Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 328

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 328, which is the year that one of my favorite church lead­ers became a bish­op: Athana­sius.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. The Supreme Court recon­sid­ers abor­tion:
   • The Supreme Court seems poised to uphold Mississippi’s abor­tion law. (Adam Lip­tak, New York Times): “The Supreme Court seemed poised on Wednes­day to uphold a Mis­sis­sip­pi law that bans abor­tions after 15 weeks of preg­nan­cy, based on some­times tense and heat­ed ques­tion­ing at a momen­tous argu­ment in the most impor­tant abor­tion case in decades. Such a rul­ing would be flat­ly at odds with what the court has said was the cen­tral hold­ing of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 deci­sion that estab­lished a con­sti­tu­tion­al right to abor­tion and pro­hib­it­ed states from ban­ning the pro­ce­dure before fetal via­bil­i­ty, or around 23 weeks. But the court’s six-mem­ber con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty seemed divid­ed about whether to stop at 15 weeks, for now at least, or whether to over­rule Roe entire­ly, allow­ing states to ban abor­tions at any time or entire­ly.”
   • For a free, non­pay­walled analy­sis check out Major­i­ty of court appears poised to roll back abor­tion rights (Amy Howe, SCO­TUS­blog)
   • Why Roe Will Fall And Oberge­fell Won’t (Andrew Sul­li­van, Sub­stack): “In Roe, the Court tried to jump­start a con­sen­sus and failed to secure it, with pub­lic opin­ion very sim­i­lar now to where it was half a cen­tu­ry ago. In Oberge­fell, the Court wait­ed until there was major­i­ty sup­port, which arrived, accord­ing to Gallup, in 2011, and the Court then val­i­dat­ed a still-grow­ing soci­etal con­sen­sus four years lat­er.”
2. Low­er­ing the Vot­ing Age (J. Budziszews­ki, per­son­al blog): “Peo­ple who dis­cuss low­er­ing the vot­ing age – not only those for it but also those against – assume that it would mean a trans­fer of polit­i­cal influ­ence to the young. That is absurd. It would mean no such thing. Although the very young are often very sure of their opin­ions and con­vinced that they have made up their own minds, they lack the matu­ri­ty to form their minds inde­pen­dent­ly. So to low­er the vot­ing age would not mean increas­ing the polit­i­cal influ­ence of the young. It would only mean increas­ing the polit­i­cal clout of those who have influ­ence through the young.”
   • That’s a real­ly good point I had­n’t con­sid­ered. The author is a pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy and of gov­ern­ment at UT Austin.
3. Horse Troughs, Hot Tubs and Hash­tags: Bap­tism Is Get­ting Wild (Ruth Gra­ham, New York Times): “Con­tem­po­rary evan­gel­i­cal bap­tisms are often rau­cous affairs. Instead of sub­dued hymns and mur­murs, think roar­ing mod­ern wor­ship music, fist pumps, tears and bois­ter­ous cheer­ing. There are pho­tog­ra­phers, self­ie sta­tions and hash­tags for social media. One church in Texas calls its reg­u­lar mass bap­tism event a ‘plunge par­ty.’ ”
   • This is an inter­est­ing arti­cle most­ly for how inter­est­ing utter­ly nor­mal things can seem to NY Times read­ers.
4. She set out to save her daugh­ter from fen­tanyl. She had no idea what she would face on the streets of San Fran­cis­co (Heather Knight, San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle): “I asked Jes­si­ca if she thought she would ever leave San Fran­cis­co. ‘It’s like a vor­tex,’ she said. ‘I want to get out of here. But why the f— would I leave here if I have every­thing I need giv­en to me? It might be enabling or it might be keep­ing you in a cycle, but at least you can sur­vive,’ she con­tin­ued. ‘That’s bet­ter than a lot of places.’ ”
   • The wages of sin is death. What a gut-punch of a sto­ry.
5. Race Pan­ic! Stan­ford inves­ti­gates “cords with loops that may rep­re­sent noos­es” (Maxwell Mey­er, Stan­ford Review): “Call­ing out and address­ing racism? No, these Stan­ford admin­is­tra­tors are com­mit­ted to invent­ing racism. Though, I must hand it to them: Dean Hicks and her ‘insti­tu­tion­al equi­ty’ side­kick Mr. Dunk­ley might not real­ize it, but there is a beau­ti­ful, almost poet­ic irony to the tim­ing of their email. They rushed to inform Stan­ford stu­dents of an alleged race inci­dent on the very day that the crim­i­nal tri­al of Jussie Smol­lett, the great­est of all race hoax­ers, began in Chica­go. That lit­tle coin­ci­dence is the cher­ry on top of this giant farce.”
   • Mey­er’s take is, as far as I can tell, entire­ly cor­rect. If those loops looked at all like noos­es we’d have pho­tos.
6. Team builds first liv­ing robots—that can repro­duce (Joshua Brown, Uni­ver­si­ty of Ver­mont press release): “Some peo­ple may find this exhil­a­rat­ing. Oth­ers may react with con­cern, or even ter­ror, to the notion of a self-repli­cat­ing biotech­nol­o­gy. For the team of sci­en­tists, the goal is deep­er under­stand­ing.”
7. The Busi­ness of Extract­ing Knowl­edge from Aca­d­e­m­ic Pub­li­ca­tions (Markus Strass­er, per­son­al blog): “I had to wrap my head around the fact that close to noth­ing of what makes sci­ence actu­al­ly work is pub­lished as text on the web. Research ques­tions that can be answered log­i­cal­ly through just read­ing papers and con­nect­ing the dots don’t require a biotech corp to be formed around them. There’s much less log­ic and deduc­tion hap­pen­ing than you’d expect in a sci­en­tif­ic dis­ci­pline.”
   • Long and poor­ly for­mat­ted, but with an inter­est­ing core idea. Empha­sis in orig­i­nal.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Adam Rain­er is the only per­son in his­to­ry that has been classed as a dwarf and a giant. In 1918, when Adam was 18 years old, his height was mea­sured at 3’ 7.9” tall. But by the time Adam was 31, his height had grown to a stag­ger­ing 7′1″. (Red­dit)
• Moral­i­ty (SMBC): the author means this as a slam on the­ism, but I think his core insight is cor­rect. He just points it in the wrong direc­tion.
• Hik­ing (Dil­bert)
• Laid-Off Jour­nal­ist Try­ing To Learn To Code Hor­ri­fied To Dis­cov­er The Code Is Bina­ry (Baby­lon Bee)
• Stan­ford Divorce Pact results announced (Sea­mus Allen, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “Luck­i­ly, the Stan­ford Divorce Pact offers a bet­ter way. It match­es you up with the least com­pat­i­ble per­son on cam­pus, so you can skip right to the bit­ter fight­ing and resent­ment.”

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Elisha and the She‐bears (Peter J Williams, Twit­ter): an insight­ful Twit­ter thread about a dis­turb­ing OT sto­ry. The author is the War­den of Tyn­dale House at Cam­bridge. First shared in vol­ume 179.

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.