Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 345

spicy links 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 345, which I am told is the aver­age num­ber of squirts from a cow’s udder need­ed to pro­duce a gal­lon of milk. I have not ver­i­fied this claim.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Grow­ing Reli­gious Fer­vor in the Amer­i­can Right: ‘This Is a Jesus Move­ment’ (Eliz­a­beth Dias and Ruth Gra­ham, New York Times): “…ele­ments of Chris­t­ian cul­ture have long been present at polit­i­cal ral­lies. But wor­ship, a sacred act show­ing devo­tion to God expressed through move­ment, song or prayer, was large­ly reserved for church. Now, many believ­ers are import­ing their wor­ship of God, with all its inten­si­ty, emo­tion and ambi­tions, to their polit­i­cal life.”
    • At the same time: “The sheer dom­i­nance of wor­ship music with­in 21st-cen­tu­ry evan­gel­i­cal cul­ture means that the genre has been used out­side church set­tings by the con­tem­po­rary left as well. ‘Way Mak­er,’ for exam­ple, was sung at some demon­stra­tions for racial jus­tice in the sum­mer of 2020.”
    • I have com­pli­cat­ed feel­ings. I like see­ing wor­ship as part of all of life. I don’t like see­ing wor­ship get hijacked in pur­suit of oth­er agen­das. Pol­i­tics can be idol­a­trous enough with­out ACTUAL WORSHIP SONGS being in the mix.
  2. “Rus­sia can­not afford to lose, so we need a kind of a vic­to­ry”: Sergey Karaganov on what Putin wants (Bruno Maçães, The New States­man): “…Rus­sia can­not afford to ‘lose’, so we need a kind of a vic­to­ry. And if there is a sense that we are los­ing the war, then I think there is a def­i­nite pos­si­bil­i­ty of esca­la­tion. This war is a kind of proxy war between the West and the rest – Rus­sia being, as it has been in his­to­ry, the pin­na­cle of ‘the rest’ – for a future world order. The stakes of the Russ­ian elite are very high – for them it is an exis­ten­tial war.”
    • I haven’t seen many per­spec­tives from the Russ­ian side. Quite inter­est­ing.
  3. Arti­cles eval­u­at­ing the con­tem­po­rary sex­u­al eth­ic:
    • Why ‘Con­sent’ Isn’t Enough for a Sex­u­al Eth­ic (Tre­vix Wax, The Gospel Coali­tion): “The sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion isn’t work­ing. The utopia promised by blow­ing up old moral stric­tures hasn’t arrived. What’s more, in some cas­es the sit­u­a­tion seems worse.”
    • Straight Peo­ple Need Bet­ter Rules for Sex (Chris­tine Emba, New York Times): “Get­ting rid of the old rules and replac­ing them with the norm of con­sent was sup­posed to make us hap­py. Instead, many peo­ple today feel a bit … lost.”
      • Lost. A good word, that. Bet­ter than the author knows.
  4. LGBTQ-relat­ed
    • Explain­ing the LGBT Explo­sion (Bryan Caplan, Sub­stack): “While almost all stud­ies find that genet­ics mat­ters, vir­tu­al­ly none asserts that the her­i­tabil­i­ty of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion is even close to 100%. Ergo, homo­sex­u­al­i­ty must, to some extent, be ‘acquired.’ While that hard­ly implies that any spe­cif­ic mech­a­nism — such ‘recruit­ment’ or ‘media depic­tions’ — works, the idea that homo­sex­u­al­i­ty can be spread is the unher­ald­ed sci­en­tif­ic con­sen­sus.”
      • This seems triv­ial­ly true to me, but I am sure it is a sur­prise (even an offen­sive sur­prise) to some peo­ple.
    • Cal­i­for­nia city to give uni­ver­sal income to trans­gen­der, non­bi­na­ry res­i­dents regard­less of earn­ings. (Hous­ton Keene, Yahoo News): “Trans­gen­der res­i­dents in Palm Springs, Cal­i­for­nia are eli­gi­ble to receive a UBI of up to $900 per month sole­ly for iden­ti­fy­ing as trans­gen­der or non­bi­na­ry — no strings attached.”
    • Who Is Look­ing Out For Gay Kids? (Andrew Sul­li­van, Sub­stack): “This unavoid­able ten­sion between mes­sages that are good for trans kids and those that are good for gay kids is absent from the debate — in part because the woke con­flate both expe­ri­ences into the entire­ly ide­o­log­i­cal con­struct of being LGBTQIA++. But no one is LGBTQIA++. It’s lit­er­al­ly impos­si­ble. And the dif­fer­ence between the gay and trans expe­ri­ence is vast, espe­cial­ly when it comes to bio­log­i­cal sex.”
    • Researchers Found Puber­ty Block­ers And Hor­mones Didn’t Improve Trans Kids’ Men­tal Health At Their Clin­ic. Then They Pub­lished A Study Claim­ing The Oppo­site (Jesse Sin­gal, Sub­stack): “I want­ed to dou­ble-check this to be sure, so I reached out to one of the study authors. They want­ed to stay on back­ground, but they con­firmed to me that there was no improve­ment over time among the kids who went on hor­mones or block­ers.”
      • It’s like there is a con­cert­ed effort to make me a cranky mid­dle-aged man who does­n’t trust the media. This arti­cle is long and prob­a­bly only worth read­ing in detail if you knew you want­ed to read it all as soon as you saw the head­line.

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 Tourist Jour­nal­ism Ver­sus the Work­ing Class (Kevin Mims, Quil­lette): “To university-educated media pro­fes­sion­als like Car­ole Cad­wal­ladr, James Blood­worth, and John Oliv­er, an Ama­zon ware­house must seem like the Black Hole of Cal­cut­ta. But I’ve done low-paying man­u­al labor for most of my work­ing life, and rarely have I appre­ci­at­ed a job as much as my role as an Ama­zon asso­ciate.” I learned many things from this arti­cle. First shared in vol­ume 212, with a fol­low-up shared the next week: How (and Why) to KISSASS (Kevin Mims, Quil­lette): “…if you’re not a mem­ber of the pro­fes­sion­al class, the key to get­ting your per­son­al essays pub­lished in promi­nent pub­li­ca­tions is KISSASS—Keep It Short, Sad, And Sim­ple, Stu­pid.”

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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