Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 348

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.

348 is the sum of four con­sec­u­tive primes: 79 + 83 + 89 + 97 = 348.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. “Extra­or­di­nary claims require extra­or­di­nary evi­dence”… And oth­er stu­pid state­ments (C. Michael Pat­ton, Cre­do House): “ ‘Extra­or­di­nary claims require extra­or­di­nary evi­dence.’ While this may seem like sound rea­son­ing at first glance, it fails in sig­nif­i­cant ways. Try using this phrase and switch out the mod­i­fi­er. What if I said, ‘phys­i­cal claims require phys­i­cal evi­dence.’ Or what about this: ‘mirac­u­lous claims require mirac­u­lous evi­dence’? How about ‘canine claims require canine evi­dence’? Of course, you would see the fal­la­cy right away. The equiv­o­ca­tion cre­ates an appar­ent pro­fun­di­ty that mis­di­rects our sens­es. In every case claims just need evi­dence.”
2. In Praise of the Bor­ing, Uncool Church (Brett McCrack­en, Gospel Coali­tion): “It seems almost every ‘leader of Chris­t­ian cool’—whether a tat­tooed celebri­ty pas­tor or a buzzy night­club church—flames out and los­es its foot­ing fair­ly quick­ly. Which is not at all sur­pris­ing. By their very nature, things that are cool are ephemer­al. What’s fash­ion­able is, by the neces­si­ty of the rules of fash­ion, quick­ly obso­lete. This is one of many rea­sons why chas­ing cool is a fool’s errand for church­es and pas­tors…”
3. Unex­pect­ed neg­a­tive impacts of COVID:
   • Report: 26 Mil­lion Amer­i­cans Stopped Read­ing the Bible Reg­u­lar­ly Dur­ing COVID-19 (Adam MacIn­nis, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Plake thinks the dra­mat­ic change shows how close­ly Bible reading—even inde­pen­dent Bible reading—is con­nect­ed to church atten­dance. When reg­u­lar ser­vices were inter­rupt­ed by the pan­dem­ic and relat­ed health man­dates, it impact­ed not just the cor­po­rate bod­ies of believ­ers but also indi­vid­u­als at home.”
   • Researchers: COVID-19, Israel-Gaza war fueled anti­semitism (Lau­rie Kell­man, AP News): “The study com­piled data from 22 coun­tries. French author­i­ties, for instance, report­ed a 36% jump in anti­se­mit­ic inci­dents involv­ing phys­i­cal vio­lence, from 44 to 60. The Unit­ed King­dom saw a 78% jump in inci­dents of assault, from 97 to 173. The num­ber of anti­se­mit­ic inci­dents in Cana­da rose 54%, from 173 to 266, the report said.… [In Amer­i­ca] The Anti-Defama­tion League count­ed 2,717 anti­se­mit­ic inci­dents of assault, harass­ment and van­dal­ism in 2021, a 34% increase over the pre­vi­ous year. It was the high­est num­ber since the New York City-based group began track­ing such inci­dents in 1979.”
4. Red Flags for Faith-Based Lib­er­ty in Hong Kong (Susan Crab­tree, Real Clear Pol­i­tics): “Under Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping, all reli­gions have faced per­se­cu­tion.… For sev­er­al years, the Chris­t­ian church in Hong Kong was large­ly spared. But recent actions tak­en against Hong Kong’s Chris­t­ian church­es are chip­ping away at the reli­gious free­dom the city has enjoyed since the British estab­lished it as a colony in the ear­ly 1840s.”
5. Tips From the Top: Do the Best Per­form­ers Real­ly Give the Best Advice? (David E. Levari, Daniel T. Gilbert & Tim­o­thy D. Wil­son, Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence): “Although advice from the best-per­form­ing advi­sors was no more ben­e­fi­cial than advice from oth­er advi­sors, par­tic­i­pants believed that it had been—and they believed this despite the fact that they were told noth­ing about their advi­sors’ per­for­mance. Why? The best per­form­ers did not give bet­ter advice, but they did give more of it, and par­tic­i­pants appar­ent­ly mis­took quan­ti­ty for qual­i­ty.” The researchers are at Har­vard and UVA. I did not read the arti­cle itself because I found the abstract instant­ly plau­si­ble.
6. John Adams’ Fear Has Come to Pass (David French, The Dis­patch): “…the most polar­ized Amer­i­cans are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly white and col­lege-edu­cat­ed on the left and dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly white and retired on the right. The peo­ple dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly dri­ving polar­iza­tion in the Unit­ed States are not oppressed minori­ties, but rather some of the most pow­er­ful, most priv­i­leged, wealth­i­est peo­ple who’ve ever lived. They enjoy more free­dom and oppor­tu­ni­ty than vir­tu­al­ly any pri­or gen­er­a­tion of humans, all while liv­ing under the pro­tec­tive umbrel­la of the most pow­er­ful mil­i­tary in the his­to­ry of the plan­et.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
7. A Polit­i­cal Sci­en­tist on Ukraine (Mike Mazarr, Twit­ter): “Very struck by recent analy­sis + report­ing that high­lights a risk–highly uncer­tain but not so far wide­ly discussed–of a sig­nif­i­cant esca­la­tion of the Ukraine war in com­ing weeks. What it means, and what it implies for US pol­i­cy, are not at all clear.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Man who nev­er want­ed to ride in fight­er jet acci­den­tal­ly ejects him­self (San Jose Mer­cury News): “On take­off, the pilot and pas­sen­ger were sub­ject­ed to 4 Gs. Lev­el­ing off around 2,500 feet, that dropped to neg­a­tive 0.6 Gs, a feel­ing of weight­less­ness. At that point, said a trans­lat­ed ver­sion of the report, ‘the insuf­fi­cient­ly strapped and total­ly sur­prised pas­sen­ger’ grabbed for the near­est han­dle — which turned out to acti­vate the ejec­tor seat.”
• A bridge that pre­tends to crum­ble under you! (Red­dit)
• Mir­ror Card Mag­ic (Jeki Yoo, YouTube): one minute

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Real Prob­lem at Yale Is Not Free Speech (Natalia Dashan, Pal­la­di­um): “The cam­pus ‘free speech’ debate is just a side-effect. So are debates about ‘diver­si­ty’ and ‘inclu­sion.’ The real prob­lems run much deep­er. The real prob­lems start with Mar­cus and me, and the masks we wear for each oth­er…. In a world of masks and façades, it is hard to con­vey the truth. And this is how I end­ed up offer­ing a sand­wich to a man with hun­dreds of mil­lions in a for­eign bank account.” I liked this one a lot. First shared in vol­ume 215.

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.