Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 537: Hippo Poop & Manic Complainers

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Inter­est­ing

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues like­ly to be of inter­est to Chris­tians in col­lege. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Noth­ing here about Min­neso­ta or Iran. They’re both in the news, but I haven’t yet read any­thing about them that I’ve found stim­u­lat­ing.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. The Tyran­ny of the Com­plain­ers (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “In 2023, for exam­ple, 5059 sex­u­al dis­crim­i­na­tion com­plaints came from a sin­gle individual–from a total of 8151 com­plaints. Thus, one indi­vid­ual account­ed for 68.5% of all sex­u­al dis­crim­i­na­tion com­plaints in that year.… These com­plaints have to be inves­ti­gat­ed so this sin­gle indi­vid­ual may be cost­ing tax­pay­ers mil­lions. It’s as if a sin­gle indi­vid­ual were pulling a fire alarm thou­sands of times a year, mobi­liz­ing emer­gency ser­vices on demand, and nev­er fac­ing reper­cus­sions.”
2. What I’ve Learned from Watch­ing Peo­ple Wait to Have Chil­dren (Sarah Pog­gi, The Free Press): “I’ve known all of this for as long as I’ve been a doc­tor. So have my col­leagues. That’s why ob-gyn res­i­dents, despite work­ing 80-hour weeks, are more like­ly to get preg­nant dur­ing their train­ing than any oth­er med­ical spe­cial­ists.”
   • The author is a med school prof at Johns Hop­kins.
3. Why Suf­fer­ing for Christ Is More Than Just a “Nec­es­sary Evil” (Matt Rhodes, Cross­way): “You won’t go far in evan­ge­lis­tic con­ver­sa­tions in the West today before some­one asks you to explain the prob­lem of theod­i­cy: how it is that a good God could allow suf­fer­ing in the world.… But we mustn’t for­get that ques­tions can be loaded. Ask a defen­dant in court, ‘Have you stopped beat­ing your wife yet?’ and his lawyer is sure to object, ‘Your hon­or, the ques­tion pre­sup­pos­es my client has beat­en his wife.’ The ques­tion needs to be reframed, not respond­ed to.”
   • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
4. Why Chris­tians Ignore What the Bible Says About Immi­grants (Rus­sell Moore, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The Bible does not give a com­pre­hen­sive pub­lic pol­i­cy for migra­tion or asy­lum. Chris­tians of good faith can dis­agree on those things. But the Bible does give a com­pre­hen­sive view on what we are to think of human beings, includ­ing migrants. The church has a mis­sion to shape con­sciences around how we min­is­ter to scared and vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple, regard­less of whether we think they should have stayed some­where else. And Jesus has already tak­en the ques­tion of ‘Who is my neigh­bor?’ off the table…”
5. Some Venezuela per­spec­tives:
   • Was Trump’s Venezuela Attack Legal? (Jeb Ruben­feld, The Free Press): “Under cur­rent U.S. doc­trine and prece­dent, what Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump just did in Venezuela is almost cer­tain­ly legal; in fact, the U.S. did the very same thing in Pana­ma four decades ago, and the courts upheld it after years of lit­i­ga­tion and care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion. But Trump’s plan to ‘run’ Venezuela for the fore­see­able future, declared at a press con­fer­ence ear­li­er today, is much murki­er.”
     • The author is a pro­fes­sor at Yale Law School.
   • Why the Venezuela Oper­a­tion Won’t Embold­en America’s Ene­mies (Eli Lake, The Free Press): “If any­thing, a pre­cise mil­i­tary oper­a­tion to seize a rogue tyrant in a predawn raid with no U.S. casu­al­ties will cause Chi­na and Rus­sia to think twice about test­ing Amer­i­can pow­er. Venezuela count­ed on a Russ­ian-made air defense sys­tem that failed to stop the U.S. Air Force from dom­i­nat­ing its air­space. That sends a chill­ing mes­sage to Rus­sia and any­one who has pur­chased its mil­i­tary hard­ware. Chi­na had invest­ed bil­lions in Venezuela’s oil sec­tor only to see the man who cut those deals arraigned this week before a U.S. fed­er­al court in Man­hat­tan.”
   • Why I Cold-Called Pres­i­dent Trump at 4:30 in the Morn­ing (Tyler Pager, New York Times): “I just called him direct­ly and he picked up. I wasn’t that sur­prised because the president’s phone habits are pret­ty well-doc­u­ment­ed — he reg­u­lar­ly picks up calls from reporters.… This is the first time I have ever called the pres­i­dent on his cell­phone.”
     • That’s a wild detail in a wild news cycle. How many reporters have Trump’s num­ber and are just wait­ing for the right moment to call?
6. So What If the Bible Doesn’t Men­tion Embryo Screen­ing? (Brad East, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Open up the glos­sary in the back of your Bible, and you won’t find Chat­G­PT, CRISPR, or IVF. There are no chap­ter-and-verse cita­tions for lip fillers, egg freez­ing, or prac­ti­cal ques­tions like the ‘right’ age to get mar­ried or the ‘ide­al’ num­ber of chil­dren.… Mature Chris­tians, and espe­cial­ly pas­tors and whole church­es, must there­fore be able to give con­fi­dent scrip­tur­al answers to new ques­tions even when overt bib­li­cal teach­ing is lack­ing.”
   • I hope these Fri­day emails are of some small ser­vice in this regard.
7. The Case for Pro­hibit­ing Vice (Charles Fain Lehmann, Nation­al Affairs): “This fram­ing of the vice issue — as a mat­ter of per­mit­ting behav­ior that may be immoral but is more impor­tant­ly ‘harm­less’ — is so cen­tral to our pub­lic debate that both pro­po­nents and oppo­nents artic­u­late their crit­i­cisms in its lan­guage. They hag­gle about which is more harm­ful, vice or its pro­hi­bi­tion.… the fact that both pro­po­nents and oppo­nents of vice have resort­ed to appeals to harm actu­al­ly great­ly under­mines the harm prin­ci­ple’s util­i­ty. Part of the pur­pose of the prin­ci­ple is to sep­a­rate the tru­ly dam­ag­ing from the mere­ly unliked. But the dis­tinc­tion, it turns out, is far less coher­ent than pro­po­nents once claimed.… [Vice] is intrin­si­cal­ly a prob­lem, because human well-being — the good life — is always threat­ened by it.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Hip­po Blasts Poop At Hye­na (YouTube): ten sec­onds
• Teenag­er Con­fused How Par­ents Still Don’t Know Every­thing When It Only Took Him 16 Years (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.