Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 412

On Fri­days (Sat­ur­days when I feel ill on Fri­day) 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.

412 is the sum of twelve con­sec­u­tive primes: 13 + 17 + 19 + 23 + 29 + 31 + 37 + 41 + 43 + 47 + 53 + 59

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. If Satan Took Up Mar­riage Coun­sel­ing  (Tim Chal­lies, per­son­al blog) : “If Satan took up mar­riage coun­sel­ing, he would want peo­ple to believe mar­riage is so risky that it is best to post­pone it almost indef­i­nite­ly, that it is so sig­nif­i­cant and per­ilous an under­tak­ing that peo­ple should not even con­sid­er it until they have com­plet­ed their edu­ca­tion, begun a career, and become well estab­lished in life. He would espe­cial­ly want young peo­ple to antic­i­pate it with a sense of dread instead of excite­ment.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. Well worth your time.
  2. Spir­its of the Cloud: A Demonolo­gy of the Inter­net (Thomas Har­mon, The Amer­i­can Mind): “…there is much wis­dom that can be gained by turn­ing to ancient sources to under­stand how these mys­te­ri­ous forces oper­ate and how to resist them. In brief, they oper­ate by prey­ing on our imag­i­na­tions and desires, which are often­times obscure even to us, espe­cial­ly when we try to pen­e­trate the veil between present and future or between human and divine by some sort of mag­i­cal or tech­ni­cal means. James Lind­say zeroes in on this aspect: ‘Demons influ­ence peo­ple through their emo­tions and their inter­pre­ta­tions of fea­tures of their lives.’ Since they are airy, and proud of their ele­va­tion over our earth­i­ness, they have a weak­ness: humil­i­ty and an embrace of our earth­bound bod­ies (as a mat­ter of fact, the word ‘humil­i­ty’ is derived from a Latin word mean­ing ‘dirt’ or ‘earth’, humus).”
    • The author is a Catholic the­olo­gian.
  3. Many on dat­ing apps are already in rela­tion­ships or aren’t seek­ing actu­al dates, new study finds (Angela Yang, NBC News): “Hope­ful swipers look­ing to find their next part­ners on dat­ing apps have grown increas­ing­ly dis­il­lu­sioned in recent years, and a new study reveals the poten­tial root of their dif­fi­cul­ties: Many dat­ing app users aren’t seek­ing roman­tic mee­tups at all. Half of near­ly 1,400 Tin­der users sur­veyed said they weren’t inter­est­ed in actu­al­ly find­ing dates, accord­ing to research pub­lished last month. Near­ly two-thirds report­ed they were already in rela­tion­ships, and some were mar­ried while they were using the app.”
    • Just meet some­one cute and flirt with them in real life. Like, say, in your cam­pus min­istry or church.
  4. What’s Wrong With the “What’s Wrong With Men” Dis­course (Conor Fitzger­ald, Sub­stack): “…men find ther­a­py and the ther­a­peu­tic world­view alien and unhelp­ful. Even the flim­si­est male spec­i­men has psy­cho­log­i­cal needs relat­ed to accom­plish­ment, strength, use­ful­ness and capa­bil­i­ty; an atmos­phere of uncon­di­tion­al empa­thy and unre­strained emo­tion­al dis­clo­sure can be poi­so­nous to those things. What­ev­er the rea­son, men under­stand that ther­a­py (the prac­tice) is most­ly just the med­ical cod­i­fi­ca­tion of a typ­i­cal­ly female world­view as objec­tive­ly true and cor­rect. Most men aren’t going to be inter­est­ed in join­ing a con­ver­sa­tion con­duct­ed in that spir­it.”
    • This is very well put. The whole essay is inter­est­ing. Ignore the typos and dig in!
    • Relat­ed: Gen­der cri­sis is real­ly a mar­riage cri­sis (Inez Step­man, Tri­bune-Demo­c­rat): “…women with few or no ties to the oppo­site sex in the form of mar­riage and fam­i­ly are diverg­ing sharply not only from the views of men, but also from those of their mar­ried sis­ters. Mar­ried men, unmar­ried men and mar­ried women are reg­is­ter­ing pri­mar­i­ly the same polit­i­cal pref­er­ences, with only small gaps in vot­ing pat­terns between them, while sin­gle women are run­ning fast in the oppo­site direc­tion from the rest. For exam­ple, a poll in the past round of midterms found mar­ried peo­ple of both sex­es and sin­gle men all going for Repub­li­cans by major­i­ty mar­gins with­in a hand­ful of points of each oth­er (52% to 59%). Sin­gle women, on the oth­er hand, went strong­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic by a land­slide of 68% to 31%.”
  5. Stan­ford Pres­i­dent Will Resign After Report Found Flaws in His Research (Stephanie Saul, New York Times): “Dr. Tessier-Lav­i­gne, 63, will relin­quish the pres­i­den­cy at the end of August but remain at the uni­ver­si­ty as a pro­fes­sor of biol­o­gy.”
    • Tessier-Lav­i­gne mat­ter shows why run­ning a lab is a full-time job (H. Hold­en Thorp, Sci­ence): “I had seen many researchers who had tak­en big admin­is­tra­tive jobs strug­gle with over­see­ing their research group. Many inci­dents sim­i­lar to those involv­ing Tessier-Lav­i­gne arose because the prin­ci­pal inves­ti­ga­tors were too busy attend­ing to their oth­er high-pro­file jobs. David Bal­ti­more had to resign as pres­i­dent of Rock­e­feller Uni­ver­si­ty when sci­en­tif­ic mis­con­duct in his lab­o­ra­to­ry was uncov­ered (he lat­er became the pres­i­dent of the Cal­i­for­nia Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, and like Tessier-Lav­i­gne, was not found to have direct knowl­edge of the mis­con­duct). In a dif­fer­ent set of prob­lem­at­ic inter­ac­tions relat­ed to research, José Basel­ga resigned as head of Memo­r­i­al Sloan-Ket­ter­ing Can­cer Cen­ter because he failed to dis­close (inten­tion­al­ly or not) indus­try rela­tion­ships in papers pub­lished by his research group. These exam­ples reflect how tend­ing to a major admin­is­tra­tive posi­tion and run­ning a lab­o­ra­to­ry at the same time are sim­ply too much for one per­son.”
    • Richard Saller to take over as inter­im pres­i­dent in Sep­tem­ber (Ori­ana Riley, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty is a huge oper­a­tion with a $9 bil­lion bud­get — about 10 times larg­er than the first Roman emper­or Augus­tus had for the whole empire,” Saller wrote. “I have a steep learn­ing curve ahead of me.”
  6. Reli­gion as a Cul­tur­al and Polit­i­cal Iden­ti­ty (Ryan Burge, Sub­stack): “Peo­ple like the *idea* of reli­gion, with­out the actu­al trap­pings of said reli­gion. They are the kind of folks that talk about con­cepts like bib­li­cal val­ues with­out every step­ping foot inside a church. They want (pri­mar­i­ly) Chris­t­ian val­ues to be pro­tect­ed, but they don’t actu­al­ly want to spend much time under­stand­ing the the­ol­o­gy around the val­ues. For them, reli­gion has become a social and cul­tur­al mark­er — not a spir­i­tu­al one. It’s basi­cal­ly become anoth­er cud­gel in the cul­ture war. So, when the debate heats up over issues of sex­u­al­i­ty, gen­der, or abor­tion these are the kind of folks who will post memes on Face­book that include ref­er­ences to scrip­ture vers­es, despite the fact that they them­selves nev­er read the Bible.”
    • Empha­sis in orig­i­nal.
  7. The Con­sum­ing Fire of Love (Peter J. Lei­thart, First Things): “God isn’t ter­ri­fy­ing because he’s unlov­ing. He’s ter­ri­fy­ing because Love is terrifying—undiluted love, love that refus­es com­pro­mise with evil, love that will not nego­ti­ate away the good of the beloved by allow­ing the beloved to set the terms of her love, love that promis­es a good and a future beyond all the beloved can ask or imag­ine.”

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 The “Major­i­ty-Minor­i­ty” Myth (Andrew Sul­li­van, Sub­stack): “Most demo­graph­ic esti­mates of the ‘white’ pop­u­la­tion are based on the Cen­sus def­i­n­i­tion: ‘non-His­pan­ic white.’ But what of ‘His­pan­ic whites’ — those whose lin­eage may come from South or Latin Amer­i­ca in eth­nic­i­ty but who also iden­ti­fy racial­ly and social­ly as white? If you include them in this cat­e­go­ry, Amer­i­ca remains two-thirds ‘white’ all the way through 2060 and beyond.” A fas­ci­nat­ing read. From vol­ume 289

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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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