Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 373

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 373, a per­mutable prime. That means it is a prime num­ber even when you rearrange its dig­its (337, 733).

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. Recon­struct­ing Faith: Chris­tian­i­ty in a New World (Tim Keller, Life In The Gospel): “Chris­tians in our cul­tur­al moment will have to rethink their faith, but at the same time they must learn to ‘doubt their doubts.’ They must decon­struct not only their tac­it, mis­tak­en beliefs and their sec­ondary beliefs that pose as pri­ma­ry, but also just as impor­tant­ly, the cul­tur­al nar­ra­tives that are offered as the alter­na­tives to Chris­t­ian faith.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
2. The Math of Mea­sure­ments (Tum­blr): “The base 12 sys­tem of the tra­di­tion­al Eng­lish foot is fan­tas­tic for men­tal math, because 12 is a high­ly divis­i­ble num­ber. It’s eas­i­ly divis­i­ble into halves, thirds, quar­ters, and sixths by most peo­ple in their heads.… This is the kind of math most arti­sans need to do. You want sup­ports placed even­ly along a wall, to divide a piece of fab­ric in half, or to dou­ble a recipe. Nobody 1.7x’s a recipe. Met­ric would be great for that, but why would you do that? It would­n’t be worth the math involved.”
   • I very much like this rant. There’s a lot to like about met­ric, but not as much as some of its enthu­si­asts claim.
3. Co-ops are the New Greek Life (Julia Stein­berg, Stan­ford Review): “While attempt­ing to pro­vide an alter­na­tive social and liv­ing envi­ron­ment based on prin­ci­ples of coun­ter­cul­tur­al­ism, many co-ops recre­ate the social pres­sures of Greek Life through a flim­sy veneer of coun­ter­cul­tur­al­ism.… co-ops present a space to safe­ly pre­tend to be coun­ter­cul­tur­al, while forg­ing a liv­ing com­mu­ni­ty with peo­ple who are just like them, pre­vent­ing the expres­sion of true dif­fer­ence and diver­si­ty. If co-ops seek to hold onto the lega­cy of the 60s and 70s that birthed these hous­es, they must reck­on with the fact that they are cur­rent­ly co-ed Greek Hous­es in a cro­chet sweater.”
4. Boston Uni­ver­si­ty CREATES a new Covid strain that has an 80% kill rate — echo­ing dan­ger­ous exper­i­ments feared to have start­ed pan­dem­ic (Caitlin Tilley, Dai­ly Mail): “It will no doubt sur­prise many Amer­i­cans that such exper­i­ments con­tin­ue to go on in the US despite con­cerns sim­i­lar stud­ies may have led to the glob­al Covid out­break.”
   • The research paper is here — https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.13.512134v1.full.pdf
   • One good response: Irre­spon­si­ble Gain of Func­tion Research (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Frankly, the authors of the study were irre­spon­si­ble. Boston Uni­ver­si­ty also failed ter­ri­bly in its over­sight. Final­ly, I also put some blame on Antho­ny Fau­ci for evad­ing and obfus­cat­ing ear­li­er gain of func­tion research in a way that sug­gest­ed very lit­tle falls under this cat­e­go­ry. (Rand Paul was right about this).”
   • Anoth­er ratio­nal response that also address­es com­mon objec­tions: Can We At Least Ban Gain of Func­tion Research? (Zvi Mow­showitz, Sub­stack): “Imag­ine the worst thing you could do that doesn’t involve nuclear weapons. Then imag­ine some­one went ahead and did it, and pub­lished, and it was all not only legal. It was fund­ed. Here in Amer­i­ca.”
5. Amer­i­can Idol: How Pol­i­tics Replaced Spir­i­tu­al Prac­tice (Michael Wear, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “…the Chris­t­ian faith offers tremen­dous resources for com­bat­ing polit­i­cal sec­tar­i­an­ism and so much else that ails our pol­i­tics, but we have to con­nect those resources to our pub­lic life and pol­i­tics. Chris­tians don’t need to be remind­ed of kind­ness, gen­tle­ness, and joy. But many do need to be con­vinced that the way of Jesus is up to the task of pol­i­tics. They need to be con­vinced that the pub­lic are­na, too, is a forum for faith­ful­ness.”
6. Key find­ings from The Post’s series on vet­er­ans’ lucra­tive for­eign jobs (Craig Whit­lock and Nate Jones, Wash­ing­ton Post): “More than 500 retired U.S. mil­i­tary per­son­nel — includ­ing scores of gen­er­als and admi­rals — have tak­en jobs as con­trac­tors and con­sul­tants for for­eign gov­ern­ments since 2015, cash­ing in on their mil­i­tary exper­tise and polit­i­cal clout. Most have worked as civil­ian con­trac­tors for Sau­di Ara­bia, the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates and oth­er Per­sian Gulf monar­chies, play­ing a crit­i­cal, though large­ly invis­i­ble, role in upgrad­ing their mil­i­taries.”
   • Some­what relat­ed: Amer­i­can tech­nol­o­gy boosts China’s hyper­son­ic mis­sile pro­gram (Cate Cadell & Ellen Nakashima, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Mil­i­tary research groups at the lead­ing edge of China’s hyper­son­ics and mis­sile pro­grams — many on a U.S. export black­list — are­pur­chas­ing a range of spe­cial­ized Amer­i­can tech­nol­o­gy, includ­ing prod­ucts devel­oped by firms that have received mil­lions of dol­lars in grants and con­tracts from the Pen­ta­gon, a Wash­ing­ton Post inves­ti­ga­tion has found.”
   • See a non-pay­walled sum­ma­ry of the mis­sile sto­ry at US soft­ware gives Chi­na its hyper­son­ic edge (Gabriel Hon­ra­da, Asia Times)
7. Stan­ford Apol­o­gizes for Lim­it­ing Jew­ish Admis­sions in the 1950s (Aman­da Holpuch, New York Times): “Sev­er­al col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties, includ­ing Har­vard, Yale and Dart­mouth, lim­it­ed Jew­ish enroll­ment in the 1920s through the 1960s, but Stan­ford had long denied rumors that it had used sim­i­lar prac­tices.” Of inter­est in this sto­ry is (a) the inter­view at the end with Jes­si­ca, the direc­tor of Hil­lel and (b) the fact that a Sub­stack arti­cle start­ed all this.
   • The Sub­stack arti­cle which launched it: How I Dis­cov­ered Stan­ford’s Jew­ish Quo­ta (Charles Petersen, Sub­stack): “One Jew­ish stu­dent who attend­ed Stan­ford in the 1960s was told by his high school guid­ance coun­selor that the uni­ver­si­ty would only accept one Jew­ish stu­dent from each high school each year — he had been the one to get in. If this is true (and this stu­dent ver­i­fied the claim from per­son­al expe­ri­ence), it might offer an expla­na­tion for how Sny­der imple­ment­ed the sug­ges­tion, men­tioned ear­li­er, from the Jew­ish pres­i­dent of Stanford’s board of trustees. When Sny­der want­ed to admit a few Gen­tiles with less than stel­lar grades, he made sure to admit pre­cise­ly one Jew­ish appli­cant near the top of the class.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Moses Com­mands Israelites To Gath­er Dou­ble Por­tion Of Chick-fil‑A On Sat­ur­day Since They Can’t Gath­er Any Sun­day (Baby­lon Bee)
• Sad: Cli­mate Activists Van­dal­ize A Jack­son Pol­lock But No One Notices (Baby­lon Bee)
• David Pret­ty Con­fi­dent He Just Wrote A Banger After Fin­ish­ing Psalm 23 (Baby­lon Bee)
• Inter­est In Drag Queen Sto­ry Hours Wanes After They’re Renamed More Accu­rate ‘Man Wear­ing Lin­gerie Wants To Spend Time With Your Kids Hour’ (Baby­lon Bee) — I’m not sure this one belongs in the “less seri­ous” sec­tion.

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have 3 Types of Skep­tics (C. Michael Pat­ton, Cre­do House): “1. Those who need answers…. 2. Those who don’t like the answers…. 3. Those who need heal­ing.” From vol­ume 244.

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.