Tag: academia

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 66

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. “Me too” social sci­ence is not fight­ing inequal­i­ty (Kevin T. Leicht, Work in Progress): an arti­cle about how aca­d­e­mics can improve soci­ety. The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois Urbana-Cham­paign.
  2. U.S. inves­ti­gat­ing poten­tial covert Russ­ian plan to dis­rupt Novem­ber elec­tions (Dana Priest, Ellen Nakashima and Tom Ham­burg­er, Wash­ing­ton Post): “U.S. intel­li­gence and law enforce­ment agen­cies are inves­ti­gat­ing what they see as a broad covert Russ­ian oper­a­tion in the Unit­ed States to sow pub­lic dis­trust in the upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and in U.S. polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions, intel­li­gence and con­gres­sion­al offi­cials said.” The 2016 elec­tions will make an amaz­ing tele­vi­sion series a gen­er­a­tion from now. 
  3. The Idle Army: America’s Unwork­ing Men (Nico­las Eber­stadt, Wall Street Jour­nal): the author doesn’t say it here, but video games and pornog­ra­phy are huge enablers of this phe­nom­e­non. This is one of those trends that every­one will be talk­ing about in 10–15 years.
  4. You are not your brain: Why a head trans­plant is not what you think it is (Charles Camosy, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): this was mind-blow­ing. Pun intend­ed. With me, the pun is always intend­ed.
  5. How A Cake­mak­er Became An Ene­my Of The State (David Harsyani, The Fed­er­al­ist): “Chris­tians are reg­u­lar­ly com­pared to South­ern seg­re­ga­tion­ists and racists, when in real­i­ty the com­par­i­son is best reversed. Yes, the pow­er of Jim Crow reflect­ed pop­u­lar will, but it was sanc­tioned by the state. The Col­orado Civ­il Rights Com­mis­sion is sim­i­lar­ly empow­ered by the state to use its arbi­trary pow­er to destroy the rep­u­ta­tions, busi­ness­es, and lives of those who hap­pen to offend their sen­si­bil­i­ties.” See also the alarm­ing com­ments of the US Com­mis­sion on Civ­il Rights Chair­man.
  6. Reverse Voxs­plain­ing: Drugs vs. Chairs (Slat­eStar­Codex, the author is a doc­tor who writes under pseu­do­nym). This was a stim­u­lat­ing piece about the EpiPen con­tro­ver­sy to which Vox had a rejoin­der to which the author offered a sur­re­join­der.  Infor­ma­tive and full of provoca­tive state­ments such as “pre­scrip­tion drug price reg­u­la­tion would cost one bil­lion life-years, which would very slight­ly edge out Com­mu­nist Chi­na for the title of Worst Thing Ever.” For an inter­est­ing unre­lat­ed-yet-relat­ed com­pan­ion piece, see the brief Two “The Rest of the Sto­ry” Sto­ries (Alex Tab­barok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion).
  7. What Does The Bible Say About Trans­gen­derism? (Kevin DeY­oung., Gospel Coali­tion): “We under­stand that fol­low­ing Christ means dying to our­selves (Matt. 16:24), being renewed in our minds (Rom. 12:2), and no longer walk­ing as we once did (Eph. 4:17–18). Being ‘true to our­selves’ is always a false choice when it means going against God’s Word.”
  8. Porn Is Bad (Pas­cal-Emmanuel Gob­ry, The Week): “It took decades to rec­og­nize smok­ing for the pub­lic health dis­as­ter that it is, and to final­ly get a grip on it soci­etal­ly. Although porn does­n’t cause can­cer, there’s good evi­dence that it does destroy lives and fam­i­lies.”

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 60

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, with a pref­er­ence for con­tent from aca­d­e­mics and influ­en­tial voic­es. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. To quote from the begin­ning of both posts: “over the past 30 years law­mak­ers in Con­gress tend to vote in line with their party’s plat­form: 89 per­cent of the time for Repub­li­cans and 79 per­cent of the time for Democ­rats.” If you want to read the full par­ty plat­form state­ments they are linked in the arti­cles and weigh in at a tad over 50 pages each — these are much short­er sum­maries. They are pre­sent­ed in the order of their con­ven­tions. 
  2. Is Seg­re­ga­tion Scrip­tur­al? A Radio Address From Bob Jones On East­er Of 1960 (Justin Tay­lor, Evan­gel­i­cal His­to­ry): this is fas­ci­nat­ing to me as a preach­er. Notice that where Jones went off the rails was when he relied upon his inter­pre­ta­tion of a sin­gle verse as the foun­da­tion of his the­ol­o­gy. Beware of sin­gle-verse the­ol­o­gy! Also, who does­n’t talk about the res­ur­rec­tion on East­er? What was his Christ­mas ser­mon about?
  3. The False Promise Of A ‘Con­ver­sa­tion’ About Race (John McWhort­er, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “The Mar­t­ian anthro­pol­o­gist — or even a sharp 10-year-old — would be baf­fled by so many bril­liant people’s end­less­ly claim­ing in the very wake of the lat­est racial inci­dent, dis­cussed in the news cycle for weeks, that Amer­i­ca ‘doesn’t want to talk about race.’” The author is a pro­fes­sor at Colum­bia who earned his Ph.D. in lin­guis­tics at Stan­ford.
  4. In The Cul­ture War Between Stu­dents and Pro­fes­sors, The Uni­ver­si­ty Is The Real Ene­my (Don­na Zucker­berg, Jezebel): “Heller is cor­rect on one cru­cial point that I don’t think read­ers have been tak­ing seri­ous­ly enough. Col­leges like Ober­lin do encour­age indi­vid­ual expres­sion while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly groom­ing all of their stu­dents to belong to a sin­gle socioe­co­nom­ic class—the intel­lec­tu­al and pro­fes­sion­al elite. In oth­er words, study­ing Antigone doesn’t just teach you about Greek dra­ma and female polit­i­cal resis­tance. It also turns you into the kind of per­son who has read Antigone.”
  5. As A Poor Kid From The Rust Belt, Yale Law Brought Me Face-To-Face With Rad­i­cal Inequal­i­ty (J.D. Vance, Huff­in­g­ton Post): “Very few peo­ple at Yale Law School are like me. They may look like me, but for all of the Ivy League’s obses­sion with diver­si­ty, vir­tu­al­ly everyone—black, white, Jew­ish, Mus­lim, what­ev­er— comes from intact fam­i­lies who nev­er wor­ry about mon­ey.” I shared a link to an inter­view with J.D. Vance last week.

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.

If you have a non-Stan­ford friend who might be inter­est­ed in these emails, they can sign up at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/subscribe, and if you want to view the archives they are at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 59

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, with a pref­er­ence for con­tent from aca­d­e­mics and influ­en­tial voic­es. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

A Pastoral Exhortation

Anoth­er sense­less shoot­ing. In Matthew 24:12, Jesus warns that “because of the increase of wicked­ness, the love of most will grow cold.” Wicked­ness caus­es love to grow cold by two means: allure and despair. The church tends to focus on those forms of wicked­ness which entice us as a temp­ta­tion, but there is also a wicked­ness that demor­al­izes. It leaves Chris­tians feel­ing drained and help­less. This wicked­ness, with which we are all too famil­iar, can make a Chris­tian’s love grow cold. Do not be deceived. Rec­og­nize this for the demon­ic work that it is and do not let it lead you astray. Cling to Christ. Let Him be your com­fort, your peace, and your wis­dom. “Do not be over­come by evil, but over­come evil with good” (Rom 12:21).

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Bat­tle For Reli­gious Lib­er­ty (George Wood, PE News): Dr. Wood is the leader of the Assem­blies of God, which spon­sors Chi Alpha. See also this GetRe­li­gion piece on reli­gious lib­er­ty — high­ly rec­om­mend­ed
  2. Of inter­est to aca­d­e­mics
  3. Trump: Tri­bune of Poor White Peo­ple (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “And I’m always left think­ing: if this is the qual­i­ty of thought of a Har­vard Law grad­u­ate, then our soci­ety is tru­ly doomed.” This is an inter­view with the author of Hill­bil­ly Ele­gy and is much more wide-rang­ing and insight­ful than the title leads you to believe . Both the jour­nal­ist and the inter­vie­wee are Chris­tians.
  4. In Defense of Third-Par­ty Vot­ing (Zac Crip­pen, per­son­al blog): rec­om­mend­ed, dif­fi­cult to excerpt
  5. Amus­ing: This Is How We Work (Owl­turd Comix): apolo­gies for the pub­lish­er’s title.

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 you have a non-Stan­ford friend who might be inter­est­ed in these emails, they can sign up at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/subscribe, and if you want to view the archives they are at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 58

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

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues, with a pref­er­ence for con­tent from aca­d­e­mics and influ­en­tial voic­es. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Articles I Found Interesting

  1. Chi­na’s Chris­t­ian Future (Yu Jie, First Things):  Wow. This is very much worth your time.
  2. The ISIS Cor­re­spon­dent (Isaac Chotin­er, Slate): this is time­ly in light of the ter­ror­ist attack in Nice, France. “I think there is an enor­mous amount of mis­un­der­stand­ing about this ques­tion that we get asked over and over again: Does ISIS direct this attack or does ISIS inspire this attack? ISIS-inspired attacks are part of their strat­e­gy; are part of their design; are part of what they’re try­ing to do. That’s what peo­ple miss.”
  3. Ten Thoughts On Speak­ing (And Not) In A Dig­i­tal World (Kevin DeY­oung, Gospel Coali­tion): “A pas­tor does not have time to be a pro­fes­sion­al pun­dit. And even if he did, it’s fair to won­der whether he should be.” DeYoung’s thoughts par­al­lel many of my own. If you won­der why I am often silent on social media, read this.
  4. How High­ly Reli­gious Amer­i­cans’ Lives Are Dif­fer­ent From Oth­ers (Michael Lip­ka, Pew Research): inter­est­ing — both the dif­fer­ences and sim­i­lar­i­ties.
  5. Two Kinds Of Vot­ing, Two Kinds Of Dis­rup­tion, and Two Kinds of Right­eous­ness (Sen­a­tor Ben Sasse, Medi­um): “To us, vot­ing is not mere­ly about 1/130-mil­lionth of decid­ing who should pre­side over 1/3 of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment from 2017 to 2021. To us, the act of vot­ing is also a civic duty that tells peo­ple what we think Amer­i­ca means, what we want to teach our kids about moral lead­er­ship, what face we want Amer­i­ca to present to the world, and what sort of can­di­dates we want more of in com­ing years.” I know noth­ing about Sen­a­tor Sasse’s vot­ing record — I just know this is an out­stand­ing essay.
  6. When Cor­re­la­tion Does Imply Cau­sa­tion (Joshua Krisch, Voca­tiv): “Addi­tive noise mod­el test­ing is based on the sim­ple assump­tion that there is always some sta­tis­ti­cal noise cling­ing to the key vari­ables in any experiment—areas where the data becomes fuzzy and unre­li­able due to mea­sure­ment errors. Regard­less of any link, each vari­able will have its own unique noise sig­na­ture, with one caveat: If X caus­es Y, then the noise in X will be able to con­t­a­m­i­nate Y, but the noise in Y will not able to do the same to X. Because a cause can affect an effect, but an effect can­not affect a cause (read that last line a few times). … The key, then, is to fol­low the noise con­t­a­m­i­na­tion.” See the under­ly­ing paper.
  7. These essays by an Eng­lish pro­fes­sor at Emory are full of prac­ti­cal advice for those of you con­sid­er­ing acad­e­mia. Read them regard­less of your pol­i­tics or your dis­ci­pline.

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.

If you have a non-Stan­ford friend who might be inter­est­ed in these emails, they can sign up at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/subscribe, and if you want to view the archives they are at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 50

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

  1. What are the most-cit­ed pub­li­ca­tions in the social sci­ences (accord­ing to Google Schol­ar)? (Elliot Green, Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics Impact Blog): I am famil­iar with many of them, but some I have nev­er even heard of. Appar­ent­ly I am less well-read than I thought.
  2. The False Promise of DNA Test­ing (Matthew Shaer, The Atlantic): DNA test­ing exon­er­ates some but false­ly impli­cates oth­ers.
  3. Good Cit­i­zen­ship as Barack Oba­ma and Clarence Thomas See It (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “There are real diver­gences in the ways that Oba­ma and Thomas view cit­i­zen­ship, but their approach­es are more com­ple­men­tary than con­tra­dic­to­ry. Tak­en togeth­er, their advice encom­pass­es the per­son­al and the polit­i­cal, afford­ing a bet­ter por­trait of the whole cit­i­zen than either offers in iso­la­tion.”
  4. The cul­ture wars play out in the most fas­ci­nat­ing ways:
    • Media Want To Make Sure You Nev­er Hear About The Lit­tle Sis­ters of the Poor (Mol­lie Hem­ing­way, The Fed­er­al­ist): “A case of “Lit­tle Sis­ters of the Poor” vs. “Pow­er­ful Men in Gov­ern­ment” is a gift from the edi­to­r­i­al gods…. If any Repub­li­can pres­i­dent went to war against a group called Lit­tle Sis­ters of the Poor, that edi­to­r­i­al gift would be unwrapped on every front page of every news­pa­per in the land.” (addi­tion­al com­men­tary at GetRe­li­gion)
    • Relat­ed: Pro­fes­sor Michael McConnell on Zubik v. Bur­well (Michael McConnell, Volokh Con­spir­a­cy): “the deci­sion was basi­cal­ly a qui­et, face-sav­ing, non-prece­dent-set­ting defeat for the gov­ern­ment.”
    • How The Fight Over Trans­gen­der Kids Got A Lead­ing Sex Researcher Fired (Jesse Sin­gal, NY Mag): this is a very long piece which I found utter­ly fas­ci­nat­ing. It shows that for some peo­ple 90% agree­ment is not enough: “And if you look close­ly at what real­ly hap­pened — if you read the review (which CAMH has now pulled off of its web­site), speak with the activists who effec­tive­ly wrote large swaths of it, exam­ine the sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence, and talk to for­mer GIC clin­i­cians and the par­ents of patients they worked with, it’s hard not to come to an uncom­fort­able, polit­i­cal­ly incor­rect con­clu­sion: Zucker’s defend­ers are right. This was a show tri­al.”
    • Yes, my sex­u­al­i­ty is a choice: Why I reject the “born this way” nar­ra­tive (Mar­cie Bian­co, Salon):  “The pro­gres­sive move away from iden­ti­ty cat­e­gories negates the need for the nor­ma­tive, ‘born this way’ nar­ra­tive that has been used to social­ly val­i­date them…. if sex­u­al­i­ty is social­ly con­struct­ed and expressed through cul­ture, then there is no norm, nor is there deviance.”
    • State-Man­dat­ed Mourn­ing for Abort­ed Fetus­es (Emma Green, The Atlantic): I am some­what baf­fled that this sto­ry doesn’t men­tion the Cen­ter for Med­ical Progress videos from last year. There is clear­ly a rela­tion­ship.
  5. Quick Links:

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 49

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

  1. The Exper­i­ment Exper­i­ment (Plan­et Mon­ey): a con­sis­tent­ly excel­lent pod­cast. This episode is the best expla­na­tion I’ve heard about the repli­ca­tion cri­sis that plagues many dis­ci­plines.
  2. The Faith­ful: René and Juan Car­los set out to con­vert their Colom­bian megachurch to Ortho­dox Judaism. This is what hap­pened. (Gra­ciela Mochkof­sky, The Cal­i­for­nia Sun­day Mag­a­zine): this is a very sad sto­ry. The temp­ta­tions Paul warned the Gala­tians about are real.
  3. A Con­fes­sion of Lib­er­al Intol­er­ance (Nicholas Kristof, NY Times): “This bias on cam­pus­es cre­ates lib­er­al priv­i­lege. A friend is study­ing for the Law School Admis­sion Test, and the test prepa­ra­tion com­pa­ny she is using offers test-tak­ers a tip: Read­ing com­pre­hen­sion ques­tions will typ­i­cal­ly have a lib­er­al slant and a lib­er­al answr.”
  4. Face­book is going to get more polit­i­cal­ly biased, not less (Ezra Klein, Vox): “The bad press Face­book has received for polit­i­cal bias in recent days is like­ly to push it away from human cura­tion and toward yet more algo­rith­mic cura­tion. The irony is that will make Face­book more of an echo cham­ber, not less of one. Face­book’s human cura­tors are under pres­sure to present both sides, but its algo­rith­mic cura­tors are not.” The arti­cle Klein is respond­ing to is For­mer Face­book Work­ers: We Rou­tine­ly Sup­pressed Con­ser­v­a­tive News (Michael Nunez, Giz­mo­do).
  5. World Hunger Is At Its Low­est Point In 25 Years. Thank Democ­ra­cy. (Lib­by Nel­son, Vox): and as I nev­er tire of point­ing out, for wide­spread democ­ra­cy thank Bible-believ­ing Chris­tians. You’re wel­come.
  6. Ravi Zacharias On The Chris­t­ian View Of Homo­sex­u­al­i­ty (YouTube): the clip is 11 min­utes long.
  7. Where John Piper and Oth­er Evan­gel­i­cals Stand on Black Lives Mat­ter (Mor­gan Lee, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Piper also encour­aged white evan­gel­i­cals to ‘pause’ before say­ing any­thing like, ‘All lives mat­ter.’ ‘Because if you quick­ly add that, it sounds like a rebuke,’ he said. ‘It sounds like a min­i­miz­ing of what was just said. It sounds like the point that was try­ing to be made isn’t worth being made,’ he said. ‘… Of course that is true, all lives mat­ter, but oh how tim­ing mat­ters and how con­text mat­ters.’”
  8. How Bath­rooms Became the New Legal Bat­tle­ground of the Reli­gious Right (Michelle Gold­berg, Slate): Very slant­ed but inter­est­ing piece. “Polls sug­gest that a slight plu­ral­i­ty of Amer­i­cans believe peo­ple should have to use the bath­rooms that match the sex on their birth cer­tifi­cate. To a lib­er­al, this is evi­dence that more edu­ca­tion is need­ed. To a con­ser­v­a­tive, it’s proof that aver­age people’s pref­er­ences are being tram­pled on.”
  9. 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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 38

On Fri­days I share articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

  1. From The The­ol­o­gy Side:
    • Was Jesus Nei­ther a Demo­c­rat Nor a Repub­li­can? (Michael Kruger, blog): Kruger argues that this is a mis­lead­ing and triv­ial­ly true state­ment.
    • The Mega Church­es of Lagos (Andrew Esiebo, The Guardian): this is a col­lec­tion of pic­tures. The third pic­ture is mind-blow­ing.
    • Tran­script: Rev. Paul Scalia’s Eulo­gy for His Father Jus­tice Antonin Scalia (Paul Scalia, USA Today): it’s rare to find a funer­al ser­mon for a famous per­son that is this the­o­log­i­cal­ly rich. Being Protes­tant there are bits I would quib­ble with, but wow.
    • What Con­ser­v­a­tive Gay Chris­tians Want (Dan Hitchens, The Spec­ta­tor): a per­spec­tive rarely heard in main­stream media: “When Shaw writes in praise of the ‘real ele­ments of beau­ty’ in gay rela­tion­ships, or laments how the C of E’s ‘hypocrisy’ has ‘hurt a lot of peo­ple’, he sounds like a lib­er­al Angli­can. At oth­er times, he sounds like any­thing but. Sex is ‘not a small issue that we can afford to dis­agree on’, he says; ‘mar­riage between a man and a woman, union in dif­fer­ence, sex with­in that’ is one of the most impor­tant ‘pic­tures of God’s love for us’. The Bible starts with a mar­riage in Eden and ends with a mar­riage between Christ and the Church. ‘It’s not just a cou­ple of vers­es in Leviti­cus that we need to change,’ Shaw argues: recon­struct­ing mar­riage would mean ‘rip­ping out the heart of almost every part of scrip­ture’.”
    • Three Lies Every Cam­pus Min­is­ter Must Silence (Paul  Worces­ter, Cam­pus Min­istry Today): this arti­cle has an amaz­ing close. Even if you skim the arti­cle, devour the tes­ti­mo­ny at the end. You nev­er know the impact you have.
    • An Economist’s Ratio­nal Road to Chris­tian­i­ty (Eric Falken­stein, per­son­al blog): one man’s jour­ney to con­ver­sion. It’s a bit long. The author’s Ph.D. is from North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty, he works in indus­try, and has pub­lished two well-received books. My favorite line is “in the words of a famous short green deist, ‘Do, or do not, there is no try.’”
  2. From The Polit­i­cal Side
  3. God Loved Alexan­der Hamil­ton (Susan Lim, Chris­tian­i­ty Today) — his­to­ry nerds pay atten­tion — there’s some good stuff here.
  4. Ran­dom Research

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.

Past edi­tions are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links (you can also sign up to receive them via email at that site)

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 34

Here are some things I found inter­est­ing this week. See the bot­tom for con­text.

  1. On The Via­bil­i­ty of Con­spir­a­to­r­i­al Beliefs (David Robert Grimes, PLOS One): Oxford physi­cist Grimes came up with an equa­tion that shows how like­ly a con­spir­a­cy will be to suc­ceed under ide­al con­di­tions. Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est is the chart on the bot­tom of page 11, show­ing that a con­spir­a­cy with more than 502 peo­ple has a 95% like­li­hood of expo­sure after just 25 years. Read­ing that puts 1 Corinthi­ans 15:3–6 in a new light: “For what I received I passed on to you as of first impor­tance: that Christ died for our sins accord­ing to the Scrip­tures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day accord­ing to the Scrip­tures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hun­dred of the broth­ers and sis­ters at the same time, most of whom are still liv­ing, though some have fall­en asleep.” Please note that there are all kinds of assump­tions in the paper that are sub­ject to chal­lenge… but if one of your friends brings this study up you should men­tion this pas­sage to them. 🙂
  2. Cer­ti­tude And Seek­ing The Truth (Peter Wehn­er, Com­men­tary). Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus (the rec­om­men­da­tion was actu­al­ly for a blog post excerpt­ing this arti­cle, but I thought the whole thing was worth read­ing — it aligns nice­ly with my dis­claimer at the bot­tom).
  3. My Major, Myself: (Olga Khaz­an, The Atlantic). What does your major reveal (prob­a­bilis­ti­cal­ly) about your per­son­al­i­ty?
  4. Why Humans Find It Hard To Do Away With Reli­gion (John Gray, The New States­man): Gray is him­self an athe­ist. My favorite line: “The invet­er­ate human incli­na­tion to reli­gion is, in effect, the athe­ist prob­lem of evil.” This isn’t quite right but it is amus­ing.
  5. Peo­ple Can Be Con­vinced They Com­mit­ted A Non-Exis­tant Crime In Just Three Hours (Bec Crew, Sci­ence Alert). Dis­turb­ing. This is a sum­ma­ry of the find­ings of an aca­d­e­m­ic paper: Con­struct­ing Rich False Mem­o­ries of Com­mit­ting Crime (Shaw & Porter, Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence).
  6. How Reli­gion Is Shap­ing the 2016 Pres­i­den­tial Race (Pew Research). If pol­i­tics is your thing, this arti­cle will be inter­est­ing.
  7. Are Aca­d­e­mics Dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly Gay? (Colleen Fla­her­ty, Inside High­er Edu­ca­tion). The tl;dr ver­sion is yes.

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.

To that end, on Fri­days I’ve been shar­ing articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). 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.

Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links