Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 300

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 300, which is how many Spar­tans it takes to fend off a Per­sian army.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. When Men Behave Bad­ly — A Review (Rob Hen­der­son, Quil­lette): “Intrigu­ing­ly, men and women con­verge in their answers when asked what per­cent­age of men would be will­ing to com­mit rape. Women esti­mate that about one-third of men would com­mit rape if there were no con­se­quences, and about one-third of men report that they would com­mit rape if they believed they could get away with it.” The author is a PhD can­di­date at Cam­bridge review­ing a book by a pro­fes­sor at UT Austin. Extreme­ly inter­est­ing through­out. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
2. Proof That Polit­i­cal Priv­i­lege Is Harm­ful for Chris­tian­i­ty (Nilay Saiya, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “In a peer-reviewed study pub­lished this month in the jour­nal Soci­ol­o­gy of Reli­gion, my coau­thor and I chal­lenge the per­ceived wis­dom that edu­ca­tion and afflu­ence spell Christianity’s demise. In our sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis of a glob­al sam­ple of 166 coun­tries from 2010 to 2020, we find that the most impor­tant deter­mi­nant of Chris­t­ian vital­i­ty is the extent to which gov­ern­ments give offi­cial sup­port to Chris­tian­i­ty through their laws and poli­cies. How­ev­er, it is not in the way devout believ­ers might expect.”
3. The Redemp­tion of Justin Bieber (Zach Baron, GQ): “And then there is God. If you ask Chance the Rap­per why he and his friend seem so hap­py in an indus­try that tends to grind peo­ple to dust, he will answer with­out hes­i­ta­tion. ‘Both of us, our secret sauce is Jesus,’ Chance says. ‘Justin doesn’t fake the funk. He goes to Jesus with his prob­lems, he goes to Jesus with his suc­cess­es. He calls me just to talk about Jesus.’ ”
4. In Decid­ing Ful­ton v. Philadel­phia, the Supreme Court Should Remem­ber That Fos­ter Care Is for the Chil­dren (James Dwyer, Nation­al Review): “But fos­ter care is not a pub­lic accom­mo­da­tion nor a ser­vice to ‘the pub­lic.’ Chil­dren are not gener­ic goods for sale (like donuts or cups of cof­fee), to which every­one has an equal right. Instead, when the gov­ern­ment is mak­ing deci­sions on behalf of fos­ter chil­dren, it is oblig­at­ed to act only in that child’s best inter­est.” The author is a law prof at William and Mary and this arti­cle is real­ly good.
5. Pan­dem­ic-relat­ed:
   • COVID-19 Rewired Our Brains (Michael Bren­dan Dougher­ty, Nation­al Review): “At some point, the pan­dem­ic — the pro­vi­sion­al and prac­ti­cal judg­ments in favor of cau­tion that can jus­ti­fy restric­tive behav­iors — became an unshake­able moral pur­pose. Actu­al weigh­ing of risks went out the win­dow: There’s a dead­ly dis­ease out there; my actions can con­tribute to the end of the dis­ease or to its spread­ing in per­pe­tu­ity. ” This artic­u­lates some­thing I’ve dim­ly felt. Very good.
   • The Lib­er­als Who Can’t Quit Lock­down (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “But per­son­al deci­sions dur­ing the coro­n­avirus cri­sis are fraught because they seem sym­bol­ic of people’s broad­er val­ue sys­tems. When vac­ci­nat­ed adults refuse to see friends indoors, they’re work­ing through the trau­ma of the past year, in which the bro­ken­ness of America’s med­ical sys­tem was so evi­dent. When they keep their kids out of play­grounds and urge friends to stay dis­tanced at small out­door pic­nics, they are con­tin­u­ing the spir­it of the past year, when civic duty has been expressed through lone­ly asceti­cism. For many peo­ple, this kind of behav­ior is a form of good cit­i­zen­ship. That’s a hard idea to give up.”
   • Believe Sci­ence: Get Vac­ci­nat­ed. Then Relax. (Bari Weiss, Sub­stack): “In oth­er words, once we are stuck inside it is very hard to unstick our­selves. I’m try­ing to remind myself of this truth when I find myself want­i­ng to berate friends who, ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed, look at me with crazy eyes when I sug­gest com­ing over for din­ner. PTSD might be too strong a descrip­tor, but it’s not so far off either.”
   • Data Shows White Evan­gel­i­cals And Catholics More Like­ly to Get Vac­cine Than ‘Nones’ and Gen­er­al Pub­lic (Ryan Burge, Reli­gion Unplugged): “…when the sam­ple is bro­ken down into the three of the largest reli­gious groups: White evan­gel­i­cals, White Catholics and the reli­gious­ly unaf­fil­i­at­ed, some dis­par­i­ties begin to emerge. It’s note­wor­thy that White Chris­tians were sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly to get the vac­cine than the gen­er­al pub­lic between Jan­u­ary and April. In the lat­est wave of the sur­vey, near­ly 60% of White Catholics had been vac­ci­nat­ed and just about half of White evan­gel­i­cals said the same. It was the reli­gious “nones” that were lag­ging far behind, with only 31% indi­cat­ing that they had received one dose.” That is def­i­nite­ly not the impres­sion I’ve got­ten from the media, but it is the impres­sion I’ve got­ten from my friends. The author is a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at East­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty.
   • Patents are Not the Prob­lem! (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Patents are not the prob­lem. All of the vac­cine man­u­fac­tur­ers are try­ing to increase sup­ply as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. Bil­lions of dos­es are being produced–more than ever before in the his­to­ry of the world. Licens­es are wide­ly avail­able.… Plas­tic bags are a big­ger bot­tle­neck than patents. The US embar­go on vac­cine sup­plies to India was pre­cise­ly that the Biden admin­is­tra­tion used the DPA to pri­or­i­tize things like biore­ac­tor bags and fil­ters to US sup­pli­ers and that meant that India’s Serum Insti­tute was hav­ing trou­ble get­ting its pro­duc­tion lines ready for Novavax. Cure­Vac, anoth­er poten­tial mRNA vac­cine, is also find­ing it dif­fi­cult to find sup­plies due to US restric­tions (which means sup­plies are short every­where).” Loose­ly relat­ed, but such a glo­ri­ous rant I had to share it.
   • The ori­gin of COVID: Did peo­ple or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan? (Nicholas Wade, Bul­letin of the Atom­ic Sci­en­tists): “Sci­ence is sup­pos­ed­ly a self-cor­rect­ing com­mu­ni­ty of experts who con­stant­ly check each other’s work. So why didn’t oth­er virol­o­gists point out that the Ander­sen group’s argu­ment was full of absurd­ly large holes? Per­haps because in today’s uni­ver­si­ties speech can be very cost­ly. Careers can be destroyed for step­ping out of line. Any virol­o­gist who chal­lenges the community’s declared view risks hav­ing his next grant appli­ca­tion turned down by the pan­el of fel­low virol­o­gists that advis­es the gov­ern­ment grant dis­tri­b­u­tion agency.” Very thor­ough, very read­able, very per­sua­sive. There is a real chance humans are respon­si­ble for COVID and we need to inves­ti­gate it.
6. How the Pen­ta­gon Start­ed Tak­ing U.F.O.s Seri­ous­ly (Gideon Lewis-Kraus, New York­er): “Despite the fact that most adults car­ry around excep­tion­al­ly good cam­era tech­nol­o­gy in their pock­ets, most U.F.O. pho­tos and videos remain mad­den­ing­ly indis­tinct, but the for­mer Pen­ta­gon offi­cial implied that the gov­ern­ment pos­sess­es stark visu­al doc­u­men­ta­tion; Eli­zon­do and Mel­lon have said the same thing.”
7. I Became a Moth­er at 25, and I’m Not Sor­ry I Didn’t Wait (Eliz­a­beth Bru­enig, New York Times): “But what of hav­ing chil­dren — or get­ting mar­ried, for that mat­ter — before estab­lish­ing one­self? That is: What to say to the young per­son who might con­sid­er those kinds of com­mit­ments if not for the final­i­ty of it all, the sense that she may be mak­ing some­body else before know­ing who she her­self real­ly is?”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Enhance (SMBC)
• Cre­ative Alpha­bet Teach­ing (Twit­ter)

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Weight of Glo­ry (C.S. Lewis): It was orig­i­nal­ly preached as a ser­mon and then print­ed in a the­ol­o­gy mag­a­zine. Relat­ed: see the C. S. Lewis Doo­dle YouTube chan­nel – it’s real­ly good! (first shared in vol­ume 36)

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.