Tag: china

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 123

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. Meet The “Young Saints” Of Bethel Who Go To Col­lege To Per­form Mir­a­cles (Mol­ly Hens­ley-Clan­cy, Buz­zfeed): “Behind Bethel’s rise is the enor­mous tal­ent and ambi­tion of the church’s mag­ne­tiz­ing lead­ers, Bill John­son and Kris Val­lot­ton, who cofound­ed BSSM in 1998. Depend­ing on who you ask, Val­lot­ton and John­son are genius­es, false prophets, or both. What’s unde­ni­able is that with Val­lot­ton at his side, John­son, a fifth-gen­er­a­tion pas­tor, has trans­formed a small, unre­mark­able local church into what Chris­tian­i­ty Today called ‘a hub of a glob­al revival move­ment.’” Fair and inter­est­ing — much bet­ter than oth­er sto­ries I have seen. I know a lot about Bethel and I learned sev­er­al things from this piece.
  2. A Let­ter to Jamie Dimon (and any­one else still strug­gling to under­stand cryp­tocur­ren­cies) (Adam Lud­win, com­pa­ny blog): this is a gen­uine­ly help­ful expla­na­tion of what Bit­coin and oth­er cryp­tocur­ren­cies are good for. “They’re a new mod­el for cre­at­ing, financ­ing, and oper­at­ing soft­ware ser­vices in a way that is decen­tral­ized top-to-bot­tom. That doesn’t make them bet­ter or worse than exist­ing soft­ware mod­els or the cor­po­rate enti­ties that cre­ate them. As we’ll see lat­er, there are major trade-offs. What we can say is sim­ply that they are rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent from soft­ware as we know it today and rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent from the forms of orga­ni­za­tion we are used to.”
  3. Meet­ing Mid­dle East Chris­tians is where West­ern stereo­types go to die (John Allen, Crux): “Spend­ing time among the Chris­tians of the Mid­dle East is always an edi­fy­ing expe­ri­ence, but for West­ern­ers it packs a spe­cial punch. That’s because the Chris­t­ian pop­u­la­tion of this peren­ni­al­ly trou­bled region often is where West­ern stereo­types about the Mid­dle East go to die.” The more you fol­low glob­al news the more sur­pris­ing you will con­sid­er the author’s claims to be.
  4. Chi­nese House Church Lead­ers and Tod­dler Arrest­ed After Singing in Pub­lic Park (Sarah Eekhoff Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Oth­er provinces have been com­ing down espe­cial­ly hard on reli­gious edu­ca­tion for chil­dren. In Zhe­jiang province—where hun­dreds of cross­es were torn off church­es over the past sev­er­al years—elementary and mid­dle school chil­dren weren’t allowed to attend church or Sun­day school this sum­mer.”
  5. 4 Spe­cif­ic Things You Lose When You Leave Chris­tian­i­ty (Kristi Har­ri­son, Cracked) — this is well-writ­ten and heart­break­ing. “I have no idea why any­one thinks church is bor­ing. In my expe­ri­ence, church was not a slog through old songs, tired rit­u­als, or heavy-hand­ed ser­mons; it was an addic­tive, engag­ing expe­ri­ence where I felt like I had a seat at the table with the cre­ator of the Uni­verse.”
  6. Sci­ence v. Sci­ence+ (David Hed­dle, per­son­al blog): “So sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly, at least, sci­ence and faith are not incompatible–unless you devise a way to measure/detect the incom­pat­i­bil­i­ty. I have pro­posed two exper­i­ments: 1. I’ll give you ten papers from tier‑1 peer-reviewed jour­nals. Five from athe­ists, five from the­ists, with the names redact­ed. Detect the incom­pat­i­bil­i­ty and accu­rate­ly sep­a­rate the papers into the two groups. 2. Design an exper­i­ment that can be done by an athe­is­tic sci­en­tist and not a the­is­tic sci­en­tist.” The author is a physics pro­fes­sor at Christo­pher New­port Uni­ver­si­ty.
  7. Free­dom not to choose is a faith worth believ­ing in (David Mitchell, The Guardian):  “I always say I’m agnos­tic because I’d like there to be a God – a nice lib­er­al one – but I can’t be sure there is and the idea of reg­u­lar reli­gious obser­vance unnerves me because it would be unusu­al in my peer group. Not a very well thought-through phi­los­o­phy, I know. But in the absence of fam­i­ly or soci­etal pres­sures, in a con­text of almost com­plete reli­gious free­dom, many of us rely on sim­i­lar back-of-an-enve­lope answers to eter­nal ques­tions, because adopt­ing the answers thou­sands of full-time pon­der­ers have come up with over thou­sands of years feels like squan­der­ing that free­dom.” David Mitchell is a British comedian/public intel­lec­tu­al (sort of) — if you’re unfa­mil­iar with him, watch some clips from the British game show Would I Lie To You? A good first clip is David Mitchell’s Code For Note­wor­thi­ness.

Things Glen Found Entertaining/Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The world will only get weird­er (Steven Coast, per­son­al blog): “We fixed all the main rea­sons air­craft crash a long time ago. Some­times a long, long time ago. So, we are left with the less and less prob­a­ble events.” The piece is a few years old so the exam­ples are dat­ed, but it remains very intrigu­ing. (first shared in vol­ume 67)

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 120

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. Divine To Divid­ed: How Occu­py Cen­tral Split Hong Kong’s Chris­t­ian Lead­ers (Jayson Albano, Mar­ta Colom­bo And Maria Cristhin Kuiper, South Chi­na Morn­ing Post): “Once on the street, he could see clear­ly. He could see the crowds form­ing, and he could see the mount­ing ranks of riot police. And when he saw those same police­men fir­ing tear gas into the assem­bled mass­es one thing became clear in his mind: that his faith in God demand­ed he act.”
  2. The old­est human lived to 122. Why no per­son will like­ly break her record. (Bri­an Resnick, Vox): “The authors pro­pose this is a built-in ‘nat­ur­al lim­it’ to our longevi­ty, an ‘inad­ver­tent byprod­uct’ of our biol­o­gy. And to increase the nat­ur­al lim­it we’d need to fun­da­men­tal­ly alter our genet­ics.”
    • This is based on a very read­able piece in Nature Evi­dence for a lim­it to human lifes­pan (Xiao Dong, Bran­don Mil­hol­land & Jan Vijg, Nature).
    • This find­ing reminds me of Gen­e­sis 6:3, “Then the Lord said, ‘My Spir­it will not con­tend with humans for­ev­er, for they are mor­tal; their days will be a hun­dred and twen­ty years.’”
  3. I used to sup­port legal­iz­ing all drugs. Then the opi­oid epi­dem­ic hap­pened. (Ger­man Lopez, Vox): “By the time I began as a drug pol­i­cy reporter in 2010, I was all in on legal­iz­ing every drug, from mar­i­jua­na to hero­in and cocaine. It all seemed so obvi­ous to me. Pro­hi­bi­tion had failed…. Then I began report­ing on the opi­oid epi­dem­ic.” FYI: this arti­cle is long: only read the first two sec­tions unless you’re real­ly into the sub­ject.
  4. Authors’ note: Deep neur­al net­works are more accu­rate than humans at detect­ing sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion from facial images (Michal Kosin­s­ki and Yilun Wang, self-pub­lished on Google Docs): this note by two Stan­ford researchers to explain their recent paper is extreme­ly inter­est­ing. “We used wide­ly avail­able off-the-shelf tools, pub­licly avail­able data, and stan­dard meth­ods well known to com­put­er vision prac­ti­tion­ers. We did not cre­ate a pri­va­cy-invad­ing tool, but rather showed that basic and wide­ly used meth­ods pose seri­ous pri­va­cy threats.”
  5. I called Hugh Hefn­er a pimp, he threat­ened to sue. But that’s what he was. (Suzanne Moore, The Guardian): “But this man is still being cel­e­brat­ed by peo­ple who should know bet­ter. You can dress it up with talk of glam­our and bun­ny ears and fish­nets, you can talk about his con­tri­bu­tion to gonzo jour­nal­ism, you can con­tex­tu­alise his dri­ve to free up sex as part of the sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion. But strip it all back and he was a man who bought and sold women to oth­er men.”
    • Con­cep­tu­al­ly relat­ed: STD rates hit anoth­er record high, with Cal­i­for­nia near the top (Soumya Kar­la­mangla, LA Times): “More than a quar­ter-mil­lion Cal­i­for­ni­ans were infect­ed with either syphilis, chlamy­dia or gon­or­rhea last year, which con­sti­tutes a 40% jump com­pared with five years ago, state offi­cials said.” I am often struck by the fact that STDs would effec­tive­ly dis­ap­pear in one gen­er­a­tion if peo­ple obeyed the Bible.
    • Dit­to: Pas­tor­ing Sin­gles in a Sex-Crazed, Gen­der-Con­fused World (Juan Sanchez, Life­way): “Celi­bate sin­gle­ness is a gift from God with a pur­pose.” This one isn’t just for pas­tors — rec­om­mend­ed to all sin­gles.
  6. Col­in Kaeper­nick vs. Tim Tebow: A tale of two Chris­tians on their knees (Michael Frost, Wash­ing­ton Post): “They’re both Chris­t­ian foot­ball play­ers, and they’re both known for kneel­ing on the field, although for very dif­fer­ent rea­sons. One grew up the son of Bap­tist mis­sion­ar­ies to the Philip­pines. The oth­er was bap­tized Methodist, con­firmed Luther­an, and attend­ed a Bap­tist church dur­ing col­lege. Both have made a pub­lic dis­play of their faith. Both are prayer­ful and devout.” It’s a clever piece, although you should also read the gen­tle crit­i­cism of it at Kaeper­nick vs. Tebow? Wash­ing­ton Post pass­es along flawed take on a cru­cial heresy (Ter­ry Mat­ting­ly, GetRe­li­gion)
    • Inter­est­ing­ly, Kaeper­nick began kneel­ing after a meet­ing with a vet­er­an who told him that mere­ly sit­ting was dire­spect­ful. Kaeper­nick Meets With Vet­er­an Nate Boy­er, Then Kneels Dur­ing Anthem (Under the Radar) (an arti­cle I found after an alum­nus shared it on twit­ter this week — thanks, Han­nah!)
    • The Abbie Hoff­man of the Right: Don­ald Trump (David Brooks, New York Times): “The mem­bers of the edu­cat­ed class saw this past weekend’s N.F.L. fra­cas as a fight over racism. They felt mobi­lized and uni­fied in that fight and full of right­eous ener­gy. Mem­bers of the work­ing class saw the fra­cas as a fight about Amer­i­can iden­ti­ty. They saw Pitts­burgh Steel­ers coach Mike Tom­lin try to dis­suade Ale­jan­dro Vil­lanue­va, a three-time com­bat vet­er­an, from cel­e­brat­ing the flag he risked his life for. Mem­bers of this class also felt mobi­lized, uni­fied and full of right­eous ener­gy.”
  7. A lot of you seemed to like the graph­ic I used in this week’s ser­mon. Here’s a thumb­nail, you can down­load a high-res ver­sion from the source at Visu­al The­ol­o­gy: The Books of the Bible (Tim Chal­lies).
Books of the Bible — Peri­od­ic Table

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Every Place Has Detrac­tors. Con­sid­er Where They’re Com­ing From.(Megan McCar­dle, Bloomerg View): “There is grave dan­ger in judg­ing a neigh­bor­hood, or a cul­ture, by the accounts of those who chose to leave it. Those peo­ple are least like­ly to appre­ci­ate the good things about where they came from, and the most like­ly to dwell on its less attrac­tive qual­i­ties.” Bear this in mind when lis­ten­ing to con­ver­sion tes­ti­monies (both sec­u­lar and reli­gious). (first shared in vol­ume 62)

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 117

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’s Chang­ing Reli­gious Iden­ti­ty (Daniel Cox and Robert Jones, PRRI): There’s a lot of data here. One bit that stood out to me: “Athe­ists and agnos­tics account for a minor­i­ty of all reli­gious­ly unaf­fil­i­at­ed. Most are sec­u­lar. Athe­ists and agnos­tics account for only about one-quar­ter (27%) of all reli­gious­ly unaf­fil­i­at­ed Amer­i­cans. Near­ly six in ten (58%) reli­gious­ly unaf­fil­i­at­ed Amer­i­cans iden­ti­fy as sec­u­lar, some­one who is not reli­gious; 16% of reli­gious­ly unaf­fil­i­at­ed Amer­i­cans nonethe­less report that they iden­ti­fy as a ‘reli­gious per­son.’”
  2. Risky road: Chi­na’s mis­sion­ar­ies fol­low Bei­jing west (BBC): “As a self-declared athe­ist gov­ern­ment, news of Chi­nese Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies get­ting into trou­ble abroad is embar­rass­ing. But at the same time, Bei­jing needs to show it can pro­tect its cit­i­zens as it goes glob­al. As Feng­gang Yang, an expert on reli­gion in Chi­na at Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty, puts it: ‘They thought Chris­tian­i­ty was a west­ern reli­gion import­ed into Chi­na, so how can you export Chris­tian­i­ty from Chi­na?’” Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
  3. There was a lot writ­ten about cam­pus sex­u­al assault recent­ly. Here are some stand­outs:
    • The Cam­pus Sex-Crime Tri­bunals Are Los­ing (KC John­son, Com­men­tary Mag­a­zine): “Barrett’s deci­sion marked the 59th judi­cial set­back for a col­lege or uni­ver­si­ty since 2013 in a due-process law­suit brought by a stu­dent accused of sex­u­al assault. (In four addi­tion­al cas­es, the school set­tled a law­suit before any judi­cial deci­sion occurred.) This body of law serves as a tow­er­ing rebuke to the Oba­ma administration’s rein­ter­pre­ta­tion of Title IX, the 1972 law bar­ring sex dis­crim­i­na­tion in schools that receive fed­er­al fund­ing.”
    • The Uncom­fort­able Truth About Cam­pus Rape Pol­i­cy (Emi­ly Yoffe, The Atlantic): “A trou­bling para­dox with­in the activist com­mu­ni­ty, and increas­ing­ly among admin­is­tra­tors, is the belief that while women who make a com­plaint should be giv­en the strong ben­e­fit of the doubt, women who deny they were assault­ed should not nec­es­sar­i­ly be believed. ”
    • The Bad Sci­ence Behind Cam­pus Response to Sex­u­al Assault (Emi­ly Yoffe, The Atlantic): “The spread of an inac­cu­rate sci­ence of trau­ma is an object les­son in how good inten­tions can over­take crit­i­cal think­ing, to poten­tial­ly harm­ful effect.”
    • Here Is Every Crazy Title IX Rape Case Bet­sy DeVos Ref­er­enced, Plus a Bunch More (Rob­by Soave, Rea­son): “Crit­ics of DeVos will say that her plan to reform Title IX is some kind of give­away to rapists. But it’s not. Today, DeVos rec­og­nized a basic and obvi­ous truth that every objec­tive chron­i­cler of the col­lege rape cri­sis already knows: The Oba­ma-era mod­i­fi­ca­tions to Title IX utter­ly failed to bring jus­tice to cam­pus­es.”
  4. To Under­stand Ris­ing Inequal­i­ty, Con­sid­er the Jan­i­tors at Two Top Com­pa­nies, Then and Now (Neil Irwin, New York Times): “The right prod­uct engi­neer or mar­ket­ing exec­u­tive can mean the dif­fer­ence between suc­cess or fail­ure, and com­pa­nies tend to hire such peo­ple as full-time employ­ees and as part of a long-term rela­tion­ship — some­thing like the trans­mis­sion sup­pli­er. What has changed in the last gen­er­a­tion is that com­pa­nies today view more and more of the labor it takes to pro­duce their goods and ser­vices as akin to sta­plers: some­thing to be pro­cured at the time and place need­ed for the low­est price pos­si­ble.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  5. I also read a lot about DACA this week:
    • Trump’s deci­sion to end DACA, explained (Daniel Bush, PBS New­shour): “In June, 11 attor­neys gen­er­al — from con­ser­v­a­tive states like Texas, Arkansas, West Vir­ginia and Kansas — threat­ened to sue the Trump admin­is­tra­tion unless it took steps by Sept. 5 to end the pro­gram. For months, senior Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials have expressed con­cern that DACA would not stand up in court.”
    • Trump Ends DACA, Despite Pleas from Evan­gel­i­cal Advis­ers  (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “In addi­tion to the 57 per­cent of US evan­gel­i­cals that favor cit­i­zen­ship and the 19 per­cent that favor depor­ta­tion, 15 per­cent say DACA recip­i­ents should be allowed to become legal res­i­dents but not cit­i­zens, while 9 per­cent don’t know.”
    • Can these Demo­c­ra­t­ic attor­neys gen­er­al save DACA? I asked 9 legal experts. (Sean Illing, Vox): The experts seem pes­simistic.
    • Don­ald Trump is right: Con­gress should pass DACA (Econ­o­mist): “If you could design peo­ple in a lab­o­ra­to­ry to be an adorn­ment to Amer­i­ca they would look like the recip­i­ents of DACA…. They are a high-achiev­ing lot. More than 90% of those now aged over 25 are employed; they cre­ate busi­ness­es at twice the rate of the pub­lic as a whole; many have spous­es and chil­dren who are cit­i­zens. They are Amer­i­can in every sense bar the bureau­crat­ic one.”
    • Rescind­ing DACA Is The Right Thing To Do (David Harsyani, The Fed­er­al­ist): “There are a vast num­ber of sol­id eco­nom­ic and moral argu­ments for legal­iz­ing the chil­dren of ille­gal immi­grants. In sub­stance, I agree with DACA. Yet… the Con­sti­tu­tion makes no allowance for the pres­i­dent to write law ‘if Con­gress doesn’t act.’”
  6. Should a Judge’s Nom­i­na­tion Be Derailed by Her Faith? (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “She and oth­er Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors on the com­mit­tee seemed trou­bled by Barrett’s Catholic con­vic­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the issues of abor­tion and same-sex mar­riage, which came up lat­er dur­ing ques­tion­ing. But when Bar­rett repeat­ed­ly stat­ed that she would uphold the law, regard­less of her per­son­al beliefs, they didn’t seem to believe her.” For a less restrained per­spec­tive, read Demo­c­ra­t­ic McCarthyites (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive).  And it’s not just con­ser­v­a­tives dis­pleased. Check out [Prince­ton] Pres­i­dent Eis­gru­ber asks Sen­ate com­mit­tee to avoid ‘reli­gious test’ in judi­cial appoint­ments (Prince­ton Office of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions).

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have a debate I fea­tured way back in vol­ume 48 between two pas­tors on guns – both are very thought­ful and are skill­ful debaters.  All the posts are pret­ty short.

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 115

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 Most Short­sight­ed Attack on Free Speech in Mod­ern U.S. His­to­ry (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “Under a legal regime where hate speech was not con­sid­ered free speech, Trump and Ses­sions could like­ly pun­ish words used by mem­bers of Antifa and Black Lives Mat­ter. Do you think he’d police their speech more or less vig­or­ous­ly than white suprema­cists?”
  2. Everyone’s Sus­pi­cious of Athe­ists — Even Oth­er Athe­ists (Thomas MacMil­lan, NY Mag): “Accord­ing to a new study pub­lished last week in Nature, peo­ple all over the world con­nect immoral­i­ty with athe­ism. In fact, the moral prej­u­dice against athe­ists is so strong that it holds even in coun­tries like the Nether­lands, where most peo­ple aren’t reli­gious. Even athe­ists them­selves, accord­ing to the study, are inclined to see non­be­liev­ers as more wicked than the faith­ful.” The Nature paper is Glob­al evi­dence of extreme intu­itive moral prej­u­dice against athe­ists.
  3. I Won’t Make Jesus Bow Down to Xi Jin­ping (Derek Lam, New York Times): “Of Hong Kong’s six major reli­gions, five are already firm­ly under the con­trol of the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty. Judg­ing by recent events, the par­ty is very close to com­plet­ing its mis­sion of bring­ing Chris­tian­i­ty under its thumb.”
  4. The Dri­ve For Per­fect Chil­dren Gets A Lit­tle Scary (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg View): “If you could direct­ly alter your kids’ genet­ic pro­file, what would you want? It’s hard to know how the social debate would turn out after years of back and forth, but I was dis­mayed to read one recent research paper by psy­chol­o­gists Rachel M. Lath­am and Sophie von Stumm. The descrip­tive title of that work, based on sur­vey evi­dence, is ‘Moth­ers want extra­ver­sion over con­sci­en­tious­ness or intel­li­gence for their chil­dren.’ Upon reflec­tion, maybe that isn’t so sur­pris­ing, because par­ents pre­sum­ably want chil­dren who are fun to spend time with.”
  5. Math­e­mat­i­cal mys­tery of ancient Baby­lon­ian clay tablet solved (Phys.org): “Plimp­ton 322 pre­dates Hip­parchus by more than 1000 years,” says Dr Wild­berg­er. “It opens up new pos­si­bil­i­ties not just for mod­ern math­e­mat­ics research, but also for math­e­mat­ics edu­ca­tion. With Plimp­ton 322 we see a sim­pler, more accu­rate trigonom­e­try that has clear advan­tages over our own.” The aca­d­e­m­ic paper is Plimp­ton 322 is Baby­lon­ian exact sex­a­ges­i­mal trigonom­e­try (His­to­ria Math­e­mat­i­ca). Anoth­er reminder that our ances­tors were pret­ty clever.
  6. Robert E. Lee opposed Con­fed­er­ate mon­u­ments (Lisa Des­jardins, PBS New­sHour):  “But while he was alive, Lee stressed his belief that the coun­try should move past the war. He swore alle­giance to the Union and pub­licly decried south­ern sep­a­ratism, whether mil­i­tant or sym­bol­ic.”
  7. This Is How Sex­ism Works in Sil­i­con Val­ley  My law­suit failed. Oth­ers won’t. (Ellan Pao, The Cut): “Before suing, I’d con­sult­ed oth­er women who had sued big, pow­er­ful com­pa­nies over harass­ment and dis­crim­i­na­tion, and they all gave me pret­ty much the same advice: ‘Don’t do it.’ One woman told me, ‘It’s a com­plete mis­match of resources. They don’t fight fair. Even if you win, it will destroy your rep­u­ta­tion.’”
  8. James Kennedy Min­istries Sues SPLC over Hate Map (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): see also Politico’s June arti­cle Has a Civ­il Rights Stal­wart Lost Its Way? (short answer: yes, yes it has)

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have No Food Is Healthy. Not Even Kale. (Michael Ruhlman, Wash­ing­ton Post). Peo­ple can be healthy. Food can be nutri­tious. This is a won­der­ful essay about how we mis­use lan­guage to our detri­ment. If you’re sur­prised I includ­ed this, I believe that our cul­ture has a qua­si-reli­gious rela­tion­ship to health and to food, and I also believe that the use of lan­guage is pro­found­ly moral and that our cul­ture is a lin­guis­tic mess (to which I know of no fin­er guide than The Under­ground Gram­mar­i­an). (first shared in vol­ume 33)

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 105

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. Alvin Plantinga’s Mas­ter­ful Achieve­ment (William Doino, First Things): “In the 1950’s there was not a sin­gle pub­lished defense of reli­gious belief by a promi­nent philoso­pher; by the 1990’s there were lit­er­al­ly hun­dreds of books and arti­cles, from Yale to UCLA and from Oxford to Hei­del­berg, defend­ing and devel­op­ing the spir­i­tu­al dimen­sion. The dif­fer­ence between 1950 and 1990 is, quite sim­ply, Alvin Planti­nga.”
  2. The Man Behind Trump’s Reli­gious-Free­dom Agen­da for Health Care (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “Sev­eri­no spent sev­en years in civ­il-rights enforce­ment at the Depart­ment of Jus­tice; before that, he lit­i­gat­ed reli­gious-lib­er­ty cas­es. He has expe­ri­ence. He just doesn’t share the ide­o­log­i­cal con­vic­tions of many who work in his field.”
  3. Iraqi Chris­tians should not be deport­ed to become vic­tims of ISIS (Bawai Soro, The Hill): “The Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment, for the first time ever, is about to deport to a coun­try under­go­ing an active geno­cide the very peo­ple tar­get­ed in that geno­cide.” See US Pre­pares to Deport Hun­dreds of Iraqi Chris­tians (Grif­fin Paul Jack­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today) for more details.
  4. There is no Thucy­dides Trap (Arthur Wal­dron, Supchi­na): “For the first time this year, my Chi­nese grad­u­ate stu­dents are mar­ry­ing one anoth­er and buy­ing hous­es here. This is a lead­ing indi­ca­tor. If it could be done, the com­ing tsuna­mi would bring 10 mil­lion high­ly qual­i­fied Chi­nese fam­i­lies to the U.S. in 10 years — along with flee­ing crooks, spies, and oth­er flot­sam and jet­sam. Even Xi’s first wife fled Chi­na; she lives in Eng­land.” The author is an IR pro­fes­sor at Penn.
  5. Can’t Believe You Think That (Cit­i­zen Of No Mean City): “Maybe next time before dis­miss­ing some­one for their views on this sub­ject we would do well to afford them the dig­ni­ty of hav­ing thought about their posi­tion, and to dig deep­er and ask ‘what has led them to think this way?’ or ‘can I learn from lis­ten­ing to them?’”
  6. Six Days and 50 Years of War (Bret Stephens, NY Times): “In June 1967 Arab lead­ers declared their inten­tion to anni­hi­late the Jew­ish state, and the Jews decid­ed they wouldn’t sit still for it. For the crime of self-preser­va­tion, Israel remains a nation unfor­giv­en.”
  7. Here are sev­er­al links about a dis­turb­ing moment on Capi­tol Hill:

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 101

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 Curi­ous Rise Of The ‘White Left” As A Chi­nese Inter­net Insult (Chenchen Zhang, Open Democ­ra­cy): “If you look at any thread about Trump, Islam or immi­gra­tion on a Chi­nese social media plat­form these days, it’s impos­si­ble to avoid encoun­ter­ing the term baizuo (白左), or lit­er­al­ly, the ‘white left’.… Crit­i­cisms of the ‘white left’ against the back­ground of the Euro­pean refugee cri­sis fit espe­cial­ly well with the ‘ris­ing Chi­na’ ver­sus ‘Europe in decline’ nar­ra­tive.”
  2. The True Heart­break Of Read­ing The Bible (Rebec­ca McLaugh­lin, Ver­i­tas): “When we humans make metaphors, we’re notic­ing con­nec­tions.  Love is a sick­ness. Life is a marathon. Par­ents can be heli­copters.  But if the mes­sage of the Bible is true – if there is a God who cre­at­ed the uni­verse  – then bib­li­cal metaphors are dif­fer­ent. God did not notice how human fathers love their chil­dren and decide to call him­self our Father (e.g. Isa­iah 63:16, Matthew 6:9).  Rather, God cre­at­ed father­hood, so that the best of human fathers could give us some small glimpse of how he loves us.”
  3. Beau­ty sleep is a real thing, research shows (Michelle Roberts, BBC): “Beau­ty sleep is a real thing, accord­ing to researchers who have shown that peo­ple who miss out on sleep do appear less attrac­tive to oth­ers. A cou­ple of bad nights is enough to make a per­son look “sig­nif­i­cant­ly” more ugly, their sleep exper­i­ments sug­gest.” Bad news for Stan­ford stu­dents.
  4. Way More Amer­i­cans May Be Athe­ists Than We Thought (Daniel Cox, Five Thir­ty Eight): I sus­pect that even the high­est esti­mate in the arti­cle is low­er than what many at Stan­ford assume.
  5. The Dam­age We Would Do To Each Oth­er If We Had “The Expla­na­tion”  (Richard Beck, per­son­al blog): “Imag­ine, if you will, that the Bible gave us an expla­na­tion for why there is so much pain and suf­fer­ing in the world. Imag­ine that the Bible gave us ‘The Expla­na­tion’ in a spe­cif­ic text, some­thing we could eas­i­ly quote and share…. Then imag­ine how The Expla­na­tion would be used.”
  6. What Makes A Par­ent? (Ian Park­er, New York­er): “…at the end she stood to make a skep­ti­cal point or two. In her view, the speak­ers had under­es­ti­mat­ed the legal con­se­quences of mak­ing a per­son a par­ent. The panel’s chair, a judge, asked Rabin to stop lec­tur­ing the room. It was a pecu­liar moment. Rabin—who is gay, and a par­ent, and who has no argu­ment with Barone’s vic­to­ry, and who is admired for her own chal­lenge to Ali­son D., in 2010—seemed to have been cast as a reac­tionary, intrud­ing on a cel­e­bra­tion.” This is a long, fas­ci­nat­ing piece which (in my view but not the author’s) high­lights some of the neg­a­tive con­se­quences of the LGBT rev­o­lu­tion in soci­ety.

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 98

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. Pre­emie Lambs Suc­cess­ful­ly Grown To Term In Arti­fi­cial Womb (Jason Kot­tke, per­son­al blog): what an amaz­ing age we live in. These arti­fi­cial wombs are trans­par­ent, so this fif­teen sec­ond video of a lamb in one is def­i­nite­ly worth watch­ing.
  2. In ‘China’s Jerusalem’, ‘anti-ter­ror cam­eras’ the new cross for church­es to bear (Alice Yan, South Chi­na Morn­ing Post): “Gov­ern­ment offi­cials came to the church­es and put up ­cam­eras by force. Some pas­tors and wor­ship­pers who didn’t agree to the move were dragged away.… Some peo­ple need­ed to be treat­ed in hos­pi­tal after fight­ing the offi­cials.”
  3. Rod Dreher’s Monas­tic Vision (Joshua Roth­man, New York­er): “The most suc­cess­ful peo­ple nowa­days are flex­i­ble and root­less; they can live any­where and believe any­thing. Dreher thinks that liq­uid moder­ni­ty is a more or less unstop­pable force—in part because cap­i­tal­ism and tech­nol­o­gy are unstop­pable. He urges Chris­tians, there­fore, to remove them­selves from the cur­rents of moder­ni­ty.”
  4. The Cru­cible of the Appli­ca­tion Process (Dil­lon Bowen, Quil­lette) — “This essay is about my expe­ri­ence with the [elite grad school] appli­ca­tion process—specifically how I was repeat­ed­ly encour­aged to alter my appli­ca­tions to con­form with far-Left polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy.” Rec­om­mend­ed to me by an alum­nus.
  5. A bap­tism, then a mur­der con­fes­sion (The Chris­t­ian Chron­i­cle, Bob­by Ross Jr): “Lucin­da Wil­son might have got­ten away with mur­der. Except that she became a Chris­t­ian and con­fessed to her crime. Now 48, Wil­son has served 20-plus years of a life sen­tence for the cap­i­tal mur­der of her ex-fiancé’s girl­friend, Mar­garet Morales.”
  6. The Survivor’s Guide To Adult­hood (Wyatt Hong, Yale Dai­ly News): “Many of you will leave col­lege as I did, believ­ing that you will change the world, but you will soon dis­cov­er that the truth is the reverse. The world will change you. This is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a bad thing, but it can be fright­en­ing.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent as “a thought­ful, well-writ­ten piece.” The author is a Stan­ford grad in med school at Yale.
  7. I learned today that the Nation­al Chi Alpha Min­istry Cen­ter is on Pin­ter­est. I knew about the Insta­gram, Twit­ter and YouTube accounts, but some­how I nev­er expect­ed Pin­ter­est.

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 92

Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the earth and the sky. How is it that you don't know how to interpret this present time? Luke 12:56

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. On Polit­i­cal Cor­rect­ness (William Dere­siewicz, The Amer­i­can Schol­ar): a long and thought­ful arti­cle. “Selec­tive pri­vate col­leges have become reli­gious schools. The reli­gion in ques­tion is not Method­ism or Catholi­cism but an extreme ver­sion of the belief sys­tem of the lib­er­al elite: the lib­er­al pro­fes­sion­al, man­age­r­i­al, and cre­ative class­es, which pro­vide a large major­i­ty of stu­dents enrolled at such places and an even larg­er major­i­ty of fac­ul­ty and admin­is­tra­tors who work at them. To attend those insti­tu­tions is to be social­ized, and not infre­quent­ly, indoc­tri­nat­ed into that reli­gion.… I say this, by the way, as an athe­ist, a demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist, a native north­east­ern­er, a per­son who believes that col­leges should not have sports teams in the first place—and in case it isn’t obvi­ous by now, a card-car­ry­ing mem­ber of the lib­er­al elite.”
  2. Sim­i­lar: Is Inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty a Reli­gion? (NY Mag, Andrew Sul­li­van): “It posits a clas­sic ortho­doxy through which all of human expe­ri­ence is explained — and through which all speech must be fil­tered. Its ver­sion of orig­i­nal sin is the pow­er of some iden­ti­ty groups over oth­ers. To over­come this sin, you need first to con­fess, i.e., ‘check your priv­i­lege,’ and sub­se­quent­ly live your life and order your thoughts in a way that keeps this sin at bay. The sin goes so deep into your psy­che, espe­cial­ly if you are white or male or straight, that a pro­found con­ver­sion is required.”
  3. Con­sis­tent Veg­e­tar­i­an­ism and the Suf­fer­ing of Wild Ani­mals (Thomas Sit­tler-Adam­czews­ki, Jour­nal of Prac­ti­cal Ethics): argues that “…wild ani­mals have worse lives than farmed ani­mals, and that con­sis­tent veg­e­tar­i­ans should there­fore reduce the num­ber of wild ani­mals as a top pri­or­i­ty.”
  4. What Chris­tian­i­ty in Chi­na Is Real­ly Like (Col­in Clark, Gospel Coali­tion): “First and fore­most, house church lead­ers aren’t under­ground because of the extent of gov­ern­men­tal med­dling, but because of the mere fact of it…. Extend all the appar­ent olive branch­es you want, but Jesus Christ is still the head of the church, not the TSPM and not the CCC.”
  5. Why the courts were wrong to rule against a florist who declined ser­vice to a gay wed­ding (Robert Vis­ch­er, Amer­i­ca Mag­a­zine): “The florist, Bar­ronelle Stutz­man, had served the gay cus­tomers, Robert Inger­soll and Curt Freed, many times over a num­ber of years, includ­ing by pro­vid­ing flow­ers for birth­days and oth­er per­son­al events; she object­ed only to pro­vid­ing flow­ers for their wed­ding. The court declined to rec­og­nize such a dis­tinc­tion, find­ing that a refusal to pro­vide ser­vices for a wed­ding between mem­bers of the same sex amounts to dis­crim­i­na­tion based on sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion.” The author is the dean of a law school and this is one of the more thought­ful and com­pre­hen­sive pieces I have seen on this issue. Relat­ed: UW Madi­son Stu­dents On Reli­gious Free­dom (YouTube): I am skep­ti­cal of videos like this (how many peo­ple did they inter­view and cut out?), but it def­i­nite­ly reflects a ten­den­cy many col­lege stu­dents have — they instinc­tive­ly sup­port reli­gious free­dom when it’s not for evan­gel­i­cals.
  6. Dream­ing of life with­out the GOP? Wel­come to California—where things are far from per­fect (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, LA Times): “We’re a case study in what a polit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty looks like when Repub­li­cans wield lit­tle or no pow­er — and an ongo­ing refu­ta­tion of the con­ceit that but for the GOP, the Unit­ed States would be free of dys­func­tion.”

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 81

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. Pas­tor, Am I A Chris­t­ian? (Nicholas Kristof, NY Times): Skep­ti­cal but inter­est­ed pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al invites Tim Keller to answer his ques­tions about Chris­tian­i­ty and then pub­lish­es the con­ver­sa­tion. #goals  (rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent)
  2. Free Pas­tor Andrew: Chris­tians Ral­ly for Mis­sion­ary Jailed in Turkey (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today) : “Turkey has accused mul­ti­ple pas­tors of being ‘a threat to nation­al secu­ri­ty.’”
  3. China’s Great Leap Back­ward (James Fal­lows, The Atlantic): “This assess­ment implies that U.S. atten­tion should be focused on get­ting through an upcom­ing time of dif­fi­cul­ty, which could last years or decades, with­out pan­ick­ing that his­to­ry now seems to favor the repres­sive Chi­nese mod­el of gov­er­nance.” This is a long piece, but the issue is an impor­tant one and it is worth your time. For some sor­ta semi-relat­ed thoughts on Rus­sia, read The Russ­ian Ques­tion by Niall Fer­gu­son: “the Unit­ed States should be clos­er to each of Rus­sia and Chi­na than they are to one anoth­er.”
  4. How Out­ra­geous Are the New North Car­oli­na Laws? (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion) is help­ful, and for some per­spec­tive read His­to­ry Can Teach Both Par­ties (John Hood, Car­oli­na Jour­nal). The most alarmist view I have seen is North Car­oli­na Is No Longer Clas­si­fied as a Democ­ra­cy, an op-ed by a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at UNC. 
  5. Why the Catholic Church some­times turns to sci­ence to inves­ti­gate mir­a­cles (Kelsey Dal­las, Deseret News): “The patient is still alive, pos­ing an ongo­ing chal­lenge to sci­en­tif­ic researchers. ‘I have zero expla­na­tion for why she’s alive. She does,’ Duf­fin said.”
  6. Why Oxford Dictionary’s 2016 Word of the Year Mat­ters (Ravi Zacharias, Gospel Coali­tion): “There is an ulti­mate cry for jus­tice in every heart. Jus­tice counts on the truth. With­out those two real­i­ties, civ­i­liza­tion will die.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  7. The Impact of Holy Land Cru­sades on State For­ma­tion: War Mobi­liza­tion, Trade Inte­gra­tion, and Polit­i­cal Devel­op­ment in Medieval Europe (Lisa Blay­des and Christo­pher Paik, Inter­na­tion­al Orga­ni­za­tion): “Areas with high lev­els of cru­sad­er mobi­liza­tion wit­nessed more polit­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty in the cen­turies to fol­low. The causal mech­a­nism that we put for­ward is that the depar­ture of rel­a­tive­ly large num­bers of Euro­pean land­ed elites for the Holy Land reduced the absolute num­ber of elites who might serve as chal­lengers to the king.” File away under expla­na­tions I had nev­er con­sid­ered. Blay­des is a pro­fes­sor at Stan­ford and Paik at NYU Abu Dhabi.

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 70

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.

This edi­tion is com­ing out ear­ly in the morn­ing because I’m about to hop on a plane to preach at a retreat in Vir­ginia. Your prayers for fruit­ful min­istry are appre­ci­at­ed!

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Red Tape: Chi­na Wants To Con­strict Chris­t­ian Activ­i­ties With 26 New Rules (Sarah Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): there are inter­est­ing par­al­lels between the way Stan­ford reg­u­lates stu­dents and how states such as Chi­na and Rus­sia reg­u­late their cit­i­zens. #seri­ous­lytho
  2. How Chris­tian­i­ty Flour­ish­es (Jared Wil­son, Gospel Coali­tion): “I can­not find any­where in the New Tes­ta­ment where it teach­es Chris­tians how to be a major­i­ty pres­ence in the world.”
  3.  Jon­ah Gold­berg On Why He Won’t Vote For Hilary or Trump (Seth Steven­son, Slate): the Solzhen­it­syn quote alone makes the arti­cle worth­while.
  4. Why Believ­ing In Mir­a­cles Could Be Haz­ardous To Your Health (David Brig­gs, Wash­ing­ton Post): if you think med­i­cine and faith are opposed to each oth­er, you have bad the­ol­o­gy. Matthew 9:12 seems rel­e­vant.
  5. Don’t Take A Test On A Hot, Pol­lut­ed Day (Alex Tab­barok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “I find both of these results hard to believe which doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean that they shouldn’t be believed.”
  6. Is glob­al­iza­tion bad for the glob­al poor? This study ran an exper­i­ment to find out. (Vox): “Some­thing as com­pli­cat­ed as glob­al­iza­tion is nev­er going to be just good or just bad. We need to divide the good and the bad, and fig­ure out how to address the lat­ter with­out elim­i­nat­ing the for­mer.”
  7. Undo­ing Insu­lar­i­ty: A Small Study of Gen­der Soci­ol­o­gy’s Big Prob­lem (Char­lot­ta Stern, Econ Jour­nal Watch): “gen­der soci­ol­o­gy insu­lates its sacred beliefs from ideas that chal­lenge those beliefs, even when the chal­leng­ing ideas are very well-ground­ed. The sacred beliefs are to the effect that the bio­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences between the sex­es are minor and that the cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences between (or among) the gen­ders are the result of social process­es and have lit­tle basis in bio­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences.”

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.