Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 519: our therapeutic age and transparent mice scalps

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 Chris­t­ian in a Ther­a­peu­tic Age (Ian Har­ber, Mere Ortho­doxy): “What are ways that Chris­tians can live, wit­ness, and nav­i­gate the com­plex­i­ties of a ther­a­peu­tic cul­ture? I believe there are at least three. 1) Occu­py a dif­fer­ent exis­ten­tial space, 2) Embody a dif­fer­ent sto­ry, and 3) Cul­ti­vate a dif­fer­ent qual­i­ty of life.… The ther­a­peu­tic cul­ture is try­ing to solve real ail­ments. We’re more frac­tured, iso­lat­ed, and devoid of mean­ing-mak­ing roles and insti­tu­tions than ever before. The dig­i­tal age has rap­tured us from our bod­ies and com­mu­ni­ties and drained us of the very things that make us human. But the good truth for our time—and all eternity—is that the God-human, Jesus, has made a way for us to recov­er our human­i­ty”
2. Researchers turn mouse scalp trans­par­ent to image brain devel­op­ment (Stan­ford News): “Now, by sim­ply rub­bing a solu­tion into a juve­nile mouse’s scalp, researchers at Stan­ford can make the skin trans­par­ent to all vis­i­ble light, allow­ing them to image the devel­op­ing con­nec­tions in a liv­ing mouse’s brain. And because the tech­nique is reversible and non-inva­sive, the researchers can return to the same ani­mal over days and weeks.”
   • Chi Alpha alum­nus and Stan­ford pro­fes­sor Guosong Hong at it again!
3. Robin West­man and the Rise of Amer­i­can Nihilism (Peter Savod­nik, The Free Press): “All that fin­ger-point­ing obscures a deep­er point: West­man seems to have been dri­ven by an all-con­sum­ing, destruc­tive force, a nihilism—the con­vic­tion that life is mean­ing­less; that words like truth, jus­tice and God are emp­ty slo­gans; that every­thing must be razed. Nihilism is not some obscure aca­d­e­m­ic notion. It stretch­es back to the 19th century—early Russ­ian rad­i­cals were called nihilists—and it has waxed and waned across the past 150 years. Today, you can feel the nihilist impulse cours­ing through Amer­i­ca, which has been most­ly stripped of its faith and a shared nation­al cul­ture and has seen once-great institutions—universities, cor­po­ra­tions, church­es, non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions, the media, the military—become engulfed in scan­dal and politi­ciza­tion.”
4. They Became Sym­bols for Gazan Star­va­tion. But All 12 Suf­fer from Oth­er Health Prob­lems. (Olivia Rein­gold and Tanya Lukyano­va, The Free Press): “Uncov­er­ing this miss­ing con­text didn’t require in-depth, on-the-ground reporting—or months of inves­tiga­tive work. It took min­utes, and required noth­ing more than a com­put­er with a sta­ble inter­net con­nec­tion. We sim­ply ran the sto­ry sub­ject­s’ names through Google Trans­late to get the Ara­bic spelling, then searched those names in Ara­bic-lan­guage media. Even a quick scan of the results revealed that many of these chil­dren suf­fer from mus­cle atro­phy, head injuries, or oth­er seri­ous med­ical con­di­tions that help explain their ema­ci­at­ed appear­ance.”
   • A fol­low-up: Jour­nal­ists Against Jour­nal­ism (The Free Press): “Jour­nal­is­tic out­lets love to boast about ‘impact,’ and this sto­ry has had more than its share.… In a nor­mal time, this is the kind of work that would be praised by our peers for get­ting to ground truth. But we don’t live in nor­mal times. And that is not how some of our col­leagues in the news media saw things.… You’ll notice one impor­tant aspect about the uproar: No one is dis­put­ing the facts in our piece.”
5. Two on Chi­na (or more specif­i­cal­ly, the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty):
   • How Chi­na Influ­ences Elec­tions in America’s Biggest City (Michael Forsythe, Jay Root, Bian­ca Pal­laro & David A. Fahren­thold, New York Times): “In New York City, social clubs backed by Chi­na under­mined a con­gres­sion­al can­di­date who once chal­lenged the regime on Chi­nese tele­vi­sion. They helped unseat a state sen­a­tor for attend­ing a ban­quet with the pres­i­dent of Tai­wan. And they con­demned a City Coun­cil can­di­date on social media for sup­port­ing Hong Kong democ­ra­cy. In the past few years, these orga­ni­za­tions have qui­et­ly foiled the careers of politi­cians who opposed China’s author­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ment while back­ing oth­ers who sup­port­ed poli­cies of the country’s rul­ing Com­mu­nist Par­ty.”
   • I’m a Stan­ford stu­dent. A Chi­nese agent tried to recruit me as a spy (Elsa John­son, The Times): “After that I start­ed screen­shot­ting our con­ver­sa­tions. I was begin­ning to sus­pect that Charles might be work­ing for the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty (CCP) and he could be try­ing to recruit me as a spy. I know it sounds para­noid, but I had heard of oth­er Stan­ford stu­dents receiv­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions like this out of the blue — espe­cial­ly those study­ing sci­ence, tech, engi­neer­ing or math­e­mat­ics.…. Thanks to Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ties’ open-door pol­i­cy, Chi­nese aca­d­e­mics are allowed to col­lab­o­rate with our smartest researchers and sci­en­tists, and take our advance­ments in AI, robot­ics, weapon­ry and nuclear tech­nol­o­gy back home. This is not an exag­ger­a­tion — it’s the con­clu­sion of a report on the CCP pub­lished last Sep­tem­ber by the House select com­mit­tee on the CCP.”
6. The Wrong Def­i­n­i­tion of Love (David Brooks, New York Times): “In [our ther­a­py-dri­ven] cul­ture peo­ple are nat­u­ral­ly going to define love as the feel­ing they get when some­body sat­is­fies their crav­ing for pos­i­tive and ten­der atten­tion, not as some­thing they self­less­ly give to anoth­er. In oth­er, less self-ori­ent­ed cul­tures, and in oth­er times, love was seen as some­thing clos­er to self-abne­ga­tion than to self-com­fort. It was seen as a force so pow­er­ful that it could over­come our nat­ur­al self­ish­ness.”
7. As Stan­ford lays off work­ers, 18 employ­ees made $1 mil­lion or more (Top 25 list­ed) (Braden Cartwright, Palo Alto Dai­ly Post): “At a time when Stan­ford is fir­ing employ­ees to save mon­ey, new­ly released IRS doc­u­ments show the uni­ver­si­ty paid 18 employ­ees $1 mil­lion or more in the pre­vi­ous fis­cal year. Stan­ford announced in July that it was lay­ing off 363 employ­ees this fall as part of a $140 mil­lion bud­get cut caused by reduced fed­er­al research fund­ing and a high­er endow­ment tax.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Cat­a­stro­phe (Pearls Before Swine)
• There’s a Sim­ple Trick to Unshrink Your Clothes, Thanks to Sci­ence (Nisa Sal­im, Sci­enceAl­ert): “If a favourite gar­ment has shrunk in the wash, you can try to res­cue it with this sim­ple method. Gen­tly soak the item in luke­warm water mixed with hair con­di­tion­er or baby sham­poo (approx­i­mate­ly one table­spoon per litre). Then, care­ful­ly stretch the fab­ric back into shape and dry it flat or under gen­tle ten­sion – for exam­ple, by peg­ging the gar­ment to a dry­ing rack.”
  • Read­ing this arti­cle is like read­ing one of those recipe blogs that goes on and on before it gets to the point, but the final bit is inter­est­ing.
• Gen­era (SMBC)
• Man Ful­fills The Great Com­mis­sion By Occa­sion­al­ly Wear­ing Nov­el­ty Chris­t­ian T‑Shirt In Pub­lic (Baby­lon Bee)
• Bill Belichick’s Girl­friend, 24, Wants to Trade­mark ‘Gold Dig­ger’ (Amber Lewis, The Dai­ly Beast): “Jor­don Hud­son wants to make some gold from the gold-dig­ging accu­sa­tions levied at her amid her rela­tion­ship with Bill Belichick, who is esti­mat­ed to be worth $70 mil­lion. The for­mer cheer­leader, 24, filed a trade­mark appli­ca­tion this week through the com­pa­ny she man­ages, TCE Rights Man­age­ment, to cash in on her ‘gold dig­ger’ epi­thet. If her bid is suc­cess­ful, she will launch her own trade­marked jew­el­ry and key chains line, Peo­ple reports.”
• See­ing infrared: sci­en­tists cre­ate con­tact lens­es that grant ‘super-vision’ (Ian Sam­ple, The Guardian): “In pre­vi­ous work, the research team gave mice near-infrared vision by inject­ing upcon­ver­sion nanopar­ti­cles under the reti­na, the light-sen­si­tive mem­brane at the back of the eye. But not­ing that this ‘may not be read­i­ly accept­ed by humans,’ they searched for a less inva­sive strat­e­gy. Writ­ing in the jour­nal Cell, the sci­en­tists describe how they made soft con­tact lens­es seed­ed with upcon­ver­sion nanopar­ti­cles. When worn, peo­ple could see Morse code-like sig­nals flashed from an infrared LED and tell what direc­tion infrared light came from. Their infrared vision improved when they closed their eyes, because eye­lids block vis­i­ble light more than infrared, so there was less vis­i­ble light to inter­fere.”
  • The arti­cle is a few months old. Wild times.

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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.