Tag: amazon

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 291

fas­ci­nat­ing links from a vari­ety of per­spec­tives

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 291, which is not a very inter­est­ing num­ber. It’s 3 · 97, which I guess is some­thing.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Inside Xinjiang’s Prison State (Ben Mauk, New York­er): “On his sec­ond day of deten­tion, a mem­ber of the camp admin­is­tra­tion came to see him. Kok­teubai asked when he would learn what he was accused of doing. He was sur­prised to learn that he wouldn’t be ques­tioned at all. ‘If you hadn’t com­mit­ted a crime, you wouldn’t have end­ed up here,’ the admin­is­tra­tor told him. ‘So there is some­thing you are here for.’ ” The graph­ics inter­fere with the read­ing expe­ri­ence, but it’s worth­while.
  2. On The Expe­ri­ence of Being Poor-ish, For Peo­ple Who Aren’t (Anony­mous, Sub­stack): “When some­one is telling me they are or have been poor and I’m try­ing to deter­mine how poor exact­ly they were, there’s one ever­green ques­tion I ask that has nev­er failed to give me a good idea of what kind of sit­u­a­tion I’m deal­ing with. That ques­tion is: ‘How many times have they turned off your water?’.” Fol­low up: Being Poor-ish Revis­it­ed: Read­er Ques­tions These are both real­ly good.
  3. David Shor on Why Trump Was Good for the GOP and How Dems Can Win in 2022 (Eric Levitz, New York Mag­a­zine): “But when I look at the 2020 elec­tion, I see that we ran against the most unpop­u­lar Repub­li­can ever to run for pres­i­dent — and we ran lit­er­al­ly the most pop­u­lar fig­ure in our par­ty whose last name is not Oba­ma — and we only nar­row­ly won the Elec­toral Col­lege. If Biden had done 0.3 per­cent worse, then Don­ald Trump would have won reelec­tion…” This is extra­or­di­nar­i­ly fas­ci­nat­ing in a very non­par­ti­san way (although the inter­vie­wee is extreme­ly par­ti­san).
  4. In pan­dem­ic news:
    • 5 Pan­dem­ic Mis­takes We Keep Repeat­ing (Zeynep Tufek­ci, The Atlantic): “One of the most impor­tant prob­lems under­min­ing the pan­dem­ic response has been the mis­trust and pater­nal­ism that some pub­lic-health agen­cies and experts have exhib­it­ed toward the pub­lic.… And yet, from the begin­ning, a good chunk of the pub­lic-fac­ing mes­sag­ing and news arti­cles implied or claimed that vac­cines won’t pro­tect you against infect­ing oth­er peo­ple or that we didn’t know if they would, when both were false.” Watch­ing peo­ple reject accu­rate infor­ma­tion about the pan­dem­ic because high-sta­tus peo­ple rail against it has been like watch­ing my skep­ti­cal friends reject the gospel because of peer pres­sure. IT’S GOOD NEWS — BELIEVE IT! The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at UNC.
    • Pan­dem­ic Approach­es: The Dif­fer­ences Between Flori­da, Cal­i­for­nia (Noel King, Greg Allen, & Eric West­er­velt, NPR): “In Decem­ber, Cal­i­for­nia had a spike, and Gov­er­nor Gavin New­som reim­posed a stay-at-home order and a busi­ness lock­down order that was recent­ly lift­ed. At the same time, cas­es were spik­ing in Flori­da. But every­thing stayed open, includ­ing schools. So which approach works?” Spoil­er: Flori­da is look­ing pret­ty good.
    • Stop Say­ing We Can’t Go Back to Nor­mal After Vac­cines (Bon­nie Kris­t­ian, Rea­son): “Nor­mal­cy is the whole point of vac­ci­na­tion, and these vac­cines can get us there. So when pub­lic health advice says “no” to nor­mal­cy even after vac­ci­na­tion, it mis­leads the pub­lic and wild­ly under­sells the vac­cines. A year into this, that’s cru­el and dispir­it­ing.… there must be a firm end date to those pub­lic mea­sures for every­one. I can’t say exact­ly when it should be, nor do I think a sin­gle nation­al date would make sense. I’m envi­sion­ing some­thing like six weeks after vac­cines have become avail­able (as in, you can eas­i­ly get an appoint­ment) to all who want them in a giv­en city, coun­ty, or state.”
    • Not Gath­er­ing with the Church Hurts You Spir­i­tu­al­ly (Jonathan Lee­man, 9 Marks): “Jesus designed Chris­tian­i­ty and the progress of our dis­ci­ple­ship to cen­ter around gath­er­ings. The math is there­fore sim­ple: Gath­er­ing with the church is spir­i­tu­al­ly good for you. Not phys­i­cal­ly gath­er­ing with the church spir­i­tu­al­ly hurts you.”
    • The Secret Life of a Coro­n­avirus (Carl Zim­mer, New York Times): “With sci­en­tists adrift in an ocean of def­i­n­i­tions, philoso­phers have rowed out to offer lifelines.“ What a glo­ri­ous sen­tence. Also, I began the arti­cle sym­pa­thet­ic to the idea that virus­es are alive and we draw our bound­aries too tight­ly, which is what the author wants me to believe. But his argu­ments were so weak that I’ve flipped to: “not alive, mere­ly inter­ac­tive.”
    • The rise of the nox­ious con­tract (David B. Grusky et al, Stan­ford Cen­ter On Pover­ty and Inequal­i­ty): “We observed that many peo­ple ‘com­pare down­ward’ by empha­siz­ing their priv­i­lege rel­a­tive to those less for­tu­nate, that oth­ers ‘look out­ward’ in recog­ni­tion that times of cri­sis require band­ing togeth­er, and that yet oth­ers ‘look inward’ as they cope with unusu­al­ly stress­ful chal­lenges. Although many ways of cop­ing are there­fore in play, none of them entail invid­i­ous com­par­isons that then lead to resent­ment or con­flict.” An analy­sis of whether peo­ple who have to work in-per­son are resent­ful of those who telecom­mute. Spoil­er: not so much. Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  5. On Ryan Ander­son­’s book being dropped by Ama­zon:
    • Ryan T. Ander­son Was Made For This Moment (Rod Dreher inter­view­ing Ryan T. Ander­son, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “…most every­one agrees that a hos­pi­tal shouldn’t refuse to treat some­one for Covid because they iden­ti­fy as LGBT. But, thank God, that doesn’t seem to have actu­al­ly ever hap­pened. Still when peo­ple hear about a law that bans LGBT dis­crim­i­na­tion, that’s what they have in mind. They don’t real­ize what it means for sex-reas­sign­ment pro­ce­dures in gen­er­al, let alone what it means for chil­dren with gen­der dys­pho­ria in par­tic­u­lar. So activists pull on people’s heart­strings by say­ing we need a law ban­ning tru­ly unjust dis­crim­i­na­tion (which is vir­tu­al­ly non-exis­tent) and then that law isn’t nuanced and mea­sured, but a rad­i­cal bill impos­ing a rad­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy. A law that is sold as a shield pro­tect­ing vul­ner­a­ble minori­ties ends up being a sword to per­se­cute peo­ple who don’t embrace a new sex­u­al ortho­doxy.”
    • Book Ban­ning in an Age of Ama­zon (Abi­gail Shri­er, Sub­stack): “Remem­ber where you were in Feb­ru­ary of 2021. Con­gress fought over a sec­ond impeach­ment of an ex-pres­i­dent. The states debat­ed whether forced tru­an­cy would make life eas­i­er for America’s teach­ers. And earth’s largest bookseller—(Internal mot­to: ‘Work Hard. Have Fun. Make his­to­ry.’)—began qui­et­ly delet­ing books.”
  6. Killing The SAT Means Hurt­ing Minori­ties (Andrew Sul­li­van, Sub­stack): “There’s a rea­son why white Hol­ly­wood celebs cheat the sys­tem. It’s the only way their less gift­ed kids can win out over the dis­ad­van­taged. Want to max­i­mize priv­i­lege? Make admis­sions depen­dent sole­ly on teacher rec­om­men­da­tions, school grades, and per­son­al essays. Want to min­i­mize it? Abol­ish lega­cy admis­sions, and use the SAT.” I gen­uine­ly do not under­stand how this is con­tro­ver­sial. The data is clear and over­whelm­ing.
  7. Ele­vat­ing the Role of Faith-Inspired Impact in the Social Sec­tor (Jeri Eck­hart Queenan, Peter Grunert, and Devin Mur­phy, The Bridges­pan Group): “Giv­ing to reli­gious­ly affil­i­at­ed orga­ni­za­tions (which includes dona­tions to con­gre­ga­tions) rep­re­sents near­ly one-third of all giv­ing in the Unit­ed States. Rough­ly a third of the 50 largest non­prof­its in the coun­try have a faith ori­en­ta­tion. And, 40 per­cent of inter­na­tion­al non­govern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions are faith-inspired.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Spir­i­tu­al Shape of Polit­i­cal Ideas (Joseph Bot­tum, The Week­ly Stan­dard): many mod­ern polit­i­cal ideas are derived from Chris­t­ian the­o­log­i­cal con­cepts. (first shared in vol­ume 1)

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 290

links con­tain­ing both good and bad news for evan­gel­i­cals

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 290, which is an inter­est­ing num­ber because it is both the prod­uct of three primes (= 2 â‹… 5 â‹… 29) as well as the sum of con­sec­u­tive primes (= 67 + 71+ 73 +79).

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Evan­gel­i­cals in Amer­i­ca: The Stats May Sur­prise You (Ryan Burge, Gospel Coali­tion): “…after look­ing at the data for the last 10 years as a quan­ti­ta­tive social sci­en­tist, I can say with cer­tain­ty that although there are clear rea­sons for con­cern, evan­gel­i­cal pres­ence in the Unit­ed States is stronger than ever before.” The author is a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at East­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty and also a pas­tor in a non-evan­gel­i­cal denom­i­na­tion.
  2. Reli­gious Com­mu­ni­ty and Human Flour­ish­ing (Tyler J. Van­der­Weele, Psy­chol­o­gy Today): “In some cas­es, our results close­ly repli­cat­ed past work. For exam­ple, we found that, even after con­trol­ling for the fac­tors above, indi­vid­u­als who attend­ed reli­gious ser­vices week­ly or more were 16% less like­ly to become depressed, and saw a 29% reduc­tion in smok­ing and 34% reduc­tion in heavy drink­ing. These results match rea­son­ably close­ly results from sev­er­al pri­or stud­ies, includ­ing the pri­or meta-analy­ses men­tioned above. Some­what strik­ing­ly, but again in line with pri­or analy­sis, week­ly ser­vice atten­dees were 26% less like­ly to die dur­ing the fol­low-up peri­od.” Van­der­Weele , him­self a Chris­t­ian, is an epi­demi­ol­o­gist at Har­vard and I have shared some of his work before.
  3. When Ama­zon Erased My Book (Ryan T. Ander­son, First Things): “Ama­zon nev­er informed me or my pub­lish­er that it was remov­ing my book. And Amazon’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives haven’t respond­ed to our inquiries about it. Per­haps they’re cit­ing a reli­gious objec­tion to sell­ing my book? Or maybe they only sell books with which they agree? (If so, they have a lot of explain­ing to do about why they car­ry Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.) If there’s a reli­gious or speech objec­tion, let’s hear it.” His book is quite good and is still avail­able at Barnes & Noble. Ama­zon, how­ev­er, sells 5/6 of the books in Amer­i­ca. Being delist­ed by them seri­ous­ly affects the mar­ket­place of ideas.
    • Damna­tio memo­ri­ae (Alan Jacobs, per­son­al blog): “But to me, the most inter­est­ing point for reflec­tion is this: The cen­sors at Ama­zon clear­ly believe there is only one rea­son to read a book. You read a book because you agree with it and want it to con­firm what you already believe. Imag­ine, for instance, a trans­gen­der activist who wants to under­stand the posi­tion held by Ryan Ander­son and peo­ple like him in order bet­ter to refute it. That per­son can’t get a copy of the book through Ama­zon any more than a sym­pa­thet­ic read­er like me can.“  The author is an Eng­lish pro­fes­sor at Bay­lor whose writ­ing I have fea­tured before.
  4. Not all ‘anti-racist’ ideas are good ones. The left isn’t being hon­est about this. (Matthew Ygle­sias, Wash­ing­ton Post): “More broad­ly, iden­ti­fy­ing a racial gap and declar­ing it to be racist is often insuf­fi­cient. Such an approach impedes actu­al­ly think­ing about prob­lems — par­tic­u­lar­ly in media, aca­d­e­m­ic and non­prof­it cir­cles, where the accu­sa­tion of racism can car­ry severe con­se­quences. And so to avoid con­tro­ver­sy, peo­ple avoid impor­tant debates rather than risk­ing offense.”
  5. The Covid Emer­gency Must End (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “A major set­back is always pos­si­ble, but right now, the con­di­tions for the end of the emer­gency seem like­ly to arrive some­time in the sum­mer, not at Christ­mas­time.”
    • School Clo­sures Have Failed America’s Chil­dren (Nicholas Kristof, New York Times): “Yes, it’s hard to open schools dur­ing a pan­dem­ic. But pri­vate schools most­ly man­aged to, and that’s true not only of rich board­ing schools but also of strapped Catholic schools. As a nation, we fought to keep restau­rants and malls open — but we didn’t make schools a sim­i­lar pri­or­i­ty, so needy chil­dren were left behind”
  6. 1 in 6 Gen Z adults are LGBT. And this num­ber could con­tin­ue to grow. (Saman­tha Schmidt, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Research from the Williams Insti­tute at the UCLA School of Law has sim­i­lar­ly found that a key dri­ver of the growth in the LGBT com­mu­ni­ty has been a surge in bisex­u­al women and girls. Bisex­u­al women make up the largest group of LGBT adults — about 35 per­cent, accord­ing to a Williams Insti­tute analy­sis of data from three pop­u­la­tion-based sur­veys. More than one in 10 U.S. high school youth iden­ti­fies as les­bian, gay or bisex­u­al. And among them, 75 per­cent are female and 77 per­cent iden­ti­fy as bisex­u­al.” The cheer­lead­ing aside, it’s a very inter­est­ing arti­cle — espe­cial­ly if you think about oth­er ways to frame it.
    • Anoth­er per­spec­tive on the same data: Two Sex­es. Infi­nite Gen­ders. (Andrew Sul­li­van, Sub­stack): “It turns out that in 2020, only 1.4 per­cent of US adults are gay men, and only 0.7 per­cent are les­bians. So all the gays and les­bians amount to a lit­tle over 2 per­cent of the country’s adults. And that seems about right to me. The sur­prise, how­ev­er, is that there are now almost as many peo­ple iden­ti­fy­ing as ‘trans’ as ‘les­bian’.… Bisex­u­als, at 54.6 per­cent of all ‘LGBT’ iden­ti­fiers, are now a major­i­ty, and in Gen Z, clock in at 72 per­cent! The qual­i­fi­ca­tion to this is that only 3.7 per­cent of bisex­u­als live with some­one of the same sex while over 30 per­cent live with some­one of the oppo­site sex.”
  7. Inside a Bat­tle Over Race, Class and Pow­er at Smith Col­lege (Michael Pow­ell, New York Times): “The sto­ry high­lights the ten­sions between a student’s deeply felt sense of per­son­al truth and facts that are at odds with it.” What is super-weird to me is that I’ve seen peo­ple on social media say, “See? It’s more com­pli­cat­ed than crit­ics are mak­ing it out to be.” But… it’s not. Read­ing the details mere­ly fills in the out­line of the sto­ry I had picked up from oth­er sources.

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 two arti­cles from back in the 90’s, polit­i­cal sci­en­tist J. Budziszews­ki wrote them back-to-back for First Things, The Prob­lem With Lib­er­al­ism and The Prob­lem With Con­ser­v­a­tivism, and if you nev­er have before I encour­age you to read them both. Espe­cial­ly read the one that describes your team. (first shared in a non-Fri­day blog post)

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.