Tag: apologetically interesting

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 73

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. Here is the 2010 arti­cle I men­tioned in my ser­mon: Study of the ther­a­peu­tic effects of prox­i­mal inter­ces­so­ry prayer (STEPP) on audi­to­ry and visu­al impair­ments in rur­al Mozam­bique (Google schol­ar link). And the book I men­tioned, Mir­a­cles by Craig Keen­er, is in Green Library at BS2548 .K44 2011. 
  2. The Bur­ial Place Of Jesus Exposed For The First Time In Cen­turies: An Inter­view On What It Orig­i­nal­ly Looked Like And How We Know This Is The Right Loca­tion (Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coali­tion): “Read­ers might won­der, though, how we know this is real­ly the place Jesus was buried…. What does the Bible say? How about archae­ol­o­gy? Do we know what first-cen­tu­ry tombs looked like? How big were these tombs?”
  3. Papyrus offers non­bib­li­cal men­tion of Judean king­dom in Jerusalem (Michael Chabin, Reli­gion News Service): “Israeli archae­ol­o­gists have unveiled the ear­li­est known non­bib­li­cal Hebrew-lan­guage ref­er­ence to Jerusalem, dat­ing back to the time of the First Tem­ple in the sev­enth cen­tu­ry B.C.” Note that there is some con­tro­ver­sy about the papyrus.
  4. Nei­ther Trump Nor Clin­ton Is The End Of The Repub­lic (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “[Amer­i­ca] sur­vived chat­tel slav­ery that made a mock­ery of found­ing prin­ci­ples, Shay’s Rebel­lion, the Whiskey Insur­rec­tion, the burn­ing of its cap­i­tal by the British, the Trail of Tears, The Dred Scott deci­sion, the afore­men­tioned civ­il war, the assas­si­na­tions of pres­i­dents, Plessy vs. Fer­gu­son, an impe­ri­al­ist for­ay into the Philip­pines, the Espi­onage and Sedi­tion Acts, a flu pan­dem­ic that killed 20 mil­lion world­wide and an esti­mat­ed 675,000 Amer­i­cans, the Great Depres­sion, the glob­al rise of fas­cism, World War II, an expan­sion­ist Com­mu­nist dic­ta­tor­ship with nuclear weapons that infil­trat­ed the U.S. gov­ern­ment, Jim Crow, Water­gate, urban riots, the Sex­u­al Rev­o­lu­tion, and the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks. But now it’s all over [because of this elec­tion].” See also Friedersdorf’s arti­cle How  Mil­lions Of Good Peo­ple Can Vote Dif­fer­ent­ly Than You Will.
  5. The Unin­tend­ed Con­se­quences of Law (Joe Bosquin, Builder): “Large, sweep­ing statutes like Prop 13 have con­se­quences that con­tin­ue to man­i­fest decades after they are passed. In this case, it’s a dearth of entry-lev­el hous­ing.”

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 69

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. How To Pray A Psalm (Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coali­tion): prayer life need a boost? Give this a try. 
  2. A Col­lege Is A Com­mu­ni­ty But It Can­not Be A Home (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): for­get col­lege. This whole world is not your home — 1 Peter 2:11; Hebrews 13:14.
  3. Is Pla­gia­rism A Sin? (Ger­vase Markham, per­son­al blog): this is well-argued and rais­es issues I had not con­sid­ered before.
  4. Split Over Don­ald Trump and Cut Off by Cul­ture Wars, Evan­gel­i­cals Despair (Lau­rie Good­stein, NY Times): an unusu­al­ly per­cep­tive piece from the often obliv­i­ous-to-reli­gion New York Times.
  5. Sci­ence Denial­ism: Pot. Ket­tle. Black. (David Hed­dle, per­son­al blog): a nuclear physi­cist gives an stim­u­lat­ing sum­ma­ry of cos­mo­log­i­cal fine-tun­ing and how both the­ists and skep­tics often mis­un­der­stand it.
  6. Eco­nom­ic Free­dom and Reli­gion: An Empir­i­cal Inves­ti­ga­tion (SSRN): “Our cross-sec­tion­al dataset includes 137 coun­tries aver­aged over the peri­od 2001–2010. Sim­ple cor­re­la­tions show that Protes­tantism is asso­ci­at­ed with eco­nom­ic free­dom, Islam is not, with Catholi­cism in between.”
  7. Can Islam and Lib­er­al­ism Coex­ist? (Isaac Chotin­er, Slate): an absolute­ly fas­ci­nat­ing inter­view with Sha­di Hamid. “Dur­ing the course of our con­ver­sa­tion… we dis­cussed why lib­er­als have trou­ble tak­ing reli­gion seri­ous­ly, the future of Islamist pol­i­tics in Turkey and Egypt, and what the rise of Don­ald Trump has meant for Amer­i­can Mus­lims.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 68

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. Mis­sion­ar­ies are strug­gling to work under new Rus­sia law ban­ning pros­e­ly­tiz­ing (Michael Ali­son Chan­dler, Wash­ing­ton Post): “A month after the restric­tions went into effect on July 20, at least sev­en peo­ple had been charged under it…  The list includes a Bap­tist preach­er from the Unit­ed States who was charged with hold­ing reli­gious ser­vices in his home and adver­tis­ing them on pub­lic bul­letin boards. He was con­vict­ed and fined, but he is appeal­ing the case.”
  2. ‘Hill­song’ Casts a Sec­u­lar Lens on an Evan­gel­i­cal Band (NY Times, Joe Coscarel­li): “Hillsong’s cre­ative direc­tor… described embrac­ing the rock-star expo­sure as ‘try­ing to draw atten­tion to your­self for the sole premise of draw­ing atten­tion away from your­self’ — to God.”
  3. 7 Books on the White-Black Racial Divide You Should Read (Ivan Mesa, Gospel Coali­tion): because you don’t have enough books to read at Stan­ford.
  4. We Gave Four Good Poll­sters the Same Raw Data. They Had Four Dif­fer­ent Results. (NY Times, Nate Cohn): “Well, well, well. Look at that. A net five-point dif­fer­ence between the five mea­sures, includ­ing our own, even though all are based on iden­ti­cal data. Remem­ber: There are no sam­pling dif­fer­ences in this exer­cise.” I didn’t know this at all. Wow. We know less about the elec­tion than we thought.
  5. “If you are a very tal­ent­ed per­son, you have a choice: You either go to New York or you go to Sil­i­con Val­ley.” (Peter Thiel said it, and this link is to an op-ed by Aaron Renn in a Chica­go paper defend­ing it.) For a con­trary take, read this com­ment from Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion.
  6. No, We Should­n’t Start Wor­ry­ing About Glob­al Inequal­i­ty — Pover­ty’s The Prob­lem (Forbes, Tim Worstall): “[Reduc­ing inequal­i­ty is] a bad goal. One rea­son being that rich peo­ple get­ting poor­er reduces inequal­i­ty. And if inequal­i­ty reduc­tion is our goal then we should there­fore wel­come such things as reces­sions.” Found on a student’s twit­ter feed.
  7. What If Evo­lu­tion Bred Real­i­ty Out Of Us? (NPR, Adam Frank): read­ing this called to mind some­thing Chester­ton observed way back in 1908:

    It is idle to talk always of the alter­na­tive of rea­son and faith. Rea­son is itself a mat­ter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any rela­tion to real­i­ty at all. If you are mere­ly a scep­tic, you must soon­er or lat­er ask your­self the ques­tion, “Why should ANYTHING go right; even obser­va­tion and deduc­tion? Why should not good log­ic be as mis­lead­ing as bad log­ic? They are both move­ments in the brain of a bewil­dered ape?” The young scep­tic says, “I have a right to think for myself.” But the old scep­tic, the com­plete scep­tic, says, “I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all.” — Ortho­doxy, G. K. Chester­ton

Things Glen Found Amusing

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 67

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Ice­break­ers Are Ter­ri­ble. They Also, Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Work Real­ly Well (Cari Romm, NY Mag­a­zine): “Is there any val­ue to mak­ing a room­ful of peo­ple mis­er­able with false cheer? Psy­chol­o­gist Anton Vil­la­do is adamant that the answer is yes, and that ice­break­ers don’t have to be pleas­ant to be effec­tive.” Rel­e­vant for the start of the school year.
  2. Reli­gion in US ‘worth more than Google and Apple com­bined’ (Har­ri­et Sher­wood, The Guardian): “the sums spent by reli­gious organ­i­sa­tions on social pro­grammes have tripled in the past 15 years, to $9bn. Twen­ty of the top 50 char­i­ties in the US are faith-based, with a com­bined oper­at­ing rev­enue of $45.3bn.” There’s some excel­lent com­men­tary on this at Crux.
  3. The First Coun­try to Offi­cial­ly Defend Chris­tians Per­se­cut­ed by ISIS (World Watch Mon­i­tor at Chris­tian­i­ty Today): It’s Hun­gary. Hun­gary’s Min­is­ter for Human Resources said, “Today, Chris­tian­i­ty has become the most per­se­cut­ed reli­gion, where out of five peo­ple killed [for] reli­gious rea­sons, four of them are Chris­tians.… In 81 coun­tries around the world, Chris­tians are per­se­cut­ed, and 200 mil­lion Chris­tians live in areas where they are dis­crim­i­nat­ed against.”
  4. Why Not a Col­lege Degree in Sports? (Roger Pielke Jr., NY Times): “Beyond our cul­tur­al bias­es, what real­ly is the dif­fer­ence between a Shake­speare play, an orches­tra con­cert and a bas­ket­ball game? Each per­for­mance requires some high-lev­el com­bi­na­tion of phys­i­cal abil­i­ty and men­tal acu­ity, devel­oped through years of train­ing and study, and for which only a select few reach elite lev­els.” There is a sim­i­lar arti­cle back in issue 44.
  5. Time For A Realign­ment (NY Times, David Brooks): “There’s a good chance many of you will be switch­ing polit­i­cal par­ties over the next 15 years.” This is true both for the rea­sons Brooks men­tions and also because some of you will change your minds.
  6. The world will only get weird­er (Steven Coast, per­son­al blog): “We fixed all the main rea­sons air­craft crash a long time ago. Some­times a long, long time ago. So, we are left with the less and less prob­a­ble events.” The piece is a few years old so the exam­ples are dat­ed, but it remains very intrigu­ing.

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 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.