Tag: elite colleges

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 461



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 461, a prime num­ber.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. So You’ve Decid­ed to Vote for an Unfit Can­di­date (O. Alan Noble, Sub­stack): “Come Novem­ber, most vot­ers will choose between two pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates, nei­ther of whom are fit for office, as I have pre­vi­ous­ly argued. I’m not just argu­ing that they are sin­ners and there­fore ‘evil’ in the sense that every­one is fall­en; I’m argu­ing that they are specif­i­cal­ly unjust and immoral and unfit for posi­tions of nation­al lead­er­ship.… There are many issues to take into account when vot­ing for a can­di­date, but one of them is how your vote will form your own soul.”
  2. Arti­cles mak­ing obser­va­tions rarely heard in high-sta­tus soci­ety:
    • New Research Finds Huge Dif­fer­ences Between Male and Female Brains (Leonard Sax, Psy­chol­o­gy Today): “As you can see, there wasn’t a con­tin­u­um: the female fin­ger­prints of brain activ­i­ty were quite dif­fer­ent from the male fin­ger­prints of rest­ing brain activ­i­ty, with no over­lap. These find­ings strong­ly sug­gest that what’s going on in a woman’s brain at rest is sig­nif­i­cant­ly dif­fer­ent from what’s going on in a man’s brain at rest.”
    • How divorce nev­er ends (Brid­get Pheta­sy, The Spec­ta­tor): “All of this is to say some­thing you don’t hear that often: divorce will affect your kids for the rest of their lives, well into adult­hood. They will have split hol­i­days and sum­mers. They will have step­par­ents. Their kids will have step-grand­par­ents. What­ev­er inher­i­tance they would have been enti­tled to is often being divvied up with oth­er spous­es and their kids. More impor­tant than the mon­ey, how­ev­er, is the atten­tion they’ll nev­er get because their par­ents are dat­ing or remar­ry­ing or what­ev­er. They will only be with one par­ent half of the year — if they’re lucky: we only saw my dad twice a year. They will have to choose who gets Christ­mas, for­ev­er. Or they will be bounc­ing around at hol­i­day time with their kids, just like the old days.”
    • The Real Prob­lem With Legal Weed (Charles Fain Lehman, New York Times Mag­a­zine): “While mar­i­jua­na may not be as bad as some crit­ics claim, the med­ical evi­dence is clear that it can do sub­stan­tial harm. Mar­i­jua­na is addic­tive — around 30 per­cent of users use com­pul­sive­ly, even as their use harms them­selves and the peo­ple around them.… Mar­i­jua­na does hurt a sub­stan­tial por­tion of its con­sumers, often quite bad­ly. And there is no rea­son to think that busi­ness­es won’t sell mar­i­jua­na to those it hurts, if they’re allowed to. What the alco­hol and tobac­co mar­kets show us, rather, is that addic­tion and prof­it don’t mix well.”
      • Unlocked.
    • We deserve a more nuanced con­ver­sa­tion about work­ing moms (Rachel M. Cohen, Vox): “After the essay on moth­er­hood dread was pub­lished, I heard from Sharon Sassler, a Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty soci­ol­o­gist who stud­ies rela­tion­ships and gen­der. She had recent­ly pub­lished a paper on gen­der wage gaps in the com­put­er sci­ence field and found that moth­ers in com­put­er sci­ence actu­al­ly earned more than child­less women (though this ‘wage pre­mi­um’ was sig­nif­i­cant­ly less than what fathers earned). ‘It was dif­fi­cult for me to find a home for the attached arti­cle because review­ers can­not fath­om that moth­ers might out-earn sin­gle women, though there is a grow­ing body of evi­dence that [they] do,’ she wrote in her email to me. ‘It might be selec­tion [bias] … but giv­en that folks have found this across dis­ci­plines sug­gests that the moth­er­hood penal­ty real­ly needs to be reassessed.’ I was curi­ous about Sassler’s sug­ges­tion that moms might actu­al­ly earn more and that we don’t often hear that because gate­keep­ers ‘seem to like the nar­ra­tive that women are always screwed by fam­i­ly.’”
  3. This Is What Elite Fail­ure Looks Like (Oren Cass, New York Times): “Tak­ing the majority’s pref­er­ences seri­ous­ly, even when they con­flict with the pref­er­ences of more sophis­ti­cat­ed experts, is often dis­par­aged as pop­ulism. But while elect­ed offi­cials and their tech­no­crat­ic advis­ers may have spe­cial insight into how the people’s goals are best achieved, only the peo­ple can deter­mine what those goals should be and whether they are being met…. While pol­i­cy ini­tia­tives so often seek to max­i­mize effi­cien­cy and growth, move peo­ple to oppor­tu­ni­ty and redis­trib­ute from the economy’s win­ners to the losers, the typ­i­cal Amer­i­can has an attach­ment to place, a focus on fam­i­ly, a com­mit­ment to mak­ing things, and would accept eco­nom­ic trade-offs in pur­suit of those pri­or­i­ties.… The impor­tant fea­ture of all these pref­er­ences is that they are inher­ent­ly valid. No set of facts or sta­tis­ti­cal analy­ses, to which an expert might have supe­ri­or access, over­rides what peo­ple actu­al­ly val­ue and what trade-offs they would choose to make. Lead­ers might seek to shape pub­lic opin­ion and alter pref­er­ences — indeed, that is part of lead­ing — but they must yield to the out­come. Their oblig­a­tion is to pur­sue the community’s pri­or­i­ties, not their own.”
  4. Mis­sion­ar­ies Have Gone to Thai­land for 200 Years. Why Aren’t There More Chris­tians? (Rebec­ca Brit­ting­ham, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Yet the free­dom that Chris­tians enjoy in Thai­land hasn’t trans­lat­ed into a wide accep­tance of Chris­tian­i­ty by local Thais. Despite near­ly 200 years of Protes­tant mis­sions, only about 1.2 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion are Chris­tians. The ques­tion of why Thai­land is such dif­fi­cult soil for the seed of the gospel to grow has plagued mis­sion­ar­ies, as many have seen lit­tle fruit for the years they’ve spent learn­ing Thai, build­ing rela­tion­ships, and try­ing to intro­duce locals to the gospel.”
  5. I Went From Fos­ter Care to Yale. This Is What I Learned About ‘Lux­u­ry Beliefs.’ (Rob K. Hen­der­son, New York Times on YouTube): six minute video.
    • This is worth watch­ing even if you’re famil­iar with his ‘lux­u­ry beliefs’ con­cept.
    • I actu­al­ly had din­ner in a group with Rob on Sun­day night. We’re not friends — I just saw that he was in town and will­ing to meet up with peo­ple so I DMd him on Twit­ter. Nice guy.
  6. How Lib­er­al Col­lege Cam­pus­es Ben­e­fit Con­ser­v­a­tive Stu­dents (Lau­ren A. Wright, The Atlantic): “Con­ser­v­a­tive cul­ture war­riors argue that edu­ca­tion at high­ly selec­tive col­leges is worth­less, and rec­om­mend that con­ser­v­a­tive stu­dents who don’t want to be silenced or indoc­tri­nat­ed opt out. I dis­agree. Con­ser­v­a­tive stu­dents expe­ri­ence what high­er edu­ca­tion has long claimed to offer: expo­sure to dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives, reg­u­lar prac­tice build­ing and defend­ing coher­ent argu­ments, intel­lec­tu­al chal­lenges that spur cre­ativ­i­ty and growth. Lib­er­al acad­e­mia has large­ly robbed lib­er­al stu­dents of these rewards.”
    • The author is a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at Prince­ton. No pay­wall.
  7. Reli­able Sources: How Wikipedia Admin David Ger­ard Laun­ders His Grudges Into the Pub­lic Record (Trac­ing Wood­grains, Sub­stack): “Wikipedia’s job is to repeat what Reli­able Sources say. David Gerard’s mis­sion is to deter­mine what Reli­able Sources are, using any argu­ments at his dis­pos­al that instru­men­tal­ly favor sources he finds agree­able.… From there, it’s sim­ple: Wikipedia edi­tors duti­ful­ly etch onto the page, with a neu­tral point of view, that Huff­in­g­ton Post writ­ers think this, PinkNews edi­tors think that, and expe­ri­enced Har­vard pro­fes­sors who make the mis­take of writ­ing for The Free Press think noth­ing fit for an ency­clo­pe­dia.”
    • This is a long, wild arti­cle about inter­net minu­ti­ae. But if you’ve ever won­dered about bias on Wikipedia, dive in.

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 457



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 457, the sum of three con­sec­u­tive primes (149 + 151 + 157) and also appar­ent­ly the index of a prime Euclid num­ber, but I would be lying if I said I knew what that is.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The case for show­ing up to church—even if you don’t believe in God (Emma Camp, Amer­i­ca): “But despite my reg­u­lar church atten­dance for almost two years now, I still haven’t devel­oped a rock-sol­id faith. I’ve joked—and said as much on Twitter—that I only believe in God about 30 per­cent of the time on a good day. My ambiva­lence does set me apart from most of my friends from church, a group that includes a few sem­i­nar­i­ans. But it doesn’t keep me from com­ing back.”
  2. The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs (Ruxan­dra Tes­lo, Sub­stack): “To for­mal­ize this: ‘Any sys­tem that is not explic­it­ly pro-Weird Nerd will turn anti-Weird Nerd pret­ty quick­ly.’ That is because most peo­ple, while lik­ing non-con­formism in the abstract and post-fac­to, are not very will­ing to actu­al­ly put up with the per­son­al­i­ty trade-offs of Weird Nerds in prac­tice. There is an increas­ing num­ber of peo­ple right now who are think­ing about how to build bet­ter intel­lec­tu­al insti­tu­tions… it’s worth think­ing about what kind of peo­ple one wants to attract in these insti­tu­tions and how to keep them there. And I believe the con­ver­sa­tion here starts with accept­ing a sim­ple truth, which is that Weird Nerds will have cer­tain traits that might be less than ide­al, that these traits come ‘in a pack­age’ with oth­er, very good traits, and if one makes fil­ter­ing or pro­mo­tion based on the absence of those traits a pri­or­i­ty, they will miss out on the pos­i­tives.”
  3. An Object Les­son From Covid on How to Destroy Pub­lic Trust (Zeynep Tufek­ci, New York Times): “If the gov­ern­ment mis­led peo­ple about how Covid is trans­mit­ted, why would Amer­i­cans believe what it says about vac­cines or bird flu or H.I.V.? How should peo­ple dis­tin­guish between wild con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and actu­al con­spir­a­cies?… As the expres­sion goes, trust is built in drops and lost in buck­ets, and this buck­et is going to take a very long time to refill.”
    • Unlocked.
  4. ‘Sham’ Surgery Can Actu­al­ly Fix Our Bod­ies. So Why Are Some Against It? (Jere­my How­ick, Sci­ence Alert): “More broad­ly, a review of 53 place­bo-con­trolled surgery tri­als found that sham surgery was as good as the real thing in over half of the stud­ies. Sham knee and back surgery works as well as real surgery for pain. Pre­tend­ing to put brain implants works as well as real implants for reduc­ing migraine attacks. Fake laser surgery works as well as real laser surgery to stop gas­troin­testi­nal bleed­ing. And fake surgery works as well as real surgery for mak­ing sphinc­ters func­tion more effi­cient­ly.”
  5. The Day My Old Church Can­celed Me Was a Very Sad Day (David French, New York Times): “When I left the Repub­li­can Par­ty, I thought a shared faith would pre­serve my denom­i­na­tion­al home. But I was wrong. Race and pol­i­tics trumped truth and grace, and now I’m no longer wel­come in the church I loved.”
    • Unlocked.
  6. Alito’s ‘God­li­ness’ Com­ment Echoes a Broad­er Chris­t­ian Move­ment (Eliz­a­beth Dias and Lisa Lerer, New York Times): “It’s a phrase not com­mon­ly asso­ci­at­ed with legal doc­trine: return­ing Amer­i­ca to ‘a place of god­li­ness.’ And yet when asked by a woman pos­ing as a Catholic con­ser­v­a­tive at a din­ner last week, Jus­tice Samuel A. Ali­to Jr. appeared to endorse the idea.… Now, Supreme Court jus­tices have become caught up in the debate over whether Amer­i­ca is a Chris­t­ian nation. While Jus­tice Ali­to is hard­ly open­ly cham­pi­oning these views, he is embrac­ing lan­guage and sym­bol­ism that line up with a much broad­er move­ment push­ing back against the declin­ing pow­er of Chris­tian­i­ty as a major­i­ty reli­gion in Amer­i­ca.”
    • This caveat is sig­nif­i­cant and should per­haps be high­er placed in the sto­ry: “The Times has not heard the full unedit­ed record­ing and has reviewed only the edit­ed record­ing post­ed online, after the woman who record­ed them, a lib­er­al activist, declined to send the Times the full record­ing.” 
    • Relat­ed: What Exact­ly Did Jus­tice Ali­to Say That Was Wrong? (Marc O. DeGiro­la­mi, New York Times): “Where was the justice’s error? He did not men­tion any pend­ing case or lit­i­ga­tion. He did not name any per­son or par­ty. He did not dis­cuss any spe­cif­ic polit­i­cal or moral mat­ter. Most of the exchange con­sists of the filmmaker’s own goad­ing remarks, fol­lowed by the justice’s vague and ano­dyne affir­ma­tions and replies. About what you might expect when cor­nered at a bor­ing cock­tail par­ty.”
    • Relat­ed: Wild Dis­tor­tions of ‘Secret Record­ing’ of Ali­to (Ed Whe­lan, Nation­al Review): “You are wel­come of course to dis­agree with Ali­to.… But it’s beyond bizarre to find it news­wor­thy that Ali­to made a pri­vate com­ment that mir­rors pub­lic speech­es he has been giv­ing.”
  7. Against Ambi­tion (Grace Car­roll, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “Wineb­urg walked into his class­room intend­ing to make a brief open­ing com­ment about the scene out­side. What fol­lowed — a tirade against a cul­ture of careerism so bla­tant­ly prof­it-moti­vat­ed that stu­dents were being lured, lit­er­al­ly, to flash­ing salaries like moths to flame — ‘sort of took on a life of its own,’ he recalled recent­ly. It’s known col­lo­qui­al­ly among some stu­dents as ‘the rant.’ I was one of the frosh sit­ting in Wineburg’s class that fall. I remem­ber the rant.… most­ly I remem­ber feel­ing like some­one was lift­ing some­thing very heavy off of me, a weight I hadn’t real­ized I was car­ry­ing until it was gone.”

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 456



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 456, a very sat­is­fy­ing num­ber: each dig­it increas­es and I like it.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Holy Hag­gling: Learn to Pray like Abra­ham (Justin Dille­hay, The Gospel Coali­tion): “We’re often ready to write off an oth­er­wise good church or orga­ni­za­tion because of a few bad apples with­in it. But Abra­ham is the exact opposite—he asks God to spare an entire city of bad apples for the sake of a few good apples with­in it.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  2. The Non­prof­it Indus­tri­al Com­plex and the Cor­rup­tion of the Amer­i­can City (Jonathan Ire­land, Amer­i­can Affairs): “Who­ev­er came up with the idea of call­ing these orga­ni­za­tions ‘non­prof­its’ was a mar­ket­ing genius on the lev­el of Steve Jobs. When some­one hears the word non­prof­it, they assume that such an orga­ni­za­tion is work­ing for the pub­lic good; that it serves the home­less, pro­tects the weak, exists for the ben­e­fit and the bet­ter­ment of soci­ety at large.… Con­se­quent­ly, non­prof­its receive a ben­e­fit of the doubt that would not be grant­ed to any oth­er form of pri­vate cor­po­ra­tion. Yet non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions are fre­quent­ly the exact oppo­site of what they appear to be.”
    • Stun­ning sto­ries in here. 100% worth your time.
  3. Why the Pan­dem­ic Prob­a­bly Start­ed in a Lab, in 5 Key Points (Ali­na Chan, New York Times): “Ulti­mate­ly, a nev­er-before-seen SARS-like virus with a new­ly intro­duced furin cleav­age site, match­ing the descrip­tion in the Wuhan institute’s Defuse pro­pos­al, caused an out­break in Wuhan less than two years after the pro­pos­al was draft­ed.…”
    • Unlocked. Empha­sis removed for read­abil­i­ty. The author is a mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gist at a joint MIT/Harvard insti­tute.
  4. Men Only Want One Thing (Nathan Bea­com, Com­ment): “Over a hun­dred years ago, William James, the father of Amer­i­can psy­chol­o­gy, argued that men need a ‘moral equiv­a­lent of war.’ To retain virtue, James thought, men need­ed the soul-shap­ing force of mil­i­tary life with­out war’s destruc­tive con­se­quences.”
    • This is a sol­id arti­cle, espe­cial­ly rec­om­mend­ed for guys. Ladies, you can eaves­drop if you like.
  5. Why No One Will Save Sudan (Cameron Hud­son, Per­sua­sion): “For those track­ing events in the coun­try, a seem­ing­ly end­less thread of head­lines and edi­to­ri­als lament this ‘for­got­ten con­flict.’ But this is the wrong fram­ing. The cri­sis in Sudan is nei­ther for­got­ten nor ignored. It is de-pri­or­i­tized. And that is worse.… Over the past sev­er­al weeks, a new Beng­hazi-like slaugh­ter has been tak­ing shape in the North Dar­fur city of El Fash­er. With near­ly one mil­lion inter­nal­ly dis­placed already tak­ing refuge there and more than one mil­lion more await­ing a com­ing onslaught by the Rapid Sup­port Forces mili­tia, which has promised to take the city and com­plete their takeover of all of Dar­fur, the specter of geno­cide once again hangs over the region. Egress out of the city has been cut off, as have aid flows into the city, lead­ing ana­lysts to refer to the city as a ‘kill box.’ ”
  6. Does Divorce Make You Hot­ter? (Kat Rosen­field, The Free Press): “…[cel­e­bra­to­ry sto­ries about divorce are] a prod­uct of a pop­u­lar ‘woman empow­ered by every­thing woman does’ par­a­digm, where all choic­es made by women are a prod­uct of lib­er­a­tion, hence fem­i­nist, hence good. There is no error or dis­ap­point­ment that can’t be yass-kweened away.… It’s only women who are seen as requir­ing this par­tic­u­lar brand of cheer­lead­ing, who are relent­less­ly encour­aged to reframe all their neg­a­tive expe­ri­ences as the best thing they ever did.”
    • Straight fire through­out. Rec­om­mend­ed.
  7. Speech Under the Shad­ow of Pun­ish­ment (Jean­nie Suk Gersen, New York­er): “…admin­is­tra­tors have become accus­tomed to using pun­ish­ment as a go-to solu­tion rather than as a last resort. The empha­sis on dis­ci­pli­nary action became par­tic­u­lar­ly pro­nounced in the twen­ty-tens, when uni­ver­si­ties were under urgent pres­sure to address cam­pus sex dis­crim­i­na­tion and harass­ment.… [fur­ther­more] some stu­dents may have been dis­ci­plined not mere­ly for par­tic­i­pat­ing in an encamp­ment but for vio­lat­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion, harass­ment, or bul­ly­ing poli­cies. The pres­sure to enforce those poli­cies can­not be over­stat­ed. In the twen­ty-tens, the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion inves­ti­gat­ed many schools, includ­ing Har­vard, for fail­ing to ade­quate­ly address alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al mis­con­duct; uni­ver­si­ties today are once again under fed­er­al scruti­ny, which threat­ens their fed­er­al fund­ing and tax-exempt sta­tus, for fail­ing to address alle­ga­tions of anti­semitism.”
    • The author is a law prof at Har­vard.

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 454



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 454, a num­ber whose sym­me­try pleas­es me.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Nones Have Hit a Ceil­ing (Ryan Burge, Sub­stack): “The rise of the nones may be large­ly over now. At least it won’t be increas­ing in the same way that it did in the pri­or thir­ty years. Of course, the ques­tion is why? I don’t know if I have a bul­let­proof answer. I think the eas­i­est expla­na­tion is that a lot of mar­gin­al­ly attached peo­ple switched to ‘no reli­gion’ on sur­veys over the last decade or two. Even­tu­al­ly, there weren’t that many mar­gin­al­ly attached folks any­more. All you had left were the very com­mit­ted reli­gious peo­ple who like­ly won’t become nones for any rea­son. The loose top soil has been scooped off and hauled away, leav­ing noth­ing but hard bedrock under­neath.”
    • Empha­sis removed for read­abil­i­ty.
  2. ‘Loud-mouthed bul­ly’: CS Lewis satirised Oxford peer in secret poems (Dalya Alberge, The Guardian): “Jok­ing that an infu­ri­at­ed Lewis had per­haps com­posed them dur­ing one of Wyld’s lec­tures, Horobin not­ed that one of them iden­ti­fies Wyld through an acros­tic with the ini­tial let­ters spelling out the name ‘Hen­ry Cecil Wyld’. He added: ‘On the remain­ing blank pages he penned a series of addi­tion­al satir­i­cal vers­es lam­poon­ing Wyld – one in Eng­lish, along­side oth­ers in Latin, Greek, French and even Old Eng­lish.’ ”
    • Even Lewis’s shade was epic and eru­dite. I love this sto­ry. Also, a reminder that every word will be brought into judge­ment — even words uttered (or penned) in secret. I should men­tion he would not yet have been a Chris­t­ian when these poems appear to have been com­posed.
  3. What Do Stu­dents at Elite Col­leges Real­ly Want? (Francesca Mari, New York Times): “…every­one arrived on cam­pus hop­ing to change the world. But what they learn at Har­vard, he said, is that actu­al­ly doing any­thing mean­ing­ful is too hard. Peo­ple give up on their dreams, he told me, and decide they might as well make mon­ey. Some­one else told me it was com­mon at par­ties to hear their peers say they just want to sell out.”
    • Unlocked
  4. Redefin­ing the sci­en­tif­ic method: as the use of sophis­ti­cat­ed sci­en­tif­ic meth­ods that extend our mind (Alexan­der Krauss, PNAS Nexus): “This study reveals that 25% of all dis­cov­er­ies since 1900 did not apply the com­mon sci­en­tif­ic method (all three features)—with 6% of dis­cov­er­ies using no obser­va­tion, 23% using no exper­i­men­ta­tion, and 17% not test­ing a hypoth­e­sis. Empir­i­cal evi­dence thus chal­lenges the com­mon view of the sci­en­tif­ic method.”
    • From the abstract because it is so suc­cinct­ly put, but the arti­cle itself is easy to read. Rec­om­mend­ed. The author is a philoso­pher of sci­ence at the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics.
  5. Amer­i­can Mis­sion­ar­ies Killed in Port-au-Prince (Daniel Sil­li­man, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Crim­i­nal gangs killed near­ly 5,000 peo­ple in Haiti last year. Then, in 2024, the gangs band­ed togeth­er, turned against the politi­cians who had once col­lab­o­rat­ed with them for pow­er, and launched coor­di­nat­ed attacks on the gov­ern­ment. The gangs set police sta­tions on fire, shut down the main air­port and sea­port, and broke open two pris­ons, releas­ing an esti­mat­ed 4,000 inmates. They van­dal­ized gov­ern­ment offices, stormed the Nation­al Palace, and took con­trol of about 80 per­cent of the cap­i­tal.”
  6. Group chats rule the world. (Sri­ram Krish­nan, per­son­al blog): “Most of the inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tions in tech now hap­pen in pri­vate group chats: What­sapp, Telegram, Sig­nal, small invite-only Dis­cord groups.… The great cul­ture wars of 2020 meant peo­ple, espe­cial­ly in tech, weren’t com­fort­able shar­ing their views in pub­lic lest they get var­i­ous online mobs after them.”
  7. What ‘Tradwives’—and Some of Their Critics—Miss (Han­nah Ander­son, The Dis­patch): “But women haven’t been unique­ly lied to. Fam­i­lies have been lied to about what their homes can and should be. Men and women alike have been told that their great­est achieve­ments lie out­side of it. And yet, a mar­riage reduced from two ‘careerists’ to one is still serv­ing cor­po­rate inter­ests. At best, a woman sac­ri­fic­ing her career to enable her husband’s career (as Butk­er asserts his wife does and as he coun­seled new female grad­u­ates) miss­es the point. At worst, it enables the very mar­ket­place that desires noth­ing more than to creep into our homes and com­mod­i­fy every expres­sion of good­ness and beau­ty that hap­pens there—even if what we’re sell­ing is tra­di­tion­al­ism.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty Tour by Drone (YouTube): six min­utes (it’s a lit­tle long, but the first bit is nice to watch)
  • Will 18 year old Emma Olson FOOL Penn & Teller with a Rubik’s cube? (Penn & Teller Fool Us, YouTube): nine min­utes
  • When an Eel Takes a Bite Then an Octo­pus Might Claim an Eye­ball (Joshua Rapp Learn, New York Times): “In each video, the com­mon octo­pus may sac­ri­fice arms, much as lizards drop their tails to dis­tract preda­tors, Dr. Hernán­dez-Urcera said. In the first video, the octo­pus los­es three arms while the one in the sec­ond video los­es two — but they can ful­ly regrow limbs in about 45 days, some lab tests show.”
    • Rarely do I find that news arti­cles are improved by embed­ded videos. This is one of the excep­tions. Very cool.
  • Are Plants Intel­li­gent? If So, What Does That Mean for Your Sal­ad? (Eliz­a­beth A. Har­ris, New York Times): “Obvi­ous­ly we’re ani­mals that need to eat plants. There’s no way around that. But there is a way of imag­in­ing a future with agri­cul­tur­al prac­tices and har­vest­ing prac­tices that are more tuned into the life style of the plant, the things it’s capa­ble of and its pro­cliv­i­ties. This opens up the world of plant ethics.”
    • The arti­cle itself is inter­est­ing. The title made me laugh.

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 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 452

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.

452 is a prod­uct of 113. Specif­i­cal­ly, 452 = 4 · 113. A web­site informed that it is also the clos­est inte­ger to 7Ï€, but that’s a weird fact.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. ‘I Knew I Would Pay a Price for My Faith’: Chi­na Releas­es Mis­sion­ary After Sev­en Years (CJ Wu inter­view­ing John Cao, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “I did not have a Bible while in prison. Although both my moth­er and my lawyer brought Bibles to my prison, the cor­rec­tion­al staff refused to hand them over to me. My moth­er would write down Bible vers­es in her let­ters to me. Yet the police checked our cor­re­spon­dence: If faith was men­tioned in my let­ters, they would not be deliv­ered. Both pris­ons had small libraries with hun­dreds of books. I would search for Leo Tolstoy’s books, since there are some Bible vers­es in his books. When I found them, I’d be very, very hap­py and copy the vers­es in my note­book. In the four years I was there, I copied dozens of vers­es.”
  2. The ado­les­cent men­tal health mess (Lucy Foulkes, Medi­um): “We are in a sit­u­a­tion where some ado­les­cents are very legit­i­mate­ly expe­ri­enc­ing men­tal health crises, with­out decent treat­ment, while oth­ers are inac­cu­rate­ly describ­ing typ­i­cal devel­op­men­tal stress with the lan­guage of dis­or­der.… The whole thing is a mess, and a thou­sand miles away from the orig­i­nal goal of men­tal health aware­ness.”
    • The author is a psy­chol­o­gist at Oxford.
    • Ampli­fied by the New York Times: Are We Talk­ing Too Much About Men­tal Health? (Ellen Bar­ry, New York Times): “[The] train­ing could encour­age ‘co-rumi­na­tion,’ the kind of long, unre­solved group dis­cus­sion that churns up prob­lems with­out find­ing solu­tions.… Co-rumi­na­tion appears to be high­er in girls, who tend to come into the pro­gram more dis­tressed, as well as more attuned to their friends, he said. ‘It might be,’ he said, ‘that they kind of get togeth­er and make things a lit­tle bit worse for each oth­er.’”
  3. Per­spec­tives and news about the col­lege protests
    • The Peo­ple Set­ting Amer­i­ca on Fire (Park Mac­Dougald, Tablet Mag­a­zine): “In fact, it is a mis­take both to view the cam­pus protests as a ‘stu­dent’ move­ment and to regard the out­siders as ‘infil­tra­tors’ or some­how sep­a­rate from the move­ment. Rather, stu­dent activists have been work­ing togeth­er with out­siders, with whom they are linked via over­lap­ping activist net­works and nation­wide orga­ni­za­tions.… wealthy donors have been sub­si­diz­ing months of rolling dis­rup­tive street protests by a grab bag of rev­o­lu­tion­ary and anti-Israel rad­i­cals. That leads nat­u­ral­ly to a ques­tion: To what end?”
    • An Inside Look at the Stu­dent Takeover of Columbia’s Hamil­ton Hall (Sharon Otter­man, New York Times): “[The main­te­nance work­er] said he tried to block them and they tried to rea­son with him to get out of the way, telling him ‘this is big­ger than you.’ One per­son, he recalled, told him he didn’t get paid enough to deal with this. Some­one tried to offer him ‘a fist­ful of cash.’ He said he replied: “I don’t want your mon­ey, dude. Just get out of the build­ing.” … Both Mr. Tor­res and Mr. Wil­son said they strong­ly object­ed to the tac­tics of the occu­piers, which they said had tak­en a toll on them. Nei­ther man ever wants to work in Hamil­ton Hall again.”
      • A pret­ty wild sto­ry told from a unique per­spec­tive
    • How Coun­ter­pro­test­ers at U.C.L.A. Pro­voked Vio­lence, Unchecked for Hours (EIGHT JOURNALISTS!, New York Times): “A New York Times exam­i­na­tion of more than 100 videos from clash­es at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Los Ange­les, found that vio­lence ebbed and flowed for near­ly five hours, most­ly with lit­tle or no police inter­ven­tion. The vio­lence had been insti­gat­ed by dozens of peo­ple who are seen in videos coun­ter­protest­ing the encamp­ment.… Fif­teen peo­ple were report­ed­ly injured in the attack, accord­ing to a let­ter sent by the pres­i­dent of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia sys­tem to the board of regents.”
    • Behind the Ivy Intifa­da (Musa al-Ghar­bi, Com­pact Mag­a­zine): “Con­trary to ear­li­er claims by uni­ver­si­ty and city offi­cials about a large pro­por­tion of ‘out­side agi­ta­tors,’ more than 70 per­cent of those arrest­ed at Colum­bia had a direct insti­tu­tion­al tie to the uni­ver­si­ty. This was reflect­ed in how they were treat­ed after arrest. Most of those swept up were released with­out charges. Among Colum­bia affil­i­ates who were for­mal­ly charged, none faced more than a sin­gle mis­de­meanor charge. Mean­while, those who faced charges at City Col­lege, the near­by pub­lic uni­ver­si­ty raid­ed by police the same night, were all hit with felonies. While it’s pos­si­ble that the City Col­lege kids just engaged in more extreme and unlaw­ful activ­i­ty, it seems more like­ly that belong­ing to the elite paid crim­i­nal-jus­tice div­i­dends for the Colum­bia arrestees.”
      • Wow. Well worth read­ing. Full of snarky insight. The author is a pro­fes­sor of com­mu­ni­ca­tion at Stony Brook and is pro-Pales­tin­ian.
    • Check Your Priv­i­lege (Nick Catog­gio, The Dis­patch): “Acad­e­mia could select for kids who show intel­lec­tu­al humil­i­ty and curios­i­ty, to bor­row a point from my col­league Sarah Isgur. Instead they’ve select­ed for kids who feel not mere­ly enti­tled to demand that their elders ‘check their priv­i­lege’ but moral­ly jus­ti­fied in act­ing aggres­sive­ly to make sure they do. All told, one might say that pro­gres­sives, the great ene­mies of colo­nial­ism, have … col­o­nized high­er edu­ca­tion over the past half-cen­tu­ry. And you know how set­tler-colo­nial­ists are. They can be very defen­sive when you demand that they vacate ter­ri­to­ry they regard as right­ly theirs. The behav­ior of cam­pus pro­gres­sives this month has radi­at­ed the sense that Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ties are ‘theirs’ in a way that isn’t true of oth­er stu­dents. It’s been point­ed out repeat­ed­ly but can’t be empha­sized enough that the sort of dis­rup­tion in which they’ve engaged wouldn’t be tol­er­at­ed from those whose polit­i­cal beliefs offend­ed the administration’s left­ist ortho­doxy.”
  4. Per­spec­tives and news about the war in Gaza
    • One Pho­to That Cap­tures the Loss in Gaza (Nicholas Kristof, New York Times): “An Amer­i­can sur­geon who vol­un­teered in Gaza sent me a pho­to that sears me with its glimpse of over­whelm­ing grief: A woman mourns her young son.… The nurs­es and oth­er doc­tors who were in the I.C.U. that day said that Karam died of com­pli­ca­tions from mal­nu­tri­tion.”
    • Israel orders Al Jazeera to close its local oper­a­tion and seizes some of its equip­ment (Tia Gold­en­berg and Jon Gam­brell, AP News): “The extra­or­di­nary order, which includes con­fis­cat­ing broad­cast equip­ment, pre­vent­ing the broad­cast of the channel’s reports and block­ing its web­sites, is believed to be the first time Israel has ever shut­tered a for­eign news out­let oper­at­ing in the coun­try.… While includ­ing on-the-ground report­ing of the war’s casu­al­ties, its Ara­bic arm often pub­lish­es ver­ba­tim video state­ments from Hamas and oth­er region­al mil­i­tant groups.… Al Jazeera has been closed or blocked by oth­er Mideast gov­ern­ments.”
    • Kol Hakavod (Russ Roberts, Sub­stack): “Israel going to the finals real­ly shouldn’t float my boat and make my heart sing. But it did. Because here’s the thing. The deci­sion about who advanced to the Euro­vi­sion finals tomor­row night was done by a pop­u­lar vote. There’s no pan­el of judges in the semi­fi­nal round.… Golan advanced. Despite the thou­sands who marched in the streets and the dozens who booed Golan in the rehearsal hall, prob­a­bly mil­lions, from the safe­ty of their homes, were able to cast an anony­mous vote for Israel.”
  5. The Heresy of Chris­t­ian Bud­dhism (Anony­mous, Sub­stack): “…while many men can eas­i­ly recog­nise the moral evil of debauch­ery and world­li­ness, not many see the dan­ger of an ascetic puri­tanism that push­es too far. Too much empha­sis on sin, too much empha­sis on humil­i­ty, too much empha­sis on heav­en and even too much empha­sis on Christ to the exclu­sion of man soon leads to a Chris­tian­i­ty that hates the indi­vid­ual, indi­vid­u­a­tion and the cre­at­ed world. Chris­tian­i­ty starts to resem­ble Bud­dhism.”
    • Fol­low-up: The Bud­dhist Mood in Evan­gel­i­cal­ism (Aaron Renn, Sub­stack): “…the de fac­to def­i­n­i­tion of idol­a­try is want­i­ng any­thing so much that, if you don’t get it, you are very upset. Hence, the path to avoid­ing sin and idol­a­try, the way to please God, is to purge one­self of desires. This is Bud­dhism. Undoubt­ed­ly it would be pos­si­ble for some­one to be engaged in idol­a­try in some of these cas­es. But there are a lot of things in this world you should be upset about.”
  6. When Intru­sive Thoughts Come (John Bee­son, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Nur­ture men­tal play­grounds of gospel creativity.Many of us expend so much ener­gy try­ing to knock down destruc­tive intru­sive thoughts that we have no ener­gy to build con­struc­tive imag­i­na­tions. We believe our minds are dan­ger­ous and need to be shut down. But your mind is a gift God intends to be lever­aged for his glo­ry. He desires to reshape your mind to become a fac­to­ry of God-glo­ri­fy­ing curios­i­ty.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • Cruise ship sails into New York City port with 44-foot dead whale across its bow (ABC News): “A cruise ship sailed into a New York City port with a 44-foot dead whale across its bow, marine author­i­ties said. The whale, iden­ti­fied as an endan­gered sei whale, was caught on the ship’s bow when it arrived at the Port of Brook­lyn on Sat­ur­day, Nation­al Ocean­ic and Atmos­pher­ic Admin­is­tra­tion fish­eries spokesper­son Andrea Gomez said.”
    • I guess it’s the nau­ti­cal equiv­a­lent of a car hit­ting a deer. Yikes.

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 451

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 451, which feels like it is maybe a prime num­ber but it turns out that 451 = 11 · 41.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Was Paul a Slave? (Mark R. Fairchild and Jor­dan K. Mon­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Rec­on­cil­ing the Phar­isee, Hebrew of Hebrews, Ara­ma­ic-speak­ing zealot Paul with the Roman cit­i­zen, glo­be­trot­ting, Greek-speak­ing Paul seems impos­si­ble. Unless, that is, we con­sid­er the ear­ly church’s rec­ol­lec­tion of Paul’s upbring­ing as a child in an enslaved fam­i­ly. ‘The man­u­mis­sion of Paul’s father solves these prob­lems,’ Ries­ner told me.”
    • The title is a lit­tle mis­lead­ing — the ques­tion is real­ly whether Paul was born a slave and lat­er freed (they do explain Acts 22:28, “When Paul told the com­man­der in Acts 22:28 that he was ‘born’ a Roman cit­i­zen, that word, gen­nao, can refer to birth or adop­tion. Freed Roman slaves were often adopt­ed into their master’s fam­i­ly and giv­en a Roman name and cit­i­zen­ship.”
    • The authors are schol­ars with rel­e­vant exper­tise. The mid­dle sec­tion of the arti­cle is where all the meat is and makes some good points. The open­ing and clos­ing felt like fluff to me.
    • Unlocked.
  2. Stuff about the col­lege protests
    • For most peo­ple, pol­i­tics is about fit­ting in (Nate Sil­ver, Sub­stack): “Peo­ple are try­ing to fig­ure out where they fit in — who’s on their side and who isn’t. And this works in both direc­tions: peo­ple can be attract­ed to a group or neg­a­tive­ly polar­ized by it.… Notice what’s miss­ing from my list? The notion of pol­i­tics as a bat­tle of ideas.”
    • Col­lege pro­test­ers seek amnesty to keep arrests and sus­pen­sions from trail­ing them (Joce­lyn Geck­er, AP News): “Petocz said protest­ing in high school was what helped get him into Van­der­bilt and secure a mer­it schol­ar­ship for activists and orga­niz­ers. His col­lege essay was about orga­niz­ing walk­outs in rur­al Flori­da to oppose Gov. Ron DeSan­tis’ anti-LGBTQ poli­cies. ‘Van­der­bilt seemed to love that,’ Petocz said.’ ”
    • What Stu­dents Read Before They Protest (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “[Read­ing the syl­labus explains] the two things that seem so dis­pro­por­tion­ate in these protests and the cul­ture that sur­rounds them. First, it explains why this con­flict attracts such a scale of on-cam­pus atten­tion and action and dis­rup­tion, while so many oth­er wars and crises (Sudan, Con­go, Arme­nia, Bur­ma, Yemen …) are bare­ly noticed or ignored. Sec­ond, it explains why the atten­tion seems to leap so quick­ly past cri­tique into car­i­ca­ture, past sym­pa­thy for the Pales­tini­ans into jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for Hamas, past con­dem­na­tion of Israeli pol­i­cy into anti-Semi­tism.”
    • In an Online World, a New Gen­er­a­tion of Pro­test­ers Choos­es Anonymi­ty (Nicholas Fan­dos, New York Times): “On cam­pus­es from New Eng­land to South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, stu­dents lead­ing one of the largest protest move­ments in decades have increas­ing­ly strapped on face masks and check­ered Pales­tin­ian kaf­fiyehs in a polar­iz­ing bid to pro­tect their anonymi­ty even as they demand uni­ver­si­ties and gov­ern­ments be held to account. The choice rep­re­sents a sharp break by many, though not all, of these stu­dents from ear­li­er gen­er­a­tions of uni­ver­si­ty activists, who gained their moral force in part by putting their words on record and their futures in jeop­ardy for a larg­er cause.”
    • How Pro­test­ers Can Actu­al­ly Help Pales­tini­ans (Nicholas Kristof, New York Times): “…this may sound zany, but how about rais­ing mon­ey to send as many of your stu­dent lead­ers as pos­si­ble this sum­mer to live in the West Bank and learn from Pales­tini­ans there (while engag­ing with Israelis on the way in or out)? West Bank mon­i­tors say that a recent Israeli crack­down on for­eign­ers help­ing Pales­tini­ans, by deny­ing entry or deport­ing peo­ple, has made this more dif­fi­cult but not impos­si­ble. Stu­dent vis­i­tors must be pru­dent and cau­tious but could study Ara­bic, teach Eng­lish and vol­un­teer with human rights orga­ni­za­tions on the ground. Pales­tini­ans in parts of the West Bank are under siege, peri­od­i­cal­ly attacked by set­tlers and in need of observers and advo­cates.”
  3. Some stuff about gen­der:
    • The Bat­tle of the Sex­es Needs a Truce (Thomas Adamo and Isabel­la Griepp, Stan­ford Review): “We must acknowl­edge how soci­ety has lied to both men and women since they were boys and girls—lies that have done noth­ing but bring about dishar­mo­ny between the sex­es. In seek­ing to empow­er young girls, par­ents and teach­ers have de-empha­sized the innate dif­fer­ences between the sex­es. And, any dif­fer­ences between the sex­es were explained in terms of how men had his­tor­i­cal­ly oppressed women, rather than the unique and valu­able char­ac­ter­is­tics that men and women inher­ent­ly pos­sess.”
      • The authors are stu­dents in Chi Alpha.
    • The Mas­culin­i­ty Pyra­mid (Seth Troutt, Mere Ortho­doxy): “A man who is over­ly con­cerned with how he is dif­fer­ent from women is miss­ing the holy instinct of Adam, who first notices the same­ness of Eve and sec­ond notices their dif­fer­ences (Gen 2:23).”
    • Scripts for Healthy Mas­culin­i­ty (Seth Troutt, Mere Ortho­doxy): “…men ought to be dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed from God, ani­mals, boys, and women. When prop­er­ly con­sid­ered, those four dis­tinc­tions yield the four core mas­cu­line virtues of humil­i­ty (in our dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion from God), dis­ci­pline (in our dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion from ani­mals), respon­si­bil­i­ty (in our dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion from boys), and chival­ry (in our dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion from women).”
  4. There’s Real­ly No Good Rea­son to Use Tik­Tok (Samuel D. James, Sub­stack): “Tik­Tok is, in my view, a social media plat­form devoid of pos­i­tive ben­e­fit. I do not mean by that that it is whol­ly evil or can­not be used except sin­ful­ly. Rather, I think Tik­Tok sim­ply lacks any mer­it as a plat­form and is only use­ful in the sense that it is pas­sive­ly enter­tain­ing. This is also how I would describe things like soap operas, pro­fes­sion­al wrestling, and the nation­al hot dog eat­ing con­test. The dif­fer­ence, though, between Tik­Tok and those things, is that Tik­Tok is 1) addic­tive, 2) active­ly cor­ro­sive to think­ing, and 3) mar­ket­ed to and con­sumed by an enor­mous num­ber of chil­dren.”

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 450

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.

450 is a cool num­ber because it ends in 50. Which is just cool.

It’s also some­thing called an Ara­bi­an Nights fac­to­r­i­al, mean­ing that 450! has 1001 dig­its. What a fun con­cept!

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Pro-Pales­tin­ian Encamp­ments Spread, Lead­ing to Hun­dreds of Arrests (Anna Betts, New York Times): “In the week since Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty start­ed crack­ing down on pro-Pales­tin­ian pro­test­ers occu­py­ing a lawn on its cam­pus, protests and encamp­ments have sprung up at oth­er col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties across the coun­try. Police inter­ven­tions on sev­er­al cam­pus­es have led to more than 400 arrests so far.”
    • Scenes of Protests Spread at Elite Cam­pus­es (Troy Clos­son, New York Times): “Near­ly 50 peo­ple were arrest­ed at Yale Uni­ver­si­ty in New Haven, Conn., on Mon­day morn­ing, fol­low­ing the arrests last week of more than 100 pro­test­ers at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty in New York City. The arrests unleashed a wave of activism across oth­er cam­pus­es.… The flur­ry of protests has pre­sent­ed a steep chal­lenge for uni­ver­si­ty lead­ers, as some Jew­ish stu­dents say they have faced harass­ment and anti­se­mit­ic com­ments. Ear­ly Mon­day morn­ing, Colum­bia announced a same-day shift to online class­es because of the protests. Barnard Col­lege, across the street, fol­lowed suit hours lat­er.”
    • The Car­nage Is the Point (Dan Drezn­er, Sub­stack): “Uni­ver­si­ties like Colum­bia have han­dled this poor­ly, although their response pales in com­par­i­son to how some elect­ed offi­cials want them to respond. An awful lot of politi­cians have been call­ing on the use of force against pro­tes­tors. Sen­a­tors Tom Cot­ton and Josh Haw­ley have called for the Nation­al Guard to be deployed in Colum­bia, as has Speak­er of the House Mike John­son. Ear­li­er this week Texas gov­er­nor Greg Abbott enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly sent Texas state troop­ers to con­duct mass arrests, break­ing up an unsanc­tioned but non­vi­o­lent demon­stra­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin. Cot­ton, Haw­ley, John­son, and Abbott are a lot of things, but stu­pid they are not. Why would they call for coer­cion when they must be ful­ly aware that such an approach would fur­ther fan the flames of protest?”
    • An inter­est­ing analy­sis. Worth your time.
  2. No, There Are No “Trans” Ani­mals (Emma Hilton and Jonathan Kay, Quil­lette): “Do some crea­tures change sex? Absolute­ly. But this isn’t new infor­ma­tion. It’s a fact that biol­o­gists have known about for a long time. What is also well-known is that none of these sex-chang­ing crea­tures are mam­mals, much less human. Rather, they’re insects, fish, lizards, and marine inver­te­brates whose biol­o­gy is dif­fer­ent from our own in count­less (fas­ci­nat­ing) ways. What’s more, in every sin­gle case described above, there are always (at most) just two dis­tinct sex­es at play—no mat­ter how those two sex­es may switch or com­bine. One of those sex­es is male, a sex asso­ci­at­ed with gonads that pro­duce sperm (testes); and the oth­er is female, with gonads that pro­duce eggs (ovaries). There’s noth­ing else on the menu. It’s just M and F.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  3. Ex-ath­let­ic direc­tor accused of fram­ing prin­ci­pal with AI arrest­ed at air­port with gun (Kris­ten Grif­fith & Justin Fen­ton, The Bal­ti­more Ban­ner): “Eiswert’s voice, which police and AI experts believe was sim­u­lat­ed, made dis­parag­ing com­ments toward Black stu­dents and the sur­round­ing Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, was wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed on social media.”
    • AI crimes are fix­ing to get wild. In case you haven’t been keep­ing up, AI-gen­er­at­ed video and audio is shock­ing­ly good. https://twitter.com/reidhoffman/status/1783145009153450374 <– check this wild exam­ple. Reid Hoff­man (one of the so-called ‘Pay­pal Mafia’, founder of LinkedIn) inter­views an AI avatar of him­self for about 14 min­utes.
  4. What Is a Woman? What Is a Man? (Aaron Renn, Sub­stack): “The key is to under­stand who men and women are, bio­log­i­cal­ly, soci­o­log­i­cal­ly, and cul­tur­al­ly. What we will see is that evan­gel­i­cals have very lit­tle to say about this.”
  5. How do you get sib­lings to be nice to each oth­er? Lati­no fam­i­lies have an answer (Michaeleen Doucleff, NPR): “I ask Cindy the same ques­tion I posed to sci­en­tists: How do you teach chil­dren to find joy in help­ing their sib­lings? And she answers exact­ly the same as the sci­en­tists answered: ‘We mod­el it.’ Cindy says. Cindy mod­els not just help­ing her sib­lings, but also the joy she receives from the rela­tion­ships she has with her broth­ers and sis­ters.”
  6. Changes in Col­lege Admis­sions (Zvi Mow­showitz, Sub­stack): “Start­ing in August 2024, LSAT to elim­i­nate the Log­ic Games (Ana­lyt­ic Rea­son­ing) sec­tion, the hard­est, most fun and most objec­tive and intel­li­gence-test­ing part of the whole test. Nor­mal­ly I would be against dumb­ing down our test­ing, but keep­ing smart peo­ple from becom­ing lawyers is not the worst idea.”
    • The whole thing is inter­est­ing. The excerpt is amus­ing.
  7. Astronomers Find Evi­dence Of A Mas­sive Object Beyond The Orbit Of Nep­tune (James Fel­ton, IFL Sci­ence): “Car­ry­ing out sim­u­la­tions to try and dis­cov­er what best explains the orbits of these objects, the team found that a mod­el that includes a mas­sive plan­et beyond the region of Nep­tune explained the steady state of these objects much bet­ter than in sim­u­la­tions where plan­et 9 was not includ­ed. In the mod­el, the team includ­ed oth­er vari­ables, such as the galac­tic tide and the grav­i­ta­tion­al influ­ence of pass­ing stars.”

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 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 444

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 444, which is just the same dig­it repeat­ed. I like that. Clean. Classy. Ele­gant.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Rant About Wor­ship Songs (Jere­my Pierce, First Things): “Here are some of the things I real­ly hate in a wor­ship song.”
    • This is bril­liant, from back in 2010.
  2. Top Only­Fans cre­ator mak­ing $300,000 a month turns to Christ, walks away from porn indus­try (John Knox, Not The Bee): “From what I can tell, Nala here isn’t going through a Lil’ Nas X ‘Chris­t­ian era’ where she’s aging out of porn and wants to rebrand her­self as a good girl again before piv­ot­ing to anoth­er grift. All I see is gen­uine joy, like the pros­ti­tute who wept and was for­giv­en at Jesus’ feet.”
    • Includes a video of her shar­ing her tes­ti­mo­ny. I love this part: “The dev­il can tru­ly give you things in this life. He has a bud­get, though. He can only go so far.… The dev­il has a bud­get, but God does not.”
  3. Lati­nos Are Flock­ing to Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tian­i­ty (Marie Arana, The Free Press): “In fact, some researchers project that by 2030, half of the entire pop­u­la­tion of Amer­i­can Lati­nos will iden­ti­fy as Protes­tant evan­gel­i­cals. Com­pare that growth with white evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tants, whose num­bers have declined from 23 per­cent of the Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tion in 2006 to 14 per­cent in 2020. With the His­pan­ic population’s pro­ject­ed growth, in less than a decade, we may see forty mil­lion Latinos—a con­gre­ga­tion the size of California—heading to Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cal church­es every Sun­day.”
  4. Is Rome a True Church? (Chris Castal­do, Mere Ortho­doxy): “Protes­tants tend to answer the ques­tion of Roman Catholicism’s sta­tus in one of two ways. Look­ing through the lens of the ear­ly creeds (i.e., Nicene and Apos­tles’), some under­stand it to be fun­da­men­tal­ly ortho­dox. The ratio­nale is sim­ple: because the creeds uphold the basic tenets of Chris­tian­i­ty, and Rome upholds those creeds, her apos­tolic­i­ty is affirmed. Roman Catholi­cism is thus regard­ed as ‘inside the pale.’ An alter­na­tive read­ing, one that prob­a­bly informed the Face­book com­ment, is to view the Roman Catholic Church through the lens of the six­teenth-cen­tu­ry Ref­or­ma­tion in which the Coun­cil of Trent anath­e­ma­tized (pro­nounced to be cursed) the doc­trine of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion by faith alone. Because such faith is rec­og­nized as the dri­ving cen­ter of the bib­li­cal gospel, and Rome force­ful­ly repu­di­ates the doc­trine, the Roman Church is there­fore con­sid­ered incom­pat­i­ble with bib­li­cal faith.  I rec­og­nize the log­ic in these posi­tions, but in my opin­ion, both are incom­plete.”
  5. Jour­nal­ism Has a Reli­gion Prob­lem (Andrew T. Walk­er, Nation­al Review): “Jour­nal­ism has a reli­gion prob­lem. More specif­i­cal­ly, jour­nal­ists are either unaware or unwill­ing to admit that their own views, pre­sum­ably untouched by ‘reli­gion,’ are nonethe­less pas­sion­ate­ly held con­vic­tions ground­ed, well, some­where. What do I mean by that? Well, jour­nal­ism that touch­es on reli­gion and pol­i­tics tends to see reli­gious view­points as car­ry­ing a spe­cial bur­den. It goes some­thing like this: ‘Tell me, Mr. Pious, why a diverse pop­u­la­tion should accept your views on moral­i­ty, con­sid­er­ing they come from reli­gion.’ ”
  6. Har­vard Tram­ples the Truth (Mar­tin Kulldorff,City Jour­nal): “…as I dis­cov­ered, truth can get you fired. This is my story—a sto­ry of a Har­vard bio­sta­tis­ti­cian and infec­tious-dis­ease epi­demi­ol­o­gist, cling­ing to the truth as the world lost its way dur­ing the Covid pan­dem­ic.… Two Har­vard col­leagues tried to arrange a debate between me and oppos­ing Har­vard fac­ul­ty, but just as with Stan­ford, there were no tak­ers. The invi­ta­tion to debate remains open. The pub­lic should not trust sci­en­tists, even Har­vard sci­en­tists, unwill­ing to debate their posi­tions with fel­low sci­en­tists.”
  7. How the Gaza Min­istry of Health Fakes Casu­al­ty Num­bers (Abra­ham Wyn­er, Tablet Mag­a­zine): “If Hamas’ num­bers are faked or fraud­u­lent in some way, there may be evi­dence in the num­bers them­selves that can demon­strate it. While there is not much data avail­able, there is a lit­tle, and it is enough: From Oct. 26 until Nov. 10, 2023, the Gaza Health Min­istry released dai­ly casu­al­ty fig­ures that include both a total num­ber and a spe­cif­ic num­ber of women and chil­dren.”
    • The author is a pro­fes­sor of sta­tis­tics at the Whar­ton School, and I find his analy­sis com­pelling.

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.