Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 370

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 vol­ume 370, a nar­cis­sis­tic num­ber (some­times also called an Arm­strong num­ber). It has three dig­its, and when you raise each dig­it to the third pow­er they sum to the orig­i­nal num­ber: 370 = 3³ + 7³ + 0³. There are only 88 nar­cis­sis­tic num­bers in base 10, and only 4 of those have three dig­its (153, 370, 371, and 407).

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. YouTube May Force You to Watch 10 (or More) Unskip­pable Ads in a Row (Ted Gioia, Sub­stack): “This, my friends, is the web we asked for. We want­ed every­thing for free—but what we real­ly got was a swamp where all the costs are still there, just hid­den. And the expe­ri­ence we have gained from oth­er indus­tries where prices are most­ly hid­den from view—healthcare is the most obvi­ous exam­ple, but of course there are others—is that this usu­al­ly turns out to be the most expen­sive trans­ac­tion of them all.”
   • This is real­ly good!
2. For Sub­ur­ban Texas Men, a Work­out Craze With a Side of Faith (Ruth Gra­ham, New York Times): “This is F3 — that’s fit­ness, fel­low­ship and faith — a fast-grow­ing net­work of men’s work­outs that com­bine exer­cise with spir­i­tu­al­ly inflect­ed cama­raderie.… I first heard about F3 through a few acquain­tances in Texas, men who spoke about their local groups with the zeal of evan­ge­lists. It remind­ed me of how urban women used to talk with me about Soul­Cy­cle, only these guys were sub­ur­ban fathers.”
   • A Short Sto­ry of Men (David French, The Dis­patch): “What is the short sto­ry of mod­ern men? Life has changed for­ev­er. Ide­o­logues pull men and boys into destruc­tive and unsus­tain­able extremes. Yet vir­tu­ous pur­pose can still be found in the fun­da­men­tal build­ing blocks of the good life. Only a man can be a hus­band, only a man can be a father, and men need male friends. If a man can fill those roles with integri­ty and courage, then doubts about his mas­culin­i­ty should not ever dark­en his heart.”
   • This is a response piece inspired by the above sto­ry about F3.
3. The Chero­kee Nation is again call­ing on Con­gress to deliv­er on a 200-year-old promise (Harmeet Kaur, CNN): “The Chero­kee Nation is renew­ing its cam­paign for rep­re­sen­ta­tion in Con­gress, call­ing on fed­er­al leg­is­la­tors to hon­or a treaty that the US gov­ern­ment made near­ly 200 years ago. In a video released last week, the trib­al nation reassert­ed its demand that Con­gress seat its del­e­gate in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives – a right stip­u­lat­ed by the 1835 Treaty of New Echo­ta.”
   • From what I can tell this is a legit claim: the treaty was approved by the US Sen­ate even though shady things hap­pened on the the Chero­kee side (the treaty was entered into by Chero­kees not autho­rized to nego­ti­ate on behalf of their tribe). I don’t know why this is con­tro­ver­sial: Amer­i­ca took the land, we need to hon­or all the terms of the deal.
4. ‘Out of con­trol’ STD sit­u­a­tion prompts call for changes (Mike Sto­bbe, Asso­ci­at­ed Press): “New syphilis infec­tions plum­met­ed in the U.S. start­ing in the 1940s when antibi­otics became wide­ly avail­able. They fell to their low­est ever by 1998, when few­er than 7,000 new cas­es were report­ed nation­wide. The CDC was so encour­aged by the progress it launched a plan to elim­i­nate syphilis in the U.S. But by 2002 cas­es began ris­ing again, large­ly among gay and bisex­u­al men, and they kept going. In late 2013, CDC end­ed its elim­i­na­tion cam­paign in the face of lim­it­ed fund­ing and esca­lat­ing cas­es, which that year sur­passed 17,000. By 2020 cas­es had reached near­ly 41,700 and they spiked even fur­ther last year, to more than 52,000.”
   • That’s a 26% jump just last year!
   • As STD rates explode, are we still sure God’s way isn’t bet­ter? (Peter Heck, Not The Bee): “There’s more to the Chris­t­ian sex­u­al eth­ic than a despot­ic list of don’ts. There’s a holis­tic and healthy ide­al that includes rec­og­niz­ing the per­son you are dat­ing is some­one’s future spouse and should be treat­ed with the same dig­ni­ty that we would want anoth­er treat­ing our future spouse. There’s an endur­ing com­men­da­tion of the for­ma­tion of life­long, lov­ing rela­tion­ships built not upon tawdry lusts but self-sac­ri­fi­cial com­mit­ment; the recog­ni­tion that love is not some­thing we feel, but some­thing we do. There’s a self-con­trol that pro­tects human­i­ty and lib­er­ates it from sick­ness and suf­fer­ing. It’s God’s way…”
   • I often think upon this fact: if the Chris­t­ian sex­u­al eth­ic were uni­ver­sal­ly observed for one gen­er­a­tion STDs would be essen­tial­ly elim­i­nat­ed.
5. Illib­er­al­ism Is For (Cul­tur­al) Losers (Bri­an Matt­son, Sub­stack): “Illib­er­al­ism, the deep desire to deny to oth­ers their rights of con­science and belief and prop­er­ty that we our­selves enjoy and to force them into con­for­mi­ty to our vision of the com­mon good by way of coer­cive State pow­er is the last resort of losers. Cul­tur­al losers. Abi­gail Adams would judge that such peo­ple are unfit for lib­er­ty; or at least they are peo­ple who can’t accom­plish any­thing fruit­ful with it. I have a bet­ter idea. Reform our weak insti­tu­tions, and where we can­not, we build bet­ter ones and be cul­tur­al win­ners.”
6. An ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ men­tal­i­ty on cam­pus­es turns poten­tial friends into allies — or ene­mies (Pamela Paresky and Samuel J. Abrams, Boston Globe): “Accord­ing to an NBC poll released in August, only 20 per­cent of col­lege sopho­mores sur­veyed said they can def­i­nite­ly see them­selves room­ing with some­one who vot­ed dif­fer­ent­ly than they did in the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. And more than half said they prob­a­bly or def­i­nite­ly couldn’t see them­selves dat­ing such a stu­dent. Cam­pus cul­ture seems to fur­ther social dis­con­nec­tion rather than fos­ter friend­ship across the polit­i­cal divide.”
   • The authors are schol­ars of psy­chol­o­gy and pol­i­tics, respec­tive­ly. I read this one most­ly because the thumb­nail pre­view is of Stan­ford.
7. The ‘Liz­zo Play­ing James Madis­on’s Flute’ Con­tro­ver­sy: A Blogger’s Analy­sis (Nick Catog­gio, The Dis­patch): “H ad you heard of Madison’s flute before Liz­zo played it? I hadn’t. I’d heard of her but not it. It was she who lent celebri­ty to the instru­ment, not vice ver­sa. You may find that dispir­it­ing, although I’m not sure why any of us should have base­line knowl­edge about a ran­dom gift giv­en to James Madi­son that played no mean­ing­ful role in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. Me, I’m thrilled to have learned about it via this episode. A crys­tal flute! Made for the father of the Con­sti­tu­tion! Played for the first time in 200 years by a celebrity—totally ran­dom­ly! It wouldn’t sur­prise me if it turns out to have mag­i­cal pow­ers and Liz­zo has now been pos­sessed by Madison’s ghost. Which, if so, would make her next con­cert a must-see. But I digress. The last rea­son this sto­ry is instant blog fod­der is because, per the fore­go­ing, it’s quirky as all hell.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Warn­ing Lights (The Far Side)
• Cof­fee (Pearls Before Swine)
• Why Are Maps So Hard To Fold? (QI, YouTube): three min­utes
• Find Out the Gen­tle­man’s Occu­pa­tion (He Can Only Lie) (Taskmas­ter, YouTube): twelve min­utes
• David Blaine Burns $100 Bill and James Drinks The Ash­es (The Late Late Show, YouTube): eight min­utes
• The San­ta Clara Bron­cos men’s track team delib­er­ate­ly does goofy pho­tos as one of their team tra­di­tions. This is amaz­ing.
• Piff The Mag­ic Drag­on and Mr. Pif­fles Sur­prise The Judges With a Spell­bind­ing Per­for­mance (Amer­i­ca’s Got Tal­ent, YouTube): sev­en min­utes

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Nuclear Fam­i­ly Was a Mis­take (David Brooks, The Atlantic): “If you want to sum­ma­rize the changes in fam­i­ly struc­ture over the past cen­tu­ry, the truest thing to say is this: We’ve made life freer for indi­vid­u­als and more unsta­ble for fam­i­lies. We’ve made life bet­ter for adults but worse for chil­dren. We’ve moved from big, inter­con­nect­ed, and extend­ed fam­i­lies, which helped pro­tect the most vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple in soci­ety from the shocks of life, to small­er, detached nuclear fam­i­lies (a mar­ried cou­ple and their chil­dren), which give the most priv­i­leged peo­ple in soci­ety room to max­i­mize their tal­ents and expand their options. The shift from big­ger and inter­con­nect­ed extend­ed fam­i­lies to small­er and detached nuclear fam­i­lies ulti­mate­ly led to a famil­ial sys­tem that lib­er­ates the rich and rav­ages the work­ing-class and the poor.” High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. From vol­ume 238.

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.