Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 467

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 467, a num­ber which has strict­ly increas­ing dig­its when writ­ten nor­mal­ly as well as when writ­ten in bases 7 (1235₇) and 9 (568₉).

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. Col­leges Can’t Say They Weren’t Warned (David French, New York Times): “In the after­math of the Oct. 7 Hamas ter­ror­ist attack on Israel, a num­ber of uni­ver­si­ties were tak­en by sur­prise by the sheer sus­tained dis­rup­tion and by the anti­se­mit­ic ani­mos­i­ty on their cam­pus­es. They strug­gled to respond effec­tive­ly. As the war con­tin­ues — and as the con­flict with Hezbol­lah esca­lates on Israel’s north­ern bor­der — uni­ver­si­ties can no longer claim to be sur­prised. They know what might hap­pen this school year, and this knowl­edge has legal sig­nif­i­cance. If they fail to pro­tect the free speech of stu­dents or to pro­tect stu­dents from anti­se­mit­ic or Islam­o­pho­bic harass­ment, there will be con­se­quences.”
2. Strand­ed in Space? NASA Doesn’t See the Star­lin­er Astro­nauts That Way. (Ken­neth Chang, New York Times): “If you go some­where expect­ing an eight-day trip and end up not being able to leave for eight months, most peo­ple would con­sid­er that ‘strand­ed.’… All sum­mer, NASA and Boe­ing offi­cials have been reluc­tant to use the words, ‘stuck’ and ‘strand­ed,’ which would add anoth­er black mark to a space­craft that has been delayed for years by tech­ni­cal set­backs.”
3. Augus­tine, AI, and the Demon Heuris­tic (Robert Cot­ton, Mere Ortho­doxy): “One does not have to dig deep into the com­ments sec­tion of a Chat­G­PT demo video to find some­one con­vinced that there’s some­thing demon­ic about it. At the risk of keep­ing com­pa­ny with the most para­noid of the ter­mi­nal­ly online, I would like to add anoth­er point which makes this posi­tion plausible–that there is some­thing of the demon­ic to recent AI devel­op­ments.… I think we should be quite alarmed by how we are approach­ing Arti­fi­cial Gen­er­al Intel­li­gence (AGI) and how it appears to look. If this theur­gic vision of idol­a­try is Bib­li­cal­ly true, we should be wor­ried that there are malig­nant actors attempt­ing to gain a foothold. The veneer of dis­en­chant­ment to which tech­nol­o­gy so effec­tive­ly pre­tends is, in fact, quite capa­ble of hid­ing a very old and very mag­i­cal strat­a­gem.”
   • Fas­ci­nat­ing and brings com­plete­ly unex­pect­ed (to me) evi­dence to the table.
4. Faith abounds at the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion, but don’t be sur­prised (Jack Jenk­ins, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): “The faith-fueled mes­sag­ing [at the DNC] may have sur­prised some con­ser­v­a­tives, but it’s hard­ly news to any­one who kept a close eye on lib­er­als over the past decade or so. The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, although home to a grow­ing (and siz­able) sub­set of reli­gious­ly unaf­fil­i­at­ed vot­ers, remains major­i­ty reli­gious and major­i­ty Chris­t­ian, accord­ing to the Pub­lic Reli­gion Research Insti­tute. More to the point: Although peo­ple of faith have long been at home among its ranks, reli­gious rhetoric at Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty con­ven­tions has gar­nered more head­lines in recent years, with the 2016 gath­er­ing fea­tur­ing a prime­time address from a promi­nent pas­tor and the 2020 event includ­ing an entire sec­tion ded­i­cat­ed to faith.”
5. Col­lege Fresh­man, Stick the Land­ing (Vince Green­wald, Gospel Coali­tion): “Know ahead of time that you won’t find a per­fect church. There are no per­fect church­es. You’re just look­ing for a healthy and faith­ful one. So after your short church-shop­ping phase, make the piv­ot from eval­u­a­tion to par­tic­i­pa­tion. Pur­sue mem­ber­ship. Look for oppor­tu­ni­ties to serve. Bring some friends. And resist the urge to church shop indef­i­nite­ly. Plants don’t grow well when they’re con­stant­ly uproot­ed and trans­plant­ed. Nei­ther do Chris­tians.”
   • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. I would add to the arti­cle: look for an on-cam­pus fel­low­ship such as Chi Alpha. They will help you find a church as well as in many oth­er prac­ti­cal ways.
6. The Sil­i­con Val­ley Canon: On the Paıdeía of the Amer­i­can Tech Elite (Tan­ner Greer, blog): “I laugh some­times at the com­plaints I see on human­i­ties twit­ter bewail­ing the shal­low read­ing habits of the tech-bro. The tech­nol­o­gy broth­ers read—a lot! I am sure more nov­els are read every year on Sand Hill Road than on Capi­tol Hill. Wash­ing­ton func­tionar­ies sim­ply do not live a life of the mind. If Sil­i­con Val­ley tech­nol­o­gists do not always live such a life, they at least pre­tend to.… You can divide most of these [beloved by Sil­i­con Val­ley] titles into five over­ar­ch­ing cat­e­gories: works of spec­u­la­tive or sci­ence fic­tion; his­tor­i­cal case stud­ies of ambi­tious men or impor­tant moments in the his­to­ry of tech­nol­o­gy; books that out­line gen­er­al prin­ci­ples of physics, math, or cog­ni­tive sci­ence; books that out­line the oper­at­ing prin­ci­ples and busi­ness strat­e­gy of suc­cess­ful start-ups; and final­ly, nar­ra­tive his­to­ries of suc­cess­ful start-ups them­selves.”
7. Praise for Price Goug­ing (John Cochrane, Sub­stack): “We should praise price-goug­ing. Yes, pass a new fed­er­al law, one that over­rides the many state laws against price goug­ing.… Price goug­ing directs scarce sup­ply to the peo­ple who real­ly need it, encour­ages new sup­ply to come in, encour­ages hold­ing stock­piles for a rainy day, encour­ages effi­cient use of stock­piles we have sit­ting around, and encour­ages peo­ple to sub­sti­tute for less scarce goods when they can.”
   • The author is an econ­o­mist at Stan­ford’s Hoover Insti­tu­tion.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Study Finds Polls Are Only Accu­rate When Your Can­di­date Is Ahead (Baby­lon Bee)

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.