Tag: astronomy

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 481

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. Sales of Bibles Are Booming, Fueled by First-Time Buyers and New Versions (Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, Wall Street Journal): “Worries about the economy, conflicts abroad and uncertainty over the election pushed readers toward the publication in droves. Bible sales are up 22% in the U.S. through the end of October, compared with the same period last year, according to book tracker Circana BookScan. By contrast, total U.S. print book sales were up less than 1% in that period.”
  2. Does Politics Belong in the Church? Does the Church Belong in Politics? (Carl S. H. Henry, Juicy Ecumenism): “Does the church belong in politics? Insofar as it owns land and buildings the church clearly has civic obligations and should render to Caesar what is properly Caesar’s. As an institution grounded on a divine disclosure of truth and morality, moreover, the church is mandated to proclaim publicly the revealed principles by which Christ the King of kings will ultimately judge nations and states and does so even now. The church as such must also stimulate members to apply scriptural principles with sound reason and in good conscience to current political concerns, in quest of preferred policies and programs promotive of justice and peace. Since God wills the state as an instrumentality for preserving justice and restraining disorder, the church should urge members to engage in political affairs to their utmost competence and ability, to vote faithfully and intelligently, to engage in the political process at all levels, and to seek and hold public office. The church is not, however, to use the mechanisms of government to legally impose upon society at large her theological commitments. The church must increasingly clarify when obedience to God requires disobedience to the state and, no less, when disobedience to the state constitutes disobedience to God.” 
    • From 1984, a transcription of a speech by a key voice in the emergence of American evangelicalism. This speech, with updates to replace 80’s references, could be given today.
  3. Ryugu asteroid sample rapidly colonized by terrestrial life despite strict contamination control (Justin Jackson, Phys.org): “NASA tries to avoid introducing Earth microbes to Mars by constructing probes and landers in cleanroom environments and has found the task nearly impossible. There have been species of microbes discovered in NASA clean rooms that not only evade disinfection methods but also adapt to using cleaning agents as a food source.” 
    • That last sentence is stunning. This is how British researchers tried (and failed) to prevent contamination of an asteroid sample: “Transported to Earth in a hermetically sealed chamber, the sample was opened in nitrogen in a class 10,000 clean room to prevent contamination. Individual particles were picked with sterilized tools and stored under nitrogen in airtight containers. Before analysis, the sample underwent Nano-X-ray computed tomography and was embedded in an epoxy resin block for scanning electron microscopy.”
  4. Deus in machina: Swiss church installs AI-powered Jesus (Ashifa Kassam, The Guardian):“The small, unadorned church… in the Swiss city of Lucerne… installed an artificial intelligence-powered Jesus capable of dialoguing in 100 different languages. After training the AI program in theological texts, visitors were then invited to pose questions to a long-haired image of Jesus beamed through a latticework screen… More than 1,000 people – including Muslims and visiting tourists from as far as China and Vietnam – took up the opportunity to interact with the avatar… two-thirds of them had found it to be a ‘“‘spiritual experience.’” 
    • Recommended by a student who calls the article “harrowing.”
  5. Why housing shortages cause homelessness (Salim Furth, Works in Progress): “…most people at risk of homelessness manage to remain housed by staying with others. The higher rate of homelessness in high-cost areas is mostly explained by the inability of the family and friends of potentially homeless people to afford extra living space.” 
    • Some thoughts in response: https://x.com/lymanstoneky/status/1864706992369205381
    • This article matches my experience: plenty of people in Louisiana and Missouri had spare rooms to let people use. Almost no one I know has a spare room in Silicon Valley. People barely even have yards here.
  6. Why Christians Should Care About Oak Flat (Robert P. George, First Things): “For those of us who gather in traditional houses of worship, Apache spiritual practices might feel remote or alien. A patch of Arizona wilderness bears little resemblance to the churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples we regard as sacred space. Yet our tradition of religious freedom, properly understood, has never been about protecting only what is familiar or convenient. Nor has it been a simple live-and-let-live compromise, a fragile truce in which we agree to tolerate one another’s practices for the sake of peace. It is instead a commitment to a fundamental principle that acknowledges our nature as rational beings, bearers of profound, inherent, and equal dignity, capable of ordering our lives toward the good, the true, and the holy.” 
    • Robbie George is, of course, a law prof at Princeton and an outspoken Catholic.
  7. America’s best-known practitioner of youth gender medicine is being sued (Jesse Singal, The Economist): “Ms Breen said she is doing significantly better today—partly, she believes, simply because she ceased taking testosterone. But well before that, she ditched the therapist Dr Olson-Kennedy referred her to, who she said fixated entirely on her gender identity. She switched to a dialectical behavioural therapist whom she described as a godsend, with whom she had her first-ever in-depth conversations about the physical and sexual abuse she endured earlier in life. Ms Breen said she was fairly confident that if she’d had these conversations at age 12, she wouldn’t have pursued medical transition. She has been left with permanent medical consequences: a lower voice than she wants, an Adam’s Apple that distresses her, the prospect of breast reconstruction if she wants to partially regain a female shape, and the possibility that she is infertile due to the years she spent on testosterone.” 

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • Defender of the Basic (YouTube, CollegeHumor): five minutes with only one mildly off-color interchange. I agree with this video directionally but happen to have different (but equally basic) aesthetic preferences than many of those highlighted. 
  • NASA Rocket Engine Fireplace (NASA, YouTube): want a nerdy fireplace on your TV during the holidays? NASA’s got you. 8 hours of a rocket in a fireplace in 4k.
  • Who Needs Congress When You Have Cameo? (Joseph Bernstein, New York Times): “He’s available for birthday wishes (‘Any time you hit a zero it’s a big one, but turning 70 is pretty epic’), wedding congratulations (‘Marriage is an amazing institution’) and pep talks (‘Even on tough days, find the good in it, find the pride in the work’) — all starting at $500. Mr. Gaetz is happy to poke fun at his professional setback, contrasting his failed nomination with the success of one of his Cameo customers who just became a partner in a law firm.” 

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 450

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.

450 is a cool number because it ends in 50. Which is just cool. 

It’s also something called an Arabian Nights factorial, meaning that 450! has 1001 digits. What a fun concept!

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Pro-Palestinian Encampments Spread, Leading to Hundreds of Arrests (Anna Betts, New York Times): “In the week since Columbia University started cracking down on pro-Palestinian protesters occupying a lawn on its campus, protests and encampments have sprung up at other colleges and universities across the country. Police interventions on several campuses have led to more than 400 arrests so far.” 
    • Scenes of Protests Spread at Elite Campuses (Troy Closson, New York Times): “Nearly 50 people were arrested at Yale University in New Haven, Conn., on Monday morning, following the arrests last week of more than 100 protesters at Columbia University in New York City. The arrests unleashed a wave of activism across other campuses.… The flurry of protests has presented a steep challenge for university leaders, as some Jewish students say they have faced harassment and antisemitic comments. Early Monday morning, Columbia announced a same-day shift to online classes because of the protests. Barnard College, across the street, followed suit hours later.”
    • The Carnage Is the Point (Dan Drezner, Substack): “Universities like Columbia have handled this poorly, although their response pales in comparison to how some elected officials want them to respond. An awful lot of politicians have been calling on the use of force against protestors. Senators Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley have called for the National Guard to be deployed in Columbia, as has Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. Earlier this week Texas governor Greg Abbott enthusiastically sent Texas state troopers to conduct mass arrests, breaking up an unsanctioned but nonviolent demonstration at the University of Texas at Austin. Cotton, Hawley, Johnson, and Abbott are a lot of things, but stupid they are not. Why would they call for coercion when they must be fully aware that such an approach would further fan the flames of protest?”
    • An interesting analysis. Worth your time.
  2. No, There Are No “Trans” Animals (Emma Hilton and Jonathan Kay, Quillette): “Do some creatures change sex? Absolutely. But this isn’t new information. It’s a fact that biologists have known about for a long time. What is also well-known is that none of these sex-changing creatures are mammals, much less human. Rather, they’re insects, fish, lizards, and marine invertebrates whose biology is different from our own in countless (fascinating) ways. What’s more, in every single case described above, there are always (at most) just two distinct sexes at play—no matter how those two sexes may switch or combine. One of those sexes is male, a sex associated with gonads that produce sperm (testes); and the other is female, with gonads that produce eggs (ovaries). There’s nothing else on the menu. It’s just M and F.” 
    • Recommended by a student.
  3. Ex-athletic director accused of framing principal with AI arrested at airport with gun (Kristen Griffith & Justin Fenton, The Baltimore Banner): “Eiswert’s voice, which police and AI experts believe was simulated, made disparaging comments toward Black students and the surrounding Jewish community, was widely circulated on social media.” 
    • AI crimes are fixing to get wild. In case you haven’t been keeping up, AI-generated video and audio is shockingly good. https://twitter.com/reidhoffman/status/1783145009153450374 <– check this wild example. Reid Hoffman (one of the so-called ‘Paypal Mafia’, founder of LinkedIn) interviews an AI avatar of himself for about 14 minutes.
  4. What Is a Woman? What Is a Man? (Aaron Renn, Substack): “The key is to understand who men and women are, biologically, sociologically, and culturally. What we will see is that evangelicals have very little to say about this.”
  5. How do you get siblings to be nice to each other? Latino families have an answer (Michaeleen Doucleff, NPR): “I ask Cindy the same question I posed to scientists: How do you teach children to find joy in helping their siblings? And she answers exactly the same as the scientists answered: ‘We model it.’ Cindy says. Cindy models not just helping her siblings, but also the joy she receives from the relationships she has with her brothers and sisters.”
  6. Changes in College Admissions (Zvi Mowshowitz, Substack): “Starting in August 2024, LSAT to eliminate the Logic Games (Analytic Reasoning) section, the hardest, most fun and most objective and intelligence-testing part of the whole test. Normally I would be against dumbing down our testing, but keeping smart people from becoming lawyers is not the worst idea.” 
    • The whole thing is interesting. The excerpt is amusing.
  7. Astronomers Find Evidence Of A Massive Object Beyond The Orbit Of Neptune (James Felton, IFL Science): “Carrying out simulations to try and discover what best explains the orbits of these objects, the team found that a model that includes a massive planet beyond the region of Neptune explained the steady state of these objects much better than in simulations where planet 9 was not included. In the model, the team included other variables, such as the galactic tide and the gravitational influence of passing stars.” 

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 397

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 397, which is a prime number.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Stanford Needs Easter (Isabella Grieppe & Diego Garcia-Camargo, Stanford Review): “So, instead of sheepishly following the cultural status quo, consider the possibility that there is more to our lives than our material reality. Consider the existential possibility that the God of the universe sent His only Son because of His Love for you; that on this day He took upon himself the brokenness of this world in a tortuous death for you; and that He conquered death to offer you hope and purpose in Loving and serving Him by Loving and serving others.”
  2. The Limits of Forgiveness (Elizabeth Bruenig, The Point Magazine): “In a forum we both participated in for the Boston Review, University of Chicago philosopher Agnes Callard once observed that if a person is wronged and therefore made angry at another person, there’s no logical reason for that anger to be extinguished, ever. Sure, it may run its course, or the angry individual may become bored with the emotion or simply elect to drop it, but there is no logical reason, once the anger is felt at the initial offense, that one should ever stop feeling angry—even once one has avenged oneself.” 
    • Well worth your time.
  3. NASA Astronaut Asks for Prayer for Moon Mission (Daniel Silliman, Christianity Today): “The last time he was in space, Glover said, he really felt closer to God. Not because he was above the sky but because, as James 4:8 says, when you submit yourself to God and come near to God, God comes near to you. Reading the Bible in space was a powerful experience. Glover remembers being in weightlessness in his quarters on the International Space Station and reading Philippians 4. Some of the words were so familiar to him, like verse 13, which says in his New King James Version, ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.’ But there were other passages he felt like he was seeing for the first time. Like in verse 12, where Paul writes, ‘I have learned both to be full and to be hungry.’ Glover had never noticed that before. It expressed exactly how he felt about himself and his training and mission.”
  4. With some of my fellow Stanford Law students, there’s no room for argument (Tess Winston, Washington Post): “I often think of one of my first-year professors, who was appalled by these students’ stigmatizing of the prosecutorial role. He asked one: Given that prosecutors decide whether and what charges to bring against a defendant, isn’t it preferable for well-qualified people to fill the role? Without missing a beat, the student responded: No, being a prosecutor is simply evil.” 
    • I have unlocked the paywall on this one. The author is a third year law school student at SLS.
  5. Do Your Political Beliefs Affect Your Parenting? (Leonard Sax, Institute for Family Studies): “A mom brought her six-year-old daughter into the office with a fever and a sore throat. I asked the little girl to open her mouth and say ‘Ah.’ She shook her head and clenched her mouth shut. ‘Mom, it looks like I’m going to need your help here,’ I said. ‘Could you please ask your daughter to open her mouth and say ‘Ah’?’ Mom arched her eyebrows and replied, ‘Her body, her choice.’ Wow. This mom was invoking the ‘My body, my choice’ slogan of abortion-rights activists to defend her 6‑year-old daughter’s refusal to let me, the doctor, look at her daughter’s throat. I have been a family doctor for nearly 34 years. Until recently, I saw no connection between politics and parenting.” 
    • Really interesting. Also accurate, if my experience is any guide. There is a marked difference in the parenting philosophies people hold in the Bay Area based upon their politics.
  6. I just finished The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling podcast and I recommend it. The seven episodes were all engaging and the author comes at everything from a unique perspective. The episodes are around an hour long.
  7. Before Politics, There’s the World (Freddie deBoer, Substack): “this piece on adoption by Larissa MacFarquhar in the New Yorker. It is, I think, a pitch-perfect example of the contemporary tendency to simply wish away any sort of necessity other than moral or political necessity. The essay is a relentless chronicle of all of the ills of adoption, why adoption is alienating and traumatic for the adopted child, how adoption scars adoptees for life, divides them from their cultures, leaves the without an identity…. Yet what MacFarquhar says in parentheses and half-sentences is the most important point of all — that adoption is inherently a response to the unavoidable tragedies of human life, a necessarily imperfect solution to very real and persistent problems.… Almost entirely undiscussed is the fact that the world houses both children who need homes and loving and nurturing adults with homes to share. That’s why adoption exists. That’s always been why adoption exists. Kids need parents and parents need kids. No facile trauma narrative can change that basic arithmetic.” 
    • deBoer is usually a good essayist and he outdoes himself in this one.

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 Secularization and the Tribulations of the American Working-Class (Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution): “I praise the scholarship and courage of Brian N. Wheaton.” Along with the related: Getting Past the Gatekeepers (J. Budziszewski, personal blog): “Your gatekeepers want you to write a book more like the one they would have written. If you do make revisions, make them in such a way that the book becomes not less your own, but even more your own. That’s not pride. If God condescends to allow certain insights to the historians on your board, how wonderful! Let them write about them! Read and learn from them! But if He condescends to allow certain other insights to you, you should write about yours, not theirs.” The author is a professor of politics and philosophy at UT Austin. From volume 276.

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 186

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. America in one tweet:“We are living in an era of woke capitalism in which companies pretend to care about social justice to sell products to people who pretend to hate capitalism.” (Clay Routledge, Twitter)
  2. Engineers of the Soul: Ideology in Xi Jinping’s China (John Garnaut, Sinocism): “In classical Chinese statecraft there are two tools for gaining and maintaining control over “the mountains and the rivers”: The first is wu (weapons, violence — 武) and the second is wen (language, culture — 文). Chinese leaders have always believed that power derives from controlling both the physical battlefield and the cultural domain. You can’t sustain physical power without discursive power. Wu and wen go hand-in-hand.”
  3. A Strange Argument for the Commonplace (Cato Unbound, Agnes Callard): “We should not equalize the rich and poor, but rather endeavor to make the poor of tomorrow wealthier than the rich of today.” I’m including this link mostly because of that quote. Also because it has some commentary on Peter Singer which dovetails with a conversation I had earlier this week.
  4. Most Teenagers Drop Out of Church as Young Adults (Aaron Earls, Lifeway Research ): “Almost half (47 percent) of those who dropped out and attended college say moving to college played a role in their no longer attending church for at least a year…. Among all those who dropped out, 29 percent say they planned on taking a break from church once they graduated high school. Seven in 10 (71 percent) say their leaving wasn’t an intentional decision.” 
    • The title is a bit misleading. Yes, a majority of young adults who previously attended church do stop attending church for at least one year between the ages of 18–22, but if you look at their underlying research about 70% eventually start attending again. Also, it doesn’t seem to ask whether any of these people were involved in an activity that they might not characterize as church (like Chi Alpha or Intervarsity). I know some of my Chi Alpha students are not currently worshiping with a Sunday morning congregation, but it would be wrong to infer that their faith has been put on pause.
  5. Have Aliens Found Us? A Harvard Astronomer on the Mysterious Interstellar Object ‘Oumuamua (Isaac Chotiner, New Yorker): “Last year, I wrote a paper about cosmology where there was an unusual result, which showed that perhaps the gas in the universe was much colder than we expected. And so we postulated that maybe dark matter has some property that makes the gas cooler. And nobody cares, nobody is worried about it, no one says it is not science. Everyone says that is mainstream—to consider dark matter, a substance we have never seen. That’s completely fine. It doesn’t bother anyone. But when you mention the possibility that there could be equipment out there that is coming from another civilization—which, to my mind, is much less speculative, because we have already sent things into space—then that is regarded as unscientific.” 
    • I am skeptical, but I find the conversation fascinating. Related: an article on the Fermi paradox I shared back in volume 159 and an article on government investigation of UFO reports from volume 132.
  6. The marvel of the human dad (Anna Machin, Aeon): “But crucially, dad has not evolved to be the mirror to mum, a male mother, so to speak. Evolution hates redundancy and will not select for roles that duplicate each other if one type of individual can fulfil the role alone. Rather, dad’s role has evolved to complement mum’s.” Dr. Machin is a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Oxford.
  7. The Virtue Signalers Won’t Change the World (John McWhorter, The Atlantic): “Just as the first and second waves of both feminism and antiracism transformed social structures, third-wave antiracism may seem parallel to third-wave feminism in moving on to a different form of abuse, psychological rather than institutional. But this focus on the psychological has morphed, of late, from a pragmatic mission to change minds into a witch hunt driven by the personal benefits of virtue signaling, obsessed with unconscious and subconscious bias. As noble as this culture of shaming genuinely seems to many, it’s a dead end.” 
    • A useful, detailed follow-up: The Perils of a Psychological Approach to Anti-racism (Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic): “If the phenomenon McWhorter described is real, we should be able to find leftists who intend to fight bias by calling out psychological harms, only to fall into ‘hypersensitivity, oversimplification, and even a degree of performance’ as participants signal virtue in ways that help no one.”

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 Inside Graduate Admissions (Inside Higher Ed, Scott Jaschick): if you plan to apply to grad school, read this. There is one revealing anecdote about how an admissions committee treated an application from a Christian college student. My takeaway: the professors tried to be fair but found it hard to do, and their stated concerns were mostly about the quality of the institution rather than the faith of the applicant. Troubling nonetheless. (first shared in volume 32)

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.