Tag: athletics

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 464



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 464, which only has two prime fac­tors: 2 and 29.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Stan­ford in Paris 2024 (Stan­ford News): “A school-record 60 Stan­ford-affil­i­at­ed ath­letes have qual­i­fied to com­pete at the Olympic Games Paris 2024.… Nations rep­re­sent­ed include the Unit­ed States (38), Cana­da (5), Aus­tralia (3), Israel (2), Switzer­land (2), Egypt (1), France (1), Ger­many (1), Greece (1), Hong Kong (1), Nige­ria (1), Philip­pines (1), Sin­ga­pore (1), Spain (1) and Venezuela (1).”
  2. Teach­ers and the Trans­mis­sion of Excel­lence (Matt Clan­cy, New Things Under The Sun): “Here’s a strik­ing fact: through 2022, one in two Nobel prize win­ners in physics, chem­istry, and med­i­cine also had a Nobel prize win­ner as their aca­d­e­m­ic advi­sor.”
    • Men­tor­ship mat­ters, and not just in acad­e­mia. I have a friend who once told me, “You always need to learn up. Look above you and find peo­ple who have already achieved what you hope to achieve and spend as much time around them as you can.”
  3. There Is Almost No ‘Lib­er­al­iz­ing Reli­gion’ in the Unit­ed States (Ryan Burge, Sub­stack): “The more peo­ple go to church, the less lib­er­al they are. That’s true across racial lines. That’s also true in a lot of major Protes­tant tra­di­tions includ­ing a few main­line stal­warts like the Unit­ed Methodist Church and the PCUSA.”
    • Empha­sis removed for read­abil­i­ty.
  4. The Most Reveal­ing Moment of a Trump Ral­ly (McK­ay Cop­pins, The Atlantic): “To under­stand the evolv­ing psy­chol­o­gy and beliefs of Trump’s reli­gious sup­port­ers, I attempt­ed to review every prayer offered at his cam­paign events since he announced in Novem­ber 2022 that he would run again. Work­ing with a researcher, I com­piled 58 in total, the most recent from June 2024. The result­ing document—at just over 17,000 words—makes for a strange, reveal­ing reli­gious text: benign in some places, blas­phe­mous in oth­ers; con­tra­dic­to­ry and poignant and fright­en­ing and sad and, per­haps most of all, beg­ging for exe­ge­sis.”
    • Inter­est­ing con­cept for an arti­cle. Note that the author is Mor­mon, so fac­tor that in when eval­u­at­ing his reli­gious com­men­tary.
  5. Peo­ple Say Queer Peo­ple Are Born That Way. It’s More Com­pli­cat­ed. (Charles M. Blow, New York Times): “ ‘Born this way’ may, unfor­tu­nate­ly, have been an over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion. It’s prob­a­bly clos­er to the truth to say that peo­ple are ‘formed this way.’ As the com­plex­i­ty of human sex­u­al­i­ty has become clear­er, sci­en­tists and writ­ers have attempt­ed to add nec­es­sary nuance to the sub­ject. But the slo­gan remains entrenched in the cul­ture.… It is not only unsup­port­able by sci­ence but also does not cap­ture the full real­i­ty of queer expe­ri­ence and is unjust to some mem­bers of the queer com­mu­ni­ty itself.”
    • I am old enough to remem­ber when the “born this way” argu­ment was the dom­i­nant rea­son homo­sex­u­al­i­ty gained widestream accep­tance in Amer­i­ca. Unlocked.
  6. Should Pornog­ra­phy Be Com­plete­ly Banned? (Ryan Burge, Sub­stack): “The share of Amer­i­cans who want no restric­tions on porn has nev­er been that high. It was 10% of the sam­ple back in the ear­ly 1970s and today it’s dropped to a very small frac­tion — just 4% of those who took the sur­vey in 2022. So, there’s lit­tle appetite for a lais­sez-faire approach to pornog­ra­phy.”
  7. Cou­ples, Stop Writ­ing Your Own Wed­ding Vows (Cheryl Mendel­son, The Atlantic): “Tra­di­tion­al vows cre­ate an intense moment of qui­et speech that height­ens the exu­ber­ance of the toasts, drink­ing, and danc­ing that fol­low. Replac­ing them with sen­ti­men­tal or jokey words turns the vow-tak­ing into an iron­ic per­for­mance of some­thing the cou­ple is implic­it­ly dis­avow­ing. One of my friends regards tak­ing vows oth­er than the tra­di­tion­al ones as ‘like being on the wit­ness stand and answer­ing the ques­tions you wish you had been asked.’ He and his wife want­ed ‘no irony’ or attempts at wit in their vows, and ‘redact­ed’ theirs from a church rite.”

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 376

My favorite line from this week: “Men bond by insult­ing each oth­er and not real­ly mean­ing it; women bond by com­pli­ment­ing each oth­er and not real­ly mean­ing it.”

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, vol­ume 376, is an auto­mor­phic num­ber because when raised to a pow­er it ends in itself. 3762 = 141376. It con­tin­ues: 3763 = 53157376 and so on. 37615 = 424441337012461701988020381601157349376 and so on.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Male-War­rior Hypoth­e­sis (Rob Hen­der­son, Sub­stack): “…young human males often address each oth­er with abu­sive insults. The rit­u­al tests the strength of the friend­ship. If light­heart­ed ver­bal quips do not dam­age the rela­tion­ship, then the bonds are like­ly rel­a­tive­ly strong. In con­trast, women and girls sel­dom insult their friends, and often work extra hard to praise them to avoid any signs of hos­til­i­ty. Men bond by insult­ing each oth­er and not real­ly mean­ing it; women bond by com­pli­ment­ing each oth­er and not real­ly mean­ing it.”
    • This arti­cle is engross­ing even if you already know the gist.
  2. The Fever Is Break­ing (David Brooks, New York Times): “The sin­gle most impor­tant result of this elec­tion was the tri­umph of the normies. Estab­lish­men­tar­i­an, prac­ti­cal lead­ers who are not always scream­ing angri­ly at you did phe­nom­e­nal­ly well, on right and left: Mike DeWine in Ohio, Josh Shapiro in Penn­syl­va­nia. Work­man­like incum­bents from John Thune in South Dako­ta to Ron Wyden in Ore­gon had suc­cess­ful nights. Gov. Tony Evers of Wis­con­sin had the quo­ta­tion that sum­ma­rized the elec­tion: ‘Bor­ing wins.’ ”
    • Relat­ed (in that it is about pol­i­tics): 3 Prin­ci­ples for Set­tling Polit­i­cal Spats in the Church (Daniel K. Williams, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Any attempt to make soci­ety more moral through leg­is­la­tion will inevitably be selec­tive and incom­plete and may offer mixed results. Which major polit­i­cal par­ty in the Unit­ed States is com­mit­ted to address­ing the prob­lems of divorce, gam­bling addic­tions, mar­i­tal infi­deli­ty, and alco­hol abuse? Which par­ty will do the most to pro­tect the poor from being exploit­ed through pay­day loans? Which par­ty will fight against the pornog­ra­phy indus­try? If you haven’t seen any polit­i­cal ads this elec­tion sea­son that address any of these issues, per­haps that’s a sign of the moral selec­tiv­i­ty in our cur­rent par­ti­san pol­i­tics.”
    • The author is a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of West Geor­gia. Empha­sis in orig­i­nal.
  3. A Tra­di­tion of Anti-Tra­di­tion­al­ists (Mark Bauer­lein, First Things): “All the talk in the human­i­ties back then turned on ‘open­ing up the canon’ and break­ing up the dom­i­nance of Dead White Males—less John Dry­den and more Aphra Behn, more diver­si­ty and few­er idols—but in the the­o­ry area, these fig­ures were as canon­i­cal as the saints.… What this bias has pro­duced is two gen­er­a­tions of col­lege teach­ers who don’t real­ize their bias. They got a nar­row edu­ca­tion that they trust­ed was the broad­est one. They gen­uine­ly don’t know that anoth­er crit­i­cal tra­di­tion besides the progressive/transgressive one exists.” This essay is a bulls­eye.
    • Relat­ed: An Exis­ten­tial Threat to Doing Good Sci­ence (Lua­na Maro­ja, Bari Weis­s’s Sub­stack): “The restric­tion of aca­d­e­m­ic free­dom comes in two forms: what we teach and what we research. Let’s start with teach­ing. I need to empha­size that this is not hypo­thet­i­cal. The cen­so­ri­ous, fear­ful cli­mate is already affect­ing the con­tent of what we teach.”
    • There’s a Stan­ford con­nec­tion in this sec­ond arti­cle, btw. The arti­cle is an adap­ta­tion of a speech giv­en at a pri­vate con­fer­ence at Stan­ford quite recent­ly.
  4. Con­tra Res­i­dent Con­trar­i­an On Unfal­si­fi­able Inter­nal States (Scott Alexan­der, Astral Codex Ten): “But in the sto­ries these peo­ple told me, it was more about — they found that this effort was pro­duc­ing some­thing unex­pect­ed, and devel­op­ing new per­son­al­i­ty aspects that they need­ed, so they kept going. If you take one step towards Darth Vad­er, he will take two steps toward you (sor­ry if I am sound­ing like a Sith youth pas­tor).”
    • This is absolute­ly fas­ci­nat­ing and the excerpt does not do it any jus­tice. Rec­om­mend­ed.
  5. New Endorse­ments for Col­lege Ath­letes Resur­face an Old Con­cern: Sex Sells (Kurt Streeter, New York Times): “Haley Jones, an All-Amer­i­ca guard at Stan­ford and a can­di­date for the Play­er of the Year Award, said she didn’t want to play up sex appeal. Her endorse­ment income is dri­ven by a social media image that por­trays her as a light­heart­ed stu­dent-ath­lete with­out an overt­ly provoca­tive tone.”
    • Inter­est­ing in its own right, also a stronger Stan­ford angle than I expect­ed.
  6. It’s Always a ‘Neg­a­tive World’ for Chris­tian­i­ty (David French, The Dis­patch): “One of [the] core con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian cri­tiques of Amer­i­can cul­ture is that Amer­i­ca is grow­ing ever-more hos­tile to the authen­tic Chris­t­ian faith. We’ve left a friend­ly and hos­pitable past, and now we’re con­fronting a hos­tile future.… But this analy­sis is fun­da­men­tal­ly wrong. It’s dan­ger­ous­ly wrong. It’s wrong not because the present moment is par­tic­u­lar­ly hos­pitable to the Chris­t­ian faith, but because it fun­da­men­tal­ly mis­un­der­stands both Amer­i­can his­to­ry and Amer­i­can Chris­ten­dom, and it fun­da­men­tal­ly mis­un­der­stands the per­ma­nent coun­ter­cul­tur­al real­i­ty of authen­tic Chris­tian­i­ty.”
  7. Pay­walls or Con­stant Intru­sive Ads: Pick One (Fred­die deBoer, Sub­stack): “And I also want to say, if you’re annoyed that you can’t get past a pay­wall — tough. Because an era of ris­ing pay­walls is absolute­ly nec­es­sary if you want writ­ing to sur­vive as a pro­fes­sion, and if you want good jour­nal­ism and analy­sis to endure.”

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 Small World Net­work of Col­lege Class­es: Impli­ca­tions for Epi­dem­ic Spread on a Uni­ver­si­ty Cam­pus (Wee­den & Corn­well, Soci­o­log­i­cal Sci­ence): “If one chose a giv­en stu­dent at ran­dom, that stu­dent is like­ly to attend class with a stu­dent who, in turn, attends class with any oth­er ran­dom­ly cho­sen stu­dent. Put dif­fer­ent­ly, although it is unlike­ly that any two ran­dom­ly cho­sen stu­dents would be enrolled in the same course, it is high­ly like­ly that they would be enrolled in dif­fer­ent cours­es that both include the same third par­ty.“

The authors, pro­fes­sors at Cor­nell, were curi­ous about the poten­tial for dis­ease spread among under­grads at their school. Tak­ing this in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent direc­tion: the aver­age stu­dent at Stan­ford is like­ly only one or two steps away from Chi Alpha. WOW! Invite your friends! From vol­ume 246

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 203

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. The Heart of the Evan­gel­i­cal Cri­sis (Mark Gal­li, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “My next thought was, ‘Well, if I call myself a Chris­t­ian, I should have greater love and desire to know God more deeply. Per­haps I should pray for that.’ And that’s when some­thing occurred to me with great force: I wasn’t sure I want­ed that. I rec­og­nize that was an odd admis­sion for a per­son who claimed to be a good Chris­t­ian. But there it was. I didn’t think I real­ly want­ed to love God more. The rea­sons for that are com­plex and will be touched on lat­er, but the bot­tom line was: I real­ly didn’t want to love God.” First essay in a series.
  2. Abor­tion in Amer­i­ca, explained in 10 facts (Anna North, Vox): “Even though the abor­tion rate has declined, the pro­ce­dure remains com­mon­place. Accord­ing to a 2017 analy­sis by the Guttmach­er Insti­tute, 23.7 per­cent of women in the Unit­ed States will have an abor­tion by the age of 45. Nine­teen per­cent will have one by age 30, and 4.6 per­cent will have one by age 20.”
    • Debunk­ing 9 Myths Sur­round­ing Alabama’s Abor­tion Law (Car­ole Noviel­li, Live Action): “This bill, HB314, was spon­sored by a female law­mak­er, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ter­ri Collins, and was signed into law by female Gov­er­nor Kay Ivey. Pro-life orga­ni­za­tions are led by women. The Roe v. Wade Supreme Court deci­sion, on the oth­er hand, was imposed by all men.”
    • Alaba­ma and Geor­gia Are Throw­ing Down the Gaunt­let against Roe. Good. (David French, Nation­al Review): dif­fi­cult to excerpt. A good sum­ma­ry of the legal strat­e­gy the south­ern states are pur­su­ing.
    • I’m an anti-abor­tion Chris­t­ian. But Alabama’s ban will do more harm than good. (Kather­ine Kelaidis, Vox): “Dra­con­ian bans on abor­tion — and frankly any­thing oth­er than lib­er­al access to abor­tions along with com­pre­hen­sive sex edu­ca­tion and access to con­tra­cep­tion — fail to pro­tect human life, both in the womb and out­side of it. This, in itself, should be intol­er­a­ble to any Chris­t­ian, par­tic­u­lar­ly one who views abor­tion as moral­ly sus­pect.”
    • Why some anti-abor­tion con­ser­v­a­tives think Alabama’s abor­tion law goes too far (Jane Coas­ton, Vox): “A 2018 Gallup poll found that just 29 per­cent of Amer­i­cans believe abor­tion should be legal in all cir­cum­stances, but that out­weighs the 18 per­cent of Amer­i­cans who believe abor­tion should be ille­gal in all cir­cum­stances. The vast major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans think abor­tion should be legal, with restric­tions of some kind (abor­tions being per­mit­ted only with­in the first three months of preg­nan­cy, for exam­ple).”
    • That lat­est Pat Robert­son juridi­cal quote: Jour­nal­ists may want to note these inter­est­ing facts (Ter­ry Mat­ting­ly, GetRe­li­gion): “Robert­son is (a) mak­ing a com­ment about legal ques­tions linked to this Alaba­ma law and, (b) also about the polit­i­cal real­i­ties sur­round­ing it. Thus, I am ask­ing: Should jour­nal­ists con­sid­er adding one or two sen­tences to their reports not­ing that Robert­son is (a) a grad­u­ate of Yale Law School and (b) some­one who grew up in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., as the son of a U.S. Sen­a­tor? How many read­ers know these two facts about this famous reli­gious leader?” Wait. What? I had no idea.
    • Most Abor­tion-Mind­ed Women Aren’t Cal­cu­lat­ing Killers. They’re Afraid (Maria Baer, Gospel Coali­tion): the whole thing is worth read­ing — this bit caught my atten­tion but isn’t real­ly close to her main point: “Evil often begets more evil. While many who sup­port so-called abor­tion rights believe they’re serv­ing needy women, they’re over­look­ing one crit­i­cal real­i­ty: Women are often brought—reluctantly—to the abor­tion doc­tor. These women are com­pelled toward abor­tion not by their own empow­er­ing, my-body-is-my-own sense of auton­o­my, but by anoth­er per­son seek­ing con­trol. Angry boyfriends, angry hus­bands, angry moth­ers, angry employers—these are so often the wind at the back of an abor­tion-mind­ed woman.”
  3. Too many men: Chi­na and India bat­tle with the con­se­quences of gen­der imbal­ance (Simon Deny­er & Annie Gowen,South Chi­na Morn­ing Post): this arti­cle is a year old, it’s long but good. “Noth­ing like this has hap­pened in human his­to­ry. A com­bi­na­tion of cul­tur­al pref­er­ences, gov­ern­ment decree and mod­ern med­ical tech­nol­o­gy in the world’s two largest coun­tries has cre­at­ed a gen­der imbal­ance on a con­ti­nen­tal scale. Men out­num­ber women by 70 mil­lion in Chi­na and India…. In any giv­en age group, a pro­por­tion of men will fail to find brides, but they will stay in the mar­riage mar­ket, com­pet­ing with younger men to mar­ry younger women. The dis­pro­por­tion keeps grow­ing. By 2050, French demog­ra­ph­er Christophe Guil­mo­to esti­mates, there could be between 150 to 190 men for every 100 women in China’s mar­riage mar­ket.”
  4. A few brief obser­va­tions about think­ing clear­ly:
    • Account­ing Iden­ti­ties and the Implic­it The­o­ry of Iner­tia (Nick Rowe, Worth­while Cana­di­an Ini­tia­tive): “Ani­mals can be divid­ed into Car­ni­vores and Non-Car­ni­vores: A = C + NC. There­fore, if we add some wolves to an island of sheep, the num­ber of ani­mals on that island will increase. It’s easy to see why that argu­ment might not be right. Wolves kill sheep. But if you did­n’t know that fact about wolves and sheep, the argu­ment looks very appeal­ing. But the equa­tion A = C + NC tells us absolute­ly noth­ing about the world; it’s an account­ing iden­ti­ty that is true by def­i­n­i­tion. The only thing it tells you is how I have cho­sen to divide up the world into parts. And I can choose an infi­nite num­ber of dif­fer­ent ways to divide the world up into parts.” This is an impor­tant insight.
    • Why Do Exper­i­ments Make Peo­ple Uneasy? (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “One fac­tor which comes out of respon­dent com­ments is that the exper­i­ment forces peo­ple to reck­on with the idea that even experts don’t know what the right thing to do is and that con­fes­sion of igno­rance both­ers peo­ple. (This is also one rea­son why peo­ple may pre­fer pun­dits who always ‘know’ the right thing to do even when they man­i­fest­ly do not).”
    • Our first instinct is far too often wrong (Tim Har­ford, Finan­cial Times): “In a mul­ti­ple-choice test, you some­times write down an answer and then have sec­ond thoughts. Is it wise to stay with your first instincts, or bet­ter to switch? Most peo­ple would advise that the ini­tial answer is usu­al­ly bet­ter than the doubt-plagued sec­ond guess…. Researchers have been study­ing this ques­tion since the 1920s. They have over­whelm­ing­ly con­clud­ed both that indi­vid­ual answer changes are more like­ly to be from wrong to right, and that stu­dents who change their answers tend to improve their scores.”
    • The Big Sto­ry You Don’t Read About (David Brooks, New York Times): “How did we in our busi­ness get in the spot where we spend 90 per­cent of our cov­er­age on the 10 per­cent of our lives influ­enced by pol­i­tics and 10 per­cent of our cov­er­age on the 90 per­cent of our lives influ­enced by rela­tion­ship, com­mu­ni­ty and the places we live in every day?”
  5. When Male Run­ners Lose to Women (Ley­land Cec­co, The Wal­rus): “Stud­ies are start­ing to show that male and female bod­ies respond dif­fer­ent­ly to fatigue: dur­ing long peri­ods of exer­cise, the brain mon­i­tors and triages the body’s out­put, reg­u­lat­ing feel­ings of exhaus­tion to ensure the run­ner doesn’t overex­tend them­selves. If the cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem sens­es the activ­i­ty is becom­ing too intense, it reduces the muscle’s out­put…. ‘It turns out women have a slight­ly, it seems, bet­ter resis­tance to that kind of fatigue.’”
  6. The Incom­pat­i­bil­i­ty of Crit­i­cal The­o­ry and Chris­tian­i­ty (Neil Shen­vi & Pat Sawyer, Gospel Coali­tion): “Chris­tian­i­ty pro­vides us with an over­ar­ch­ing meta­nar­ra­tive that runs from cre­ation to redemp­tion: We are crea­tures made in God’s image, who have sinned against him, who need to be res­cued through the aton­ing work of Jesus, and who are called to love both God and neigh­bor. In con­trast, crit­i­cal the­o­ry is asso­ci­at­ed with a meta­nar­ra­tive that runs from oppres­sion to lib­er­a­tion: We are mem­bers either of a dom­i­nant group or of a mar­gin­al­ized group with respect to a giv­en iden­ti­ty mark­er. As such, we either need to divest our­selves of pow­er and seek to lib­er­ate oth­ers, or we need to acquire pow­er and lib­er­ate our­selves by dis­man­tling all struc­tures and insti­tu­tions that sub­ju­gate and oppress. In crit­i­cal the­o­ry, the great­est sin is oppres­sion, and the great­est virtue is the pur­suit of lib­er­a­tion.”
    • Relat­ed (at least in my mind): Chris­tians Can­not Be Mis­treat­ed (George Yancey, Patheos): “I believe that some indi­vid­u­als are unable to see anti-Chris­t­ian dis­crim­i­na­tion no mat­ter what evi­dence is pre­sent­ed to them. For them the cul­tur­al nar­ra­tive that Chris­tians are the dom­i­nant group is sim­ply too pow­er­ful for them to con­sid­er alter­na­tive infor­ma­tion.” The author, whose work I have fea­tured before, is a soci­ol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Texas.
  7. The ‘3.5% Rule’: How A Small Minor­i­ty Can Change The World (David Rob­son, BBC): “Look­ing at hun­dreds of cam­paigns over the last cen­tu­ry, Chenoweth found that non­vi­o­lent cam­paigns are twice as like­ly to achieve their goals as vio­lent cam­paigns. And although the exact dynam­ics will depend on many fac­tors, she has shown it takes around 3.5% of the pop­u­la­tion active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in the protests to ensure seri­ous polit­i­cal change.”

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 an eye-open­ing (and dis­may­ing) arti­cle, What The Media Gets Wrong About Israel (Mat­tie Fried­man, The Atlantic). (first shared back in vol­ume 5): “one of the most impor­tant aspects of the media-sat­u­rat­ed con­flict between Jews and Arabs is also the least cov­ered: the press itself. The West­ern press has become less an observ­er of this con­flict than an actor in it, a role with con­se­quences for the mil­lions of peo­ple try­ing to com­pre­hend cur­rent events, includ­ing pol­i­cy­mak­ers who depend on jour­nal­is­tic accounts to under­stand a region where they con­sis­tent­ly seek, and fail, to pro­duc­tive­ly inter­vene.”

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 142

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. A Qui­et Exo­dus: Why Black Wor­shipers Are Leav­ing White Evan­gel­i­cal Church­es (Camp­bell Robert­son, NY Times): “As the head­lines of the out­side world turned to police shoot­ings and protest, lit­tle changed inside major­i­ty-white church­es. Black con­gre­gants said that beyond the occa­sion­al vague prayer for heal­ing a divid­ed coun­try, or a dona­tion dri­ve for law enforce­ment, they heard noth­ing.” The dynam­ic described is real and one I have per­son­al­ly wit­nessed.  All in all a pret­ty good arti­cle although it has a few glar­ing blind spots, most­ly because it focus­es almost exclu­sive­ly on those who chose to leave and does­n’t tell the sto­ry of those who chose to stay.
  2. And while we’re talk­ing about race: “I Hope We Have No Crack­ers Here”: EBF Staff Sanc­tion Racial Slur (Anna Mitchell & Philip Clark, Stan­ford Review): “You would think that res­i­dents of a sup­pos­ed­ly pro­gres­sive and racial­ly con­scious house would jump to remove a racial epi­thet from house prop­er­ty.”
  3. This is also rel­e­vant to the first arti­cle: In Don­ald Trump, Evan­gel­i­cals Have Found Their Pres­i­dent (David Brody, New York Times): “In fact, evan­gel­i­cals take the long view on Mr. Trump; they afford him grace when he doesn’t deserve it. Few dis­pute that Mr. Trump may need a lit­tle more grace than oth­ers. But evan­gel­i­cals tru­ly do believe that all peo­ple are flawed, and yet Christ offers them grace. Shouldn’t they do the same for the pres­i­dent?”
  4. This Is How To Pay Col­lege Ath­letes (Patrick Hru­by, Dead­spin): “Because here’s the thing: nobody asks how’s it going to work when it comes to, say, pay­ing den­tists. Or invest­ment bankers. Or pro­gram­mers. Or pro­fes­sors. Or for that mat­ter col­lege coach­es, ath­let­ic direc­tors, and school pres­i­dents. There are no mas­ter com­pen­sa­tion plans for those and hun­dreds of oth­er lines of work because there’s no need for a plan. The very notion of com­ing up with a com­pli­cat­ed, cen­tral­ized set of rules dic­tat­ing how much plumbers can earn and under what cir­cum­stances they can earn it would be un-Amer­i­can…” 
  5. Was the apos­tle Paul mar­ried? Yes, he was. Here’s how we know. (Den­ny Burk, Per­son­al Blog):  “It may be that Paul’s words have impli­ca­tions for all who are unmar­ried, but I think Paul’s ref­er­ence to the unmar­ried refers to wid­ow­ers specif­i­cal­ly. There are a num­ber of rea­sons for this. Not the least of which is the fact that the Greek word for ‘wid­ow­er’ was rarely used in ancient Greek and was nev­er used in the Koine peri­od…. Paul uses the term ‘unmar­ried’ two oth­er times in this chap­ter to refer to those who were pre­vi­ous­ly mar­ried.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of Bib­li­cal stud­ies.
  6. Leav­ing Blokesworld: Why You Can’t Have Your Porn and #MeToo (Mea­gan Tyler, Aus­tralian Broad­cast­ing Com­pa­ny: Reli­gion and Ethics): “In one of the few attempts to link #MeToo and porn cul­ture, two Dutch filmmakers asked men to try and dif­fer­en­ti­ate between wom­en’s accounts of sex­u­al assault and scripts from porn films. The com­par­i­son high­lights the dif­fi­cult­ly in dis­cern­ing any dif­fer­ence…. So, for all the men who have been ask­ing what they can do in light of #MeToo, here’s a place start: stop link­ing your sex­u­al arousal to wom­en’s sex­u­al sub­or­di­na­tion. Stop watch­ing porn.”
  7. The Cen­ter Left Is On Life Sup­port (Michael Bren­dan Dougher­ty, Nation­al Review): “As lib­er­als backed away from the hard pol­i­tics of mate­r­i­al redis­tri­b­u­tion, they found them­selves try­ing to redis­trib­ute the hon­orif­ic resources of soci­ety. Instead of dra­mat­i­cal­ly expand­ing day care, you could talk about sin­gle moth­ers as heroes.” The author is on the right and is diag­nos­ing a prob­lem he sees across the aisle. His com­ments about redis­trib­ut­ing hon­orifics are insight­ful and remind me of Tyler Cowen’s obser­va­tion that pol­i­tics is often more about rais­ing or low­er­ing some group’s social sta­tus than actu­al­ly solv­ing press­ing prob­lems. 
  8. What’s an Inclu­sion Rid­er? Let the Pro­fes­sor Who Helped Invent the Con­cept Explain (Rebec­ca Kee­gan, Van­i­ty Fair): “Smith said that an inclu­sion rid­er is a pro­vi­sion added to actors’ con­tracts to ensure that cast­ing on pro­duc­tions is more rep­re­sen­ta­tive. ‘It stip­u­lates that in small and sup­port­ing roles, char­ac­ters should reflect the world we live in,’ she said. That includes 50 per­cent gen­der par­i­ty, 40 per­cent inclu­sion for peo­ple of col­or, 5 per­cent L.G.B.T.Q., and 20 per­cent dis­abled.” This is a clever maneu­ver. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, there does not seem to be a pro­vi­sion for high­light­ing evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians accord­ing to our pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion in soci­ety. What if in every sit­com there was a Ned Flan­ders char­ac­ter?

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 Mak­ing Sense of the Num­bers of Gen­e­sis [pdf link] (Car­ol Hill, Per­spec­tives on Sci­ence and the Chris­t­ian Faith): “Joseph and Joshua were each record­ed as dying at age 110—a num­ber con­sid­ered ‘per­fect’ by the Egyp­tians. In ancient Egypt­ian doc­trine, the phrase ‘he died aged 110’ was actu­al­ly an epi­taph com­mem­o­rat­ing a life that had been lived self­less­ly and had result­ed in out­stand­ing social and moral ben­e­fit for oth­ers. And so for both Joseph and Joshua, who came out of the Egypt­ian cul­ture, quot­ing this age was actu­al­ly a trib­ute to their char­ac­ter. But, to be described as ‘dying at age 110’ bore no nec­es­sary rela­tion­ship to the actu­al time of an individual’s life span.” You will not agree with every­thing in this arti­cle, but it is full of fas­ci­nat­ing insights. (first shared in vol­ume 51)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 89

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. Are Gen­der Fem­i­nists and Trans­gen­der Activists Under­min­ing Sci­ence? (Debra Soh, LA Times): “Dis­tor­tion of sci­ence hin­ders progress. When gen­der fem­i­nists start refut­ing basic biol­o­gy, peo­ple stop lis­ten­ing, and the larg­er point about equal­i­ty is lost.” The author has a Ph.D. in neu­ro­science and con­sid­ered her­self trans­gen­der as a child.
  2. The Masa­da Mys­tery (Eric Cline, Aeon): some fas­ci­nat­ing insights on one of the most famous tragedies that occurred short­ly after the events described in the New Tes­ta­ment. The author is a pro­fes­sor of clas­sics and anthro­pol­o­gy.
  3. Use Of Weaponized Drones By ISIS Spurs Ter­ror­ism Fears (Joby War­rick, Wash­ing­ton Post): “They’re now show­ing that these devices can be effec­tive on the bat­tle­field,” said Steven Stal­in­sky.… “With the way these groups use social media, my wor­ry is that they’re also putting the idea into people’s heads that this is some­thing you can now do.”
  4. 4 Recent Exam­ples Show Why Nobody Trusts Media ‘Fact Checks’ (Mol­lie Hem­ing­way, The Fed­er­al­ist): “The upshot is that the arti­cle does a nice job of prov­ing Mark Twain’s point that the three types of lies are lies, damn lies and sta­tis­tics, as it uses a sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis of ques­tion­able mer­it to ‘dis­prove’ a state­ment that was lit­er­al­ly true.”
  5. I Ignored Trump News For A Week. Here’s What I Learned. (Farhad Man­joo, NY Times): “On most days, Mr. Trump is 90 per­cent of the news on my Twit­ter and Face­book feeds, and prob­a­bly yours, too. But he’s not 90 per­cent of what’s impor­tant in the world.”
  6. 4 Ways To Make Sure Your Protest Real­ly Makes A Dif­fer­ence (David Christo­pher Bell, Cracked): “But what if I told you that if you fol­low the rules his­to­ry has laid out, protests and boy­cotts absolute­ly can work? For when you look down the annals of suc­cess­ful civ­il dis­obe­di­ence, a clear pat­tern emerges.” This being Cracked, lan­guage warn­ing. Also, the URL is fun­ny: the slug is a‑be­gin­ners-guide-to-over­throw­ing-gov­ern­ment
  7. Two arti­cles that I did not expect to find fas­ci­nat­ing but did: Sports­writ­ing Has Become A Lib­er­al Pro­fes­sion: Here’s How It Hap­pened (Bryan Cur­tis, The Ringer): “I’m a lib­er­al sports­writer myself. The new world suits me just fine. Would it be nice to have a David Frum or Ross Douthat of sports­writ­ing, mak­ing wrong­head­ed-but-inter­est­ing argu­ments about NCAA ama­teurism? Sure. As long as nobody believed them.” This arti­cle led to the con­ser­v­a­tive fol­lowup The Arro­gant Think­ing Of Lib­er­al Sports Writ­ers (Michael Bren­dan Dougher­ty, The Week): “Has no one stopped to notice there is some­thing odd about an anti-racism that will cause an ever­more diverse coun­try to declare root­ing for white-faced mas­cots the only safe thing to do? How will this dele­tion of all non-white faces look in 50 years?”

Things Glen Found Amusing

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 78

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. On Wednes­day I men­tioned how some mod­ern research about speak­ing in tongues aligns very well with Paul’s com­ments about tongues strength­en­ing believ­ers even while their mind is unfruit­ful (1 Cor 14:4, 14). A read­able sum­ma­ry from a few years back is A Neu­ro­sci­en­tif­ic Look At Speak­ing In Tongues (Bene­dict Carey, NYT) and also Speak­ing in Tongues: Glos­salalia and Stress Reduc­tion (The Dana Foun­da­tion). If you want to see the actu­al research they are allud­ing to, check out the uni­ver­si­ty press release Lan­guage Cen­ter of the Brain Is Not Under the Con­trol of Sub­jects Who “Speak in Tongues” (U Penn, 2006) or the aca­d­e­m­ic papers Sali­vary Alpha-Amy­lase and Cor­ti­sol Among Pen­te­costals on a Wor­ship and Non­wor­ship Day (Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Human Biol­o­gy, 2013) and Glos­so­lalia is asso­ci­at­ed with dif­fer­ences in bio­mark­ers of stress and arousal among Apos­tolic Pen­te­costals (Reli­gion, Brain and Behav­ior, 2012).
  2. A hor­ri­fy­ing look into the mind of 9/11’s mas­ter­mind, in his own words (Marc Thiessen, Wash­ing­ton Post): Indis­putably inter­est­ing. Two caveats: you should look up the name James E. Mitchell for con­text and there are sure­ly those who tes­ti­fy dif­fer­ent­ly than Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Hav­ing said that… fas­ci­nat­ing.
  3. Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Experts Stand Togeth­er, on Cas­es Inside Prison Walls (Ter­ry Mat­ting­ly, On Reli­gion): “There is space enough in our cul­ture to allow dif­fer­ent peo­ple with dif­fer­ent beliefs to live peace­ably in the same land.”
  4. Texas elec­tor who crit­i­cized Trump says he’s resign­ing (Kyle Cheney, Politi­co): “Since I can’t in good con­science vote for Don­ald Trump, and yet have sin­ful­ly made a pledge that I would, the best option I see at this time is to resign my posi­tion as an Elec­tor…. I will sleep well at night know­ing I nei­ther gave in to [the people’s] demands nor caved to my con­vic­tions. I will also mourn the loss of our repub­lic.” The elec­tor is clear­ly a thought­ful Chris­t­ian who made his deci­sion very the­o­log­i­cal­ly. Read his own words about it at Con­flict­ed Elec­tor In A Cor­rupt Col­lege. Even if you dif­fer with his the­ol­o­gy at points, applaud his con­sis­ten­cy. Also note how much Politi­co edit­ed out his the­o­log­i­cal con­vic­tions in their report­ing — a very com­mon occur­rence in major media out­lets.
  5. Gays, Bias, And Pho­ny Sci­ence (Nao­mi Schae­fer Riley,  NY Post): “In the end, nei­ther LaCour nor Hatzen­buehler actu­al­ly did the work to prove their the­ses — because there would be no real con­se­quences if they were caught, and any­way acad­e­mia writ large didn’t want to ‘catch’ them at all.”
  6. The Under­stud­ied Female Sex­u­al Preda­tor (Conor Frieder­dorf, The Atlantic): “In inci­dents of sex­u­al vio­lence report­ed to the Nation­al Crime Vic­tim­iza­tion Sur­vey, 38 per­cent of vic­tims were men…”
  7. Cheat or Go Home: Inside the ‘Dys­func­tion­al Hell’ of Becom­ing a CFB Coach (Matt Hayes, Bleach­er Report): “Auburn offi­cials have always denied it, the NCAA could nev­er nail it down and the statute of lim­i­ta­tions on infrac­tions has long since passed. But here’s the catch: I’ve seen the ledger.” Even if you don’t like sports, this is a worth­while read.

Things Glen Found Amusing

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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