Tag: academia

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 145

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’ve been trav­el­ing a lot this week, so I haven’t done as much online read­ing as nor­mal. A few of these links are actu­al­ly left­overs from pre­vi­ous weeks that did­n’t quite make the orig­i­nal cut. Let me know if I over­looked some­thing you think I’d find inter­est­ing!

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Why I’m Hap­py My Son Mar­ried at 20 (Rebec­ca Brew­ster Steven­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The preva­lent mes­sage in our cul­ture is that young adult­hood is the time to build a foun­da­tion for a healthy life. Those in their ear­ly 20s are encour­aged to pur­sue edu­ca­tion, trav­el, and gain life expe­ri­ence, all unhin­dered by wed­lock. Mar­riage is viewed by many as some­thing that comes only after ade­quate time to devel­op per­son­al iden­ti­ty and estab­lish a strong finan­cial foot­ing. But inher­ent in this delay is a real­i­ty we as par­ents are very cog­nizant of: Young adults, like all of us, are sex­u­al beings. When mar­riage is delayed, so is the oppor­tu­ni­ty to expe­ri­ence sex­u­al inti­ma­cy with­in God’s para­me­ters of a mar­riage covenant.”
  2. Stan­ford’s Pro­posed Renam­ing Prin­ci­ples: when I read the prin­ci­ples, my ini­tial thought was that Serra’s name was secure on cam­pus. But at least one stu­dent strong­ly dis­agrees.  
  3. The Per­ils of Paid Con­tent (Andrew Pot­ter, In Due Course): “When I was a stu­dent jour­nal­ist, it was axiomat­ic that adver­tis­ing was the biggest threat to inde­pen­dent media. Putting your liveli­hood in the hands of cap­i­tal­ists meant, ipso fac­to, doing their bid­ding. Expe­ri­ence is a great teacher though, and when I start­ed work­ing as an edi­tor at a news­pa­per, I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised to dis­cov­er that you didn’t wake up every day to a swarm of calls from out­raged adver­tis­ers threat­en­ing to pull their cam­paigns if we didn’t smarten up….  But you know who does com­plain a lot? Sub­scribers do, end­less­ly.”
  4. Last Fall This Schol­ar Defend­ed Colo­nial­ism. Now He’s Defend­ing Him­self. (Vimal Patel, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “There are two sep­a­rate issues. One is the sub­stan­tive issue of colo­nial­ism. I think the acad­e­my remains high­ly illib­er­al and intol­er­ant of my view­point. It remains the case that most of the peo­ple who sup­port­ed me didn’t sup­port me because they agreed with my argu­ment. I think my sup­port­ers came in two types: those who agreed with my argu­ment, and oth­ers who said that even bad argu­ments that have gone through the process of being pub­lished should be respond­ed to, not silenced.”
  5. Empire State Of Mind (Doug Mack, Slate): “If you can find Iowa on the map and rat­tle off a few facts about the state (corn, cau­cus­es, Field of Dreams, a real­ly big state fair), you should be able to do the same for Puer­to Rico, which has a larg­er pop­u­la­tion. That’s espe­cial­ly impor­tant for lead­ers in Wash­ing­ton, giv­en that the ter­ri­to­ries have no full-fledged con­gres­sion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion of their own, and giv­en that a cer­tain base­line lev­el of knowl­edge is a pre­req­ui­site for sound pol­i­cy­mak­ing.”
  6. The Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca Scan­dal, in 3 Para­graphs (Robin­son Mey­er, The Atlantic): “About 270,000 peo­ple installed Kogan’s app on their Face­book account. But as with any Face­book devel­op­er at the time, Kogan could access data about those users or their friends. And when Kogan’s app asked for that data, it saved that infor­ma­tion into a pri­vate data­base instead of imme­di­ate­ly delet­ing it. Kogan pro­vid­ed that pri­vate data­base, con­tain­ing infor­ma­tion about 50 mil­lion Face­book users, to the vot­er-pro­fil­ing com­pa­ny Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca. Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca used it to make 30 mil­lion ‘psy­cho­graph­ic’ pro­files about vot­ers.
  7. John Bolton Is Right About the U.N. (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “The U.N. is a nev­er-end­ing scan­dal dis­guised as an ever­last­ing hope. The hope is that dia­logue can over­come dis­trust and col­lec­tive secu­ri­ty can be made to work in the inter­ests of human­i­ty. Real­i­ty says oth­er­wise. Trust is estab­lished by deeds, not words. Col­lec­tive secu­ri­ty is a recipe for inter­na­tion­al paral­y­sis or worse. Just ask the peo­ple of Alep­po.”

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The world will only get weird­er (Steven Coast, per­son­al blog): “We fixed all the main rea­sons air­craft crash a long time ago. Some­times a long, long time ago. So, we are left with the less and less prob­a­ble events.” The piece is a few years old so the exam­ples are dat­ed, but it remains very intrigu­ing. (first shared in vol­ume 67)

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.

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 143

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’m a schol­ar of the “pros­per­i­ty gospel.” It took can­cer to show me I was in its grip. (Kate Bowler, Vox): “Every day I pray the same prayer: God, save me. Save me. Save me. Oh, God, remem­ber my baby boy. Remem­ber my son and my hus­band before you return me to ash­es. Before they walk this earth alone. I plead with a God of Maybe, who may or may not let me col­lect more years. It is a God I love, and a God that breaks my heart.” The author is a pro­fes­sor at Duke Divin­i­ty School.
  2. Two intrigu­ing arti­cles on the trans­gen­der move­ment in Amer­i­ca:
    • The Dis­ap­pear­ance of Desire (Sohrab Ahmari, Com­men­tary Mag­a­zine):  “Sex­u­al­i­ty is a bod­i­ly expe­ri­ence. It stretch­es creduli­ty to sug­gest that a trans person’s deci­sion to alter his or her sexed body has noth­ing to do with what he or she wish­es to do with that body—and whom he or she wish­es to attract. Yet, as with gen­der itself, the trans activists treat sex­u­al desire as an abstract and dis­em­bod­ied thing.”
    • Divorc­ing The Trans­gen­der Com­mu­ni­ty (Gretchen Rachel Ham­mond, Tablet Mag­a­zine): the lan­guage in this one is uncouth. “It was then that I began to notice that those trans­gen­der peo­ple who start­ed to speak out as an activist, jour­nal­ist, celebri­ty, orga­niz­er, com­men­ta­tor or even via a social media post were com­ing under attack, not just from the usu­al crowd of Evan­gel­i­cal Con­ser­v­a­tive hys­ter­ics, but increas­ing­ly and unnerv­ing­ly from their own com­mu­ni­ty.”
  3. For the lawyers: Dis­agree­ment is Not Always Dis­crim­i­na­tion: On Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop and the Anal­o­gy to Inter­ra­cial Mar­riage (Ryan Ander­son, George­town Jour­nal of Law and Pub­lic Pol­i­cy): “Col­orado is part of a larg­er nation­al trend in which author­i­ties are using antidis­crim­i­na­tion statutes as swords to pun­ish already mar­gin­al­ized peo­ple (such as sup­port­ers of the con­ju­gal under­stand­ing of mar­riage), rather than as shields to pro­tect peo­ple from unjust dis­crim­i­na­tion (such as African Amer­i­cans in the wake of Jim Crow and today).… sup­port for mar­riage as the union of hus­band and wife is essen­tial­ly dif­fer­ent from oppo­si­tion to inter­ra­cial mar­riage, and that the sta­tus of African Amer­i­cans is impor­tant­ly dif­fer­ent from that of Amer­i­cans who iden­ti­fy as gay. As a result, First Amend­ment pro­tec­tions for peo­ple who act on the belief that mar­riage unites hus­band and wife dif­fer in crit­i­cal ways from hypoth­e­sized First Amend­ment pro­tec­tions for racists—and the courts can dis­tin­guish the two cas­es…. pro­tec­tions for cit­i­zens who sup­port the con­ju­gal under­stand­ing of mar­riage bear much more sim­i­lar­i­ty to pro­tec­tions for pro-life cit­i­zens.”
  4. The Igno­ble Lie (Patrick Deneen, First Things): “This helps explain the strange and often hys­ter­i­cal insis­tence upon equal­i­ty ema­nat­ing from our nation’s most elite and exclu­sive insti­tu­tions. The most absurd recent instance was Har­vard University’s offi­cial effort to elim­i­nate social clubs due to their role in ‘enact­ing forms of priv­i­lege and exclu­sion at odds with our deep­est val­ues,’ in the words of its pres­i­dent. Harvard’s oppo­si­tion to exclu­sion sits com­fort­ably with its admis­sions rate of 5 per­cent (2,056 out of 40,000 appli­cants in 2017). The denial of priv­i­lege and exclu­sion seems to increase in pro­por­tion to an institution’s exclu­siv­i­ty.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Stud­ies at Notre Dame.
  5. Sex, Lies, and Spies (Dar­rell Cole, Prov­i­dence): “Once the case for employ­ing a spy in the first place has been made, the ques­tion of how to spy comes into focus, and thus one of the major moral prob­lems for spies is try­ing to make a case that lying and sex are just (com­bat) tac­tics…. We can make a clear and con­vinc­ing case that the Chris­t­ian tra­di­tion may sup­port the idea that lies told for the pub­lic good are jus­ti­fi­able. When spies tell such lies in the line of duty, their decep­tions fall into that cat­e­go­ry and, so, are jus­ti­fi­able. Can the same be said for sex in the line of duty? Can manip­u­la­tive sex for the pub­lic good be jus­ti­fi­able?” A fas­ci­nat­ing dis­cus­sion of a ques­tion that had nev­er crossed my mind. The author is an ethics pro­fes­sor at Drew Uni­ver­si­ty.
  6. The Last Temp­ta­tion (Michael Ger­son, The Atlantic): “In a remark­ably free coun­try, many evan­gel­i­cals view their rights as frag­ile, their insti­tu­tions as threat­ened, and their dig­ni­ty as assailed. The sin­gle largest reli­gious demo­graph­ic in the Unit­ed States—representing about half the Repub­li­can polit­i­cal coalition—sees itself as a besieged and dis­re­spect­ed minor­i­ty. In this way, evan­gel­i­cals have become simul­ta­ne­ous­ly more engaged and more alien­at­ed…. It is true that inso­far as Chris­t­ian hos­pi­tals or col­leges have their reli­gious lib­er­ty threat­ened by hos­tile lit­i­ga­tion or gov­ern­ment agen­cies, they have every right to defend their insti­tu­tion­al identities—to advo­cate for a prin­ci­pled plu­ral­ism. But this is dif­fer­ent from evan­gel­i­cals regard­ing them­selves, hys­ter­i­cal­ly and with self-pity, as an oppressed minor­i­ty that requires a strong­man to res­cue it. This is how Trump has invit­ed evan­gel­i­cals to view them­selves.” The author worked in the Bush White House and describes him­self as an evan­gel­i­cal.
    • In response: The True Sin of Amer­i­can Evan­gel­i­cals in the Age of Trump (David French, Nation­al Review): “it mat­ters exact­ly how Evan­gel­i­cals arrived where they are today. It wasn’t the hys­ter­i­cal reac­tion of a self-pity­ing peo­ple. For most it was the sad result of a series of tough choic­es — made in response to dif­fi­cult and unrea­son­able chal­lenges. Even today there are mil­lions of Evan­gel­i­cals — peo­ple who still count them­selves reluc­tant Trump sup­port­ers — who are deeply uneasy with the pres­i­dent and the state of their own reli­gious move­ment. It serves no one’s inter­ests to min­i­mize the legit­i­ma­cy of their deep polit­i­cal con­cern.”
    • My take: Gerson’s essay is very good and French adds a need­ed per­spec­tive. Bonus quote from Gerson’s essay: “The ban­ish­ment of fun­da­men­tal­ism from the cul­tur­al main­stream cul­mi­nat­ed dra­mat­i­cal­ly in a Ten­nessee cour­t­house in 1925. William Jen­nings Bryan, the most promi­nent Chris­t­ian politi­cian of his time, was set against Clarence Dar­row and the the­o­ry of evo­lu­tion at the Scopes ‘mon­key tri­al,’ in which a Ten­nessee edu­ca­tor was tried for teach­ing the the­o­ry in high school. Bryan won the case but not the coun­try. The jour­nal­ist and crit­ic H. L. Menck­en pro­vid­ed the account accept­ed by his­to­ry, dis­miss­ing Bryan as ‘a tin pot pope in the Coca-Cola belt and a broth­er to the for­lorn pas­tors who bela­bor half-wits in gal­va­nized iron taber­na­cles behind the rail­road yards.’ Fun­da­men­tal­ists became com­ic fig­ures, sub­ject to world-class con­de­scen­sion. It has large­ly slipped the mind of his­to­ry that Bryan was a peace activist as sec­re­tary of state under Woodrow Wil­son and that his pol­i­tics fore­shad­owed the New Deal. And Menck­en was even­tu­al­ly revealed as a racist, an anti-Semi­te, and a eugen­ics advo­cate.” Empha­sis mine. I con­sid­er myself fair­ly well-informed about Amer­i­can reli­gious his­to­ry and found the bold­ed details sur­pris­ing.
  7. The real Down syn­drome prob­lem: Accept­ing geno­cide (George Will, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Ice­land must be pleased that it is close to suc­cess in its pro­gram of geno­cide, but before con­grat­u­lat­ing that nation on its final solu­tion to the Down syn­drome prob­lem, per­haps it might answer a ques­tion: What is this prob­lem? To help under­stand why some peo­ple might ask this ques­tion, meet two chil­dren. One is Agus­ta, age 8, a cit­i­zen of Ice­land. The oth­er is Lucas, age 1, an Amer­i­can cit­i­zen in Dal­ton, Ga., who recent­ly was select­ed to be 2018 ‘Spokes­ba­by’ for the Ger­ber baby food com­pa­ny. They are two exam­ples of the prob­lem. Now, before Ice­land becomes snip­py about the descrip­tion of what it is doing, let us all try to think calm­ly about geno­cide, with­out get­ting judg­men­tal about it. It is sim­ply the delib­er­ate, sys­tem­at­ic attempt to erase a cat­e­go­ry of peo­ple. So, what one thinks about a geno­cide depends on what one thinks about the cat­e­go­ry involved. In Iceland’s case, the cat­e­go­ry is peo­ple with Down syn­drome.”
    • Relat­ed: a Face­book post from one of our sopho­mores (shared with his per­mis­sion): “My par­ents were told that I would be born with down syn­drome and advised to abort me. In response my father pulled us out of the hos­pi­tal’s manda­to­ry coun­sel­ing pro­gram, spent a lot of time in prayer, and decid­ed emphat­i­cal­ly that I would be born. I had no say in the mat­ter, as I was too small to com­mu­ni­cate or under­stand. I could­n’t cry or plead for my life. I could­n’t even look the peo­ple in the eyes who want­ed to kill me. 20 years lat­er, I have my God and my par­ents to thank for defend­ing me, defend­ing an unborn child wrong­ly accused of a crime that car­ried a death sen­tence: a defect. My par­ents had no idea exact­ly where God want­ed to take me, but because of their defense, I’m here, down syn­drome free, sit­ting in a class­room at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty.” (source) By the way, he was was not only admit­ted to Stan­ford. He was admit­ted to every sin­gle Ivy League school.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Every Place Has Detrac­tors. Con­sid­er Where They’re Com­ing From.(Megan McCar­dle, Bloomberg View): “There is grave dan­ger in judg­ing a neigh­bor­hood, or a cul­ture, by the accounts of those who chose to leave it. Those peo­ple are least like­ly to appre­ci­ate the good things about where they came from, and the most like­ly to dwell on its less attrac­tive qual­i­ties.” Bear this in mind when lis­ten­ing to con­ver­sion tes­ti­monies (both sec­u­lar and reli­gious). (first shared in vol­ume 62)

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.

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 140

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 gun debate has flared up again in the wake of a school shoot­ing.
  2. Lying to Inves­ti­ga­tors Should­n’t Be a Crime (Stephen Carter, Bloomberg View): “Pros­e­cu­tors want to catch you in a lie because, when they can’t prove an under­ly­ing crime, it’s often easy to prove that you lied to them. That’s where the prob­lem aris­es. I’ve been telling my aston­ished law stu­dents for decades that except in cer­tain well-defined cir­cum­stances, lying to inves­ti­ga­tors shouldn’t be a crime.” Carter is a law pro­fes­sor at Yale. I strong­ly endorse this view.
  3. Let’s Fix Peer Review (Ray Tru­ant, per­son­al blog): “When we apply for a grant or want to pub­lish our sci­ence, we secret­ly get the work reviewed by our peers, some of which are com­pet­ing with us for pre­cious fund­ing, or a bizarre ver­sion of fame. Under the veil of anonymi­ty, a review­er can write any­thing, includ­ed false state­ments, or incor­rect state­ments to jus­ti­fy a deci­sion. The deci­sion is most often, ‘do not fund’ or ‘reject’, even if the review is based off of inac­cu­ra­cies, lack of exper­tise, or even bla­tant slan­der. There are no rules, there are no reper­cus­sions.” Tru­ant is a bio­chemist at McMas­ter Uni­ver­si­ty in Cana­da.
  4. Jane Stanford’s Speech (Jane Stan­ford, stanford.edu): A stu­dent had to read this for a class a while back, and was struck by how selec­tive­ly it is quot­ed by the uni­ver­si­ty. The orig­i­nal doc­u­ment is thor­ough­ly reli­gious. “An impres­sion has gone forth that we were indif­fer­ent to reli­gious influ­ences and instruc­tions being taught here. I am quite sure that if all could be made to under­stand that this project was born from a great sor­row, the great­est that par­ents can endure, that the Cre­ator has led us through the deep waters out into the sun­shine of faith and and belief in a future life; that we have whol­ly and entire­ly as far as pos­si­ble giv­en our lives to Him; and only ask that He will guide us to do His will; that every stone that has been laid into the build­ings of this Uni­ver­si­ty but num­bers the prayers that have been offered up to our Heav­en­ly Father for strength, guid­ance, and help. That we should for­get His love and mer­cy and be indif­fer­ent as to the Chris­t­ian influ­ence to be used among the stu­dents, it would be an impos­si­bil­i­ty.”
  5. [Har­vard] Places HCFA On ‘Pro­ba­tion’ After Group Barred Stu­dent in Same-Sex Rela­tion­ship from Lead­er­ship (Car­o­line Engel­may­er & Michael Xie, Har­vard Crim­son): “The Office of Stu­dent Life has placed reli­gious group Har­vard Col­lege Faith and Action on ‘admin­is­tra­tive pro­ba­tion’ for a year after the orga­ni­za­tion pres­sured a female mem­ber of its stu­dent lead­er­ship to resign in Sep­tem­ber fol­low­ing her deci­sion to date a woman.… Col­lege admin­is­tra­tors told them HCFA is the first-ever cam­pus group to be placed on admin­is­tra­tive pro­ba­tion.”
  6. Mean­while on the Farm, Lone­ly Men and Women of Faith: The Expe­ri­ence of Reli­gious Stu­dents at Stan­ford (Ben Simon, Stan­ford Review): “It may be unrea­son­able to expect a sec­u­lar insti­tu­tion like Stan­ford to ful­ly accom­mo­date each student’s reli­gious needs. With that said, Stan­ford goes far beyond the let­ter of the law when it comes to eth­nic or racial diver­si­ty, but it does lit­tle to go out of its way to help reli­gious stu­dents.”
  7. As more jour­nal­ists report on Ice­land’s cir­cum­ci­sion saga, the coun­try gets a rab­bi (Julia Duin, GetRe­li­gion): “As Robert George of Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty – for­mer chair­man of the U.S. Com­mis­sion on Inter­na­tion­al Reli­gious Free­dom – not­ed in a series of tweets recent­ly, a coun­try ban­ning cir­cum­ci­sion effec­tive­ly bans Jews from liv­ing there. Dit­to for Mus­lims…. [How­ev­er] Gun­nars­dót­tir told the news­pa­per she ‘didn’t think it was nec­es­sary to con­sult’ with the island’s small Jew­ish and Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion before propos­ing the anti-cir­cum­ci­sion bill, adding ‘I didn’t see it as a reli­gious mat­ter.’” That last detail is telling. Reli­gious illit­er­a­cy caus­es real harms.
  8. Read My Lips: No New Admin­is­tra­tors (Berber Jin, Stan­ford Review): “Though admin­is­tra­tive offices are obvi­ous­ly nec­es­sary for the university’s oper­a­tion, their self-serv­ing incen­tives should make us wary of their expan­sion. Unlike fac­ul­ty, who gain pres­tige through qual­i­ty teach­ing and inno­v­a­tive research, admin­is­tra­tors move up the career lad­der by expand­ing bureau­cra­cy.” The Review has been on fire late­ly.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have a debate between two pas­tors on guns I shared back in vol­ume 48 – both are very thought­ful and are skill­ful debaters.  Here is the con­ver­sa­tion so far. All the posts are pret­ty short.

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 138

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. How to read books effi­cient­ly in grad school (Thomas Kidd, per­son­al newslet­ter): “Here’s the method I rec­om­mend for read­ing a book effi­cient­ly: read every word of the intro­duc­tion and con­clu­sion of a book. Then read the intro­duc­tion and con­clu­sion of each chap­ter word-for-word. With­in each chap­ter, read the first and last sen­tence of each body para­graph. Slow down when it gets inter­est­ing, or when the author hits on your par­tic­u­lar research inter­est.” Kidd is a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at Bay­lor Uni­ver­si­ty. There is a length­i­er arti­cle with relat­ed thoughts titled Effi­cient Read­ing by Karin Wulf, a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at William and Mary.
  2. The Anti-Chris­t­ian Alt-Right (Matthew Rose, First Things): “Almost every­thing writ­ten about the ‘alter­na­tive right’ in main­stream out­lets is wrong in one respect. The alt-right is not stu­pid. It is deep. Its ideas are not ridicu­lous. They are seri­ous. To appre­ci­ate this fact, one needs to inquire beyond its pres­ence on social media, where its obnox­ious use of insult, obscen­i­ty, and racism has earned it a rep­u­ta­tion for moral idio­cy. The rep­u­ta­tion is deserved, but do not be deceived. Behind its online tantrums and per­son­al attacks are argu­ments of gen­uine pow­er and expand­ing appeal…. The alt-right is anti-Chris­t­ian. Not by impli­ca­tion or insin­u­a­tion, but by con­fes­sion. Its lead­ing thinkers flaunt their rejec­tion of Chris­tian­i­ty and their desire to con­vert believ­ers away from it.”
  3. News To A For­eign Coun­try (David War­ren, per­son­al blog): “The State has its reli­gion, we have ours. So long as we remain meek and obe­di­ent, to any­thing we are required to sign, the Antichrist him­self wouldn’t care what we think. The trou­ble aris­es only when we fail to sign, salute, or check the right box­es. That is, from the Antichrist’s point of view, a form of defi­ance that requires pun­ish­ment — a pun­ish­ment that we have brought upon our­selves, as will be con­de­scend­ing­ly explained.” This is a tran­scribed speech by a Cana­di­an jour­nal­ist, and it is extreme­ly fiery and very Catholic.
  4. Trans­gen­der Ide­ol­o­gy Is Rid­dled With Con­tra­dic­tions. Here Are the Big Ones. (Ryan T Ander­son, Her­itage): “If gen­der is a social con­struct, how can gen­der iden­ti­ty be innate and immutable? How can one’s iden­ti­ty with respect to a social con­struct be deter­mined by biol­o­gy in the womb? How can one’s iden­ti­ty be unchange­able (immutable) with respect to an ever-chang­ing social con­struct? And if gen­der iden­ti­ty is innate, how can it be ‘flu­id’?”
  5. Mas­sacre in Myan­mar (Wa Lone, Kyaw Soe Oo, Simon Lewis and Antoni Slod­kows­ki, Reuters):  “Reuters has pieced togeth­er what hap­pened in Inn Din in the days lead­ing up to the killing of the 10 Rohingya – eight men and two high school stu­dents in their late teens. Until now, accounts of the vio­lence against the Rohingya in Rakhine state have been pro­vid­ed only by its vic­tims. The Reuters recon­struc­tion draws for the first time on inter­views with Bud­dhist vil­lagers who con­fessed to torch­ing Rohingya homes, bury­ing bod­ies and killing Mus­lims. This account also marks the first time sol­diers and para­mil­i­tary police have been impli­cat­ed by tes­ti­mo­ny from secu­ri­ty per­son­nel them­selves.”
  6. Should We Say “Of Course” To Fem­i­nism? (Anni­ka Nordquist, Stan­ford Review): “…I would chal­lenge all crit­i­cal­ly-think­ing fem­i­nists to ask the same ques­tion I asked my friend: if this move­ment does­n’t wel­come me, my opin­ions, or my solu­tions, why would I want to be part of it?” Yes, this is our Anni­ka.
  7. Is There a Smarter Way to Think About Sex­u­al Assault on Cam­pus?  (Jia Tol­lenti­no, The New York­er):  “In col­lege, every­thing is Janus-faced: what you inter­pret as refuge can lead to dan­ger, and vice ver­sa. One of the most high­ly val­orized social activ­i­ties, black­ing out and hook­ing up, holds the poten­tial for trau­ma with­in it like a seed.”
  8. What Teenagers Are Learn­ing From Online Porn (Mag­gie Jones, New York Times): “But you don’t have to believe that porn leads to sex­u­al assault or that it’s cre­at­ing a gen­er­a­tion of bru­tal men to won­der how it helps shape how teenagers talk and think about sex and, by exten­sion, their ideas about mas­culin­i­ty, fem­i­nin­i­ty, inti­ma­cy and pow­er.” This arti­cle uses graph­ic imagery.
  9. How Chi­nese over­seas stu­dents are learn­ing harsh life lessons (Eric Fish, South Chi­na Morn­ing Post):   “Inter­views with Chi­nese stu­dents study­ing abroad and aca­d­e­mics who research their atti­tudes present a com­plex pic­ture – one in which stu­dents enter and leave with diverse views and iden­ti­ties that often defy clear loy­al­ties or ide­o­log­i­cal labels. But nev­er­the­less, many feel caught in the geopo­lit­i­cal cross­fire – forced to choose a side or keep their heads down.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have This Is What Makes Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats So Dif­fer­ent (Vox, Ezra Klein): the title made me skep­ti­cal, but it’s insight­ful (first shared in vol­ume 32).

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 134

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. ‘Walk­ing a line’: The shrewd tac­tics of the White House’s evan­gel­i­cal gate­keep­er (Michelle Boorstein & Sarah Pul­liam Bai­ley, The Wash­ing­ton Post):  “The Sen­ate race in Alaba­ma and Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist Roy Moore? ‘I’m not involved.’ Trump’s pen­chant for lying? ‘I don’t want to get into it. Because I don’t focus on those things.’ The GOP tax law that bit­ter­ly divid­ed reli­gious lead­ers? ‘I don’t think there’s an answer.’ ‘For me, that’s all noise,’ he said. ‘It’s not that it isn’t impor­tant, but I don’t have time for all that… If I did dig into it, I might have stronger opin­ions, and that would be a dis­trac­tion for me.’”
  2. The Top 50 Coun­tries Where It’s Most Dan­ger­ous to Fol­low Jesus (Sarah Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “For decades, North Korea has clear­ly been the world’s worst per­se­cu­tor of Chris­tians. But now, anoth­er nation near­ly match­es it.” Spoil­er alert: Afghanistan.
  3. Clas­si­cal Lib­er­al­ism Strikes Out (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Thus, the irony: indi­vid­u­al­ism and sta­tism are not oppo­sites, but grow togeth­er in tan­dem. In our dai­ly par­ti­san pol­i­tics, we have tend­ed to pit indi­vid­u­al­ism against sta­tism – Ayn Rand against Karl Marx – with con­ser­v­a­tives claim­ing to be indi­vid­u­al­ists and pro­gres­sives claim­ing to sup­port an expan­sive state. But what we have wit­nessed is the simul­ta­ne­ous growth of both the state and the rise of indi­vid­u­al­ism, not as oppo­sites, but as nec­es­sary part­ners. The world has nev­er seen a more indi­vid­u­al­is­tic soci­ety nor a more encom­pass­ing state. The state has empow­ered itself by claim­ing to empow­er the indi­vid­ual.” This is a very stim­u­lat­ing inter­view with Notre Dame pro­fes­sor Patrick Deneen. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
  4. High­er Edu­ca­tion Is Drown­ing In BS (Chris­t­ian Smith, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “Ideas and their accom­pa­ny­ing prac­tices have con­se­quences. What is formed in col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties over decades shows up for bet­ter or worse in the char­ac­ter and qual­i­ty of our pub­lic ser­vants, polit­i­cal cam­paigns, pub­lic-pol­i­cy debates, cit­i­zen par­tic­i­pa­tion, social cap­i­tal, media pro­gram­ming, low­er school edu­ca­tion, con­sumer pref­er­ences, busi­ness ethics, enter­tain­ments, and much more. And the long-term cor­ro­sive effects on pol­i­tics and cul­ture can also be repaired only over the long term, if ever. There are no quick fix­es here.” Side note: I’ve met Dr. Smith, who is a soci­ol­o­gist at Notre Dame, before. He’s a smart cook­ie. 
  5. Oprah: Prophet, Priest­ess … Queen? (Ross Douthat, New York Times):  “Amer­i­can cul­ture is divid­ed between three broad approach­es to reli­gious ques­tions: one tra­di­tion­al, one spir­i­tu­al and one sec­u­lar. The tra­di­tion­al approach takes var­i­ous forms (Catholic and Protes­tant, Mus­lim and Ortho­dox Jew­ish) but its instincts are creedal, con­fes­sion­al, dog­mat­ic; it believes in a spe­cif­ic rev­e­la­tion, a spe­cif­ic author­i­ty and a spe­cif­ic holy book, and seeks to con­form itself to teach­ings hand­ed down from the reli­gious past. The sec­u­lar approach is post-reli­gious, sci­en­tis­tic, con­vinced that the lab­o­ra­to­ry and the micro­scope will ulti­mate­ly account for every­thing that mat­ters, while hope­ful­ly jus­ti­fy­ing a lib­er­al society’s still-some­what-Chris­t­ian moral com­mit­ments along the way. But in between sec­u­lar­ism and tra­di­tion­al­ism lies the most Amer­i­can approach to mat­ters of faith….”
  6. Can We Teach Our­selves to Believe? (Agnes Callard, New York Times): “Pas­cal seems to con­cede that try­ing to believe is a mat­ter of wish­ful think­ing, self-decep­tion or self-manip­u­la­tion. He thinks we should do it any­way. But I think our hope of becom­ing bet­ter peo­ple — whether in respect of reli­gion, friend­ship or jus­tice, or in any num­ber of dif­fer­ent ways — rests on the pos­si­bil­i­ty that there is a more straight­for­ward and less self-abas­ing way to try to believe.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go. 
  7. The Legion Lone­ly (Steven Thomas, Hazlitt): “Friend­ship in adult­hood is a chal­lenge for a lot of peo­ple. On aver­age, both men and women start to lose friends around age 25, and con­tin­ue to lose friends steadi­ly for the rest of our lives.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have On Obsti­na­cy In Belief (C.S. Lewis, The Sewa­nee Review): this is a reward­ing essay from way back in 1955. (first shared in vol­ume 6).

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 119

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

A note to our new stu­dents: no, you don’t have to read the whole thing. What a lot of Chi Alphans do is skim the list and find one or two that seem inter­est­ing to them and open them in new tabs.

Be sure to read the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Views among col­lege stu­dents regard­ing the First Amend­ment: Results from a new sur­vey (John Vil­lasenor, Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion): “Stu­dents act as de fac­to arbiters of free expres­sion on cam­pus. The Supreme Court jus­tices are not stand­ing by at the entrances to pub­lic uni­ver­si­ty lec­ture halls ready to step in if First Amend­ment rights are cur­tailed. If a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of stu­dents believe that views they find offen­sive should be silenced, those views will in fact be silenced.” The author is an  absurd­ly accom­plished Stan­ford grad: he is a simul­ta­ne­ous­ly a pro­fes­sor of elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing and pub­lic pol­i­cy while also serv­ing as a vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor of law (all at at UCLA) as well as a senior fel­low at the Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion.
  2. I Went To North Korea: What You’ve Heard vs What I Saw (Mark Hill, Cracked): “Sev­en care­ful­ly con­trolled days isn’t enough time to become an expert in any coun­try, let alone one this com­pli­cat­ed, and the best peo­ple to tell the sto­ry are Kore­ans them­selves. But they’re not real­ly avail­able right now…” The arti­cle is inter­est­ing and most­ly con­firms my impres­sions of North Korea.
  3. Is Inter­net Porn Mak­ing Young Men Impo­tent? (EJ Dick­son, Rolling Stone): “A num­ber of fac­tors have been spec­u­lat­ed as being behind this trend, from eat­ing processed foods to tak­ing psy­chotrop­ic drugs. Yet it’s porn that is most fre­quent­ly cit­ed as the like­ly cul­prit, prompt­ing the cre­ation of the term ‘porn-induced erec­tile dys­func­tion,’ which was coined by Dr. Abra­ham Mor­gen­taler, an asso­ciate clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor of urol­o­gy at Har­vard Med­ical School.”
  4. Protes­tants: The Most ‘Catholic’ of Chris­tians (Caleb Lind­gren, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The ‘Reform­ing Catholic Con­fes­sion,’ released today, aims to demon­strate that—despite “denominationalism”—Protestants are remark­ably uni­fied.” See A Reform­ing Catholic Con­fes­sion for the text of the state­ment.
  5. Big Data Sur­veil­lance: The Case of Polic­ing (Sarah Brayne, Amer­i­can Soci­o­log­i­cal Review): “In some instances, it is sim­ply eas­i­er for law enforce­ment to pur­chase pri­vate­ly col­lect­ed data than to rely on in-house data because there are few­er con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions, report­ing require­ments, and appel­late checks on pri­vate sec­tor sur­veil­lance and data col­lec­tion.… More­over, respon­dents explained, pri­vate­ly col­lect­ed data is some­times more up-to-date.” (hat tip: Big Data Sur­veil­lance by Alex Tabar­rok at Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion). The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at UT Austin.
  6. The Aca­d­e­m­ic Rea­son Why There Are So Few Con­ser­v­a­tives In Acad­e­mia (George Yancey, Patheos): “…over the last sev­er­al years, I have been doing empir­i­cal work in anti-Chris­t­ian bias in soci­ety and acad­e­mia. The way my work has been treat­ed has changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly although I became bet­ter, not worse, in doing research. Review­ers are clear­ly more hos­tile to my work on anti-Chris­t­ian bias than my work in race and eth­nic­i­ty, and some of their cri­tiques are almost laugh­able. Those who want to state that we can trust sci­ence because it enables an open search for the truth have nev­er tried to pub­lish work that vio­lates the polit­i­cal and moral sen­si­bil­i­ties of aca­d­e­mics.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of soci­ol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Texas.
  7. A Third of Veg­e­tar­i­ans Eat Meat When They’re Drunk (Phoebe Hurst, Vice):  this research does not appear to be of the high­est qual­i­ty, but I found it intrigu­ing nonethe­less.

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have A His­to­ry of the Sec­ond Amend­ment in Two Paint­ings (Ezra Klein, Wonkblog): this brief arti­cle from a few years ago is still one of the most insight­ful things I’ve read about firearms in Amer­i­ca. The Yale pro­fes­sor inter­viewed, Dr. Amar, also wrote a length­i­er arti­cle about this for Slate. (first shared in vol­ume 54)

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 117

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. America’s Chang­ing Reli­gious Iden­ti­ty (Daniel Cox and Robert Jones, PRRI): There’s a lot of data here. One bit that stood out to me: “Athe­ists and agnos­tics account for a minor­i­ty of all reli­gious­ly unaf­fil­i­at­ed. Most are sec­u­lar. Athe­ists and agnos­tics account for only about one-quar­ter (27%) of all reli­gious­ly unaf­fil­i­at­ed Amer­i­cans. Near­ly six in ten (58%) reli­gious­ly unaf­fil­i­at­ed Amer­i­cans iden­ti­fy as sec­u­lar, some­one who is not reli­gious; 16% of reli­gious­ly unaf­fil­i­at­ed Amer­i­cans nonethe­less report that they iden­ti­fy as a ‘reli­gious per­son.’”
  2. Risky road: Chi­na’s mis­sion­ar­ies fol­low Bei­jing west (BBC): “As a self-declared athe­ist gov­ern­ment, news of Chi­nese Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies get­ting into trou­ble abroad is embar­rass­ing. But at the same time, Bei­jing needs to show it can pro­tect its cit­i­zens as it goes glob­al. As Feng­gang Yang, an expert on reli­gion in Chi­na at Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty, puts it: ‘They thought Chris­tian­i­ty was a west­ern reli­gion import­ed into Chi­na, so how can you export Chris­tian­i­ty from Chi­na?’” Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
  3. There was a lot writ­ten about cam­pus sex­u­al assault recent­ly. Here are some stand­outs:
    • The Cam­pus Sex-Crime Tri­bunals Are Los­ing (KC John­son, Com­men­tary Mag­a­zine): “Barrett’s deci­sion marked the 59th judi­cial set­back for a col­lege or uni­ver­si­ty since 2013 in a due-process law­suit brought by a stu­dent accused of sex­u­al assault. (In four addi­tion­al cas­es, the school set­tled a law­suit before any judi­cial deci­sion occurred.) This body of law serves as a tow­er­ing rebuke to the Oba­ma administration’s rein­ter­pre­ta­tion of Title IX, the 1972 law bar­ring sex dis­crim­i­na­tion in schools that receive fed­er­al fund­ing.”
    • The Uncom­fort­able Truth About Cam­pus Rape Pol­i­cy (Emi­ly Yoffe, The Atlantic): “A trou­bling para­dox with­in the activist com­mu­ni­ty, and increas­ing­ly among admin­is­tra­tors, is the belief that while women who make a com­plaint should be giv­en the strong ben­e­fit of the doubt, women who deny they were assault­ed should not nec­es­sar­i­ly be believed. ”
    • The Bad Sci­ence Behind Cam­pus Response to Sex­u­al Assault (Emi­ly Yoffe, The Atlantic): “The spread of an inac­cu­rate sci­ence of trau­ma is an object les­son in how good inten­tions can over­take crit­i­cal think­ing, to poten­tial­ly harm­ful effect.”
    • Here Is Every Crazy Title IX Rape Case Bet­sy DeVos Ref­er­enced, Plus a Bunch More (Rob­by Soave, Rea­son): “Crit­ics of DeVos will say that her plan to reform Title IX is some kind of give­away to rapists. But it’s not. Today, DeVos rec­og­nized a basic and obvi­ous truth that every objec­tive chron­i­cler of the col­lege rape cri­sis already knows: The Oba­ma-era mod­i­fi­ca­tions to Title IX utter­ly failed to bring jus­tice to cam­pus­es.”
  4. To Under­stand Ris­ing Inequal­i­ty, Con­sid­er the Jan­i­tors at Two Top Com­pa­nies, Then and Now (Neil Irwin, New York Times): “The right prod­uct engi­neer or mar­ket­ing exec­u­tive can mean the dif­fer­ence between suc­cess or fail­ure, and com­pa­nies tend to hire such peo­ple as full-time employ­ees and as part of a long-term rela­tion­ship — some­thing like the trans­mis­sion sup­pli­er. What has changed in the last gen­er­a­tion is that com­pa­nies today view more and more of the labor it takes to pro­duce their goods and ser­vices as akin to sta­plers: some­thing to be pro­cured at the time and place need­ed for the low­est price pos­si­ble.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  5. I also read a lot about DACA this week:
    • Trump’s deci­sion to end DACA, explained (Daniel Bush, PBS New­shour): “In June, 11 attor­neys gen­er­al — from con­ser­v­a­tive states like Texas, Arkansas, West Vir­ginia and Kansas — threat­ened to sue the Trump admin­is­tra­tion unless it took steps by Sept. 5 to end the pro­gram. For months, senior Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials have expressed con­cern that DACA would not stand up in court.”
    • Trump Ends DACA, Despite Pleas from Evan­gel­i­cal Advis­ers  (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “In addi­tion to the 57 per­cent of US evan­gel­i­cals that favor cit­i­zen­ship and the 19 per­cent that favor depor­ta­tion, 15 per­cent say DACA recip­i­ents should be allowed to become legal res­i­dents but not cit­i­zens, while 9 per­cent don’t know.”
    • Can these Demo­c­ra­t­ic attor­neys gen­er­al save DACA? I asked 9 legal experts. (Sean Illing, Vox): The experts seem pes­simistic.
    • Don­ald Trump is right: Con­gress should pass DACA (Econ­o­mist): “If you could design peo­ple in a lab­o­ra­to­ry to be an adorn­ment to Amer­i­ca they would look like the recip­i­ents of DACA…. They are a high-achiev­ing lot. More than 90% of those now aged over 25 are employed; they cre­ate busi­ness­es at twice the rate of the pub­lic as a whole; many have spous­es and chil­dren who are cit­i­zens. They are Amer­i­can in every sense bar the bureau­crat­ic one.”
    • Rescind­ing DACA Is The Right Thing To Do (David Harsyani, The Fed­er­al­ist): “There are a vast num­ber of sol­id eco­nom­ic and moral argu­ments for legal­iz­ing the chil­dren of ille­gal immi­grants. In sub­stance, I agree with DACA. Yet… the Con­sti­tu­tion makes no allowance for the pres­i­dent to write law ‘if Con­gress doesn’t act.’”
  6. Should a Judge’s Nom­i­na­tion Be Derailed by Her Faith? (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “She and oth­er Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors on the com­mit­tee seemed trou­bled by Barrett’s Catholic con­vic­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the issues of abor­tion and same-sex mar­riage, which came up lat­er dur­ing ques­tion­ing. But when Bar­rett repeat­ed­ly stat­ed that she would uphold the law, regard­less of her per­son­al beliefs, they didn’t seem to believe her.” For a less restrained per­spec­tive, read Demo­c­ra­t­ic McCarthyites (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive).  And it’s not just con­ser­v­a­tives dis­pleased. Check out [Prince­ton] Pres­i­dent Eis­gru­ber asks Sen­ate com­mit­tee to avoid ‘reli­gious test’ in judi­cial appoint­ments (Prince­ton Office of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions).

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have a debate I fea­tured way back in vol­ume 48 between two pas­tors on guns – both are very thought­ful and are skill­ful debaters.  All the posts are pret­ty short.

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 116

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 flood­ing in Hous­ton is crazy, and I say this as some­one who grew up fac­ing hur­ri­canes in Louisiana on a reg­u­lar basis. If you want to help, Con­voy of Hope is our rec­om­mend­ed dis­as­ter-relief orga­ni­za­tion. You can learn more about what they’re doing at Hur­ri­cane Har­vey Response. So far they’ve served over forty thou­sand peo­ple. More hur­ri­cane read­ing:
  2. 20 Argu­ments For God’s Exis­tence (Peter Kreeft, per­son­al web­site): “You may be blessed with a vivid sense of God’s pres­ence; and that is some­thing for which to be pro­found­ly grate­ful. But that does not mean you have no oblig­a­tion to pon­der these argu­ments. For many have not been blessed in that way. And the proofs are designed for them—or some of them at least—to give a kind of help they real­ly need. You may even be asked to pro­vide help.” I was remind­ed of this by a con­ver­sa­tion with an alum­nus. The author is a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor at Boston Col­lege.
  3. A Beat­ing In Berke­ley (Matt Labash, Week­ly Stan­dard): “One of them, Will John­son, announces that he is a black Amer­i­can and a Chris­t­ian. ‘This is not a neo-Nazi, white suprema­cist ral­ly,’ he says. ‘I don’t know where they got that from. I actu­al­ly called Nan­cy Pelosi’s office and asked her to change that. There’s no way I am a white suprema­cist.’” An amaz­ing arti­cle. Well worth read­ing.
  4. Some Thoughts and Advice for Our Stu­dents and All Stu­dents (an open let­ter from some Har­vard, Yale and Prince­ton pro­fes­sors): “Think­ing for your­self means ques­tion­ing dom­i­nant ideas even when oth­ers insist on their being treat­ed as unques­tion­able. It means decid­ing what one believes not by con­form­ing to fash­ion­able opin­ions, but by tak­ing the trou­ble to learn and hon­est­ly con­sid­er the strongest argu­ments to be advanced on both or all sides of questions—including argu­ments for posi­tions that oth­ers revile and want to stig­ma­tize and against posi­tions oth­ers seek to immu­nize from crit­i­cal scruti­ny.” Inter­est­ing­ly, at least four of the sig­na­to­ries (near­ly 20%) are peo­ple who have pre­vi­ous­ly made an appear­ance in these emails.
  5. Wait, Do Peo­ple Actu­al­ly Know Just How Evil This Man Is? (Nathan J. Robin­son, Cur­rent Affairs): “And I am wor­ried that even those who detest Trump and are appalled by this par­don do not entire­ly appre­ci­ate the depth of Arpaio’s evil, or under­stand quite how inde­fen­si­ble what Don­ald Trump just has done is. Frankly I think even Trump may not ful­ly real­ize the extent of the wrong­do­ing that he has just sig­naled his approval of.” Depress­ing read­ing.
  6. The Pre­mi­um Mediocre Life of Maya Mil­len­ni­al (Venkatesh Rao, Rib­bon­farm): “Pre­mi­um mediocre is the finest bot­tle of wine at Olive Gar­den. Pre­mi­um mediocre is cup­cakes and froyo. Pre­mi­um mediocre is ‘truf­fle’ oil on any­thing (no actu­al truf­fles are harmed in the mak­ing of ‘truf­fle’ oil), and extra-leg-room seats in Econ­o­my. Pre­mi­um mediocre is cruise ships, arti­san piz­za, Game of Thrones, and The Bel­la­gio. Pre­mi­um mediocre is food that Insta­grams bet­ter than it tastes…. pre­mi­um medi­oc­rity is cre­at­ing an aura of exclu­siv­i­ty with­out actu­al­ly exclud­ing any­one.” The arti­cle is far too long. Read the first few para­graphs and you’ll get the idea.
  7. My IRB Night­mare (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “We, as the patient’s doc­tors, would make the diag­no­sis and write it down on the chart. But we (as study inves­ti­ga­tors) need­ed a full signed con­sent form before we were allowed to access the diag­no­sis we had just made.” This is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly dis­turb­ing and enter­tain­ing, and so is the fol­low-up post.
  8. The Cost of Run­ning Har­vard (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): I assume broad­ly sim­i­lar sta­tis­tics are true of Stan­ford.

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Weight of Glo­ry (C.S. Lewis): orig­i­nal­ly preached as a ser­mon and then print­ed in a the­ol­o­gy mag­a­zine. Relat­ed: see the C. S. Lewis Doo­dle YouTube chan­nel – it’s real­ly good! (first shared in vol­ume 36)

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 108

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. Should Tyler Cowen Believe In God? (Ross Douthat, NYT): this is delight­ful. “There: I’ve prob­a­bly blas­phemed, weak­ened my Catholic cre­den­tials, endan­gered my soul, insult­ed my reli­gious brethren, picked point­less fights with Mus­lims and Calvin­ists, and betrayed a juve­nile under­stand­ing of sta­tis­tics.”
  2. Des­per­a­tion and Ser­vice in the Bail Indus­try (Joshua Page, Con­texts): “…indus­try advo­cates con­fi­dent­ly assert that bail com­pa­nies and agents are ser­vice providers help­ing needy peo­ple. As my research shows, this claim is based in real­i­ty. But it is a con­struct­ed real­i­ty. Polit­i­cal and legal deci­sions make the ser­vices nec­es­sary in the first place.”
  3. “High” Achiev­ers? Cannabis Access and Aca­d­e­m­ic Per­for­mance (Olivi­er Marie & Ulf Zölitz, The Review of Eco­nom­ic Stud­ies): The authors stud­ied “an excep­tion­al pol­i­cy intro­duced in the city of Maas­tricht in the Nether­lands that dis­crim­i­nat­ed access via licensed cannabis shops based on an individual’s nation­al­i­ty…. We find that the aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance of stu­dents who are no longer legal­ly per­mit­ted to buy cannabis sub­stan­tial­ly increas­es.” In oth­er news, water is wet. You can find a PDF of the full paper at SSRN)
  4. The Case Against Car­di­nal Pell (Julia Yost, First Things): this is fas­ci­nat­ing and dis­tress­ing and full of all sorts of indi­rect­ly-relat­ed asides, such as “the McMartin Preschool case gen­er­at­ed 321 charges from forty-one chil­dren. We now know that every charge was a lie and every child was a liar. Yet today, with the chil­dren now well into their thir­ties, many of them still insist that their charges were true.”
  5. Stranger In A Strange Land (Fran­cis J. Beck­with, Inside High­er Ed): “A lit­tle over four years ago, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado at Boul­der began a three-year pilot pro­gram that I believe has no prece­dent in Amer­i­can high­er edu­ca­tion. With the help of pri­vate donors and the sup­port of the university’s board, pres­i­dent and chan­cel­lor, the school cre­at­ed the posi­tion of Vis­it­ing Schol­ar of Con­ser­v­a­tive Thought and Pol­i­cy.”
  6. I Am Not a ‘Paki,’ Not a Ter­ror­ist. I Am Nobody but Myself. (Omar Aziz, NY Times): rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. “Here is the basic conun­drum the child of immi­grants faces as he goes through school. Until now, he has safe­ly assumed the iden­ti­ty pro­vid­ed to him by his fam­i­ly, but as he encoun­ters inno­cent white faces, he is con­front­ed with an inter­ro­ga­tion about who he real­ly is.”
  7. Would Your Dog Eat You if You Died? Get the Facts. (Eri­ka Engel­haupt, Nation­al Geo­graph­ic): “There’s no way to guar­an­tee that your pet won’t eat you if you die, apart from not hav­ing any pets. Even ham­sters and birds have been known to scav­enge on occa­sion.” Ham­sters? Real­ly? Who has ham­sters roam­ing freely through their house?

Things Glen Found Amusing

Something Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light a link I shared before which is still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have  The Land of We All (Richard Mitchell, The Gift of Fire): this essay teas­es out the impli­ca­tions of this insight: “Think­ing can not be done cor­po­rate­ly. Nations and com­mit­tees can’t think. That is not only because they have no brains, but because they have no selves, no cen­ters, no souls, if you like. Mil­lions and mil­lions of per­sons may hold the same thought, or con­vic­tion or sus­pi­cion, but each and every per­son of those mil­lions must hold it all alone.” Warn­ing: the for­mat­ting is hor­rid. It is worth read­ing any­way. Either use the Read­abil­i­ty book­marklet, an app like Pock­et, or just cut and paste it into a text doc­u­ment on your com­put­er. (first shared in vol­ume 2)

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 103

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. Praise & Ques­tions: How Kendrick & Chance Talk to God in Dif­fer­ent Ways (Migueli­to, DJ Booth): “I’ve encoun­tered two dif­fer­ent kinds of reli­gious believ­ers, gen­er­al­ly speak­ing. The first are those who focus on the gifts of God and the bless­ings in their life and take an opti­mistic approach to human­i­ty. The oth­er group is made up of those who become gripped by the mys­tery sur­round­ing such a fig­ure and keep an air of skep­ti­cism about them.”
  2. How Oxford and Peter Singer drove me from athe­ism to Jesus (Sarah Irv­ing-Stone­brak­er, Ver­i­tas): “I grew up in Aus­tralia, in a lov­ing, sec­u­lar home, and arrived at Syd­ney Uni­ver­si­ty as a crit­ic of ‘reli­gion.’  I didn’t need faith to ground my iden­ti­ty or my val­ues…. [how­ev­er, while at Oxford] I began to realise that the impli­ca­tions of my athe­ism were incom­pat­i­ble with almost every val­ue I held dear.” The author is a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at West­ern Syd­ney Uni­ver­si­ty.
  3. Lis­ten­ing: An Anti­dote to the Mod­ern University’s Inco­her­ence (Dominic Bur­bidge, The Pub­lic Dis­course): insight­ful break­down of the three sub-uni­ver­si­ties we dwell with­in: the uni­ver­si­ty of ratio­nal­ism, the uni­ver­si­ty of rev­o­lu­tion, and the uni­ver­si­ty of sub­jec­tivism. The author is an admin­is­tra­tor at Oxford.
  4. Won­der Woman and the Gen­der Wars (Rus­sell Moore, per­son­al blog): “Won­der Woman does indeed rep­re­sent pow­er, but she also is, in every iter­a­tion, designed to be sex­u­al­ly attrac­tive to men. The 1970s-era tele­vi­sion series not­ed in its theme song, ‘Fight­ing for your rights, in your satin tights, and the old red, white, and blue.’ The rights and the tights were both part of the package—and, from the looks of things, still are.” This piece is quite good.
  5. The Marines Can Treat Women Hon­or­ably With­out Putting Them in the Infantry (David French, Nation­al Review): “The women-in-infantry debate is the lux­u­ry of a soci­ety that hasn’t fought a large-scale ground war in gen­er­a­tions, and a seri­ous mixed-gen­der exper­i­ment wouldn’t sur­vive first con­tact with a well-equipped and well-trained oppos­ing force.” The author is both a vet­er­an of the Iraq war and a grad­u­ate of Har­vard Law School. A short but thought­ful response to the wide­ly-shared Vox arti­cle The Marine Corps has a “tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty” prob­lem
  6. If you haven’t seen it yet, there’s quite the con­tro­ver­sy at Ever­green Col­lege. There’s a good sum­ma­ry at The blas­phe­my case against Bret Wein­stein, and its four lessons for pro­fes­sors (Jonathan Haidt, Het­ero­dox Acad­e­my): “I gen­er­al­ly oppose zero-tol­er­ance poli­cies, but if we are to have one, it should be for vio­lence and intim­i­da­tion on cam­pus.” And this is a good op-ed on the sit­u­a­tion: When the Left Turns on Its Own (Bari Weiss, NY Times): “Lib­er­als shouldn’t cede the respon­si­bil­i­ty to defend free speech on col­lege cam­pus­es to con­ser­v­a­tives. After all, with­out free speech, what’s lib­er­al­ism about?”
  7. I’ve seen lots of opin­ions about Trump pulling Amer­i­ca out of the Paris cli­mate agree­ment. I was most struck by these two reac­tions that both grant that the agree­ment was in some sense just for show but arrive at dif­fer­ent con­clu­sions from that premise:
    • From the right: The Place­bo Pol­i­tics of Paris (Jason Willick, The Amer­i­can Inter­est): “Pres­i­dent Trump’s repu­di­a­tion of the agree­ment… delights his nation­al­is­tic base and sends his inter­na­tion­al­ist-mind­ed crit­ics into parox­ysms of rage and despair—all with­out actu­al­ly doing any­thing, because the Paris agree­ment con­sists sim­ply of vol­un­tary, unen­force­able emis­sions pledges that are already being flout­ed.”
    • From the left: The Odd Kabu­ki of the Cli­mate Pact With­draw­al (Eric Pos­ner, per­son­al blog): “[the pact] was mean­ing­ful-sym­bol­ic rather than mean­ing­less-sym­bol­ic. Mean­ing­ful-sym­bol­ic means that the coun­tries were tak­ing a first step toward actu­al­ly reduc­ing green­house gas­es rather than a first step toward pre­tend­ing to reduce 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.