Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 346

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, vol­ume 346, is the 5^th Franel num­ber.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. Spir­i­tu­al­ly uplift­ing:
   • Fire Upon The Earth (Charles Cha­put, First Things): “Too many peo­ple who claim to be Chris­t­ian sim­ply don’t know Jesus Christ. They don’t real­ly believe in the gospel. They feel embar­rassed by their reli­gion and out of step with the times. They may keep their reli­gion for its com­fort val­ue, or adjust it to fit their doubts. It doesn’t reshape their lives, because it isn’t real. And because it isn’t real, it has no trans­form­ing effect on their behav­ior, no social force, and few pub­lic con­se­quences. Their faith, what­ev­er it once was, is now dead.” THIS IS STRAIGHT FIRE. The excerpt does not do it jus­tice.
   • The Man On The Mid­dle Cross (Alis­tair Begg, YouTube): one and a half min­utes.
   • It’s Fri­day… But Sun­day’s a Com­ing! (YouTube): three and a half min­utes
2. Recalled Expe­ri­ences Sur­round­ing Death: More Than Hal­lu­ci­na­tions? (Neu­ro­science News): “The recalled expe­ri­ences sur­round­ing death are not con­sis­tent with hal­lu­ci­na­tions, illu­sions or psy­che­del­ic drug induced expe­ri­ences, accord­ing to sev­er­al pre­vi­ous­ly pub­lished stud­ies. Instead, they fol­low a spe­cif­ic nar­ra­tive arc involv­ing a per­cep­tion of: (a) sep­a­ra­tion from the body with a height­ened, vast sense of con­scious­ness and recog­ni­tion of death; (b) trav­el to a des­ti­na­tion; © a mean­ing­ful and pur­pose­ful review of life, involv­ing a crit­i­cal analy­sis of all actions, inten­tions and thoughts towards oth­ers; a per­cep­tion of (d) being in a place that feels like “home”, and (e) a return back to life.” The orig­i­nal research: https://nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nyas.14740
3. Why the Past 10 Years of Amer­i­can Life Have Been Unique­ly Stu­pid (Jonathan Haidt, The Atlantic): “The sto­ry of Babel is the best metaphor I have found for what hap­pened to Amer­i­ca in the 2010s, and for the frac­tured coun­try we now inhab­it. Some­thing went ter­ri­bly wrong, very sud­den­ly. We are dis­ori­ent­ed, unable to speak the same lan­guage or rec­og­nize the same truth. We are cut off from one anoth­er and from the past.” This is quite good. Haidt is a social psy­chol­o­gist at NYU and is some­one who seems to be faith-adja­cent: he’s near Chris­tian­i­ty but not there yet.
4. LGBTQ relat­ed
   • What I wish I’d known when I was 19 and had sex reas­sign­ment surgery (Corin­na Cohn, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Surgery unshack­led me from my body’s urges, but the destruc­tion of my gonads intro­duced a dif­fer­ent type of bondage. From the day of my surgery, I became a med­ical patient and will remain one for the rest of my life.” I am impressed that the Wash­ing­ton Post pub­lished this op-ed.
   • How to Make Sense of the New L.G.B.T.Q. Cul­ture War (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “If con­ser­v­a­tives had pre­dict­ed just before Oberge­fell v. Hodges that soon a fifth of young adults would iden­ti­fy as L.G.B.T.Q., promi­nent voic­es would deploy terms like ‘preg­nant per­son’ and ‘men­stru­a­tor’ in place of ‘woman,’ and natal males would be win­ning women’s track and swim­ming com­pe­ti­tions, they would have been treat­ed as hys­ter­ics.” This is a strong essay. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed and worth using up one of your pay­wall access­es.
   • Vic­to­ry: Shawnee State agrees pro­fes­sors can’t be forced to speak con­trary to their beliefs (Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom): “As part of the set­tle­ment, the uni­ver­si­ty has agreed that Meri­wether has the right to choose when to use, or avoid using, titles or pro­nouns when refer­ring to or address­ing stu­dents. Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, the uni­ver­si­ty agreed Meri­wether will nev­er be man­dat­ed to use pro­nouns, includ­ing if a stu­dent requests pro­nouns that con­flict with his or her bio­log­i­cal sex.” In addi­tion, “the uni­ver­si­ty agreed to pay $400,000 in dam­ages and Meriwether’s attor­neys’ fees.”
5. Pan­dem­ic relat­ed
   • The Accu­ra­cy of Author­i­ties (Robin Han­son, blog): “The best esti­mates of a max­i­mal­ly accu­rate source would be very fre­quent­ly updat­ed and fol­low a ran­dom walk, which implies a large amount of back­track­ing. And author­i­ta­tive sources like WHO are often said to be our most accu­rate sources. Even so, such sources do not tend to act this way. They instead update their esti­mates rarely, and are espe­cial­ly reluc­tant to issue esti­mates that seem to back­track. Why?” There is sol­id wis­dom in this post.
   • Faith, Sci­ence, and Fran­cis Collins (Dhruv Khullar, New York­er): “In May, 2021, after help­ing to lead the fed­er­al pan­dem­ic response for more than a year, dur­ing which he woke up most morn­ings at four-thir­ty, Collins escaped for a week­end to a rent­ed barn in Loudoun Coun­ty, Vir­ginia. He brought his gui­tar and a Bible that he has had for decades; hors­es and goats kept him com­pa­ny. Collins gazed out at the blue sky and rolling hills. He wrote, prayed, and ulti­mate­ly decid­ed to leave his post as the direc­tor of the N.I.H. Collins told me that he prays not to ask God to change his cir­cum­stances, but to ask God what he him­self should do.”
   • A Warn­ing From Shang­hai (Jay Bat­tacharya, Bari Weis­s’s Sub­stack): “Yet the soul search­ing [of the attack on me and oth­er researchers] should have caused among pub­lic health offi­cials has large­ly failed to occur. Instead, the les­son seems to be: Dis­sent at your own risk. I do not prac­tice medicine—I am a pro­fes­sor spe­cial­iz­ing in epi­demi­ol­o­gy and health pol­i­cy at Stan­ford Med­ical School. But many friends who do prac­tice have told me how they have cen­sored their thoughts about Covid lock­downs, vac­cines, and rec­om­mend­ed treat­ment to avoid the mob.”
6. The Law that Banned Every­thing (Richard Hana­nia, Sub­stack): “If every­thing is poten­tial­ly ille­gal, and gov­ern­ment does not have the resources to go after every­thing, then the gov­ern­ment basi­cal­ly has arbi­trary pow­er to do what­ev­er it wants under civ­il rights law.” This was an absolute­ly fas­ci­nat­ing inter­view. The inter­vie­wee is a law pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of San Diego.
7. A primer on the Stan­ford bud­get (Tim Macken­zie, Stan­ford Dai­ly) “… this year’s oper­at­ing bud­get says ‘the buffers serve as a finan­cial reserve in the event of an earth­quake or oth­er dis­as­ter.’ In oth­er words, Stan­ford has near­ly $4 bil­lion in a rainy-day fund. In the 2019–2020 bud­get, the last pre-COVID bud­get, Tier I and Tier II Buffers stood at $1.4 bil­lion and $1.0 bil­lion, respec­tive­ly. The buffers actu­al­ly grew by more than a bil­lion dol­lars dur­ing the ongo­ing pan­dem­ic. Mean­while, hun­dreds of work­ers were laid off and sub­con­tract­ed work­ers went months with­out promised pay. Appar­ent­ly, a glob­al pan­dem­ic does not reach the thresh­old of ‘earth­quake or oth­er dis­as­ter’ required to uti­lize finan­cial reserves to resist changes in uni­ver­si­ty oper­a­tions when chal­lenged with mar­ket uncer­tain­ty.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Find­ing A Time To Meet (Dil­bert)
• The Byzan­tine Sco­tist on Twit­ter (Twit­ter): “Don­ald Trump is not a his­tor­i­cal fig­ure but is actu­al­ly a com­pi­la­tion of 4 dis­tinct sources. A thread” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. This is actu­al­ly genius, and the more you know about JEDP and sim­i­lar the­o­ries the fun­nier it is. Worth read­ing if you’ve ever had a pro­fes­sor tell you that the Pen­ta­teuch is unre­li­able.
• Roman Sol­dier Assigned To Guard Tomb Of Some Jew­ish Car­pen­ter Look­ing For­ward To Unevent­ful Week­end (Baby­lon Bee)

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have For the clas­sic selec­tion next week: Against Against Bil­lion­aire Phil­an­thropy (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “I wor­ry the move­ment against bil­lion­aire char­i­ty is on track to dam­age char­i­ty a whole lot more than it dam­ages bil­lion­aires.” This is a very inter­est­ing essay, and he has a follow-up, High­lights From The Com­ments on Bil­lion­aire Phil­an­thropy, which thought­ful­ly responds to crit­i­cisms. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. First shared in vol­ume 213.

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.