Tag: democracy

TGFI, Volume 566: a great roiling bouillabaisse of links

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Inter­est­ing

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues like­ly to be of inter­est to Chris­tians in col­lege. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Stop Pathol­o­giz­ing Ordi­nary Life (Clay Rout­ledge, New York Times): “The more fix­at­ed we are on men­tal health, the more sen­si­tive we become to any­thing that might qual­i­fy as a symp­tom and the more we use clin­i­cal lan­guage to describe nor­mal emo­tion­al expe­ri­ences like grief, burnout and lone­li­ness. This broad­en­ing of what we think counts as a dis­or­der — known as con­cept creep — encour­ages us to pathol­o­gize ordi­nary life and see our­selves as men­tal­ly unhealthy.… Near­ly a third of Amer­i­can adults and half of Gen Z adults have giv­en them­selves a diag­no­sis of a men­tal ill­ness based on infor­ma­tion from social media. And research sug­gests that peo­ple who rely on social media for infor­ma­tion about men­tal ill­ness­es tend to have less accu­rate knowl­edge about them.”
  2. Coun­ter­feit Prov­i­dence: Why Chris­tians Must Reject the Con­spir­a­to­r­i­al Mind (Mitchell Bahnsen, Sub­stack): “The believ­er has been cat­e­chized, right­ly, to reject the sec­u­lar pic­ture of his­to­ry as a direc­tion­less churn of mat­ter and acci­dent. He knows in his bones that events mean some­thing, that his­to­ry is going some­where, that appear­ances deceive and a deep­er order under­lies them. Con­spir­acism takes the prov­i­den­tial instinct, a the­o­log­i­cal­ly healthy one, and trans­fers its object from the father­ly hand of God to the hid­den hand of the deep state. Where prov­i­dence teach­es that his­to­ry is gov­erned by a God who is for us, con­spir­acism teach­es that it is gov­erned by pow­ers who are against us.”
  3. US pros­e­cu­tors charge Atlanta man after Graphe­neOS phone wipes itself dur­ing air­port search (Skye Jacobs, TechSpot): “The case rais­es ques­tions about which con­sti­tu­tion­al rights apply at US bor­ders, includ­ing inter­na­tion­al air­ports, where author­i­ties have broad­er search pow­ers.… Graphe­neOS is designed to improve pri­va­cy and secu­ri­ty on Pix­el phones. Sup­port­ers say those tools are legit­i­mate secu­ri­ty pro­tec­tions, not evi­dence of crim­i­nal intent. Boutry point­ed to France and Spain, where author­i­ties have strug­gled to gain access to secured devices. He said author­i­ties have treat­ed the use of Graphe­neOS itself as sus­pi­cious. In Cat­alo­nia, Spain, police have been pro­fil­ing peo­ple car­ry­ing Pix­el phones, assum­ing they have Graphe­neOS installed and are drug deal­ers or gang mem­bers.”
  4. A rev­o­lu­tion is unfold­ing. Vot­ers every­where are furi­ous. (Fareed Zakaria, Wash­ing­ton Post): “We sum­mon a car in three min­utes. A pack­age arrives the same day. AI answers com­pli­cat­ed ques­tions in sec­onds, and does more com­plex work that took peo­ple months in mere min­utes. Nat­u­ral­ly, cit­i­zens begin to expect sim­i­lar effi­cien­cy from gov­ern­ment. But democ­ra­cy is not designed for speed. It is designed for legit­i­ma­cy. It bar­gains, com­pro­mis­es, con­sults courts, pro­tects vul­ner­a­ble groups and bal­ances com­pet­ing inter­ests. Those safe­guards are pre­cise­ly what dis­tin­guish democ­ra­cy from author­i­tar­i­an­ism. Yet in an age shaped by technology’s warp speed, they increas­ing­ly look like paral­y­sis.”
  5. How the mod­ern plea bar­gain under­cuts the con­sti­tu­tion­al right to a jury tri­al (Matt Martens, The Hill): “Jury tri­als, by pub­licly air­ing and test­ing the evi­dence of the crimes, serve the dual func­tions of both pro­tect­ing the accused from false accu­sa­tions and coer­cion to wrong­ly admit guilty and pro­tect­ing the com­mu­ni­ty from lenient sen­tenc­ing of dan­ger­ous offend­ers. Mod­ern Amer­i­can-style plea bar­gains wreak hav­oc on both those vital inter­ests.”
    • The author is a lawyer and a well-known Chris­t­ian thinker on the sub­ject of jus­tice. He has a sem­i­nary degree in addi­tion to his legal train­ing and attends Capi­tol Hill Bap­tist Church in DC.
  6. The Apples and Oranges Tri­bunal (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Hayek nailed it in The Mirage of Social Jus­tice: jus­tice is about con­duct — how one per­son treats anoth­er. An employ­er who defrauds his work­ers, an employ­ee who steals from the till, a prod­uct sold under false pre­tens­es — con­demn them, take them to court. But the pat­tern of prices that emerges from mil­lions of vol­un­tary trades is nobody’s con­duct. No one chose it, no one designed it, no one can be guilty of it. The con­stel­la­tion of prices is, in Ferguson’s phrase, the result of human action but not of human design. Demand­ing that prices be just is a cat­e­go­ry error, like suing the weath­er. Prices don’t grade our mer­it; they guide our actions. Ask them to do the first and they can no longer do the sec­ond.”
  7. Some thoughts on AI:
    • What will more intel­li­gence actu­al­ly do for us? (Noah Smith, Sub­stack): “So although we don’t know yet, it’s pos­si­ble that humans were already hit­ting the point of dimin­ish­ing returns with regards to indi­vid­ual cog­ni­tive capac­i­ty, and that super­in­tel­li­gent machines will nev­er be as far beyond us as we are beyond dogs. But even if that’s true, I can think of at least three rea­sons why machine super­in­tel­li­gence could still deliv­er huge pro­duc­tiv­i­ty gains.… (1) The most obvi­ous advan­tage that machine super­in­tel­li­gence con­fers is replic­a­bil­i­ty.… (2) in the age of AI, dis­trib­uted tac­it knowl­edge might not be near­ly as big of a bar­ri­er to tech­no­log­i­cal dif­fu­sion.… (and 3) there may be laws of the uni­verse that humans can’t under­stand but AI can.”
      • This is real­ly good and worth a pon­der.
    • The Hid­den Cost of China’s Free A.I. (Tal Feld­man, New York Times): “When researchers asked DeepSeek to write code for users whom the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment views with hos­til­i­ty, such as Falun Gong or Tibetans, DeepSeek wrote code with secu­ri­ty vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, mak­ing it eas­i­er for hack­ers to pen­e­trate.… Imag­ine an employ­ee inside an Amer­i­can com­pa­ny who was smart and hard-work­ing and whose goal in life was to pro­mote the inter­ests of a for­eign gov­ern­ment. We would call that per­son a for­eign agent. We are now hir­ing mil­lions of them through the use of Chi­nese A.I.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • $200,000 Spent On Trav­el Ball Final­ly Pays Off With Son’s $500 Col­lege Schol­ar­ship (Baby­lon Bee): “Ben­son’s uncle Matthew, a finan­cial plan­ner, had advised years ago that if the fam­i­ly would put all the trav­el ball mon­ey in a 529 account, young Bray­den would have rough­ly one mil­lion dol­lars to pay for his col­lege edu­ca­tion. ‘Who’s laugh­ing now, Matthew?’ said Mr. Ben­son. ‘What a dope. I can’t wait to text out pic­tures of the schol­ar­ship offer. He’s going to feel so stu­pid.’ After 10 years of miss­ing church, school, birth­days, wed­dings, and funer­als for trav­el ball, the Ben­son fam­i­ly was thank­ful their per­sis­tence had paid off. ‘I admit, there were times I ques­tioned if we were doing the right thing,’ said mom Jes­si­ca. ‘When we skipped my sis­ter’s wed­ding because there was sup­posed to be a col­lege scout at this tour­na­ment in Alaba­ma, I had my doubts. Hold­ing this $500 check in my hands, those doubts are final­ly gone.’ ”
  • Cal­i­for­ni­a’s icon­ic wel­come signs are get­ting a dra­mat­ic makeover (Tes­sa McLean, SF Gate): “Aside from being ‘warm and wel­com­ing,’ Cochrane said the goal for the new designs was to present ‘a legit pho­to op’ for pass­ing motorists. He said they’ve already become ‘social media mag­nets’ in just the short time they’ve been dis­played.”
    • They look real­ly nice. I’m impressed.
  • Datatype: a vari­able font that turns text into charts: “Datatype is an Open­Type vari­able font that turns sim­ple text expres­sions into inline charts. No JavaScript, no images, no ren­der­ing library — just type the syn­tax and Datatype­’s lig­a­ture sub­sti­tu­tion does the rest.”
    • THIS IS SO COOL! Note: this is for web­sites, won’t work on a Word doc­u­ment.

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 445

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 445, which feels like it ought to have many fac­tors. But it’s just 89 * 5.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Har­vard, M.I.T. and Sys­temic Anti­semitism (David French, New York Times): “…what’s hap­pen­ing to Jew­ish stu­dents and fac­ul­ty at sev­er­al elite cam­pus­es is so com­pre­hen­sive and all-con­sum­ing that it can only be described as sys­temic anti­semitism.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. Worth read­ing. Unlocked.
  2. How To Save a Democ­ra­cy (Quico Toro, Sub­stack): “Watch­ing videos of the protest now, what strikes you is that Bernar­do Aré­va­lo is sel­dom men­tioned. K’iche’ lead­ers were at pains to empha­size they were not there to favor one politi­cian or anoth­er. They were there to defend their votes. If Arévalo’s name was sel­dom uttered, the name of Jesus Christ was con­stant­ly invoked.”
    • A remark­able sto­ry. 
  3. Piety and Pro­fan­i­ty: The Raunchy Chris­tians Are Here (Ruth Gra­ham, New York Times): “The par­tial embrace of vul­gar­i­ty, Dr. Kobes Du Mez point­ed out, is hap­pen­ing in a moment of deep con­ser­v­a­tive out­rage, an often vis­cer­al dis­gust, at ris­ing rates of non­tra­di­tion­al gen­der and sex­u­al iden­ti­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly among young peo­ple. In that con­text, an indul­gence in het­ero­sex­u­al lust, even if in poor taste, is becom­ing seen as not just benign, but maybe even healthy and noble. Part of the rea­son trans­gen­der iden­ti­ties are con­sid­ered a threat is that they blur gen­der dif­fer­ence, Dr. Kobes Du Mez said. ‘Against that back­drop, it’s a whole­some thing for a boy to be lust­ing after a very sexy woman.’”
    • Unlocked.
  4. Steven D. Levitt (Freako­nom­ics co-author and Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Eco­nom­ics Pro­fes­sor) on His Career And Deci­sion To Retire From Aca­d­e­m­ic Eco­nom­ics (Jon Hart­ley, Cap­i­tal­ism and Free­dom): “I had always been the smartest kid or close to the smartest kid, but then I got to MIT and I real­ized my God these peo­ple are incred­i­ble. Not just what they know but how they think. So, I knew from day one I was the odd man out. I mean I’m not even exag­ger­at­ing when I say that there was a group of peo­ple in the in-crowd. Aus­tan Gools­bee, my good friend Aus­tan Gools­bee was one of the in-crowds. And Aus­tan told me that maybe a month into our first year at MIT, the in-crowd sat down and they made a list of the five peo­ple most like­ly to fail out. And I was on that list of five.”
    • An absolute­ly delight­ful inter­view. The above link is to the tran­script, but I rec­om­mend the audio ver­sion.
  5. The Pol­i­cy Stakes in this Elec­tion Are High (Josh Bar­ro, Sub­stack): “This pres­i­den­tial elec­tion is not very inter­est­ing, but it is impor­tant. And some of the rea­sons it’s impor­tant are the banal rea­sons that every pres­i­den­tial elec­tion is impor­tant: You get dif­fer­ent pol­i­cy out­comes depend­ing on who gets elect­ed.”
    • Writ­ten from a cen­ter-left per­spec­tive. Even if you dis­agree with Bar­ro on your pre­ferred pol­i­cy out­comes, I think he does a nice job of sum­ma­riz­ing some of the most impor­tant dif­fer­ences (although he leaves off a few big ones about which the two admin­is­tra­tions have dif­fer­ent track records such as reli­gious free­dom, DEI issues, etc).
  6. Are Drunk Peo­ple in New Orleans More Sen­si­ble Than Con­gress? (Ben Meets Amer­i­ca, YouTube): four min­utes. If the qual­i­ty con­tin­ues, I will prob­a­bly be shar­ing most install­ments of this series.
  7. Which Cities are the Least Reli­gious? (Ryan Burge, Sub­stack): “The least reli­gious cities are at the top and there are two clear win­ners here: San Fran­cis­co and Seat­tle. In both cas­es, about sev­en in ten adults are attend­ing reli­gious ser­vices less than once a year. But I think that San Fran­cis­co make take the crown for most sec­u­lar — just 12% of folks in that city are attend­ing church at least once a month.”
    • Empha­sis removed for read­abil­i­ty

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 328

Every­thing from bap­tisms to abor­tion to per­ceived noos­es. Also self-repli­cat­ing robots which is noth­ing to wor­ry about at all.

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 328, which is the year that one of my favorite church lead­ers became a bish­op: Athana­sius.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Supreme Court recon­sid­ers abor­tion:
    • The Supreme Court seems poised to uphold Mississippi’s abor­tion law. (Adam Lip­tak, New York Times): “The Supreme Court seemed poised on Wednes­day to uphold a Mis­sis­sip­pi law that bans abor­tions after 15 weeks of preg­nan­cy, based on some­times tense and heat­ed ques­tion­ing at a momen­tous argu­ment in the most impor­tant abor­tion case in decades. Such a rul­ing would be flat­ly at odds with what the court has said was the cen­tral hold­ing of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 deci­sion that estab­lished a con­sti­tu­tion­al right to abor­tion and pro­hib­it­ed states from ban­ning the pro­ce­dure before fetal via­bil­i­ty, or around 23 weeks. But the court’s six-mem­ber con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty seemed divid­ed about whether to stop at 15 weeks, for now at least, or whether to over­rule Roe entire­ly, allow­ing states to ban abor­tions at any time or entire­ly.”
    • For a free, non­pay­walled analy­sis check out Major­i­ty of court appears poised to roll back abor­tion rights (Amy Howe, SCO­TUS­blog)
    • Why Roe Will Fall And Oberge­fell Won’t (Andrew Sul­li­van, Sub­stack): “In Roe, the Court tried to jump­start a con­sen­sus and failed to secure it, with pub­lic opin­ion very sim­i­lar now to where it was half a cen­tu­ry ago. In Oberge­fell, the Court wait­ed until there was major­i­ty sup­port, which arrived, accord­ing to Gallup, in 2011, and the Court then val­i­dat­ed a still-grow­ing soci­etal con­sen­sus four years lat­er.”
  2. Low­er­ing the Vot­ing Age (J. Budziszews­ki, per­son­al blog): “Peo­ple who dis­cuss low­er­ing the vot­ing age – not only those for it but also those against – assume that it would mean a trans­fer of polit­i­cal influ­ence to the young. That is absurd. It would mean no such thing. Although the very young are often very sure of their opin­ions and con­vinced that they have made up their own minds, they lack the matu­ri­ty to form their minds inde­pen­dent­ly. So to low­er the vot­ing age would not mean increas­ing the polit­i­cal influ­ence of the young. It would only mean increas­ing the polit­i­cal clout of those who have influ­ence through the young.”
    • That’s a real­ly good point I had­n’t con­sid­ered. The author is a pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy and of gov­ern­ment at UT Austin.
  3. Horse Troughs, Hot Tubs and Hash­tags: Bap­tism Is Get­ting Wild (Ruth Gra­ham, New York Times): “Con­tem­po­rary evan­gel­i­cal bap­tisms are often rau­cous affairs. Instead of sub­dued hymns and mur­murs, think roar­ing mod­ern wor­ship music, fist pumps, tears and bois­ter­ous cheer­ing. There are pho­tog­ra­phers, self­ie sta­tions and hash­tags for social media. One church in Texas calls its reg­u­lar mass bap­tism event a ‘plunge par­ty.’ ”
    • This is an inter­est­ing arti­cle most­ly for how inter­est­ing utter­ly nor­mal things can seem to NY Times read­ers.
  4. She set out to save her daugh­ter from fen­tanyl. She had no idea what she would face on the streets of San Fran­cis­co (Heather Knight, San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle): “I asked Jes­si­ca if she thought she would ever leave San Fran­cis­co. ‘It’s like a vor­tex,’ she said. ‘I want to get out of here. But why the f— would I leave here if I have every­thing I need giv­en to me? It might be enabling or it might be keep­ing you in a cycle, but at least you can sur­vive,’ she con­tin­ued. ‘That’s bet­ter than a lot of places.’ ”
    • The wages of sin is death. What a gut-punch of a sto­ry.
  5. Race Pan­ic! Stan­ford inves­ti­gates “cords with loops that may rep­re­sent noos­es” (Maxwell Mey­er, Stan­ford Review): “Call­ing out and address­ing racism? No, these Stan­ford admin­is­tra­tors are com­mit­ted to invent­ing racism. Though, I must hand it to them: Dean Hicks and her ‘insti­tu­tion­al equi­ty’ side­kick Mr. Dunk­ley might not real­ize it, but there is a beau­ti­ful, almost poet­ic irony to the tim­ing of their email. They rushed to inform Stan­ford stu­dents of an alleged race inci­dent on the very day that the crim­i­nal tri­al of Jussie Smol­lett, the great­est of all race hoax­ers, began in Chica­go. That lit­tle coin­ci­dence is the cher­ry on top of this giant farce.”
    • Mey­er’s take is, as far as I can tell, entire­ly cor­rect. If those loops looked at all like noos­es we’d have pho­tos.
  6. Team builds first liv­ing robots—that can repro­duce (Joshua Brown, Uni­ver­si­ty of Ver­mont press release): “Some peo­ple may find this exhil­a­rat­ing. Oth­ers may react with con­cern, or even ter­ror, to the notion of a self-repli­cat­ing biotech­nol­o­gy. For the team of sci­en­tists, the goal is deep­er under­stand­ing.”
  7. The Busi­ness of Extract­ing Knowl­edge from Aca­d­e­m­ic Pub­li­ca­tions (Markus Strass­er, per­son­al blog): “I had to wrap my head around the fact that close to noth­ing of what makes sci­ence actu­al­ly work is pub­lished as text on the web. Research ques­tions that can be answered log­i­cal­ly through just read­ing papers and con­nect­ing the dots don’t require a biotech corp to be formed around them. There’s much less log­ic and deduc­tion hap­pen­ing than you’d expect in a sci­en­tif­ic dis­ci­pline.”
    • Long and poor­ly for­mat­ted, but with an inter­est­ing core idea. Empha­sis in orig­i­nal.

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 Elisha and the She‐bears (Peter J Williams, Twit­ter): an insight­ful Twit­ter thread about a dis­turb­ing OT sto­ry. The author is the War­den of Tyn­dale House at Cam­bridge. First shared in vol­ume 179.

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.