Tag: apologetically interesting

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 65

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The health effects of reli­gious ser­vice atten­dance (red­dit AMA): the researcher, Tyler Van­der­Weele, is a Har­vard pro­fes­sor and a believ­er. You can see his Ver­i­tas talks here.
  2. If you’re not a sports per­son, you may not know that the San Fran­ci­c­so 49’s quar­ter­back recent­ly refused to stand for the nation­al anthem because Amer­i­ca is unjust. Con­tro­ver­sy ensued. Two alum­ni shared rel­e­vant arti­cles: Col­in Kaeper­nick Is Righter Than You Know: The Nation­al Anthem Is a Cel­e­bra­tion of Slav­ery and the salti­er Why I’ll Nev­er Stand Again For ‘The Star-Span­gled Ban­ner’. Doug Wil­son offered good insights at The Seat­ed Col­in Kaeper­nick. See also Be Use­ful (A Post About Col­in Kaepernik) by Scott Adams and Insult­ing Col­in Kaeper­nick Says More About Our Patri­o­tism Than His by Kareem Abdul-Jab­bar. For a con­trary view, see Col­in Kaeper­nick, Meet Hen­ry John­son (David French, Nation­al Review).
  3. Framed. (Christo­pher Gof­fard, LA Times): this is one of the cra­zi­est things I have read all year. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. Heads up: there is a Stan­ford con­nec­tion in the sto­ry and it is not a pos­i­tive one.
  4. What sci­ence real­ly has to say about sex­u­al­i­ty and gen­der (Joe Carter, ERLC): this is a read­able sum­ma­ry of a 144 page PDF writ­ten by Paul McHugh (a psy­chi­a­trist at Johns Hop­kins) and Lawrence May­er (an bio­sta­tis­ti­cian at Ari­zona State). From the orig­i­nal arti­cle: “Sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and gen­der iden­ti­ty resist expla­na­tion by sim­ple the­o­ries. There is a large gap between the cer­tain­ty with which beliefs are held about these mat­ters and what a sober assess­ment of the sci­ence reveals.”
  5. How The Catholic Church Doc­u­ment­ed Moth­er Tere­sa’s 2 Mir­a­cles (Tom Gjel­ten, NPR): “The group rea­soned that if Duf­fin, as an athe­ist, found there was no sci­en­tif­ic rea­son the woman should have recov­ered, who could doubt it was a mir­a­cle? In fact, after her inves­ti­ga­tion of the wom­an’s recov­ery, Duf­fin agreed that the wom­an’s heal­ing was — for lack of a bet­ter word — mirac­u­lous.” The Pope and I dis­agree about a lot of things (includ­ing saints), but I have long been impressed with the way the Catholic Church crit­i­cal­ly eval­u­ates mir­a­cles.
  6. FBI Says For­eign Hack­ers Pen­e­trat­ed State Elec­tion Sys­tems (Michael Isikoff, Yahoo News): I am con­vinced we are way more vul­ner­a­ble on this front than most peo­ple know.
  7. The Sneaky Pro­gram To Spy On Bal­ti­more From Above (Conor Frieder­dorf, The Atlantic): “In real­i­ty, unlike in 1984, Big Broth­er may watch for awhile with­out reveal­ing that there is a Big Broth­er.”
  8. Wait­ing To Die (Michael Pat­ton): well worth your time.

Things Glen Found Amusing

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 61

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Church Wor­ship Music You Need To Know About (Greg Atkin­son, personal blog): “I… prob­a­bly expe­ri­ence music and wor­ship in more church­es year­ly, than just about any­one else…”
  2. Divorce Con­tin­ues To Take A Psy­cho­log­i­cal Toll on Kids (no byline, Guardian): pon­der anew Malachi 2:13–16 and Matthew 19:1–8.
  3. ‘There isn’t real­ly any­thing mag­i­cal about it’: Why more mil­len­ni­als are avoid­ing sex (Tara Bahram­pour, Wash­ing­ton Post):  Your peers are less sex­u­al­ly active than you assume. They “are more than twice as like­ly to be sex­u­al­ly inac­tive in their ear­ly 20s as the pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion was.” 
  4. Are Soar­ing Lev­els of Income Inequal­i­ty Mak­ing Us A More Polar­ized Nation? (Chris­tos Makridis, The Con­ver­sa­tion): “We all real­ize that greater inequal­i­ty has tan­gi­ble impli­ca­tions for who wins and los­es in soci­ety. How­ev­er, all these pieces of evi­dence sug­gest it may also induce more extreme polit­i­cal atti­tudes and ide­olo­gies.” Note the author — one of our own Chi Alpha stu­dents! It’s also on AP’s the Big Sto­ry, so it might get syn­di­cat­ed. Get your self­ies with Chris­tos now before he becomes famous.
  5. Col­lege Stu­dents Protest, Alumni’s Fond­ness Fades, and Checks Shrink (Anemona Hor­to­col­lis, NY Times): we should not be sur­prised when things that polar­ize stu­dents also polar­ize alum­ni.

Things Glen Found Diverting

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 58

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

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

Articles I Found Interesting

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

Amusing

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 57

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

Articles I Found Interesting

This has been a depress­ing week. Shoot­ings by police, shoot­ings of police, the ISIS bomb­ing in Bagh­dad, reli­gious-lib­er­ty infringe­ments, dis­grace­ful polit­i­cal behav­ior and more. If you’re feel­ing down, the first few links will be espe­cial­ly help­ful to you.

  1. How To Pray In Our Time Of Nation­al Cri­sis (Joe Carter, Gospel Coali­tion): “Many of us are anx­ious and hurt­ing. All of us are con­fused. When faced with this type of nation­al crisis we may find it dif­fi­cult to turn to our Com­forter in prayer. We are used to going to God with our requests, but this time seems dif­fer­ent. We are mired in sor­row and pain…”
  2. Lamen­ta­tions: A Bot­tle For The Tears Of the World (Christo­pher Wright, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “So much of our wor­ship is cov­er-up: pre­tend­ing to have emo­tions we don’t real­ly feel, or smoth­er­ing the emo­tions we do. That is not praise. It sim­ply leaves us to pick up our suf­fer­ing again on the way out—without bring­ing it into God’s pres­ence or hurl­ing it at him in ques­tion­ing (but trust­ing) protest. Spend­ing time in Lamen­ta­tions helps us learn how to plumb the depths of lament as well as scale the heights of rejoic­ing.”
  3. What Shoot­ings And Racial Jus­tice Mean For The Body of Christ (Rus­sell Moore, per­son­al blog): “If we believe that every per­son will stand before a Judg­ment Seat, we can­not then stand silent­ly when we see injus­tice. But many—including evan­gel­i­cals of all ethnicities—wonder what we can real­ly do? Some are reluc­tant to speak because they do not wish to reduce these issues to a hash-tag and they don’t know what to do.”
  4. End Need­less Inter­ac­tion With Cops Dur­ing Traf­fic Stops (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): a shrewd, easy-to-imple­ment sug­ges­tion.
  5. My Four Months As A Pri­vate Prison Guard (Shane Bauer, Moth­er Jones): a very long but very engag­ing essay. “I start­ed apply­ing for jobs in pri­vate pris­ons because I want­ed to see the inner work­ings of an indus­try that holds 131,000 of the nation’s 1.6 mil­lion pris­on­ers. As a jour­nal­ist, it’s near­ly impos­si­ble to get an uncon­strained look inside our penal sys­tem. When pris­ons do let reporters in, it’s usu­al­ly for care­ful­ly man­aged tours and mon­i­tored inter­views with inmates. Pri­vate pris­ons are espe­cial­ly secre­tive.” See also Wounds From Incar­cer­a­tion That Nev­er Heal (Tony Brown & Eve­lyn Pat­ter­son, The New Repub­lic)
  6. Two sto­ries on the reli­gious-lib­er­ty front:
  7. A group of our sum­mer Chi Alphans had a con­ver­sa­tion about how the books of the Bible got select­ed. If you’re curi­ous, here are two resources by Michael Kruger, a schol­ar in the field, that should prove help­ful: Ten Basic Facts About the NT Canon That Every Chris­t­ian Should Mem­o­rize and 10 Mis­con­cep­tions About the NT Canon

A Quote To Ponder

Think before you act; think twice before you speak; think thrice before you post to social media.

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 56

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

Articles I Found Interesting

  1. Your Unchurched Friends Want to Know About Your Faith (Bob Smi­etana, Chris­tian­i­ty Today):  “Almost half [of unchurched Amer­i­cans] say they dis­cuss reli­gion freely if the top­ic comes up (47%). A third say they lis­ten with­out respond­ing (31%), while 11 per­cent change the sub­ject. Only about a third say some­one has explained the ben­e­fits of being a Chris­t­ian to them (35%).”
  2. Oberge­fell and the New Gnos­ti­cism (Sherif Gir­gis, First Things): “For decades, the Sex­u­al Rev­o­lu­tion was sup­posed to be about free­dom. Today, it is about coer­cion. Once, it sought to free our sex­u­al choic­es from restric­tive laws and unwant­ed con­se­quences. Now, it seeks to free our sex­u­al choic­es from oth­er peo­ple’s dis­ap­proval.” Sherif has spo­ken for Chi Alpha before.
  3. As a Psy­chi­a­trist I Diag­nose Men­tal Ill­ness. And, Some­times, Demon­ic Pos­ses­sion (Richard Gal­lagher, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Ques­tions about how a sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly trained physi­cian can believe ‘such out­dat­ed and unsci­en­tif­ic non­sense,’ as I’ve been asked, have a sim­ple answer. I hon­est­ly weigh the evi­dence.”
  4. Most Amer­i­can Chris­tians Believe They’re Vic­tims of Dis­crim­i­na­tion (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “Almost half of Amer­i­cans say dis­crim­i­na­tion against Chris­tians is as big of a prob­lem as dis­crim­i­na­tion against oth­er groups, includ­ing blacks and minori­ties.”
  5. Nine Prayers For The Not-Yet-Mar­ried (Mar­shall Segal, Desir­ing God): rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent, rel­e­vant to many of you.
  6. Man Seeks Euthana­sia To End His Sex­u­al­i­ty Strug­gle (Jonathan Blake, BBC): sanc­tion­ing euthana­sia is unwise and leads to unex­pect­ed out­comes. For a the­o­log­i­cal argu­ment see Is There No Moral Law? (Dou­glas Far­row, First Things).
  7. Russia’s Pro­posed Law: No Evan­ge­liz­ing Out­side of Church (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “To share their faith, cit­i­zens must secure a gov­ern­ment per­mit through a reg­is­tered reli­gious orga­ni­za­tion, and they can­not evan­ge­lize any­where besides church­es and oth­er reli­gious sites. The restric­tions even apply to activ­i­ty in pri­vate res­i­dences and online.”
  8. Some more on Brex­it:
    • Why Brex­it Hap­pened And What It Means (Tyler Cowen): “The actu­al prac­ti­cal prob­lems with immi­gra­tion are much greater here in Brus­sels, but the coun­try is much fur­ther from ‘doing any­thing about it,’ whether pru­dent­ly or not, and indeed to this day Bel­gium is not actu­al­ly a mature nation-state and it may splin­ter yet.  That Eng­land did some­thing is one reflec­tion of the fact that Eng­land is a bet­ter-run region than Bel­gium, even if you feel as I do that the vote was a big mis­take…. Most of all, I con­clude that the desire to pre­serve the Eng­lish nation [sic] as Eng­lish is stronger than I or indeed most oth­ers had thought.  There is a pos­i­tive side to that.  And if all along you thought there was no case for Leave, prob­a­bly it is you who is the provin­cial one.” Odd­ly, the [sic] is in the orig­i­nal.
    • A great piece from short­ly before the vote: Reflec­tions Of A Ref­er­en­dum Fence-Sit­ter (David Good­hart, Prospect Mag­a­zine)
    • An inter­est­ing piece on the the­ol­o­gy of Brex­it: For hard-line Protes­tants, leav­ing Europe is a mat­ter of escha­tol­ogy (“Eras­mus”, The Econ­o­mist)

Interesting Research Findings

  • Why Peo­ple With No Reli­gion Are Pro­ject­ed To Decline As A Share Of The World’s Pop­u­la­tion (Michael Lip­ka, Pew Research): “These pro­jec­tions, which take into account demo­graph­ic fac­tors such as fer­til­i­ty, age com­po­si­tion and life expectan­cy, fore­cast that peo­ple with no reli­gion will make up about 13% of the world’s pop­u­la­tion in 2050, down from rough­ly 16% as of 2010.”
  • The Data On Chil­dren In Same-Sex House­holds Get More Depress­ing (Mark Reg­nerus, Pub­lic Dis­course): “…dur­ing ado­les­cence the chil­dren of same-sex par­ents report­ed mar­gin­al­ly less depres­sion than the chil­dren of oppo­site-sex par­ents. But by the time the sur­vey was in its fourth wave—when the kids had become young adults between the ages of 24 and 32—their expe­ri­ences had reversed. Indeed, dra­mat­i­cal­ly so: over half of the young-adult chil­dren of same-sex par­ents report ongo­ing depres­sion, a surge of 33 per­cent­age points (from 18 to 51 per­cent of the total). Mean­while, depres­sion among the young-adult chil­dren of oppo­site-sex par­ents had declined from 22 per­cent of them down to just under 20 per­cent. A few oth­er find­ings are worth men­tion­ing as well. Obe­si­ty surged among both groups, but the dif­fer­ences became sig­nif­i­cant over time, with 31 per­cent obe­si­ty among young-adult chil­dren of oppo­site-sex par­ents, well below the 72 per­cent of those from same-sex house­holds.”
  • Church Atten­dance Linked With Reduced Sui­cide Risk, Espe­cial­ly For Catholics, Study Says (Melis­sa Healy, LA Times): “Com­pared with women who nev­er par­tic­i­pat­ed in reli­gious ser­vices, women who attend­ed any reli­gious ser­vice once a week or more were five times less like­ly to com­mit sui­cide between 1996 and 2010, says a study pub­lished Wednes­day by JAMA Psy­chi­a­try.” See the under­ly­ing study in JAMA Psy­chi­a­try.
  • Researchers Have Found That War Has A Remark­able and Mirac­u­lous Effect (Jeff Guo, Wonkblog): “the expe­ri­ence of wartime vio­lence some­how changes peo­ple for the bet­ter, mak­ing them more coop­er­a­tive and more trust­ing.”
  • Con­crete Prob­lems in AI Safe­ty (mul­ti­ple impres­sive authors, arXiv.org): CS peo­ple please read this, espe­cial­ly in con­junc­tion with AI Downs Fight­er Pilot.

A Quote To Ponder

“Being part of com­mu­ni­ty takes time and involves restric­tions. Mere­ly hav­ing an iden­ti­ty doesn’t. In our cul­tur­al empha­sis and life, we’ve gone from a com­mu­ni­ty focus to an iden­ti­ty focus.” David Brooks (source)

Something Amusing To End On

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 51

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

  1. Why Amer­i­ca Spends So Much On The Mil­i­tary (red­dit): this was a sur­pris­ing­ly edu­ca­tion­al read. It was writ­ten in response to the claim that “next year’s pro­posed mil­i­tary bud­get could buy every home­less per­son a $1 mil­lion home.”
  2. Chew­bac­ca Laugh­ter Brings Unex­pect­ed Plat­form (Dan Van Veen, PE News): “On Wednes­day night before mak­ing the video, she felt that the Holy Spir­it had direct­ed her to a spe­cif­ic restau­rant for sup­per just pri­or to church. There, God had a ‘divine oppor­tu­ni­ty’ wait­ing.”
  3. Mak­ing Sense of the Num­bers of Gen­e­sis [pdf link] (Car­ol Hill, Per­spec­tives on Sci­ence and the Chris­t­ian Faith): “Joseph and Joshua were each record­ed as dying at age 110—a num­ber con­sid­ered ‘per­fect’ by the Egyp­tians. In ancient Egypt­ian doc­trine, the phrase ‘he died aged 110’ was actu­al­ly an epi­taph com­mem­o­rat­ing a life that had been lived self­less­ly and had result­ed in out­stand­ing social and moral ben­e­fit for oth­ers. And so for both Joseph and Joshua, who came out of the Egypt­ian cul­ture, quot­ing this age was actu­al­ly a trib­ute to their char­ac­ter. But, to be described as ‘dying at age 110’ bore no nec­es­sary rela­tion­ship to the actu­al time of an individual’s life span.” You will not agree with every­thing in this arti­cle, but it is full of fas­ci­nat­ing insights.
  4. Unsafe Cars Can Save Lives (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Safe­ty is rel­a­tive so cars judged unsafe by glob­al stan­dards could save lives in India. The big­ger les­son is that it’s always dan­ger­ous to impose glob­al stan­dards with­out tak­ing into account the dif­fer­ing cir­cum­stances of time and place.”
  5. The Big Uneasy (Nathan Heller, The New York­er): “A [uni­ver­si­ty] president’s job is to push past con­tra­dic­tions, while an activist’s duty is to call them out. The insti­tu­tions that give many peo­ple a lan­guage and a forum to denounce injus­tice are, inevitably, the near­est tar­gets of their crit­i­cism.” Bonus points for quot­ing Toc­queville. 
  6. The Trans­gen­der Bath­room Debate and the Loom­ing Title IX Cri­sis (Jean­nie Suk, New York­er): “Whether or not the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment act­ed unlaw­ful­ly, it has now set in motion a poten­tial Title IX col­li­sion course between its direc­tives on sex­u­al vio­lence and on bath­rooms…. The dis­com­fort that some peo­ple, some sex­u­al-assault sur­vivors, in par­tic­u­lar, feel at the idea of being in rest rooms with peo­ple with male sex organs, what­ev­er their gen­der, is not easy to brush aside as big­otry.“ The author is a pro­fes­sor at Har­vard Law School.
  7. Claims by trans­gen­der school­teacher (who wants to be called ‘they’) yield $60,000 set­tle­ment, agree­ment to cre­ate dis­ci­pli­nary rules reg­u­lat­ing ‘pro­noun usage (Eugene Volokh, Volokh Con­spir­a­cy): the sec­ond half is what cap­tured my atten­tion. “When the gov­ern­ment is act­ing as sov­er­eign, telling us what we must or must not say on pain of coer­cive­ly imposed legal lia­bil­i­ty, the First Amend­ment is at full force. That force, I think, should pre­clude gov­ern­ment com­mands that we start using new words — or rad­i­cal gram­mat­i­cal mod­i­fi­ca­tions of old, famil­iar words — that con­vey gov­ern­ment-favored mes­sages about gen­der iden­ti­ty or any­thing else.”
  8. Peter Thiel’s fund­ing of Hulk Hogan-Gawk­er lit­i­ga­tion should not raise con­cerns (Eugene Kon­torovich, Volokh Con­spir­a­cy):  “if the law­suit is not friv­o­lous, it is hard to see how the moti­va­tions of fun­ders are rel­e­vant (or dis­cernible). One would not say a civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tion could not accept dona­tions from phil­an­thropists angered by a per­son­al expe­ri­ence with dis­crim­i­na­tion.” Also see Tyler Cowen’s take.
  9. Amus­ing: Oth­er Promis­es of God (xkcd)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

If you want to view the archives they are at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 45

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

This week there are a few more links than nor­mal. Enjoy!

  1. New Evi­dence On When The Bible Was Writ­ten: Ancient Shop­ping Lists (Isabel Ker­sh­n­er, New York Times): “One of the long­stand­ing argu­ments for why the main body of bib­li­cal lit­er­a­ture was not writ­ten down in any­thing like its present form until after the destruc­tion and exile of 586 B.C. is that before then there was not enough lit­er­a­cy or enough scribes to sup­port such a huge under­tak­ing. But if the lit­er­a­cy rates in the Arad fortress were repeat­ed across the king­dom of Judah, which had about 100,000 peo­ple, there would have been hun­dreds of lit­er­ate peo­ple, the Tel Aviv research team sug­gests.” — also check out the AP/Guardian on this.
  2. Is Porn Immoral? That Doesn’t Mat­ter: It’s a Pub­lic Health Cri­sis (Gaile Dines, Wash­ing­ton Post): “After 40 years of peer-reviewed research, schol­ars can say with con­fi­dence that porn is an indus­tri­al prod­uct that shapes how we think about gen­der, sex­u­al­i­ty, rela­tion­ships, inti­ma­cy, sex­u­al vio­lence and gen­der equal­i­ty — for the worse…. just as the tobac­co indus­try argued for decades that there was no proof of a con­nec­tion between smok­ing and lung can­cer, so, too, has the porn indus­try, with the help of a well-oiled pub­lic rela­tions machine, denied the exis­tence of empir­i­cal research on the impact of its prod­ucts.”
  3. Face­book Employ­ees Asked Mark Zucker­berg If They Should Try To Stop A Don­ald Trump Pres­i­den­cy (Michael Nunez, Giz­mo­do): “Face­book has toyed with skew­ing news in the past. Dur­ing the 2008 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, Face­book secret­ly tam­pered with 1.9 mil­lion user’s news feeds. An aca­d­e­m­ic paper was pub­lished about the secret exper­i­ment, claim­ing that Face­book increased vot­er turnout by more than 340,000 peo­ple. In 2010, the com­pa­ny tam­pered with news feeds again. It con­duct­ed a 61-mil­lion-per­son exper­i­ment to see how Face­book could impact the real-world vot­ing behav­ior of mil­lions of peo­ple. In 2012, Face­book delib­er­ate­ly exper­i­ment­ed on its users’ emo­tions.  The com­pa­ny, again, secret­ly tam­pered with the news feeds of 700,000 peo­ple and con­clud­ed that Face­book can basi­cal­ly make you feel what­ev­er it wants you to.”
  4. I Was A Clos­et­ed Chris­t­ian At The Pen­ta­gon (Matthew Spence, Wash­ing­ton Post): “I feared how com­ing out as a prac­tic­ing Chris­t­ian would define me. I wor­ried that my boss­es, peers and sub­or­di­nates might asso­ciate me with Amer­i­can offi­cials who have spo­ken of U.S. mil­i­tary engage­ments in the Mid­dle East as ‘cru­sades’ or with the Islam­ic State’s dec­la­ra­tion of holy war. I feared that talk­ing about my faith would detract from the log­ic of my argu­ments. And, as a rel­a­tive­ly young per­son in a senior posi­tion, I need­ed every scrap of cred­i­bil­i­ty I could claim.”
  5. Why Jesus’ Skin Col­or Mat­ters (Chris­te­na Cleve­land, Chris­tian­i­ty Today):  “While Christ the Lord tran­scends skin col­or and racial divi­sions, white Jesus has real con­se­quences.”
  6. Hous­ton police offi­cer presents a few “dou­ble-edged sword” sce­nar­ios regard­ing body cam­eras (red­dit): unin­tend­ed con­se­quences are always dif­fi­cult to pre­dict.
  7. Was It Wrong To Hack and Leak the Pana­ma Papers? (Tyler Cowen, blog): sur­pris­ing­ly stim­u­lat­ing.
  8. Onward Chris­t­ian Sol­diers: In the Era of Trump-Style Pol­i­tics, Evan­gel­i­cal Vot­ers Are Not a Mono­lith (Julie Lyons, Hous­ton Press): this is a very insight­ful and data-rich arti­cle.
  9. The Ten­sions Threat­en­ing the Future of Reli­gious Free­dom Law (Kelsey Dal­las, Deseret News): this is a very good sum­ma­ry of the cur­rent state of reli­gious free­dom leg­is­la­tion.
  10. Chris­tian­i­ty and Korea (Dave Haz­zan, The Diplo­mat): “Evan­gel­i­cal zeal to send mis­sion­ar­ies to places most oth­ers would nev­er go – includ­ing Afghanistan, Iraq, Jor­dan, and Yemen – have caused headaches for the gov­ern­ment. In 2007, after ignor­ing the government’s advice, 27 Kore­an mis­sion­ar­ies to Afghanistan were kid­napped by the Tal­iban, and two were killed. In 2009, the Kore­an for­eign min­istry warned Kore­an Chris­tians to stop mis­sion­iz­ing in Arab coun­tries, fear­ing it was mak­ing Kore­ans ter­ror­ist targets.”9
  11. Kin­da Ran­dom

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 34

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

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world.

To that end, on Fri­days I’ve been shar­ing articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 30

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world.

To that end, on Fri­days I’ve been shar­ing articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al and soci­etal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). May these give you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar. Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

  1. A Carved Stone Block Upends Assump­tions About Ancient Judaism (NY Times, Isabel Kir­sh­n­er): I find the title amus­ing (the find­ing lines up per­fect­ly with my assump­tions about Judaism before the destruc­tion of the tem­ple).
  2. Jesus’ Left­ward Bias (Pacif­ic Stan­dard, Tom Jacobs): warn­ing — this is not about what you think it prob­a­bly is. It is based on the study Did Bud­dha Turn The Oth­er Cheek Too? A Com­par­i­son of Pos­ing Bias­es Between Jesus and Bud­dha and weaves togeth­er art, self­ies, and the role of emo­tions in Chris­tian­i­ty. Real­ly.
  3. Shut­ting Down Con­ver­sa­tions About Rape at Har­vard Law (New York­er, Jean­nie Suk): a Har­vard Law prof com­ments on how cam­pus­es should han­dle rape accu­sa­tions, and points out that a rigid “believe the accuser” stance will result in great injus­tice against black men.
  4. Amer­i­can Chris­tians Could Take A Les­son From Angela Merkel (Reli­gion News Ser­vice, Guthrie Graves-Fitzsim­mons): I did not know Merkel (Ger­man Chan­cel­lor and Time Per­son of the Year) was pious. See the com­ments for clar­i­fi­ca­tion about what tribe of Chris­tian­i­ty she belongs to. As always, take claims about the faith of pub­lic fig­ures with a grain of salt, espe­cial­ly when they are from anoth­er cul­ture. I was also inter­est­ed by Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Is A Sham, Says Angela Merkel (Wash­ing­ton Post, Rick Noack)
  5. Beyond Fight or Flight: $1 Mil­lion Reveals How Chris­tians Cope with Per­se­cu­tion in 30 Coun­tries (Chris­tian­i­ty Today, Sarah Zyl­stra): Fas­ci­nat­ing research on what Chris­tians actu­al­ly do when they face intense per­se­cu­tion. Relat­ed: Glob­al­ly, Reli­gious Per­se­cu­tion is Chris­t­ian Per­se­cu­tion (Crux, John Allen): I appre­ci­at­ed the selec­tion of sto­ries in this arti­cle. They avoid­ed the crazy, gory sto­ries that make you put this into a spe­cial place in your brain and chose much sim­pler anec­dotes that make you see what this is a like on a day-to-day basis in cer­tain parts of the world. See also, The Biggest Apol­o­gy For Chris­t­ian Per­se­cu­tion of Oth­er Chris­tians Ever. (Chris­tian­i­ty Today, Sarah Zyl­stra).
  6. Quick Links

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.

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 29

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world.

To that end, on Fri­days I’ve been shar­ing articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al and soci­etal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). May these give you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar. Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

  1. C.S. Lewis Was A Secret Gov­ern­ment Agent (Chris­tian­i­ty Today, Har­ry Lee Poe): It’s not as excit­ing as the title sounds, but it’s still cool. C.S. Lewis did some work for MI6. That’s the same agency as James Bond.  JAMES BOND.
  2. Why I wor­ry exper­i­men­tal social sci­ence is head­ed in the wrong direc­tion (Chris Blattman, per­son­al blog). This is an excel­lent piece by a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at Colum­bia.
  3. Utah Reduced Chron­ic Home­less­ness By 91 Per­cent. Here’s How. (NPR, Kel­ly McEv­ers). Props to the Mor­mons. It reminds me of an old piece by Mal­colm Glad­well: Mil­lion Dol­lar Mur­ray.
  4. Phil­an­thropy Should Be Con­tro­ver­sial (Bloomberg View, Justin Fox): Fas­ci­nat­ing through­out — the last two para­graphs were quite sur­pris­ing to me.
  5. John Ker­ry Should Rec­og­nize Chris­t­ian Geno­cide (USA Today, Kirsten Pow­ers): I’ve post­ed about this before and will like­ly keep doing so. The sit­u­a­tion is insane.
  6. Why Chris­tians Must Speak Out Against Don­ald Trump’s Mus­lim Remarks (Wash­ing­ton Post, Rus­sell Moore). Relat­ed: Is An Immi­gra­tion Ban on Mus­lims Uncon­sti­tu­tion­al? (Eric Pos­ner, a law prof at U Chica­go).  Moore has been on a tear late­ly, see also his What We Lose When We Prayer Shame Politi­cians After A Mass Shoot­ing (Wash­ing­ton Post, Rus­sell Moore). “The first response to a word of our fel­low cit­i­zens in per­il should be a human response of empa­thy. For reli­gious peo­ple, that means a call to pray for them, and to encour­age oth­ers of like mind to do so…. When that becomes just anoth­er cul­ture war bat­tle­field, we’ve lost more than a set of pol­i­cy pro­pos­als. We’ve lost the social cohe­sion we need to do any­thing.”
  7. How Oba­ma’s Gun-Con­trol Push Invert­ed the Pol­i­tics of the No-Fly List (The Atlantic, David Gra­ham): this is a depress­ing com­men­tary on the polar­iza­tion of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. See also Eric Posner’s com­ments: The Repub­li­can-Demo­c­ra­t­ic Divide on Civ­il Lib­er­ties. Relat­ed — Par­ty­ism Now Trumps Racism (Bloomberg View, Cass Sun­stein) and Polit­i­cal Iden­ti­ty Is Now Fair Game For Hatred: How Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats Dis­crim­i­nate (Vox, Ezra Klein).
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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.

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.