Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 468

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 468, which is writ­ten as 3333 in base 5. I find that pret­ty cool.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. Near­ly Half of the World’s Migrants Are Chris­t­ian (Chloë-Ari­zona Fodor, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “While Chris­tians make up about 30 per­cent of the world’s pop­u­la­tion, the world’s migrants are 47 per­cent Chris­t­ian, accord­ing to the lat­est data col­lect­ed in 2020.… US migrants are much more like­ly to have a reli­gious iden­ti­ty than the Amer­i­can-born pop­u­la­tion in gen­er­al. The influx of reli­gious migrants can have a sig­nif­i­cant impact on the reli­gious com­po­si­tion of their des­ti­na­tion coun­tries. In the case of the US, ‘immi­grants are kind of putting the brakes on sec­u­lar­iza­tion,’ Kramer said.”
2. Meet new­ly crowned Miss USA Alma Coop­er M.S. ’25 (Semi­ra Aro­ra, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “Before Stan­ford, Coop­er grad­u­at­ed in the top five per­cent of her class at West Point. Cur­rent­ly, she is a part of the high­ly selec­tive Knight-Hen­nessy schol­ar­ship pro­gram, which aims to cul­ti­vate mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary lead­ers and offers schol­ars up to three years of fund­ing for grad­u­ate stud­ies.”
3. A Scary Date Can Help You Find a Good Mate (Coltan Scrivn­er, Sub­stack): “Female par­tic­i­pants enjoyed the hor­ror clip the most when watch­ing with a male who dis­played mas­tery, while male par­tic­i­pants enjoyed it most in the pres­ence of a dis­tressed female. For males con­fed­er­ates whose pho­tographs were rat­ed less attrac­tive, dis­play­ing mas­tery increased how attrac­tive they were per­ceived by the female par­tic­i­pant that watched the clip with them. In oth­er words, women enjoyed a scary sit­u­a­tion more when they expe­ri­enced it with a man who dis­played mas­tery of their fear, and those men were, in some cas­es, seen as more attrac­tive than men who dis­played indif­fer­ence or dis­tress.”
   • The author is a Behav­ioral Sci­en­tist at the Recre­ation­al Fear Lab at Aarhus Uni­ver­si­ty in Den­mark and also has an appoint­ment in the Psy­chol­o­gy Depart­ment at Ari­zona State Uni­ver­si­ty. The “Recre­ation­al Fear Lab” — what an amaz­ing name!
4. New Train­ing and Tougher Rules: How Col­leges Are Try­ing to Tame Gaza Protests (Alan Blind­er, New York Times): “The strate­gies that are com­ing into pub­lic view sug­gest that some admin­is­tra­tors at schools large and small have con­clud­ed that per­mis­sive­ness is per­ilous, and that a hard­er line may be the best option — or per­haps just the one least like­ly to invite blow­back from elect­ed offi­cials and donors who have demand­ed that uni­ver­si­ties take stronger action against pro­test­ers.”
   • Relat­ed: At Michi­gan, Activists Take Over and Shut Down Stu­dent Gov­ern­ment (Hali­na Ben­net, New York Times): “But last spring, pro-Pales­tin­ian activists, run­ning under the Shut It Down par­ty, won con­trol over the stu­dent gov­ern­ment. They imme­di­ate­ly moved to with­hold fund­ing for all activ­i­ties, until the uni­ver­si­ty com­mit­ted to divest from com­pa­nies that prof­it from Israel’s war in Gaza.… When cam­paign­ing for stu­dent gov­ern­ment, the Shut It Down par­ty did not keep its inten­tions a secret. Its plat­form ‘ran with one sin­gle point: to halt the oper­a­tions of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan Cen­tral Stu­dent Gov­ern­ment,’ Ali­fa Chowd­hury, the pres­i­dent of the par­ty, wrote in a state­ment to The Times.”
5. Gos­sip­ing Is Fun. It’s Nat­ur­al. And These Peo­ple Won’t Do It. (Michal Lei­bowitz, New York Times): “I found the lives and rela­tion­ships described by the abstain­ers com­pelling. I was intrigued by their opti­mism, by their grace, by their com­mit­ment to judg­ing oth­ers by their best fea­tures. Which is not to say I’ve sworn off gos­sip entire­ly. But I’ve def­i­nite­ly cut back. And what do you know? The less I judge peo­ple, the less I want to judge peo­ple. The less I com­plain, the less I want to com­plain. The less, maybe, that I even see things to com­plain about.”
6. How your mind­set could affect your response to vac­cines (Tay­lor Kub­o­ta, Stan­ford News): “It’s impor­tant to remem­ber that our body’s respons­es to any­thing – the med­ica­tions we take, the foods we eat, and the stress we expe­ri­ence – are influ­enced by our mind­sets as well as the objec­tive prop­er­ties of those things. And this is also true of the COVID-19 vac­cine. Our mind­sets about the vac­cine can affect not just how we feel after­ward but also our expe­ri­ence with side effects. And in some instances, your mind­set about the vac­cine’s side effects can poten­tial­ly influ­ence your immune response.”
   • Rec­om­mend­ed to me by a med­ical doc­tor.
7. Can We Be a Lit­tle Less Selec­tive With Our Moral Out­rage? (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “Of all the world’s injus­tices, per­haps the sad­dest is that so many of them are sim­ply ignored.”
   • A depress­ing list of a bunch of hor­ri­ble gov­ern­ments around the world.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Out­side (SMBC)
• Study Shows 9 Out Of 10 Astro­nauts Choose To Be Strand­ed In Space Rather Than Board Craft Built By Boe­ing (Baby­lon Bee)
• Three Kinds of Research (xkcd)
• Schrödinger’s Neigh­bors Say Thought Exper­i­ment Very Inter­est­ing But They Would Real­ly Just Like A Straight Answer On Where Their Cat Is (Baby­lon Bee)
• Anh Phoong’s bill­boards made her a Cal­i­for­nia icon. Here’s the price tag. (Tim­o­thy Karoff, SF Gate): “To get a more pre­cise fig­ure, SFGATE reached out to Phoong to ask direct­ly: How much have you spent on bill­boards this year? While Phoong told SFGATE that she doesn’t have an exact fig­ure (‘We’re still count­ing,’ she said), the esti­mate is huge. ‘Right now, we’re hit­ting about $3 mil­lion,’ she said.”

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.