Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 332

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. Learn­ing in dou­ble time: The effect of lec­ture video speed on imme­di­ate and delayed com­pre­hen­sion (Mur­phy et al, Applied Cog­ni­tive Psy­chol­o­gy): “We pre­sent­ed par­tic­i­pants with lec­ture videos at dif­fer­ent speeds and test­ed imme­di­ate and delayed (1 week) com­pre­hen­sion. Results revealed min­i­mal costs incurred by increas­ing video speed from 1x to 1.5x, or 2x speed, but per­for­mance declined beyond 2x speed. We also com­pared learn­ing out­comes after watch­ing videos once at 1x or twice at 2x speed. There was not an advan­tage to watch­ing twice at 2x speed but if par­tic­i­pants watched the video again at 2x speed imme­di­ate­ly before the test, com­pared with watch­ing once at 1x a week before the test, com­pre­hen­sion improved. Thus, increas­ing the speed of videos (up to 2x) may be an effi­cient strat­e­gy, espe­cial­ly if stu­dents use the time saved for addi­tion­al study­ing or rewatch­ing the videos, but learn­ers should do this addi­tion­al study­ing short­ly before an exam.” The authors are researchers at UCLA.
2. The pan­dem­ic:
   • Our play­book to fight covid-19 is out­dat­ed. Here are 10 updates for 2022. (Joseph G. Allen, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Pub­lic health’s cred­i­bil­i­ty is on the line now. The pub­lic and busi­ness­es see that pub­lic health guid­ance isn’t keep­ing up with the times, and they’re right.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of envi­ron­men­tal health at Har­vard.
   • Pan-coro­n­avirus “super” vac­cine (Kate­lyn Jetelina, Sub­stack): “This clin­i­cal tri­al has tak­en longer than expect­ed because peo­ple can only par­tic­i­pate if they have not been pre­vi­ous­ly vac­ci­nat­ed or infect­ed with COVID. As you can imag­ine, the pool of eli­gi­ble and will­ing par­tic­i­pants is get­ting small­er and small­er.” The author is an epi­demi­ol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas Health Cen­ter.
   • Covid 12/30: Infin­i­ty War (Zvi Mow­showitz, Less Wrong): “For five weeks, we’ve seen Omi­cron dou­ble and dou­ble again. That which can’t go on for­ev­er, won’t. There aren’t many dou­blings left. This is it. The CDC’s revised guide­lines made it even more clear that we’re going to col­lec­tive­ly make the right deci­sion, let it hap­pen, and hope for the best. It’s not like we have any choice in the mat­ter.” Long and full of time­ly infor­ma­tion.
3. The Miss­ing Data in the Infla­tion Debate (Aus­tan Gools­bee, New York Times): “…the pain of infla­tion may not be shared equal­ly.… In Novem­ber, online prices fell 0.2 per­cent as the C.P.I. rose 0.8 per­cent. In oth­er words: The more some­one shops online rather than in stores, the less infla­tion the indi­vid­ual has faced. Notably, shop­ping online is far more com­mon among high-income peo­ple. And dur­ing the pan­dem­ic the prac­tice has grown more preva­lent.” The author is an econ prof at U Chica­go.
4. Evan­gel­i­cals a Ris­ing Force Inside Argentina’s Pris­ons (Ger­man de los San­tos & Rodri­go Abd, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Many here began ped­dling drugs as teenagers and got stuck in a spi­ral of vio­lence that led some to their graves and oth­ers to over­crowd­ed pris­ons divid­ed between two forces: drug lords and preach­ers. Over the past 20 years, Argen­tine prison author­i­ties have encour­aged, to one extent or anoth­er, the cre­ation of units effec­tive­ly run by evan­gel­i­cal inmates—sometimes grant­i­ng them a few extra spe­cial priv­i­leges, such as more time in fresh air.” An Asso­ci­at­ed Press sto­ry.
5. The secret truth of the stu­dent debt cri­sis (Ryan Coop­er, The Week): “The truth is the ques­tion of whether stu­dent debt should be can­celed is large­ly irrel­e­vant. Most stu­dent debt will be can­celed soon­er or lat­er, because an ever-grow­ing share of bor­row­ers can­not pos­si­bly repay their loans. Ever.”
6. Build­ing Trust Across the Polit­i­cal Divide (April Law­son, Com­ment): “The Blue-inflect­ed tra­di­tion­al empa­thy-build­ing forms of bridge-build­ing have a great deal to rec­om­mend them. But there is a flaw: the implic­it belief under­ly­ing this style of bridg­ing is that we can learn to love each oth­er by see­ing that we are all deeply the same. While true in some sens­es, this miss­es a fun­da­men­tal insight about rela­tion­ship that most of us know from expe­ri­ence: We have the capac­i­ty to build rela­tion­ship through con­flict.” Hon­est­ly describes very real dynam­ics. Almost a year old but I’m just see­ing it now.
7. Musko­gee stu­dent hon­ored for sav­ing 2 lives (Cathy Spauld­ing, Enid News & Eagle): “Davy­on, who attends the 6th and 7th Grade Acad­e­my, used an abdom­i­nal thrust on a school mate who was chok­ing on a bot­tle cap. Lat­er that day, Davy­on res­cued a woman from a burn­ing house.”
   • First, this 6th grad­er deserves huge props. Sec­ond, the sto­ries are actu­al­ly a lit­tle com­i­cal when you read the details. So much so that “saved” might be gen­er­ous on the burn­ing house. Still, boss.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• In Ret­ro­spect, Woman Attend­ing Com­mu­nist-Themed Par­ty Should Have Real­ized There Would­n’t Be Any Food (Baby­lon Bee)
• Gov­ern­ment Spend­ing & Stock Mar­ket (Mo Amer, YouTube): lan­guage warn­ing. Six min­utes. More insight­ful than many seri­ous com­men­ta­tors.
• A Very Stan­ford Solu­tion (Pearls Before Swine)
• You Can’t Find A Birth­day Gift For A 90-Year-Old (Dan Grueter, YouTube): four min­utes.
• Con­found­ing Vari­ables (xkcd)

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have God­speed: The Pace Of Being Known (Vimeo): a stu­dent brought this 30 minute video to my atten­tion and said it made her think about how she should be liv­ing in her dorm. Worth watch­ing as you pre­pare to return to cam­pus. First shared in vol­ume 181.

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.