Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 483

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. The Shock of Faith: It’s Noth­ing Like I Thought It Would Be (David Brooks, New York Times): “When reli­gion is seen as belief, then the believ­er lives on a con­tin­u­um between belief and doubt. But when reli­gion is seen as a long­ing, then the believ­er lives on the con­tin­u­um between inten­si­ty and apa­thy. That’s the con­tin­u­um I live on these days.”
   • High­ly rec­om­mend­ed, unlocked, sent to me by mul­ti­ple alum­ni.
2. Archae­ol­o­gists Found a Skele­ton Wear­ing an Amulet That May Change the His­to­ry of Chris­tian­i­ty (Tim New­comb, Pop­u­lar Mechan­ics): “Every oth­er link to reli­able evi­dence of Chris­t­ian life in the north­ern Alpine area of the Roman Empire is at least 50 years younger, all com­ing from the fourth cen­tu­ry A.D.…. The sci­en­tif­ic study is bol­stered by ref­er­ences nev­er found so ear­ly, such as men­tion of Saint Titus, a stu­dent of the Apos­tle Paul, the invo­ca­tion ‘holy, holy, holy!’ which wasn’t more com­mon until the fourth cen­tu­ry A.D., and the phrase ‘bend your knees,’ which is a quote from Paul’s let­ter to the Philip­pi­ans.”
   • Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus. The title is click­bait, but the arti­cle’s con­tent is inter­est­ing.
3. What if Our Democ­ra­cy Can’t Sur­vive With­out Chris­tian­i­ty? (David French and Jonathan Rauch, New York Times): “It turns out that Chris­tian­i­ty is a load-bear­ing wall in democ­ra­cy, and the founders told us that. They didn’t spec­i­fy that you have to be a Chris­t­ian, per se, but they said that our lib­er­al, sec­u­lar Con­sti­tu­tion, it’s great, as far as it goes, but it relies on virtues like truth­ful­ness and law­ful­ness and the equal dig­ni­ty of every indi­vid­ual. And they under­stood that those have to come from an out­side source. The Con­sti­tu­tion won’t fur­nish them. And the source that they relied on prin­ci­pal­ly was reli­gion to teach those things and to build and trans­mit those val­ues. And it turns out that for most of our his­to­ry, Chris­tian­i­ty has been pret­ty good at that.” 
   • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
4. Study claims all observ­ables in nature can be mea­sured with a sin­gle con­stant: The sec­ond (Phys.org): “ ‘In Galilean space-time, you need rulers and clocks to mea­sure all the phys­i­cal vari­ables. In rel­a­tivis­tic space-time, how­ev­er, clocks are suf­fi­cient. This is because in rel­a­tiv­i­ty, space and time are so inter­re­lat­ed that a sin­gle unit is suf­fi­cient to describe all quan­ti­ties. High-pre­ci­sion clocks, such as the atom­ic clocks used today, are capa­ble of meet­ing all mea­sure­ment needs,’ says Mat­sas.”
5. Why are Top Sci­en­tists Leav­ing Har­vard? (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Mina tells an incred­i­ble sto­ry of what hap­pened dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. At the time Mina was a fac­ul­ty mem­ber at the Chan School of Pub­lic Health, he is extreme­ly active in advis­ing gov­ern­ments on the pan­dem­ic, and he brings Har­vard mil­lions of dol­lars a year in fund­ing. But when he tries to hire some­one at his lab, the uni­ver­si­ty refus­es because there is hir­ing freeze! Sor­ry, no hir­ing for pan­dem­ic research dur­ing a pan­dem­ic.”
6. When Gen. George Pat­ton Called on God (Alex Ker­shaw, Wall Street Jour­nal): “Pat­ton instruct­ed his men: ‘Pray when dri­ving. Pray when fight­ing. Pray alone. Pray with oth­ers. Pray by night and pray by day.’ He believed the Third Army’s near­ly 500 chap­lains, rep­re­sent­ing 32 denom­i­na­tions, were as crit­i­cal to vic­to­ry as his tank com­man­ders. ‘He want­ed a chap­lain to be above aver­age in courage,’ O’Neill recalled. ‘In time of bat­tle, he want­ed the chap­lains up front, where the men were dying. And that’s where the Third Army chap­lains went—up front. We lost more chap­lains, pro­por­tion­ate­ly, than any oth­er group.’ ”
   • This is one of those his­tor­i­cal moments that I always mar­vel at when I read about it.
7. The Abor­tion Lob­by Endan­gers Preg­nant Women (Rachel Roth Ald­hiz­er, Wall Street Jour­nal): “Reclas­si­fy­ing induc­tion of labor—or, rarely, sur­gi­cal res­o­lu­tion for PPROM—as abor­tion care seems to threat­en women’s pre­na­tal care nation­wide. No abor­tion leg­is­la­tion in any state restricts emer­gency pro­ce­dures to pro­tect the life or health of the moth­er. Yet this lin­guis­tic shift could mis­lead physi­cians in states with abor­tion restric­tions into believ­ing that stan­dard treat­ments for preg­nan­cy com­pli­ca­tions may be ille­gal, or at least sub­ject to a high­er stan­dard of physi­cian judg­ment when deter­min­ing a treat­ment course.… Only the abor­tion lob­by and the politi­cians who sup­port it ben­e­fit from these lin­guis­tic games.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Bay Area squir­rels are killing and decap­i­tat­ing en masse, study finds (Suzie Dun­das, SF Gate): “The researchers observed inter­ac­tions between voles and ground squir­rels in June and July and found that 42% involved squir­rels killing voles. What makes this dis­cov­ery so unusu­al is that the per­cent­age should have been zero.”
• How to Hon­or the Inten­tions of Those Who Came Before You (Basic Instruc­tions)
• Unclear If Pianist Total Begin­ner Or Pro­fes­sion­al Jazz Play­er (Baby­lon Bee)
• Cup­cake (SMBC)

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.