Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 389

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 389, a prime num­ber.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty Can Still Come Back (Tim Keller, The Atlantic): “There was no such thing as monasticism—through which pagan North­ern Europe was turned Christian—until there was. There was no Ref­or­ma­tion until there was. There was no revival that turned Methodists and Bap­tists into cul­tur­al­ly dom­i­nant forces in the mid­west­ern and south­east­ern Unit­ed States—until there was. There was no East African Revival, led pri­mar­i­ly by African peo­ple, that helped turn Africa from a 9 per­cent Chris­t­ian con­ti­nent in 1900 into a 50 per­cent Chris­t­ian con­ti­nent today—until there was. Chris­tian­i­ty, like its founder, does not go from strength to strength but from death to res­ur­rec­tion.”
  2. Is the Pub­lic Domain Just?: Bib­li­cal Stew­ard­ship and Legal Pro­tec­tion For Tra­di­tion­al Knowl­edge Assets (Ruth L. Okedi­ji, The Colum­bia Jour­nal of Law and the Arts): “The Arti­cle pro­pos­es a the­o­log­i­cal frame­work of ‘bib­li­cal stew­ard­ship’ root­ed in ima­go Dei—the foun­da­tion­al con­cept inform­ing Jew­ish and Chris­t­ian under­stand­ings of human nature and social interaction—to address the socio-moral dimen­sions that are con­sti­tu­tive of TK [tra­di­tion­al knowl­edge] sys­tems and the insti­tu­tion­al con­text in which they unfold. The bib­li­cal stew­ard­ship frame­work focus­es on the coop­er­a­tive and kin­ship arrange­ments that enable and sus­tain pro­duc­tive capac­i­ty for TK.”
    • The author is a pro­fes­sor at Har­vard Law and a sol­id Chris­t­ian. I just heard her speak and the per­son intro­duc­ing her men­tioned this arti­cle as an exam­ple of how bold she is in inte­grat­ing her faith into her schol­ar­ship.
  3. Some COVID per­spec­tives
    • Sure­ly Right (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “…the only sen­si­ble posi­tion is to advo­cate for ear­ly and wide­spread vac­cine access, be high­ly crit­i­cal of all the pol­i­tick­ing about vac­cine tim­ing around the elec­tion, and to avoid man­dates unless you intend to enforce them at gun­point.… Because we live in a world where the default is not to vac­ci­nate, pol­i­tics poi­sons every­thing it touch­es, and the child­hood man­dates are his­tor­i­cal acci­dents that could very well fall to con­cert­ed polit­i­cal action.”
      • A brief, fas­ci­nat­ing read.
    • Why the Odds Are Stacked Against a Promis­ing New Covid Drug (Ben­jamin Mueller, The New York Times): “By for­ti­fy­ing the body’s own mech­a­nisms for quash­ing an invad­ing virus, they can poten­tial­ly help defend against not only Covid, but also the flu and oth­er virus­es with the poten­tial to kin­dle future pan­demics.… For all of its promise, though, the drug — called pegy­lat­ed inter­fer­on lamb­da — faces an uncer­tain road [due to the FDA].”
    • Not pay­walled. Infu­ri­at­ing. Out­ra­geous. Ridicu­lous.
    • Bureau­crats: “COVID is so bad we need to change every aspect of soci­ety to deal with it. But don’t change our bureau­cra­cy. It’s not THAT bad.”
  4. Boston Uni­ver­si­ty pro­vides update on CTE study, dis­cov­ers brain dis­ease in 92 per­cent of ex-NFL play­ers ana­lyzed (Vic­to­ria Her­nan­dez, USA Today): “The Boston Uni­ver­si­ty CTE Cen­ter stud­ied the brains of 376 deceased for­mer NFL play­ers and diag­nosed 345 of them with chron­ic trau­mat­ic encephalopa­thy. This is 91.7 per­cent of those stud­ied.”
    • I’ve been say­ing this for about two stu­dent gen­er­a­tions now, but foot­bal­l’s days are num­bered in Amer­i­ca. It’s hard to imag­ine the sport sur­viv­ing the sorts of reforms that would be nec­es­sary.
  5. I Thought I Was Sav­ing Trans Kids. Now I’m Blow­ing the Whis­tle. (Jamie Reed, The Free Press): “I am a 42-year-old St. Louis native, a queer woman, and polit­i­cal­ly to the left of Bernie Sanders.… I’m now mar­ried to a trans man, and togeth­er we are rais­ing my two bio­log­i­cal chil­dren from a pre­vi­ous mar­riage and three fos­ter chil­dren we hope to adopt.… Giv­en the secre­cy and lack of rig­or­ous stan­dards that char­ac­ter­ize youth gen­der tran­si­tion across the coun­try, I believe that to ensure the safe­ty of Amer­i­can chil­dren, we need a mora­to­ri­um on the hor­mon­al and sur­gi­cal treat­ment of young peo­ple with gen­der dys­pho­ria.”
    • Not sur­pris­ing if you’ve been fol­low­ing this top­ic, but depress­ing and with new anec­dotes.
  6. Chat­G­PT Is a Blur­ry JPEG of the Web (Ted Chi­ang, The New York­er): “Think of Chat­G­PT as a blur­ry JPEG of all the text on the Web. It retains much of the infor­ma­tion on the Web, in the same way that a JPEG retains much of the infor­ma­tion of a high­er-res­o­lu­tion image, but, if you’re look­ing for an exact sequence of bits, you won’t find it; all you will ever get is an approx­i­ma­tion. But, because the approx­i­ma­tion is pre­sent­ed in the form of gram­mat­i­cal text, which Chat­G­PT excels at cre­at­ing, it’s usu­al­ly accept­able. You’re still look­ing at a blur­ry JPEG, but the blur­ri­ness occurs in a way that doesn’t make the pic­ture as a whole look less sharp.”
    • This is a good anal­o­gy.
  7. A Black Pro­fes­sor Trapped in Anti-Racist Hell (Vin­cent Lloyd, Com­pact Mag­a­zine): “Each stu­dent read from a pre­pared state­ment about how the sem­i­nar per­pet­u­at­ed anti-black vio­lence in its con­tent and form, how the black stu­dents had been harmed, how I was guilty of count­less microag­gres­sions, includ­ing through my body lan­guage, and how stu­dents didn’t feel safe because I didn’t imme­di­ate­ly cor­rect views that failed to treat anti-black­ness as the cause of all the world’s ills.… I am a black pro­fes­sor, I direct­ed my university’s black-stud­ies pro­gram, I lead anti-racism and trans­for­ma­tive-jus­tice work­shops, and I have pub­lished books on anti-black racism and prison abo­li­tion. I live in a pre­dom­i­nant­ly black neigh­bor­hood of Philadel­phia, my daugh­ter went to an Afro­cen­tric school, and I am on the board of our local black cul­tur­al orga­ni­za­tion.”
    • The author is a pro­fes­sor at Vil­lano­va (which is not, to be clear, the loca­tion of this deba­cle).

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 Uncon­scious Learn­ing Under­lies Belief in God – Stronger Beliefs in Peo­ple Who Can Uncon­scious­ly Pre­dict Com­plex Pat­terns (Sci Tech Dai­ly): “Indi­vid­u­als who can uncon­scious­ly pre­dict com­plex pat­terns, an abil­i­ty called implic­it pat­tern learn­ing, are like­ly to hold stronger beliefs that there is a god who cre­ates pat­terns of events in the uni­verse, accord­ing to neu­ro­sci­en­tists at George­town Uni­ver­si­ty.” Shock­er: peo­ple who see real­i­ty clear­ly are more like­ly to per­ceive God’s hand at work in real­i­ty. From vol­ume 267.

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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