Author: Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 102

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. Tran­script of New Orleans May­or Landrieu’s address on Con­fed­er­ate mon­u­ments (Derek Cos­son, The Pulse): “To lit­er­al­ly put the con­fed­er­a­cy on a pedestal in our most promi­nent places of hon­or is an inac­cu­rate recita­tion of our full past, it is an affront to our present, and it is a bad pre­scrip­tion for our future.”
  2. Rod Dreher’s A Mon­u­men­tal His­to­ry offers a gen­er­al agree­ment with Lan­drieu’s speech along with a thought­ful defense of Robert E. Lee. “I am only some­what trou­bled by the Lee monument’s removal. That’s not because of any sym­pa­thy for the Con­fed­er­a­cy — it deserved to lose, and the suf­fer­ing of the South in and after the war was, I believe, God’s judg­ment on it for the sin of slav­ery…. [nonethe­less] Lee was a far more com­plex man than many peo­ple today seem to real­ize.” (Dreher is also a Louisiana res­i­dent)
  3. Col­lege Fresh­men Are Less Reli­gious Than Ever (Allen Downey, Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can): “Most of this growth [of ‘no reli­gious pref­er­ence’] comes at the expense of Catholi­cism, which dropped from 32 per­cent to 23 per­cent, and main­stream Protes­tant denom­i­na­tions includ­ing Bap­tists (from 17 per­cent to 7 per­cent), and Methodists (from 9 per­cent to 3 per­cent). At the same time the num­ber of stu­dents choos­ing ‘Oth­er Chris­t­ian’ increased from 5 per­cent to 13 per­cent.”
  4. UK Mus­lims Report­ed Abe­di (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “What else would you have had these Mus­lims do? Sounds like they did exact­ly what they were sup­posed to do… [On the oth­er hand] what more would you have author­i­ties do? If he had not act­ed out… what do you do?” Things are com­plex. And yes, this is the same Rod Dreher as in the sec­ond entry on this list. He’s pro­lif­ic. 
  5. Sex­u­al regret in US and Nor­way: Effects of cul­ture and indi­vid­ual dif­fer­ences in reli­gios­i­ty and mat­ing strat­e­gy (Ben­dix­en, Asao, Wyck­off, Buss and Ken­nair, Per­son­al­i­ty and Indi­vid­ual Dif­fer­ences):  From the abstract: “Men were sig­nif­i­cant­ly less like­ly to regret hav­ing had casu­al sex than women and were sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly to regret pass­ing up casu­al sex­u­al oppor­tu­ni­ties than women… Final­ly, North Amer­i­cans and Nor­we­gians did not dif­fer sig­nif­i­cant­ly in over­all amount of sex­u­al regret nor in pat­terns of sex dif­fer­ences in sex­u­al regret.” I’m always fas­ci­nat­ed by gen­der dif­fer­ences that tran­scend cul­tures. 

Things Glen Found Amusing

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 101

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 Curi­ous Rise Of The ‘White Left” As A Chi­nese Inter­net Insult (Chenchen Zhang, Open Democ­ra­cy): “If you look at any thread about Trump, Islam or immi­gra­tion on a Chi­nese social media plat­form these days, it’s impos­si­ble to avoid encoun­ter­ing the term baizuo (白左), or lit­er­al­ly, the ‘white left’.… Crit­i­cisms of the ‘white left’ against the back­ground of the Euro­pean refugee cri­sis fit espe­cial­ly well with the ‘ris­ing Chi­na’ ver­sus ‘Europe in decline’ nar­ra­tive.”
  2. The True Heart­break Of Read­ing The Bible (Rebec­ca McLaugh­lin, Ver­i­tas): “When we humans make metaphors, we’re notic­ing con­nec­tions.  Love is a sick­ness. Life is a marathon. Par­ents can be heli­copters.  But if the mes­sage of the Bible is true – if there is a God who cre­at­ed the uni­verse  – then bib­li­cal metaphors are dif­fer­ent. God did not notice how human fathers love their chil­dren and decide to call him­self our Father (e.g. Isa­iah 63:16, Matthew 6:9).  Rather, God cre­at­ed father­hood, so that the best of human fathers could give us some small glimpse of how he loves us.”
  3. Beau­ty sleep is a real thing, research shows (Michelle Roberts, BBC): “Beau­ty sleep is a real thing, accord­ing to researchers who have shown that peo­ple who miss out on sleep do appear less attrac­tive to oth­ers. A cou­ple of bad nights is enough to make a per­son look “sig­nif­i­cant­ly” more ugly, their sleep exper­i­ments sug­gest.” Bad news for Stan­ford stu­dents.
  4. Way More Amer­i­cans May Be Athe­ists Than We Thought (Daniel Cox, Five Thir­ty Eight): I sus­pect that even the high­est esti­mate in the arti­cle is low­er than what many at Stan­ford assume.
  5. The Dam­age We Would Do To Each Oth­er If We Had “The Expla­na­tion”  (Richard Beck, per­son­al blog): “Imag­ine, if you will, that the Bible gave us an expla­na­tion for why there is so much pain and suf­fer­ing in the world. Imag­ine that the Bible gave us ‘The Expla­na­tion’ in a spe­cif­ic text, some­thing we could eas­i­ly quote and share…. Then imag­ine how The Expla­na­tion would be used.”
  6. What Makes A Par­ent? (Ian Park­er, New York­er): “…at the end she stood to make a skep­ti­cal point or two. In her view, the speak­ers had under­es­ti­mat­ed the legal con­se­quences of mak­ing a per­son a par­ent. The panel’s chair, a judge, asked Rabin to stop lec­tur­ing the room. It was a pecu­liar moment. Rabin—who is gay, and a par­ent, and who has no argu­ment with Barone’s vic­to­ry, and who is admired for her own chal­lenge to Ali­son D., in 2010—seemed to have been cast as a reac­tionary, intrud­ing on a cel­e­bra­tion.” This is a long, fas­ci­nat­ing piece which (in my view but not the author’s) high­lights some of the neg­a­tive con­se­quences of the LGBT rev­o­lu­tion in soci­ety.

Things Glen Found Amusing

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 100

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. Chris­tians, in an Epochal Shift, Are Leav­ing the Mid­dle East (Maria Abi-Habib, Wall Street Jour­nal): “Like the Jews before them, Chris­tians are flee­ing the Mid­dle East, emp­ty­ing what was once one of the world’s most-diverse regions of its ancient reli­gions. They’re being dri­ven away not only by Islam­ic State, but by gov­ern­ments the U.S. counts as allies in the fight against extrem­ism.” You might need to search for an ungat­ed copy.
  2. The Col­or of Law (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Call­ing itself the Penin­su­la Hous­ing Asso­ci­a­tion of Palo Alto, the co-op pur­chased a 260-ranch [sic] adja­cent to the Stan­ford cam­pus and planned to build 400 hous­es as well as shared recre­ation­al facil­i­ties, a shop­ping area, a gas sta­tion, and a restau­rant on com­mon­ly owned land.  But the bank would not finance con­struc­tion costs nor issue mort­gages to the co-op or its mem­bers with­out gov­ern­ment approval, and the FHA would not insure loans to a coop­er­a­tive that includ­ed African Amer­i­can mem­bers.”
  3. Sil­i­con Val­ley: A Real­i­ty Check (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “…peo­ple should lay off the crit­i­cism a lit­tle. When Capi­tol Hill screws up, tens of thou­sands of inno­cent Iraqis get killed. When Wall Street screws up, the coun­try is plunged into reces­sion and poor fam­i­lies lose their homes. When Sil­i­con Val­ley screws up, peo­ple who want a point­less Wi-Fi enabled juicer get a point­less Wi-Fi enabled juicer. Which by all accounts makes pret­ty good juice.”
  4. The Case for Idol­a­try: Why Chris­tians Can Wor­ship Idols (Andrew Wil­son, Gospel Coali­tion): this is a reprint of a satir­i­cal piece from a few years back. I thought I had linked to it when it first came out, but can’t find it in the archives. 
  5. The Rise of Café Church­es in South Korea (Jason Strother, The Atlantic): “‘Church­es and cafés have the hard­est time sur­viv­ing in Korea,’ said Ahn Min-ho, a 42-year-old ordained min­is­ter and cer­ti­fied barista. ‘Com­bin­ing the two is mutu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial.’”

Things Glen Found Amusing

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 99

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. Porn Star James Deen’s Cri­sis of Con­science (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “In any case, he now feels there is an eth­i­cal dilem­ma in porn. On one hand, the industry’s suc­cess depends on its being acces­si­ble to mass audi­ences online. On the oth­er hand, Deen is con­vinced that the acces­si­bil­i­ty of porn is harm­ing young peo­ple.” This arti­cle is graph­ic.
  2. This Black Pas­tor Led A White Church — In 1788 (Thabiti Anyab­wale, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “He was licensed to preach on Novem­ber 29, 1780 and five years lat­er became the first African-Amer­i­can ordained by any reli­gious body in Amer­i­ca. In 1804 Mid­dle­bury Col­lege award­ed Haynes an hon­orary Master’s degree—another first for an African-Amer­i­can.”
  3. Trump’s Exec­u­tive Order On Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Is Worse Than Use­less (David French, Nation­al Review): “the order has three main com­po­nents: 1) a promise to ‘pro­tect and vig­or­ous­ly pro­mote reli­gious lib­er­ty,’ 2) a direc­tive to ‘ease restric­tions on polit­i­cal activ­i­ty by church­es and char­i­ties,’ and 3) an order to ‘fed­er­al agen­cies to exempt some reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions from Afford­able Care Act require­ments that pro­vide employ­ees with health cov­er­age for con­tra­cep­tion.’ Those direc­tives are respec­tive­ly 1) mean­ing­less, 2) dan­ger­ous, and 3) mean­ing­less.” The ACLU agrees, say­ing in their press release that the order was “an elab­o­rate pho­to-op with no dis­cernible pol­i­cy out­come.”
  4. It’s Basi­cal­ly Just Immoral To Be Rich (A.Q. Smith, Cur­rent Affairs): “We can define some­thing like a ‘max­i­mum moral income’ beyond which it’s obvi­ous­ly inex­cus­able not to give away all of your mon­ey. It might be 50 thou­sand. Call it 100, though. Per per­son. With an addi­tion­al 50 allowed per child. This means two par­ents with a child can still earn $250,000! That’s so much mon­ey. And you can keep it. But every­one who earns any­thing beyond it is oblig­at­ed to give the excess away in its entire­ty.” Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus. Com­pare and con­trast with 1 Tim­o­thy 6:17–19.
  5. How Two Mis­sis­sip­pi Col­lege Stu­dents Fell in Love and Decid­ed to Join a Ter­ror­ist Group (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “The­o­ret­i­cal­ly, when the Bureau comes across two kids like Jae­lyn and Moe—lost, in love, and grasp­ing toward a dark future—agents could try to set them on anoth­er path, reach­ing out to their fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties. In real­i­ty, though, that’s not what the coun­try has asked them to do.”
  6. The Reac­tionary Temp­ta­tion (Andrew Sul­li­van, NY Mag): “With­in the space of 50 years, Amer­i­ca has gone from seg­re­ga­tion to dizzy­ing mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism; from tra­di­tion­al fam­i­ly struc­tures to wide­spread divorce, cohab­i­ta­tion, and sex­u­al lib­er­ty; from a few respect­ed sources of infor­ma­tion to an end­less stream of peer-to-peer media; from careers in one com­pa­ny for life to an ever-accel­er­at­ing need to retrain and regroup; from a patri­archy to (incom­plete) gen­der equal­i­ty; from homo­sex­u­al­i­ty as a sin to homo­pho­bia as a taboo; from Chris­tian­i­ty being the com­mon cul­ture to a sec­u­lar­ism no soci­ety has ever sus­tained before ours.”
  7. Let­ter To My Younger Self (Ryan Leaf, The Player’s Tri­bune): “Con­grat­u­la­tions. You offi­cial­ly have it all — mon­ey, pow­er and pres­tige. All the things that are impor­tant, right?… That’s you, young Ryan Leaf, at his absolute finest: arro­gant, boor­ish and nar­cis­sis­tic. You think you’re on top of the world and that you’ve got all the answers. Well I’m sor­ry to have to tell you this, but the truth is….” Such a grip­ping let­ter. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.

Things Glen Found Amusing

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 98

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. Pre­emie Lambs Suc­cess­ful­ly Grown To Term In Arti­fi­cial Womb (Jason Kot­tke, per­son­al blog): what an amaz­ing age we live in. These arti­fi­cial wombs are trans­par­ent, so this fif­teen sec­ond video of a lamb in one is def­i­nite­ly worth watch­ing.
  2. In ‘China’s Jerusalem’, ‘anti-ter­ror cam­eras’ the new cross for church­es to bear (Alice Yan, South Chi­na Morn­ing Post): “Gov­ern­ment offi­cials came to the church­es and put up ­cam­eras by force. Some pas­tors and wor­ship­pers who didn’t agree to the move were dragged away.… Some peo­ple need­ed to be treat­ed in hos­pi­tal after fight­ing the offi­cials.”
  3. Rod Dreher’s Monas­tic Vision (Joshua Roth­man, New York­er): “The most suc­cess­ful peo­ple nowa­days are flex­i­ble and root­less; they can live any­where and believe any­thing. Dreher thinks that liq­uid moder­ni­ty is a more or less unstop­pable force—in part because cap­i­tal­ism and tech­nol­o­gy are unstop­pable. He urges Chris­tians, there­fore, to remove them­selves from the cur­rents of moder­ni­ty.”
  4. The Cru­cible of the Appli­ca­tion Process (Dil­lon Bowen, Quil­lette) — “This essay is about my expe­ri­ence with the [elite grad school] appli­ca­tion process—specifically how I was repeat­ed­ly encour­aged to alter my appli­ca­tions to con­form with far-Left polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy.” Rec­om­mend­ed to me by an alum­nus.
  5. A bap­tism, then a mur­der con­fes­sion (The Chris­t­ian Chron­i­cle, Bob­by Ross Jr): “Lucin­da Wil­son might have got­ten away with mur­der. Except that she became a Chris­t­ian and con­fessed to her crime. Now 48, Wil­son has served 20-plus years of a life sen­tence for the cap­i­tal mur­der of her ex-fiancé’s girl­friend, Mar­garet Morales.”
  6. The Survivor’s Guide To Adult­hood (Wyatt Hong, Yale Dai­ly News): “Many of you will leave col­lege as I did, believ­ing that you will change the world, but you will soon dis­cov­er that the truth is the reverse. The world will change you. This is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a bad thing, but it can be fright­en­ing.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent as “a thought­ful, well-writ­ten piece.” The author is a Stan­ford grad in med school at Yale.
  7. I learned today that the Nation­al Chi Alpha Min­istry Cen­ter is on Pin­ter­est. I knew about the Insta­gram, Twit­ter and YouTube accounts, but some­how I nev­er expect­ed Pin­ter­est.

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 97

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 ben­e­fits and harms of mar­i­jua­na, explained by the most thor­ough research review yet (Ger­man Lopez, Vox): “the bot­tom line is that mar­i­jua­na does pose some harms — par­tic­u­lar­ly for peo­ple at risk of devel­op­ing men­tal health dis­or­ders, preg­nant women, those vul­ner­a­ble to res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems, and any­one get­ting into a car. And while some of these harms may be over­come by marijuana’s ben­e­fits or cur­tailed by con­sum­ing pot with­out smok­ing it, the evi­dence shows that weed’s rep­u­ta­tion as a safe drug is unde­served.”
  2. What do slave­hold­ers think? (Austin Choi-Fitz­patrick, Aeon):  “The con­tem­po­rary traf­fick­ers and slave­hold­ers I spoke with are not moti­vat­ed by a love of injus­tice. They are instead dri­ven by cul­tur­al iner­tia, a desire for prof­it or, more fre­quent­ly, a need for basic sus­te­nance…. The terms used here – slav­ery and slave­hold­er – nev­er crossed the lips, nor per­haps even the minds, of the men I spoke with.” The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of San Diego.
  3. The Cri­sis of West­ern Civ (David Brooks, NY Times): “These days, the whole idea of West­ern civ is assumed to be reac­tionary and oppres­sive. All I can say is, if you think that was reac­tionary and oppres­sive, wait until you get a load of the world that comes after it.”
  4. Charles Murray’s ‘Provoca­tive’ Talk (Wendy M. Williams and Stephen J. Ceci, NY Times): two Cor­nell pro­fes­sors “tran­scribed Mr. Murray’s speech and — with­out indi­cat­ing who wrote it — sent it to a group of 70 col­lege pro­fes­sors (women and men, of dif­fer­ent ranks, at dif­fer­ent uni­ver­si­ties)… the 57 pro­fes­sors who respond­ed to our request gave Mr. Murray’s talk an aver­age score of 5.05, or ‘mid­dle of the road.’” This, of course, is the speech which faced a back­lash result­ing in a pro­fes­sor need­ing a neck brace. Fas­ci­nat­ing.
  5. This Is About That (Andrew Wil­son, Vimeo): this 3.5 minute video starts slow but ends strong. A med­i­ta­tion on the rela­tion­ship between mar­riage and the gospel. Rec­om­mend­ed.
  6. Inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty Is a Polit­i­cal Foot­ball; Here’s Why It Doesn’t Have to Be (Chris Mar­tin, Het­ero­dox Acad­e­my): “Pro­gres­sives have adopt­ed an over­am­bi­tious mod­el of inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty in which every­one lies on axes of oppres­sion, and I will explain this model’s three flaws. Con­ser­v­a­tives gen­er­al­ly believe that inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty is use­less, but I explain how inter­sec­tion­al schol­ar­ship can be use­ful to researchers, regard­less of whether they are lib­er­al, cen­trist, con­ser­v­a­tive, lib­er­tar­i­an, or eclec­tic.”
  7. Here’s the Mil­lion-Dol­lar Answer to How Per­se­cut­ed Chris­tians Per­se­vere (Sarah Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Researchers grouped respons­es to per­se­cu­tion into three cat­e­gories: sur­vival, asso­ci­a­tion, and con­fronta­tion…. ‘Evan­gel­i­cals are divid­ed between those who are will­ing to take up arms and those who view wit­ness and non-retal­i­a­tion as the respons­es to which the Bible calls Chris­tians,’ the report stat­ed. They tend to be more skep­ti­cal of the inter­re­li­gious dia­logue favored by Catholics and main­line Protes­tants, and more like­ly to pur­sue evan­ge­liza­tion.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 96

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. A Face-to-Face Request Is 34 Times More Suc­cess­ful than an Email (Vanes­sa Bohns, Har­vard Busi­ness Review): “you need to ask six peo­ple in per­son to equal the pow­er of a 200-recip­i­ent email blast. Still, most peo­ple tend to think the email ask will be more effec­tive.”
  2. What Would Jesus Dis­rupt? (Mya Fra­zier, Bloomberg): “As the prod­uct takes shape and Foust pre­pares to move from the con­cept phase to fundrais­ing, a more explic­it­ly spir­i­tu­al ques­tion begins to nag at him: ‘How do you raise mon­ey like Jesus?’ Foust has attend­ed Cross­roads for five years, but his evan­gel­i­cal faith began when he was a child grow­ing up in a devout house­hold on a tree farm in Paris, a town in north­east Ohio. He’s heard from oth­er entre­pre­neurs how bru­tal fundrais­ing can be. You’re going to have to sell your soul, they warn. You’re going to have to lie.”
  3. Five Stages of Spir­i­tu­al Awak­en­ing (Dave Fer­gu­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): Inter­est­ing arti­cle, although I dis­like the labels he chose. I would term them (1) yearn­ing for mean­ing, (2) expe­ri­enc­ing regret, (3) acknowl­edg­ing need, (4) per­ceiv­ing Christ’s love, and (5) receiv­ing eter­nal life. It’s worth ask­ing where your friends are on this jour­ney and engage them on that top­ic.
  4. Why Prison?: An Eco­nom­ic Cri­tique (Peter Sal­ib, Berke­ley Jour­nal of Crim­i­nal Law): “If our jew­el thief must pay $100,000 to be opti­mal­ly deterred but has only $50,000 in cash, the cho­sen mon­e­tary sanc­tion must mere­ly be capa­ble of mak­ing him worse off by the equiv­a­lent of anoth­er $50,000. As such, this paper does not endorse any par­tic­u­lar non­mon­e­tary sanc­tion. His­to­ry presents a star­tling array of options, includ­ing: flog­ging, pil­lo­ry, run­ning the gaunt­lope, tar­ring and feath­er­ing, brand­ing, and many more. Mod­ern judges have con­coct­ed sim­i­lar­ly cre­ative sanc­tions, includ­ing: forc­ing crim­i­nals to pub­licly car­ry embar­rass­ing signs, man­dat­ing that they sleep in dog­hous­es, or requir­ing them to under­go unwant­ed hair­cuts. If one objects to all of these, as-yet unimag­ined pun­ish­ments could be sub­sti­tut­ed.” This is very long. Skim the table of con­tents and jump to any parts you find inter­est­ing.
  5. Social ecol­o­gy of sim­i­lar­i­ty (Bahns, Pick­ett & Cran­dall, Group Process­es & Inter­group Rela­tions): “Dyads were sig­nif­i­cant­ly more sim­i­lar on atti­tudes, beliefs, and health behav­iors in the large cam­pus than in the small col­leges sam­ple. Our find­ings reveal an irony—greater human diver­si­ty with­in an envi­ron­ment leads to less per­son­al diver­si­ty with­in dyads.” In oth­er words, small­er uni­ver­si­ties lead to more diverse friend­ships.

Things Glen Found Amusing

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 95

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. ‘You Can’t Give In’: Mon­ty Williams On Life After Tragedy (Chris Bal­lard, Sports Illus­trat­ed): “He puts on a good face, but talk­ing about what hap­pened, as he does over the course of the next three days, often paus­ing for min­utes at a time, remains dif­fi­cult. ‘I just couldn’t under­stand it,’ he says. ‘And nev­er will. But my faith in God nev­er wavered. Just, some­times your faith and your feel­ings don’t line up.’” This is the pick of the week. Very pow­er­ful.
  2. When Char­ac­ter No Longer Counts (Alan Jacobs, Nation­al Affairs): “What is required of seri­ous reli­gious believ­ers in a plu­ral­is­tic soci­ety is the abil­i­ty to code-switch: nev­er to for­get or neglect their own native reli­gious tongue, but also nev­er to for­get that they live in a soci­ety of peo­ple for whom that lan­guage is gib­ber­ish. To speak only in the lan­guage of prag­ma­tism is to bring noth­ing dis­tinc­tive to the table; to speak only a pri­vate lan­guage of rev­e­la­tion and self-pro­claimed author­i­ty is to leave the table alto­geth­er. For their own good, but also for the com­mon good, reli­gious believ­ers need to be always bilin­gual­ly present.” Includ­ing for the sum­ma­ry para­graph. That’s gold.
  3. Count­ing The Cost: DR Con­go Demon­strates Dif­fi­cul­ty of Mea­sur­ing Mar­tyr­dom (Sarah Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Why do cal­cu­la­tions of Chris­tians killed for their faith world­wide each year range from 1,000 to 100,000? The rea­son large­ly comes down to one coun­try: the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of the Con­go (DRC).” Many sur­pris­ing pieces of infor­ma­tion. Worth­while.
  4. Book Review: See­ing Like A State (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “Peas­ants didn’t like per­ma­nent sur­names. Their own sys­tem was quite rea­son­able for them: John the bak­er was John Bak­er, John the black­smith was John Smith, John who lived under the hill was John Under­hill, John who was real­ly short was John Short. The same per­son might be John Smith and John Under­hill in dif­fer­ent con­texts, where his sta­tus as a black­smith or place of ori­gin was more impor­tant. But the gov­ern­ment insist­ed on giv­ing every­one a sin­gle per­ma­nent name, unique for the vil­lage, and track­ing who was in the same fam­i­ly as whom. Resis­tance was intense.” This is long and amaz­ing.
  5. Chi­na’s Suc­cess Explains Author­i­tar­i­an­is­m’s Allure (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg View): “…if there is a pow­er­ful sys­tem on the world stage, many of us will be drawn to it and seek to emu­late it, with­out always being con­scious of the rea­sons for those attrac­tions. This process is actu­al­ly not so dif­fer­ent from how neolib­er­al­ism attract­ed greater sup­port dur­ing the 1990s, when it was per­ceived as the major vic­tor on the world stage.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 94

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. Sor­ry, but if you’re a Chris­t­ian, you need to go to church. Reg­u­lar­ly. (Paul Prather, Lex­ing­ton Her­ald-Leader): “You might see your­self as a ter­rif­ic base­ball pitch­er. But if you only throw base­balls in your back­yard at a ply­wood cutout, you won’t progress. You’re not even real­ly play­ing base­ball. To dis­cov­er the full extent of your abil­i­ties, to under­stand the true game, you need a catch­er, a coach, infield­ers and out­field­ers — and even some­one stand­ing in the batter’s box ready to swat your best fast­ball right back at you.”
  2. Review­ing Rod Dreher’s “The Bene­dict Option” (Jake Meador, Mere Ortho­doxy): The Bene­dict Option is a much-dis­cussed book which lays out a strat­e­gy for Chris­tians in the mod­ern world — delib­er­ate with­draw­al from some aspects of cul­ture, delib­er­ate engage­ment with oth­ers. This is one of the most insight­ful reviews I’ve read.
  3. Just Who Are These ‘Peo­ple of Faith’ Any­way? (John Stack­house, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The Ther­ava­da form of Bud­dhism, still the dom­i­nant ver­sion of that reli­gion in Sri Lan­ka and South­east Asia, does not ven­er­ate a deity. The Chi­nese tra­di­tions of Con­fu­cian­ism and Dao­ism do not, either. Many forms of belief in the super­nat­ur­al do not require faith so much as knowl­edge of the divine and of the cor­rect prac­tices to align one­self with it in order to best nego­ti­ate the world.”
  4. Can Reli­gious Char­i­ties Take the Place of the Wel­fare State? (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “Keis­ter [a pro­fes­sor of soci­ol­o­gy at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty] has argued that reli­gious engage­ment is close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with finan­cial generosity—in a recent paper, for exam­ple, she found that those who attend reli­gious ser­vices every week give near­ly three times as much as those who don’t.”
  5. Read the above in con­junc­tion with How Utah Keeps The Amer­i­can Dream Alive (Megan McAr­dle, Bloomberg View): “The vast wel­fare infra­struc­ture from the Mor­mon Church nat­u­ral­ly makes it eas­i­er to have small­er gov­ern­ment. Per­haps that could be repli­cat­ed by oth­er com­mu­ni­ties. But the val­ues of the Mor­mon Church may cre­ate a pub­lic that sim­ply needs less help. That’s hard­er for anoth­er com­mu­ni­ty to imi­tate. I’m not sure this key ingre­di­ent is avail­able in a sec­u­lar ver­sion; I think reli­gion might only come in reli­gion fla­vor. How the heck is some state gov­ern­ment sup­posed to get peo­ple to mar­ry, and stay mar­ried?”
  6. In Europe, cohab­i­ta­tion is stable…right? (Brad Wilcox and Lau­rie DeRose, Brook­ings): “It is easy to see why some con­clude that mar­riage per se does not mat­ter. But here’s the thing: mar­riage is itself strong­ly asso­ci­at­ed with fam­i­ly sta­bil­i­ty. U.S. chil­dren born to cohab­it­ing par­ents are twice as like­ly to see their par­ents’ rela­tion­ship end com­pared to chil­dren born to mar­ried par­ents…”
  7. Does it pay to get a dou­ble major? (Chris­tos Makridis, Quartz): our very own Chris­tos ana­lyzes whether get­ting a techie plus a fuzzy major yields a high­er salary than get­ting either alone.
  8. Why Amer­i­can Farm­ers Are Hack­ing Their Trac­tors With Ukrain­ian Firmware (Jason Koe­bler, Vice): “It’s quite sim­ple, real­ly. John Deere sold farm­ers their trac­tors, but has used soft­ware to main­tain con­trol of every aspect of its use after the sale.”

    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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 93

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. Yes, You Can Please Your Heav­en­ly Father (Kevin DeY­oung, Gospel Coali­tion): “Over and over, more than a dozen times in the New Tes­ta­ment, we [are clear­ly taught that our actions can please God]. We ought to be gen­er­ous. We ought to be god­ly. We ought to love and live a cer­tain way because it pleas­es God.”
  2. Break­ing Faith (Peter Beinart, The Atlantic): “As Amer­i­cans have left orga­nized reli­gion, they haven’t stopped view­ing pol­i­tics as a strug­gle between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ Many have come to define us and them in even more pri­mal and irrec­on­cil­able ways.”
  3. Sor­ry, But The Irish Were Always ‘White’ (And So Were Ital­ians, Jews, and So On): (David Bern­stein, Wash­ing­ton Post): The author makes intu­itive and com­pelling argu­ments. He is a law pro­fes­sor at George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty. 
  4. The Expe­ri­ence of Dis­crim­i­na­tion in Con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­ca: Results from a Nation­al­ly Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Sam­ple of Adults (SocArX­iv): note that this has not yet under­gone peer review and that the dataset has some lim­i­ta­tions. Hav­ing said that, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such research about how fre­quent­ly peo­ple feel dis­crim­i­nat­ed against. Table 2 on page 11 is where the most inter­est­ing infor­ma­tion can be found. Dif­fi­cult to sum­ma­rize but provoca­tive. 
  5. Relat­ed: White Evan­gel­i­cals Believe They Face More Dis­crim­i­na­tion Than Mus­lims (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “White evan­gel­i­cals per­ceive dis­crim­i­na­tion in Amer­i­ca in vast­ly dif­fer­ent terms than all oth­er reli­gious groups, includ­ing their minor­i­ty peers.”
  6. The recent nation­wide threats against the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty seem to have been per­pe­trat­ed large­ly by a 19 year-old dual-cit­i­zen­ship Amer­i­can-Israeli Jew (Yon­ah Jere­my Bob, Jerusalem Post) with a small sub­set stem­ming from a reporter stalk­ing an ex-girl­friend (Eric Lev­en­son and AnneClaire Sta­ple­ton, CNN). A use­ful reminder that our assump­tions are often wrong. 
  7. The Fake Kid­nap­ping Scan­dal That Almost Destroyed A Megachurch Pio­neer (Luke Har­ring­ton, Christ and Pop Cul­ture): “…it turns out the cul­ture wars weren’t invent­ed last week. The U.S.’s reli­gious and cul­tur­al land­scape of the 1920s was rocked by no short­age of its own con­flict, with fac­tions of evan­gel­i­cals, fun­da­men­tal­ists, main­line Chris­tians, and sec­u­lar­ists all vying for pow­er, and McPher­son had man­aged to make ene­mies of most of them.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.