Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 359

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.

359 is the 72nd prime number, and is also what is known as a Sophie Germain prime because if you double it and add 1 the result (719) is also prime.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Is Faith The Enemy of Science? (Glen Scrivener, Twitter): a good 90 second video
  2. I Don’t Want to See a High School Football Coach Praying at the 50-Yard Line (Anne Lamott, New York Times): “How do people like me who believe entirely in science and reason also believe that prayer can heal and restore? Well, I’ve seen it happen a thousand times in my own inconsequential life. God seems like a total showoff to me, if perhaps unnecessarily cryptic.” This is a fascinating op-ed.
  3. On masculinity:
    • Against the Extremism of the American Masculinity Debate (David French, The Dispatch): “While there are many millions of men and boys who do quite well in our country, the vast majority of our nation’s young men are falling behind their female peers. I quoted this statistic in my last newsletter, but it’s worth quoting again: Men account for 70 percent of the decline in enrollment in American colleges and universities.”
    • So Jordan Peterson posted a video message to the Church. Message to the Christian Churches (Jordan Peterson, YouTube: eleven minutes. It’s generated thoughts:
    • Church: Where Are The Men? (Rod Dreher, The American Conservative): “Peterson means it literally when he complains here that most churches offer nothing for young men. Men feel unwanted in these feminized precincts, and there is often nothing much to attract or hold them to congregational life.” This post is LONG and ventures deeper into church history than I expected it to.
    • Jordan Peterson’s “Message to Christian Churches” Is Nonsense (Tyler Huckabee, Relevant): “He’s found an audience and that’s fine, but when Peterson steers outside of his lane, you can tell. And on Wednesday, Peterson veered well outside of his lane with this ‘Message to Christian Churches.’ It is ridiculous.”
    • Crossing the Jordan (Matthew Hosier, ThinkTheology): “There is much about this message that I find salutary and invigorating. As I say, it made me laugh and cry and cheer. Although, without clarity about the atoning work of Christ on the cross, without a proper notion of grace, Peterson’s appeal represents only a robust Pelagianism and is therefore insufficient to deal with our most fundamental problem. Pelagianism does not offer a solution to the problem of original sin; at best it can ameliorate the symptoms, not cure the disease.”
  4. Book Review: The Man From The Future (Astral Codex Ten, Scott Alexander): “…after a lifetime of culturally-Jewish atheism, he wished to be baptized. His daughter attributed her father’s ‘change of heart’ to Pascal’s Wager: the idea that even a very small probability of gaining a better afterlife is worth the relatively trivial cost of a deathbed conversion. Even as his powers deserted him, John von Neumann remained a game theorist to the end.” Fascinating throughout.
  5. Arrest made in rape of Ohio girl that led to Indiana abortion drawing international attention (Bethany Bruner, Monroe Trombly, Tony Cook, The Columbus Dispatch): “A Columbus man has been charged with impregnating a 10-year-old Ohio girl, whose travel to Indiana to seek an abortion led to international attention following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade and activation of Ohio’s abortion law.”
  6. Whose breath are you breathing? (Farah Hancock, Radio New Zealand): “At 5737ppm, the equivalent of one in every seven breaths I took on the bus was air other people had breathed out. I texted a friend: ‘OMG, the readings are so high I may as well let the other passengers lick my face!’ I was being a little gross, because even according to a scientist, it is a little gross. ‘You can think of it as spit particles, tiny spit particles are what you are breathing in,’ says University of Auckland aerosol chemist Dr Joel Rindelaub. ‘It’s breath backwash that gets people infected.’ ”
    • First, “breath backwash” is a magnificent term. Kudos. Second, I’m pretty sure the math is more complicated than the article makes it seem. I would nonetheless love seeing CO2 meters in public places.
  7. How Universities Weaponize Freshman Orientation (Abigail Anthony, National Review): “Ideally, freshman orientation should be a procedural, social assimilation to familiarize students with the resources the university offers and how to access them. However, Princeton University undertook a mission to present incoming students with sexual, moral, and political guidance, wholly omitting widely held perspectives and effectively insulating progressive views from intellectual trial. Moreover, attendance at these events was compulsory, thus constituting an ideological hazing.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • The lines in this checkerboard pattern are straight (Akiyoshi Kitaoka’s work on some random blog)
  • Turnabout (The Far Side)
  • Down Memory Lame (Loading Artist) — relatable
  • Humans Will Believe Anything They Hear (Bengt Washburn, YouTube): six minutes. Recommended by an alumnus. It sounded familiar so I searched the archives and saw I shared it back in volume 310. It was definitely worth watching again!
  • “Eat the Rich” ice cream truck sells $10 popsicles shaped like Bezos, Musk, others (Khristopher J. Brooks, CBS News): “An artists’ collective in Brooklyn is selling popsicles shaped like billionaires including Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos with the tagline ‘Eat the Rich.’ But the $10 price tag on the frozen treats has some people pointing out the irony of criticizing the world’s wealthiest while engaging in ‘peak capitalism.’ ” Warning: autoplays unrelated videos.
  • BMW starts selling heated seat subscriptions for $18 a month (James Vincent, The Verge): “Carmakers have always charged customers more money for high-end features, of course, but the dynamic is very different when software, rather than hardware, is the limiting factor. Charging more for high-end features feels different when you already own them In the case of heated seats, for example, BMW owners already have all the necessary components, but BMW has simply placed a software block on their functionality that buyers then have to pay to remove.” Recommended by an alumnus. This actually probably belongs up in the serious category because it’s an omen of the future.

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll highlight an older link still worth your consideration. This week we have The Church, intensive kinship, and global psychological variation (Schulz et al, Science): “…we propose that the Western Church (i.e., the branch of Christianity that evolved into the Roman Catholic Church) transformed European kinship structures during the Middle Ages and that this transformation was a key factor behind a shift towards a WEIRDer psychology.” At the time I first shared it I said, “This is really interesting if it holds up.” I did a quick literature church and the result seems to be holding. First shared in volume 226.

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.

Leave a Reply