Tag: africa

TGFI Volume 531: Christianity improves longevity, plus some smart people who believe

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Inter­est­ing

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues like­ly to be of inter­est to Chris­tians in col­lege. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. More Than a Mag­ic Pill (Kathryn But­ler, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Church atten­dance reduces all-cause mor­tal­i­ty by near­ly 30 per­cent over a 15-year peri­od and pro­tects woman against sui­cide by 400 per­cent. Week­ly church­go­ing in women over 40 is as pro­tec­tive against death as annu­al mam­mo­grams, McLaugh­lin writes. Those attend­ing ser­vices more than week­ly at age 20 have ‘a rough­ly sev­en-year greater life expectan­cy than their nonchurch­go­ing peers.’ Church­go­ing pro­tects against alco­hol, smok­ing, and drug abuse and decreas­es the odds of depres­sion by one-third.”
    • I been sayin’ it. Preach!
  2. Alvin Planti­nga, God’s Philoso­pher (Daniel Sil­li­man, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “In the 1950s there was not a sin­gle pub­lished defense of reli­gious belief by a promi­nent philoso­pher,” said philoso­pher Kel­ly James Clark, one of Plantinga’s stu­dents. “By the 1990s there were lit­er­al­ly hun­dreds of books and arti­cles, from Yale to UCLA and from Oxford to Hei­del­berg, defend­ing and devel­op­ing the spir­i­tu­al dimen­sion. The dif­fer­ence between 1950 and 1990 is, quite sim­ply, Alvin Planti­nga.”
  3. The Mak­ing of an Elite: Japan­ese Chris­tians (Cremieux, Sub­stack): “It’s prob­a­bly sur­pris­ing to hear that 20% of the post-World War II Prime Min­is­ters of Japan before the new­ly-elect­ed Sanae Takaichi have been Chris­t­ian. Out of those 35 Prime Min­is­ters since 1945, Shigeru Yoshi­da and Tarō Asō were Catholic, and Tet­su Kataya­ma, Ichirō Hatoya­ma, Masayoshi ÅŒhi­ra, Shigeru Ishi­ba, and Yukio Hatoya­ma were var­i­ous fla­vors of Protes­tant. How this hap­pens in a coun­try that’s less than 1% Chris­t­ian and in which there’s sig­nif­i­cant anti-Chris­t­ian dis­crim­i­na­tion is per­plex­ing, but I think it makes sense giv­en how today’s Japan­ese Chris­tians came to be.”
    • Fas­ci­nat­ing read­ing. The role of the samu­rai was very unex­pect­ed to me!
  4. How Two Times Reporters Cov­er Chris­tian­i­ty in a Polar­ized Amer­i­ca (Patrick Healy, Eliz­a­beth Dias & Ruth Gra­ham, New York Times): “I think a lot about which details to include in a sto­ry, and how I’m describ­ing peo­ple and scenes. Part of fair­ness is not tak­ing cheap shots by sub­tly depict­ing one side as back­ward or unso­phis­ti­cat­ed, for exam­ple. I also try to bring peo­ple into as many hous­es of wor­ship as pos­si­ble. And I would define that expan­sive­ly, from tra­di­tion­al church ser­vices to prayer meet­ings to wor­ship ser­vices in the Trump White House.”
    • Unlocked. A real­ly well-done inter­view. I have gen­er­al­ly found Gra­ham and Dias to be fair and insight­ful. Most of the sto­ries involv­ing the NYT being tone-deaf to reli­gion have come about when jour­nal­ists who don’t cov­er the reli­gion beat try to drag reli­gion into their sto­ry with­out ful­ly under­stand­ing what they’re try­ing to describe.
  5. It Used to Be ‘Get Mar­ried.’ Now It’s ‘Stay Sin­gle.’ (Freya India, The Free Press): “I keep hear­ing about how there’s too much pres­sure to set­tle down. Appar­ent­ly every­one wants to know when you’re get­ting mar­ried, when you’re hav­ing kids.… My whole life I’ve only ever felt the oppo­site, an over­whelm­ing pres­sure to be sin­gle. In the sec­u­lar lib­er­al world I used to think there were no expec­ta­tions, no pres­sure. There is, though: The pres­sure today is to avoid any­thing that might stick, to run through life with­out get­ting snagged on any respon­si­bil­i­ties, with­out get­ting teth­ered to some­one else too ear­ly.… We don’t scru­ti­nize the 25-year-old who is still sin­gle but the one who set­tles down. In fact, this feels like the only life deci­sion left to dis­ap­prove of, the only one accept­able to judge. Want­i­ng to com­mit is the one desire that is dis­cour­aged, treat­ed with sus­pi­cion, the only thing in the mod­ern world we are ever told to delay.”
    • Relat­ed: Senior Scaries: Treat­ing dat­ing like the job mar­ket (Erin Ye, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “The last time I was on the phone with my mom, she told me that it was my own fault I didn’t have a boyfriend. ‘You need to start treat­ing dat­ing like it’s the job mar­ket: you’re not apply­ing to posi­tions, you’re not inter­view­ing, you’re not even doing things that you can add to your résumé,’ she said. ‘You just need to get out there. Think of it like get­ting an intern­ship. Don’t wor­ry about the return offer just yet!’ ”
  6. They Led at Sad­dle­back Church. ICE Said They Were Safe. (Andy Olsen, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The grow­ing abo­li­tion of dis­cre­tion, per­haps more than any oth­er aspect of the administration’s immi­gra­tion sup­pres­sion, will cause the deep­est pain for many fam­i­lies that pre­vi­ous­ly had lit­tle to fear. Indi­vid­u­als with­in the US immi­gra­tion edi­fice have long had some author­i­ty to exer­cise com­pas­sion in sit­u­a­tions where, in their judg­ment, the cost to soci­ety of a person’s removal might be high­er than the cost of non­re­moval. One could view such dis­cre­tion, as the Trump admin­is­tra­tion does, as a weak­ness. Or one could see dis­cre­tion as the car­di­nal qual­i­ty that sep­a­rates a human jus­tice sys­tem from a cold enforce­ment machine with all the sen­si­bil­i­ty of a red-light cam­era.”
    • A mov­ing sto­ry, told with all the messy details.
  7. Trump says Chris­tians are being per­se­cut­ed in Nige­ria. The real­i­ty is more com­pli­cat­ed (Chine­du Asadu, AP News): “Nigeria’s pop­u­la­tion of 220 mil­lion is split almost even­ly between Chris­tians, who live pre­dom­i­nant­ly in the south, and Mus­lims, most­ly in the north — where attacks have long been con­cen­trat­ed and where lev­els of illit­er­a­cy, pover­ty and hunger are among the country’s high­est. Nation­wide, Mus­lims con­sti­tute a slight major­i­ty. Experts and data from two non­par­ti­san sources — the U.S.-basedt and Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions — show Chris­tians are often tar­gets in a small per­cent­age of over­all attacks that appear to be moti­vat­ed by reli­gion, in some north­ern states. But the num­bers and ana­lysts also indi­cate that across the north, most vic­tims of over­all vio­lence are Mus­lims.”
    • I was skep­ti­cal of the head­line, but the arti­cle makes a good case for it. Hav­ing said that, the author has­n’t shown that there isn’t a prob­lem of reli­gious per­se­cu­tion in Nige­ria; the author has only shown that there is also a prob­lem of ram­pant law­less­ness.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • 6–7 in the Bible (Kristy Etheridge, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “News out­lets from The New York Times to The Indi­an Express have cov­ered the glob­al phe­nom­e­non that delights chil­dren, puz­zles grownups, and leaves school teach­ers 67 per­cent sure they should retire ear­ly.… a church in Char­lotte, North Car­oli­na, cre­at­ed an entire out­reach event around the infa­mous num­bers. Jonathan White is a pas­tor and direc­tor of children’s pro­gram­ming at Meck­len­burg Com­mu­ni­ty Church. When he deter­mined that the 6–7 trend wasn’t harm­ful and wasn’t going away, he wrote it into the church’s Novem­ber fam­i­ly night.”
  • Schol­ars Now Believe Num­ber Of The Beast Is Actu­al­ly 67 (Baby­lon Bee)
  • The Bat­man effect: The mere sight of the ‘super­hero’ can make us more altru­is­tic (Gaby Clark, Phys.org): “In the exper­i­men­tal con­di­tion, anoth­er exper­i­menter dressed as Bat­man entered the scene from anoth­er door of the train. Faced with this unex­pect­ed encounter, pas­sen­gers were sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly to offer their seats: 67.21% of pas­sen­gers offered their seats in the pres­ence of Bat­man, or more than two out of three, com­pared to 37.66% in the con­trol exper­i­ment, or just over one out of three.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
  • Mil­lions Con­vert To Chris­tian­i­ty After The­olo­gians Con­firm There Is No Microsoft Teams In Heav­en (Baby­lon Bee)

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). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. 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.

TGFI, Volume 524: beauty and virality

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Inter­est­ing

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues like­ly to be of inter­est to Chris­tians in col­lege. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. ‘The Idea of the Beau­ti­ful Is a Sig­na­ture of God’: A Q&A With Mar­i­lynne Robin­son (Peter Wehn­er, New York Times): “Calvin says there is not a blade of grass that God cre­at­ed that was not meant to rav­ish us with its beau­ty. The idea of the beau­ti­ful is a sig­na­ture of God, I think for Calvin and Jonathan Edwards and many oth­er peo­ple. This dis­til­la­tion of the joy, the sen­so­ry joy, of being among things in the world. I think the loss of beau­ty is a loss of an intel­lec­tu­al dis­ci­pline, which sci­ence nev­er lost because sci­en­tists always have the right to say a for­mu­la is beau­ti­ful. We in the out­side world, we’ve aban­doned the word and the con­cept. It’s sug­ges­tive that the sci­en­tists use it.”
  2. Per­form­ing Gen­der, Left and Right (Richard Hana­nia, Sub­stack): “How each side behaves is a metaphor for its strengths and weak­ness­es as a move­ment. Con­ser­v­a­tives fun­da­men­tal­ly get human nature and are more in tune with it, but tend to indulge in their instincts and act like idiots. Lib­er­als are thought­ful and polite but place a high pri­or­i­ty on emo­tion­al safe­ty and avoid­ing dan­ger­ous or uncom­fort­able sit­u­a­tions.… These per­son­al­i­ty and aes­thet­ic dif­fer­ences are cen­tral to polit­i­cal divides. So much of pol­i­tics is who you know, and it’s dif­fi­cult to go some­where in a move­ment if you don’t get along with the peo­ple in it. Elites there­fore sort accord­ing to per­son­al­i­ty in addi­tion to ide­ol­o­gy.”
  3. Why Evan­gel­i­cal­ism Is Built for Tik­Tok (Riv­er Page, The Free Press): “Of course evan­gel­i­cals went viral on Tik­Tok. The medi­um is per­fect for the mes­sage; but also, the mes­sage is per­fect for the medi­um. Catholics have art and ancient rit­u­als. Evan­gel­i­cals have rhetoric and emotion—the kind of stuff that trav­els far and wide on a plat­form where you have 15 sec­onds to grab people’s atten­tion.”
  4. Craft Is the Anti­dote to Slop. (Will Mani­dis, Sub­stack): “From Gen­e­sis, man enters not a par­adise with­out labor but a world of inten­tion­al cre­ation. The LORD God places man in the Gar­den of Eden ‘to dress it and to keep it’ (Gen­e­sis 2:15) estab­lish­ing labor not as pun­ish­ment but as sacred voca­tion. This orig­i­nal call­ing invites us to co-cre­ate the King­dom, tend­ing and devel­op­ing the world with inten­tion and care. Our fun­da­men­tal pur­pose is not con­sump­tion but par­tic­i­pa­tion in the ongo­ing work of cre­ation. The ser­pen­t’s temp­ta­tion rep­re­sents the first short­cut in human his­to­ry.… Human­i­ty’s first sin was, in part, choos­ing the easy short­cut over the mean­ing­ful process – pre­fer­ring effort­less gain to the demand­ing but ful­fill­ing work of tend­ing the gar­den.”
  5. Real­iz­ing a desired fam­i­ly size: when should cou­ples start? (Habbe­ma et al, Human Repro­duc­tion): “With­out IVF, cou­ples should start no lat­er than age 32 years for a [90% chance of a] one-child fam­i­ly, at 27 years for a two-child fam­i­ly, and at 23 years for three chil­dren. When cou­ples accept 75% or low­er chances of fam­i­ly com­ple­tion, they can start 4–11 years lat­er.”
    • An alum­nus passed this along to me and I found it fas­ci­nat­ing.
  6. He’s Chris­t­ian. In Nige­ria, That Meant Tor­ture and Prison. (Josh Code, The Free Press): “What came to my mind when I was in deten­tion was that death could be the final result. I knew the con­se­quences of help­ing Mus­lims who have con­vert­ed to Christianity—and also the fact that the police were look­ing for them. So death was what was on my mind.… From the point of my deten­tion to the point where I was released, I was con­stant­ly pray­ing and fast­ing. Because of the way I was pray­ing, the oth­er men detained with me thought I was a pas­tor and were even call­ing me ‘rev­erend’ and ask­ing me to remem­ber them in my prayers, so that the Lord would also deliv­er them from cap­tiv­i­ty. Mind you, they were Mus­lims, not Christians—their deten­tion was not on account of their faith.”
  7. There Are Only Two Gametes (Car­ol Hooven, Tablet): “We call ani­mals that pro­duce sperm ‘male’ and those that pro­duce eggs ‘female.’ That’s about it. The bot­tom line is that there are two gamete types and thus two sex­es. There are no oth­er sex­es, no oth­er repro­duc­tive cat­e­gories. Among main­stream evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gists, there is sim­ply no dis­agree­ment on these basic points: The ‘gamet­ic view’ is the estab­lished ortho­doxy of our field. It applies across sex­u­al­ly repro­duc­ing ani­mals and accom­mo­dates all the com­plex­i­ty and vari­a­tion with­in the sex­es. It holds in non­re­pro­duc­tive­ly viable animals—like post­menopausal me—that don’t pro­duce gametes; it holds in male sea­hors­es that get preg­nant; in clown­fish who change from male to female (first pro­duc­ing sperm and then eggs); in females who iden­ti­fy as male (trans men) and take male lev­els of testos­terone and have a deep voice and a thick, bushy beard.”

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). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. 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 510: gambling, persecution, and free will

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. Online Sports Gam­bling and Col­lege Stu­dents: A Chris­t­ian Response to a Grow­ing Indus­try (Kim­ber­ley Reeve and Jared Pincin, Chris­t­ian High­er Edu­ca­tion): “Because the Bible does not offer direct guid­ance on the top­ic of gam­bling, Chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tions take dif­fer­ing posi­tions.… The com­mon thread across these tra­di­tions is that there is a point where gam­bling becomes moral­ly imper­mis­si­ble.”
    • Relat­ed: How to Rein in Run­away Sports Bet­ting (Lyman Stone, Sub­stack): “A good reg­u­la­to­ry response is sim­ple: ban all win lim­its. Let win­ners win. Bet­tors don’t like lim­its on win­nings. They are obvi­ous­ly unfair. They are also clear­ly a key source of prof­its for com­pa­nies.… Sec­ond­ly, there should be lim­its on how much an indi­vid­ual can lose on a web­site. Once an indi­vid­ual has lost a cer­tain amount of mon­ey, bet­ting web­sites should be required to shut down their account. The harms of gam­bling are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly caused by big-losers, and gam­bling com­pa­nies can iden­ti­fy those big losers and pro­tect them. They don’t do this because they make mon­ey when losers lose.… So no lim­its for win­ning, lim­its for los­ing is a pret­ty rea­son­able reg­u­la­to­ry approach. Win­ners don’t threat­en seri­ous social harms. Losers do. Uncap­ping win­ners and pro­tect­ing losers will also dra­mat­i­cal­ly wors­en the bal­ance sheet of gam­bling sites, forc­ing them to charge high­er spreads on bets, which will deter many gam­blers.”
  2. As Chris­tians Are Slaugh­tered, the World Looks Away (Madeleine Kearns, The Free Press): “The world should have seen it com­ing. Since 2009, Islamists in north­ern Nige­ria have destroyed over 18,000 church­es and, through­out the coun­try, have mur­dered over 50,000 Chris­tians. A fur­ther 5 mil­lion Chris­tians have been dis­placed with­in the coun­try, accord­ing to a 2023 Vat­i­can report.… If West­ern media reports on the per­se­cu­tion at all, it typ­i­cal­ly char­ac­ter­izes it as land dis­putes between neigh­bor­ing eth­nic groups. For instance, after the atroc­i­ties at Yel­wa­ta, the BBC report­ed: ‘The author­i­ties have not blamed any group, but it is safe to assume that there are lots of vic­tims on both sides, as any attack usu­al­ly leads to revenge and then a cycle of vio­lence.’ But where is the evi­dence that Chris­tians are killing Fulani Mus­lims by the hun­dreds, shout­ing ‘Christ is king’ as they hack peo­ple of oth­er faiths to death?”
  3. Pen­te­costals Keep Grow­ing: What the Assem­blies of God’s 2024 Report Shows About the Spir­it-Filled Move­ment (Ed Stet­zer and Todd Kor­pi, Church­Lead­ers): “The AG in the Unit­ed States is a part of the World Assem­blies of God Fel­low­ship (WAGF), which togeth­er makes up one of the largest Protes­tant bod­ies on the plan­et with over 85 mil­lion adher­ents. The WAGF is now larg­er than the Angli­can com­mu­nion, which is often cit­ed as the third-largest Chris­t­ian tra­di­tion. Instead, the WAGF is itself now the third-largest Chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tion­al tra­di­tion.”
    • Ed Stet­zer is a professor/dean at the Tal­bot School of The­ol­o­gy, and Todd Kor­pi is a pro­fes­sor at Fuller The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary. The Assem­blies of God is, of course, the spon­sor of Chi Alpha and the group with which I am ordained.
  4. When Women Are Rad­i­cal­ized (Claire Lehmann, The Dis­patch): “There is grow­ing aware­ness of how young men can be drawn into far-right extrem­ism or misog­y­nis­tic sub­cul­tures, but we in the media—and soci­ety more broadly—pay less atten­tion to how young women become drawn into polit­i­cal sub­cul­tures. Indeed, the terms ‘rad­i­cal­iza­tion’ and ‘women’ are rarely—if ever—seen togeth­er. This over­sight has con­se­quences, because radicalization—defined as rigid com­mit­ment to an ide­o­log­i­cal cause to the point where it dis­torts one’s world­view, harms men­tal health, under­mines rela­tion­ships, or dis­rupts functioning—is not a male-only phe­nom­e­non.”
  5. Solipsism»Determinism (Bryan Caplan, Sub­stack): “A large major­i­ty of my smartest friends insist that deter­min­ism is true. Physics text­books say so, basic log­ic (‘Every effect must have a cause’) says so, and they say so. Who am I to dis­agree? My answer begins with a tru­ism: The foun­da­tion of sci­ence is repeat­ed, care­ful obser­va­tion. If sci­en­tists are allowed to dis­miss piles of repeat­ed, care­ful obser­va­tions as ‘illu­sion,’ there is no sci­ence. Next step: I have a life­time of repeat­ed, care­ful obser­va­tion of my own mind. Via intro­spec­tion, I direct­ly observe myself mak­ing gen­uine choic­es in every wak­ing moment. There­fore: Any ‘sci­en­tif­ic’ the­o­ry that con­tra­dicts these obser­va­tions is, at best, incom­plete.”
  6. God and Woman at Cor­nell (Mary Eber­stadt, First Things): “Why does sec­u­lar­ism flour­ish on col­lege cam­pus­es? Ear­li­er today, some of us were talk­ing about the philoso­pher René Girard, who had an idea that sounds sim­ple, but isn’t: We fig­ure out what we desire by see­ing what oth­er peo­ple desire. That’s part of what hap­pens with stu­dents on cam­pus, and it’s why even those raised in a reli­gious home tend to become more secular—because they don’t see a lot of peo­ple like them­selves in a place like Cor­nell. The idea dawns, even sub­con­scious­ly, ‘Well, maybe there’s a rea­son why they all think dif­fer­ent­ly from me. After all, we’re in a very sophis­ti­cat­ed place with high­ly edu­cat­ed peo­ple, so maybe I should be like that.’ That’s the rel­a­tive­ly benign force that dri­ves peo­ple who were raised reli­gious toward sec­u­lar­ism. There is anoth­er force, more malev­o­lent: intim­i­da­tion, the chill­ing effect of being sur­round­ed by, or per­ceiv­ing one­self to be sur­round­ed by, peo­ple who think your belief sys­tem is ridicu­lous. There is also the fact that col­lege is famous­ly the place where a lot of young peo­ple break free from the con­strain­ing Judeo-Chris­t­ian rule­book about sex and mar­riage. These real­i­ties togeth­er con­spire to dri­ve col­lege kids away from faith.”
  7. Audi­ences Prove that Experts Are Dead Wrong (Ted Gioia, Sub­stack): “The rebirth of long­form runs counter to every­thing media experts are ped­dling. They are all try­ing to game the algo­rithm. But they’re mak­ing a huge mis­take. They believe that long­form is doomed. They see that dig­i­tal plat­forms reward ultra-short videos on an end­less scroll. And they under­stand that this works because the inter­face is extreme­ly addic­tive. So short must defeat long in the dig­i­tal mar­ket­place. That’s obvi­ous to them. But all the evi­dence now proves that this isn’t hap­pen­ing.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. 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 485



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.

In this first email of 2025, I’d like to pass along an alum­nus’s obser­va­tion that 2025 is equal to 13 + 23 + 33 + 43 + 53 + 63 + 73 + 83 + 93 which is also equal to (1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9)2.

Even cool­er, he point­ed out that 2025 equals (20+25)(20/(2*5)) or just (20+25)2

Num­bers do fun things.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. How Intel­lec­tu­als Found God (Peter Savod­nik, The Free Press): “Instead of smirk­ing at reli­gion, some of our most impor­tant philoso­phers, nov­el­ists, and pub­lic intel­lec­tu­als are now reassess­ing their con­tempt for it. They are won­der­ing if they might have missed some­thing.”
  2. H5N1: Much More Than You Want­ed To Know (Scott Alexan­der, Astral Codex Ten): “I con­clude that the most plau­si­ble esti­mate for the chance of an H5N1 pan­dem­ic in the next year is 5%.”
    • Pret­ty much exact­ly how much I want­ed to know and explained well. Reas­sur­ing.
  3. How to like every­thing more (Sasha Chapin, Sub­stack): “In my expe­ri­ence, high-lev­el enjoy­ment, like a sport, is com­posed of many inter­lock­ing micro-skills that must be trained indi­vid­u­al­ly, but which rein­force each oth­er.”
  4. Amer­i­ca, the beau­ti­ful (Chris Arnade, Sub­stack): “We are an ide­al for a large por­tion of the world, and while that ide­al isn’t always a real­i­ty that we live up to, very few peo­ple come here, then turn around and go back, because with enough ded­i­ca­tion, you can cre­ate your own form of ful­fill­ment here. The US is a vast fed­er­a­tion of micro com­mu­ni­ties and micro cul­tures, all bound togeth­er by the belief, how­ev­er ten­ta­tive and neb­u­lous, in the Amer­i­can Dream.”
    • A fre­quent crit­ic of Amer­i­ca explains why he loves it nonethe­less.
  5. Africa Has Entered a New Era of War (Gabriele Stein­hauser, Andrew Bar­nett and Emma Brown, Wall Street Jour­nal): “Africa is now expe­ri­enc­ing more con­flicts than at any point since at least 1946, accord­ing to data col­lect­ed by Upp­sala Uni­ver­si­ty in Swe­den and ana­lyzed by Norway’s Peace Research Insti­tute Oslo. This year alone, experts at the two insti­tutes have iden­ti­fied 28 state-based con­flicts across 16 of the continent’s 54 coun­tries, more than in any oth­er region in the world and dou­ble the count just a decade and a half ago. That tal­ly doesn’t include con­flicts that don’t involve gov­ern­ment forces, for instance between dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties, and whose num­ber has also dou­bled since 2010.”
    • Vast­ly under­re­port­ed in Amer­i­ca. If you ask most Amer­i­cans what wars are rag­ing right now they’d be able to iden­ti­fy Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Hamas and not much else. But there’s a lot else. Wikipedi­a’s sum­ma­ry puts the cur­rent tal­ly at 19 full-blown wars, 20 sig­nif­i­cant con­flicts and 15 skir­mish­es.
  6. Can You Can­cel a Coun­try? (Russ Roberts, Sub­stack): “The fans of set­tler colo­nial­ism love hat­ing Israel because Israel is so young. You can’t return Amer­i­ca to 1619, say. In Amer­i­ca, there are over 325 mil­lion set­tlers and only 7 mil­lion Native Amer­i­cans. Decol­o­niz­ing the Unit­ed States is unimag­in­able. So is decol­o­niz­ing Israel, real­ly. But it’s more imag­in­able than the Unit­ed States. The defend­ers of Israel see Israel as the tip of the sword fight­ing against ter­ror­ism and Jihadism. For the those who use the set­tler colo­nial­ism lens, Hamas is the tip of the sword against set­tler colo­nial­ism.”
    • Roberts is an econ­o­mist, a fel­low at Stan­ford’s Hoover Insti­tu­tion, and the pres­i­dent of Shalem Col­lege in Jerusalem.
  7. A Cen­tu­ry of Human Detri­tus, Visu­al­ized (Den­nis Over­bye, New York Times): “ ‘The web­site enables many com­par­isons that, once seen, can no longer be unseen,’ he said. For instance, humans out­weigh wild ani­mals 10 to 1, a fact that sur­prised Dr. Ménard. (‘In my expe­ri­ence, most peo­ple expect the oppo­site.’) But we weigh only half as much as the live­stock herds we main­tain to eat. Per­haps more omi­nous­ly, humans use 100 times their own mass in plas­tic.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. 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 456



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.

This is vol­ume 456, a very sat­is­fy­ing num­ber: each dig­it increas­es and I like it.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Holy Hag­gling: Learn to Pray like Abra­ham (Justin Dille­hay, The Gospel Coali­tion): “We’re often ready to write off an oth­er­wise good church or orga­ni­za­tion because of a few bad apples with­in it. But Abra­ham is the exact opposite—he asks God to spare an entire city of bad apples for the sake of a few good apples with­in it.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  2. The Non­prof­it Indus­tri­al Com­plex and the Cor­rup­tion of the Amer­i­can City (Jonathan Ire­land, Amer­i­can Affairs): “Who­ev­er came up with the idea of call­ing these orga­ni­za­tions ‘non­prof­its’ was a mar­ket­ing genius on the lev­el of Steve Jobs. When some­one hears the word non­prof­it, they assume that such an orga­ni­za­tion is work­ing for the pub­lic good; that it serves the home­less, pro­tects the weak, exists for the ben­e­fit and the bet­ter­ment of soci­ety at large.… Con­se­quent­ly, non­prof­its receive a ben­e­fit of the doubt that would not be grant­ed to any oth­er form of pri­vate cor­po­ra­tion. Yet non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions are fre­quent­ly the exact oppo­site of what they appear to be.”
    • Stun­ning sto­ries in here. 100% worth your time.
  3. Why the Pan­dem­ic Prob­a­bly Start­ed in a Lab, in 5 Key Points (Ali­na Chan, New York Times): “Ulti­mate­ly, a nev­er-before-seen SARS-like virus with a new­ly intro­duced furin cleav­age site, match­ing the descrip­tion in the Wuhan institute’s Defuse pro­pos­al, caused an out­break in Wuhan less than two years after the pro­pos­al was draft­ed.…”
    • Unlocked. Empha­sis removed for read­abil­i­ty. The author is a mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gist at a joint MIT/Harvard insti­tute.
  4. Men Only Want One Thing (Nathan Bea­com, Com­ment): “Over a hun­dred years ago, William James, the father of Amer­i­can psy­chol­o­gy, argued that men need a ‘moral equiv­a­lent of war.’ To retain virtue, James thought, men need­ed the soul-shap­ing force of mil­i­tary life with­out war’s destruc­tive con­se­quences.”
    • This is a sol­id arti­cle, espe­cial­ly rec­om­mend­ed for guys. Ladies, you can eaves­drop if you like.
  5. Why No One Will Save Sudan (Cameron Hud­son, Per­sua­sion): “For those track­ing events in the coun­try, a seem­ing­ly end­less thread of head­lines and edi­to­ri­als lament this ‘for­got­ten con­flict.’ But this is the wrong fram­ing. The cri­sis in Sudan is nei­ther for­got­ten nor ignored. It is de-pri­or­i­tized. And that is worse.… Over the past sev­er­al weeks, a new Beng­hazi-like slaugh­ter has been tak­ing shape in the North Dar­fur city of El Fash­er. With near­ly one mil­lion inter­nal­ly dis­placed already tak­ing refuge there and more than one mil­lion more await­ing a com­ing onslaught by the Rapid Sup­port Forces mili­tia, which has promised to take the city and com­plete their takeover of all of Dar­fur, the specter of geno­cide once again hangs over the region. Egress out of the city has been cut off, as have aid flows into the city, lead­ing ana­lysts to refer to the city as a ‘kill box.’ ”
  6. Does Divorce Make You Hot­ter? (Kat Rosen­field, The Free Press): “…[cel­e­bra­to­ry sto­ries about divorce are] a prod­uct of a pop­u­lar ‘woman empow­ered by every­thing woman does’ par­a­digm, where all choic­es made by women are a prod­uct of lib­er­a­tion, hence fem­i­nist, hence good. There is no error or dis­ap­point­ment that can’t be yass-kweened away.… It’s only women who are seen as requir­ing this par­tic­u­lar brand of cheer­lead­ing, who are relent­less­ly encour­aged to reframe all their neg­a­tive expe­ri­ences as the best thing they ever did.”
    • Straight fire through­out. Rec­om­mend­ed.
  7. Speech Under the Shad­ow of Pun­ish­ment (Jean­nie Suk Gersen, New York­er): “…admin­is­tra­tors have become accus­tomed to using pun­ish­ment as a go-to solu­tion rather than as a last resort. The empha­sis on dis­ci­pli­nary action became par­tic­u­lar­ly pro­nounced in the twen­ty-tens, when uni­ver­si­ties were under urgent pres­sure to address cam­pus sex dis­crim­i­na­tion and harass­ment.… [fur­ther­more] some stu­dents may have been dis­ci­plined not mere­ly for par­tic­i­pat­ing in an encamp­ment but for vio­lat­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion, harass­ment, or bul­ly­ing poli­cies. The pres­sure to enforce those poli­cies can­not be over­stat­ed. In the twen­ty-tens, the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion inves­ti­gat­ed many schools, includ­ing Har­vard, for fail­ing to ade­quate­ly address alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al mis­con­duct; uni­ver­si­ties today are once again under fed­er­al scruti­ny, which threat­ens their fed­er­al fund­ing and tax-exempt sta­tus, for fail­ing to address alle­ga­tions of anti­semitism.”
    • The author is a law prof at Har­vard.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. 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 438

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.

This is vol­ume 438, which is 666 in base 8. 👀

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Don’t For­get About Niger­ian Chris­tians (Samuel Sey, per­son­al blog): “Over the last 15 years, More than 50,000 Niger­ian Chris­tians have been killed for their faith, 18,000 church­es have been destroyed, and mil­lions more have been dis­placed. In 2023, around 5,000 Chris­tians were killed world­wide because of their faith—90% of them were Nige­ri­ans.  Nige­ria is the dead­liest coun­try for Chris­tians. Every Chris­t­ian in north­ern (and some cen­tral states) Nige­ria is prob­a­bly griev­ing the loss of a spouse or a child (or both) from per­se­cu­tion.”
  2. As Kids, They Thought They Were Trans. They No Longer Do. (Pamela Paul, New York Times): “Stud­ies show that around eight in 10 cas­es of child­hood gen­der dys­pho­ria resolve them­selves by puber­ty and 30 per­cent of peo­ple on hor­mone ther­a­py dis­con­tin­ue its use with­in four years, though the effects, includ­ing infer­til­i­ty, are often irre­versible.… Trans activists often cite low regret rates for gen­der tran­si­tion, along with low fig­ures for detran­si­tion. But those stud­ies, which often rely on self-report­ed cas­es to gen­der clin­ics, like­ly under­state the actu­al num­bers. None of the sev­en detran­si­tion­ers I inter­viewed, for instance, even con­sid­ered report­ing back to the gen­der clin­ics that pre­scribed them med­ica­tion they now con­sid­er to have been a mis­take. Nor did they know any oth­er detran­si­tion­ers who had done so.”
    • Unlocked. The main point is hor­ri­fy­ing and one I’ve shared many times in this chan­nel before. A sec­ondary point which is quite inter­est­ing is how intent the author is on mak­ing this the fault of her polit­i­cal oppo­nents. Her audi­ence needs to know that her tribe is still trust­wor­thy despite mas­sive mis­takes on this issue. Par­ti­san­ship poi­sons the things it touch­es.
  3. Birth rates are falling in the Nordics. Are fam­i­ly-friend­ly poli­cies no longer enough? (Hen­ry Mance, Finan­cial Times): “…child­less­ness is also ris­ing among those who are in a rela­tion­ship. Many cou­ples are wait­ing too long. ‘Peo­ple call me a lot in Fin­land. [They say] ‘I’m 42, my part­ner has had three mis­car­riages and she says she will not con­tin­ue. And I under­stand I will nev­er be a father. I’m the only child of my par­ents, and there’s nobody left, and help me.’ Rotkirch is wary of an empha­sis on fer­til­i­ty treat­ments. Women’s fer­til­i­ty drops in their late thir­ties and for­ties: soci­ety has to adapt. ‘If you do every­thing that typ­i­cal min­is­ters of finance tell you to do, you are 45 — you have a house and a doc­tor­ate and it’s too late. The ide­alised life course is real­ly at odds with female repro­duc­tive biol­o­gy.’”
  4. Some Israel/Hamas arti­cles:
    • The UN’s Ter­ror­ism Teach­ers (Hil­lel C. Neuer, The Free Press): “UN Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al António Guter­res said he was ‘hor­ri­fied’ to dis­cov­er that UNRWA [Unit­ed Nations Relief and Works Agency for Pales­tine Refugees in the Near East] employ­ees par­tic­i­pat­ed in the inva­sion and mas­sacre of Octo­ber 7.… UNRWA employ­ees have held Israeli hostages cap­tive in their homes, using UNRWA facil­i­ties to move them from place to place.… It was only after Israel’s gov­ern­ment pro­vid­ed evi­dence that 12 of the agency’s employ­ees were actu­al­ly involved in the Octo­ber 7 mas­sacre that UNRWA and the Biden admin­is­tra­tion took some action.”
      • Wowsers.
    • How Pales­tine Hijacked the U.S. Civ­il Rights Move­ment (Gil Troy, Tablet Mag­a­zine): “The dif­fer­ences between the Pales­tin­ian nation­al move­ment and the Amer­i­can civ­il rights move­ment are obvi­ous and fun­da­men­tal. Pales­tini­ans have played no role in Amer­i­can his­to­ry or the his­to­ry of slav­ery. Pales­tini­ans played no role in the civ­il rights strug­gle. The Pales­tin­ian-Israeli clash, which is occur­ring a world away from Amer­i­ca, is nation­al not racial. Most Israelis are dark-skinned, while some Pales­tini­ans are light-skinned. Non­vi­o­lence fueled the civ­il rights strug­gle, while the Pales­tin­ian move­ment keeps per­fect­ing new forms of polit­i­cal vio­lence and ter­ror-porn, from hijack­ing to sui­cide bomb­ing.”
  5. The Mean­ing­less Inco­her­ence Of “LGBTQ+” (Andrew Sul­li­van, Sub­stack): “The trou­ble is that words have mean­ings, and the term ‘LGBTQ+’ — like the term ‘His­pan­ic’ or ‘Lati­no’ — is not like NATO. It doesn’t refer to a sin­gle, iden­ti­fi­able group, expe­ri­ence, or com­mu­ni­ty. It refers to mul­ti­ple ones. And each is dis­tinct, dis­crete and often very dif­fer­ent. When you exam­ine its com­po­nent parts, you real­ize that the Ls and Gs and Bs and Ts, let alone the Is and the +s, dif­fer dra­mat­i­cal­ly in basic things like psy­chol­o­gy, lifestyle, income, geog­ra­phy, edu­ca­tion, and pol­i­tics.… We’re con­stant­ly told, of course, that all gays and les­bians have col­lec­tive­ly co-opt­ed and des­tig­ma­tized the q‑word. But polling shows that only 3 — 4 per­cent of the entire LGBTQ+ world call them­selves ‘queer’. So the MSM rou­tine­ly uses a word for the entire ‘LGBTQ+’ world that 96 per­cent of this com­mu­ni­ty rejects. It’s up there with ‘Lat­inx’ as an accu­rate descrip­tor.”
    • Sul­li­van is one of the most influ­en­tial gay pub­lic intel­lec­tu­als. There are a lot of things he and I dis­agree about, but I near­ly always find his per­spec­tives illu­mi­nat­ing.
  6. Two arti­cles about a weird­ly intense con­tro­ver­sy about Alis­tair Begg:
    • Throw-Away Cul­ture is the Spir­it of the Sex­u­al Rev­o­lu­tion, Too. (Samuel D. James, Sub­stack): “A per­son who inter­prets their sex­u­al desires to be some sort of immov­able iden­ti­ty that must be ver­i­fied and actu­al­ized is in a very lam­en­ta­ble state. But what about the per­son who inter­prets their quick tem­per, their sus­pi­cion of oth­er Chris­tians, and their desire to build a plat­form atop the ruins of oth­ers’, as like­wise an immov­able iden­ti­ty— ‘I just know what time it is’? Theirs is hard­ly bet­ter. The Chris­t­ian life doesn’t work like that.”
    • Alis­tair Begg Meets the Polit­i­cal­ly Cor­rect (Rus­sell Moore, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Might Begg be draw­ing the line in the wrong place—too much in the direc­tion of show­ing grace? Sure. Might I be draw­ing it in the wrong place—too much in the direc­tion of main­tain­ing truth? Again, yes. He risks con­fus­ing peo­ple. I risk hurt­ing peo­ple. That’s why I think we both attempt to sort these out with fear and trem­bling and a will­ing­ness to be cor­rect­ed.”
  7. Reli­gious peo­ple coped bet­ter with Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, research sug­gests (Fred Lewsey, Cam­bridge Research News): “Where men­tal health declined, it was around 60% worse on aver­age for the non-reli­gious com­pared to peo­ple of faith with typ­i­cal lev­els of ‘reli­gios­i­ty’. Inter­est­ing­ly, the pos­i­tive effects of reli­gion were not found in areas with strictest lock­downs, sug­gest­ing access to places of wor­ship might be even more impor­tant in a US con­text. The study also found sig­nif­i­cant uptake of online reli­gious ser­vices, and a 40% low­er asso­ci­a­tion between Covid-19 and men­tal health for those who used them.”
    • How hor­ri­ble the pan­dem­ic must have been for those with­out faith. I hat­ed it and I’m a min­is­ter!

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. 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 408

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.

This is vol­ume 408, the 8th Pell Num­ber, a sequence use­ful in approx­i­mat­ing the square root of 2.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Com­pe­ti­tion for Believ­ers in Africa Is Trans­form­ing Chris­tian­i­ty and Islam (Fran­cis X. Roc­ca, Nicholas Bariyo & Gben­ga Aking­bule, Wall Street Jour­nal): “On a recent Sun­day morn­ing in Lagos, Nigeria’s biggest city, mem­bers of the faith­ful clutched their hymn books and chant­ed God’s prais­es as they danced to the beat of tam­bourines. A preach­er led the con­gre­ga­tion in pray­ing for the health of their chil­dren and suc­cess at work. The ser­vice resem­bled Pen­te­costal Chris­tian­i­ty, a move­ment that orig­i­nat­ed in the U.S. and has swept Africa in the last few decades. But the par­tic­i­pants weren’t Chris­tians. They were Mus­lims, prac­tic­ing an ecsta­t­ic style of wor­ship that has devel­oped in response to the chal­lenge posed by Pen­te­costal­ism. Across sub-Saha­ran Africa, reli­gion today is in fer­ment as dif­fer­ent ver­sions of Chris­tian­i­ty and Islam vie for believers—a con­test that is trans­form­ing both faiths and dis­rupt­ing long-estab­lished terms of coex­is­tence.”
    • High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. I believe I have unlocked the pay­wall on this one.
  2. Cal­i­for­nia restau­rant used fake priest to get work­ers to con­fess “sins,” feds say (Aimee Pic­chi, CBS News): “In court doc­u­ments, a serv­er at the restau­rant, Maria Par­ra, tes­ti­fied that she found her con­ver­sa­tion with the alleged priest ‘unlike nor­mal con­fes­sions,’ where she would talk about what she want­ed to con­fess, accord­ing to a court doc­u­ment reviewed by CBS Mon­ey­Watch. Instead, the priest told her that he would ask ques­tions ‘to get the sins out of me.’ ”
  3. Slav­ery in the Bible | Dr. Esau Mccaul­ley (Jude 3 Project, YouTube): sev­en min­utes.
  4. Sports Writ­ers Out, Zoomer Tik­Tok­ers In (Ethan Strauss, Sub­stack): “There’s a real malev­o­lent genius to con­coct­ing a cuck­ish char­ac­ter who pals around with the high-sta­tus Cavin­ders, but only as the butt of their jokes. He’s lit­er­al­ly mod­el­ing los­ing mon­ey towards the Betr cof­fers, while hang­ing out with mod­els. Some­one actu­al­ly came up with a means for habit­u­at­ing young men into an attrac­tive form of fail­ing as part of an ‘organic’-looking humil­i­a­tion fan­ta­sy.”
  5. Data Fal­si­fi­ca­da (Part 1): “Clus­ter­fake” (Uri Simon­sohn, Leif Nel­son & Joe Sim­mons, Data Cola­da): “That’s right: Two dif­fer­ent peo­ple inde­pen­dent­ly faked data for two dif­fer­ent stud­ies in a paper about dis­hon­esty.”
    • There was empha­sis in orig­i­nal which I removed for read­abil­i­ty.
  6. U.S.-Funded Sci­en­tist Among Three Chi­nese Researchers Who Fell Ill Amid Ear­ly Covid-19 Out­break (Michael R. Gor­don, Wall Street Jour­nal): “A promi­nent sci­en­tist who worked on coro­n­avirus projects fund­ed by the U.S. gov­ern­ment is one of three Chi­nese researchers who became sick with an unspec­i­fied ill­ness dur­ing the ini­tial out­break of Covid-19, accord­ing to cur­rent and for­mer U.S. offi­cials.”
    • A less san­i­tized pre­sen­ta­tion of the same facts: First Peo­ple Sick­ened By COVID-19 Were Chi­nese Sci­en­tists At Wuhan Insti­tute Of Virol­o­gy, Say US Gov­ern­ment Sources (Michael Shel­len­berg­er, Matt Taib­bi & Alex Gutentag, Sub­stack): “Sources with­in the US gov­ern­ment say that three of the ear­li­est peo­ple to become infect­ed with SARS-CoV­‑2 were Ben Hu, Yu Ping, and Yan Zhu. All were mem­bers of the Wuhan lab sus­pect­ed to have leaked the pan­dem­ic virus. As such, not only do we know there were WIV sci­en­tists who had devel­oped COVID-19-like ill­ness­es in Novem­ber 2019, but also that they were work­ing with the clos­est rel­a­tives of SARS-CoV­‑2, and insert­ing gain-of-func­tion fea­tures unique to it.”
  7. REVIEW EXCLUSIVE—Catch Him if You Can: Meet Will Cur­ry (Josi­ah Jon­er, Stan­ford Review): “Will Curry’s sto­ry is long and complex—but most of all, enthralling. He is a liv­ing sto­ry of some­one who lived the adven­tur­ous life that so many desire yet nev­er actu­al­ly live, includ­ing many at Stan­ford trapped in a cul­ture of monot­o­ny. Is all of the sto­ry he told me true? Maybe, or maybe not. Will is, after all, a com­pet­i­tive pok­er play­er who has pulled off bluffs in the past. But regard­less, Will’s sto­ry is far from over. In fact, I think it’s real­ly only begun.”

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The New Nation­al Amer­i­can Elite (Michael Lind, Tablet Mag­a­zine): “…from the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion until the late 20th cen­tu­ry, the Amer­i­can elite was divid­ed among region­al oli­garchies. It is only in the last gen­er­a­tion that these region­al patri­ci­ates have been absorbed into a sin­gle, increas­ing­ly homo­ge­neous nation­al oli­garchy, with the same accent, man­ners, val­ues, and edu­ca­tion­al back­grounds from Boston to Austin and San Fran­cis­co to New York and Atlanta. This is a tru­ly epochal devel­op­ment.” Lind is a pro­fes­sor at UT Austin in the school of pub­lic affairs. From vol­ume 286.

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). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. 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 400

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.

Vol­ume 400… it’s big and round. It’s also a square num­ber. Much to like about 400.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Treat Stu­dents Like Future Par­ents, Not Just Future Employ­ees (Mary Frances Myler, The Pub­lic Dis­course): “Even though stu­dents may not always think of them­selves as such, it is ful­ly rea­son­able for uni­ver­si­ties to treat them as future spous­es and par­ents. Indeed, it is odd that uni­ver­si­ties instill the knowl­edge and habits that empow­er a stu­dent to climb the cor­po­rate lad­der after grad­u­a­tion but ignore the virtues prop­er to famil­ial voca­tions.… The dif­fi­cul­ty of bal­anc­ing the pur­suit of a career and hav­ing a fam­i­ly is noth­ing new; it just isn’t talked about at uni­ver­si­ties. Start­ing the con­ver­sa­tion would help the stu­dents who already know that they desire mar­riage and a fam­i­ly, and it would open a new hori­zon to those who haven’t con­sid­ered these pos­si­bil­i­ties for their future.”
  2. Demons be gone: meet­ing America’s new exor­cists (Elle Hardy, The Guardian): “There are only three things you need to get Satan out of your life: a buck­et, a pen and Broth­er Mike’s two-page ques­tion­naire. Unlike those megachurch preach­ers and their plas­tic smiles, Broth­er Mike Smith doesn’t make out­landish claims – not in his mind, at least. He’s not ped­dling ‘crap’, he says. As the leader of a mod­est min­istry he calls Hard­core Chris­tian­i­ty in down­town Phoenix, Ari­zona, he only claims that he can set you free from demons 100% of the time – if you fol­low his instruc­tions to the let­ter.”
    • This arti­cle is a wild ride. Def­i­nite­ly a jaw-drop­ping moment with Don and Lily at the end.
  3. They’re the Hap­pi­est Peo­ple in Amer­i­ca. We Called Them to Ask Why. (Aaron Zit­ner, Wall Street Journal):“America’s hap­pi­est peo­ple have a few traits in com­mon: They val­ue com­mu­ni­ty and close per­son­al rela­tion­ships. They tend to believe in God. And they gen­er­al­ly are old­er, often in their retire­ment years.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  4. Great News for Female Aca­d­e­mics! (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “In an exten­sive sur­vey, meta-analy­sis, and new research, Ceci, Kahn and Williams show that the sit­u­a­tion for women in acad­e­mia is in many domains good to great. For exam­ple, in hir­ing for tenure the evi­dence is strong that women are advan­taged. More­over, women are advan­taged espe­cial­ly in fields where they have rel­a­tive­ly low rep­re­sen­ta­tion (GEMP: geo­sciences, engi­neer­ing, eco­nom­ics, mathematics/computer sci­ence, and phys­i­cal sci­ence).… It should be not­ed that the Ceci, Kahn and Williams paper is an adver­sar­i­al col­lab­o­ra­tion”
  5. After Fast­ing Deaths, Kenyan Police Find Dozens Buried on Preacher’s Prop­er­ty (Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “In the for­est com­pound owned by the founder of Good News Inter­na­tion­al Church, Kenyan police have dis­cov­ered dozens of starv­ing peo­ple and 65 bod­ies buried in unmarked graves. They arrest­ed two peo­ple who weren’t starv­ing: the church’s leader, Paul Macken­zie, and Mackenzie’s min­istry part­ner, pas­tor Zablon Wa Yesu.… The [Nation­al Coun­cil of Church­es] called on cit­i­zens to avoid church­es that do not have a prop­er gov­er­nance struc­ture, refuse to meet in the open, or rely on a pas­tor to pray for mem­bers instead of being encour­aged to pray to God them­selves.”
    • The dif­fer­ence between a quirky church and a flat-out tox­ic church is not so sub­tle as some peo­ple sup­pose.
  6. Elite Law Schools Boy­cotted the U.S. News Rank­ings. Now, They May Be Pay­ing a Price. (Anemona Har­to­col­lis, New York TImes): “Last week, U.S. News pre­viewed its first rank­ings since the boy­cott — for the top dozen or so law and med­ical schools only — and now, it seems, many of these same schools care quite a lot about their por­tray­al in the publication’s peck­ing order.… ‘The lev­el of inter­est in our rank­ings, includ­ing from those schools that decline to par­tic­i­pate in our sur­vey, has been beyond any­thing we have expe­ri­enced in the past,’ U.S. News wrote on its web­site, explain­ing why it was delay­ing the release.”
  7. Lean Into Neg­a­tive Emo­tions. It’s the Healthy Thing to Do (Melin­da Wen­ner Moy­er, NYT): “Avoid­ing or sup­press­ing feel­ings can be coun­ter­pro­duc­tive, too. In a small clin­i­cal tri­al, researchers asked peo­ple to put one of their hands into an ice water bath and to either accept their feel­ings of pain or to sup­press them. Those who tried to sup­press their feel­ings report­ed more pain and couldn’t endure the ice water for as long as those who accept­ed their dis­com­fort … If we aren’t focus­ing our time and ener­gy on cri­tiquing our feel­ings, we have more time and ener­gy to bet­ter our lives and change the world.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.

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 How To Get Out Of The Friend Zone (Aaron Renn, The Mas­culin­ist): “Friend­ships between men and women have the char­ac­ter­is­tic that they often evolve into asym­me­try of intent, which is exploita­tive if it per­sists…. remem­ber, just as no woman is under any oblig­a­tion to go out on a date with a man such as you, you are under no oblig­a­tion to be a friend to women.” Every once in a while I like to toss out some­thing sure to rile peo­ple up, just to make sure you’re all pay­ing atten­tion. From vol­ume 277. 

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). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. 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 378

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.

This is vol­ume 378, which is appar­ent­ly the max­i­mum num­ber of objects you can slice a cube into using 13 cuts.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Jesus Christ, Stream­ing Star (Ruth Gra­ham, New York Times): “Con­ceived by a lit­tle-known cre­ator, fea­tur­ing no major stars and fund­ed pri­mar­i­ly, at first, through small con­tri­bu­tions with­out the sup­port of a Hol­ly­wood stu­dio, [The Cho­sen] began on an obscure pro­pri­etary app and is now giv­en away for free. Its I.P. is 2,000 years old. But despite the long odds, the faith-based dra­ma series has become a bona fide phe­nom­e­non in many parts of Chris­t­ian cul­ture, attract­ing a fer­vent ecu­meni­cal fan­dom while remain­ing almost invis­i­ble to oth­ers.”
  2. How Col­leges and Sports-Bet­ting Com­pa­nies ‘Cae­sarized’ Cam­pus Life (Anna Betts, Andrew Lit­tle, Eliz­a­beth Sander, Alexan­dra Tremayne-Pen­gel­ly & Walt Bog­danich, New York Times): “The deals came togeth­er large­ly in pri­vate, The Times found, with min­i­mal dis­cus­sion on cam­pus about their poten­tial impact on stu­dents, ath­letes and the integri­ty of col­lege sports.”
    • I love that the lead author is named Betts.
  3. AI Con­quers Diplo­ma­cy (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Keep in mind that since the game is zero-sum to do well the AI must con­vince humans to do what is NOT in their inter­est. We real­ly do need to invest more in the align­ment prob­lem.”
  4. Respons­es to the pro­posed “Respect for Mar­riage Act”
    • No respect for reli­gious free­dom in the “Respect for Mar­riage Act” (Kris­ten Wag­goner, World): “[This leg­is­la­tion] fuels hos­til­i­ty towards Amer­i­cans who hold beliefs about mar­riage root­ed in hon­or­able or philo­soph­i­cal premises.It impos­es a new oblig­a­tion to rec­og­nize same-sex rela­tion­ships on reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions that work close­ly with gov­ern­ment. It cre­ates new tools for pro­gres­sive activists and the Depart­ment of Jus­tice to enforce that oblig­a­tion. It gives the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice a new argu­ment for tak­ing tax-exempt sta­tus away from reli­gious non-prof­its. It makes reli­gious free­dom and free speech cas­es hard­er to win by ele­vat­ing the fed­er­al government’s inter­est in same-sex mar­riage.”
    • Why I Changed My Mind About Law and Mar­riage, Again (David French, The Dis­patch): “I agree with Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia pro­fes­sor Dou­glas Lay­cock. ‘The act con­tains “impor­tant pro­tec­tions” for reli­gious lib­er­ty, includ­ing “an explic­it state­ment by Con­gress that “diverse beliefs about the role of gen­der in marriage”—including the belief that mar­riage is between a man and woman rather than between per­sons of the same sex—“are held by rea­son­able and sin­cere peo­ple based on decent and hon­or­able philo­soph­i­cal premis­es” and that such beliefs “are due prop­er respect.“ ‘ Oth­er pro­vi­sions pro­vide pro­tec­tions for the tax exemp­tions for reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions, hold that reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions don’t have to par­tic­i­pate in the sol­em­niza­tion of same-sex mar­riages, and specif­i­cal­ly reject the approach of the Equal­i­ty Act, which sought to under­mine the Reli­gious Free­dom Restora­tion Act.”
    • Respect For Mar­riage Act: An Impru­dent Com­pro­mise (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “[Law­mak­ers] have to make their polit­i­cal deci­sions rec­og­niz­ing the social and cul­tur­al real­i­ties of con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­ca, a coun­try where a major­i­ty of young peo­ple prize sex­u­al auton­o­my more than reli­gious lib­er­ty, and who love gay more than God. That’s not like­ly to get any bet­ter, and is in fact like­ly to get far worse. What then? I don’t iden­ti­fy with David French’s eager­ness to com­pro­mise, and I would draw the lines of com­pro­mise in dif­fer­ent places … but French seems to under­stand the shaky ground on which Chris­t­ian trads stand bet­ter than a lot of peo­ple who are right about mar­riage do.” Dreher is respond­ing to a dif­fer­ent arti­cle by French than the one below, which was print­ed a day lat­er.
    • An Open Let­ter to Those Who Think I’ve Lost My Chris­t­ian Faith (David French, The Dis­patch): “…read the text of the bill. Does that lan­guage tru­ly give the IRS a ‘new argu­ment for tax­ing tax-exempt sta­tus away’? And does the act cre­ate ‘new tools for pro­gres­sive activists and the Depart­ment of Jus­tice’ to enforce an oblig­a­tion to rec­og­nize same-sex mar­riages on ‘reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions that work close­ly with gov­ern­ment’? [It does not.]”
  5. Two arti­cles describ­ing how out-of-con­trol euthana­sia is get­ting in some coun­tries:
    • Sched­uled to Die: The Rise of Canada’s Assist­ed Sui­cide Pro­gram (Rupa Sub­ra­manya, Bari Weis­s’s Sub­stack): “Next March, the gov­ern­ment is sched­uled to expand the pool of eli­gi­ble sui­cide-seek­ers to include the men­tal­ly ill and ‘mature minors.’ Accord­ing to Canada’s Depart­ment of Jus­tice, par­ents are gen­er­al­ly ‘enti­tled to make treat­ment deci­sions on their children’s behalf. The mature minor doc­trine, how­ev­er, allows chil­dren deemed suf­fi­cient­ly mature to make their own treat­ment deci­sions.…’ Dr. Dawn Davies, a pal­lia­tive care physi­cian who sup­port­ed MAiD when it was first con­ceived, said she had ‘tons of wor­ries’ about where this might lead. She could imag­ine kids with per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­ders or oth­er men­tal health issues say­ing they want­ed to die. ‘Some of them will mean it, some of them won’t,’ she said. ‘And we won’t nec­es­sar­i­ly be able to dis­cern who is who.’ ”
    • “Safe­guards” Can­not Make Euthana­sia Safe (Robert Clarke, First Things): “There is a clear slip­pery slope from approv­ing euthana­sia in rare ter­mi­nal cas­es to approv­ing just about any men­tal health diag­noses. Twen­ty-three-year-old Shan­ti de Corte was recent­ly euth­a­nized due to the men­tal trau­ma she suf­fered from the 2016 Brus­sels air­port ter­ror­ist attack, after which she ‘nev­er felt safe.’ Her death sig­nals our society’s fail­ure to sup­port the vul­ner­a­ble and wound­ed. We have aban­doned authen­tic care and com­pas­sion in favor of death.”
  6. Mega­lopo­lis: how coastal west Africa will shape the com­ing cen­tu­ry (Howard W French, The Guardian): “By 2100, the Lagos-Abid­jan stretch is pro­ject­ed to be the largest zone of con­tin­u­ous, dense habi­ta­tion on earth, with some­thing in the order of half a bil­lion peo­ple [all in one giant mega­lopo­lis].”

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 Are the Wages of Sin Real­ly Death?: Moral and Epi­demi­o­log­ic Obser­va­tions (David Lyle Jef­frey and Jeff Levin, Chris­t­ian Scholar’s Review): “So, are the wages of sin real­ly death? As far as pop­u­la­tion-health research sug­gests, the answer is a guard­ed yes.” The authors are pro­fes­sors at Bay­lor, one of epi­demi­ol­o­gy and the oth­er of lit­er­a­ture. From vol­ume 250. I know I shared it recent­ly. It’s worth shar­ing again.

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). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. 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 367

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.

This is the 367th install­ment, notable because 367 is a prime num­ber and also the largest num­ber whose square is com­posed of strict­ly increas­ing dig­its: 3672 = 134689.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Social­ism, Nation­al­ism, and Tolkien (Alec Dent, The Dis­patch): “In our time of unprece­dent­ed wealth and safe­ty, the once-defeat­ed foe of illib­er­al­ism has made a reap­pearence.… due large­ly to a lack of appre­ci­a­tion for how good we have things right now, a lack of under­stand­ing of how we got here, and a lack of under­stand­ing of how a rad­i­cal over­haul of soci­ety would alter the world as we know it.”
  2. The Despo­tism of Isa­ias Afew­er­ki (Alex de Waal, The Baf­fler): “…fight­ers protest­ed the deci­sion that they should con­tin­ue to serve with­out pay for two more years. A group of dis­abled vet­er­ans marched—there’s no verb that con­veys the deter­mined col­lec­tive motion of their wheel­chairs, arti­fi­cial limbs, and sticks—towards the cap­i­tal to demand their pen­sions. They were shot at with live ammu­ni­tion. Some were killed, oth­ers were arrest­ed and dis­ap­peared.”
    • I’d heard before that Eritrea was worse than North Korea in some ways, but this arti­cle real­ly drove it home. Wow.
  3. Why Peo­ple Are Los­ing Faith In Pub­lic Insti­tu­tions (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “…if you relied on the Post to tell you about the world you actu­al­ly live in, it would not have occurred to you that there is any oth­er side to the library sto­ry than the vir­tu­ous pink-haired queer librar­i­an and her allies ver­sus the mob of big­ots. If you are on the Left, isn’t it in your inter­est to under­stand why peo­ple are so upset, even if you don’t agree with them? Isn’t it in your inter­est to at least think about why the peo­ple of a town would rather defund their library rather than see it used in this way?”
    • This one is wild and Dreher, as they say, has the receipts.
  4. Can an Athe­ist Be a Moral Real­ist? (J. Budziszews­ki, per­son­al blog): “…I can’t see how you can be an athe­ist and a moral real­ist at the same time. It is like eat­ing a cake and still hav­ing it. If nat­u­ral­ism is true, then aren’t we just meat bags full of water with no dig­ni­ty? My friend says I am car­i­ca­tur­ing his posi­tion. Am I miss­ing some­thing, or is he?”
    • This is well argued. The author is a pro­fes­sor of gov­ern­ment and phi­los­o­phy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas.
  5. Trump should fill Chris­tians with rage. How come he doesn’t? (Michael Ger­son, Wash­ing­ton Post): “I know that peo­ple inspired by [Jesus] have done great things in the past — build­ing hos­pi­tals for the poor, improv­ing the rights of women and chil­dren, mil­i­tat­ing against slav­ery, car­ing for the men­tal­ly dis­abled, work­ing for a mer­ci­ful wel­fare state, fight­ing prej­u­dice, improv­ing glob­al health. But pre­cise­ly because these things have hap­pened, it is dif­fi­cult for me to com­pre­hend why so many Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cals have reject­ed the splen­dor and romance of their call­ing and set­tled for the cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal resent­ments of the hard right.”
    • Long and a bit ram­bly, nonethe­less inter­est­ing.
  6. Pub­lish­ing needs JK Rowl­ing to be a mon­ster (Vic­to­ria Smith, The Crit­ic Mag­a­zine): “The trou­ble with JK Rowl­ing is that she has done noth­ing wrong. Back in 2020, she wrote a care­ful­ly word­ed, com­pas­sion­ate piece about sex and gen­der.… This is a sit­u­a­tion in which the pun­ish­ment has cre­at­ed the crime and it’s one that is need­ed by mem­bers of the pub­lish­ing indus­try who have spent years embrac­ing the argu­ments of the most extreme trans activists while ignor­ing those of fem­i­nists. They need Rowl­ing to be a mon­ster. Oth­er­wise they might have to respond, not just to what Rowl­ing has writ­ten, but to the real­i­ties of the move­ment to which they have pledged alle­giance.”
  7. Died: Queen Eliz­a­beth II, British Monarch Who Put Her Trust in God (Dud­ley Delffs, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The Queen’s love of the Bible and its gospel mes­sage led to her par­tic­i­pa­tion in the pub­li­ca­tion of a spe­cial book to com­mem­o­rate her 90th birth­day. Titled The Ser­vant Queen and the King She Serves.… Her Majesty per­son­al­ly wrote the fore­word, thank­ing read­ers for their prayers and good wish­es. ‘I have been—and remain—very grate­ful to … God for His stead­fast love. I have indeed seen His faith­ful­ness,’ she wrote. The book was dis­trib­uted to thou­sands of church­es across the UK and through­out many Com­mon­wealth coun­tries pri­or to the Queen’s birth­day in 2016. The book proved so pop­u­lar that the Bible Soci­ety had to print anoth­er 150,000 copies to meet demand.”

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 Big Data+Small Bias « Small Data+Zero Bias (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Sup­pose you want to esti­mate who will win the 2016 US Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. You ask 2.3 mil­lion poten­tial vot­ers whether they are like­ly to vote for Trump or not. The sam­ple is in all ways demo­graph­i­cal­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the US vot­ing pop­u­la­tion but poten­tial Trump vot­ers are a tiny bit less like­ly to answer the ques­tion, just .001 less like­ly to answer (note they don’t lie, they just don’t answer).” I was stunned. From vol­ume 234.

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). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. 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.