Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 293

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 293 — a prime num­ber.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. Arti­cle relat­ed to vio­lence against Asian-Amer­i­cans:
   • Reli­gion, Race, and the Atlanta Mur­ders (Ed Stet­zer, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “There are so many threads to this knot that need to be slow­ly untan­gled. There are ele­ments relat­ed to pornog­ra­phy, sex traf­fick­ing, reli­gion, evan­gel­i­cal­ism, South­ern Bap­tists, and many oth­ers just out­side our periph­ery. But nei­ther the com­plex­i­ty of this event nor the trib­al­ism of our cul­tur­al dis­course must not allow us to avoid self-reflec­tion and scruti­ny. We must con­front the real­i­ty that some­thing is hor­ri­bly wrong in our midst when a per­son kills to ‘elim­i­nate’ temp­ta­tion.”
   • We Need to Put a Name to This Vio­lence (Jay Caspi­an Kang, New York Times): “There is no shared his­to­ry between, say, Thai immi­grants who saw images of one of their own attacked in San Fran­cis­co, and the Chi­nese-Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tion of Oak­land alarmed by the assault in Chinatown.Asian-American iden­ti­ty is frac­tured and often inco­her­ent because it assumes kin­ship between peo­ple who do not speak the same lan­guage, and, in many cas­es, dis­like one anoth­er.” This was writ­ten before the Atlanta mur­ders and is dis­cussing the trend wave of vio­lence more gen­er­al­ly.
   • The Mud­dled His­to­ry of Anti-Asian Vio­lence (Hua Hsu, New York­er): “Some have won­dered if these hor­rif­ic, viral videos con­sti­tute a wave, or if they were just ran­dom inci­dents. When your con­cerns have gone unrec­og­nized for decades, it’s under­stand­able why some with­in the Asian-Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty remain so invest­ed in using these high­ly vis­i­ble moments as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to call atten­tion to hate, even if the inci­dents seem more var­ied than that. The wave in ques­tion isn’t just two or three inci­dents.” Also writ­ten before the Atlanta shoot­ings.
   • Racial­iz­ing The Atlanta Mas­sage Par­lor Killings (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “It is strik­ing to see how quick­ly our media has racial­ized the nar­ra­tive of the hor­rif­ic mur­ders at the Geor­gia mas­sage par­lors. From what we know so far, the alleged mur­der­er was a young man tor­ment­ed by his com­pul­sive sex­u­al desires. He vis­it­ed mas­sage par­lors in the past, and went to this one to kill the women he once depend­ed on to grat­i­fy his desires. From all the avail­able evi­dence, these killings were the misog­y­nis­tic act of a sex­u­al­ly depraved man.” As is often the case with Dreher, some of the best mate­r­i­al is in the updates at the end (usu­al­ly a com­ment from a read­er that Dreher thought sig­nif­i­cant).
   • When The Nar­ra­tive Replaces The News (Andrew Sul­li­van, Sub­stack): “Mass killers, if they are moti­vat­ed by big­otry or hate, tend to let the world know… This mass mur­der­er in Atlanta actu­al­ly denied any such motive, and, to repeat myself, there is no evi­dence for it — and that has been true from the very start.”
   • The Media Got It Wrong: Police Cap­tain Did­n’t Say the Atlanta Spa Killer Was Hav­ing a ‘Bad Day’ (Rob­by Soave, Rea­son): “A police offi­cer excus­ing Long’s actions as mere­ly the result of him hav­ing a ‘bad day’ would indeed be con­temptible. But that’s not what Bak­er did. In fact, many of the peo­ple so infu­ri­at­ed about the quote were mis­led by Rupar’s edit of the video. The full video (the rel­e­vant sec­tion starts at about 13:50) makes clear that Bak­er was not pro­vid­ing his own com­men­tary, but rather sum­ma­riz­ing what Long had told the inves­ti­ga­tors.”
2. Third Places and the Hori­zons of Male Friend­ships (Ryan McCormick, Mere Ortho­doxy): “Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, typ­i­cal male friend­ship is dif­fer­ent from typ­i­cal, con­tem­po­rary female friend­ship. A fail­ure to rec­og­nize the dif­fer­ent ways that men and women form inti­mate bonds in friend­ship is what breeds so much con­fu­sion and leads to the mis­di­ag­no­sis of ‘tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty.’” I will add one extra lay­er of diag­no­sis that the author did­n’t address: many in our cul­ture have a hor­ror of male-only spaces. How are we sur­prised to dis­cov­er a dearth of male friend­ships when we view the very exis­tence of mas­cu­line com­mu­ni­ties as evi­dence of some­thing amiss?
3. The False and Exag­ger­at­ed Claims Still Being Spread About the Capi­tol Riot (Glenn Green­wald, Sub­stack): “Despite this alleged bru­tal mur­der tak­ing place in one of the most sur­veilled build­ings on the plan­et, filled that day with hun­dreds of cell­phones tap­ing the events, nobody saw video of it. No pho­tographs depict­ed it. To this day, no autop­sy report has been released. No details from any offi­cial source have been pro­vid­ed.”
   • Fol­low-up: As the Insur­rec­tion Nar­ra­tive Crum­bles, Democ­rats Cling to it More Des­per­ate­ly Than Ever (Glenn Green­wald, Sub­stack): “As I detailed sev­er­al weeks ago, so many of the most har­row­ing and wide­spread media claims about the Jan­u­ary 6 riot proved to be total fab­ri­ca­tions. A pro-Trump mob did not bash Office Bri­an Sicknick’s skull in with a fire extin­guish­er. No pro­test­er brought zip-ties with them as some pre­med­i­tat­ed plot to kid­nap mem­bers of Con­gress (two riot­ers found them on a table inside). There’s no evi­dence any­one intend­ed to assas­si­nate Mike Pence, Mitt Rom­ney or any­one else.”
   • Relat­ed: Two are charged in the assault of a Capi­tol Police offi­cer who died after the Jan. 6 riot. (Katie Ben­ner and Adam Gold­man, New York Times): “The Jus­tice Depart­ment has charged two men in the assault on Bri­an D. Sick­nick, a Capi­tol Police offi­cer who died the day after he fought riot­ers storm­ing the Capi­tol on Jan. 6, accord­ing to a law enforce­ment offi­cial briefed on the case and court doc­u­ments.… It is not clear whether Offi­cer Sick­nick died because of his expo­sure to the spray.”
4. Covid’s Par­ti­san Errors (David Leon­hardt, New York Times): “ ‘Repub­li­cans con­sis­tent­ly under­es­ti­mate risks, while Democ­rats con­sis­tent­ly over­es­ti­mate them.’  …The rea­sons for these ide­o­log­i­cal bias­es aren’t com­plete­ly clear, but they are not shock­ing. Con­ser­v­a­tives tend to be more hos­tile to behav­ior restric­tions and to sci­en­tif­ic research. And lib­er­als some­times over­re­act to social prob­lems.”
5. Tim­ing the SARS-CoV­‑2 index case in Hubei province (Sci­ence, Jonathan Pekar et al):  “Empir­i­cal obser­va­tion through­out the SARS-CoV­‑2 pan­dem­ic has shown the out­sized role of super­spread­ing events in the prop­a­ga­tion of SARS-CoV­‑2, where­in the aver­age infect­ed per­son does not trans­mit the virus. Our results sug­gest the same dynam­ics like­ly influ­enced the ini­tial estab­lish­ment of SARS-CoV­‑2 in humans, as only 29.7% of sim­u­lat­ed epi­demics from the pri­ma­ry analy­sis went on to estab­lish self-sus­tain­ing epi­demics. The remain­ing 70.3% of epi­demics went extinct.… Fur­ther­more, the large and high­ly con­nect­ed con­tact net­works char­ac­ter­iz­ing urban areas seem crit­i­cal to the estab­lish­ment of SARS-CoV­‑2. When we sim­u­lat­ed epi­demics where the num­ber of con­nec­tions was reduced by 50% or 75% (with­out rescal­ing per-con­tact trans­mis­si­bil­i­ty), to reflect emer­gence in a rur­al com­mu­ni­ty, the epi­demics went extinct 94.5% or 99.6% of the time, respec­tive­ly.”
   • This is real­ly inter­est­ing. The researchers are large­ly at UCSD. One impli­ca­tion is that there are a LOT more ani­mal-to-human COVID-like infec­tions that sim­ply nev­er make the leap to becom­ing wide­spread. Kind of like music: there are a ton of great musi­cians who just nev­er catch their big break. With­out super­spread­ers, this kind of pan­dem­ic appears unlike­ly. I hope researchers can find a way to address what­ev­er caus­es some­one to be a super­spread­er.
6. Rais­ing Beef Cat­tle (Tom Blan­ton, Quil­lette): “It is by cher­ry-pick­ing images of the times of con­fine­ment from around the world that the grue­some image of ‘fac­to­ry farms’ is cre­at­ed. Often the images are tak­en from coun­tries that don’t have the human­i­tar­i­an reg­u­la­tions that most West­ern nations have.… If those gen­uine­ly con­cerned for the suf­fer­ing of ani­mals could find it with­in them­selves to rec­og­nize that it is not immoral to slaugh­ter ani­mals humane­ly for food, they would find many allies for the cause of reduc­ing ani­mal suf­fer­ing amongst the peo­ple who raise and work with these ani­mals on a dai­ly basis.”
7. Could It Be… Genes? (Fred­die deBoer, Sub­stack): “This is an arti­cle about how fam­i­ly influ­ences chil­dren with­out a con­sid­er­a­tion of the most direct and pow­er­ful way. The words ‘gene’ and ‘genes’ and ‘genet­ic’ do not appear in this paper. Nei­ther do ‘her­i­ta­ble’ or ‘hered­i­ty’ or ‘hered­i­tary.’ The con­cept of the trans­fer of genet­ic infor­ma­tion from par­ent to off­spring sim­ply does not exist in this men­tal space… in a paper about how fam­i­lies influ­ence the char­ac­ter­is­tics of their chil­dren. I would call this odd, but it’s par for the course in social sci­ence research.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• A Geog­ra­phy of Who Hates Who (The Dai­ly Show, YouTube): three min­utes. Not entire­ly accu­rate, but fair­ly amus­ing.
• St. Patrick: The Musi­cal (Luther­an Satire, YouTube): six min­utes, rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus
• In Edgy Gram­mys Per­for­mance, Ful­ly Clothed Woman Sings Beau­ti­ful Song (Baby­lon Bee)
• Mask Dur­ing Zoom (Dil­bert): it actu­al­ly does feel like this some­times

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have On Obsti­na­cy In Belief (C.S. Lewis, The Sewa­nee Review): this is a reward­ing essay from way back in 1955. (first shared in vol­ume 6)

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.