Author: Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 92

Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the earth and the sky. How is it that you don't know how to interpret this present time? Luke 12:56

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. On Polit­i­cal Cor­rect­ness (William Dere­siewicz, The Amer­i­can Schol­ar): a long and thought­ful arti­cle. “Selec­tive pri­vate col­leges have become reli­gious schools. The reli­gion in ques­tion is not Method­ism or Catholi­cism but an extreme ver­sion of the belief sys­tem of the lib­er­al elite: the lib­er­al pro­fes­sion­al, man­age­r­i­al, and cre­ative class­es, which pro­vide a large major­i­ty of stu­dents enrolled at such places and an even larg­er major­i­ty of fac­ul­ty and admin­is­tra­tors who work at them. To attend those insti­tu­tions is to be social­ized, and not infre­quent­ly, indoc­tri­nat­ed into that reli­gion.… I say this, by the way, as an athe­ist, a demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist, a native north­east­ern­er, a per­son who believes that col­leges should not have sports teams in the first place—and in case it isn’t obvi­ous by now, a card-car­ry­ing mem­ber of the lib­er­al elite.”
  2. Sim­i­lar: Is Inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty a Reli­gion? (NY Mag, Andrew Sul­li­van): “It posits a clas­sic ortho­doxy through which all of human expe­ri­ence is explained — and through which all speech must be fil­tered. Its ver­sion of orig­i­nal sin is the pow­er of some iden­ti­ty groups over oth­ers. To over­come this sin, you need first to con­fess, i.e., ‘check your priv­i­lege,’ and sub­se­quent­ly live your life and order your thoughts in a way that keeps this sin at bay. The sin goes so deep into your psy­che, espe­cial­ly if you are white or male or straight, that a pro­found con­ver­sion is required.”
  3. Con­sis­tent Veg­e­tar­i­an­ism and the Suf­fer­ing of Wild Ani­mals (Thomas Sit­tler-Adam­czews­ki, Jour­nal of Prac­ti­cal Ethics): argues that “…wild ani­mals have worse lives than farmed ani­mals, and that con­sis­tent veg­e­tar­i­ans should there­fore reduce the num­ber of wild ani­mals as a top pri­or­i­ty.”
  4. What Chris­tian­i­ty in Chi­na Is Real­ly Like (Col­in Clark, Gospel Coali­tion): “First and fore­most, house church lead­ers aren’t under­ground because of the extent of gov­ern­men­tal med­dling, but because of the mere fact of it…. Extend all the appar­ent olive branch­es you want, but Jesus Christ is still the head of the church, not the TSPM and not the CCC.”
  5. Why the courts were wrong to rule against a florist who declined ser­vice to a gay wed­ding (Robert Vis­ch­er, Amer­i­ca Mag­a­zine): “The florist, Bar­ronelle Stutz­man, had served the gay cus­tomers, Robert Inger­soll and Curt Freed, many times over a num­ber of years, includ­ing by pro­vid­ing flow­ers for birth­days and oth­er per­son­al events; she object­ed only to pro­vid­ing flow­ers for their wed­ding. The court declined to rec­og­nize such a dis­tinc­tion, find­ing that a refusal to pro­vide ser­vices for a wed­ding between mem­bers of the same sex amounts to dis­crim­i­na­tion based on sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion.” The author is the dean of a law school and this is one of the more thought­ful and com­pre­hen­sive pieces I have seen on this issue. Relat­ed: UW Madi­son Stu­dents On Reli­gious Free­dom (YouTube): I am skep­ti­cal of videos like this (how many peo­ple did they inter­view and cut out?), but it def­i­nite­ly reflects a ten­den­cy many col­lege stu­dents have — they instinc­tive­ly sup­port reli­gious free­dom when it’s not for evan­gel­i­cals.
  6. Dream­ing of life with­out the GOP? Wel­come to California—where things are far from per­fect (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, LA Times): “We’re a case study in what a polit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty looks like when Repub­li­cans wield lit­tle or no pow­er — and an ongo­ing refu­ta­tion of the con­ceit that but for the GOP, the Unit­ed States would be free of dys­func­tion.”

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 91

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 Cri­sis of Lib­er­ty In The West (Ryan Ander­son, Her­itage Foun­da­tion): “Free­dom today is under­stood as a mat­ter of indifference—a free­dom from con­straint. But free­dom right­ly under­stood is a free­dom for—a free­dom for excel­lence.” This. Read this.
  2. Gen­der Rever­sal Teach­es Uncom­fort­able Lessons (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “How would the Trump-Clin­ton debates have been per­ceived if the gen­ders had been reversed? Two pro­fes­sors worked with trained actors to dupli­cate not just the words but also the man­ner­isms of Trump and Clinton–only with a female actor play­ing Trump, now called Bren­da King, and a male actor play­ing Clin­ton, now called Jonathan Gor­don.” The pro­fes­sors found the oppo­site of what they expect­ed. There is a video clip so you can judge for your­self. A lit­tle mind-blow­ing.
  3. Amer­i­can Car­nage (Christo­pher Cald­well, First Things): “Call­ing addic­tion a dis­ease use­ful­ly describes cer­tain mea­sur­able aspects of the problem—particularly tol­er­ance and with­draw­al. It fails to cap­ture what is spe­cial and dan­ger­ous about the way drugs bind with people’s minds. Almost every known dis­ease is some­thing peo­ple wish to be rid of. Addic­tion is dif­fer­ent. Addicts resist known cures—even to the point of death.” A pow­er­ful arti­cle.
  4. There’s Enough Time To Change Every­thing (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “If I were loose­ly gath­er­ing top­ics of study into cat­e­gories, I might call them arts, reli­gion, schol­ar­ship, and sci­ence. As impor­tant as schol­ar­ship and sci­ence are, arts and reli­gion are more impor­tant” A wide-rang­ing and fas­ci­nat­ing inter­view with Yale pro­fes­sor David Gel­ern­ter. This one is long.
  5. Faith Is Chang­ing The Way Peo­ple Think About Music (Marc Barnes, Rel­e­vant): “The cre­ative arts have a long his­to­ry of tak­ing to what is taboo in the pub­lic square. It is no sur­prise that they are tak­ing reli­gion, the ugly duck­ling of mod­ern sec­u­lar life, under their wing.”
  6. North Korea Is Prac­tic­ing For Nuclear War (Jef­frey Lewis, For­eign Pol­i­cy): “What­ev­er restraint Kim or Trump might show — and let’s be hon­est, our expec­ta­tions here are not high — each will face enor­mous pres­sure to start the attack lest his oppo­nent beat him to the punch.” Ouch.
  7. 10 Ques­tions for Sha­di Hamid (Raz­ib Khan, per­son­al blog): “It’s not so much that [devout Mus­lims] want to die; it’s more that they are ready to die, and it doesn’t fright­en them as much as it might fright­en some­one else, because they believe there’s a pret­ty good chance that they’ll be grant­ed par­adise espe­cial­ly if they hap­pen to killed while they’re in the mid­dle of an act that they con­sid­er to be in the ser­vice of God and his mes­sage.” The inter­view­er is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in genet­ics at UC Davis and the inter­vie­wee is a senior fel­low at the Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion. Also worth read­ing is Rod Dreher’s reac­tion piece Islam: The Last Badass Reli­gion.

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 90

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 Sto­ry of Those Lit­tle Com­mu­nion Cups, What­ev­er Those Are Tech­ni­cal­ly Called (Luke Har­ring­ton, Christ and Pop Cul­ture): “If you’re won­der­ing, there’s actu­al­ly nev­er been a dis­ease out­break traced back to the com­mon com­mu­nion cup. Nor is it like­ly to occur, giv­en the par­tic­u­lars of the ceremony—silver and gold don’t con­sti­tute a hos­pitable envi­ron­ment for bac­te­ria, and nei­ther does an alco­holic bev­er­age. And if you come from a tra­di­tion, as I do, that believes Jesus is actu­al­ly present in the wine (and the bread), it seems per­ti­nent to point out that that guy is in the busi­ness of heal­ing dis­ease, not spread­ing it.”
  2. Chance the Rap­per, Chris­tian­i­ty, and Black­ness (Ernest Ezeu­go, New Amer­i­ca): “For dis­en­chant­ed Chris­t­ian millennials—specifically those of color—Chance’s pro­found faith is a reminder that there is a place where we belong, because it was made for us, labored over for us, bled over for us, no mat­ter what the rest of it looks like.”
  3. Black Church­es Mat­ter: Research Ties Atten­dance to Pos­i­tive Out­comes (David Brig­gs, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Sev­er­al new stud­ies build on past research to con­tin­ue reveal­ing how faith is asso­ci­at­ed with pos­i­tive out­comes for black Amer­i­cans amid the real­i­ties of dis­crim­i­na­tion and eco­nom­ic, polit­i­cal, and social inequal­i­ty.”
  4. Some Groups of Peo­ple Who May Not 100% Deserve Our Eter­nal Scorn (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): this is a fun list includ­ing celebri­ties who speak out about pol­i­tics, peo­ple who com­pare events to Har­ry Pot­ter, and pun­dits who failed to pre­dict Trump.
  5. How Pro-Life Move­ment Was Born A Lib­er­al Cause (Charles Camosy, Crux):  “The con­tro­ver­sy over abor­tion orig­i­nat­ed as a con­flict between two dif­fer­ent groups of lib­er­als.  For that rea­son, it has not fol­lowed the polit­i­cal tra­jec­to­ry of oth­er social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive move­ments.” The title is not a typo, by the way.
  6. The true sto­ry of Army medic Desmond Doss, the soft-spo­ken Chris­t­ian super­hero (Ter­ry Mat­ting­ly, On Reli­gion): “Work­ing alone, Doss – who refused a weapon, because of his Sev­enth-day Adven­tist con­vic­tions – low­ered at least 75 injured men over a 400-foot cliff dur­ing the World War II Bat­tle of Oki­nawa. He col­lapsed sev­er­al times dur­ing that night, but kept going with these words on his lips: ‘Please Lord, help me get one more.’ A Japan­ese sol­dier lat­er tes­ti­fied that he aimed at Doss sev­er­al times, but his rifle kept jam­ming when he tried to fire.”
  7. Van Jones’ Excel­lent Metaphors About the Dan­gers of Ide­o­log­i­cal Safe­ty (Jonathan Haidt, Het­ero­dox Acad­e­my): the link has a com­pelling video of Van Jones talk­ing about how to deal with offen­sive words. There is a tran­script, but the ver­bal deliv­ery is pow­er­ful. It’s under five min­utes and well worth your time.

Things Glen Found Entertaining

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 89

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. Are Gen­der Fem­i­nists and Trans­gen­der Activists Under­min­ing Sci­ence? (Debra Soh, LA Times): “Dis­tor­tion of sci­ence hin­ders progress. When gen­der fem­i­nists start refut­ing basic biol­o­gy, peo­ple stop lis­ten­ing, and the larg­er point about equal­i­ty is lost.” The author has a Ph.D. in neu­ro­science and con­sid­ered her­self trans­gen­der as a child.
  2. The Masa­da Mys­tery (Eric Cline, Aeon): some fas­ci­nat­ing insights on one of the most famous tragedies that occurred short­ly after the events described in the New Tes­ta­ment. The author is a pro­fes­sor of clas­sics and anthro­pol­o­gy.
  3. Use Of Weaponized Drones By ISIS Spurs Ter­ror­ism Fears (Joby War­rick, Wash­ing­ton Post): “They’re now show­ing that these devices can be effec­tive on the bat­tle­field,” said Steven Stal­in­sky.… “With the way these groups use social media, my wor­ry is that they’re also putting the idea into people’s heads that this is some­thing you can now do.”
  4. 4 Recent Exam­ples Show Why Nobody Trusts Media ‘Fact Checks’ (Mol­lie Hem­ing­way, The Fed­er­al­ist): “The upshot is that the arti­cle does a nice job of prov­ing Mark Twain’s point that the three types of lies are lies, damn lies and sta­tis­tics, as it uses a sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis of ques­tion­able mer­it to ‘dis­prove’ a state­ment that was lit­er­al­ly true.”
  5. I Ignored Trump News For A Week. Here’s What I Learned. (Farhad Man­joo, NY Times): “On most days, Mr. Trump is 90 per­cent of the news on my Twit­ter and Face­book feeds, and prob­a­bly yours, too. But he’s not 90 per­cent of what’s impor­tant in the world.”
  6. 4 Ways To Make Sure Your Protest Real­ly Makes A Dif­fer­ence (David Christo­pher Bell, Cracked): “But what if I told you that if you fol­low the rules his­to­ry has laid out, protests and boy­cotts absolute­ly can work? For when you look down the annals of suc­cess­ful civ­il dis­obe­di­ence, a clear pat­tern emerges.” This being Cracked, lan­guage warn­ing. Also, the URL is fun­ny: the slug is a‑be­gin­ners-guide-to-over­throw­ing-gov­ern­ment
  7. Two arti­cles that I did not expect to find fas­ci­nat­ing but did: Sports­writ­ing Has Become A Lib­er­al Pro­fes­sion: Here’s How It Hap­pened (Bryan Cur­tis, The Ringer): “I’m a lib­er­al sports­writer myself. The new world suits me just fine. Would it be nice to have a David Frum or Ross Douthat of sports­writ­ing, mak­ing wrong­head­ed-but-inter­est­ing argu­ments about NCAA ama­teurism? Sure. As long as nobody believed them.” This arti­cle led to the con­ser­v­a­tive fol­lowup The Arro­gant Think­ing Of Lib­er­al Sports Writ­ers (Michael Bren­dan Dougher­ty, The Week): “Has no one stopped to notice there is some­thing odd about an anti-racism that will cause an ever­more diverse coun­try to declare root­ing for white-faced mas­cots the only safe thing to do? How will this dele­tion of all non-white faces look in 50 years?”

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 88

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

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. Sleep-Deprived Judges Dole Out Harsh­er Pun­ish­ments (Chris Barnes, Har­vard Busi­ness Review): this is clever. The author turned day­light sav­ings time into a nat­ur­al exper­i­ment and ana­lyzed the effects of mild sleep depri­va­tion on judge’s deci­sions. After los­ing 40 min­utes of sleep the judges appar­ent­ly became 5% harsh­er in their ver­dicts. Apply to your own sleep debt and moral conun­drums. 
  2. The Hottest Invite In Town: Don­ald Trump’s Sup­per Club (Sara Mur­ray, CNN): “Long after the Pres­i­den­t’s offi­cial day has end­ed, his worka­holic ten­den­cies have him host­ing a rotat­ing sup­per club at the most cov­et­ed address in Wash­ing­ton. At least four nights a week, he wel­comes a steady stream of Cab­i­net mem­bers, staffers and mem­bers of Con­gress to the res­i­dence to brush up on nation­al secu­ri­ty issues and for­eign affairs over steak, fish and sal­ads, accord­ing to Trump aides.” This is sur­pris­ing­ly infor­ma­tive.
  3. Watch­ing Wikipedi­a’s extinc­tion event from a dis­tance (Andrea James, Boing Boing): “Wikipedia went from peo­ple writ­ing an ency­clo­pe­dia to peo­ple writ­ing rules about writ­ing an ency­clo­pe­dia…” I can attest to the ten­den­cy the author describes and am gen­uine­ly wor­ried about Wikipedia’s tra­jec­to­ry.
  4. The Soul Of Evan­gel­i­cal­ism: What Will Become Of Us? (Scot McK­night): “Let’s get the stan­dard def­i­n­i­tion of evan­gel­i­cal­ism on the table first: an evan­gel­i­cal is com­mit­ted to these four ele­ments: the Bible, the cross as the place of atone­ment, the neces­si­ty of per­son­al con­ver­sion, and an active Chris­t­ian life both in missions/evangelism as well as jus­tice, peace and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. On top of this, evan­gel­i­cal­ism is non-denom­i­na­tion­al and cross-denom­i­na­tion­al.”
  5. The Great Shame Of Our Pro­fes­sion: How The Human­i­ties Sur­vive on Exploita­tion (Kevin Birm­ing­ham , The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): it doesn’t get good until para­graph six (search for the word ‘remiss’ and begin there). “If his­to­ry is any guide, there will be about nine times as many new Ph.D.s this year as there are jobs…. Why do our nation’s Eng­lish depart­ments con­sis­tent­ly accept sev­er­al times as many grad­u­ate stu­dents as their bespoke job mar­ket can sus­tain? Eng­lish depart­ments are the only employ­ers demand­ing the cre­den­tials that Eng­lish doc­tor­al pro­grams pro­duce.”
  6. An Ivy League pro­fes­sor who spent 4 months work­ing in a South Bronx check-cash­ing store says we’re get­ting it all wrong (Alex Mor­rell, Busi­ness Insid­er): “Over and over again, Ser­von heard and observed that check cash­ers met cus­tomers’ needs bet­ter than banks did. She dis­cov­ered there were three main rea­sons peo­ple used these ser­vices instead of banks: cost, trans­paren­cy, and ser­vice.”

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 87

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

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. I Helped Cre­ate the Milo Trolling Play­book. You Should Stop Play­ing Right Into It (Ryan Hol­l­i­day, The Observ­er): “It was a mas­ter­ful bit of trolling that admit­ted­ly felt a lot more mean­ing­ful and excit­ing when I was younger than it does to me today: We encour­aged protests at col­leges by send­ing out­raged emails to var­i­ous activist groups and clubs on cam­pus­es where the movie was being screened. We sent fake tips to Gawk­er, which duti­ful­ly ate them up.” Fas­ci­nat­ing. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
  2. Meet the Pas­tor Who Chal­lenged Africa’s Old­est Dic­ta­tor with Sur­pris­ing Suc­cess (Ann Thomp­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Last sum­mer, Mawarire led nation­al protests against the gov­ern­ment, includ­ing call­ing for every­one to stay home from work for a day; hun­dreds of thou­sands did. Mawarire was arrest­ed in July and charged with incit­ing pub­lic vio­lence. After thou­sands ral­lied to sup­port him and a court tossed the charges, Mawarire and his fam­i­ly fled to Amer­i­ca. The pas­tor returned to Zim­bab­we alone last week.”
  3. Remind me what was so great about trade? (Tim Har­ford, Finan­cial Times): “…there are two ways to make cheese in the UK: the obvi­ous way, using cows, and the indi­rect way, by mak­ing cars and then trad­ing the cars in exchange for cheese. The British cheese indus­try is, in a very real sense, direct­ly com­pet­ing with the British car indus­try. Pro­tect one with a tar­iff, and you hurt the oth­er.”
  4. The Preach­er and the Sher­iff (Nathaniel Rich, NY Times): “The police said that Vic­tor White III, while detained in the back seat of a locked police car, his hands shack­led behind his back, had com­mit­ted sui­cide by shoot­ing him­self in the back with a hand­gun that an offi­cer had not found dur­ing an ear­li­er search.”
  5. Not ‘Lone Wolves’ After All: How ISIS Guides World’s Ter­ror Plots From Afar (Ruk­mi­ni Cal­li­machi, NY Times): “Inves­ti­ga­tion doc­u­ments from Europe show that a grow­ing share of attacks bear signs of con­tact with the Islam­ic State’s strong­hold, even though the attack­er was ini­tial­ly described as act­ing alone.”
  6. The Com­forts of the Bet­sy DeVos War (Ross Douthat, NY Times): “It’s not that lib­er­als aren’t gen­uine­ly wor­ried about every­thing that makes Trump­ism poten­tial­ly abnor­mal and un-repub­li­can and author­i­tar­i­an. But a more nor­mal threat to a deep-pock­et­ed inter­est group’s pref­er­ences still turned out to be a more nat­ur­al ral­ly­ing point than the specter of creep­ing Putin­ism.”

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 86

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

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. Here are the two arti­cles I allud­ed to in this week’s mes­sage: Why The Best Thing This Gen­er­a­tion Can Do Is Put Down The Drink (Alex­ia LaFe­ta, Elite Dai­ly) and The Alco­hol Black­out (Sarah Hep­o­la, Texas Month­ly). The lat­ter is par­tic­u­lar­ly insight­ful. I have shared these both before (see vol­ume 18 and vol­ume 25).
  2. Who Is To Blame For The Great­est Myth In The His­to­ry Of Sci­ence And Reli­gion? These Two Guys (Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coali­tion): “The so-called ‘war’ between faith and learn­ing, specif­i­cal­ly between ortho­dox Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy and sci­ence, was man­u­fac­tured…. It is a con­struct that was cre­at­ed for polem­i­cal pur­pos­es.”
  3. Home­less Find Rest In Faith-Based Shel­ters More Than Oth­ers (Adelle Banks, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): “In a pre­lim­i­nary study of 11 U.S. cities, 58 per­cent of emer­gency beds for the home­less were at faith-based orga­ni­za­tions. That per­cent­age ranged wide­ly across the cities, with 90 per­cent of emer­gency beds in Oma­ha, Neb., pro­vid­ed by faith groups and 33 per­cent in Port­land, Ore.”
  4. How To Protest Bet­ter (Leah Sargeant, First Things): excel­lent sub­ti­tle, “light hearts, not trash cans, on fire.” Relat­ed per­spec­tive from the oppo­site side of the ide­o­log­i­cal aisle: And Now It’s Time To Do The Real Work (Fred­erik deBoer). Also worth not­ing, Anar­chists, NOT Cal stu­dents, respon­si­ble for vio­lence in UC Berke­ley protests.
  5. The biggest news since last Friday’s email is Trump’s immi­gra­tion action. The two pieces I saw shared most by my thought­ful friends on social media are Malev­o­lence Tem­pered by Incom­pe­tence: Trump’s Hor­ri­fy­ing Exec­u­tive Order on Refugees and Visas (Ben­jamin Wittes, Law­fare) and Trump’s Exec­u­tive Order on Refugees, Sep­a­rat­ing Fact from Hys­te­ria (David French, Nation­al Review). Two insight­ful fol­low-ups are What Con­ser­v­a­tives Get Wrong About Trump’s Immi­gra­tion Order (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic) and Tal­ly­ing Up Trump (Peter Lei­thart, First Things). George Wood, the leader of my denom­i­na­tion, penned a Response To The Exec­u­tive Order on Immi­gra­tion.
  6. An Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian Defends Trump’s First Week In Office (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “I’m will­ing to give him the ben­e­fit of the doubt thus far because I, and many Amer­i­cans, have been unfor­tu­nate­ly trained by the press in recent years not to take their side auto­mat­i­cal­ly any­more. They have tremen­dous­ly under­mined them­selves.” It’s inter­est­ing to read Fake News and Evan­gel­i­cals (Alex Wil­gus, Com­mon Vision) in con­junc­tion with this.
  7. Neil Gor­such belongs to a notably lib­er­al church — and would be the first Protes­tant on the Court in years (Julie Zauzmer, Wash­ing­ton Post): He is Epis­co­pal, yet many Epis­co­pals (espe­cial­ly cler­gy) are opposed to his nom­i­na­tion, where­as evan­gel­i­cals and Catholics are most­ly delight­ed. 

Things Glen Found Amusing/Entertaining

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 85

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

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. Recen­cy Illu­sions (Alan Jacobs, The New Atlantis): “I have come to believe that it is impos­si­ble for any­one who is reg­u­lar­ly on social media to have a bal­anced and accu­rate under­stand­ing of what is hap­pen­ing in the world. To fol­low a minute-by-minute cycle of news is to be con­stant­ly threat­ened by illu­sion.”
  2. The Fan­ta­sy Of Addic­tion (Peter Hitchens, First Things): “Even hero­in abusers, and gam­blers, can and do just stop. Rea­son has over­come desire. In which case the whole idea of ‘addic­tion,’ as a pow­er greater than will, is over­thrown.”
  3. Nige­ria Could Teach The West A Few Things (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg View): “…in essence Nige­ria has in a few decades cre­at­ed an almost entire­ly new, coun­try-sized city [Lagos] built on the ideals and prac­tice of reli­gious tol­er­ance.”
  4. Com­pas­sion Has ‘Very Lit­tle Hope’ for India, Sets Dead­line to Shut Down Spon­sor­ships (Sarah Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The Indi­an gov­ern­ment objects to Compassion’s Chris­tian­i­ty, accord­ing to the ministry’s tes­ti­mo­ny to US law­mak­ers. Hin­du nation­al­ists have put increas­ing pres­sure on Chris­tians in India since the elec­tion of Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi in 2014.”
  5. Why Trump’s Staff Is Lying (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg View): “If you want to ascer­tain if some­one is tru­ly loy­al to you, ask them to do some­thing out­ra­geous or stu­pid. If they balk, then you know right away they aren’t ful­ly with you.”
  6. Will There Be An Inter­nal Revolt Against Trump? (Tevi Troy, Com­men­tary Mag­a­zine): “Can­di­date Trump ran on repeal­ing Oba­macare, com­bat­ing polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness, and law and order. Many career offi­cials in these agen­cies have seen their mis­sion in oppo­site terms—they were tasked with pro­mot­ing the Afford­able Care Act, main­tain­ing speech regimes on cam­pus, and cre­at­ing new guid­ance on how to mon­i­tor alle­ga­tions of racism by police offi­cers.”
  7. Planned Parenthood’s Most Mis­lead­ing Sta­tis­tic (Joe Carter, Gospel Coali­tion): this arti­cle seems to be inspired by a three-minute sting video show­ing how dif­fi­cult it is to receive any­thing oth­er than an abor­tion at Planned Par­ent­hood. 

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 84

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The World’s Most Out­stand­ing Med­ical Mis­sion­ary (Sarah Eekhoff Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): the fam­i­ly of God fre­quent­ly makes me proud.
  2. ‘Worst Year Yet’: The Top 50 Coun­tries Where It’s Hard­est To Be A Chris­t­ian (Jere­my Weber, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Per­se­cu­tion rose glob­al­ly again for the third year in a row, indi­cat­ing how volatile the sit­u­a­tion has become,” stat­ed Open Doors. “Coun­tries in South and South­east Asia rapid­ly rose to unprece­dent­ed lev­els and now rank among such vio­lent areas as the Mid­dle East and Sub-Saha­ran Africa.”
  3. When The Brain Scram­bles Names, It’s Because You Love Them (Michelle Trudeau, NPR): This is my defense to you all. Also, I found this bit fun­ny — in a fam­i­ly “you are much more like­ly to be [acci­den­tal­ly] called the dog’s name than you are to be called the cat’s name.”
  4. It’s inau­gu­ra­tion day, so a lot of the arti­cles relate to the new­ly sworn-in Pres­i­dent.
    • How To Live Under An Unqual­i­fied Pres­i­dent (John Piper, Desir­ing God): this is good.
    • Trump Takes Jezreel (Dou­glas Wil­son, per­son­al blog): “Polit­i­cal fac­tions want every­thing to be a sim­ple bina­ry choice on the human lev­el. You either are all in for Jezebel or all in for Jehu. What Scrip­ture invites us to is qual­i­fied sup­port, or per­haps qual­i­fied dis­ap­proval. So and so was a good king, but did not remove the high places.”
    • The Church’s Integri­ty in the Trump Years (Mark Gal­li, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Our main polit­i­cal task in this new admin­is­tra­tion is more urgent than ever… we can speak char­i­ta­bly to one anoth­er about our dis­agree­ments, tak­ing the time to find out what each of us real­ly believes and why.”
    • The Pol­i­tics of Answered Prayer (Peter Lei­thart, First Things): sure to dis­qui­et and/or offend.
    • A Bit Of Con­text on Trump, NATO, and Ger­many (Tyler Cowen, per­son­al blog): “I strong­ly favor NATO and I don’t think you can trust the Rus­sians with just about any­thing, or for that mat­ter make much of a deal with them.” (this piece is not about the inau­gu­ra­tion, but I found it very stim­u­lat­ing)
  5. Bon­ho­ef­fer On Why God Does Not Fill The Empti­ness When A Loved One Dies (Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coalition): “to the extent the empti­ness tru­ly remains unfilled one remains con­nect­ed to the oth­er per­son through it.”
  6. Author­i­tar­i­ans Dis­tract Rather than Debate (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “it has long been assumed that pro­pa­gan­da posts would sup­port the gov­ern­ment with praise or crit­i­cize crit­ics of the gov­ern­ment. Not so. In fact, pro­pa­gan­da posts active­ly steer away from con­tro­ver­sial issues.”
  7. Men’s Bread­win­ning Still Mat­ters For Mar­riage (Chris­tos Makridis, Insti­tute For Fam­i­ly Stud­ies): yes, that’s our Chris­tos. “The col­lege-edu­cat­ed may embrace egal­i­tar­i­an ideals of fam­i­ly life, but their behav­ior is more com­pli­cat­ed.”

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 83

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

There are a few more links than nor­mal because I missed send­ing out last week­s’s email.

  1. North­west­ern Grad Stu­dent Sues Evanston Police; Dash­cam Arrest Video Released (Lau­ra Podes­ta, ABC Chica­go Eye­wit­ness News): Lawrence is an alum­nus of our min­istry. This one hits close to home.
  2. The Sex Bureau­cra­cy (Jacob Gersen & Jean­nie Suk Gersen, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “Under the rubric of pre­vent­ing sex­u­al vio­lence, col­leges are now deep in the busi­ness of pro­vid­ing advice on sex and rela­tion­ships. And they’re not good at it.” Even from a sec­u­lar per­spec­tive, col­lege admin­is­tra­tors are act­ing absurd­ly.
  3. We’re Liv­ing Through The First World Cyber­war — But Just Haven’t Called It That (Marin Belam, The Guardian): “It is impor­tant to remem­ber that the inter­net orig­i­nal­ly came from defence research….. we are liv­ing through the first time it is being used in anger.”
  4. Putin’s Real Long Game (Mol­ly McK­ew, Politi­co): “What both admin­is­tra­tions fail to real­ize is that the West is already at war, whether it wants to be or not…. This war seeks, at home and abroad, to erode our val­ues, our democ­ra­cy, and our insti­tu­tion­al strength; to dilute our abil­i­ty to sort fact from fic­tion, or moral right from wrong; and to con­vince us to make deci­sions against our own best inter­ests.”
  5. Sug­ar, Explained (Julia Bel­luz and Javier Zarraci­na, Vox): “The back­lash against sug­ar, and the sci­ence behind it, is a lot more com­pli­cat­ed than it seems.”
  6. The Life And Death Of Evangelicalism’s Lit­tle Mag­a­zine (John Schmalzbauer,Comment): this was extreme­ly inter­est­ing to me, although prob­a­bly less so to many oth­ers.
  7. When There’s No Ther­a­pist, How Can The Depressed Find Help? (Joanne Sil­bern­er, NPR): Dif­fi­cult to excerpt — very inter­est­ing sto­ry.
  8. Some­times the Peo­ple Need to Call the Experts (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg View): There are some good insights here. My favorite line, though, was this: “It’s a good rule of gov­er­nance that pol­i­cy can­not race too far ahead of the cit­i­zen­ry, and I don’t view fac­ul­ty as a class of peo­ple well-suit­ed for that kind of humil­i­ty.”
  9. The Ide­o­log­i­cal Rea­sons Why Democ­rats Have Neglect­ed Local Pol­i­tics (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “The pro­gres­sive project is ulti­mate­ly about work­ing toward a soci­ety built on one uni­fied vision of pol­i­cy and cul­ture, rather than a diverse array of poli­cies and cul­tures.”
  10. Intel­lec­tu­als For Trump (Kele­fah San­neh, New York­er):  “We have grown accus­tomed to hear­ing sto­ries about the lib­er­al bub­ble, but the real sto­ry of this year’s elec­tion was about the con­ser­v­a­tive bub­ble: the results showed how sharply the pri­or­i­ties of the movement’s lead­ers dif­fered from those of their puta­tive fol­low­ers.”
  11. Harvard’s George J. Bor­jas (Robert Ver­bruggen, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Per­haps odd­ly for some­one who gained immense­ly from mov­ing from one coun­try to anoth­er, Bor­jas has spent much of his career try­ing to answer the ques­tions of who los­es from immi­gra­tion and how much.”

Things Glen Found Entertaining

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.