Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 454



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 454, a num­ber whose sym­me­try pleas­es me.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Nones Have Hit a Ceil­ing (Ryan Burge, Sub­stack): “The rise of the nones may be large­ly over now. At least it won’t be increas­ing in the same way that it did in the pri­or thir­ty years. Of course, the ques­tion is why? I don’t know if I have a bul­let­proof answer. I think the eas­i­est expla­na­tion is that a lot of mar­gin­al­ly attached peo­ple switched to ‘no reli­gion’ on sur­veys over the last decade or two. Even­tu­al­ly, there weren’t that many mar­gin­al­ly attached folks any­more. All you had left were the very com­mit­ted reli­gious peo­ple who like­ly won’t become nones for any rea­son. The loose top soil has been scooped off and hauled away, leav­ing noth­ing but hard bedrock under­neath.”
    • Empha­sis removed for read­abil­i­ty.
  2. ‘Loud-mouthed bul­ly’: CS Lewis satirised Oxford peer in secret poems (Dalya Alberge, The Guardian): “Jok­ing that an infu­ri­at­ed Lewis had per­haps com­posed them dur­ing one of Wyld’s lec­tures, Horobin not­ed that one of them iden­ti­fies Wyld through an acros­tic with the ini­tial let­ters spelling out the name ‘Hen­ry Cecil Wyld’. He added: ‘On the remain­ing blank pages he penned a series of addi­tion­al satir­i­cal vers­es lam­poon­ing Wyld – one in Eng­lish, along­side oth­ers in Latin, Greek, French and even Old Eng­lish.’ ”
    • Even Lewis’s shade was epic and eru­dite. I love this sto­ry. Also, a reminder that every word will be brought into judge­ment — even words uttered (or penned) in secret. I should men­tion he would not yet have been a Chris­t­ian when these poems appear to have been com­posed.
  3. What Do Stu­dents at Elite Col­leges Real­ly Want? (Francesca Mari, New York Times): “…every­one arrived on cam­pus hop­ing to change the world. But what they learn at Har­vard, he said, is that actu­al­ly doing any­thing mean­ing­ful is too hard. Peo­ple give up on their dreams, he told me, and decide they might as well make mon­ey. Some­one else told me it was com­mon at par­ties to hear their peers say they just want to sell out.”
    • Unlocked
  4. Redefin­ing the sci­en­tif­ic method: as the use of sophis­ti­cat­ed sci­en­tif­ic meth­ods that extend our mind (Alexan­der Krauss, PNAS Nexus): “This study reveals that 25% of all dis­cov­er­ies since 1900 did not apply the com­mon sci­en­tif­ic method (all three features)—with 6% of dis­cov­er­ies using no obser­va­tion, 23% using no exper­i­men­ta­tion, and 17% not test­ing a hypoth­e­sis. Empir­i­cal evi­dence thus chal­lenges the com­mon view of the sci­en­tif­ic method.”
    • From the abstract because it is so suc­cinct­ly put, but the arti­cle itself is easy to read. Rec­om­mend­ed. The author is a philoso­pher of sci­ence at the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics.
  5. Amer­i­can Mis­sion­ar­ies Killed in Port-au-Prince (Daniel Sil­li­man, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Crim­i­nal gangs killed near­ly 5,000 peo­ple in Haiti last year. Then, in 2024, the gangs band­ed togeth­er, turned against the politi­cians who had once col­lab­o­rat­ed with them for pow­er, and launched coor­di­nat­ed attacks on the gov­ern­ment. The gangs set police sta­tions on fire, shut down the main air­port and sea­port, and broke open two pris­ons, releas­ing an esti­mat­ed 4,000 inmates. They van­dal­ized gov­ern­ment offices, stormed the Nation­al Palace, and took con­trol of about 80 per­cent of the cap­i­tal.”
  6. Group chats rule the world. (Sri­ram Krish­nan, per­son­al blog): “Most of the inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tions in tech now hap­pen in pri­vate group chats: What­sapp, Telegram, Sig­nal, small invite-only Dis­cord groups.… The great cul­ture wars of 2020 meant peo­ple, espe­cial­ly in tech, weren’t com­fort­able shar­ing their views in pub­lic lest they get var­i­ous online mobs after them.”
  7. What ‘Tradwives’—and Some of Their Critics—Miss (Han­nah Ander­son, The Dis­patch): “But women haven’t been unique­ly lied to. Fam­i­lies have been lied to about what their homes can and should be. Men and women alike have been told that their great­est achieve­ments lie out­side of it. And yet, a mar­riage reduced from two ‘careerists’ to one is still serv­ing cor­po­rate inter­ests. At best, a woman sac­ri­fic­ing her career to enable her husband’s career (as Butk­er asserts his wife does and as he coun­seled new female grad­u­ates) miss­es the point. At worst, it enables the very mar­ket­place that desires noth­ing more than to creep into our homes and com­mod­i­fy every expres­sion of good­ness and beau­ty that hap­pens there—even if what we’re sell­ing is tra­di­tion­al­ism.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty Tour by Drone (YouTube): six min­utes (it’s a lit­tle long, but the first bit is nice to watch)
  • Will 18 year old Emma Olson FOOL Penn & Teller with a Rubik’s cube? (Penn & Teller Fool Us, YouTube): nine min­utes
  • When an Eel Takes a Bite Then an Octo­pus Might Claim an Eye­ball (Joshua Rapp Learn, New York Times): “In each video, the com­mon octo­pus may sac­ri­fice arms, much as lizards drop their tails to dis­tract preda­tors, Dr. Hernández-Urcera said. In the first video, the octo­pus los­es three arms while the one in the sec­ond video los­es two — but they can ful­ly regrow limbs in about 45 days, some lab tests show.”
    • Rarely do I find that news arti­cles are improved by embed­ded videos. This is one of the excep­tions. Very cool.
  • Are Plants Intel­li­gent? If So, What Does That Mean for Your Sal­ad? (Eliz­a­beth A. Har­ris, New York Times): “Obvi­ous­ly we’re ani­mals that need to eat plants. There’s no way around that. But there is a way of imag­in­ing a future with agri­cul­tur­al prac­tices and har­vest­ing prac­tices that are more tuned into the life style of the plant, the things it’s capa­ble of and its pro­cliv­i­ties. This opens up the world of plant ethics.”
    • The arti­cle itself is inter­est­ing. The title made me laugh.

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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