Tag: college

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 168

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 Momen­tous Place? (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “The old city of Jerusalem is aston­ish­ing­ly small for a city with so many momen­tous places. One can walk from Christianity’s holi­est site to the holi­est site of Judaism, paus­ing to look at one of the holi­est sites of Islam, in less time than it takes to walk from my office on the cam­pus of George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty to the cam­pus Star­bucks.” Short and provoca­tive.
  2. Aus­trali­a’s new Pen­te­costal prime min­is­ter: Try to guess how the press is receiv­ing him (Ira Rifkin, GetRe­li­gion): “…the new prime min­is­ter, Scott Mor­ri­son, is an out­spo­ken, polit­i­cal­ly con­ser­v­a­tive Pen­te­costal Chris­t­ian. This mix­ing of reli­gion and pol­i­tics may be old-hat at this point for Amer­i­cans. But it’s an entire­ly new expe­ri­ence for Aus­tralians.”
  3. My nephew tried to school me on cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion. It did­n’t end well.(Jack Van­No­ord, Chica­go Tri­bune): fic­tion­al, amus­ing, and makes a seri­ous point about glob­al cul­tur­al exchange. “Most weeks, his less-woke friends go out for Taco Tues­days, but not Kyle. No more hum­mus. No more bagels. No mo’ pho. Poor Kyle. Liv­ing the unap­pro­pri­at­ed life is tough busi­ness. When­ev­er it rains, Kyle gets soaked. No more umbrel­las for him. Chi­nese. Kyle has stopped binge watch­ing ‘The Walk­ing Dead’ once I men­tioned the word for, and the con­cept of, zom­bies were appro­pri­at­ed from West Africa. Kyle was tak­ing a sum­mer math course at the com­mu­ni­ty col­lege. But he dropped out. It was just too hard. His home­work was tak­ing all evening. He was doing all his assign­ments using Roman numer­als since Ara­bic numer­als are … well, Ara­bic.”
  4. The Reli­gious Typol­o­gy (Pew Research Cen­ter): “ a new Pew Research Cen­ter analy­sis looks at beliefs and behav­iors that cut across many denom­i­na­tions – impor­tant traits that unite peo­ple of dif­fer­ent faiths, or that divide peo­ple who have the same reli­gious affil­i­a­tion – pro­duc­ing a new and reveal­ing clas­si­fi­ca­tion, or typol­o­gy, of reli­gion in Amer­i­ca.”
  5. A Prison That’s Also a Loony Bin (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “A trans­gen­der pris­on­er has admit­ted sex­u­al­ly assault­ing inmates at a women’s jail. Karen White, 51, who was born male but now iden­ti­fies as a woman, has plead­ed guilty to two counts of sex­u­al touch­ing at New Hall Prison, Wake­field.” The sto­ry is astound­ing.
  6. Bet­ter Dead Than Dis­abled? (Charles Camosy, Com­mon­weal): “pro­lif­ers are not imag­in­ing things: argu­ments in favor of the autonomous moral and legal choice to com­mit infan­ti­cide are easy to find…. [for exam­ple, a] 2012 arti­cle by moral philoso­phers Alber­to Giu­bili­ni and Francesca Min­er­va, which appeared in the respect­ed Jour­nal of Med­ical Ethics, was provoca­tive­ly titled ‘After-Birth Abor­tion: Why Should the Baby Live?’”
  7. Diary of a Con­cus­sion: What I Learned About Head Injuries By Hav­ing One (Eliz­a­beth Lopat­to, The Verge): “To have your per­son­al­i­ty altered by brain trau­ma seems to upset peo­ple more than hav­ing it altered by, for instance, emo­tion­al trau­ma. I don’t know why this is! …. If I thought I was my brain, prob­a­bly I would have found the injury more upset­ting. But I didn’t and don’t believe that; my self is an inter­ac­tion between my body and my brain.” This is a year old but I just stum­bled upon it. Super inter­est­ing.

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 How To Pray A Psalm (Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coali­tion): prayer life need a boost? Give this a try. (first shared in vol­ume 69)

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 119

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

A note to our new stu­dents: no, you don’t have to read the whole thing. What a lot of Chi Alphans do is skim the list and find one or two that seem inter­est­ing to them and open them in new tabs.

Be sure to read the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Views among col­lege stu­dents regard­ing the First Amend­ment: Results from a new sur­vey (John Vil­lasenor, Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion): “Stu­dents act as de fac­to arbiters of free expres­sion on cam­pus. The Supreme Court jus­tices are not stand­ing by at the entrances to pub­lic uni­ver­si­ty lec­ture halls ready to step in if First Amend­ment rights are cur­tailed. If a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of stu­dents believe that views they find offen­sive should be silenced, those views will in fact be silenced.” The author is an  absurd­ly accom­plished Stan­ford grad: he is a simul­ta­ne­ous­ly a pro­fes­sor of elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing and pub­lic pol­i­cy while also serv­ing as a vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor of law (all at at UCLA) as well as a senior fel­low at the Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion.
  2. I Went To North Korea: What You’ve Heard vs What I Saw (Mark Hill, Cracked): “Sev­en care­ful­ly con­trolled days isn’t enough time to become an expert in any coun­try, let alone one this com­pli­cat­ed, and the best peo­ple to tell the sto­ry are Kore­ans them­selves. But they’re not real­ly avail­able right now…” The arti­cle is inter­est­ing and most­ly con­firms my impres­sions of North Korea.
  3. Is Inter­net Porn Mak­ing Young Men Impo­tent? (EJ Dick­son, Rolling Stone): “A num­ber of fac­tors have been spec­u­lat­ed as being behind this trend, from eat­ing processed foods to tak­ing psy­chotrop­ic drugs. Yet it’s porn that is most fre­quent­ly cit­ed as the like­ly cul­prit, prompt­ing the cre­ation of the term ‘porn-induced erec­tile dys­func­tion,’ which was coined by Dr. Abra­ham Mor­gen­taler, an asso­ciate clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor of urol­o­gy at Har­vard Med­ical School.”
  4. Protes­tants: The Most ‘Catholic’ of Chris­tians (Caleb Lind­gren, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The ‘Reform­ing Catholic Con­fes­sion,’ released today, aims to demon­strate that—despite “denominationalism”—Protestants are remark­ably uni­fied.” See A Reform­ing Catholic Con­fes­sion for the text of the state­ment.
  5. Big Data Sur­veil­lance: The Case of Polic­ing (Sarah Brayne, Amer­i­can Soci­o­log­i­cal Review): “In some instances, it is sim­ply eas­i­er for law enforce­ment to pur­chase pri­vate­ly col­lect­ed data than to rely on in-house data because there are few­er con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions, report­ing require­ments, and appel­late checks on pri­vate sec­tor sur­veil­lance and data col­lec­tion.… More­over, respon­dents explained, pri­vate­ly col­lect­ed data is some­times more up-to-date.” (hat tip: Big Data Sur­veil­lance by Alex Tabar­rok at Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion). The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at UT Austin.
  6. The Aca­d­e­m­ic Rea­son Why There Are So Few Con­ser­v­a­tives In Acad­e­mia (George Yancey, Patheos): “…over the last sev­er­al years, I have been doing empir­i­cal work in anti-Chris­t­ian bias in soci­ety and acad­e­mia. The way my work has been treat­ed has changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly although I became bet­ter, not worse, in doing research. Review­ers are clear­ly more hos­tile to my work on anti-Chris­t­ian bias than my work in race and eth­nic­i­ty, and some of their cri­tiques are almost laugh­able. Those who want to state that we can trust sci­ence because it enables an open search for the truth have nev­er tried to pub­lish work that vio­lates the polit­i­cal and moral sen­si­bil­i­ties of aca­d­e­mics.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of soci­ol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Texas.
  7. A Third of Veg­e­tar­i­ans Eat Meat When They’re Drunk (Phoebe Hurst, Vice):  this research does not appear to be of the high­est qual­i­ty, but I found it intrigu­ing nonethe­less.

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 His­to­ry of the Sec­ond Amend­ment in Two Paint­ings (Ezra Klein, Wonkblog): this brief arti­cle from a few years ago is still one of the most insight­ful things I’ve read about firearms in Amer­i­ca. The Yale pro­fes­sor inter­viewed, Dr. Amar, also wrote a length­i­er arti­cle about this for Slate. (first shared in vol­ume 54)

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 118

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. Eat, pray, live: the Lagos megachurch­es build­ing their very own cities (Ruth Mclean, The Guardian): “Redemp­tion Camp has 5,000 hous­es, roads, rub­bish col­lec­tion, police, super­mar­kets, banks, a fun fair, a post office – even a 25 megawatt pow­er plant. In Nige­ria, the line between church and city is rapid­ly van­ish­ing.”
  2. An Open Let­ter to Ta-Nehisi Coates (Jason D. Hill, Com­men­tary Mag­a­zine): a gay black man strong­ly believes in the Amer­i­can dream and takes issue with Coates’ dis­par­age­ment of it. “I expect­ed no spe­cial treat­ment because, as an Amer­i­can, I was already part of an excep­tion­al process. My ideas, I had decid­ed on the flight over, would one day be taught in col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties. I will tell you present­ly the extent to which that willed deci­sion became real­i­ty, and why it was pos­si­ble only in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.” (inci­den­tal­ly, I fea­tured an essay by Coates back in issue 80)
  3. The Ques­tion of Race in Cam­pus Sex­u­al-Assault Cas­es (Emi­ly Yoffe, The Atlantic): “Kagle believes that men of color—and espe­cial­ly for­eign men of col­or, stu­dents from Africa and Asia—were unique­ly defense­less when charged with sex­u­al assault, typ­i­cal­ly lack­ing finan­cial resources, a net­work of sup­port, and an under­stand­ing of their rights.” I linked Yof­fe’s two pre­vi­ous arti­cles in last week’s edi­tion. They should be read in con­junc­tion with Cam­pus Rape, A Sur­vivor’s Sto­ry (Bret Stephens, NY Times).
  4. They Serve Gay Clients All The Time. So Why Won’t They Cater A Same-Sex Wed­ding? (Josh Shep­herd, The Fed­er­al­ist): “Phillips choked up with emo­tion as he con­tin­ued: ‘You can’t serve God and mon­ey. I didn’t open this so I could make a lot of mon­ey. I opened it up so it would be a way that I could cre­ate my art, do the bak­ing that I love and serve the God that I love in ways that would hope­ful­ly hon­or Him.’” See also Icing on the Cake: Jus­tice Dept. Backs Chris­t­ian Bak­er Bound for Supreme Court (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today). The lat­ter is tremen­dous news, and pre­sum­ably due to the influ­ence of Mike Pence.
  5. How Many Church­es Does Amer­i­ca Have? More Than Expect­ed (Rebec­ca Ran­dall, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Accord­ing to a recent paper pub­lished by soci­ol­o­gist Simon Brauer in the Jour­nal for the Sci­en­tif­ic Study of Reli­gion, the num­ber of reli­gious con­gre­ga­tions in the Unit­ed States has increased by almost 50,000 since 1998.” You can see the orig­i­nal research here — the researcher is a soci­ol­o­gist at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty. Inter­est­ing news. It’s almost like the gates of hell can­not pre­vail against the church. 
  6. Faith groups pro­vide the bulk of dis­as­ter recov­ery, in coor­di­na­tion with FEMA (Paul Singer, USA Today):  “ ‘About 80% of all recov­ery hap­pens because of non-prof­its, and the major­i­ty of them are faith-based,’ said Greg For­rester, CEO of the nation­al VOAD. The mon­ey is ‘all raised by the indi­vid­u­als who go and serve, raised through cor­po­rate con­nec­tions, raised through church con­nec­tions,’ and amounts to bil­lions of dol­lars worth of dis­as­ter recov­ery assis­tance, he said.”
  7. The Human Fetus Pref­er­en­tial­ly Engages with Face-like Visu­al Stim­uli (Cur­rent Biol­o­gy, Reid et al): appar­ent­ly about a month and a half before birth babies can per­ceive faces through the uter­ine wall. You can read a pop­u­lar sum­ma­ry of the research at Seek­er: Human Fetus­es Can See and React to Faces From Inside the Womb. I found this research both amaz­ing and depress­ing. I won­der how many babies were excit­ed to be mak­ing a new friend up until they were abort­ed.
  8. Har­vard Calls Chelsea Man­ning Invite A ‘Mis­take,’ Rescinds Fel­low­ship Offer — Here’s What’s Going On (Ben­jamin Gog­gin, Digg). For a good expla­na­tion of rea­sons so many were opposed to this appoint­ment, read When Trans­gen­der Trumps Treach­ery (James Kirchick, NY Times). Kirchick is gay, which makes his piece all the more inter­est­ing to read.

Things Glen Found Amusing

  • Mag­ic 8 Ball (red­dit)
  • Too Dumb To Under­stand (Dil­bert)
  • A Frog Prince — Penn and Teller (Youtube)
  • Study: Col­lege Stu­dents Spend Far More Time Play­ing Than Study­ing (Megan Oprea, The Fed­er­al­ist): “The sad truth is that uni­ver­si­ties have begun to exist for the sake of their own exis­tence, rather than the edu­ca­tion of their under­grads. Mean­while, stu­dents are tak­ing their stud­ies less and less seri­ous­ly as they real­ize that they need only go through the motions to grad­u­ate and get on the job mar­ket, which is their ulti­mate goal. No won­der they’re spend­ing their time on every­thing except their stud­ies.” Dis­claimer: yes, I know the num­bers are dif­fer­ent at Stan­ford. I also know you spend more time on non-aca­d­e­m­ic activ­i­ties than you think. #just­sayin

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 102

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. Tran­script of New Orleans May­or Landrieu’s address on Con­fed­er­ate mon­u­ments (Derek Cos­son, The Pulse): “To lit­er­al­ly put the con­fed­er­a­cy on a pedestal in our most promi­nent places of hon­or is an inac­cu­rate recita­tion of our full past, it is an affront to our present, and it is a bad pre­scrip­tion for our future.”
  2. Rod Dreher’s A Mon­u­men­tal His­to­ry offers a gen­er­al agree­ment with Lan­drieu’s speech along with a thought­ful defense of Robert E. Lee. “I am only some­what trou­bled by the Lee monument’s removal. That’s not because of any sym­pa­thy for the Con­fed­er­a­cy — it deserved to lose, and the suf­fer­ing of the South in and after the war was, I believe, God’s judg­ment on it for the sin of slav­ery…. [nonethe­less] Lee was a far more com­plex man than many peo­ple today seem to real­ize.” (Dreher is also a Louisiana res­i­dent)
  3. Col­lege Fresh­men Are Less Reli­gious Than Ever (Allen Downey, Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can): “Most of this growth [of ‘no reli­gious pref­er­ence’] comes at the expense of Catholi­cism, which dropped from 32 per­cent to 23 per­cent, and main­stream Protes­tant denom­i­na­tions includ­ing Bap­tists (from 17 per­cent to 7 per­cent), and Methodists (from 9 per­cent to 3 per­cent). At the same time the num­ber of stu­dents choos­ing ‘Oth­er Chris­t­ian’ increased from 5 per­cent to 13 per­cent.”
  4. UK Mus­lims Report­ed Abe­di (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “What else would you have had these Mus­lims do? Sounds like they did exact­ly what they were sup­posed to do… [On the oth­er hand] what more would you have author­i­ties do? If he had not act­ed out… what do you do?” Things are com­plex. And yes, this is the same Rod Dreher as in the sec­ond entry on this list. He’s pro­lif­ic. 
  5. Sex­u­al regret in US and Nor­way: Effects of cul­ture and indi­vid­ual dif­fer­ences in reli­gios­i­ty and mat­ing strat­e­gy (Ben­dix­en, Asao, Wyck­off, Buss and Ken­nair, Per­son­al­i­ty and Indi­vid­ual Dif­fer­ences):  From the abstract: “Men were sig­nif­i­cant­ly less like­ly to regret hav­ing had casu­al sex than women and were sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly to regret pass­ing up casu­al sex­u­al oppor­tu­ni­ties than women… Final­ly, North Amer­i­cans and Nor­we­gians did not dif­fer sig­nif­i­cant­ly in over­all amount of sex­u­al regret nor in pat­terns of sex dif­fer­ences in sex­u­al regret.” I’m always fas­ci­nat­ed by gen­der dif­fer­ences that tran­scend cul­tures. 

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 83

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

There are a few more links than nor­mal because I missed send­ing out last week­s’s email.

  1. North­west­ern Grad Stu­dent Sues Evanston Police; Dash­cam Arrest Video Released (Lau­ra Podes­ta, ABC Chica­go Eye­wit­ness News): Lawrence is an alum­nus of our min­istry. This one hits close to home.
  2. The Sex Bureau­cra­cy (Jacob Gersen & Jean­nie Suk Gersen, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “Under the rubric of pre­vent­ing sex­u­al vio­lence, col­leges are now deep in the busi­ness of pro­vid­ing advice on sex and rela­tion­ships. And they’re not good at it.” Even from a sec­u­lar per­spec­tive, col­lege admin­is­tra­tors are act­ing absurd­ly.
  3. We’re Liv­ing Through The First World Cyber­war — But Just Haven’t Called It That (Marin Belam, The Guardian): “It is impor­tant to remem­ber that the inter­net orig­i­nal­ly came from defence research….. we are liv­ing through the first time it is being used in anger.”
  4. Putin’s Real Long Game (Mol­ly McK­ew, Politi­co): “What both admin­is­tra­tions fail to real­ize is that the West is already at war, whether it wants to be or not…. This war seeks, at home and abroad, to erode our val­ues, our democ­ra­cy, and our insti­tu­tion­al strength; to dilute our abil­i­ty to sort fact from fic­tion, or moral right from wrong; and to con­vince us to make deci­sions against our own best inter­ests.”
  5. Sug­ar, Explained (Julia Bel­luz and Javier Zarraci­na, Vox): “The back­lash against sug­ar, and the sci­ence behind it, is a lot more com­pli­cat­ed than it seems.”
  6. The Life And Death Of Evangelicalism’s Lit­tle Mag­a­zine (John Schmalzbauer,Comment): this was extreme­ly inter­est­ing to me, although prob­a­bly less so to many oth­ers.
  7. When There’s No Ther­a­pist, How Can The Depressed Find Help? (Joanne Sil­bern­er, NPR): Dif­fi­cult to excerpt — very inter­est­ing sto­ry.
  8. Some­times the Peo­ple Need to Call the Experts (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg View): There are some good insights here. My favorite line, though, was this: “It’s a good rule of gov­er­nance that pol­i­cy can­not race too far ahead of the cit­i­zen­ry, and I don’t view fac­ul­ty as a class of peo­ple well-suit­ed for that kind of humil­i­ty.”
  9. The Ide­o­log­i­cal Rea­sons Why Democ­rats Have Neglect­ed Local Pol­i­tics (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “The pro­gres­sive project is ulti­mate­ly about work­ing toward a soci­ety built on one uni­fied vision of pol­i­cy and cul­ture, rather than a diverse array of poli­cies and cul­tures.”
  10. Intel­lec­tu­als For Trump (Kele­fah San­neh, New York­er):  “We have grown accus­tomed to hear­ing sto­ries about the lib­er­al bub­ble, but the real sto­ry of this year’s elec­tion was about the con­ser­v­a­tive bub­ble: the results showed how sharply the pri­or­i­ties of the movement’s lead­ers dif­fered from those of their puta­tive fol­low­ers.”
  11. Harvard’s George J. Bor­jas (Robert Ver­bruggen, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Per­haps odd­ly for some­one who gained immense­ly from mov­ing from one coun­try to anoth­er, Bor­jas has spent much of his career try­ing to answer the ques­tions of who los­es from immi­gra­tion and how much.”

Things Glen Found Entertaining

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.