Tag: artificial intelligence

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 347

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

This is vol­ume 347, a Fried­man num­ber. That means it can be writ­ten as an equa­tion com­prised of its own dig­its (3+4=7).

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. What John Updike and Ger­ard Man­ley Hop­kins knew about the pow­er of East­er (Tish Har­ri­son War­ren, New York Times): “If Jesus wasn’t actu­al­ly res­ur­rect­ed, then East­er is less real than the bud­ding buzz of spring, less real than a dying breath, less real than my own hands, feet and skin. I have no inter­est in a Chris­tian­i­ty that isn’t deeply, pro­found­ly, irre­ducibly mate­r­i­al.”
  2. Frag­men­ta­tion Is Not What’s Killing Us (Rus­sell Moore, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “[The break­down at Babel] does indeed sound like now. But the lessons we learn will be wrong if we don’t see the pri­ma­ry point of the Babel sto­ry: The prob­lem wasn’t the frag­men­ta­tion. The prob­lem was the uni­ty.”
  3. Chi­na Covid #2 (Zvi Mow­showitz, Sub­stack): “I want to empha­size that it is very dif­fi­cult to know what is going on inside Chi­na and my sources for this are not the best. I find the Ukraine war a rel­a­tive epis­temic cake­walk com­pared to this. So please under­stand that the alarmist claims from var­i­ous threads are to be tak­en with large heap­ings of salt.”
  4. Solve for the wartime pre­sen­ta­tion equi­lib­ri­um (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “The country’s IT Army, a vol­un­teer force of hack­ers and activists that takes its direc­tion from the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment, says it has used [facial recog­ni­tion search­es] to inform the fam­i­lies of the deaths of 582 Rus­sians, includ­ing by send­ing them pho­tos of the aban­doned corpses. The Ukraini­ans cham­pi­on the use of face-scan­ning soft­ware from the U.S. tech firm Clearview AI as a bru­tal but effec­tive way to stir up dis­sent inside Rus­sia, dis­cour­age oth­er fight­ers and has­ten an end to a dev­as­tat­ing war.” Tech­nolo­gies always have unex­pect­ed appli­ca­tions.
  5. Help­ing the Poor: The Great Dis­trac­tion (Bryan Caplan, Sub­stack): “Gov­ern­ments around the world impose numer­ous poli­cies that active­ly hurt the poor. The whole debate about ‘help­ing the poor’ cre­ates the illu­sion that the sole rea­son for their suf­fer­ing is mere neglect, even though out­right abuse is ram­pant.… They don’t need us to help them; they need us to stop hurt­ing them.”
  6. There is No Pink Tax (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Pref­er­ences dif­fer sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly across gen­ders lead­ing to sub­tly dif­fer­ent prod­ucts even in cat­e­gories which appear sim­i­lar on the sur­face.… Women and men could save mon­ey by buy­ing prod­ucts pri­mar­i­ly mar­ket­ed to the oppo­site gender–like 2‑in‑1 shampoo+conditioner–but only by buy­ing prod­ucts that they pre­fer less than the prod­ucts they choose to buy.”
  7. Study explores aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess among Jew­ish girls (Tulane Uni­ver­si­ty, Phys.org): “Girls raised by Jew­ish par­ents are 23 per­cent­age points more like­ly to grad­u­ate col­lege than girls with a non-Jew­ish upbring­ing, even after account­ing for their par­ents’ socioe­co­nom­ic sta­tus. Girls raised by Jew­ish par­ents also grad­u­ate from more selec­tive col­leges, accord­ing to a new­ly pub­lished study by Tulane Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Ilana Hor­witz.” Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus. One of our PhD can­di­dates is coau­thor on the paper — con­grat­u­la­tions!

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Revolt of the Fem­i­nist Law Profs (Wes­ley Yang, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “The sex bureau­cra­cy, in oth­er words, piv­ot­ed from pun­ish­ing sex­u­al vio­lence to impos­ing a nor­ma­tive vision of ide­al sex, to which stu­dents are held admin­is­tra­tive­ly account­able.” First shared in vol­ume 214.

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 324

some pre-Hal­loween links

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

This is vol­ume 324, which is 182.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Emp­ty Pews Are an Amer­i­can Pub­lic Health Cri­sis (Tyler J. Van­der­Weele and Bren­dan Case, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Reli­gious par­tic­i­pa­tion strong­ly pro­motes health and well­ness. This means that Amer­i­cans’ grow­ing dis­af­fec­tion with orga­nized reli­gion isn’t just bad news for church­es; it also rep­re­sents a pub­lic health cri­sis, one that has been large­ly ignored but the effects of which are like­ly to increase in com­ing years.”
    • The authors are part of the Human Flour­ish­ing Pro­gram at Har­vard. I have quot­ed Tyler Van­der­Weele’s research sev­er­al times in the past.
  2. Some per­spec­tives on the Amer­i­can church:
    • J.D. Vance and the Great Chal­lenge of Chris­t­ian Mal­ice (David French, The Dis­patch): “The real cri­sis [in Amer­i­can Chris­t­ian polit­i­cal engage­ment] is instead a cri­sis of the heart. Our ortho­doxy is under­mined by our actions, and our actions spring forth from the deep­est parts of our being. At a time of ris­ing antipa­thy, a Chris­t­ian polit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty should blaze forth with a radi­ant coun­ter­cul­tur­al embrace of kind­ness and grace. Instead, all too many of us have for­got­ten a fun­da­men­tal truth. There are no ‘right peo­ple’ to hate.”
    • Why ‘Evan­gel­i­cal’ Is Becom­ing Anoth­er Word for ‘Repub­li­can’ (Ryan Burge, New York Times): “For instance, in 2008, just 16 per­cent of all self-iden­ti­fied evan­gel­i­cals report­ed their church atten­dance as nev­er or sel­dom. But in 2020, that num­ber jumped to 27 per­cent. In 2008, about a third of evan­gel­i­cals who nev­er attend­ed church said they were polit­i­cal­ly con­ser­v­a­tive. By 2019, that had risen to about 50 per­cent.… [also] more peo­ple are embrac­ing the label who have no attach­ment to Protes­tant Chris­tian­i­ty. For exam­ple, the share of Catholics who also iden­ti­fied as evan­gel­i­cals (or born again) rose to 15 per­cent in 2018 from 9 per­cent in 2008. That same pat­tern appears with Mus­lims. In fact, there’s evi­dence that the share of mem­bers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Lat­ter-day Saints, Ortho­dox Chris­tian­i­ty and Hin­duism who iden­ti­fy as evan­gel­i­cal is larg­er today than it was just a decade ago.”
    • The Evan­gel­i­cal Church Is Break­ing Apart (Peter Wehn­er, The Atlantic): “Scott Dud­ley, the senior pas­tor at Belle­vue Pres­by­ter­ian Church in Belle­vue, Wash­ing­ton, refers to this as ‘our idol­a­try of pol­i­tics.’ He’s heard of many con­gre­gants leav­ing their church because it didn’t match their pol­i­tics, he told me, but has nev­er once heard of some­one chang­ing their pol­i­tics because it didn’t match their church’s teach­ing. He often tells his con­gre­ga­tion that if the Bible doesn’t chal­lenge your pol­i­tics at least occa­sion­al­ly, you’re not real­ly pay­ing atten­tion to the Hebrew scrip­tures or the New Tes­ta­ment.”
    • Church Mem­ber­ship Is Not a One-Way Street (Alex Duke, Cross­way): “Think of your church as a light­bulb hooked up to a dim­mer switch in a dark room. Every­thing we do makes our wit­ness brighter or dark­er. Prac­tic­ing mean­ing­ful mem­ber­ship is one of the surest ways to turn that dim­mer switch up; ignor­ing it is one of the surest ways to turn it down. Mean­ing­ful mem­ber­ship is more impor­tant than you think.”
  3. The Prob­lem With Dave Chap­pelle (Samuel D. James, Sub­stack): “Chap­pelle is not a hap­less vic­tim of a crush­ing ide­o­log­i­cal agen­da; he’s not Bar­ronelle Stutz­man or James Eich. Chap­pelle is, like many before and many after him, a Robe­spierre of the very rev­o­lu­tion that’s after him now. His for­tune was made inside the same pro­gres­sive sen­si­bil­i­ty that threat­ens him, and it is pre­cise­ly Chappelle’s (and many oth­er come­di­ans) skill with which he dis­missed any notion of the sacred that has tak­en root in the peo­ple who are walk­ing out on his un-PC act.” Real­ly sol­id insights here.
  4. The par­ent­ing prob­lem the gov­ern­ment can’t fix (Stephanie H. Mur­ray, The Week): “There is a cul­tur­al weight dan­gling from the yoke of mod­ern Amer­i­can par­ent­hood — one that is prob­a­bly beyond the gov­ern­ment to alle­vi­ate.… Chil­dren are a per­son­al choice and there­fore a per­son­al prob­lem, many peo­ple seem to believe. Have as many as you want — just make sure they don’t both­er the rest of us. The prob­lem is that this cre­do is total­ly out of step with real­i­ty.… par­ent­ing is an inher­ent­ly social occu­pa­tion. Try­ing to cram it into an indi­vid­u­al­ist frame­work, where the costs and con­se­quences of chil­dren fall on par­ents and no one else, dis­torts the whole endeav­or.”
    • I have long thought that dis­lik­ing chil­dren is pro­found­ly hyp­o­crit­i­cal. You were once a child who craved affec­tion and under­stand­ing, how rude to reject chil­dren now that you have learned to nav­i­gate the world more effec­tive­ly.
  5. Sci­en­tists Built an AI to Give Eth­i­cal Advice, But It Turned Out Super Racist (Tony Tran, Futur­ism): “And as is often the case, part of the rea­son Delphi’s answers can get ques­tion­able can like­ly be linked back to how it was cre­at­ed. The folks behind the project drew on some eye­brow-rais­ing sources to help train the AI, includ­ing the ‘Am I the Ass­hole?’ sub­red­dit, the ‘Con­fes­sions’ sub­red­dit, and the ‘Dear Abby’ advice col­umn, accord­ing to the paper the team behind Del­phi pub­lished about the exper­i­ment. It should be not­ed, though, that just the sit­u­a­tions were culled from those sources — not the actu­al replies and answers them­selves.… the team behind Del­phi used Amazon’s crowd­sourc­ing ser­vice Mechan­i­cal­Turk to find respon­dents to actu­al­ly train the AI.”
  6. About Israel and Jew­ish peo­ple:
    • When Your Body Is Some­one Else’s Haunt­ed House (Dara Horn, Bari Weiss’ Sub­stack): “Those girls were not stu­pid, and prob­a­bly not even big­ot­ed. But in their entire­ly typ­i­cal and well-inten­tioned edu­ca­tion, they had learned about Jews main­ly because peo­ple had killed Jews. Like most peo­ple in the world, they had only encoun­tered dead Jews: peo­ple whose sole attribute was that they had been mur­dered, and whose mur­ders served a clear pur­pose, which was to teach us some­thing. Jews were peo­ple who, for moral and edu­ca­tion­al pur­pos­es, were sup­posed to be dead.”
    • Whose Promised Land? A Jour­ney Into a Divid­ed Israel (Patrick Kings­ley & Laeti­tia Van­con, New York Times): “‘I believe in the coun­try as long as it doesn’t fight reli­gion, as long as it doesn’t fight me,’ he said. In his view, the new gov­ern­ment has under­mined Israel’s Jew­ish­ness, under­cut­ting the state’s legit­i­ma­cy. ‘If it’s not a Jew­ish state, then we have no right to exist here,’ he said. ‘Our right to exist here is based on the fact that God gave us the land.’”
    • Pales­tine Isn’t Fer­gu­son (Susie Lin­field, The Atlantic): “Any use­ful analy­sis of the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict requires engag­ing with an unre­solved, frus­trat­ing­ly com­plex, griev­ous­ly resilient strug­gle between two nation­al move­ments, each with a jus­ti­fied claim to the land. Once that effort is aban­doned, a vac­u­um ensues. It is filled by the trans­for­ma­tion of a coun­try into a metaphor; by the rewrit­ing (or ignor­ing) of his­to­ry; by Manichean think­ing; and by the con­ver­sion of lan­guage into a means of per­for­mance rather than a descrip­tion of real­i­ty.”
  7. Learn­ing From Our Defeat: The Skill of the Vul­cans (Tan­ner Greer, per­son­al blog): “…both of these rel­a­tive non-enti­ties were pulled aside from their reg­u­lar posi­tions and hand­ed an addi­tion­al respon­si­bil­i­ty— coor­di­na­tor of the Amer­i­can effort in Afghanistan.Read that again: they were both giv­en the same job at the same time. Yet the prob­lem was worse than just dupli­ca­tion of effort and con­fused lines of author­i­ty. The two men were not even aware the oth­er man was work­ing the same port­fo­lio!”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Dis­solv­ing the Fer­mi Para­dox (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “Imag­ine we knew God flipped a coin. If it came up heads, He made 10 bil­lion alien civ­i­liza­tion. If it came up tails, He made none besides Earth. Using our one para­me­ter Drake Equa­tion, we deter­mine that on aver­age there should be 5 bil­lion alien civ­i­liza­tions. Since we see zero, that’s quite the para­dox, isn’t it? No. In this case the mean is mean­ing­less. It’s not at all sur­pris­ing that we see zero alien civ­i­liza­tions, it just means the coin must have land­ed tails. SDO say that rely­ing on the Drake Equa­tion is the same kind of error.”  First shared in vol­ume 159.

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 314

Afghanistan links at the bot­tom.

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

314 is rough­ly Ï€ times 100, and that makes me hap­py.

Afghanistan links are at the bot­tom and are well worth read­ing, but oth­er stuff is up top in case you’re over­whelmed already.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. A Guide to Find­ing Faith (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “…the world in 2021, no less than the world in 1521 or 321, presents con­sid­er­able evi­dence of an orig­i­nat­ing intel­li­gence pre­sid­ing over a law-bound world well made for our minds to under­stand, and at the same time a panoply of spir­i­tu­al forces that seem to inter­vene unpre­dictably in our exis­tence.” This is a won­der­ful thing to have print­ed in the New York Times.
  2. The Real Col­lege Scan­dal (Agnes Callard, The Point Mag­a­zine): “If I had to mea­sure the worth of my class­es in my stu­dents’ sub­se­quent civic virtue or life sat­is­fac­tion, I couldn’t afford to lose touch with most of them after grad­u­a­tion. I am some­times sad­dened when I lose touch with them, but it nev­er caus­es me to won­der whether their edu­ca­tion was worth­while.” Enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
  3. Ope­nAI Codex Live Demo (Ope­nAI, YouTube): thir­ty astound­ing min­utes. This tech­nol­o­gy is going to change SO MUCH. I’m hon­est­ly blown away. Sign up for beta access at https://openai.com/join
  4. Unmar­ried Sex Is Worse Than You Think (Sarah Eekhoff Zyl­stra & Collin Hansen, Gospel Coali­tion): “Amer­i­cans talk a lot about sex. Any­one would think they’re hav­ing a lot of it.… Instead, the oppo­site has hap­pened. Young peo­ple are hav­ing less sex—and are less happy—than the mar­ried, church­go­ing gen­er­a­tion before them.”
  5. Does Cana­da have a reli­gion prob­lem? (Ray Pen­nings, Sub­stack): “In part­ner­ship with the Angus-Reid Insti­tute, Car­dus has been mea­sur­ing Cana­di­an spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. We asked about sev­en prac­tices — belief in God’s exis­tence, prayer, read­ing a scrip­ture, par­tic­i­pat­ing in wor­ship, believ­ing in an after­life, hav­ing reli­gious expe­ri­ences, teach­ing your kids about faith. We termed the 16 per­cent who do at least six of these ‘reli­gious­ly com­mit­ted’ and the 19 per­cent who do zero or one ‘non-believ­ers.’ That leaves the 64 per cent of Cana­di­ans in the mid­dle — nei­ther devout­ly reli­gious, nor reli­gious­ly indif­fer­ent. They’re a big chunk of the 86 per cent of Cana­di­ans who pray at least month­ly.  But many reli­gious Cana­di­ans, of var­i­ous faiths, don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly feel it’s safe to be pub­lic about their beliefs.” The author is the co-founder of Car­dus, a Cana­di­an think tank. Rec­om­mend­ed by a friend of the min­istry.
  6. Who Tells Them Things They Don’t Want to Hear? (Fred­die deBoer, Sub­stack): “…I don’t think and have nev­er sug­gest­ed that crowd­fund­ed media can replace the basic news­gath­er­ing func­tion of news­pa­pers and that the NYT in par­tic­u­lar still serves a vital func­tion in its fun­da­men­tal repor­to­r­i­al duties. This is, in fact, pre­cise­ly why I am so dis­turbed by the paper’s takeover by a fringe ide­ol­o­gy embraced by a tiny sliv­er of the Amer­i­can pub­lic and by behind-the-scenes high school bull­shit.”
    • These two lines at the end grabbed me, “It’s only integri­ty when it hurts, guys. Some­thing you write is only brave when it piss­es off all your friends and col­leagues.
  7. Con­cern­ing Afghanistan, the work­ing out of which has made me more ashamed of my coun­try than I can put into words.
    • What We Got Wrong in Afghanistan (Mike Jason, The Atlantic): “We didn’t send the right peo­ple, pre­pare them well, or reward them after­ward. We rotat­ed strangers on tours of up to a year and expect­ed them to build rela­tion­ships, then replaced them. We were over­ly opti­mistic and large­ly made things up as we went along. We didn’t like over­sight or tough ques­tions from Wash­ing­ton, and no one real­ly both­ered to hold us account­able any­way.… We didn’t fight a 20-year war in Afghanistan; we fought 20 inco­her­ent wars, one year at a time, with­out a sense of direc­tion.” The author is an Army vet who served in Afghanistan. Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. Bru­tal.
    • I Was Deeply Involved in War in Afghanistan for More Than a Decade. Here’s What We Must Learn (James Stavridis, Time): “The on-the-ground lead­ers in Afghanistan, most­ly Army and Marine Corps, were over­whelm­ing­ly brave, thought­ful, and com­pe­tent. But as we learned over the long years, we sim­ply rotat­ed them too fre­quent­ly. If we had fought World War II by lim­it­ing Gen­er­al Eisen­how­er or Admi­ral Nimitz to one year tours of duty, the out­come would have been dif­fer­ent, to say the least. We made the same mis­take in Viet­nam, where every­one was on a one year tour, and the out­come was a dis­as­ter. This was reflect­ed up-and-down the chain of com­mand, and the lack of con­ti­nu­ity and sense of ‘I’ve just got to make it to my depar­ture date’ hin­dered strate­gic coheren­cy bad­ly.” The author is a for­mer com­man­der of NATO. Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
    • Nation­al Humil­i­a­tions (Mark Too­ley, Prov­i­dence): “And Amer­i­ca like all great nations will endure and hope­ful­ly learn from its humil­i­a­tions, whether 1941 or 1950 or 1975 or 2001 or today. All nations ulti­mate­ly decide their own des­tinies medi­at­ed by divine judg­ment and mer­cy. Maybe Afghanistan’s col­lapse is a divine judg­ment on it and us. But there is mer­cy always avail­able, accom­pa­nied by wis­dom.”
      • The sur­vey of his­to­ry at the begin­ning is what caught my atten­tion. Some of those dis­as­ters are bare­ly on my his­tor­i­cal radar.
    • Afghan Trav­es­ty (Dou­glas Wil­son, per­son­al blog): “God knows how to hum­ble great mil­i­tary pow­ers. He has done it numer­ous times, and that is what you are see­ing right now. What are we to make of that great patri­ot­ic vaunt, ‘these col­ors don’t run’? The reply is that they will run any and every time God deter­mines that they will.” The­o­log­i­cal­ly brac­ing.
    • Dis­as­ter in Afghanistan Will Fol­low Us Home (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “But didn’t we have to leave Afghanistan some­time? So goes a coun­ter­ar­gu­ment. Yes, though we’ve been in Korea for 71 years, at far high­er cost, and the world is bet­ter off for it.”
    • Did Amer­i­ca just lose Afghanistan because of What­sApp? (Pre­ston Byrne, per­son­al blog): “The Unit­ed States thought it was fight­ing an army. I sus­pect the rea­son we lost is because we were fight­ing a meme.”
    • The above dove­tails nice­ly with a Tan­ner Greer essay: Fight­ing Like Tal­iban (Tan­ner Greer, per­son­al blog): “War in Afghanistan often seemed like a game of pick­up bas­ket­ball, a con­test among friends, a tour­na­ment where you nev­er knew which team you’d be on when the next game got under way. Shirts today, skins tomor­row. On Tues­day, you might be part of a fear­some Tal­iban reg­i­ment, run­ning into a mine­field. And on Wednes­day you might be man­ning a check­point for some gang of the North­ern Alliance.”
    • Dis­hon­or in Afghanistan (Jon­ah Gold­berg, The Dis­patch): “You can believe that get­ting out of Afghanistan is the right policy––again, I have friends whom I respect who believe that––while also under­stand­ing that this was a ter­ri­ble way to get out of Afghanistan. We can all agree that it’s time to leave a par­ty; that doesn’t auto­mat­i­cal­ly mean you should jump out the near­est win­dow to make your exit.”
    • The Fall of Impe­r­i­al Amer­i­ca (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “As a friend of mine put it this morn­ing, how many meet­ings to plan an order­ly evac­u­a­tion of Afghanistan did our mil­i­tary brass miss so they could attend diver­si­ty train­ing? Again, we are an unse­ri­ous coun­try, and the world knows it. A friend of mine whose son is head­ed to West Point told me that in the boy’s pack­et of infor­ma­tion that just came in there is a rain­bow-flag diver­si­ty stick­er. Amer­i­ca might not know how to win actu­al wars, but it sure is going to equip its troops to win the cul­ture war against tra­di­tion­al moral­i­ty and old-fash­ioned Amer­i­can val­ues.” Feisty.
    • What We Can Learn From Europe’s Refugee Crises (John Gus­tavs­son, The Dis­patch): “As a Euro­pean with expe­ri­ence of work­ing with eco­nom­ic and migra­tion pol­i­cy, and who wit­nessed what hap­pened in my home coun­try of Swe­den, I have seen what works—and espe­cial­ly what doesn’t.”
      • Full of real talk. I am in favor of reset­tling vir­tu­al­ly any­one who can get out (or who we can get out) of Afghanistan and putting them onto a path to cit­i­zen­ship (like­wise for Hong Kong). I am also in favor of being thought­ful in the ways described in this arti­cle.
    • Today’s Tal­iban uses sophis­ti­cat­ed social media prac­tices that rarely vio­late the rules (Craig Tim­berg and Cris­tiano Lima, Wash­ing­ton Post): “…U.S. con­ser­v­a­tives have been demand­ing to know why for­mer pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has been banned from Twit­ter while var­i­ous Tal­iban fig­ures have not. The answer, ana­lysts said, may sim­ply be that Trump’s posts for years chal­lenged plat­form rules against hate speech and incit­ing vio­lence. Today’s Tal­iban, by and large, does not.”
      • This illus­trates a weak­ness in the West. We pun­ish pro­ce­dur­al vio­la­tions more than we pun­ish actu­al vice, in part because so many of our elites don’t have a moral com­pass that they view as true and bind­ing. It’s OK if the Tal­iban uses social media to achieve actu­al evil as long as they don’t make us think about what they’re doing. Kind of like it’s okay for Chi­na to bru­tal­ize their own pop­u­la­tion as long as they don’t tweet about it and lie about doing it. Tech com­pa­nies will boy­cott Geor­gia but not Chi­na; they will dis­man­tle Par­ler but not Tik­Tok.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have If I Were 22 Again (John Piper, Desir­ing God): “There have been about 18,340 days since I turned 22, and I think I have read my Bible on more of those days than I have eat­en. I have cer­tain­ly read my Bible on more of those days that I have watched tele­vi­sion or videos.… Read your Bible every day of your life. If you have time for break­fast, nev­er say that you don’t have time for God’s word.” This whole thing is real­ly good. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. First shared in vol­ume 151.

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 281

inter­est­ing things from Christ­mas week 2020

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

As fore­told, slight­ly delayed this week and will like­ly be a day off next week as well.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Apply­ing Bib­li­cal prin­ci­ples in the work­place (Vann Ky, per­son­al blog): “These prin­ci­ples have helped me devel­op work ethics and make an impact, not just at my cur­rent com­pa­ny but also when I was a col­lege stu­dent.” Vann is an alum­na.
  2. When You Can’t Just ‘Trust the Sci­ence’ (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “Last month [the CDC’s] Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee on Immu­niza­tion Prac­tices pro­duced a work­ing doc­u­ment that’s a mas­ter­piece of para-sci­en­tif­ic effort, in which ques­tions that are legit­i­mate­ly med­ical and sci­en­tif­ic (who will the vac­cine help the most), ques­tions that are more logis­ti­cal and soci­o­log­i­cal (which pat­tern of dis­tri­b­u­tion will be eas­i­er to put in place) and moral ques­tions about who deserves a vac­cine are all jum­bled up, assessed with a form of pseu­do-rig­or that resem­bles some­one bluff­ing the way through a McK­in­sey job inter­view and then used to jus­ti­fy the con­clu­sion that we should vac­ci­nate essen­tial work­ers before seniors … because seniors are more like­ly to be priv­i­leged and white.”
    • Why Did So Many Doc­tors Become Nazis? (Ash­ley K. Fer­nades, Tablet Mag­a­zine): “It is wor­thy of empha­sis that although many pro­fes­sions (includ­ing law) were ‘tak­en in’ by Nazi phi­los­o­phy, doc­tors and nurs­es had a pecu­liar­ly strong attrac­tion to it. Robert N. Proc­tor (1988) notes that physi­cians joined the Nazi par­ty in droves (near­ly 50% by 1945), much high­er than any oth­er pro­fes­sion. Physi­cians were sev­en times more like­ly to join the SS than oth­er employed Ger­man males.” The author is a physi­cian and a bioethi­cist at The Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty. 
    • Ore­gon Hos­pi­tals Did­n’t Have Short­ages. So Why Were Dis­abled Peo­ple Denied Care? (Joseph Shapiro, NPR): “There’s no rea­son that these exam­ples would occur more fre­quent­ly in Ore­gon than in oth­er states. But the fight for that anony­mous woman with an intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty peeled back the cur­tain on health care deci­sion-mak­ing in Ore­gon in a way that did not hap­pen in oth­er states. That activism led to change in Ore­gon — includ­ing anti-dis­crim­i­na­tion leg­is­la­tion and new statewide poli­cies.”
    • How Much Herd Immu­ni­ty Is Enough? (Don­ald G. McNeil, New York Times): “In a tele­phone inter­view the next day, Dr. Fau­ci acknowl­edged that he had slow­ly but delib­er­ate­ly been mov­ing the goal posts. He is doing so, he said, part­ly based on new sci­ence, and part­ly on his gut feel­ing that the coun­try is final­ly ready to hear what he real­ly thinks.”
  3. The Death and Life of an Admis­sions Algo­rithm (Lilah Burke, Insid­er High­er Edu­ca­tion): “For exam­ple, let­ters of rec­om­men­da­tion con­tain­ing the words ‘best,’ ‘award,’ ‘research’ or ‘Ph.D.’ are pre­dic­tive of admis­sion — and can lead to a high­er score — while let­ters con­tain­ing the words ‘good,’ ‘lass,’ ‘pro­gram­ming’ or ‘tech­nol­o­gy’ are pre­dic­tive of rejec­tion. A high­er grade point aver­age means an appli­cant is more like­ly to be accept­ed, as does the name of an elite col­lege or uni­ver­si­ty on the résumé. With­in the sys­tem, insti­tu­tions were encod­ed into the cat­e­gories ‘elite,’ ‘good’ and ‘oth­er,’ based on a sur­vey of UT com­put­er sci­ence fac­ul­ty.”
    • Inter­est­ing­ly, the crit­i­cisms peo­ple made of the algo­rithm are not actu­al­ly crit­i­cisms of the algo­rithm. They are crit­i­cisms of the admis­sions com­mit­tee itself.
  4. An Advent Lament in the Pan­dem­ic (Michael Luo, The New York­er): “The pan­dem­ic in 2020 has held a mir­ror to Chris­tian­i­ty, just as the epi­demics of antiq­ui­ty did, but today’s reflec­tion car­ries the poten­tial to repulse rather than attract.”
    • Curi­ous­ly, the spe­cif­ic exam­ples he cites are most­ly pos­i­tive but he allows the neg­a­tive exam­ple to col­or the entire piece. This is what I have seen as well — vir­tu­al­ly all church­es are act­ing respon­si­bly but the pub­lic focus is on the ones that aren’t.
  5. Why Does It Mat­ter that Jesus Was Born of a Vir­gin? (Kevin DeY­oung, Gospel Coali­tion): “Even if pro­fess­ing Chris­tians accept the vir­gin birth, many would have a hard time artic­u­lat­ing why the doc­trine real­ly mat­ters.”
  6. A Game Design­er’s Analy­sis of QAnon (Reed Berkowitz, Medi­um): “When I saw QAnon, I knew exact­ly what it was and what it was doing. I had seen it before. I had almost built it before. It was gaming’s evil twin. A game that plays peo­ple.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. Empha­sis in orig­i­nal.
  7. 117 Wit­ness­es Detail North Korea’s Per­se­cu­tion of Chris­tians (Jayson Casper, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Drawn from expe­ri­ences stretch­ing from 1990 to 2019, KFI’s report lists scores of vio­la­tions. These include 36 instances of pun­ish­ment met­ed out to fam­i­ly mem­bers, 36 instances of tor­ture, and 20 exe­cu­tions. Women and girls rep­re­sent 60 per­cent of the vic­tims.… Chris­tians total near­ly 80 per­cent: 215 cas­es.” The 98 page report which inspired this arti­cle is Per­se­cut­ing Faith:Documenting reli­gious free­dom vio­la­tions in North Korea

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Revolt of the Fem­i­nist Law Profs (Wes­ley Yang, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “The sex bureau­cra­cy, in oth­er words, piv­ot­ed from pun­ish­ing sex­u­al vio­lence to impos­ing a nor­ma­tive vision of ide­al sex, to which stu­dents are held admin­is­tra­tive­ly account­able.” First shared in vol­ume 214.

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 279

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Blows to vol­ley­ball star Hay­ley Hod­son’s head changed her life (Patrick Hru­by, LA Times): “The fam­i­ly did not trust Stan­ford. School doc­tors, Hod­son says, had diag­nosed her foot pain as inflam­ma­tion and told her that she wasn’t risk­ing fur­ther injury by play­ing. Med­ical records show that an inde­pen­dent doc­tor sub­se­quent­ly reviewed MRI scans tak­en by Stan­ford and deter­mined she had a stress frac­ture.” Hay­ley was a stu­dent in Chi Alpha.
  2. My White Priv­i­lege Did­n’t Save Me. But God Did (Edie Wyatt, Quil­lette): “Not long after, I walked into a sub­ur­ban Bap­tist church, full of strange, unfash­ion­ably dressed, con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians. I was a Marx­ist, a fem­i­nist, foul-mouthed, a chain-smok­er, and des­per­ate. The love I received in that place is the rea­son that I will defend the rights of fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­tians to my dying breath.” This is amaz­ing. If you only read one thing this week, make it this one. Reminder: titles are rarely cho­sen by the author and often do not reflect the essence of an arti­cle.
  3. A pastor’s life depends on a coro­n­avirus vac­cine. Now he faces skep­tics in his church. (Sarah Pul­liam Bai­ley, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Before the pan­dem­ic, the 45-year-old min­is­ter, who nor­mal­ly leads near­ly 2,000 peo­ple, would stand by the entrance to shake hands and offer hugs. Now, before ser­vices, he stays seclud­ed in a room off­stage until it is time to preach while an armed church mem­ber who works for Home­land Secu­ri­ty watch­es the door.”
  4. Amer­i­cans’ Men­tal Health Rat­ings Sink to New Low (Megan Bre­nan, Gallup): “Although the major­i­ty of U.S. adults con­tin­ue to rate their men­tal health as excel­lent (34%) or good (42%), and far few­er say it is only fair (18%) or poor (5%), the lat­est excel­lent rat­ings are eight points low­er than Gallup has mea­sured in any pri­or year.” 
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent because of one very inter­est­ing sta­tis­tic: the only group that showed an increase in men­tal health was week­ly church­go­ers (the week­ly part mat­ters — month­ly church­go­ers expe­ri­enced a decline). I looked at the more detailed PDF and it was unclear to me how they asked about church atten­dance, and of course it is impos­si­ble to iden­ti­fy cau­sa­tion from a sur­vey like this.
    • I found this com­ment by an econ­o­mist on Twit­ter fun­ny: “This is absolute­ly the least sur­pris­ing thing ever. Church folks are like, “The pan­dem­ic sucks, but my church did these 57 things and I’m over­whelmed with peo­ple try­ing to find ways to sup­port dur­ing these times.” Every­body else is like, ‘I’M SO ALONE’” 
  5. The Rise and Fall of Carl Lentz, the Celebri­ty Pas­tor of Hill­song Church (Ruth Gra­ham, New York Times): “Soon the church’s cul­tur­al cachet grew out­side Chris­t­ian cir­cles. ‘I knew peo­ple who came to church not because they were Chris­tians but because they thought Carl was hot,’ said Heather McClana­han, who worked for the church in 2014 and 2015.”
    • The Cri­sis of Chris­t­ian Celebri­ty (David French, The Dis­patch): “The way I’ve put it in speech­es to young Chris­tians is sim­ply this, ‘Make the easy choice so you don’t have to make the hard choice.’ Say­ing no to the extra drink is much eas­i­er than halt­ing a drunk­en flir­ta­tion.”
  6. Promi­nent evan­gel­i­cals are direct­ing Trump’s sink­ing ship. That feeds doubts about reli­gion. (Michael Ger­son, Wash­ing­ton Post): “When promi­nent Chris­tians affirm absurd polit­i­cal lies with reli­gious fer­vor, non­be­liev­ers have every rea­son to think: ‘Maybe Chris­tians are prone to swal­low­ing absurd reli­gious lies as well. Maybe they are sim­ply cred­u­lous about every­thing.’ If we should encounter some­one who believes — hon­est­ly and adamant­ly believes — in both the exis­tence of the East­er Bun­ny and in the res­ur­rec­tion of Christ, it would nat­u­ral­ly raise ques­tions about the qual­i­ty of his or her believ­ing fac­ul­ties.”
  7. The com­ing war on the hid­den algo­rithms that trap peo­ple in pover­ty (Karen Hao, MIT Tech­nol­o­gy Review): Not until they were stand­ing in the court­room in the mid­dle of a hear­ing did the wit­ness rep­re­sent­ing the state reveal that the gov­ern­ment had just adopt­ed a new algo­rithm. The wit­ness, a nurse, couldn’t explain any­thing about it. “Of course not—they bought it off the shelf,” Gilman says. “She’s a nurse, not a com­put­er sci­en­tist. She couldn’t answer what fac­tors go into it. How is it weight­ed? What are the out­comes that you’re look­ing for? So there I am with my stu­dent attor­ney, who’s in my clin­ic with me, and it’s like, ‘Oh, am I going to cross-exam­ine an algo­rithm?’”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

QI’s Gift-Wrap­ping Life Hack! (QI, YouTube): mind blown in less than three min­utes

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Tourist Jour­nal­ism Ver­sus the Work­ing Class (Kevin Mims, Quil­lette): “To university-educated media pro­fes­sion­als like Car­ole Cad­wal­ladr, James Blood­worth, and John Oliv­er, an Ama­zon ware­house must seem like the Black Hole of Cal­cut­ta. But I’ve done low-paying man­u­al labor for most of my work­ing life, and rarely have I appre­ci­at­ed a job as much as my role as an Ama­zon asso­ciate.” I learned many things from this arti­cle. First shared in vol­ume 212, with a fol­low-up shared the next week: How (and Why) to KISSASS (Kevin Mims, Quil­lette): “…if you’re not a mem­ber of the pro­fes­sion­al class, the key to get­ting your per­son­al essays pub­lished in promi­nent pub­li­ca­tions is KISSASS—Keep It Short, Sad, And Sim­ple, Stu­pid.”

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 273

Hon­est­ly, there are too many polit­i­cal arti­cles in this one.

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. How does Google’s monop­oly hurt you? Try these search­es. (Geof­frey Fowler, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Googling didn’t used to require so much … scrolling. On some search­es, it’s like Where’s Wal­do but for infor­ma­tion. With­out us even real­iz­ing it, the Internet’s most-used web­site has been get­ting worse. On too many queries, Google is more inter­est­ed in mak­ing search lucra­tive than a bet­ter prod­uct for us.”
  2. A shad­owy AI ser­vice has trans­formed thou­sands of women’s pho­tos into fake nudes: ‘Make fan­ta­sy a real­i­ty’ (Drew Har­well, Wash­ing­ton Post): “An arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence ser­vice freely avail­able on the Web has been used to trans­form more than 100,000 women’s images into nude pho­tos with­out the women’s knowl­edge or con­sent, trig­ger­ing fears of a new wave of dam­ag­ing ‘deep­fakes’ that could be used for harass­ment or black­mail. Users of the auto­mat­ed ser­vice can anony­mous­ly sub­mit a pho­to of a clothed woman and receive an altered ver­sion with the cloth­ing removed.” Well, that’s not ter­ri­fy­ing at all. 
  3. Of Course We’re Not a Democ­ra­cy (Mike Lee, First Things): “Our sys­tem of gov­ern­ment is best described as a con­sti­tu­tion­al repub­lic. Pow­er is not found in mere majori­ties, but in care­ful­ly bal­anced pow­er.” The author is a US Sen­a­tor (R — Utah).
  4. Should the Pro­fes­sion­al Be Polit­i­cal? (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “The Coin­base deci­sion cap­tured the atten­tion of CEOs, tech work­ers, and mem­bers of the media who are ask­ing them­selves a time­ly ques­tion: What role, if any, should polit­i­cal activism play in the work­place? If Coinbase’s approach doesn’t lead to a staff exo­dus or legal set­backs or some oth­er unfore­seen harm, it is like­ly to be adopt­ed at oth­er companies––probably for the better––because it is well suit­ed to help­ing work­places stay diverse and inclu­sive in a polar­ized moment.”
  5. Elec­tion-relat­ed arti­cles
    • My favorite polit­i­cal ad of 2020 (Twit­ter): 30 sec­onds, and I am quite seri­ous. 
    • The Spir­i­tu­al Bless­ing of Polit­i­cal Home­less­ness (David French, The Dis­patch): “More and more, thought­ful (main­ly young) Chris­tians say to me, ‘I’m pro-life, I believe in reli­gious free­dom and free speech, I think we should wel­come immi­grants and refugees, and I des­per­ate­ly want racial rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. Where do I fit in?’ The answer is clear. Nowhere. And that truth is a bless­ing, if you embrace it.”
    • Poli­cies, Per­sons, and Paths to Ruin (John Piper, Desir­ing God): “Actu­al­ly, this is a long-over­due arti­cle attempt­ing to explain why I remain baf­fled that so many Chris­tians con­sid­er the sins of unre­pen­tant sex­u­al immoral­i­ty (porneia), unre­pen­tant boast­ful­ness (ala­zoneia), unre­pen­tant vul­gar­i­ty (ais­chrolo­gia), unre­pen­tant fac­tious­ness (dichostasi­ai), and the like, to be only tox­ic for our nation, while poli­cies that endorse baby-killing, sex-switch­ing, free­dom-lim­it­ing, and social­is­tic over­reach are viewed as dead­ly.” 
    • Could Trump Be A Christ-Fig­ure: A Response to John Piper About Trump (C. Michael Pat­ton, Cre­do House): “I don’t know if Trump is who the media says he is, I can only go off what I hear him say and see him do. Take away the accu­sa­tions of xeno­pho­bia, racism, and misog­y­ny and what do you have? An alleged sor­did past with women (me too) and a present of enact­ing the poli­cies I agree with.” The title is so provoca­tive and I almost didn’t read it, but I found it gen­uine­ly inter­est­ing. The title is over-the-top, though.
    • Why Most Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians are Polit­i­cal Con­ser­v­a­tives (JP More­land, per­son­al blog): “Suf­fice it to say that, when care­ful­ly exam­ined, the texts show that the state is not to be in the busi­ness of show­ing com­pas­sion or pro­vid­ing pos­i­tive rights for its cit­i­zens through its use of coer­cive pow­er (e.g. tax­a­tion). These are mat­ters of indi­vid­ual moral respon­si­bil­i­ty and oblig­a­tion for the peo­ple of God (and var­i­ous char­i­ties). Rather, the state is the pro­tec­tor of neg­a­tive rights.” The link is to a short blog entry that con­tains a link to a 20 page PDF. The excerpt is from the PDF. The author is a philoso­pher at Bio­la Uni­ver­si­ty and brought up some points about the Old Tes­ta­ment I had nev­er con­sid­ered before. 
    • 2020 Polls: Vot­ers Have Nev­er Been More Divid­ed by Gen­der (Eric Levitz, NY Mag­a­zine): “And today, young women in the U.S. aren’t just unprece­dent­ed­ly sin­gle; they also appear to be unprece­dent­ed­ly unin­ter­est­ed in het­ero­sex­u­al­i­ty: Accord­ing to pri­vate polling shared with Intel­li­gencer by Demo­c­ra­t­ic data sci­en­tist David Shor, rough­ly 30 per­cent of Amer­i­can women under 25 iden­ti­fy as LGBT; for women over 60, that fig­ure is less than 5 per­cent.” 👀👀👀
    • A response: No Fam­i­lies, No Chil­dren, No Future (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “There is noth­ing remote­ly nor­mal about that num­ber. It is a sign of a deeply deca­dent cul­ture — that is, a cul­ture that lacks the where­with­al to sur­vive. The most impor­tant thing that a gen­er­a­tion can do is pro­duce the next gen­er­a­tion. No fam­i­lies, no chil­dren, no future.”
    • How fas­cist is Pres­i­dent Trump? There’s still a for­mu­la for that. (John McNeill, Wash­ing­ton Post): “In a fed­er­al, decen­tral­ized state with con­sti­tu­tion­al checks and bal­ances, it’s hard­er to gov­ern as a fas­cist than to run as one. Trump’s polit­i­cal out­look and behav­ior bear many sim­i­lar­i­ties to those of fas­cist lead­ers, but he has not ruled like an authen­tic fas­cist.” Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus. The author is a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at George­town. 
    • ICE Detainees in Geor­gia Say They Had Unneed­ed Surg­eries (Caitlin Dick­er­son, Seth Freed Wessler and Miri­am Jor­dan, New York Times): “Immi­grants detained at an ICE-con­tract­ed cen­ter in Geor­gia said they had inva­sive gyne­col­o­gy pro­ce­dures that they lat­er learned might have been unnec­es­sary.” About a month old, rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
    • In a year of polit­i­cal anger, unde­cid­ed vot­ers inspire a spe­cial kind of scorn (Mau­ra Jud­kis, Wash­ing­ton Post): “With so much on the line, the Unde­cid­eds have become more mys­ti­fy­ing — and frus­trat­ing — than ever. Nobody believes they are real. Oh, and every­one hates them.”
  6. The Real Caus­es of Human Sex Dif­fer­ences (David C. Geary>, Quil­lette): “Peo­ple have many stereo­types about boys and men and girls and women and most of them are accu­rate and, if any­thing, under­es­ti­mate the mag­ni­tude of actu­al sex differences.The key ques­tion is whether these stereo­typed beliefs cre­ate a self-ful­fill­ing prophe­cy or are large­ly a descrip­tion of sex dif­fer­ences that chil­dren and adults have observed in their day-to-day life.” The author is an evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mis­souri 
  7. Glob­al things to remem­ber in prayer:
    • Niger­ian forces killed 12 peace­ful pro­test­ers, Amnesty says (Sam Olukoya And Lekan Oyekan­mi, Asso­ci­at­ed Press): “At least 56 peo­ple have died dur­ing two weeks of wide­spread demon­stra­tions against police vio­lence, includ­ing 38 on Tues­day, the group said…. cit­ing eye­wit­ness­es, video footage and hos­pi­tal reports.”
    • Nige­ria Is Mur­der­ing Its Cit­i­zens (Chi­ma­man­da Ngozi Adichie, New York Times): “The Niger­ian state has turned on its peo­ple. The only rea­son to shoot into a crowd of peace­ful cit­i­zens is to ter­ror­ize: to kill some and make the oth­ers back down. It is a colos­sal and unfor­giv­able crime.”
    • Turks and Arme­ni­ans Rec­on­cile in Christ. Can Azeris Join Them? (Jayson Casper, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Bey­tel became a Chris­t­ian in 2000. But it was not until 2009 when he met Jacob Purs­ley, an Amer­i­can min­is­ter to Turkey, that he began to wres­tle with his share in the nation­al respon­si­bil­i­ty. The spir­i­tu­al growth of the church is hin­dered by the uncon­fessed sin of geno­cide, Purs­ley implored the believ­ers. He urged Turk­ish Chris­tians to seek rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with Arme­ni­ans, on behalf of the nation.”
    • Azer­bai­jan Evan­gel­i­cals: Con­flict with Arme­ni­ans Is Not a Reli­gious War (Jayson Casper, Chris­tian­i­ty Today):“Originally a ‘Mus­lim athe­ist’ from a well-edu­cat­ed fam­i­ly, he was saved in 1991 after fol­low­ing a beau­ti­ful girl and her mys­te­ri­ous leather-bound book to a Bible study. With­in a year, he was assis­tant pas­tor, and in 1997 he was ordained a min­is­ter in the Greater Grace Chris­t­ian move­ment.” Includ­ing entire­ly for that lumi­nous excerpt. 
    • Biden and Big Tech have Poland and Hun­gary in their crosshairs (Glad­den Pap­pin, Newsweek): “The real rea­son that Poland and Hun­gary have been demo­nized in the Unit­ed States is that they rep­re­sent a suc­cess­ful alter­na­tive to the failed Amer­i­can com­bi­na­tion of indus­tri­al and fam­i­ly col­lapse.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of pol­i­tics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Dal­las. I don’t have strong opin­ions about Euro­pean pol­i­tics, but I am struck by how pas­sion­ate some Amer­i­cans are about them.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence and Mag­i­cal Think­ing (Ed Fes­er, per­son­al blog): “Build­ing a com­put­er is pre­cise­ly anal­o­gous to putting togeth­er a bit of mag­i­cal sleight of hand. It is a clever exer­cise in sim­u­la­tion, noth­ing more. And the con­vinc­ing­ness of the sim­u­la­tion is as com­plete­ly irrel­e­vant in the one case as it is in the oth­er. Say­ing ‘Gee, AI pro­grams can do such amaz­ing things. Maybe it real­ly is intel­li­gence!’ is like say­ing ‘Gee, Penn and Teller do such amaz­ing things. Maybe it real­ly is mag­ic!’” Fes­er is one of my favorite philoso­phers. First shared in vol­ume 197, and I recall a CS major telling me how much he dis­agreed with it.

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 264

sub­stan­tive pieces this week, plus reli­gious argu­ments for and against both Biden and Trump

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

As always, just skim and open the links that seem inter­est­ing to you in new tabs.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Chal­lenge of Marx­ism (Yoram Hazony, Quil­lette): “Not very long ago, most of us liv­ing in free soci­eties knew that Marx­ism was not com­pat­i­ble with democ­ra­cy…. Indeed, the entire pur­pose of demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ment, with its plu­ral­i­ty of legit­i­mate par­ties, is to avoid the vio­lent recon­sti­tu­tion of soci­ety that Marx­ist polit­i­cal the­o­ry regards as the only rea­son­able aim of pol­i­tics.”
  2. The par­ti­cle col­lec­tion that fan­cied itself a physi­cist (Ed Fes­er, per­son­al blog): “Democritus’s point is that if the atom­ist says both that atoms are all that exist and that col­or, sweet­ness, etc. and the oth­er qual­i­ties of con­scious expe­ri­ence are not to be found in the atoms, then we have a para­dox.” Fes­er, as I’ve men­tioned before, is one of my favorite philoso­phers.
  3. Anti-racist Argu­ments Are Tear­ing Peo­ple Apart (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “I made a series of rapid assump­tions about what I was watch­ing. I sur­mised that Broshi was a col­lege-edu­cat­ed, upper-mid­dle-class pro­gres­sive who sits on some sort of edu­ca­tion coun­cil in the pub­lic-school sys­tem and owns copies of White Fragili­ty and How to Be an Antiracist. I sur­mised that she was call­ing some­one out. And I sur­mised that her white, male tar­get was off­screen rolling his eyes. All of which turned out to be cor­rect.” This is amaz­ing.
    • Relat­ed: Why we can­not ignore Insti­tu­tion­al Racism (George Yancey, Patheos): “Pre­tend that we are going to have a mile race a year from now. I tell a third of the class about the race and hire a train­er for them. For anoth­er third of the class I tell them about the race six months lat­er but do not hire them a train­er. But I do advise them that they may want to work on their own to get ready for the race. The last third of the class I call them the morn­ing of the race and tell them that it is time to run. Assum­ing that the class is ran­dom­ly divid­ed into thirds, we know what will hap­pen in the race do we not?”
    • Relat­ed: Black and White evan­gel­i­cals once talked about ‘racial rec­on­cil­i­a­tion.’ Then Trump came along. (Sarah Pul­liam Bai­ley, Wash­ing­ton Post): “…despite shared Chris­t­ian beliefs and com­mit­ment to reli­gious obser­vance, White evan­gel­i­cals are among the most strong­ly Repub­li­can con­stituen­cies, while Black Protes­tants tend to vote Demo­c­ra­t­ic. And that divide appears to have grown hard­er to bridge since Trump took office.”
    • Col­leges aren’t report­ing anti-Semi­tism as a crime (Aiden Pink, For­ward): “A For­ward analy­sis com­par­ing news reports of cam­pus anti­semitism between 2016 and 2018 to the fil­ings for those years found that few­er than half of the inci­dents that could have been report­ed as hate crimes actu­al­ly were. Out of a total of 158 inci­dents at 64 schools, 93 — includ­ing anti­se­mit­ic van­dal­ism at brand-name schools known for vibrant Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties like Har­vard, Prince­ton, MIT, UCLA and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land — were left out of the fed­er­al fil­ings.” Stan­ford comes off look­ing pret­ty good in this arti­cle. 
  4. The Amer­i­can Mis­un­der­stand­ing of Nat­ur­al Rights (Cameron Hilditch, Nation­al Review): “Our inher­i­tance of human rights was built to reflect the fact that we are all liv­ing images of a par­tic­u­lar cru­ci­fied crim­i­nal from Galilee, who pro­claimed that we are each and all more than what Cae­sar would make of us. If we care to enjoy the rights bequeathed to us by this tra­di­tion through­out the com­ing years, decades, and cen­turies, then we can no longer avoid pub­licly dis­cussing the inex­tri­ca­ble nature of reli­gious and polit­i­cal ideas.” 
    • Relat­ed: Is Amer­i­can Chris­t­ian Jurispru­dence a Thing? (Steven D. Smith, Law & Lib­er­ty): “Tak­en togeth­er, these assump­tions gen­er­ate an over­all atti­tude toward the project of law that resists oppos­ing extremes: on the one hand, an exces­sive or decon­struc­tive cynicism—one that would reduce the law to sim­ply a man­i­fes­ta­tion of pow­er based on class, race, or gender—and on the oth­er hand a dan­ger­ous utopi­anism that would use law to achieve per­fect jus­tice but end up destroy­ing human free­dom.” The author is a law pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of San Diego. 
    • Relat­ed. Ish. The end of sec­u­lar­ism is nigh (Tom Hol­land, UnHerd): “That there exist­ed things called ‘reli­gions’ — ‘Hin­duism’, ‘Islam’, ‘Judaism’ ­— and that these func­tioned in a dimen­sion dis­tinct from entire spheres of human activ­i­ty — spheres called ‘sec­u­lar’ in Eng­lish — was not a con­vic­tion native to any­where except for West­ern Europe.”
  5. Chi­na’s Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Sur­veil­lance State Goes Glob­al (Ross Ander­sen, The Atlantic): “In the ear­ly aughts, the Chi­nese tele­com titan ZTE sold Ethiopia a wire­less net­work with built-in back­door access for the gov­ern­ment. In a lat­er crack­down, dis­si­dents were round­ed up for bru­tal inter­ro­ga­tions, dur­ing which they were played audio from recent phone calls they’d made. Today, Kenya, Ugan­da, and Mau­ri­tius are out­fit­ting major cities with Chi­nese-made sur­veil­lance net­works.” I think hor­ri­fy­ing might be the best word for this arti­cle. 
  6. On pres­i­den­tial pol­i­tics and Chris­tian­i­ty:
    • From the right: Let­ter to an Anti-Trump Chris­t­ian Friend (Wayne Gru­dem, Town­Hall): “In every col­umn that I’ve pub­lished in sup­port of Trump, I have explic­it­ly reg­is­tered my dis­ap­proval of his char­ac­ter flaws and pre­vi­ous immoral behav­ior. I sup­port him because of the poli­cies he has enact­ed and will enact, and in spite of his char­ac­ter flaws (which I don’t think rise to a lev­el that would dis­qual­i­fy him from being pres­i­dent; more on this below).” The author is a pro­fes­sor at Phoenix Sem­i­nary.
    •  From the left: The Joe Biden that I know is a man of faith (Chris Coons, Fox News): “For Democ­rats like Joe and me, tak­ing care of the plan­et isn’t just about ris­ing sea lev­els and extreme weath­er, it’s also about pro­tect­ing and hon­or­ing God’s cre­ation. For Democ­rats like Joe and me, fight­ing for civ­il rights and equal­i­ty isn’t just about polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness, it’s about lov­ing our neigh­bor and rec­og­niz­ing that all of us are cre­at­ed equal in the eyes of God.” The author is a US Sen­a­tor.
    • A crit­i­cism of the right: Why Evan­gel­i­cals Sup­port Trump—and Why They Shouldn’t (George Yancey, The Bul­wark): “Many evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians see Trump as some­one who will save them from Chris­tianopho­bia. And while I under­stand and respect the nature of these Chris­tians’ fears—in fact, I share them—I believe that Trump is not only not a solu­tion to these issues but in the long run he will make things worse.” The author is a pro­fes­sor at Bay­lor.
    • A crit­i­cism of the left: Devout Catholics and Sec­u­lar Pro­gres­sives (Robert George, First Things): this one is dif­fi­cult to excerpt. Very well done. The author is a pro­fes­sor at Prince­ton. 

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have God­speed: The Pace Of Being Known (Vimeo): a stu­dent brought this 30 minute video to my atten­tion and said it made her think about how she should be liv­ing in her dorm (sad­ly irrel­e­vant for that pur­pose at the moment). First shared in vol­ume 181.

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 229

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Should Lebanon’s Chris­tians Join Protests? Viral Ser­mons Argue Yes and No. (Jayson Casper, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “”For the past month, Lebanese evan­gel­i­cals have debat­ed Scrip­ture, shar­ing ser­mons online. One viral effort urges believ­ers to stay away from wide­spread demon­stra­tions in sub­mis­sion to author­i­ty. Anoth­er licens­es par­tic­i­pa­tion in the pop­u­lar push for jus­tice.”
    • I like this arti­cle because it helps us look at a con­tentious Bib­li­cal issue in a set­ting where most of us don’t have a strong bias one way or the oth­er. Decide whose argu­ments you find most com­pelling, and then think about how they apply in your own set­ting.
  2. Most peo­ple are bad at argu­ing. These 2 tech­niques will make you bet­ter. (Bri­an Resnick, Vox): “1) If the argu­ment you find con­vinc­ing doesn’t res­onate with some­one else, find out what does…. 2) Lis­ten. Your ide­o­log­i­cal oppo­nents want to feel like they’ve been heard.”
  3. See­ing Like A Finite State Machine (Hen­ry Far­rell, Crooked Tim­ber): “In short, there is a very plau­si­ble set of mech­a­nisms under which machine learn­ing and relat­ed tech­niques may turn out to be a dis­as­ter for author­i­tar­i­an­ism, rein­forc­ing its weak­ness­es rather than its strengths, by increas­ing its ten­den­cy to bad deci­sion mak­ing, and reduc­ing fur­ther the pos­si­bil­i­ty of neg­a­tive feed­back that could help cor­rect against errors.” The author is a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty.
  4. LGBT Rights-Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Bill Pro­posed in Con­gress (Daniel Sil­li­man, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Con­gress­man Chris Stew­art doesn’t expect his bill to pass. But he is propos­ing the Fair­ness for All Act any­way. It’s a step of faith for Stew­art, a Repub­li­can who rep­re­sents Utah’s sec­ond dis­trict, and a mark­er on the bet that it’s pos­si­ble to find a com­pro­mise that pro­tects both reli­gious lib­er­ty and LGBT rights.”
  5. How the Trump Cabinet’s Bible Teacher Became a Shad­ow Diplo­mat (Mat­tathias Schwartz, New York Times): “Sev­en years ago, Drollinger pub­lished a short book called ‘Rebuild­ing Amer­i­ca: The Bib­li­cal Blue­print,’ which lays out his ambi­tion to ‘to reach all the cap­i­tals of the world for Christ.’ Drollinger, like many evan­gel­i­cals, refers to this God-giv­en glob­al remit as the Great Com­mis­sion, a phrase pop­u­lar­ized by the 19th-cen­tu­ry mis­sion­ary James Hud­son Tay­lor; Drollinger traces its man­date to Jesus’ charge, as relat­ed by Matthew, to ‘make dis­ci­ples of all the nations.’ A chart in ‘Rebuild­ing Amer­i­ca’ dia­grams the ‘influ­ence path’ of a pub­lic ser­vant as a base­ball dia­mond, run­ning through local gov­ern­ment (first base), state gov­ern­ment (sec­ond base) and nation­al gov­ern­ment (third base) and cul­mi­nat­ing in ‘inter­na­tion­al influ­ence’ (home plate).” I shared anoth­er arti­cle about Drollinger back in vol­ume 147.
  6. China’s Sov­er­eign­ty Trip­wire in Hong Kong (David P. Gold­man, First Things): “Chi­na is a poly­glot, mul­ti­eth­nic empire, not a nation-state. Infringe­ment of its con­trol over any part of its ter­ri­to­ry threat­ens the whole. For­eign inter­ven­tion and region­al divi­sions is the stuff of China’s his­tor­i­cal night­mares. Any loss of sov­er­eign­ty, in China’s expe­ri­ence, begins a slip­pery slope toward impe­r­i­al crack­up. For­eign inva­sion is still a liv­ing mem­o­ry in Chi­na, and Bei­jing reads the worst into Amer­i­can inter­ven­tion over Hong Kong.”
  7. The Sal­va­tion Army’s Actions Speak Loud­er Than Its The­ol­o­gy (Stephen L. Carter, Bloomberg): “Vol­un­teers are sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly than non-vol­un­teers to be reli­gious; and the reli­gious are sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly than the non-reli­gious to vol­un­teer. As reli­gion declines, so does vol­un­teer­ing. If we put the reli­gious vol­un­teers out of busi­ness, a lot of peo­ple will sud­den­ly be unhelped. We need all the vol­un­teers we can get. And we can­not rea­son­ably expect to replace them with paid labor. Accord­ing to the Urban Insti­tute, the 8.7 bil­lion hours vol­un­teered in the U.S. in 2016 were worth about $187.4 bil­lion.” The author is a law pro­fes­sor at Yale.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Chris­t­ian Mis­sions and the Spread of Democ­ra­cy (Greg Scan­dlen, The Fed­er­al­ist): This is a sum­ma­ry of some rather won­der­ful research Robert Wood­ber­ry pub­lished in The Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Review back in 2012: The Mis­sion­ary Roots of Lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy. If it looks famil­iar it’s because I allude to it from time to time in my ser­mons and con­ver­sa­tions. (first shared in vol­ume 14)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 210

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

It’s good to be back after last week’s hia­tus.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. AI Trained on Old Sci­en­tif­ic Papers Makes Dis­cov­er­ies Humans Missed (Madeleine Gre­go­ry, Moth­er­board): “In a study pub­lished in Nature on July 3, researchers from the Lawrence Berke­ley Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry used an algo­rithm called Word2Vec sift through sci­en­tif­ic papers for con­nec­tions humans had missed. Their algo­rithm then spit out pre­dic­tions for pos­si­ble ther­mo­elec­tric mate­ri­als, which con­vert heat to ener­gy and are used in many heat­ing and cool­ing appli­ca­tions.”
  2. Can Chris­t­ian Com­pas­sion Influ­ence How We Treat Migrants? (Alan Cross, The Bul­wark): “Com­pas­sion is not inher­it­ed, either in indi­vid­u­als nor in nations. It must be cul­ti­vat­ed and that cul­ti­va­tion often hap­pens in tri­al when we are test­ed. Amer­i­ca is being test­ed right now. How will we respond to the migrants com­ing to us des­per­ate for help and refuge? How will we respond to the sight of Oscar and Vale­ria drown­ing and being found face down on the banks of Rio Grande in each other’s arms?”
    • Relat­ed: In the ‘bat­tle at the bor­der,’ evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers jos­tle for Trump-era media rel­e­van­cy (Julia Duin, GetRe­li­gion): “Unless you’ve been under a rock recent­ly, you know much of the coun­try is fix­at­ed on the mess at our bor­der. What’s not as vis­i­ble is how evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians are fight­ing among them­selves over all of this.”
    • And yet: Repub­li­cans turn more neg­a­tive toward refugees as num­ber admit­ted to U.S. plum­mets (Han­nah Har­tig, Pew Research): “By more than two-to-one (68% to 25%), white evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tants say the U.S. does not have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to accept refugees. Oth­er reli­gious groups are more like­ly to say the U.S. does have this respon­si­bil­i­ty. And opin­ions among reli­gious­ly unaf­fil­i­at­ed adults are near­ly the reverse of those of white evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tants: 65% say the U.S. has a respon­si­bil­i­ty to accept refugees into the coun­try, while just 31% say it does not.”
  3. Man­ly wed­ding rings for tough guys who are dudes (Dan Brooks, The Out­line): “I don’t hunt, but I briefly con­sid­ered buy­ing a cam­ou­flage ring, part­ly to sig­nal my deep com­mit­ment to irony and part­ly to get bet­ter ser­vice at the auto parts store.” I real­ly enjoyed this essay, and I hope that many of you have need of wed­ding bands in the not-too-dis­tant future.
  4. Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians Face A Deep­en­ing Cri­sis (Peter Wehn­er, The Atlantic): “Cop­pock men­tioned to me the pow­er­ful exam­ple of St. Ambrose, the bish­op of Milan, who was will­ing to rebuke the Roman Emper­or Theo­do­sius for the latter’s role in mas­sacring civil­ians as pun­ish­ment for the mur­der of one of his gen­er­als. Ambrose refused to allow the Church to become a polit­i­cal prop, despite con­cerns that doing so might endan­ger him. Ambrose spoke truth to pow­er. (Theo­do­sius end­ed up seek­ing penance, and Ambrose went on to teach, con­vert, and bap­tize St. Augus­tine.) Prox­im­i­ty to pow­er is fine for Chris­tians, Cop­pock told me, but only so long as it does not cor­rupt their moral sense, only so long as they don’t allow their faith to become polit­i­cal­ly weaponized. Yet that is pre­cise­ly what’s hap­pen­ing today.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus. I wish that the Amer­i­can church was more vis­i­bly dis­mayed at some of Trump’s obvi­ous sins. I remind peo­ple of all polit­i­cal incli­na­tions that you can sup­port someone’s over­all agen­da and still rebuke them for acts of wicked­ness. In fact, being will­ing to do so makes your sup­port more mean­ing­ful. So vote for who­ev­er you want, and hold the lead­ers you sup­port to a high stan­dard.
  5. Taiwan’s Sta­tus is a Geopo­lit­i­cal Absur­di­ty (Chris Hor­ton, The Atlantic): “’Taiwan’s gov­ern­ment is demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elected—we have a pres­i­dent, we have a par­lia­ment,’ For­eign Min­is­ter Joseph Wu said plain­tive­ly at a brief­ing for for­eign media ear­li­er this year. At the time, his gov­ern­ment was try­ing to be includ­ed in the World Health Assem­bly. (It was ulti­mate­ly blocked by Chi­na.) ‘We issue visas, we issue pass­ports,’ he said, prac­ti­cal­ly plead­ing. ‘We have a mil­i­tary and a cur­ren­cy … Tai­wan exists by itself; Tai­wan is not a part of any oth­er coun­try.’”
  6. Robespierre’s Amer­i­ca (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “The data con­firm what one hears and expe­ri­ences anec­do­tal­ly all the time: In the prover­bial land of the free, peo­ple live in mor­tal fear of a moral faux pas. Opin­ions that were con­sid­ered rea­son­able and nor­mal a few years ago are increas­ing­ly deliv­ered in whis­pers. Pro­fes­sors fear their stu­dents. Pub­lish­ers drop books at the slight­est whiff of social-media con­tro­ver­sy.”
  7. Gay Rites Are Civ­il Rites (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “‘Civ­il reli­gion’ is a sur­pris­ing place for social jus­tice to end up. Gay pride start­ed at Stonewall as a giant ****-you to civ­il soci­ety. Home­less peo­ple, addicts, and sex work­ers told the police where they could shove their respectable val­ues. But there was anoth­er major world reli­gion that start­ed with beg­gars, lep­ers, and pros­ti­tutes, wasn’t there? One that told the Phar­isees where to shove their respectable val­ues.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have a com­pelling series of arti­cles on Chi­na by a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at Johns Hop­kins (who also hap­pens to be a Stan­ford grad): China’s Mas­ter Plan: A Glob­al Mil­i­tary Threat, China’s Mas­ter Plan: Export­ing an Ide­ol­o­gy, China’s Mas­ter Plan: A World­wide Web of Insti­tu­tions and China’s Mas­ter Plan: How The West Can Fight Back (Hal Brand, Bloomberg). The mon­ey quote from the sec­ond arti­cle: “If the U.S. has long sought to make the world safe for democ­ra­cy, China’s lead­ers crave a world that is safe for author­i­tar­i­an­ism.” First shared in vol­ume 156.

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 199

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

If you’ve been fol­low­ing the news, arti­cles about the Mueller report are con­spic­u­ous by their absence in this week’s email. Apolo­gies if you were hop­ing for some­thing on that, but I find it dif­fi­cult to over­state how unin­ter­est­ed I am in this news cycle.

Also, next week will be vol­ume 200. Should I do any­thing spe­cial? Sug­ges­tions are wel­come.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Is Reli­gious Decline Inevitable in the Unit­ed States? (Ryan Burge, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The results are unam­bigu­ous: those with the least amount of edu­ca­tion are con­sis­tent­ly the most like­ly to iden­ti­fy as reli­gious­ly unaf­fil­i­at­ed. The far right bar in the graph, indi­cat­ing those with a grad­u­ate lev­el edu­ca­tion are almost always the group that is the most like­ly to be reli­gious­ly affil­i­at­ed.”
  2. The new reli­gion: why try­ing to be per­fect is doomed to fail (Oliv­er Burke­man, The Guardian): “It’s one thing to seek sal­va­tion in God, or to stop seek­ing sal­va­tion; but the attempt to engi­neer your own sal­va­tion is doomed to fail. We’re flawed and finite, so we lack the capac­i­ty to work, par­ent or romance our way to per­fec­tion. Try to do so and you’ll only end up strug­gling to exert ever more con­trol over your life – where­as deep rela­tion­ships, and oth­er mean­ing­ful expe­ri­ences, require giv­ing up con­trol.”
  3. Now We’re Talk­ing: The Excep­tion­al Life of Paul Coates (Wil S. Hyl­ton, Huff­in­g­ton Post): “There weren’t white cats in hoods, burn­ing cross­es and beat­ing up on black peo­ple, but if you walked through town, the moment you got to the black side, the side­walks would dis­ap­pear, the streets would dis­ap­pear, and now you’re walk­ing in dirt. So the racism was subtle—but as your con­scious­ness expands, the sub­tle­ty melts away and the racism becomes more ran­cid to the eyes and nose.” This is a fas­ci­nat­ing inter­view with Ta-Nehisi Coates’ father.
  4. Mis­sion­ar­ies are sup­posed to suf­fer … So am I allowed to buy an air con­di­tion­er? (Amy Med­i­na, A Life Over­seas): “If God has called you to work among the upper-class in India, then you’ll need to live like them, in a lux­u­ry apart­ment. If God has called you to work among the coastal tribes of Tan­za­nia, then you’ll need to live like them, in a sim­ple cin­der-block house with a pit toi­let. Each life has its set of chal­lenges. Each life has its set of bless­ings.”
  5. Broke Mil­len­ni­als Are Flock­ing to Finan­cial Guru Dave Ram­sey. Is His Advice Any Good? (Kris­ten Bahler, Mon­ey): “[Young adults are] an audi­ence that mar­keters stake their entire bud­gets on, and he’s speak­ing to them in all the wrong ways. He quotes scrip­ture and Ronald Rea­gan. He calls young peo­ple ‘snowflakes.’ He has absolute­ly no chill, what­so­ev­er. But for a grow­ing swath of millennials—a gen­er­a­tion we’re told is too frag­ile, too god­less, too polit­i­cal­ly correct—his word is gospel.”
  6. Lis­ten­ing at the Great Awok­en­ing (Areo, Darel E. Paul): “…this spring the Great Awok­en­ing final­ly came to my home insti­tu­tion, Williams Col­lege. Admin­is­tra­tors and oth­er cam­pus lead­ers have encour­aged white mem­bers of the col­lege com­mu­ni­ty like myself to lis­ten. Over the past two months, I have striv­en to do exact­ly that…. Lis­ten­ing to these views from mul­ti­ple cam­pus­es helped me real­ize that what seems to be a local dis­course respond­ing to local issues is actu­al­ly a local man­i­fes­ta­tion of an inter­na­tion­al social, polit­i­cal and ide­o­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of Polit­i­cal Sci­ence at Williams Col­lege.
    • Relat­ed: The End of Empa­thy (Han­na Rosin, NPR): “…new research has scram­bled notions of how empa­thy works as a force in the world. For exam­ple, we often think of ter­ror­ists as shock­ing­ly blind to the suf­fer­ing of inno­cents. But Bre­i­thaupt and oth­er researchers think of them as clas­sic exam­ples of peo­ple afflict­ed with an ‘excess of empa­thy. They feel the suf­fer­ing of their peo­ple.’”
  7. The Gospel of AI: Evan­gel­i­cals Want Tech to Remain Good News (Grif­fin Paul Jack­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “[The doc­u­ment], com­posed by experts in busi­ness, pub­lic pol­i­cy, tech, ethics, and bib­li­cal the­ol­o­gy, con­sists of 12 arti­cles, each offer­ing bib­li­cal affir­ma­tions and denials about human nature and var­i­ous impli­ca­tions for the future of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. The doc­u­ment empha­sizes God’s pow­er as the author of life and humans’ spe­cial role as image-bear­ers. It most­ly focus­es on con­cep­tu­al and the­o­ret­i­cal frame­works for using AI but also explic­it­ly decries the use of AI for sex­u­al plea­sure as well as ‘manip­u­la­tive and coer­cive’ data col­lec­tion.”
    • See the full doc­u­ment: Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: An Evan­gel­i­cal State­ment of Prin­ci­ples: “In light of exis­ten­tial ques­tions posed anew by the emer­gent tech­nol­o­gy of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI), we affirm that God has giv­en us wis­dom to approach these issues in light of Scrip­ture and the gospel mes­sage. Chris­tians must not fear the future or any tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment because we know that God is, above all, sov­er­eign over his­to­ry, and that noth­ing will ever sup­plant the image of God in which human beings are cre­at­ed. We rec­og­nize that AI will allow us to achieve unprece­dent­ed pos­si­bil­i­ties, while acknowl­edg­ing the poten­tial risks posed by AI if used with­out wis­dom and care.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Preach­er And Pol­i­tics: Sev­en Thoughts (Kevin DeY­oung, Gospel Coali­tion): “I have plen­ty of opin­ions and con­vic­tions. But that’s not what I want my min­istry to be about. That’s not to say I don’t com­ment on abor­tion or gay mar­riage or racism or oth­er issues about the which the Bible speaks clear­ly. And yet, I’m always mind­ful that I can’t sep­a­rate Blog­ger Kevin or Twit­ter Kevin or Pro­fes­sor Kevin from Pas­tor Kevin. As such, my com­ments reflect on my church, whether I intend them to or not. That means I keep more polit­i­cal con­vic­tions to myself than I oth­er­wise would.” First shared in vol­ume 150.

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.