Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 436

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 436, which isn’t an espe­cial­ly inter­est­ing num­ber. It is, appar­ent­ly, non­to­tient, but even after read­ing about totients I remain unin­ter­est­ed.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. From Vex­ing Uncer­tain­ty to Intel­lec­tu­al Humil­i­ty (Michael Dick­son, Schiz­o­phre­nia Bul­letin):  “I am a 55-year-old hus­band, father, friend, and pro­fes­sion­al philoso­pher. In 1992, as a grad­u­ate stu­dent at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, a porter found me amongst the cows in the mead­ows of King’s Col­lege, after being there for 2 or 3 days. I was in bad phys­i­cal shape, hav­ing eat­en noth­ing, and appar­ent­ly get­ting water from the riv­er. He asked what I was doing. I replied: ‘I’m solv­ing a prob­lem about sto­chas­tic cal­cu­lus.’ This state­ment was true, but did not answer his ques­tion. He took me to the hos­pi­tal, where I remained for some weeks. It wasn’t the first time that I was psy­chot­ic, but it was, maybe, the first time that any­body noticed, the first time that I was unable to hide it from oth­ers, and there­fore from myself.”
    • The author is a pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Car­oli­na. A remark­able (and fair­ly brief) arti­cle. 
  2. Gov­Docs to the Res­cue! Debunk­ing an Immi­gra­tion Myth (Rose­mary Meszaros and Kather­ine Pen­navaria, Pol­i­cy Com­mons): “No one’s fam­i­ly name was changed, altered, short­ened, butchered, or ‘writ­ten down wrong’ at Ellis Island or any Amer­i­can port. That idea is an urban leg­end. Many names did get changed as immi­grants set­tled into their new Amer­i­can lives, but those changes were made sev­er­al years after arrival and were done by choice of some­one in the fam­i­ly.”
  3. A Peace­ful Solu­tion on Tai­wan Is Slip­ping Away (Michael Beck­ley, New York Times): “…Tai­wan pro­vokes Chi­na sim­ply by being what it is: A pros­per­ous and free soci­ety. Taiwan’s bloom­ing nation­al iden­ti­ty threat­ens Chi­na with the prospect of per­ma­nent ter­ri­to­r­i­al dis­mem­ber­ment; and Taiwan’s elec­tions, rule of law and free press make a mock­ery of Beijing’s claim that Chi­nese cul­ture is incom­pat­i­ble with democ­ra­cy. America’s words can’t change any of that. Chi­nese law explic­it­ly states that Bei­jing may use force if pos­si­bil­i­ties for peace­ful uni­fi­ca­tion are ‘com­plete­ly exhaust­ed.’ Because of pol­i­tics in Tai­wan and the Unit­ed States, those pos­si­bil­i­ties are dwin­dling.”
    • The author is a polit­i­cal sci­en­tist at Tufts.
    • Relat­ed: Tai­wan’s Chi­na-skep­tic rul­ing-par­ty can­di­date wins pres­i­den­tial elec­tion (Emi­ly Feng, NPR): “For secu­ri­ty rea­sons, Tai­wan does not allow absen­tee vot­ing, man­dat­ing that all vot­ers cast their bal­lots in-per­son, on paper only. The phys­i­cal bal­lots are then count­ed by hand at every polling sta­tion, a process that is com­plete­ly open to the pub­lic.” The impli­ca­tion being that they are so wor­ried about Chi­nese med­dling that they engage in rad­i­cal trans­paren­cy. Wow.
  4. Xi Jin­ping Is Not Try­ing to Make Chris­tian­i­ty More Chi­nese (Feng­gang Yang, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Through­out Decem­ber, the author­i­ties once again tried hard to con­tain and curb Christ­mas cel­e­bra­tions inside and out­side church­es, pro­hib­it­ed stu­dents and oth­ers from par­tic­i­pat­ing in Christ­mas activ­i­ties, and detained some house church lead­ers to pre­vent them from orga­niz­ing con­gre­ga­tion­al gath­er­ings. Yet most church­es, both the offi­cial­ly sanc­tioned church­es and unreg­is­tered house church­es, held Christ­mas Eve and Christ­mas Day wor­ship ser­vices. The online evan­ge­lis­tic galas by Bei­jing Zion Church and oth­er house church­es on Zoom and oth­er plat­forms are of high artis­tic qual­i­ty. Chris­tians shared dis­creet­ly on social media that church lead­ers bap­tized a num­ber of new believ­ers despite the cur­rent ‘bit­ter win­ter’ for church­es in Chi­na.”
    • I found this bit fas­ci­nat­ing: “Many peo­ple in the West may not know that in the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist polit­i­cal sys­tem, the party’s pol­i­cy is supe­ri­or to state laws and trumps the con­sti­tu­tion. The Chi­nafi­ca­tion pol­i­cy has led to the pro­mul­ga­tion of a series of admin­is­tra­tive reg­u­la­tions and mea­sures, includ­ing the vast­ly expand­ed Reg­u­la­tions of Reli­gious Affairs that took effect in 2018.”
    • The author is a pro­fes­sor of soci­ol­o­gy at Pur­due.
  5. You Need To Be Cringe­maxxing (Mary Har­ring­ton, Sub­stack): “There is no way in the world to make going to church cool, and the most cringe thing of all is try­ing. Here’s the thing though: data con­sis­tent­ly show that the hap­pi­est peo­ple — those who feel that their lives are most filled with pur­pose and ful­fil­ment — are not nec­es­sar­i­ly those with kids — it’s those who go to church. Those, in oth­er words, who are not just to be indif­fer­ent to cool, but active­ly anti-cool. The first step to a hap­py and ful­filled life, it appears, is cringe­maxxing.”
    • Some oth­er vague­ly-relat­ed life advice: Risk-Aver­sion Is Killing Romance (Freya India, Sub­stack): “Some­times it seems to me we’ve become so sus­pi­cious of each other’s inten­tions that we pathol­o­gise romance and com­mit­ment, and end up psy­cho­analysing to death behav­iour that’s actu­al­ly decent. Now we take every­thing that comes with real love—being affect­ed by some­one else’s emo­tions, putting your partner’s needs first, depend­ing on them—and call it dam­age or anx­ious attach­ment or trau­ma. No! It’s called deep con­nec­tion! And God, yes, wouldn’t it be much eas­i­er if it was a pathol­o­gy, a dis­ease, one we could diag­nose and solve because it’s scary and it comes with­out guar­an­tees. But it isn’t.”
  6. “How Do I Find the Main Point of a Psalm?” (John Piper, Desir­ing God): “So, the point is to look at the pieces very care­ful­ly, to fit them togeth­er in mid­size units, to jot down the main points of the mid­size units until you have them all on a half sheet of paper, and then to think and think, and pray and pray, and think and pray and think and pray, and to orga­nize and draw lines, and to try to fit them all togeth­er until they fall into place and you see how these five, six, sev­en, eight, nine points of the mid­size units are in a flow that make one big over­ar­ch­ing point. You will be sur­prised, if you take up pen­cil and paper and do this, what you will see.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent
  7. Death by a Thou­sand Paper Cuts (David Brooks, The New York Times): “…[some­times I] find a prob­lem so mas­sive that I can’t believe I’ve ever writ­ten about any­thing else. This lat­ter expe­ri­ence hap­pened as I looked into the grow­ing bureau­cra­ti­za­tion of Amer­i­can life. It’s not only that grow­ing bureau­cra­cies cost a lot of mon­ey; they also ener­vate Amer­i­can soci­ety. They redis­trib­ute pow­er from work­ers to rule mak­ers, and in so doing sap ini­tia­tive, dis­cre­tion, cre­ativ­i­ty and dri­ve. Once you start pok­ing around, the sta­tis­tics are stag­ger­ing.”
    • Relat­ed: No joke: Feds are ban­ning humor­ous elec­tron­ic mes­sages on high­ways (AP News): “Among those that will be dis­ap­pear­ing are mes­sages such as ‘Use Yah Blinkah’ in Mass­a­chu­setts; ‘Vis­it­ing in-laws? Slow down, get there late,’ from Ohio; ‘Don’t dri­ve Star Span­gled Ham­mered,’ from Penn­syl­va­nia; ‘Hocus pocus, dri­ve with focus’ from New Jer­sey; and ‘Hands on the wheel, not your meal’ from Ari­zona.”
      • You think Stan­ford hates fun? Try the fed­er­al bureau­cra­cy!

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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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