ed sto­ry:  Whistle­blow­er at Smith Col­lege Resigns Over Racism (Bari Weiss, Sub­stack): “Under the guise of racial progress, Smith Col­lege has cre­at­ed a racial­ly hos­tile envi­ron­ment in which indi­vid­ual acts of dis­crim­i­na­tion and hos­til­i­ty flour­ish. In this envi­ron­ment, people’s worth as human beings, and the degree to which they deserve to be treat­ed with dig­ni­ty and respect, is deter­mined by the col­or of their skin.”  
6. ‘You Are One Step Away from Com­plete and Total Insan­i­ty’ (David French, The Dis­patch): “This has been a dif­fi­cult newslet­ter to write. I’ve had to con­front my own neg­li­gence. I’m a Chris­t­ian writer and jour­nal­ist, and I paid insuf­fi­cient atten­tion to Thompson’s ini­tial claims. I was only vague­ly aware of her alle­ga­tions at the time, and had I dug down into the sto­ry, it would have been obvi­ous that Zacharias’s account had seri­ous prob­lems. It is no excuse to say that I can’t cov­er every­thing. I should have cov­ered this. I’m ter­ri­bly sor­ry I did not.”
   • Relat­ed: The Wreck­age of Ravi Zacharias (Rusell Moore, newslet­ter): “Your sal­va­tion and dis­ci­ple­ship are not depen­dent on whether the preach­er from whom you heard the gospel is gen­uine, but rather on whether the gospel itself is gen­uine. It is. Preda­tors often move for­ward by hid­ing behind mim­ic­ked truth. Preda­to­ry film­mak­ers pro­ceed by learn­ing how to make good films. Preda­to­ry politi­cians go for­ward by hon­ing polit­i­cal skills. Fraud­u­lent reli­gious lead­ers often ped­dle false doc­trine, but some of them also traf­fic in true doc­trines by which they have not per­son­al­ly been trans­formed. Yes, wolves often come with false doc­trine. But that does not mean that wolves are lim­it­ed to the flocks that tol­er­ate false doc­trine. In infil­trat­ing a sheep pen, a wolf will come in the skin of a sheep, not that of a goat.”
   • Also relat­ed: Ravi Zacharias, Rich Mullins, and a Raga­muf­fin Lega­cy (Esther O’Reil­ly, Patheos): “As I was reflect­ing on all this recent­ly, my mind went back to anoth­er fig­ure who was a ‘celebri­ty Chris­t­ian’ in his own way, yet attained this sta­tus reluc­tant­ly, almost by acci­dent. This fig­ure also had a mag­net­ic appeal, also had a lucra­tive and pop­u­lar min­istry, and also used his plat­form to address the chal­lenges of the Chris­t­ian walk. He also spoke often about sin, grace, moral puri­ty and spir­i­tu­al integri­ty, while wrestling with pri­vate sin. I’m speak­ing about Chris­t­ian singer-song­writer Rich Mullins…” Rich Mullins is actu­al­ly one of my heroes.
7. Essen­tial­ly Fer­tile: Notes Toward a Land Eth­ic (Jacque­lyn Lee, First Things): “What­ev­er one’s opin­ion about cli­mate change—true, false, man-made, nat­ur­al course of events, the most acute prob­lem human­i­ty faces, left­ist uni­corn, etc.—it’s unde­ni­able that the aver­age Amer­i­can is estranged from the land. That the earth is humanity’s sole source of food and water is as inescapable as ‘male and female he cre­at­ed them.’ And just as con­ser­v­a­tives insist that with­out a right­ly ordered sex­u­al eth­ic soci­ety will be in dis­ar­ray, so should we insist that with­out a right­ly ordered ‘land eth­ic’ soci­ety is unsus­tain­able.” I was not sure what to expect as I began read­ing this arti­cle and was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Social Iso­la­tion (Dil­bert)
• Lent (Pearls Before Swine)
• Apple tweaks syringe emo­ji to be less graph­ic amid vac­cine roll­out (Kaya Yuri­eff, CNN):  “Elim­i­nat­ing the blood from the syringe emo­ji makes it more appro­pri­ate to rep­re­sent Covid-19 vac­ci­na­tion, said Jere­my Burge, the chief emo­ji offi­cer of Emo­ji­pedia, an online emo­ji dic­tio­nary.”
• Dog­bert Gets Green­land (Dil­bert)
• Bears found sleep­ing under Ten­nessee home after gas leak (James Leg­gate, Fox News): “Util­i­ty work­ers check­ing on a report­ed gas leak in Ten­nessee over the week­end were sur­prised when they crawled under the house and found ‘the ample caboose of a very large snooz­ing bear.’ ”
• Sec­ond Strike (SMBC)

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have How To Ask Your Men­tors For Help (Derek Sivers): this is super-short and very good. Excerpt­ing it would ruin it. Read the whole thing. First shared in vol­ume 224.

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.