Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 330

a sur­pris­ing con­cen­tra­tion of med­ical arti­cles this week

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 330, which is the num­ber of ways to put 11 items into groups of 4.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. “What is wrong with physi­cians?” (from the com­ments) (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “There is a wild dis­con­nect between ‘being a physi­cian’ as under­stood by the pub­lic and what you actu­al­ly live.” Well worth read­ing for any­one con­sid­er­ing med school.
  2. On Cards, Cryp­to, and Christ (Pratyush Bud­di­ga, Sub­stack): “All I can remem­ber was singing a song and sud­den­ly feel­ing an inter­nal res­o­nance with­in me, a one­ness with some­thing far greater and more pow­er­ful than any­thing I had ever expe­ri­enced. It took me out of where I was in that small church in Sin­ga­pore and con­nect­ed me with the divine. The sec­ond before I didn’t believe in God. After that moment that felt like a life­time, I knew He was real.” Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
  3. Research: Reli­gious Amer­i­cans Less Like­ly to Divorce (Lyman Stone & Brad Wilcox, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Ear­li­er mar­riage is a known risk fac­tor for divorce. Pre­mar­i­tal cohab­i­ta­tion is too. Since reli­gios­i­ty tends to moti­vate ear­li­er mar­riage but less cohab­i­ta­tion, the effects on divorce are not easy to guess. What we real­ly want to know is: Do reli­gious peo­ple get divorced less? The answer appears to be yes.”
  4. Leaked SoCal hos­pi­tal records reveal huge, auto­mat­ed markups for health­care (David Lazarus, LA Times): “[The nurse’s] screen­shots, tak­en ear­li­er this year, speak for them­selves. What they show are price hikes rang­ing from 575% to 675% being auto­mat­i­cal­ly gen­er­at­ed by the hospital’s soft­ware. The eye-pop­ping increas­es are so rou­tine, appar­ent­ly, the soft­ware even dis­plays the for­mu­la it uses to con­vert rea­son­able med­ical costs to billed amounts that are much, much high­er.… This is sep­a­rate from any addi­tion­al charges for the doc­tor, anes­the­si­ol­o­gist, X‑rays or hos­pi­tal facil­i­ties.” Shared with me by an alum­nus.
  5. Destruc­tion is Still Mutu­al­ly Assured (Fred­die deBoer, Sub­stack): “Do I think it would be good if Rus­sia invad­ed Ukraine? No. Do I think that Rus­sia invad­ing Ukraine would be as bad as a nuclear war between the coun­tries with the two largest nuclear stock­piles? Also no. Not even close, actu­al­ly.”
  6. Rob Hen­der­son: How “Lux­u­ry Beliefs” Hurt the Rest of Us (Bari Weiss, pod­cast). This is a real­ly inter­est­ing inter­view.
  7. Some COVID links:
    • The Phrase “No Evi­dence” Is A Red Flag For Bad Sci­ence Com­mu­ni­ca­tion (Scott Alexan­der, Astral Codex Ten): “Sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tors are using the same term — ‘no evi­dence’ — to mean: 1. This thing is super plau­si­ble, and hon­est­ly very like­ly true, but we haven’t checked yet, so we can’t be sure. 2. We have hard-and-fast evi­dence that this is false, stop repeat­ing this eas­i­ly debunked lie. This is utter­ly cor­ro­sive to any­body trust­ing sci­ence jour­nal­ism.”
      • I found the title con­fus­ing. What the author means is that when­ev­er you see the phrase “no evi­dence” in a head­line you should antic­i­pate an unhelp­ful arti­cle. This comes up often in COVID-relat­ed arti­cles.
    • The CDC’s Flawed Case for Wear­ing Masks in School (David Zweig, The Atlantic): “…the CDC has promised to ‘fol­low the sci­ence’ in its COVID poli­cies. Yet the cir­cum­stances around the Ari­zona study seem to show the oppo­site. Dubi­ous research has been cit­ed after the fact, with­out trans­paren­cy, in sup­port of exist­ing agency guid­ance.”
    • Where I Live, No One Cares About COVID (Matthew Walther, The Atlantic): “…out­side the world inhab­it­ed by the pro­fes­sion­al and man­age­r­i­al class­es in a hand­ful of major met­ro­pol­i­tan areas, many, if not most, Amer­i­cans are lead­ing their lives as if COVID is over, and they have been for a long while.” Maybe not worth using the free pay­wall view unless you’re par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in the top­ic.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Facts Are Not Self‐Interpreting (Twit­ter) — this is a short, sound­less video. Rec­om­mend­ed. First shared in vol­ume 184.

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.

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