Tag: academia

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 98

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it).

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 96

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

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

Things Glen Found Amusing

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it).

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 94

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

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

    Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it).

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 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 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 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 80

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. Rage and Heart­break: Required Reac­tions to Alep­po (Richard Stearns, ERLC): “Let your heart be bro­ken for the suf­fer­ing in the Mid­dle East and around the world. Pray it stays bro­ken as long as any moth­er any­where pleads for help and any child fears this night will be her last.” For some con­text, read 9 Things You Should Know About Alep­po and the Syr­i­an Cri­sis (Joe Carter, Gospel Coali­tion). And this is an inter­est­ing Mus­lim take on Alep­po (Omed Safi, Wash­ing­ton Post).
  2. The Cri­sis of Chris­tians in Egypt (Gabriel Reynolds, First Things):  “It is telling, for exam­ple, that almost no such attacks have tak­en place in major­i­ty Shi’ite Iran against the Chris­t­ian minor­i­ty there. What, then, dis­tin­guish­es Egypt and Pak­istan from Iran?”
  3. My Pres­i­dent Was Black (Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic): this is a long, beau­ti­ful­ly-writ­ten piece. The Atlantic is pub­lish­ing response pieces. The first one is intense: “My pres­i­dent was black and I still am.”
  4. Why Hillary Clin­ton Bombed With White Evan­gel­i­cal Vot­ers (Ruth Gra­ham, Slate): “It was as if she was try­ing to alien­ate evan­gel­i­cals… and it worked.” This arti­cle nails a big part of the dynam­ic.
  5. With Jesus’ Birth, Why Does The Bible List Two Dif­fer­ent Fam­i­ly Trees? (Richard Ostling, Patheos): “The gen­er­al con­sen­sus on the dif­fer­ences is that Matthew depict­ed Jesus’ legal descent from David, on the assump­tion Joseph adopt­ed him. If Mary had no broth­ers, by com­mon cus­tom Joseph would have been his father-in-law’s legal ‘son’ and heir through the mar­riage. Luke defined Jesus through Mary as a blood descen­dant of David.” (for some oth­er pos­si­ble expla­na­tions, see Mark Strauss at Zon­der­van Aca­d­e­m­ic)
  6. The Defense of Lib­er­ty Can’t Do With­out Iden­ti­ty Pol­i­tics (Jacob Levy, Niska­nen Cen­ter): “Iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics… is about fight­ing for polit­i­cal jus­tice by draw­ing on the com­mit­ment that aris­es out of tar­get­ed injus­tice…. It lets us spot the major­i­ty group’s iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics rather than treat­ing it as the nor­mal back­ground state of affairs, and to rec­og­nize the oppres­sion and injus­tice that it gen­er­ates.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at McGill.
  7. The Right Shuts Down Free Speech, Too (Cather­ine Ramp­bell, Wash­ing­ton Post): it’s almost as though human nature is the same regard­less of what one thinks about the tax code. 
  8. On the academic/research side of things:

Things Glen Found Amusing

  • Indul­gences  (Pearls Before Swine): the­o­log­i­cal warn­ing — this form of recur­sion does not actu­al­ly work 
  • Local Man Relieved After Spir­i­tu­al Gift Test Comes Back Neg­a­tive For Giv­ing (Baby­lon Bee): “Accord­ing to sources, Shep­herd ripped open his results pack­et Thurs­day, and after ner­vous­ly perus­ing the cov­er let­ter, jumped for joy upon dis­cov­er­ing he had no desire or respon­si­bil­i­ty to be gen­er­ous what­so­ev­er.”
  • Band Offers Admin­is­tra­tion $60,000 To Drop Accu­sa­tions (The Flip­side): bru­tal and well-deserved (if you don’t get the joke, check out two recent edi­tions of the Foun­tain Hop­per (dirty lan­guage ahead): about the $60,000 and about the band. In case you’re won­der­ing, I do think the band is being treat­ed unfair­ly (and I have not been a huge fan of the band’s cul­ture his­tor­i­cal­ly). 
  • How To Get Vin­di­ca­tion (Basic Instruc­tions): if you are squea­mish, this one may not be for you. I found it hilar­i­ous. There is a video in the notes below the com­ic and I rec­om­mend it — if you are not squea­mish.

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 78

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. On Wednes­day I men­tioned how some mod­ern research about speak­ing in tongues aligns very well with Paul’s com­ments about tongues strength­en­ing believ­ers even while their mind is unfruit­ful (1 Cor 14:4, 14). A read­able sum­ma­ry from a few years back is A Neu­ro­sci­en­tif­ic Look At Speak­ing In Tongues (Bene­dict Carey, NYT) and also Speak­ing in Tongues: Glos­salalia and Stress Reduc­tion (The Dana Foun­da­tion). If you want to see the actu­al research they are allud­ing to, check out the uni­ver­si­ty press release Lan­guage Cen­ter of the Brain Is Not Under the Con­trol of Sub­jects Who “Speak in Tongues” (U Penn, 2006) or the aca­d­e­m­ic papers Sali­vary Alpha-Amy­lase and Cor­ti­sol Among Pen­te­costals on a Wor­ship and Non­wor­ship Day (Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Human Biol­o­gy, 2013) and Glos­so­lalia is asso­ci­at­ed with dif­fer­ences in bio­mark­ers of stress and arousal among Apos­tolic Pen­te­costals (Reli­gion, Brain and Behav­ior, 2012).
  2. A hor­ri­fy­ing look into the mind of 9/11’s mas­ter­mind, in his own words (Marc Thiessen, Wash­ing­ton Post): Indis­putably inter­est­ing. Two caveats: you should look up the name James E. Mitchell for con­text and there are sure­ly those who tes­ti­fy dif­fer­ent­ly than Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Hav­ing said that… fas­ci­nat­ing.
  3. Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Experts Stand Togeth­er, on Cas­es Inside Prison Walls (Ter­ry Mat­ting­ly, On Reli­gion): “There is space enough in our cul­ture to allow dif­fer­ent peo­ple with dif­fer­ent beliefs to live peace­ably in the same land.”
  4. Texas elec­tor who crit­i­cized Trump says he’s resign­ing (Kyle Cheney, Politi­co): “Since I can’t in good con­science vote for Don­ald Trump, and yet have sin­ful­ly made a pledge that I would, the best option I see at this time is to resign my posi­tion as an Elec­tor…. I will sleep well at night know­ing I nei­ther gave in to [the people’s] demands nor caved to my con­vic­tions. I will also mourn the loss of our repub­lic.” The elec­tor is clear­ly a thought­ful Chris­t­ian who made his deci­sion very the­o­log­i­cal­ly. Read his own words about it at Con­flict­ed Elec­tor In A Cor­rupt Col­lege. Even if you dif­fer with his the­ol­o­gy at points, applaud his con­sis­ten­cy. Also note how much Politi­co edit­ed out his the­o­log­i­cal con­vic­tions in their report­ing — a very com­mon occur­rence in major media out­lets.
  5. Gays, Bias, And Pho­ny Sci­ence (Nao­mi Schae­fer Riley,  NY Post): “In the end, nei­ther LaCour nor Hatzen­buehler actu­al­ly did the work to prove their the­ses — because there would be no real con­se­quences if they were caught, and any­way acad­e­mia writ large didn’t want to ‘catch’ them at all.”
  6. The Under­stud­ied Female Sex­u­al Preda­tor (Conor Frieder­dorf, The Atlantic): “In inci­dents of sex­u­al vio­lence report­ed to the Nation­al Crime Vic­tim­iza­tion Sur­vey, 38 per­cent of vic­tims were men…”
  7. Cheat or Go Home: Inside the ‘Dys­func­tion­al Hell’ of Becom­ing a CFB Coach (Matt Hayes, Bleach­er Report): “Auburn offi­cials have always denied it, the NCAA could nev­er nail it down and the statute of lim­i­ta­tions on infrac­tions has long since passed. But here’s the catch: I’ve seen the ledger.” Even if you don’t like sports, this is a worth­while read.

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 69

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. How To Pray A Psalm (Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coali­tion): prayer life need a boost? Give this a try. 
  2. A Col­lege Is A Com­mu­ni­ty But It Can­not Be A Home (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): for­get col­lege. This whole world is not your home — 1 Peter 2:11; Hebrews 13:14.
  3. Is Pla­gia­rism A Sin? (Ger­vase Markham, per­son­al blog): this is well-argued and rais­es issues I had not con­sid­ered before.
  4. Split Over Don­ald Trump and Cut Off by Cul­ture Wars, Evan­gel­i­cals Despair (Lau­rie Good­stein, NY Times): an unusu­al­ly per­cep­tive piece from the often obliv­i­ous-to-reli­gion New York Times.
  5. Sci­ence Denial­ism: Pot. Ket­tle. Black. (David Hed­dle, per­son­al blog): a nuclear physi­cist gives an stim­u­lat­ing sum­ma­ry of cos­mo­log­i­cal fine-tun­ing and how both the­ists and skep­tics often mis­un­der­stand it.
  6. Eco­nom­ic Free­dom and Reli­gion: An Empir­i­cal Inves­ti­ga­tion (SSRN): “Our cross-sec­tion­al dataset includes 137 coun­tries aver­aged over the peri­od 2001–2010. Sim­ple cor­re­la­tions show that Protes­tantism is asso­ci­at­ed with eco­nom­ic free­dom, Islam is not, with Catholi­cism in between.”
  7. Can Islam and Lib­er­al­ism Coex­ist? (Isaac Chotin­er, Slate): an absolute­ly fas­ci­nat­ing inter­view with Sha­di Hamid. “Dur­ing the course of our con­ver­sa­tion… we dis­cussed why lib­er­als have trou­ble tak­ing reli­gion seri­ous­ly, the future of Islamist pol­i­tics in Turkey and Egypt, and what the rise of Don­ald Trump has meant for Amer­i­can Mus­lims.”

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 67

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. Ice­break­ers Are Ter­ri­ble. They Also, Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Work Real­ly Well (Cari Romm, NY Mag­a­zine): “Is there any val­ue to mak­ing a room­ful of peo­ple mis­er­able with false cheer? Psy­chol­o­gist Anton Vil­la­do is adamant that the answer is yes, and that ice­break­ers don’t have to be pleas­ant to be effec­tive.” Rel­e­vant for the start of the school year.
  2. Reli­gion in US ‘worth more than Google and Apple com­bined’ (Har­ri­et Sher­wood, The Guardian): “the sums spent by reli­gious organ­i­sa­tions on social pro­grammes have tripled in the past 15 years, to $9bn. Twen­ty of the top 50 char­i­ties in the US are faith-based, with a com­bined oper­at­ing rev­enue of $45.3bn.” There’s some excel­lent com­men­tary on this at Crux.
  3. The First Coun­try to Offi­cial­ly Defend Chris­tians Per­se­cut­ed by ISIS (World Watch Mon­i­tor at Chris­tian­i­ty Today): It’s Hun­gary. Hun­gary’s Min­is­ter for Human Resources said, “Today, Chris­tian­i­ty has become the most per­se­cut­ed reli­gion, where out of five peo­ple killed [for] reli­gious rea­sons, four of them are Chris­tians.… In 81 coun­tries around the world, Chris­tians are per­se­cut­ed, and 200 mil­lion Chris­tians live in areas where they are dis­crim­i­nat­ed against.”
  4. Why Not a Col­lege Degree in Sports? (Roger Pielke Jr., NY Times): “Beyond our cul­tur­al bias­es, what real­ly is the dif­fer­ence between a Shake­speare play, an orches­tra con­cert and a bas­ket­ball game? Each per­for­mance requires some high-lev­el com­bi­na­tion of phys­i­cal abil­i­ty and men­tal acu­ity, devel­oped through years of train­ing and study, and for which only a select few reach elite lev­els.” There is a sim­i­lar arti­cle back in issue 44.
  5. Time For A Realign­ment (NY Times, David Brooks): “There’s a good chance many of you will be switch­ing polit­i­cal par­ties over the next 15 years.” This is true both for the rea­sons Brooks men­tions and also because some of you will change your minds.
  6. 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.

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.