Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 423

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, vol­ume 423, is the sum of 13 con­sec­u­tive prime num­bers: 11 + 13 + 17 + 19 + 23 + 29 + 31 + 37 + 41 + 43 + 47 + 53 + 59.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. How Fam­i­ly Break­down Hits Girls (Freya India, Sub­stack): “Ours is a cul­ture obsessed with trau­ma! We think we can get PTSD from uni­ver­si­ty speak­ers and stu­pid jokes and elec­tion results. And yet it’s also a cul­ture which large­ly ignores and even glam­or­is­es what seems to me one of the most obvi­ous trau­mas of all?? If any­thing qual­i­fies as traumatic—as in, an emo­tion­al­ly dis­tress­ing event that leaves a last­ing impact—surely it’s fam­i­ly break­down, which real­ly does seem to stay with peo­ple, shape their view of love and life and just keep play­ing out, over and over?”
2. All About That Tenor: Why Men Don’t Sing in Wor­ship (Kelsey Cramer McGin­nis, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The low­er rate of musi­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion among men… has a lot to do with the male voice itself—its range and pat­terns of development—and social­iza­tion in a cul­ture where so many men are uncom­fort­able with their own voic­es…. Men hear high­er, wider vocal ranges from pop­u­lar singers and wor­ship lead­ers; Chris Tom­lin and Phil Wick­ham have famous­ly impres­sive tenor ranges, far out of reach for most male voic­es.”
   • Unlocked, rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
3. The Real Prob­lem With the Super­rich (J. Budziszews­ki, per­son­al blog): “Oth­er than from sheer jeal­ousy, why should any­one object to some peo­ple hav­ing far more wealth than oth­ers?… wealth is a means to polit­i­cal pow­er, and those who crave wealth tend to be the sorts of per­sons who crave pow­er too. You can run an oli­garchy if some peo­ple are super­rich – and some oli­garchies are bet­ter than oth­ers — but if you try to run a repub­lic that way, you will lose it.”
   • A thought­ful arti­cle from a Chris­t­ian philoso­pher at UT Austin.
4. Andy Stanley’s ‘Uncon­di­tion­al’ Con­tra­dic­tion (Sam All­ber­ry, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “I have always been sin­gle. On the whole, it has been deeply joy­ous. But I am not immune from temp­ta­tion, and when any leader sug­gests to me that chaste obe­di­ence to Christ in sin­gle­ness is not sus­tain­able, he is say­ing the very same thing to me that the Dev­il says.”
   • Unlocked. The whole thing is worth read­ing for con­text.
5. Amer­i­ca is now pay­ing more in inter­est on its record $33 tril­lion debt than on nation­al defense — here’s who holds the IOUs (Ser­ah Louis, Yahoo Finance): “America’s gross nation­al debt hit an eye-water­ing $33 tril­lion for the first time in Sep­tem­ber — mere months after eclips­ing the $32 tril­lion mark ear­li­er in the year. The U.S. is also cur­rent­ly spend­ing more to pay inter­est on the nation­al debt than it does on nation­al defense, accord­ing to the Treasury’s month­ly state­ment.”
   • What a stun­ning sta­tis­tic.
6. The Labor Mar­ket Returns of Being An Artist: Evi­dence from the Unit­ed States, 2006–2021 (Chris­tos Makridis, SSRN): “First, I find a decline in the rel­a­tive earn­ings of artists to non-artists from zero to a 15% dis­ad­van­tage. After con­trol­ling for demo­graph­ic dif­fer­ences, the decline is sharp­er, declin­ing from a 15% earn­ings dis­ad­van­tage to 30%. That the inclu­sion of demo­graph­ic con­trols rais­es the earn­ings gap sug­gests there is pos­i­tive selec­tion into the arts. Sec­ond, these dif­fer­ences decline in mag­ni­tude to 4.4%, but remain sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant, after exploit­ing vari­a­tion among artists and non-artists in the same indus­try-year and major occu­pa­tion. Third, when restrict­ing the set of indi­vid­u­als to those with at least a col­lege degree, those with a fine arts degree also incur an earn­ings and employ­ment penal­ty even if they work in the arts. These results high­light the increas­ing finan­cial pre­car­i­ous­ness of artists over the past decade.”
   • The excerpt is from the abstract. Chris­tos is an alum­nus of our min­istry.
7. Unbib­li­cal Schol­ar­ship (Alan Jacobs, The Hedge­hog Review): “If we can insist—as many (though not enough) grad­u­ate pro­grams still do—that stu­dents learn lan­guages oth­er than Eng­lish in order to pur­sue the study of Eng­lish writ­ers, then we can also insist that they acquire bib­li­cal lit­er­a­cy. Every grad­u­ate stu­dent in the human­i­ties should be required to take a course in the Eng­lish Bible, a course that, among oth­er things, requires the mem­o­riza­tion and recita­tion of large chunks of the bib­li­cal text.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• The Prob­lem With Liv­ing With Guys (Liz Miele, YouTube): nine­ty sec­onds. Irra­tional­ly judgey come­di­ans are often fun­ny come­di­ans.
• Col­lege Admis­sions Then vs Now (Hold­er­ness Fam­i­ly, YouTube): four min­utes
• Micro­fast­ing (Fox­trot)
• Bat­man and Rome (Texts From Super­heroes)

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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.