Tag: comedy

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 453

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. Rec­on­cil­ing Chris­tian­i­ty with intel­lec­tu­al curios­i­ty (Nadia Jo, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “One of the val­ues Jesus empha­sized most is humil­i­ty, and I strive to imple­ment that val­ue in my intel­lec­tu­al life in addi­tion to my per­son­al life. My ethos of intel­lec­tu­al curios­i­ty involves curios­i­ty, chal­leng­ing and wrestling with claims and lines of rea­son­ing, flex­i­ble think­ing and respect for peo­ple who put in the same effort. I hope that my non­re­li­gious peers can come to under­stand and appre­ci­ate Christianity’s deep intel­lec­tu­al tra­di­tion, even if they don’t agree with its con­clu­sions. And, I encour­age more Chris­tians to live up to that tra­di­tion and exam­ine their own belief. You’ll prob­a­bly find it more reward­ing than you expect.”
    • Nadia is a stu­dent in Chi Alpha.
  2. Home­less man is brought to church and starts CURSING right in the mid­dle of the ser­mon while the pas­tor is preach­ing on the para­ble of the lost sheep. (Twit­ter): the link title is click­baity, but the video is real­ly good. 17 min­utes but 100% worth your time.
  3. The Sin­gle Chris­t­ian (Alexan­dra DeSanc­tis Marr, Reli­gion & Lib­er­ty Online): “Rather than offer­ing sym­pa­thy to those who are sin­gle for rea­sons out­side their con­trol, Broad­way argues, Chris­tians often send the mes­sage that sin­gle­ness is an afflic­tion endured by those who sim­ply aren’t try­ing hard enough to find a spouse. But, as she explains, there isn’t an easy answer to what is ulti­mate­ly a prob­lem of num­bers: ‘When women out­num­ber men in the church, that leaves three options: polygamy, mar­ry­ing a non-Chris­t­ian or stay­ing sin­gle. Which would you like us to choose?’”
    • That’s a great line by Broad­way.
  4. The Schol­ar of Com­e­dy (David Rem­nick inter­view­ing Jer­ry Sein­feld, The New York­er): “Every artist is only show­ing you his best. When you watch a movie, every scene—they only show you the one take that worked. Sev­en­teen times, they missed it. You’re only see­ing the peak of it. But in standup you got­ta make it hap­pen every night. That’s the dif­fer­ence. That’s why actors, I think, like to do the the­atre. They want to be hon­est. They want to be held to account. And only a live audi­ence holds you to account.”
  5. Chiefs kick­er Har­ri­son Butk­er says Pride Month is exam­ple of ‘dead­ly sin’ dur­ing com­mence­ment speech (Lukas Weese, New York Times): “Kansas City Chiefs kick­er Har­ri­son Butk­er, speak­ing dur­ing a com­mence­ment speech at Bene­dic­tine Col­lege, referred to Pride Month, the events in June demon­strat­ing inclu­siv­i­ty and sup­port for the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty, as an exam­ple of the ‘dead­ly sins’ as he advo­cat­ed for a more con­ser­v­a­tive brand of Catholi­cism.”
    • I am always sur­prised when peo­ple seem sur­prised when reli­gious peo­ple say reli­gious things.
    • Relat­ed: Har­ri­son Butk­er jer­sey sales increase in after­math of Bene­dic­tine Col­lege address (Greg Dai­ley and Ryan Hen­nessy, KCTV 5): “Amid reac­tion to Har­ri­son Butker’s now-viral com­mence­ment speech at Bene­dic­tine Col­lege on Sat­ur­day, the place­kick­er seems to have gained sev­er­al new fans in the process. Accord­ing to NFL.com, Butker’s jer­sey sales are among the most pop­u­lar online. Only Travis Kelce rat­ed high­er than Butk­er, with Mahomes com­ing in right behind the star from Geor­gia Tech.”
    • This is com­mon enough that there is prob­a­bly a term for it: high-sta­tus peo­ple denounce some­thing and or pre­tend it does­n’t exist, where­as many low­er-sta­tus peo­ple real­ly like it. This is a good exam­ple of this, as is the New York Times best­seller list com­pared to actu­al sales num­bers.
  6. Cam­pus protest-relat­ed:
    • See­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty More Clear­ly (David Pozen, blog): “To sim­pli­fy some­what, we might say that pro­fes­sors are grant­ed a num­ber of basic rights with­in the uni­ver­si­ty, includ­ing rights to free speech and due process and qua­si-prop­er­ty rights in the job itself. Stu­dents and staff are grant­ed a par­tial­ly over­lap­ping, though weak­er, bun­dle of rights. What none of us have are gov­er­nance rights against the trustees who real­ly run the place. We enjoy var­i­ous indi­vid­ual priv­i­leges and pro­tec­tions, but not the fran­chise. Legal schol­ars and polit­i­cal sci­en­tists have a term for this sort of arrange­ment, too: lib­er­al autoc­ra­cy.”
      • The author is a law prof at Colum­bia and has some insight­ful thoughts about how shifts in uni­ver­si­ty gov­er­nance in recent years have pro­vid­ed the con­text for how cam­pus­es are respond­ing to protests.
    • Mod­ern Protest Cul­ture is Crip­pled by Inter­net-Brain (Samuel D. James, Sub­stack): “A trans­for­ma­tion­al protest is one that bears the brunt of real­i­ty and, in so doing, con­vinces oth­ers to join in chang­ing it. The inabil­i­ty to bear this real­i­ty is not just fragili­ty, it is pre­cise­ly the way com­put­er sys­tems work; when the autonomous sys­tem fails to yield a pleas­ant or smooth solu­tion, it must be fixed, not endured. Con­tem­po­rary stu­dent activism reflects the assump­tions and habits of the dig­i­tal era.”
      • Empha­sis in orig­i­nal.
  7. Bel­gian Gov­ern­ment Will Inter­vene In Cas­es Where Pros­ti­tutes Refuse Sex­u­al Acts Too Often (Amy Hamm, ProP­ub­li­ca): “Pros­ti­tutes are to be grant­ed ‘rights’ to refuse sex­u­al acts, stop sex­u­al acts, per­form sex­u­al acts in the man­ner they pre­fer, and refuse to sit behind Ams­ter­dam-style win­dows (pub­lic fac­ing win­dows where pros­ti­tutes are on dis­play). How­ev­er, should a pros­ti­tute use these ‘rights’ 10 times with­in six months, their pimp can then call on a gov­ern­ment medi­a­tor to inter­vene.”
    • Pimps used to have to beat their pros­ti­tutes. Now they can have the gov­ern­ment use force on their behalf. #progress
    • This is the log­ic of “bake the cake, big­ot” tak­en to its ulti­mate con­clu­sion — con­science is noth­ing and the mar­ket is every­thing and per­son­al con­vic­tions are incon­ve­niences to be tram­pled upon.
    • If, as some fem­i­nists tell us, sex work is real work then you can’t be shocked at stuff like this. If, on the oth­er hand, pros­ti­tu­tion is both a tragedy and a vice you can get out­raged.

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 383

On Fri­days (Sat­ur­days when I offi­ci­ate a wed­ding on Fri­day — con­grats Alex & Andrea!) 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.

Hap­py New Year! Most of my read­ers know this, but this bun­dle of links is an over­flow from a min­istry called Chi Alpha Chris­t­ian Fel­low­ship at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. Today is Decem­ber 31st, which is the biggest giv­ing day of the year. If you are inclined toward gen­eros­i­ty on New Year’s Eve, con­sid­er mak­ing a year-end dona­tion to sup­port the min­istry.

This is vol­ume 383, which is both a prime num­ber and a palin­drome. Not too shab­by, 383. Hold your head up high among the num­bers.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Rea­sons to believe, Christ­mas edi­tion:
    • How Would You Prove That God Per­formed a Mir­a­cle? (Mol­ly Worthen, New York Times): “Josh Brown directs the pro­gram in neu­ro­science at Indi­ana Uni­ver­si­ty Bloom­ing­ton. He has pub­lished dozens of arti­cles on top­ics like the neur­al basis of deci­sion mak­ing in the brain. He has wire-rimmed glass­es and a calm, method­i­cal way of speak­ing. And after almost two decades of keep­ing rel­a­tive­ly qui­et, he is now speak­ing open­ly about his most sur­pris­ing research find­ing: He believes that God mirac­u­lous­ly healed him of a brain tumor.”
      • High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. The author is a his­to­ri­an at UNC.
    • When Mary Met the Angel (Rebec­ca McLaugh­lin, Wall Street Jour­nal): “ ‘Sci­ence is the descrip­tion of how God choos­es to work most of the time,’ writes Rus­sell Cow­burn, a pro­fes­sor of physics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge. ‘We know dead bod­ies don’t come back to life accord­ing to sci­ence. And yet Chris­tian­i­ty is built on the obser­va­tion that Jesus came back to life. I am very hap­py to say that at that spe­cial moment, God was act­ing dif­fer­ent­ly.’ Like many oth­er world-class sci­en­tists I’ve interviewed—including Fran­cis Collins, for­mer direc­tor of the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health—Prof. Cow­burn came to faith in Jesus as an adult. He is not just try­ing to make sci­en­tif­ic sense of a child­hood faith that he can­not shed.”
      • Dis­claimer: I know the author and am thrilled she was invit­ed to write about faith for the WSJ.
    • A Christ­mas Con­ver­sa­tion About Christ (Nico­las Kristof inter­view­ing Rus­sell Moore, New York Times): “The most impor­tant blind spot is per­haps miss­ing why so many of us are drawn to faith in the first place. We real­ly do believe the Gospel is Good News that answers the deep­est long­ings of the human heart. I would just rec­om­mend that peo­ple read one of the Gospels with an open mind. Jesus loves New York Times read­ers, too.”
  2. A Dark­ness Revealed (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “…the great chal­lenge here, as ever, is to strive to see our ances­tors and our con­tem­po­raries with moral clar­i­ty, not white­wash­ing their sins and fail­ings with poet­ic mem­o­ry, while also rec­og­niz­ing their virtues — and in all cas­es, nev­er, ever allow­ing their full human­i­ty, the good and the bad alike, to be assim­i­lat­ed into the realm of ideas.”
    • I found this grip­ping. A man wres­tles with the not-entire­ly-sur­pris­ing rev­e­la­tion that his father was in the KKK.
  3. Urbana Mis­sions Con­fer­ence That Once Drew 20,000 Expect­ed to Fall Far Short (Bob Smi­etana, Min­istry Watch): “Jao said that lin­ger­ing con­cerns over COVID-19 and the country’s eco­nom­ic woes are help­ing to dri­ve pro­ject­ed atten­dance down for the con­fer­ence, usu­al­ly held every three years, but delayed until this year by the pan­dem­ic. Like many church­es, he said, Inter­Var­si­ty and oth­er cam­pus min­istries are still rebuild­ing their atten­dance.”
  4. Our First Close­up Image of Mars Was a Paint-By-Num­bers Pas­tel Draw­ing (Jason Kot­tke, per­son­al blog): “On July 15, 1965, NASA’s Mariner 4 probe flew with­in 6,118 miles of the sur­face of Mars, cap­tur­ing images as it passed over the plan­et. The image data was trans­mit­ted back to sci­en­tists on Earth, but they didn’t have a good way to quick­ly ren­der a pho­to­graph from it. They deter­mined that the fastest way to see what Mariner 4 had seen was to print out the imag­ing data as a series of num­bers, paste them into a grid, buy a set of pas­tels from a near­by art store, and do a paint-by-num­bers job with the pas­tels on the data grid.”
    • This is actu­al­ly beau­ti­ful.
  5. Amer­i­cans Have Found Their Hap­py Place (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg): “Two econ­o­mists, David G. Blanch­flower of Dart­mouth and Alex Bryson of Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don, have come up with a new and more intu­itive way to mea­sure well-being. The results are strik­ing. If you con­sid­er US states as com­pa­ra­ble to coun­tries, 16 of the top 20 polit­i­cal units in the world for well-being are in the US — includ­ing the top sev­en.”
  6. The Media Very Rarely Lies (Scott Alexan­der, Astral Codex Ten): “The point is: the media rarely lies explic­it­ly and direct­ly. Reporters rarely say spe­cif­ic things they know to be false. When the media mis­in­forms peo­ple, it does so by mis­in­ter­pret­ing things, exclud­ing con­text, or sig­nal-boost­ing some events while ignor­ing oth­ers, not by par­tic­i­pat­ing in some bright-line cat­e­go­ry called ‘mis­in­for­ma­tion’.”
    • Fol­low-up: Sor­ry, I Still Think I Am Right About The Media Very Rarely Lying (Scott Alexan­der, Astral Codex Ten): “…I find it real­ly inter­est­ing that so many com­menters were so resis­tant to the idea that the worst and dumb­est con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries of our time don’t involve out­right lies. I think all of us — not just cen­sors — want to main­tain the com­fort­ing illu­sion that the bad peo­ple are doing some­thing fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent than the good peo­ple, some­thing that marks them as Obvi­ous­ly Bad in bright neon paint.”
  7. Is the right win­ning the com­e­dy wars? (Con­stance Grady, Vox): “It’s as though there’s some sort of fun­da­men­tal dis­con­nect between right and left on the issue of com­e­dy. On a very basic lev­el, the two sides seem to dis­agree on the ques­tion of what a joke should look like, what it’s okay to joke about, and what is so under threat that to joke about it would be unthink­able. No one seems sure how to talk about the dif­fer­ence, exact­ly. They just know that they want to be the fun­ny ones.”

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 Fer­til­i­ty rate: ‘Jaw-drop­ping’ glob­al crash in chil­dren being born (James Gal­lagher, BBC): “Chi­na, cur­rent­ly the most pop­u­lous nation in the world, is expect­ed to peak at 1.4 bil­lion in four years’ time before near­ly halv­ing to 732 mil­lion by 2100. India will take its place.” From a long-term per­spec­tive, this is pos­si­bly the most sig­nif­i­cant news you will read this year. Some of you will still be alive when China’s pop­u­la­tion is half what it is now. And it’s not just Chi­na — many nations are on the same path (with only a few siz­able ones head­ed in the oppo­site direc­tion). From vol­ume 259

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 357

lots of arti­cles from a busy week — skim the titles and you’ll find at least one that intrigues you

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.

357 is an idoneal num­ber, only 65 of which are known to exist (and there are at most 2 more). A num­ber is idoneal if there is no way to write it as ab+bc+ac where a, b and c are all dif­fer­ent pos­i­tive num­bers. I did­n’t know idoneal num­bers exist­ed until today. Here’s a paper about them.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. AI Relat­ed Arti­cles (Inter­est­ing and Ter­ri­fy­ing)
    • GPT‑3 is ‑right now- already more than capa­ble of enabling stu­dent pla­gia­rism (anony­mous, Sub­stack): “I can­not empha­size enough that this is not ‘some­time vague­ly in the next five years’, nor is it ‘acces­si­ble only to stu­dents with a back­ground in comp sci’. It’s a 6 cents per thou­sand words pla­gia­rism ser­vice avail­able to every­one right now.… One idea- play around with your own ques­tions before assign­ing them to stu­dents and make sure GPT‑3 has trou­ble answer­ing them.” This is actu­al­ly quite stun­ning.
    • AI Wrote and Per­formed a Jer­ry Sein­feld Rou­tine (YouTube): one minute. GPT‑3 wrote a Jer­ry Sein­feld joke and this YouTube chan­nel did a deep­fake of his voice deliv­er­ing it. Not per­fect… but sur­pris­ing­ly good.
    • Google Engi­neer on His Sen­tient AI Claim (Bloomberg Tech­nol­o­gy, YouTube): ten min­utes. This is, to be clear, a dif­fer­ent AI sys­tem than GPT‑3.
    • ‘An Invis­i­ble Cage’: How Chi­na Is Polic­ing the Future (Paul Mozur, Muyi Xiao & John Liu, New York Times): “The lat­est gen­er­a­tion of tech­nol­o­gy digs through the vast amounts of data col­lect­ed on their dai­ly activ­i­ties to find pat­terns and aber­ra­tions, promis­ing to pre­dict crimes or protests before they hap­pen. They tar­get poten­tial trou­ble­mak­ers in the eyes of the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment — not only those with a crim­i­nal past but also vul­ner­a­ble groups, includ­ing eth­nic minori­ties, migrant work­ers and those with a his­to­ry of men­tal ill­ness. They can warn the police if a vic­tim of a fraud tries to trav­el to Bei­jing to peti­tion the gov­ern­ment for pay­ment or a drug user makes too many calls to the same num­ber. They can sig­nal offi­cers each time a per­son with a his­to­ry of men­tal ill­ness gets near a school.” Empha­sis added.
  2. Weed users near­ly 25% more like­ly to need emer­gency care and hos­pi­tal­iza­tion (Sandee LaM­otte, CNN): “When com­pared with peo­ple who did not use mar­i­jua­na, cannabis users were 22% more like­ly to vis­it an emer­gency depart­ment or be hos­pi­tal­ized, the study revealed. The find­ing held true even after adjust­ing the analy­sis for over 30 oth­er con­found­ing fac­tors, includ­ing oth­er illic­it drug use, alco­hol use and tobac­co smok­ing.”
  3. Some Supreme Court arti­cles:
    • Dobbs Is Not the Only Rea­son to Ques­tion the Legit­i­ma­cy of the Supreme Court (Ezra Klein, New York Times): “Our polit­i­cal sys­tem is not designed for polit­i­cal par­ties this dif­fer­ent, and this antag­o­nis­tic. It wasn’t designed for polit­i­cal par­ties at all. The three branch­es of our sys­tem were intend­ed to check each oth­er through com­pe­ti­tion. Instead, par­ties com­pete and coop­er­ate across branch­es, and pow­er in one can be used to build pow­er in anoth­er — as McConnell well under­stood.”
    • The End of Roe Is Just the Begin­ning (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “…any con­fi­dent pre­dic­tion about this ruling’s con­se­quences is prob­a­bly a fool­ish one. There can be no cer­tain­ty about the future of abor­tion pol­i­tics because for almost 50 years all pol­i­cy debates have been over­shad­owed by judi­cial con­tro­ver­sy, and only now are we about to find out what the con­test real­ly looks like. It’s mere­ly the end of the begin­ning; the true end, in what­ev­er set­tle­ment or vic­to­ry, lies ahead.”
    • After Dobbs, mar­ried women keep­ing their sur­names regains polit­i­cal mean­ing (Kim­ber­ly A. Ham­lin, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Today, sur­veys esti­mate that between 10 per­cent and 20 per­cent of Amer­i­can women keep their maid­en names, though the per­cent­age is high­er for women with advanced degrees and those who mar­ry lat­er in life. Debates about sur­names are, in essence, debates about women’s auton­o­my. Do we regard women as indi­vid­ual cit­i­zens or, pri­mar­i­ly, as wives and moth­ers?” The author is a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at Mia­mi Uni­ver­si­ty (in Ohio).
    • Vouch­ers for Reli­gious Schools Don’t Threat­en the Sep­a­ra­tion of Church and State (Chris Freiman, Sub­stack): “Crit­ics of vouch­ers fail to dis­tin­guish between a direct sub­sidy for reli­gion and a tax-fund­ed enti­tle­ment dis­trib­uted to cit­i­zens who may use that enti­tle­ment for reli­gious pur­pos­es.… Cit­i­zens should be free to use school vouch­ers for pri­vate reli­gious edu­ca­tion because every­one should be free to use their state-sup­plied resources to pur­sue their own good in their own way, whether their good is reli­gious or not.” The author is a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor at William & Mary. This is pithy and well argued.
    • The Supreme Court hands the reli­gious right a big vic­to­ry by lying about the facts of a case (Ian Mill­his­er, Vox): “Kennedy will no doubt inspire oth­er teach­ers and coach­es to behave sim­i­lar­ly to Coach Kennedy, but those teach­ers and coach­es will do so at their own per­il. Gorsuch’s opin­ion doesn’t weigh whether a coach is allowed to do what Kennedy actu­al­ly did. That remains an open ques­tion, because the Court did not actu­al­ly decide that case.” A while ago I men­tioned that Mill­his­er often has a hard time under­stand­ing those he dis­agrees with or por­tray­ing them sym­pa­thet­i­cal­ly. I give you exhib­it A.
    • Court’s Excel­lent Rul­ing in Coach Kennedy Case (Ed Whe­lan, Nation­al Review): “The school dis­trict dis­ci­plined him only for his deci­sion to per­sist in pray­ing qui­et­ly with­out his play­ers after three games in 2015. It sought to restrict his actions at least in part because of their reli­gious char­ac­ter. Its poli­cies were not neu­tral toward reli­gion. Nor were they gen­er­al­ly applic­a­ble: In response to Kennedy’s reli­gious exer­cise, the dis­trict imposed on him a post-game oblig­a­tion to super­vise stu­dents that it did not impose on oth­er mem­bers of the coach­ing staff.” You would not know any of these facts had you only read Mill­his­er’s arti­cle.
    • Jus­tice Thomas and Lov­ing v. Vir­ginia (Josh Black­man, Rea­son): “…Lov­ing was premised on both the Equal Pro­tec­tion Clause and the Due Process Clause. Even if you reject sub­stan­tive due process, you could still find that Lov­ing reached the cor­rect result on the basis of the Equal Pro­tec­tion Clause. After all, the law lit­er­al­ly treats peo­ple dif­fer­ent­ly on the basis of their race. Two white peo­ple can get mar­ried, but a white per­son and a black per­son can­not. Even the most con­ser­v­a­tive jurists would deem such a law uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.”
    • Politi­co, Axios, and NBC News ped­dle a weird smear of Clarence Thomas (Tim­o­thy P. Car­ney, Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er): “Thomas didn’t claim that the cells of abort­ed chil­dren are in the vac­cines, but NBC News, Politi­co, and Axios all wrote as if he did. They were dead wrong on an eas­i­ly check­able fact. How did this hap­pen? How did three out­lets all ‘fact check’ a claim Thomas nev­er made, imply­ing or stat­ing that he did make it?”
  4. The Cathe­dral Vs. Yeshi­va (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “How will­ful­ly blind do you have to be to say that Yeshi­va is not a reli­gious insti­tu­tion? Some­thing tells me that the judge had her mind made up before the first argu­ments were heard. Anoth­er thing that ticks me off is that LGBT rights are wide­ly accept­ed and cel­e­brat­ed in near­ly every col­lege and uni­ver­si­ty in this land. Yeshi­va is one of a rel­a­tive hand­ful of insti­tu­tions of high­er edu­ca­tion where peo­ple who choose to attend do not have to vio­late their reli­gious con­sciences by burn­ing a pinch of incense to the LGBT Cae­sar. But the Grand Inquisi­tors of the new reli­gion will not tol­er­ate any dis­sent. Their god is a jeal­ous god.” The updates at the end are worth read­ing.
  5. A Can­did Con­ver­sa­tion with Reporter Jeanne Lenz­er on Uncov­er­ing Cor­po­rate Influ­ence in Med­i­cine and the Media for Over Two Decades (Paul Thack­er, Sub­stack): “I called the Amer­i­can Heart Asso­ci­a­tion and found out that they were tak­ing Genen­tech mon­ey, and when I asked them about any finan­cial con­flicts among their pan­elists, they said, ‘Oh, no, no, no. When we put peo­ple on a pan­el, we insist on finan­cial dis­clo­sure.’ I said, ‘Fine, would you send me those dis­clo­sures?’ They said, ‘We don’t dis­close dis­clo­sures.’ ”
    • Inter­est­ing through­out. From Aug 2021. Also, that excerpt is fun­ny.
  6. Ire­land’s COVID Response, Part 4: The Def­i­n­i­tion of Insan­i­ty… (Sam Enwright, Sub­stack): “The vac­cines proved that our civil­i­sa­tion is still capa­ble of great­ness on the scale of the Apol­lo pro­gram. Yet, can the aver­age per­son on the street even name a sin­gle indi­vid­ual that designed and built them? This New York Times arti­cle about Katal­in Karikó, pio­neer of mRNA tech­nol­o­gy, is unbe­liev­ably depress­ing. She spent decades on the fringes of acad­e­mia strug­gling to get research fund­ing or recog­ni­tion. After Salk devel­oped the polio vac­cine, peo­ple par­tied in the streets. Today, we get end­less screeds about how ‘tech can’t save us’ and Big Phar­ma is ‘prof­it­ing from pain’. I’m not say­ing there is no mer­it to these com­plaints. But a word of advice: before you crit­i­cise, go to where peo­ple are doing tru­ly extra­or­di­nary things, and observe. Lis­ten, for ye have much to learn.”
    • This is much bet­ter than the title might lead you to assume.
  7. Acad­e­mia
    • Account­ing For Col­lege Costs (John Went­worth, Less Wrong): “In this post, we’ll dig into the account­ing data for col­lege costs, espe­cial­ly for 4‑year pri­vate non­prof­it col­leges. The main the­o­ry we’ll end up at, based on the account­ing data, is that col­lege costs are dri­ven main­ly by a large increase in diver­si­ty of cours­es avail­able, which results in much low­er student/faculty ratios, and cor­re­spond­ing­ly high­er costs per stu­dent.”
    • It’s Time to Review the Insti­tu­tion­al Review Boards (Willy Chert­man, CSPI): “Insti­tu­tion­al Review Boards (IRBs) are ethics com­mit­tees, ide­al­ly com­posed of sci­en­tif­ic peers and lay com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers, that review research before it can be con­duct­ed. Their osten­si­ble pur­pose is to pro­tect research sub­jects from research harms. But often­times, IRBs are cost­ly, slow, and do more harm than good. They cen­sor con­tro­ver­sial research, invent harms where none exist, and by des­ig­nat­ing cer­tain cat­e­gories of sub­jects as ‘vul­ner­a­ble,’ cause a cor­re­spond­ing dimin­ish­ment in research on those sub­jects.”

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 hear­kens back to the 90’s, when polit­i­cal sci­en­tist J. Budziszews­ki wrote two arti­cles back-to-back for First Things, The Prob­lem With Lib­er­al­ism and The Prob­lem With Con­ser­v­a­tivism. I encour­age you to read them both — espe­cial­ly read the one that describes your team. (first shared in a non-Fri­day blog post)

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 338

more eclec­tic than nor­mal

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 the 338th install­ment. 338, I am told, is the small­est num­ber for which both the num­ber of divi­sors and the sum of its prime fac­tors is a per­fect num­ber. An odd hon­or, but one I am pleased to acknowl­edge.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Romance:
    • Reverse friend zone: many roman­tic rela­tion­ships start off just as friends. In fact, most peo­ple pre­fer it this way (Tibi Puiu, ZME Sci­ence): “When par­tic­i­pants were asked about their orig­i­nal inten­tions for ini­ti­at­ing the friend­ship that went on to evolve roman­ti­cal­ly, only 30% said they were sex­u­al­ly attract­ed to the part­ner from the very begin­ning. In 70% of cas­es, nei­ther of the two par­ties in the rela­tion­ship orig­i­nal­ly had feel­ings, with attrac­tion blos­som­ing at a lat­er time.”
    • Too Risky to Wed in Your 20s? Not if You Avoid Cohab­it­ing First (Brad Wilcox and Lyman Stone, Wall Street Jour­nal): “In ana­lyz­ing reports of mar­riage and divorce from more than 50,000 women in the U.S. government’s Nation­al Sur­vey of Fam­i­ly Growth (NFSG), we found that there is a group of women for whom mar­riage before 30 is not risky: women who mar­ried direct­ly, with­out ever cohab­it­ing pri­or to mar­riage. In fact, women who mar­ried between 22 and 30, with­out first liv­ing togeth­er, had some of the low­est rates of divorce in the NSFG.”#justsaying
  2. Stephen Col­bert Explains The Rela­tion­ship Between His Com­e­dy and His Faith (Twit­ter): I think I would real­ly like Stephen Col­bert if I met him in per­son.
  3. Stan­ford relat­ed:
    • Are semes­ters or quar­ters bet­ter? (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “In fact I think the quar­ter sys­tem doesn’t go far enough. I think we should have many more one- and two-week class­es, or five-week class­es, as well. Under­stand­ably that is more dif­fi­cult to man­age oper­a­tional­ly, but I don’t see any rea­son why it should be impos­si­ble. Com­pa­nies solve more com­plex sched­ul­ing prob­lems than that all the time. If I think of GMU, either the under­grad­u­ate majors, or the grad­u­ate stu­dents, should in my opin­ion have had some class­room time with almost every sin­gle instruc­tor. So much of life and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is about match­ing!”
    • I went to every library on cam­pus so you don’t have to (Annie Reller, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “Below is my rank­ing of the libraries on cam­pus. Please keep in mind that I have spe­cif­ic cri­te­ria when going to libraries: com­fy chairs, ambiance and light­ing. I am a human­i­ties major, so desks are less nec­es­sary as I do most of my work on my lap­top.”
  4. Why Isn’t There a Repli­ca­tion Cri­sis in Math? (Jay Daigle, blog): “Many papers have errors, yes—but our major results gen­er­al­ly hold up, even when the inter­me­di­ate steps are wrong! Our errors can usu­al­ly be fixed with­out real­ly chang­ing our con­clu­sions.… But isn’t it…weird…that our results hold up when our meth­ods don’t? How does that even work? We get away with it becuase we can be right for the wrong rea­sons—we most­ly only try to prove things that are basi­cal­ly true.” Empha­sis in orig­i­nal. The author is a math pro­fes­sor at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty.
  5. Hack­ers:
    • North Korea Hacked Him. So He Took Down Its Inter­net (Andy Green­berg, Wired): “But respon­si­bil­i­ty for North Kore­a’s ongo­ing inter­net out­ages does­n’t lie with US Cyber Com­mand or any oth­er state-spon­sored hack­ing agency. In fact, it was the work of one Amer­i­can man in a T‑shirt, paja­ma pants, and slip­pers, sit­ting in his liv­ing room night after night, watch­ing Alien movies and eat­ing spicy corn snacks—and peri­od­i­cal­ly walk­ing over to his home office to check on the progress of the pro­grams he was run­ning to dis­rupt the inter­net of an entire coun­try.” What an absolute leg­end.
    • How A Lone Hack­er Shred­ded the Myth of Crowd­sourc­ing (Mark Har­ris, Medi­um): “Myself and oth­ers in the social sci­ences com­mu­ni­ty tend to think of such mas­sive acts of sab­o­tage as anom­alies, but are they?” won­dered Cebri­an. To set­tle the ques­tion, Cebri­an ana­lyzed his (and oth­er) crowd­sourc­ing con­tests with the help of Vic­tor Nar­o­dit­skiy, a game the­o­ry expert at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Southamp­ton. The results shocked him. “The expect­ed out­come is for every­one to attack, regard­less of how dif­fi­cult an attack is,” says Cebri­an. “It is actu­al­ly ratio­nal for the crowd to be mali­cious, espe­cial­ly in a com­pe­ti­tion envi­ron­ment. And I can’t think of any engi­neer­ing or game the­o­ret­ic or eco­nom­ic incen­tive to stop it.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  6. Ukraine Gave Up a Giant Nuclear Arse­nal 30 Years Ago. Today There Are Regrets. (William J. Broad, New York Times): “We gave away the capa­bil­i­ty for noth­ing,” said Andriy Zahorod­niuk, a for­mer defense min­is­ter of Ukraine. Refer­ring to the secu­ri­ty assur­ances Ukraine won in exchange for its nuclear arms, he added: “Now, every time some­body offers us to sign a strip of paper, the response is, ‘Thank you very much. We already had one of those some time ago.’”
    • If Rus­sia does invade Ukraine, I think the biggest glob­al con­se­quence might be that nuclear pow­ers become even more com­mit­ted to main­tain­ing their arse­nals and non-nuclear pow­ers strive even hard­er to join the club.
  7. The Cana­di­an truck­ers:
    • Sym­pa­thet­ic: What the Truck­ers Want (Rupa Sub­ra­manya, Bari Weis­s’s Sub­stack): “It was iron­ic, she said that she could serve but couldn’t dine at the restau­rant where she worked.”
    • Con­cerned: Dis­patch from the Ottawa Front: Sloly is telling you all he’s in trou­ble. Who’s lis­ten­ing? (Matt Gur­ney, Sub­stack): “This is a com­pli­cat­ed protest and a com­pli­cat­ed event. It has lay­ers. Are there good, frus­trat­ed peo­ple just try­ing to be heard in the crowd? Yes. Are there bad peo­ple in the crowd, includ­ing some who’ve waved hate sym­bols and harassed or attacked oth­ers? Yes. Are there peo­ple tak­ing care­ful care of the roads, sweep­ing up trash and shov­el­ling ice and snow off the side­walk? Yes. Are there hard men milling about, keep­ing a wary eye on any­one who seems out of place? Yes. Is it a place where some peo­ple are hav­ing good-natured fun? Yes. Is it a place some oth­er peo­ple would right­ly be afraid to go? Yes. And so on. But it’s even more com­pli­cat­ed than it looks.”

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 Religion’s health effects should make doubt­ing parish­ioners recon­sid­er leav­ing (John Siniff and Tyler J. Van­der­Weele, USA Today): “Sim­ply from a pub­lic health per­spec­tive, the con­tin­u­ing diminu­tion of reli­gious upbring­ing in Amer­i­ca would be bad for health. This is not pros­e­ly­tiz­ing; this is sci­ence.” The Har­vard epi­demi­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sor  last made an appear­ance here back in vol­ume 65. First shared in vol­ume 195.

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 324

some pre-Hal­loween links

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

This is vol­ume 324, which is 182.

Things Glen Found Interesting

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

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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