Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 351

this week’s news was full of stuff I did not like

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 the 351st install­ment. 351 is, I am told, the small­est num­ber such that it and its sur­round­ing num­bers are all prod­ucts of 4 or more primes (in the case of 351=3·3·3·13).

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. My Col­lege Stu­dents Are Not OK  (Jonathan Malesic, New York Times): “High­er edu­ca­tion is now at a turn­ing point. The accom­mo­da­tions for the pan­dem­ic can either end or be made per­ma­nent. The task won’t be easy, but uni­ver­si­ties need to help stu­dents rebuild their abil­i­ty to learn. And to do that, every­one involved — stu­dents, fac­ul­ties, admin­is­tra­tors and the pub­lic at large — must insist on in-per­son class­es and high expec­ta­tions for fall 2022 and beyond.” The author has a PhD in reli­gious stud­ies and was a tenured the­ol­o­gy prof, but now teach­es writ­ing at anoth­er uni­ver­si­ty. His per­son­al jour­ney seems inter­est­ing.
  2. MIT, Har­vard sci­en­tists find AI can rec­og­nize race from X‑rays — and nobody knows how (Hiawatha Bray, Boston Globe): “Ghas­se­mi and her col­leagues remain baf­fled, but she sus­pects it has some­thing to do with melanin, the pig­ment that deter­mines skin col­or. Per­haps X‑rays and CT scan­ners detect the high­er melanin con­tent of dark­er skin, and embed this infor­ma­tion in the dig­i­tal image in some fash­ion that human users have nev­er noticed before. It’ll take a lot more research to be sure.”
  3. Pan­dem­ic news, not great this week:
    • The Covid Capit­u­la­tion (Eric Topol, Sub­stack): “To recap, we have a high­ly unfa­vor­able pic­ture of: (1) accel­er­at­ed evo­lu­tion of the virus; (2) increased immune escape of new vari­ants; (2) pro­gres­sive­ly high­er trans­mis­si­bil­i­ty and infec­tious­ness; (4) sub­stan­tial­ly less pro­tec­tion from trans­mis­sion by vac­cines and boost­ers; (5) some reduc­tion on vaccine/booster pro­tec­tion against hos­pi­tal­iza­tion and death; (6) high vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty from infec­tion-acquired immu­ni­ty only; and (7) like­li­hood of more nox­ious new vari­ants in the months ahead” The author is a pro­fes­sor of mol­e­c­u­lar med­i­cine at the Scripps Insti­tute.
    • Per­ma­nent Pan­dem­ic (Justin E. H. Smith, Harper’s Mag­a­zine): “That the polit­i­cal is always biopo­lit­i­cal, in at least this gen­er­al sense, may be a fact that recedes from view in those rare moments when things are func­tion­ing smooth­ly. At such times, the var­i­ous doc­u­ments that gov­ern­ments make us fill out and sign, or fill out on our behalf when we are born, mar­ried, arrest­ed, or dead; the var­i­ous licens­es we get renewed; and the accred­i­ta­tions we col­lect come to appear as ends in them­selves rather than as part of a vast appa­ra­tus that lim­its what we can do with our own bod­ies.” The author is a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Paris.
    • The new Covid equi­lib­ri­um (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “I know many of you like to say ‘No worse than the com­mon cold!’ Well, the thing is…the com­mon cold impos­es con­sid­er­able costs on the world. Imag­ine a new com­mon cold, which you catch a few times a year, with some sliv­er of the pop­u­la­tion get­ting some form of Long Covid. One 2003 esti­mate sug­gest­ed that the com­mon cold costs us $40 bil­lion a year, and in a typ­i­cal year I don’t get a cold even once.… Even under mild con­cep­tions of cur­rent Covid, it is entire­ly plau­si­ble to believe that the costs of Covid will run into the tril­lions over the next ten years.”
    • With Plung­ing Enroll­ment, a ‘Seis­mic Hit’ to Pub­lic Schools (Shawn Hubler, New York Times): “No over­rid­ing expla­na­tion has emerged yet for the wide­spread drop-off. But experts point to two poten­tial caus­es: Some par­ents became so fed up with remote instruc­tion or mask man­dates that they start­ed home-school­ing their chil­dren or send­ing them to pri­vate or parochial schools that large­ly remained open dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. And oth­er fam­i­lies were thrown into such tur­moil by pan­dem­ic-relat­ed job loss­es, home­less­ness and school clo­sures that their chil­dren sim­ply dropped out.”
  4. Abor­tion-relat­ed:
    • Roe draft is a reminder that reli­gion’s role in pol­i­tics is old­er than the repub­lic (Ron Elv­ing, NPR): “The ques­tion aris­es: Since when did so much of our pol­i­tics have to do with reli­gion? And the answer is, since the begin­ning – and even before. Reli­gion was a dri­ving and deter­mi­na­tive force in pol­i­tics on this con­ti­nent even before the ‘Unit­ed States’ had been formed.And it has been brought to bear in wide­ly dis­parate caus­es. Reli­gion has been invoked to con­demn slav­ery and seg­re­ga­tion, to ban alco­hol and the teach­ing of evo­lu­tion­ary sci­ence and to bol­ster anti-war move­ments.”
    • When an Abor­tion Is Pro-Life (Matthew Lof­tus, New York Times): “I view my work as a physi­cian as part of a bat­tle against bro­ken­ness in the phys­i­cal health of my patients, a bat­tle whose tide was turned when Jesus Christ rose from the dead. The Bible teach­es that our phys­i­cal bod­ies will one day be res­ur­rect­ed as Christ’s was, mys­te­ri­ous­ly trans­formed but some­how also con­tin­u­ous with our present flesh and blood — like a seed is trans­formed into a plant. I teach and work along­side local health pro­fes­sion­als so that we can care holis­ti­cal­ly for peo­ple in need, fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of Jesus, the heal­er.… Here, I think the excep­tion proves the rule: End­ing a child’s life before birth is so wrong that only sav­ing anoth­er life could be worth it.” This is a remark­able op-ed.
    • A cri­tique of the reli­gious pro-life move­ment: The Reli­gious Right and the Abor­tion Myth (Ran­dall Balmer, Politi­co): “White evan­gel­i­cals in the 1970s did not mobi­lize against Roe v. Wade, which they con­sid­ered a Catholic issue. They orga­nized instead to defend racial seg­re­ga­tion in evan­gel­i­cal insti­tu­tions, includ­ing Bob Jones Uni­ver­si­ty. To sug­gest oth­er­wise is to per­pe­trate what I call the abor­tion myth, the fic­tion that the gen­e­sis of the Reli­gious Right — the pow­er­ful evan­gel­i­cal polit­i­cal move­ment that has reshaped Amer­i­can pol­i­tics over the past four decades — lay in oppo­si­tion to abor­tion.”
    • But actu­al­ly no: What every­one gets wrong about evan­gel­i­cals and abor­tion (Gillian Frank & Neil J. Young, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Twelve years before the Roe deci­sion, a young woman wrote to the lead­ing U.S. evan­ge­list, the Rev. Bil­ly Gra­ham, with the fol­low­ing ques­tion: ‘Through a young and fool­ish sin, I had an abor­tion. I now feel guilty of mur­der. How can I ever know for­give­ness?’ Gra­ham, whose syn­di­cat­ed news­pa­per col­umn ‘My Answer’ reached mil­lions of Amer­i­cans, replied: ‘Abor­tion is as vio­lent a sin against God, nature, and one’s self as one can com­mit.’ Gra­ham telegraphed evan­gel­i­cals’ unease with abor­tion, which would become increas­ing­ly polit­i­cal in the com­ing years.”
    • Real­ly actu­al­ly no: There’s been some dis­cus­sion about how evan­gel­i­cals in the U.S. didn’t start oppos­ing abor­tion until the late 1970s – sev­er­al years after Roe v. Wade in 1973. There’s a lot more nuance to that his­to­ry. (Andrew Lewis, Twit­ter): an inter­est­ing thread from a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cincin­nati.
    • As in strong­ly no: Ballmer also mis­rep­re­sent­ed the legal aspects of this sto­ry (Jon White­head, Twit­ter)
  5. How Mary White­house Waged War on Pornog­ra­phy (Jonathon Van Maren, First Things): “White­house was mocked for pre­dict­ing that sex­u­al mes­sag­ing would soon tar­get chil­dren; it is now the norm for LGBT con­tent to appear on children’s TV shows and in sto­ry­books. She warned that films such as Bernar­do Bertolucci’s Last Tan­go in Paris crossed a line; it was lat­er revealed that the rape scene in the movie deeply trau­ma­tized the scene’s young actress, who received vile treat­ment at the hands of old­er men. On the big cul­tur­al ques­tions, White­house was right and her crit­ics were wrong.”
  6. Nao­mi Judd: ‘It’s scary to show that part of you that is the not so smart, not so togeth­er side’ (Ter­ry Mat­ting­ly, GetRe­li­gion): “Nao­mi Judd thought she under­stood the ties that bind coun­try-music stars and their audi­ence – then one aggres­sive fan went and joined the Pen­te­costal church the Judd fam­i­ly called home. ‘It real­ly bur­dened me,’ said Judd, after sign­ing hun­dreds of her ‘Love Can Build a Bridge’ mem­oir back in 1993. ‘I just don’t sign auto­graphs at church. The best way I can explain it to chil­dren … is to say, ‘Hon­ey, Jesus is the star.’ ” What a great open­ing sto­ry.
  7. On the shoot­ings:
    • Faith on the ground in Buf­fa­lo: Voice Buf­fa­lo exec­u­tive direc­tor Denise Walden (Adelle M. Banks, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): “They are some of the matri­archs and the pil­lars of our com­mu­ni­ty. They will be missed in ways that I don’t think I can do jus­tice to describ­ing, but who bring joy to this com­mu­ni­ty. They’re the ones who help stand and hold this com­mu­ni­ty togeth­er.”
    • The FAQs: What Chris­tians Should Know About the ‘Great Replace­ment’ The­o­ry (Joe Carter, Gospel Coali­tion): “The recent shoot­ing in Buf­fa­lo is the fifth ter­ror­ist attack in the past five years in which a white suprema­cist gun­man made ref­er­ence to the Great Replace­ment con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry.… Chris­tians should be the first to decry the racism and xeno­pho­bia of the the­o­ry, along with con­demn­ing the vio­lence it has per­pet­u­at­ed.”
    • Doc­tor Who Fought Church Gun­man Remem­bered as Kind Pro­tec­tor (Julie Wat­son, Min­istry Watch): “The fam­i­ly and sports med­i­cine physi­cian was like fam­i­ly to the staff and he encour­aged them to learn kung fu, telling them about the impor­tance of know­ing self-defense tech­niques. He also learned how to han­dle a gun for that same rea­son. That pre­pared­ness com­bined with Cheng’s serene dis­po­si­tion like­ly gave him a pro­cliv­i­ty for act­ing hero­ical­ly, accord­ing to active shoot­er experts.… Author­i­ties cred­it Cheng’s quick action with sav­ing per­haps dozens of lives at a cel­e­bra­to­ry lun­cheon for con­gre­gants and their for­mer pas­tor at Irvine Tai­wanese Pres­by­ter­ian Church, which wor­ships at Gene­va Pres­by­ter­ian Church in the Orange Coun­ty com­mu­ni­ty of Lagu­na Woods.”
    • After Shoot­ing, Church­es Nav­i­gate Chi­na-Tai­wan Ten­sions Under the Sur­face (Kate Shell­nutt & Sean Cheng, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “As soon as they heard that a gun­man attacked a Tai­wanese church in Cal­i­for­nia on Sun­day, some Tai­wanese cor­rect­ly assumed polit­i­cal motives.… The shoot­ing sus­pect, David Wen­wei Chou, was born and raised in Tai­wan but con­sid­ers him­self Chi­nese. (Chi­na cur­rent­ly claims Tai­wan as its ter­ri­to­ry.) He left notes in Chi­nese in his car stat­ing he did not believe Tai­wan should be inde­pen­dent from Chi­na. Chi­nese social media cir­cu­lat­ed pho­tos of Chou indi­cat­ing that he was a leader of a Chi­nese pro-uni­fi­ca­tion orga­ni­za­tion in Las Vegas.”

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 A Study Guide For Human Soci­ety, Part 1 (Tan­ner Greer, The Scholar’s Stage): “…there are two meth­ods [for find­ing good his­to­ry books] in par­tic­u­lar I have often have use­ful. The first is to Google syl­labi. If you are inter­est­ed in the his­to­ry of the Roman Repub­lic, Google ‘Roman Repub­lic syl­labus’ and see what pops up. Read a few cours­es and see what books are includ­ed. Alter­na­tive­ly, if you just read a book you thought was par­tic­u­lar­ly good, put its title into Google and then the word ‘syl­labus’ after­wards and see what oth­er read­ings col­lege pro­fes­sors have paired with that book in their cours­es.”  First shared in vol­ume 217.

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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