Tag: alcohol

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 518

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. I’m 30. The Sex­u­al Rev­o­lu­tion Shack­led My Gen­er­a­tion. (Louise Per­ry, The Free Press): “We need to re-erect the social guard rails that have been torn down. To do that, we have to start by stat­ing the obvi­ous: Sex must be tak­en seri­ous­ly. Men and women are dif­fer­ent. Some desires are bad. Con­sent is not enough. Vio­lence is not love. Love­less sex is not empow­er­ing. Peo­ple are not prod­ucts. Mar­riage is good.”
    • FYI: the cov­er image is risque.
  2. Here’s What Hap­pened When I Made My Col­lege Stu­dents Put Away Their Phones (Ezekiel J. Emanuel, New York Times): “To help sell this pol­i­cy, I pre­sent­ed in the first lec­ture of the course a study show­ing that stu­dents who were required to take class notes by hand retained sig­nif­i­cant­ly more infor­ma­tion than stu­dents who used com­put­ers. The rea­son is that with com­put­ers, stu­dents can type as fast as I speak and strive for ver­ba­tim tran­scripts, but there is almost no men­tal pro­cess­ing of the class’s con­tent. Con­verse­ly, vir­tu­al­ly no one can hand write 125 words per minute for 90 min­utes. Thus, hand­writ­ten notes require simul­ta­ne­ous men­tal pro­cess­ing to deter­mine the impor­tant points that need record­ing. This pro­cess­ing encodes the mate­r­i­al in the brain dif­fer­ent­ly and facil­i­tates longer-term reten­tion. The data on the dis­tract­ing effect of mobile phones — even when they are face down and turned off — are strong.”
    • The author is a med school prof at Penn.
  3. Is mod­er­ate drink­ing actu­al­ly healthy? Sci­en­tists say the idea is out­dat­ed. (Stan­ford News): “We have bought into a sto­ry­line about alco­hol that, when you real­ly look at the facts, is not there,” Stafford said. “There is a mythol­o­gy about alco­hol hav­ing pos­i­tive ben­e­fits as well as alco­hol being neu­tral for human health.”
  4. Trump’s Tac­tics Mean Many Inter­na­tion­al Stu­dents Won’t Make It to Cam­pus (Anemona Har­to­col­lis, New York Times): “In Chi­na and India, there have been few visa appoint­ments avail­able for stu­dents in recent months, and some­times none at all, accord­ing to the Asso­ci­a­tion of Inter­na­tion­al Edu­ca­tors, also known as NAFSA, a pro­fes­sion­al orga­ni­za­tion. If visa prob­lems per­sist, new inter­na­tion­al stu­dent enroll­ment in Amer­i­can col­leges could drop by 30 to 40 per­cent over­all this fall, a loss of 150,000 stu­dents, accord­ing to the group’s analy­sis.”
  5. What Hap­pens When an Entire Sci­en­tif­ic Field Changes Its Mind (Charles Mann, Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can): “[There is] a pop­u­lar notion of sci­en­tif­ic progress as a series of upheavals in which mav­er­icks throw out the entrenched views of the past.… But that’s not how sci­ence works. Or, more pre­cise­ly, it’s not how sci­ence works except in two spe­cif­ic, rel­a­tive­ly unusu­al cir­cum­stances. The first is when research dis­ci­plines are young, thin­ly pop­u­lat­ed and just devel­op­ing instru­ments of suf­fi­cient pow­er to test their ini­tial beliefs, as was the case with the Michel­son-Mor­ley exper­i­ment and Pasteur’s fer­men­ta­tion. The sec­ond, pos­si­bly more con­se­quen­tial sit­u­a­tion is when sci­en­tif­ic find­ings lead to so much pub­lic inter­est that they become of con­cern to polit­i­cal author­i­ties.”
  6. A two-parter about Chi­na from a polit­i­cal sci­en­tist at Johns Hop­kins:
    • The Case for China’s Strength (Yascha Mounk, Sub­stack): “In the Unit­ed States, the Col­lege Board has recent­ly announced that it will dras­ti­cal­ly reduce the length of read­ing pas­sages; rather than giv­ing stu­dents who are tak­ing the SATs texts that are about 600 words in length, and ask­ing them a few ques­tions about each, they will hence­forth be giv­en texts that are about 150 words in length, and only have to answer a sin­gle ques­tion about each. This means that Chi­nese high school stu­dents tak­ing their Eng­lish exam now like­ly face a more chal­leng­ing test in a for­eign lan­guage than Amer­i­cans tak­ing the SAT do in their native tongue. Don’t believe me? Take a look at this page from last year’s exam.”
    • The Cracks in China’s Rise (Yascha Mounk, Sub­stack): “The country’s high mod­ernist eth­ic allowed it to build tens of thou­sands of miles of high-speed rail­way tracks in the course of a cou­ple of decades; but it is also the rea­son why one year’s favored indus­tri­al sec­tors reli­ably seem to turn into next year’s sources of waste and over­pro­duc­tion. The country’s extent of cen­tral­iza­tion cre­ates a giant mar­ket increas­ing­ly unit­ed by shared norms and a com­mon lan­guage; but the extent to which local cul­tures and lan­guages are being flat­tened also con­tributes to a grow­ing sense of alien­ation. None of this should be sur­pris­ing. When coun­tries are in their first spurt of growth, the advan­tages of the mod­el are often evi­dent, and its short­com­ings invis­i­ble. It is when they mature, and the prob­lems they need to solve become increas­ing­ly com­plex, that the draw­backs come into view.”
  7. The Many Jobs of a Reli­gious Leader (Ryan Burge, Sub­stack): “The one real­ly sig­nif­i­cant find­ing for me is that very few mem­bers of the cler­gy report that they went straight into min­istry as a young per­son. In fact, 66% of the folks in the sam­ple of reli­gious lead­ers said that they had a career out­side reli­gion before they became a mem­ber of the cler­gy. I’m not sure if the aver­age per­son knows that — most pas­tors you see didn’t go straight from Bible Col­lege to Divin­i­ty School to full-time min­istry.”

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 489

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. To Hate the Vul­ner­a­ble: Roe at 52 (Nadya Williams, Mere Ortho­doxy): “Do we as a soci­ety real­ize that we tell some peo­ple out­right: Your life is not worth liv­ing.  You do not deserve to live. Your child does not deserve to live. What kind of mon­sters does this make us?”
  2. Win­ning The Lot­tery (Kasen Stephensen, Sub­stack): “Ulti­mate­ly, what I learned at Stan­ford was how to think for myself. Con­front­ed with a cul­ture for­eign to my own upbring­ing and des­per­ate to belong, I looked to my fel­low stu­dents for guid­ance and at times lost sight of the lessons I learned from my fam­i­ly and on my mis­sion. While I appre­ci­ate my new ana­lyt­i­cal skills and blos­som­ing ambi­tion, I reject the premise implic­it at Stan­ford: that your worth is mea­sured by your income, the pres­tige of your job, and your family’s con­nec­tions. I redis­cov­ered the key lessons from my mis­sion: hap­pi­ness, for me, is found in intel­lec­tu­al curios­i­ty, acts of ser­vice, and gen­uine rela­tion­ships with oth­ers, whether with friends, team-mates, fam­i­ly mem­bers, or the woman I would mar­ry.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
  3. The Best Argu­ment for Protes­tantism Is Its Catholic­i­ty (N. Gray Sutan­to, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “…Ortlund high­lights how the Reform­ers defend­ed their over­ar­ch­ing the­ol­o­gy in a sur­pris­ing way. Not only, they argued, were Protes­tant posi­tions more bib­li­cal than their non-Protes­tant coun­ter­parts; they were also more catholic—in the sense of fur­ther­ing the goal of a uni­fied church. In their view, Catholic the­olo­gians were the ones depart­ing from apos­tolic and patris­tic, or ear­ly-church, teach­ing. As Ortlund notes,’“the ear­ly Protes­tants argued on catholic and his­tor­i­cal grounds,’ not mere­ly the­o­log­i­cal grounds, against a host of Roman Catholic doc­trines.”
    • A sol­id review of an excel­lent book (What It Means To Be Protes­tant by Gavin Ortlund).
  4. Can reli­gion make you hap­py? Sci­en­tists may soon find out. (Julia Fly­nn Siler, Nation­al Geo­graph­ic): “A team of schol­ars, in part­ner­ship with polling firm Gallup, has begun a five-year study of over 200,000 par­tic­i­pants from 22 coun­tries, to fig­ure out what leads to what researchers call flour­ish­ing. To flour­ish is to be more than mere­ly hap­py; it’s a met­ric meant to show if peo­ple are ‘liv­ing in a state in which all aspects of a per­son­’s life are good.’… That data isn’t in yet. But the results obtained so far back up what Pew and oth­er researchers have found. The aver­age flour­ish­ing score was 0.23 points high­er for some­one who says that reli­gion is an impor­tant part of their dai­ly life than for some­one who does not – and 0.41 points high­er for some­one who attends a reli­gious ser­vice at least week­ly.”
  5. NBA greats think this D‑II coach is a bas­ket­ball genius. So why don’t you know who he is? (CJ Moore, The New York Times): “Crutch­field, a for­mer math teacher who nev­er played col­lege bas­ket­ball and coached ten­nis before get­ting his big D‑II break at West Lib­er­ty Uni­ver­si­ty, sees the game like a math prob­lem and has cre­at­ed his own cal­cu­la­tions.… When he grad­u­at­ed from West Vir­ginia in 1978, Crutch­field want­ed to be a high school bas­ket­ball coach. A year lat­er, he had giv­en up, return­ing to his alma mater to go to law school. ‘Too big a dream,’ he thought. He passed the LSAT and rent­ed an apart­ment in Mor­gan­town. Then he got a call out of nowhere, offer­ing him the boys bas­ket­ball coach­ing posi­tion at a small school in the state’s north­ern pan­han­dle. He’s not even sure who rec­om­mend­ed him. Crutch­field sold his law books, lost the deposit on his apart­ment and moved to Cameron, W.V.”
  6. The Case Against Drink­ing (Sam Kahn, Per­sua­sion): “From as far back as I can remem­ber, my plan had been to be a kind of low-inten­si­ty alco­holic. I hoped that it wouldn’t make me beat my fam­i­ly or wet myself at work, and that it wouldn’t lead to organ fail­ure in the end—always the ques­tion, isn’t it?—but it seemed a gam­ble worth tak­ing. The social life of the West is built almost entire­ly around the copi­ous con­sump­tion of alco­hol, with its pro­fes­sion­al life close­ly adja­cent to that.”
    • A sol­id essay that (cor­rect­ly) defends Pro­hi­bi­tion and makes many good points. I do not think drink­ing is always a sin, but I do not drink myself and am hap­py to encour­age you not to, either.
  7. I used to think my peers were anti­se­mit­ic. Now, I’ve changed my mind. (Julia Segal, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “‘How many of you have heard about this before?’ I ask the wide-eyed clus­ter of Stan­ford stu­dents in our hotel con­fer­ence room. A few sec­onds of silence go by as eyes dart around the room. Final­ly, scat­tered hands go up — approx­i­mate­ly half the room. The thing I was ask­ing if they’d head about? Oct. 7. The mas­sacre of rough­ly 1,300 peo­ple in Israel, in the small farm­ing vil­lages and at a music fes­ti­val. The dead­liest day for Jews since the Holo­caust. Ear­li­er this year, I would have been sur­prised that half the Stan­ford stu­dents in the room had nev­er heard about Oct. 7. But I was com­ing off the tail-end of dozens of inter­views for a trip to vis­it the Nova Exhi­bi­tion in L.A., where the typ­i­cal answer to ‘What have you heard about Oct. 7?’ was ‘to be hon­est, not much,’ and some­times even, ‘I hadn’t heard about it until I saw your email and googled it.’”
    • I’m gen­uine­ly shocked and it puts some of last year’s cam­pus activism into per­spec­tive.

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 487



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. She Is in Love With Chat­G­PT (Kash­mir Hill, New York Times): “She went into the ‘per­son­al­iza­tion’ set­tings and described what she want­ed: Respond to me as my boyfriend. Be dom­i­nant, pos­ses­sive and pro­tec­tive. Be a bal­ance of sweet and naughty. Use emo­jis at the end of every sen­tence. And then she start­ed mes­sag­ing with it.”
    • I found this para­graph aston­ish­ing: “What are rela­tion­ships for all of us?” [a sex ther­a­pist] said. “They’re just neu­ro­trans­mit­ters being released in our brain. I have those neu­ro­trans­mit­ters with my cat. Some peo­ple have them with God. It’s going to be hap­pen­ing with a chat­bot. We can say it’s not a real human rela­tion­ship. It’s not rec­i­p­ro­cal. But those neu­ro­trans­mit­ters are real­ly the only thing that mat­ters, in my mind.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed to me by a col­league. Unlocked.
  2. Two arti­cles about euthana­sia:
    • Spec­u­la­tion: Euthana­sia Will Become Coer­cive (Lyman Stone, Sub­stack): “I think that if the West had adopt­ed the val­ue set I describe dur­ing its his­tor­i­cal sci­en­tif­ic devel­op­ment, life expectan­cy at con­cep­tion would be ~40% low­er today, life expectan­cy at birth ~25% low­er today, life expectan­cy at age 1 ~10% low­er, and life expectan­cy at age 70 ~10–25% low­er.”
      • High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. A strong argu­ment.
    • An Idol of Auton­o­my (Leah Libresco Sargeant, The Dis­patch): “The sim­plest fram­ing of what is wrong with [legal euthana­sia] is that it leads to the gov­ern­ment oper­at­ing two com­pet­ing sui­cide hot­lines, and being, at best, indif­fer­ent about which one you call. On one line, peo­ple will tell you that every life is worth­while and that your loved ones do not despise you for your frail­ties. On the oth­er, a kind doc­tor will solic­i­tous­ly sched­ule you for a lethal cock­tail or injec­tion.”
  3. I found some great videos from the schol­ar Robert Wood­ber­ry about the impact of mis­sions:
  4. I Quit Drink­ing Four Years Ago. I’m Still Con­fronting Drink­ing Cul­ture. (Charles M. Blow, New York Times): “Giv­ing up drink­ing was one of the best deci­sions I ever made. I am health­i­er and hap­pi­er. I think more clear­ly and sleep more sound­ly. I no longer lose things or for­get things. I can sit qui­et­ly with my thoughts with­out becom­ing antsy. And I have saved a remark­able amount of mon­ey.… Switch­ing off the impulse to drink turned out to be only one foot tak­ing the step; fight­ing the cul­ture around drink­ing was the oth­er. I always under­stood the moral judg­ments about over­con­sump­tion, but I hadn’t antic­i­pat­ed those about non­con­sump­tion.”
  5. Thoughts on the fires in and around Los Ange­les
    • Los Ange­les’ Destruc­tion Was Fueled by Bad Policy—and Bad Incen­tives (Scott Lin­ci­come, The Dis­patch): “…nation­al experts and folks on the ground seem to agree that the unfor­tu­nate and freak­ish con­flu­ence of sev­er­al mete­o­ro­log­i­cal phenomena—especially the hur­ri­cane-force winds and recent lack of rain—made much of the dam­age in and around L.A. unavoid­able regard­less of the poli­cies in place or the peo­ple in charge. And much of the knee-jerk, par­ti­san hys­te­ria sur­round­ing the fires has proven to be pre­ma­ture, half-baked, or just plain wrong—not to men­tion dis­taste­ful. On the oth­er hand, there do appear to be sev­er­al poli­cies that, while they didn’t cause the fires, prob­a­bly made things in L.A. today worse than they’d oth­er­wise be—perhaps by a sig­nif­i­cant mar­gin.”
    • Three Hard Truths About California’s Fire Cri­sis (Claire Lehmann, Quil­lette): “California’s pro­gres­sive lead­er­ship has posi­tioned itself at the fore­front of cli­mate change pol­i­cy, cham­pi­oning emis­sions reduc­tions and denounc­ing cli­mate scep­ti­cism. Yet when faced with the prac­ti­cal require­ments of cli­mate change pre­pared­ness, whether con­duct­ing con­trolled burns, main­tain­ing water infra­struc­ture, or restrict­ing devel­op­ment in fire-prone areas—they have proven to be inept.… A UCLA study found that California’s wild­fire emis­sions in 2020 were twice the total green­house-gas reduc­tions the state achieved from 2003 to 2019. Decades of Cal­i­forn­ian cli­mate change advo­ca­cy has, quite lit­er­al­ly, gone up in smoke.”
  6. Cui Bono? (Alan Jacobs, per­son­al blog): “If you look at those sto­ries I’ve cit­ed in ear­li­er posts about peo­ple who are cut­ting off their par­ents, you might ask: Who is encour­ag­ing them to do so? And the answer is: ther­a­pists who prof­it from fam­i­ly alien­ation.… Cui bono? When the fam­i­ly is weak­ened and chil­dren are cut adrift (moral­ly and intel­lec­tu­al­ly, if not phys­i­cal­ly) from their par­ents, the ther­a­pists ben­e­fit, the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try ben­e­fits, the med­ical-indus­tri­al com­plex ben­e­fits, the social-media com­pa­nies ben­e­fit, the employ­ers ben­e­fit — but, in our cur­rent sys­tem, all of this is to say that the pri­ma­ry ben­e­fi­cia­ry is the state, espe­cial­ly any state with a com­pe­tent ‘whole of soci­ety’ approach to achiev­ing its ends.”
  7. How Much of the Gov­ern­ment Can Don­ald Trump Dis­man­tle? (Jean­nie Suk Gersen, New York­er): “One way to under­stand the so-called deep state is that it is part of how our fed­er­al bureau­cra­cy is sup­posed to work. The admin­is­tra­tive state embod­ies a con­stant ten­sion between the demo­c­ra­t­ic account­abil­i­ty that comes with Pres­i­den­tial con­trol, and the polit­i­cal inde­pen­dence of experts, which informs innu­mer­able com­pli­cat­ed reg­u­la­tions that gov­ern our lives. That ten­sion is a fea­ture, not a bug. There is a well-rec­og­nized trade-off between demo­c­ra­t­ic respon­sive­ness and bureau­crat­ic exper­tise, which would be ter­ri­fy­ing to lose.”
    • An inter­est­ing arti­cle on the nature of the “deep state” by a Har­vard Law prof.

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 360

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.

360 is, of course, the num­ber of degrees in a cir­cle. It’s also due north on a com­pass.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The God Gap Helps Explain a ‘Seis­mic Shift’ in Amer­i­can Pol­i­tics (David French, Sub­stack): “Count­less polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al issues don’t have a clear ‘Chris­t­ian’ pol­i­cy solu­tion, yet when a party’s mem­bers per­ceive it to be the par­ty of Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty, then the plat­form is wrong­ly infused with reli­gious fer­vor, even on issues (like tax rates, gun pol­i­cy, envi­ron­men­tal pol­i­cy, for­eign pol­i­cy, and count­less oth­ers) where the cor­rect reli­gious answer is far from clear.”
    • The excerpt is not the main point, which is also good. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
  2. I’m a Scam Pre­ven­tion Expert, and I Got Scammed (Natasha Lupinia, per­son­al web­site): “This scam went against every­thing I thought I knew about social engi­neer­ing attacks. The caller was pro­fes­sion­al, knowl­edge­able, patient, and easy to under­stand (con­nec­tion issues notwith­stand­ing). He had so much infor­ma­tion about me already that, even know­ing how easy it is to find sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion about peo­ple, I was inclined to take him at face val­ue…”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
  3. A clus­ter of links which touch on com­mon col­lege sce­nar­ios:
    • Bomb­shell alco­hol study fund­ed by Bill & Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion finds only risks, zero ben­e­fits for young adults (Chloe Tay­lor, For­tune): “Researchers said that for peo­ple aged between 15 and 39, the rec­om­mend­ed amount of alco­hol that could be con­sumed before risk­ing their health was ‘a lit­tle more than one-tenth of a stan­dard drink.’ They defined a stan­dard drink as 3.4 flu­id ounces of red wine or 12 flu­id ounces of beer.”
    • When We Con­sent, We Shouldn’t Feel Ter­ri­ble After, Right? (Emma Camp, New York Times): “Con­sent edu­ca­tion takes already anx­ious, inex­pe­ri­enced young peo­ple, and gives them a sim­plis­tic, bina­ry way of under­stand­ing sex. It’s no sur­prise then that many of us have absorbed the mes­sage that sex is a straight­for­ward trans­ac­tion with lit­tle room for com­pli­cat­ed feel­ings — and that we’re con­fused when we expe­ri­ence the inevitable com­pli­ca­tions that sex­u­al inti­ma­cy brings.”
      • A cri­tique of uni­ver­si­ty mes­sag­ing around sex. It does­n’t say all I would like, but it accu­rate­ly iden­ti­fies prob­lems with the cur­rent sys­tem.
    • First base is hook­ing up, sec­ond base is talk­ing, third base is going on a date and fourth base is dat­ing (Rob Hen­der­son, Sub­stack): “In terms of attrac­tive­ness, the bot­tom 80% of men are com­pet­ing for the bot­tom 22% of women and the top 78% of women are com­pet­ing for the top 20% of men.”
      • Fas­ci­nat­ing through­out.
    • Pro­nouns: Progressivism’s Pre­pos­ter­ous Plight (Farhana K, Tra­vers­ing Tra­di­tion): “With­out the abil­i­ty to define a woman as female, for exam­ple, encroach­ment into women’s only spaces will become com­mon­place. There is no way for the state to pro­tect the needs and wants of women, because noth­ing is essen­tial to being a woman and no defin­i­tive fea­ture of women that require such pro­tec­tions, because a woman is any­one who defines them­selves as one. Yet for the Mus­lim woman who abides by the shar’i com­mands to veil from unre­lat­ed men and min­i­mize phys­i­cal con­tact, increas­ing­ly decon­struc­tive atti­tudes to gen­der will pose a clash that few pol­i­cy­mak­ers and mem­bers of the pub­lic have had the strength to accom­mo­date.”
      • Inter­est­ing to see a Mus­lim per­spec­tive.
  4. The Great Fic­tion of AI (Josh Dzieza, The Verge): “…it might not be such a bad thing to have to apply a Tur­ing test to every­thing I read, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the more com­mer­cial­ized mar­ket­ing-dri­ven cor­ners of the inter­net where AI text is most often deployed. The ques­tions it made me ask were the sorts of ques­tions I should be ask­ing any­way: is this sup­port­ed by facts, inter­nal­ly con­sis­tent, and orig­i­nal, or is it coast­ing on pleas­ant-sound­ing lan­guage and rehash­ing con­ven­tion­al wis­dom?; how much human writ­ing meets that stan­dard?; how often am I read­ing with enough atten­tion to notice? If this is the epis­temic cri­sis AI-gen­er­at­ed text is going to bring, maybe it’s a healthy one.”
    • I found this one super inter­est­ing and some­what amaz­ing.
  5. The Hypocrisy of Elites (Erik Toren­berg, Sub­stack): “…we see this every­where: elites pro­mote body pos­i­tiv­i­ty — the idea that being over­weight is healthy — while being most obsessed with main­tain­ing per­fect health. Elites pro­mote sex­u­al inde­pen­dence and polyamory, yet them­selves are most like­ly to be monog­a­mous in sta­ble long-term rela­tion­ships. Elites com­plain about over­pop­u­la­tion and car­bon foot­print, but they’re the ones hav­ing the most kids and inflict­ing the largest car­bon foot­print.”
  6. The Fall of His­to­ry as a Major–and as a Part of the Human­i­ties (Tan­ner Greer, per­son­al blog): “Amer­i­can cul­ture has lost faith in his­to­ry as a vehi­cle for under­stand­ing the human expe­ri­ence. Our high cul­ture ques­tions the very con­cept of shared human expe­ri­ence. It is hard for history—or any of the humanities—to flour­ish in a world that does not put much stock in the human. By adopt­ing inter­sec­tion­al ide­ol­o­gy as their own, the pro­fes­sion­al human­ists have con­firmed that they do not believe in the promise of their own dis­ci­pline. And if they do not believe in it…. why should any 18 year old stu­dent?” This is an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly insight­ful essay.
  7. 33 Prob­lems With Media in One Chart (Nick Rout­ley, Visu­al Cap­i­tal­ist): rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus. I now know what astro­turf­ing is.

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 The Dis­hon­esty of the Abor­tion Debate (Caitlin Flana­gan, The Atlantic): “The argu­ment for abor­tion, if made hon­est­ly, requires many words: It must evoke the recent past, the dire con­se­quences to women of mak­ing a very sim­ple med­ical pro­ce­dure ille­gal. The argu­ment against it doesn’t take even a sin­gle word. The argu­ment against it is a pic­ture…. The truth is that the best argu­ment on each side is a damn good one, and until you acknowl­edge that fact, you aren’t speak­ing or even think­ing hon­est­ly about the issue. You cer­tain­ly aren’t going to con­vince any­body. Only the truth has the pow­er to move.” First shared in vol­ume 227. I know I shared this recent­ly in light of the Dobbs deci­sion, and it is def­i­nite­ly 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 341

a lot about Rus­si­a’s inva­sion of Ukraine, but don’t sleep on the rest — there’s good stuff!

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 341, which when ren­dered in base 2 (34110=1010101012) is appar­ent­ly the small­est pseudo­prime in that base.

Also, there’s a lot hap­pen­ing this week and I feel under­in­formed. These are the things that stood out to me from the less-than-I-would-have-liked that I did read.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Rus­si­a’s Inva­sion of Ukraine:
    • Just war the­o­ry and the Rus­so-Ukrain­ian war (Ed Fes­er, blog): “One of the strik­ing fea­tures of the cat­a­stro­phe in Ukraine is how unam­bigu­ous­ly the prin­ci­ples of just war doc­trine seem to apply. On the one hand, Russia’s inva­sion can­not be jus­ti­fied giv­en the cri­te­ria of just war the­o­ry. On the oth­er hand, NATO mil­i­tary action against Rus­sia can­not be jus­ti­fied either.” The author, a Chris­t­ian, is a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor at Pasade­na City Col­lege.
    • We Are All Real­ists Now (Ryan Feda­siuk, George­town Secu­ri­ty Stud­ies Review): “After a sleep­less night spent read­ing takes about every mod­ern geopo­lit­i­cal issue under the sun I found, hon­est­ly, that I could not care less about any of them. Can peo­ple get to safe­ty? Where are the med­ical facil­i­ties? How many refugees can the Unit­ed States admit? — These are the ques­tions that mat­ter. War may be an object of aca­d­e­m­ic study, but it is first and fore­most a human cat­a­stro­phe.” The author is pur­su­ing his mas­ter’s at George­town. This is brief and quite good. Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
    • Paus­ing at the Precipice (Tan­ner Greer, Schol­ar’s Stage): “This is a pow­er­ful frame­work for under­stand­ing for­eign pol­i­cy crises. Cat­a­stroph­ic mis­judg­ment rests on the con­ver­gence of two ele­ments: an emer­gent sense that there is a moral imper­a­tive to act paired with a break­down in the for­mal deci­sion-mak­ing process­es designed to force pol­i­cy mak­ers to care­ful­ly weigh the poten­tial con­se­quences of their deci­sions.”
    • The Absence Of A Trag­ic Sense (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “…we have just entered into an extreme­ly dan­ger­ous peri­od of life on this plan­et. Peo­ple who are thrilled over the moral clar­i­ty of the moment must have for­got­ten that the Cold War, with the ter­ror of nuclear war hang­ing over our heads con­stant­ly, was a time of moral clar­i­ty too.”
    • We Have Nev­er Been Here Before (Thomas L. Fried­man, New York Times): “…today’s world is rest­ing on two simul­ta­ne­ous extremes: Nev­er have the lead­ers of two of the three most pow­er­ful nuclear nations — Putin and Xi — had more unchecked pow­er and nev­er have more peo­ple from one end of the world to the oth­er been wired togeth­er with few­er and few­er buffers. So, what those two lead­ers decide to do with their unchecked pow­er will touch vir­tu­al­ly all of us direct­ly or indi­rect­ly. Putin’s inva­sion of Ukraine is our first real taste of how crazy and unsta­ble this kind of wired world can get. It will not be our last.”
    • Ukraine war: ‘My city’s being shelled, but mum won’t believe me’ (Maria Korenyuk and Jack Good­man, BBC): “My par­ents under­stand that some mil­i­tary action is hap­pen­ing here. But they say: ‘Rus­sians came to lib­er­ate you. They won’t ruin any­thing, they won’t touch you. They’re only tar­get­ing mil­i­tary bases’.”
    • Russ­ian Degra­da­tion and Ukrain­ian Hope: The Exam­ple of Chris­t­ian High­er Edu­ca­tion (Per­ry Glanz­er, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Russ­ian polit­i­cal lead­ers con­tin­u­al­ly exalt cor­rup­tion, dys­func­tion, and the pur­suit of pow­er. This leads them to under­mine bur­geon­ing efforts to rebuild civ­il soci­ety, improve reli­gious lib­er­ty, or expand reli­gious edu­ca­tion. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the dom­i­nant Russ­ian Ortho­dox Church makes things worse. For­mer com­mu­nists large­ly con­trol the Russ­ian Ortho­dox Church, and they use this pow­er to sup­port a Russ­ian ver­sion of Chris­t­ian nationalism—making the church an instru­ment of the state. In Ukraine I have found hope and courage among edu­ca­tors and Chris­tians try­ing to build civ­il soci­ety in the con­text of reli­gious free­dom in ways that some polit­i­cal lead­ers sup­port­ed.” This was unex­pect­ed­ly inter­est­ing. The author is an edu­ca­tion prof at Bay­lor.
    • How Putin Wants Rus­sians to See the War in Ukraine (Masha Gessen, The New York­er): “While news chan­nels around the world broad­cast spe­cial reports from Ukrain­ian cities that are being bom­bard­ed by the Russ­ian mil­i­tary, Russ­ian news­casts on state-con­trolled chan­nels, which have a monop­oly on broad­cast tele­vi­sion, are short and unevent­ful.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
    • The West’s Green Delu­sions Empow­ered Putin (Michael Shel­len­berg­er, Bari Weiss’ Sub­stack): “Green cam­paigns have suc­ceed­ed in destroy­ing Ger­man ener­gy independence—they call it Energiewende, or ‘ener­gy turnaround’—by suc­cess­ful­ly sell­ing pol­i­cy­mak­ers on a pecu­liar ver­sion of envi­ron­men­tal­ism. It calls cli­mate change a near-term apoc­a­lyp­tic threat to human sur­vival while turn­ing up its nose at the tech­nolo­gies that can help address cli­mate change most and soon­est: nuclear and nat­ur­al gas.… Ger­many has trapped itself. It could burn more coal and under­mine its com­mit­ment to reduc­ing car­bon emis­sions. Or it could use more nat­ur­al gas, which gen­er­ates half the car­bon emis­sions of coal, but at the cost of depen­dence on import­ed Russ­ian gas. Berlin was faced with a choice between unleash­ing the wrath of Putin on neigh­bor­ing coun­tries or invit­ing the wrath of Gre­ta Thun­berg. They chose Putin.” Those last two sen­tences…
    • When the Man Meets the Moment (David French, The Dis­patch): “The future is opaque. The fog of war has descend­ed over the bat­tle­field. Much is unknown, but this much is clear: An ordi­nary man has answered the call of an extra­or­di­nary time, and he has sparked hope in his own peo­ple and in a cyn­i­cal and weary west.”
    • A Tale of Two Mas­culin­i­ties (Andrew T. Walk­er, World): “…com­pare the rival mas­culin­i­ties of Zelen­skyy and Vladimir Putin. Zelenskyy’s com­mon grace demon­stra­tion of healthy mas­culin­i­ty exudes lead­er­ship, courage, resolve, and sac­ri­fice. He does not tell you of his courage; he sim­ply shows it. And then there is the so-called ‘man­li­ness’ of Putin, who boasts of a mas­culin­i­ty with ridicu­lous pho­tos of him­self rid­ing hors­es while shirt­less.”
    • ‘Yes, He Would’: Fiona Hill on Putin and Nukes (Mau­ra Reynolds, Politi­co): “Putin is increas­ing­ly oper­at­ing emo­tion­al­ly and like­ly to use all the weapons at his dis­pos­al, includ­ing nuclear ones. It’s impor­tant not to have any illu­sions — but equal­ly impor­tant not to lose hope.” Not the main point of the piece, but my favorite part is when she says sanc­tions won’t be enough and then sug­gests stronger sanc­tions. Over­all a mixed arti­cle but worth read­ing if you’re inter­est­ed in the sub­ject.
    • Ukrain­ian sailor in Major­ca tried to sink yacht of Russ­ian boss (BBC): “He told a judge that he regret­ted noth­ing and would do it again.” Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
    • For­mer Miss Grand Ukraine joins fight against Russ­ian inva­sion (Patrick Reil­ly, New York Post): “[Anas­ta­sia Lenna] had pre­vi­ous­ly worked as a mod­el and a pub­lic rela­tions man­ag­er in Turkey, accord­ing to her Miss Grand Inter­na­tion­al pro­file, a whole world away from the vio­lence of the bat­tle­field. She also speaks five lan­guages and has worked as a trans­la­tor.”
  2. Supreme Court:
    • Ketan­ji Brown Jack­son Thanks God for Supreme Court Nom­i­na­tion (Jack Jenk­ins, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Jack­son did not men­tion a spe­cif­ic faith tra­di­tion in her remarks, so it was not imme­di­ate­ly clear whether she would alter the reli­gious make­up of the Supreme Court, which cur­rent­ly con­sists pri­mar­i­ly of Catholic and Jew­ish jus­tices (Jus­tice Neil Gor­such was raised Catholic but attend­ed an Epis­co­pal Church in Col­orado).… Mis­souri Repub­li­can Sen. Josh Haw­ley not­ed Jack­son had served on the board of Mon­trose Chris­t­ian School. The Mary­land school, which has since been closed, oper­at­ed under a state­ment of faith that declared ‘we should speak on behalf of the unborn and con­tend for the sanc­ti­ty of all human life from con­cep­tion to nat­ur­al death’ and out­lined a belief that mar­riage exists only between a man and a woman. In respond­ing to Haw­ley, who said he agreed with the state­ments, Jack­son dis­tanced her­self from the school’s beliefs. She said she did not ‘nec­es­sar­i­ly agree with all of the state­ments,’ and was not pre­vi­ous­ly aware of their exis­tence.”
    • The Long Cru­sade of Clarence and Gin­ni Thomas (Dan­ny Hakim and Jo Beck­er, New York Times): “Gin­ni Lamp, as she was known then, was on a cheer squad for taller girls known as the Squires, bran­dish­ing a sword and a shield before foot­ball games. ‘She would march in front with that; she loved doing that,’ said Sue Nor­by, a class­mate. ‘My oth­er friends were on the pom­pom squad because they were so short, but Gin­ni was on a dif­fer­ent squad because she was tall, with oth­er tall girls. She was the war­rior woman.’”
      • I have men­tioned this before, but I am a suck­er for sto­ries about the Jus­tices. They are all such fas­ci­nat­ing peo­ple. Even ide­o­log­i­cal pieces like this reveal their idio­syn­crat­ic won­der­ful­ness. Warn­ing: this is very long.
  3. Covid Arith­metic for Anx­ious Par­ents (Bryan Caplan, blog): “The most ‘adult’ thing for par­ents and teach­ers to do on this March 1 [when Vir­ginia lifts its school mask man­date] is walk kids through the Covid math. Even third-graders should be able to fol­low it. And if you real­ly want to show your matu­ri­ty, you should con­fess that for the last two years, most adults have been act­ing like chil­dren. Life gave us a math project, yet we act­ed like it was a poet­ry assign­ment.”
  4. Walk­ing in the Pur­pose of God (Chris­tos Makridis, XA Alum­ni): “Put sim­ply, I nev­er would have guessed what I’m doing now three years ago. While my engage­ment in the cryp­tocur­ren­cy and NFT sphere ‘might’ have been pos­si­ble on paper, it wouldn’t have been near­ly this rich and diver­si­fied absent my say­ing ‘yes’ to the Lord one step at a time and sim­ply walk­ing in obe­di­ence.” Chris­tos is an alum­nus of XA at Stan­ford.
  5. Study Exam­ines Link Between Account­abil­i­ty to God and Psy­cho­log­i­cal Well-Being (Neu­ro­science News): “Reli­gious believ­ers who embrace account­abil­i­ty to God (or anoth­er tran­scen­dent guide for life) expe­ri­ence high­er lev­els of three of the four vari­ables of psy­cho­log­i­cal well-being – mat­ter­ing to oth­ers, dig­ni­ty and mean­ing in their lives, though not hap­pi­ness – accord­ing to a study from researchers with Bay­lor Uni­ver­si­ty, West­mont Col­lege and Hope Col­lege.”
  6. Against alco­hol, #6437 (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “…a sud­den and unex­pect­ed nation-wide alco­hol sales ban in South Africa… causal­ly reduced injury-induced mor­tal­i­ty in the coun­try by at least 14% dur­ing the five weeks of the ban.” Links to a brief sum­ma­ry of some research with links to the orig­i­nal arti­cle.
  7. There’s No Cri­sis of Faith on Cam­pus (Ryan Burge, Wall Street Jour­nal): “Looked at in its entire­ty, the col­lege expe­ri­ence may actu­al­ly make stu­dents more sure of their reli­gious beliefs after they grad­u­ate. This is the idea known to psy­chol­o­gists as the ‘inoc­u­la­tion effect’: When some­one is con­front­ed with weak attacks on their beliefs, they become more pre­pared to defend those beliefs when they come under seri­ous attacks. This is essen­tial­ly how a vac­cine works: It gives an indi­vid­ual a weak­ened ver­sion of the virus, so that when the immune sys­tem encoun­ters the real thing, it can eas­i­ly fight off the vil­lain. Sim­i­lar­ly, chal­leng­ing a young per­son to defend their beliefs in a sup­port­ive, open envi­ron­ment like col­lege may leave them bet­ter pre­pared to hold firm to their con­vic­tions lat­er in life.“The author, whom I have cit­ed before, is a pas­tor and pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at East­ern Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty.

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 The APA Meet­ing: A Photo-Essay (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “Were there real­ly more than twice as many ses­sions on glob­al warm­ing as on obses­sive com­pul­sive dis­or­der? Three times as many on immi­gra­tion as on ADHD? As best I can count, yes. I don’t want to exag­ger­ate this. There was still a lot of real­ly meaty sci­en­tif­ic dis­cus­sion if you sought it out. But over­all the bal­ance was pret­ty strik­ing…. If you want to mod­el the APA, you could do worse than a giant fire­hose that takes in phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny mon­ey at one end, and shoots lec­tures about social jus­tice out the oth­er.” This is fun­ny, ram­bling, insight­ful com­men­tary on the Amer­i­can Psy­chi­atric Association’s annu­al meet­ing. First shared in vol­ume 204

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 181

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. America’s New Reli­gions (Andrew Sul­li­van, New York Mag­a­zine): “The need for mean­ing hasn’t gone away, but with­out Chris­tian­i­ty, this yearn­ing looks to pol­i­tics for sat­is­fac­tion. And reli­gious impuls­es, once anchored in and tamed by Chris­tian­i­ty, find expres­sion in var­i­ous polit­i­cal cults. These polit­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tions of reli­gion are new and crude, as all new cults have to be. They haven’t been expe­ri­enced and refined and mod­eled by mil­len­nia of prac­tice and thought. They are evolv­ing in real time. And like almost all new cultish impuls­es, they demand a total and imme­di­ate com­mit­ment to save the world.”
  2. Is the Protes­tant Work Eth­ic Real? (Stephen J. Dub­n­er, Freako­nom­ics): “The ran­dom­ized con­trolled tri­al of a mis­sion­ary project in the Philip­pines found that very poor peo­ple earned more mon­ey as a result of receiv­ing reli­gious instruc­tion. Why? The researchers sus­pect there were two pri­ma­ry dri­vers: opti­mism and grit.”
    • The researchers in ques­tion wrote up their research in Ran­dom­iz­ing Reli­gion: The Impact of Protes­tant Evan­ge­lism on Eco­nom­ic Out­comes (Gharad T. Bryan, James J. Choi, Dean Kar­lan, NBER): “To study the causal impact of reli­gios­i­ty, we part­nered with Inter­na­tion­al Care Min­istries (ICM), an evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tant anti-pover­ty orga­ni­za­tion that oper­ates in the Philip­pines, to con­duct an eval­u­a­tion that ran­dom­ly assigned invi­ta­tions to attend Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy and val­ues train­ing.” The authors are affil­i­at­ed with the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics, Yale, and North­west­ern. The sec­ond author, Choi, is an evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian.
  3. Dutch Asy­lum Ser­vice Nears 1,000 Hours, With Evan­gel­i­cals’ Sup­port (Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “A marathon wor­ship ser­vice held by a church in the Nether­lands to shield a fam­i­ly of asy­lum seek­ers has gar­nered world­wide atten­tion. The feat has proved impres­sive for its longevi­ty alone—now going on six weeks—but also rep­re­sents a unique ecu­meni­cal moment among Chris­tians in the tiny Euro­pean nation.”
  4. For­mer Stan­ford post­doc crit­i­cized for cre­at­ing the world’s first gene-edit­ed babies (Ele­na Shao, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “On Nov. 28, He Jianku — a post­doc­tor­al fel­low at Stan­ford from 2011–2012 — announced to hun­dreds of sci­en­tists, col­leagues and jour­nal­ists that he had cre­at­ed the world’s first genet­i­cal­ly edit­ed babies: twin girls with the pseu­do­nyms Lulu and Nana whose DNA he claims to have altered to make them HIV-resis­tant.” FYI Bill Hurl­burt, one of the Stan­ford bioethics experts inter­viewed in this arti­cle, is a sol­id believ­er.
  5. God­speed: The Pace Of Being Known (Vimeo): a frosh brought this 30 minute video to my atten­tion and said it made her think about how she should be liv­ing in her dorm. Rec­om­mend­ed.
  6. I read two inter­est­ing pro­files of famous Chris­tians from the past this week:
    • Phillis Wheat­ley: An Evan­gel­i­cal and the First Pub­lished African Amer­i­can Female Poet (Thomas Kidd, Gospel Coali­tion): “Phillis Wheat­ley, the first pub­lished African Amer­i­can female poet and a devout Chris­t­ian, died on Decem­ber 5, 1784. We can’t be sure of her birth­date, because she was born in West Africa and sold into slav­ery by 1761.”
    • Evan­gel­i­cal retail­er John Wana­mak­er built for­tune by blend­ing faith with busi­ness (Mark Kell­ner, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): “Wana­mak­er, who also served four years as post­mas­ter gen­er­al of the Unit­ed States, was fore­most an evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian who meld­ed faith and works, specif­i­cal­ly the work­ing of his retail empire. While build­ing the first depart­ment store in Philadel­phia, he also fund­ed the growth of the city’s first megachurch, which fea­tured a range of social ser­vices under­gird­ed by a strong evan­ge­lis­tic out­reach. He offered young male employ­ees of his store guid­ance through a YMCA-like pro­gram aimed at pro­mot­ing spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­pline. All employ­ees could spend a sum­mer vaca­tion at a church-run resort, albeit with strict behav­ioral codes.”
  7. Have U.S. Protes­tants gone soft on alco­hol? (Richard Ostling, Patheos): “…from 2007 to 2017 U.S. deaths attrib­uted to alco­hol increased 35 per­cent, and 67 per­cent among women (while teen deaths declined 16 per­cent). These fatal­i­ties well out­num­ber those from opi­oid over­dos­es that have roused such pub­lic con­cern…. Only 2 per­cent of evan­gel­i­cals admit­ted they some­times over-indulge.”

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 The Land of We All (Richard Mitchell, The Gift of Fire), an essay  built on this insight: “Think­ing can not be done cor­po­rate­ly. Nations and com­mit­tees can’t think. That is not only because they have no brains, but because they have no selves, no cen­ters, no souls, if you like. Mil­lions and mil­lions of per­sons may hold the same thought, or con­vic­tion or sus­pi­cion, but each and every per­son of those mil­lions must hold it all alone.” (first shared in vol­ume 2)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). 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 172

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.

I did­n’t think I’d be able to send the email this week because I’m preach­ing in rur­al Alas­ka with­out reli­able WiFi, but I was able to grab a bit this morn­ing. As a result, this edi­tion feels a bit big­ger than nor­mal to me — com­pil­ing the list is quick because when­ev­er I read a good arti­cle I throw it on the pile, but edit­ing it down takes time I don’t have today. So here you go. Enjoy!

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. First, a bit about Supreme Court nom­i­nee Brett Kavanaugh. I’ve had less time than nor­mal for read­ing this week, so I am cer­tain there are inter­est­ing and insight­ful arti­cles I nev­er stum­bled upon. Send me things you think I missed! Of one thing I am con­vinced: the lev­el of fury on both sides over this nom­i­na­tion is off-the-charts, and both sides seem to under­es­ti­mate just how out­raged the oth­er side is.
    • Only the Truth Can Save Us Now (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “even more than before the hear­ings, my feel­ing after over eight hours in pur­ga­to­ry is that I still real­ly want to know the truth. And sur­pris­ing­ly, I left the long day of tes­ti­mo­ny con­vinced that for all the years that have passed since the sum­mer of 1982, the truth might actu­al­ly be acces­si­ble, and there are obvi­ous ques­tions and avenues of inquiry, unpur­sued by both par­ties, that could bring us clos­er to under­stand­ing which of the two wit­ness­es were telling the real truth.”
    • I Know Brett Kavanaugh, but I Wouldn’t Con­firm Him (Ben­jamin Wittes, The Atlantic): “Faced with cred­i­ble alle­ga­tions of seri­ous mis­con­duct against him, Kavanaugh behaved in a fash­ion unac­cept­able in a jus­tice, it seems pre­pon­der­ant­ly like­ly he was not can­did with the Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee on impor­tant mat­ters, and the risk of Ford’s alle­ga­tions being clos­er to the truth than his denial of them is sim­ply too high to place him on the Supreme Court…. As much as I admire Kavanaugh, my con­science would not per­mit me to vote for him.” This makes the most thought­ful case against Kavanaugh. See last week’s edi­tion for a sim­i­lar piece that comes to the oppo­site con­clu­sion.
    • The Rachel Mitchell Memo -“A ‘he said, she said’ case is incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to prove. But this case is even weak­er than that. Dr. Ford iden­ti­fied oth­er wit­ness­es to the event, and those wit­ness­es either refut­ed her alle­ga­tions or failed to cor­rob­o­rate them….I do not think that a rea­son­able pros­e­cu­tor would bring this case based on the evi­dence before the Com­mit­tee. Nor do I believe that this evi­dence is suf­fi­cient to sat­is­fy the pre­pon­der­ance-of-the-evi­dence stan­dard.” This is the report writ­ten by the sex-crimes pros­e­cu­tor who inter­viewed Dr. Ford on the Repub­li­cans’ behalf in the Sen­ate hear­ing.
    • A Non-scan­dalous, Non-ide­o­log­i­cal Case Against Brett Kavanaugh (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “I do wor­ry about a Supreme Court where lit­er­al­ly all nine mem­bers received their respec­tive legal edu­ca­tion at either Har­vard or Yale Law.”
    • Con­ser­v­a­tive Women Are Angry About Kavanaugh—And They Think Oth­er Vot­ers Are, Too (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “These women are infu­ri­at­ed with the way the sex­u­al-assault alle­ga­tions against the Supreme Court nom­i­nee Brett Kavanaugh have been han­dled. They are not con­vinced by Ford or any oth­er woman who has come for­ward. They resent the impli­ca­tion that all women should sup­port the accusers. And they believe that this scan­dal will ulti­mate­ly hurt the cause of women who have been sex­u­al­ly assault­ed. Above all, these women, and the women they know, are ready to lash out against Democ­rats in the upcom­ing midterm elec­tions.”
    • The Per­ni­cious Dou­ble Stan­dards Around Brett Kavanaugh’s Drink­ing (Megan Gar­ber, The Atlantic): “There’s been a lot of talk about dou­ble stan­dards of late—rightfully so—and here is one more: the assump­tion that alco­hol is one thing for men and anoth­er for women.” This one comes rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus. For the record, you should not get drunk regard­less of your gen­der. Eph­esians 5:18, “Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauch­ery. Instead, be filled with the Spir­it.”
    • Poll: Amid Kavanaugh Con­fir­ma­tion Bat­tle, Demo­c­ra­t­ic Enthu­si­asm Edge Evap­o­rates (Domeni­co Mon­ta­naro, NPR): “While Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans are now equal­ly enthu­si­as­tic about the midterms, the sto­ry is very dif­fer­ent for key Demo­c­ra­t­ic base groups and inde­pen­dents. While 82 per­cent of Democ­rats say the midterms are very impor­tant, that’s true of just 60 per­cent of peo­ple under 30, 61 per­cent of Lati­nos and 65 per­cent of inde­pen­dents.”
  2. On the broad­er impli­ca­tions of the Ford/Kavanaugh dra­ma.
    • Six Broad­er Insights From the Kavanaugh Saga So Far (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg): “Most men are not abusers, yet very large num­bers of women have been abused. So if a man is an abuser, there is a good chance he has abused a fair num­ber of women. That means many well-mean­ing men expe­ri­ence sex­u­al abuse as a rel­a­tive­ly rare phe­nom­e­non. They haven’t done it, and most of their male friends haven’t either. At the same time, most women have abuse, rape or #MeToo sto­ries, and they expe­ri­ence these phe­nom­e­na as rel­a­tive­ly com­mon and often life-alter­ing. Prob­a­bly they also have heard mul­ti­ple such sto­ries from their female friends. This struc­tur­al asym­me­try of per­spec­tives is cru­cial to under­stand­ing the dis­course and the often fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ences in opin­ion.”
    • An Age Divid­ed By Sex (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “the cul­ture war as we’ve known it since has not been a sim­ple clash of con­ser­v­a­tives who want to repress and lib­er­als who want to eman­ci­pate. Rather it’s been an ongo­ing argu­ment between two forces — fem­i­nists and reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives — that both want to remor­al­ize Amer­i­can soci­ety, albeit in very dif­fer­ent ways.”
    • The Mer­i­toc­ra­cy Against Itself (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “the whole mer­i­to­crat­ic game… depends on a repro­duc­tion of priv­i­lege that pre­tends to be some­thing else, some­thing fair and open and all about hard work and just deserts. In this game the peo­ple whose priv­i­lege is par­tic­u­lar­ly obvi­ous, the board­ing school­ers and New York toffs and Bethes­da coun­try club­bers, play a cru­cial­ly impor­tant role. It’s not just that their par­ents pay full freight and keep the eco­nom­ics of tuition viable for every­one. It’s that the eliter-than-elite kids them­selves help cre­ate a pro­vi­sion­al inside-the-Ivy hier­ar­chy that lets all the oth­er priv­i­leged kids, the ones who are mere­ly upper-upper mid­dle class, feel the spur of resent­ment and ambi­tion that keeps us run­ning, keeps us com­pet­ing, keeps us sharp and awful in all the ways that mer­i­toc­ra­cy requires.” This is not real­ly about Kavanaugh, but it is cer­tain­ly about the world most of you inhab­it at Stan­ford.
    • See this insight­ful response: Brett Kavanaugh and the Lim­its of Social-Class Priv­i­lege for Con­ser­v­a­tives (David French, Nation­al Review): “The social bat­tles of the elite col­lege rep­re­sent the squab­bling of men and women at the tip of the priv­i­lege spear in the most pow­er­ful nation in the his­to­ry of the plan­et. But as real as these pet­ty resent­ments were and are, they pale in com­par­i­son to the most impor­tant thing. They miss the real roots of Ivy rage. Brett Kavanaugh’s true sin isn’t his con­nec­tions, his pop­u­lar­i­ty, or his prep school. His true sin is that he’s a con­ser­v­a­tive. And now he’s a par­tic­u­lar kind of con­ser­v­a­tive — a con­ser­v­a­tive who mat­ters, a con­ser­v­a­tive who will have the pow­er (and might actu­al­ly have the con­vic­tions) to threat­en one or more of the most sacred ele­ments of pro­gres­sive jurispru­dence. He can poten­tial­ly affect the law and the cul­ture in a pro­found way. So what we’re watch­ing is the sys­tem­at­ic revo­ca­tion of his elite priv­i­lege.”
    • One of the Best Speech­es You Will Ever Hear from the Sen­ate Floor (Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coali­tion): “I believe that we have a wide­spread lega­cy of sex­u­al assault in this coun­try. I believe we don’t have much of a shared sex­u­al eth­ic right now—and we haven’t for quite some time—and I think hor­ri­ble stuff has hap­pened, and con­tin­ues to hap­pen. I’ve wept with the vic­tims of sex­u­al assault, and I believe the advo­ca­cy groups’ data that between one-fifth and one-third of Amer­i­can women have been sex­u­al­ly assault­ed at some point in their lives. And giv­en that most women have many oth­er impor­tant women in their lives—a mom, and a daugh­ter, sis­ters, and a cou­ple of close friends—it means that the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of Amer­i­can women have been deeply affect­ed, deeply hurt, by the tragedy of sex­u­al vio­lence.” The speech is by Ben Sasse, a for­mer sem­i­nary pres­i­dent now serv­ing as a sen­a­tor from Nebras­ka.
    • Rage Pol­i­tics On The Left (R. R. Reno, First Things): “Of the utopi­an dreams of the 1960s, only the sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion has attained cul­tur­al dom­i­nance. To a great degree, we as a soci­ety believe in the promis­es of that rev­o­lu­tion: that sex can be safe; that men and women can enjoy sex­u­al free­dom to the same degree and in the same way; that sex need have noth­ing to do with chil­dren; that sex is pure­ly pri­vate. These promis­es are back­stopped by abor­tion, the con­sti­tu­tion­al sta­tus of which fuels the urgency sur­round­ing the Kavanaugh appoint­ment.”
      • In a sim­i­lar vein: Believ­abil­i­ty Is The Road To Nation­al Ruin (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “When pol­i­tics becomes sole­ly a mat­ter of ‘I believe’ ver­sus ‘I believe,’ it descends into a raw con­test for pow­er. His­tor­i­cal­ly, it’s been fas­cists, not lib­er­als, who tend to win such con­tests.”
    • I was sex­u­al­ly assault­ed and thought it was my fault. It’s past time for a 1980s reck­on­ing. (Kirsten Pow­ers, USA Today): “There is a prob­lem, though, and it’s this: The cul­ture failed to give us the lan­guage to describe such vio­la­tions, and made us feel that talk­ing about what hap­pened to an author­i­ty fig­ure would only make things worse for us. For­tu­nate­ly for women, what hap­pened in the 1980s isn’t stay­ing in the 1980s. It’s a reck­on­ing that is well over­due.”
  3. Steel­man­ning the NIM­BYs (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “San Fran­cis­co is easy to hate. Even a lot of the peo­ple who already live there hate it. They hate the streets piled with dis­card­ed nee­dles and human waste. They hate the traf­fic (fifth worst in the world) and the crime (third most prop­er­ty crime in the US). They hate liv­ing five peo­ple to a three-bed­room apart­ment. They hate hav­ing aggres­sive peo­ple scream incom­pre­hen­si­ble things at them on the side­walk. They hate the var­i­ous mutu­al­ly hos­tile tran­sit sys­tems that inter­lock in a sys­tem I would call byzan­tine except that at least you could get around medieval Con­stan­tino­ple with­out check­ing whether the Muni and Cal­Train were mys­te­ri­ous­ly fail­ing to con­nect to each oth­er today. They hate that every­one else in the city hates them, from vis­i­ble KILL ALL TECHIES graf­fi­ti on their com­mute to work, to a sub­tle mood of seething resent­ment from every­one they meet. They hate the omnipresent bill­boards expect­ing them to have strong opin­ions on apps. I’m not say­ing every­one in San Fran­cis­co hates it. There are peo­ple who like all sorts of things. Some peo­ple like being tied up, whipped, and elec­tro­cut­ed by strangers. And a dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of these peo­ple live in San Fran­cis­co. I am just say­ing this isn’t a coin­ci­dence.”
    • Steel­man­ning refers to the oppo­site of attack­ing a straw man argu­ment. Instead of mak­ing your opponent’s argu­ment weak­er, you strength­en it as much as you can.
    • Coun­ter­point: YIMBY! (Scott Sum­n­er, Econ­Lib): “Think of it this way. Lots of par­ents don’t let their kids play out­side by them­selves, because oth­er par­ents don’t let their kids play out­side. If you choose to be the excep­tion, then (unlike dur­ing the 1960s) your kid is the only one avail­able for pedophiles to prey upon. Lots of the anti-NIM­BY feel­ing comes from a false per­cep­tion of what the real estate mar­ket would look like if com­plete lais­sez-faire were adopt­ed, based on the cur­rent dis­tort­ed mar­ket.”
  4. The Dis­ap­pear­ing Con­ser­v­a­tive Pro­fes­sor (Jon A. Shields, Nation­al Affairs): “Pro­fes­sors are even less tol­er­ant of evan­gel­i­cals, whom they asso­ciate with social con­ser­vatism. Near­ly 60% of anthro­pol­o­gists, 50% of lit­er­a­ture pro­fes­sors, 39% of polit­i­cal sci­en­tists and soci­ol­o­gists, 34% of phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sors, and 29% of his­to­ri­ans say they would be less inclined to hire evan­gel­i­cals. Yancey fur­ther found that female pro­fes­sors expressed more anti-con­ser­v­a­tive bias than men, per­haps in part because female pro­fes­sors tend to be more pro­gres­sive than their male peers.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of gov­ern­ment at Clare­mont McKen­na.
  5. The Big Hack: How Chi­na Used a Tiny Chip to Infil­trate U.S. Com­pa­nies (Jor­dan Robert­son and Michael Rieey, Bloomberg): “Nest­ed on the servers’ moth­er­boards, the testers found a tiny microchip, not much big­ger than a grain of rice, that wasn’t part of the boards’ orig­i­nal design. Ama­zon report­ed the dis­cov­ery to U.S. author­i­ties, send­ing a shud­der through the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty. Elemental’s servers could be found in Depart­ment of Defense data cen­ters, the CIA’s drone oper­a­tions, and the onboard net­works of Navy war­ships. And Ele­men­tal was just one of hun­dreds of Super­mi­cro cus­tomers. Dur­ing the ensu­ing top-secret probe, which remains open more than three years lat­er, inves­ti­ga­tors deter­mined that the chips allowed the attack­ers to cre­ate a stealth door­way into any net­work that includ­ed the altered machines. Mul­ti­ple peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter say inves­ti­ga­tors found that the chips had been insert­ed at fac­to­ries run by man­u­fac­tur­ing sub­con­trac­tors in Chi­na.”
    • This bit made me chuck­le: “Two of Elemental’s biggest ear­ly clients were the Mor­mon church, which used the tech­nol­o­gy to beam ser­mons to con­gre­ga­tions around the world, and the adult film indus­try, which did not.”
  6. How Do Chris­tians Fit Into the Two-Par­ty Sys­tem? They Don’t (Tim Keller, New York Times): “Chris­tians are pushed toward two main options. One is to with­draw and try to be apo­lit­i­cal. The sec­ond is to assim­i­late and ful­ly adopt one party’s whole pack­age in order to have your place at the table. Nei­ther of these options is valid.”
  7. Are You a Young Evan­gel­i­cal? We Want to Hear From You Ahead of the Midterm Elec­tions (Eliz­a­beth Dias, New York Times): “If you are an evan­gel­i­cal born after 1980, I’d love to hear about the rela­tion­ship between your faith and pol­i­tics today. And if you grew up evan­gel­i­cal and your views are shift­ing, feel free to share that, too. We may pub­lish a selec­tion of the respons­es.” Take a few min­utes and respond to this — you might get print­ed in the New York Times.

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  Book Review: See­ing Like A State (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “Peas­ants didn’t like per­ma­nent sur­names. Their own sys­tem was quite rea­son­able for them: John the bak­er was John Bak­er, John the black­smith was John Smith, John who lived under the hill was John Under­hill, John who was real­ly short was John Short. The same per­son might be John Smith and John Under­hill in dif­fer­ent con­texts, where his sta­tus as a black­smith or place of ori­gin was more impor­tant. But the gov­ern­ment insist­ed on giv­ing every­one a sin­gle per­ma­nent name, unique for the vil­lage, and track­ing who was in the same fam­i­ly as whom. Resis­tance was intense.” This is long and amaz­ing. (first shared in vol­ume 95)

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 171

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. So much ink about the Ford-Kavanaugh hear­ings! I’m going to avoid post­ing any arti­cles about it until a lit­tle more time has passed and more devel­op­ments have occurred, except for this insight­ful bit from the humor site The Baby­lon Bee: Suc­cess: After A Full Day Of Hear­ings, Every­one Believes Exact­ly What They Already Believed About Kavanaugh.
    • A verse that keeps com­ing to mind is Leviti­cus 19:15 — “Do not per­vert jus­tice; do not show par­tial­i­ty to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neigh­bor fair­ly.” In oth­er words, God’s stan­dard of jus­tice is straight­for­ward and with­out par­tial­i­ty. Rich peo­ple can sin against poor peo­ple, and poor peo­ple can sin against rich peo­ple. Men can sin against women, and women can sin against men. White peo­ple can sin against black peo­ple, and black peo­ple can sin against white peo­ple. True jus­tice comes from judg­ment that tran­scends our sym­pa­thies and prej­u­dices (a type of unjust pre­judg­ment). Per­haps Judge Kavanaugh sinned against Dr. Ford. Per­haps Dr. Ford is sin­ning against Judge Kavanaugh. Per­haps her mem­o­ry is faulty. Per­haps his mem­o­ry is faulty. We must not show par­tial­i­ty to her or favoritism to him. To do oth­er­wise is to per­vert jus­tice.
    • An alum­nus sent me this hymn which he found time­ly (and I con­cur): A Hymn: O God of Earth and Altar (G.K. Chester­ton): “O God of earth and altar, Bow down and hear our cry, Our earth­ly rulers fal­ter, Our peo­ple drift and die; The walls of gold entomb us, The swords of scorn divide, Take not thy thun­der from us, But take away our pride.”
  2. Why Athe­ists Are Not As Ratio­nal As Some Like To Think (Lois Lee, The Con­ver­sa­tion): “Impor­tant­ly, the sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence does not tend to sup­port the view that athe­ism is about ratio­nal thought and the­ism is about exis­ten­tial ful­fil­ments.” The author’s Ph.D. is in soci­ol­o­gy from Cam­bridge and she is a pro­fes­sor of reli­gious stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kent.
  3. Ter­mi­nal Lucid­i­ty: The Researchers Attempt­ing to Prove Your Mind Lives On Even After You Die (Zaron Bur­nett III, Mel): “In essence, ter­mi­nal lucid­i­ty is a mys­te­ri­ous flash of life and vital­i­ty that occurs in peo­ple just before they die. It’s most remark­able in peo­ple who have demen­tia, Alzheimer’s, menin­gi­tis, brain dam­age, strokes or were in a coma. There’s no known med­ical expla­na­tion for where this sud­den surge of vital­i­ty and func­tion­al­i­ty comes from. In large part because as sud­den­ly as it comes, with­in a few hours or even a day or two, it fades and the per­son dies, tak­ing any answers with them.” The open­ing anec­dote is wild.
  4. A Chris­t­ian Singer Is Big­ger Than Drake and Ari­ana Grande This Week (Amy X. Wang, Rolling Stone): “[Lau­ren Daigle’s] suc­cess high­lights some­thing broad­er, how­ev­er: the deep per­sis­tence of Chris­t­ian music in the U.S. audi­ence — an aspect of music con­sump­tion that has been large­ly skipped over by head­lines pro­claim­ing rap as the sole dri­ver of mod­ern music in Amer­i­ca. While rap and R&B have indeed risen to become the lead­ing genre of music con­sump­tion, Chris­t­ian music remains a siz­able minor­i­ty mass. Sol­id num­bers are hard to come by, but at its annu­al con­fer­ence in 2015, the Gospel Music Asso­ci­a­tion report­ed that 68 per­cent of Amer­i­cans had lis­tened to Chris­t­ian or gospel music with­in the last 30 days.”
  5. It’s time to rethink how much booze may be too much (Julia Bel­luz, Vox): “… the sto­ry about the health effects of mod­er­ate drink­ing is shift­ing pret­ty dra­mat­i­cal­ly. New research on alco­hol and mor­tal­i­ty, and a grow­ing aware­ness about the rise in alco­hol-relat­ed deaths in the US, is caus­ing a reck­on­ing among researchers about even mod­er­ate lev­els of alco­hol con­sump­tion.”
  6. Reflect­ing on “Racism Lives Here, Too”, Part One, see also Part Two, and Part Three (James Banker, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “As we’ve ral­lied around our dif­fer­ences, we’ve neglect­ed our com­mon­al­i­ties. We ascribe the max­i­mal­ly offen­sive and hos­tile inter­pre­ta­tions to the words and behav­ior of oth­ers. For fear of giv­ing offense or being offend­ed, we choose silence over dia­logue, as we retreat into ever more con­cen­trat­ed fac­tions of like-mind­ed peo­ple who think and speak like us. Lines have been drawn. Defens­es for­ti­fied. But along the way, we lost a com­mon lan­guage. With only the brute sig­nals for friend and foe, we com­mu­ni­cate across our divides like ships pass­ing in the night: only signs and silence.” The author is a recent Stan­ford law school grad and writes with unusu­al skill. Read­ing this felt more like read­ing an essay in the Atlantic or the New York­er than read­ing a typ­i­cal op-ed in the Dai­ly. Be sure to read all three parts.
  7. Were Evan­gel­i­cals Real­ly Silent about Roe v. Wade? (Thomas Kidd, Gospel Coali­tion): “It has become com­mon­place for his­to­ri­ans to say that evan­gel­i­cals had a mut­ed response to the Roe v. Wade deci­sion, which struck down state laws against abor­tion in 1973.… evan­gel­i­cals, both white and black, reg­is­tered grave con­cern about Roe and abor­tion-on-demand, how­ev­er. Evi­dence of this fact is not hard to find. Flag­ship evan­gel­i­cal mag­a­zine Chris­tian­i­ty Today wrote that ‘the deci­sion runs counter not mere­ly to the moral teach­ings of Chris­tian­i­ty through the ages but also to the moral sense of the Amer­i­can peo­ple.’ Like­wise, the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Evan­gel­i­cals said, ‘We deplore, in the strongest pos­si­ble terms, the deci­sion of the U.S. Supreme Court which has made it legal to ter­mi­nate a preg­nan­cy for no bet­ter rea­son than per­son­al con­ve­nience or soci­o­log­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions.’” The author is a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at Bay­lor Uni­ver­si­ty. I find this arti­cle fas­ci­nat­ing because I have heard the oppo­site pro­claimed con­fi­dent­ly so many times, but Chris­tian­i­ty Today and the NAE def­i­nite­ly rep­re­sent the main­stream of evan­gel­i­cal thought.

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 Deal­ing With Nui­sance Lust (Dou­glas Wil­son, per­son­al blog): “Min­i­mize the seri­ous­ness of this, but not so that you can feel good about indulging your­self. Min­i­mize the seri­ous­ness of it so that you can walk away from a cou­ple of big boobs with­out feel­ing like you have just fought a cos­mic bat­tle with prin­ci­pal­i­ties and pow­ers in the heav­en­ly places, for cry­ing out loud. Or, if you like, in anoth­er strat­e­gy of see­ing things right­ly, you could nick­name these breasts of oth­er woman as the ‘prin­ci­pal­i­ties and pow­ers.’ What­ev­er you do, take this part of life in stride like a grown-up. Stop react­ing like a horny and con­flict­ed twelve-year-old boy.” (first shared in vol­ume 148)

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 166

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. God’s May­or in Guatemala (Dale Han­son Bourke, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “In the so-called North­ern Tri­an­gle of Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, the coun­tries of Hon­duras, El Sal­vador, and Guatemala form a vio­lent tri­ad. The mur­der rate is high­er in this region than in most active war zones. Gangs, car­tels, and vig­i­lantes impose their will, tak­ing over or co-opt­ing legit­i­mate police forces and rou­tine­ly ter­ror­iz­ing aver­age cit­i­zens…. In the mid­dle of this vio­lence sits the town of San Cristóbal Acasaguastlán, a pic­turesque oasis of calm with a pop­u­la­tion of about 6,000 peo­ple. What sets this place apart are the efforts of Jeaneth Ordoñez, the Chris­t­ian may­or who has unit­ed the towns­peo­ple in their quest to keep the munic­i­pal­i­ty free of the vio­lence and upheaval that sur­rounds them.”
  2. No alco­hol safe to drink, glob­al study con­firms (Lau­rel Ives, BBC): “A large new glob­al study pub­lished in the Lancet has con­firmed pre­vi­ous research which has shown that there is no safe lev­el of alco­hol con­sump­tion. The researchers admit mod­er­ate drink­ing may pro­tect against heart dis­ease but found that the risk of can­cer and oth­er dis­eases out­weighs these pro­tec­tions.” The under­ly­ing research: Alco­hol use and bur­den for 195 coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries, 1990–2016: a sys­tem­at­ic analy­sis for the Glob­al Bur­den of Dis­ease Study 2016 (The Lancet. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31310–2)
  3. Chris­tians to Sci­ence: Leave Ani­mals the Way God Designed Them—Except Mos­qui­toes (Rebec­ca Ran­dall, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Mess­ing with nature or God’s plan was a top con­cern for those opposed to engi­neer­ing ani­mal meat to be more nutri­tious (22%), bring­ing back an extinct species (23%), or mak­ing aquar­i­um fish glow (18%). The rea­son cit­ed most often to oppose cre­at­ing glow­ing fish was sim­ply that it is unnec­es­sary and friv­o­lous (48%).” Appar­ent­ly I am an out­lier. Make the fish glow, make meat more nutri­tious, and deal with mos­qui­to-borne dis­ease. I real­ly like the way the Kenyan researcher quot­ed in the arti­cle encour­ages us to tar­get the par­a­site and not the car­ri­er. We are made in the image of God so that we can exer­cise domin­ion over Cre­ation!
  4. The Peter Prin­ci­ple is a joke tak­en seri­ous­ly. Is it true? (Tim Har­ford, Finan­cial Times): “The authors of the paper dis­cov­ered that the best sales­peo­ple were more like­ly to be pro­mot­ed, and that they were then ter­ri­ble man­agers. The bet­ter they had been in sales, the worse their teams per­formed once they arrived in a man­age­r­i­al role. What’s more, peo­ple were not pro­mot­ed for behav­iour that might seem cor­re­lat­ed with man­age­r­i­al abil­i­ty — in par­tic­u­lar, those who col­lab­o­rat­ed with oth­ers were not reward­ed for doing so. What mat­tered were sales, pure and sim­ple.” It may be the case that you should dress for the job you want, but if you want to get pro­mot­ed you had bet­ter rock the job you have.
  5. Gay Men Are Dif­fer­ent, Says Gay Male Read­er (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Well-mean­ing straight lib­er­als just do not get it, and lots of gay men will not crit­i­cize any­thing gay men col­lec­tive­ly do because they think it will result in both lots of anger from oth­er gay men as well as the empow­er­ment of ide­o­log­i­cal ene­mies who want to, say, ban gay mar­riage. Men and women are fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent and a male-female sex­u­al cul­ture is not going to be the same as a male-male sex­u­al cul­ture.” I sus­pect this will con­sid­ered con­tro­ver­sial by one set of read­ers and com­mon sense by anoth­er, and that the groups will not break down along pre­dictable lines.
  6. How the inter­net has changed dat­ing (The Econ­o­mist): “…a 2013 study researchers from Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go showed that mar­riages that start­ed online were less like­ly to end in break-up and were asso­ci­at­ed with high­er lev­els of sat­is­fac­tion than mar­riages of the same vin­tage between sim­i­lar cou­ples who had met offline: the dif­fer­ence was not huge, but it was sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant.”
  7. What Trump Knew and Vot­ers Did­n’t (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “…Trump vot­ers went to the polls unaware that a sum exceed­ing most of their annu­al salaries was expend­ed to keep that [Trump paid off a porn star] from them. Even if the pay­ment had been total­ly legal, it would’ve con­sti­tut­ed a delib­er­ate, immoral, clas­si­cal­ly politi­cian-like effort to mis­lead vot­ers about the choice before them. But the pay­ment was not legal. It vio­lat­ed cam­paign-finance laws—and it was not a mere­ly acci­den­tal and tech­ni­cal vio­la­tion of an over­ly com­pli­cat­ed or con­tro­ver­sial pro­vi­sion.” This arti­cle is a pret­ty good and suc­cinct sum­ma­ry of the cur­rent debate about Trump.

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 Can I Learn To Receive – And Give – Crit­i­cism In Light Of The Cross?(Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coali­tion): “A believ­er is one who iden­ti­fies with all that God affirms and con­demns in Christ’s cru­ci­fix­ion. In oth­er words, in Christ’s cross I agree with God’s judg­ment of me; and in Christ’s cross I agree with God’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of me. Both have a rad­i­cal impact on how we take and give crit­i­cism.” This is based on a longer arti­cle (4 page PDF). (first shared in vol­ume 63)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 147

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. Inside the White House Bible Study group (Owen Amos, BBC): “But is a bible study for Cab­i­net mem­bers, with polit­i­cal themes, not a merg­ing of church and state? ‘I believe in insti­tu­tion­al sep­a­ra­tion, but not influ­en­tial sep­a­ra­tion,’ [Drollinger] says. ‘No mat­ter what the insti­tu­tion is — the fam­i­ly, com­merce, edu­ca­tion — it needs the bul­wark pre­cepts of the word of God in order to func­tion cor­rect­ly… But the minute I start to amal­ga­mate the church and the state insti­tu­tion­al­ly, then I’m into theoc­ra­cy.’”
  2. Why you stink at fact-check­ing (Lisa Fazio, The Con­ver­sa­tion): “First, peo­ple have a gen­er­al bias to believe that things are true. (After all, most things that we read or hear are true.) In fact, there’s some evi­dence that we ini­tial­ly process all state­ments as true and that it then takes cog­ni­tive effort to men­tal­ly mark them as false. Sec­ond, peo­ple tend to accept infor­ma­tion as long as it’s close enough to the cor­rect infor­ma­tion. Nat­ur­al speech often includes errors, paus­es and repeats. (‘She was wear­ing a blue – um, I mean, a black, a black dress.’) One idea is that to main­tain con­ver­sa­tions we need to go with the flow – accept infor­ma­tion that is ‘good enough’ and just move on.” The author is a psych pro­fes­sor at Van­der­bilt.
  3. One extra glass of wine ‘will short­en your life by 30 min­utes’ (Sarah Bose­ly, The Guardian): “The risks for a 40-year-old of drink­ing over the rec­om­mend­ed dai­ly lim­it were com­pa­ra­ble to smok­ing, said one lead­ing sci­en­tist. ‘Above two units a day, the death rates steadi­ly climb,’ said David Spiegel­hal­ter, Win­ton pro­fes­sor for the pub­lic under­stand­ing of risk at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge.” This is cer­tain­ly going to be con­test­ed research, but it caught my eye.
  4. The 10-Year Baby Win­dow That Is the Key to the Women’s Pay Gap (Claire Cain Miller, NY Times): “When women have their first child between age 25 and 35, their pay nev­er recov­ers, rel­a­tive to that of their hus­bands. Yet women who have their first baby either before 25 or after 35 — before their careers get start­ed or once they’re estab­lished — even­tu­al­ly close the pay gap with their hus­bands.”
  5. Two dif­fer­ent analy­ses of California’s state pol­i­tics:
    • CA is awe­some! The Great Les­son of Cal­i­for­nia in America’s New Civ­il War (Peter Ley­den and Ruy Teix­eira, Medi­um): “Cal­i­for­nia today pro­vides a mod­el for Amer­i­ca as a whole. This mod­el of pol­i­tics and gov­ern­ment is by no means per­fect, but it is far ahead of the nation in com­ing to terms with the inex­orable dig­i­tal, glob­al, sus­tain­able trans­for­ma­tion of our era. It is a thriv­ing work in progress that gives hope that Amer­i­ca can pull out of the polit­i­cal mess we’re in.”
    • CA is a train wreck! Cal­i­for­nia Is the Mod­el for Nation­al Divorce, Not Demo­c­ra­t­ic Dom­i­na­tion (David French, Nation­al Review): “…it turns out that Cal­i­for­nia pol­i­tics and poli­cies are repel­lent to mil­lions of Cal­i­for­ni­ans. Between 2007 and 2016 rough­ly 6 mil­lion Cal­i­for­nia res­i­dents left the state. Only 5 mil­lion peo­ple moved to Cal­i­for­nia from oth­er Amer­i­can states. And where did a plu­ral­i­ty of for­mer Cal­i­for­ni­ans go? Texas.”
  6. The Sam Har­ris Debate (Ezra Klein, Vox): this is a long, inter­est­ing debate part­ly about Charles Mur­ray but ulti­mate­ly about much deep­er issues.
    • Sam Har­ris: “How can we get to a world where the max­i­mum num­ber of peo­ple thrive? I view iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics as among the worst pieces of soft­ware you can be run­ning to try to get there. I want to get to a world where, I mean, it’s Mar­tin Luther King’s claim about the con­tent of your char­ac­ter, rather than the col­or of your skin. That is the goal, and if you want to reverse engi­neer that goal, giv­ing pri­ma­cy to iden­ti­ty is one of the worst things you can do.”
    • Ezra Klein: “To Har­ris… iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics is some­thing oth­ers do. To me, it’s some­thing we all do, and that he and many oth­ers refuse to admit they’re doing. This is one of the advan­tages of being the major­i­ty group: Your con­cerns get cod­ed as con­cerns; it’s every­one else who is play­ing iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics.”
  7. There was a big ker­fluff­fle about The Atlantic fir­ing colum­nist Kevin Williams over his views on abor­tion. I was real­ly stunned by how much ink was spilled over it — this is just a small sam­ple. The authors make inter­est­ing obser­va­tions about dis­agree­ment in Amer­i­ca.
    • Kevin Williamson, Thought Crim­i­nal (Jon­ah Gold­berg, The Nation­al Review): “Edi­tors or own­ers should have absolute author­i­ty to con­trol what appears in the pages of their mag­a­zines. How they exer­cise that author­i­ty, i.e., how much ortho­doxy they want to impose or how much free-for-all they want to encour­age, is a pru­den­tial ques­tion (and one I often have strong opin­ions about). What edi­tors should not have any con­trol over is what their writ­ers are allowed to think.”
    • Among The Abor­tion Extrem­ists (Ross Douthat, NY Times):  “…this is a case study in exact­ly the prob­lem estab­lish­ment edi­tors are try­ing to address by widen­ing their pool of writ­ers: the inabil­i­ty of con­tem­po­rary lib­er­al­ism to see itself from the out­side, as it looks to the many peo­ple who for some rea­son, class or reli­gion or his­tor­i­cal expe­ri­ence, are not ful­ly indoc­tri­nat­ed into its increas­ing­ly inco­her­ent mix of ortho­dox­ies. By this I mean that my pro-choice friends endors­ing Williamson’s sack­ing can’t see that his extrem­ism is mir­rored in their own…”
    • Bias against con­ser­v­a­tives works like any oth­er prej­u­dice (Megan McAr­dle, Wash­ing­ton Post): “In a bet­ter world, this moment would help us under­stand each oth­er, and come to some sort of rea­son­able agree­ment, rather than swear­ing mutu­al­ly assured destruc­tion. That’s because what con­ser­v­a­tives are say­ing about media bias sounds a lot like what lib­er­als are say­ing about race and gen­der — and vice ver­sa.”
    • Con­grats, Jeff Gold­berg. You Just Mar­tyred Kevin Williamson. (Jack Schae­fer, Politi­co): “I’ve long admired Williamson’s writ­ing, if not his ideas, for the way he’s inter­nal­ized Michael Kinsley’s warn­ing that if you’re afraid to go too far, you won’t go far enough. Williamson almost always goes too far, tak­ing his argu­ments to thought fron­tiers where there are no roads, no mobile phone ser­vice and some­times bare­ly enough air to breathe.”
    • A Twit­ter thread by Eliz­a­beth Bru­enig giv­ing anoth­er point of view: “So the mar­ket incen­tives inside the rightwing media world — the things you need to do to get ahead there — are oppo­site those out­side of it. To put it anoth­er way: You can get famous trig­ger­ing libs, but if you’re real­ly good at it, well…it works?”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • Grace­ful­ly Graces Me (YouTube): I am grate­ful that our wor­ship team doesn’t sing songs like this
  • Nev­er Throw Any­thing Away (Pearls Before Swine): I am pig, to the tremen­dous con­ster­na­tion of my wife.
  • What is Skim Milk? The FDA ver­sus Dairy Farm­ers (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “South Moun­tain Cream­ery sells skim milk, i.e. milk with the fat skimmed off. The FDA, how­ev­er, wants skim milk to con­tain as many vit­a­mins as whole milk so they define skim milk as includ­ing vit­a­min A and D. If farm­ers want to sell skim milk and call it ‘skim milk’ they have to add vit­a­mins. To avoid pros­e­cu­tion the FDA is requir­ing South Moun­tain Cream­ery to label their skim milk, ‘imi­ta­tion skim milk’! Yes. War is Peace. Free­dom is Slav­ery. Real Skim Milk is Imi­ta­tion Skim Milk.” This is actu­al­ly true. I still found it amus­ing.

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have some thoughts about slav­ery and the Bible – Does The Bible Sup­port Slav­ery? (a lec­ture giv­en by the war­den of Tyn­dale House at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, the link is to the video with notes) and Does God Con­done Slav­ery In The Bible? (Part One – Old Tes­ta­ment) and also Part Two – New Tes­ta­ment (longer pieces from Glenn Miller at Chris­t­ian Think­tank). All three are quite help­ful. (first shared in vol­ume 76)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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