Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 369

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 post 369, which I like sim­ply because 3+6=9.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Sug­ar Babies of Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty (Nico­la Buskirk, Sub­stack): “But decades after the unwind­ing of America’s tra­di­tion­al sex­u­al mores, no new moral­i­ty has clear­ly emerged, and young peo­ple increas­ing­ly find them­selves nav­i­gat­ing a cul­ture of sex­u­al anar­chy, in which — pro­vid­ed an act is con­sen­su­al — there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ Such think­ing has brought us inevitably to the rise of Only­Fans, the nor­mal­iza­tion of sex work, and the curi­ous sto­ry of Stan­ford University’s sug­ar babies.”
    • A curi­ous sto­ry indeed!
  2. Wikipedia Is Mak­ing Us More Polit­i­cal (Samuel D. James, Sub­stack): “There is sim­ply no par­al­lel to this with any oth­er peri­od of media his­to­ry; the dig­i­tal age is the very first to say that we should have access to a repos­i­to­ry of a person’s most con­tro­ver­sial sen­tences, per­ma­nent­ly acces­si­ble through their bio­graph­i­cal data.… All of these exam­ples ampli­fy the role of pol­i­tics in cul­ture, by mak­ing par­ti­san opin­ions a vital part of a person’s bio­graph­i­cal data. There is no dis­tinc­tion any more between the per­son who, through their voca­tion­al or per­son­al choices, decides to become a polit­i­cal fig­ure, and the per­son who is per­ceived as polit­i­cal. What we know about the one is pret­ty much what we know about the oth­er. Thus, hyper-politi­ciza­tion of every­thing feels much more nor­mal.”
  3. So you haven’t caught COVID yet. Does that mean you’re a super­dodger? (Michaeleen Doucleff, NPR): “Your immune response and these T cells fire up much more quick­ly [than in a per­son with­out the HLA muta­tion],” Hol­len­bach says. “So for lack of a bet­ter term, you basi­cal­ly nuke the infec­tion before you even start to have symp­toms.… It’s def­i­nite­ly luck,” she says. “But, you know, this muta­tion is quite com­mon. We esti­mate that maybe 1 in 10 peo­ple have it. And in peo­ple who are asymp­to­matic, that ris­es to 1 in 5.”
    • Relat­ed: The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic feels over but is not actu­al­ly over. (Dan Drezn­er, Sub­stack): “For the time being I will still mask at air­ports and on air­planes and occa­sion­al­ly in very large indoor gath­er­ings. Oth­er than that, I’m done. I am vac­ci­nat­ed, boost­ed and had COVID-19 ear­li­er this year, so the prospect of con­tract­ing it again seems both less like­ly and less scary. The thing is, I con­fess to being unsure whether I have made the right prob­a­bil­i­ty cal­cu­la­tions.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of inter­na­tion­al pol­i­tics at Tufts.
  4. Why Is The Cen­tral Val­ley So Bad? (Scott Alexan­der, Astral Codex Ten): “A short dri­ve through [the Cen­tral Val­ley] is enough to notice pover­ty, decay, and home­less camps worse even than the rest of Cal­i­for­nia. But I didn’t real­ize how bad it was until read­ing this piece on the San Joaquin Riv­er. It claims that if the Cen­tral Val­ley were its own state, it would be the poor­est in Amer­i­ca, even worse than Mis­sis­sip­pi. This was kind of shock­ing. I always think of Mis­sis­sip­pi as bad because of a his­to­ry of racial vio­lence, racial seg­re­ga­tion, and get­ting burned down dur­ing the Civ­il War. But the Cen­tral Val­ley has none of those things, plus it has extreme­ly fer­tile farm­land, plus it’s in one of the rich­est states of the coun­try and should at least get good sub­si­dies and infra­struc­ture. How did it get so bad?”
  5. Cov­er­age of church­es:
    • Doug Wil­son in Ida­ho:
      1. Pas­tor Seeks To Make Moscow, Ida­ho A ‘Christian Town’  (NBC News, YouTube): twelve min­utes.
      2. What NBC Did­n’t Show You (Dou­glas Wil­son, YouTube): Wilson’s response video, four and a half min­utes.
      3. NBC News Lends a Hand (Dou­glas Wil­son, per­son­al blog): “As I have said else­where, I am grate­ful that it was not a hit piece—they let both sides talk, in oth­er words. It was even-hand­ed in that way. At the same time, it was clear that what we were say­ing must have sound­ed some­thing like Mid­dle Klin­gon to them, and this of course affects the edit­ing process.”
    • Gra­ce­point at Berke­ley:
      1. The Ungod­ly Sur­veil­lance of Anti-Porn ‘Shameware’ Apps (Dhruv Mehro­tra, Wired): “At its most basic lev­el, the idea is pret­ty straight­for­ward: Why would any­one watch porn if they are going to have to talk to their par­ents or pas­tor about it?… The trou­ble is, accord­ing to Hao-Wei Lin, pro­vid­ing his church leader with a ledger of every­thing he did online meant his pas­tor could always find some­thing to ask him about, and the way Covenant Eyes flagged con­tent didn’t help. For exam­ple, in Covenant Eyes reports that Hao-Wei Lin shared with WIRED, his online psy­chi­a­try text­book was rat­ed ‘High­ly Mature,’ the most severe cat­e­go­ry of con­tent reserved for ‘anonymiz­ers, nudi­ty, erot­i­ca, and pornog­ra­phy.’ ”
      2. At Gra­ce­point Min­istries, ‘Whole-Life Dis­ci­ple­ship’ Took Its Toll (Cur­tis Yee, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Thir­ty-two for­mer Gra­ce­point mem­bers who spoke with Chris­tian­i­ty Today for this sto­ry described a cul­ture that was ‘con­trol­ling’ and ‘coer­cive’ for the sake of min­istry effi­cien­cy. Mem­bers said they were manip­u­lat­ed into con­fess­ing sins, screamed at by lead­ers, and over­loaded with oblig­a­tions to the point of ill­ness. To keep mem­bers focused on mis­sion work, Gra­ce­point effec­tive­ly restrict­ed dat­ing, media con­sump­tion, and pet own­er­ship. Lead­ers direct­ed staff on how to arrange their homes, where to shop for clothes, and what cars to dri­ve.”
  6. Rich Mullins: Raga­muf­fin, Celebri­ty, Dis­ci­ple (Bethel McGrew, Plough): “You might have called him a frus­trat­ed strug­gling artist: a suc­cess­ful artist who nev­er want­ed to suc­ceed. When Myrrh records first called to say Amy Grant want­ed to record his song ‘Sing Your Praise to the Lord,’ he near­ly hung up. But it would be a hit, the first of many. He wrote nat­u­ral­ly to the peo­ple, com­ple­ment­ing his poet­ic lyri­cism with a good pop writer’s ear for how to con­vey pro­found ideas sim­ply. His arrange­ments were an eclec­tic fusion of pop and folk, most famous­ly intro­duc­ing radio to his sig­na­ture instru­ment, the ham­mered dul­cimer. This was the secret sauce that made hit sin­gles out of songs like the atmos­pher­ic West­ern nature poem ‘Call­ing Out Your Name’ – a tune which, by all the rules of hit sin­gles, should nev­er even have been on the air. As one fan put it, Mullins was weird, but he was also so good that radio had to play him.”
    • Mullins was unique and bril­liant and I am still sad he is dead. He was before your time, so I doubt you will believe me when I say that he by him­self out­weighed the entire Chris­t­ian music indus­try that you have been exposed to. But he was that good. It was more than his music. It was his life.

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: On Killing Human Mon­sters (Mark LiVec­chi, Prov­i­dence): “‘The inter­nal con­di­tion of God’s exter­nal expres­sion of wrath,’ writes the the­olo­gian and rab­bi Abra­ham Joshua Hes­chel, ‘is grief.’ To the best I can deduce, there­in is com­mu­ni­cat­ed the com­plex dis­po­si­tion of the just warrior.… I do not rejoice that I wor­ship a God who kills. I only rejoice that I wor­ship a God who is will­ing to.” From vol­ume 236.

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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