Tag: eritrea

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

This is the 367^th install­ment, notable because 367 is a prime num­ber and also the largest num­ber whose square is com­posed of strict­ly increas­ing dig­its: 367² = 134689.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. Social­ism, Nation­al­ism, and Tolkien (Alec Dent, The Dis­patch): “In our time of unprece­dent­ed wealth and safe­ty, the once-defeat­ed foe of illib­er­al­ism has made a reap­pearence.… due large­ly to a lack of appre­ci­a­tion for how good we have things right now, a lack of under­stand­ing of how we got here, and a lack of under­stand­ing of how a rad­i­cal over­haul of soci­ety would alter the world as we know it.”
2. The Despo­tism of Isa­ias Afew­er­ki (Alex de Waal, The Baf­fler): “…fight­ers protest­ed the deci­sion that they should con­tin­ue to serve with­out pay for two more years. A group of dis­abled vet­er­ans marched—there’s no verb that con­veys the deter­mined col­lec­tive motion of their wheel­chairs, arti­fi­cial limbs, and sticks—towards the cap­i­tal to demand their pen­sions. They were shot at with live ammu­ni­tion. Some were killed, oth­ers were arrest­ed and dis­ap­peared.”
   • I’d heard before that Eritrea was worse than North Korea in some ways, but this arti­cle real­ly drove it home. Wow.
3. Why Peo­ple Are Los­ing Faith In Pub­lic Insti­tu­tions (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “…if you relied on the Post to tell you about the world you actu­al­ly live in, it would not have occurred to you that there is any oth­er side to the library sto­ry than the vir­tu­ous pink-haired queer librar­i­an and her allies ver­sus the mob of big­ots. If you are on the Left, isn’t it in your inter­est to under­stand why peo­ple are so upset, even if you don’t agree with them? Isn’t it in your inter­est to at least think about why the peo­ple of a town would rather defund their library rather than see it used in this way?”
   • This one is wild and Dreher, as they say, has the receipts.
4. Can an Athe­ist Be a Moral Real­ist? (J. Budziszews­ki, per­son­al blog): “…I can’t see how you can be an athe­ist and a moral real­ist at the same time. It is like eat­ing a cake and still hav­ing it. If nat­u­ral­ism is true, then aren’t we just meat bags full of water with no dig­ni­ty? My friend says I am car­i­ca­tur­ing his posi­tion. Am I miss­ing some­thing, or is he?”
   • This is well argued. The author is a pro­fes­sor of gov­ern­ment and phi­los­o­phy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas.
5. Trump should fill Chris­tians with rage. How come he doesn’t? (Michael Ger­son, Wash­ing­ton Post): “I know that peo­ple inspired by [Jesus] have done great things in the past — build­ing hos­pi­tals for the poor, improv­ing the rights of women and chil­dren, mil­i­tat­ing against slav­ery, car­ing for the men­tal­ly dis­abled, work­ing for a mer­ci­ful wel­fare state, fight­ing prej­u­dice, improv­ing glob­al health. But pre­cise­ly because these things have hap­pened, it is dif­fi­cult for me to com­pre­hend why so many Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cals have reject­ed the splen­dor and romance of their call­ing and set­tled for the cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal resent­ments of the hard right.”
   • Long and a bit ram­bly, nonethe­less inter­est­ing.
6. Pub­lish­ing needs JK Rowl­ing to be a mon­ster (Vic­to­ria Smith, The Crit­ic Mag­a­zine): “The trou­ble with JK Rowl­ing is that she has done noth­ing wrong. Back in 2020, she wrote a care­ful­ly word­ed, com­pas­sion­ate piece about sex and gen­der.… This is a sit­u­a­tion in which the pun­ish­ment has cre­at­ed the crime and it’s one that is need­ed by mem­bers of the pub­lish­ing indus­try who have spent years embrac­ing the argu­ments of the most extreme trans activists while ignor­ing those of fem­i­nists. They need Rowl­ing to be a mon­ster. Oth­er­wise they might have to respond, not just to what Rowl­ing has writ­ten, but to the real­i­ties of the move­ment to which they have pledged alle­giance.”
7. Died: Queen Eliz­a­beth II, British Monarch Who Put Her Trust in God (Dud­ley Delffs, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The Queen’s love of the Bible and its gospel mes­sage led to her par­tic­i­pa­tion in the pub­li­ca­tion of a spe­cial book to com­mem­o­rate her 90th birth­day. Titled The Ser­vant Queen and the King She Serves.… Her Majesty per­son­al­ly wrote the fore­word, thank­ing read­ers for their prayers and good wish­es. ‘I have been—and remain—very grate­ful to … God for His stead­fast love. I have indeed seen His faith­ful­ness,’ she wrote. The book was dis­trib­uted to thou­sands of church­es across the UK and through­out many Com­mon­wealth coun­tries pri­or to the Queen’s birth­day in 2016. The book proved so pop­u­lar that the Bible Soci­ety had to print anoth­er 150,000 copies to meet demand.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Infla­tion (Pearls Before Swine)
• Man Eat­ing Cere­al Out Of Flower Vase Won­der­ing If He Should Do Dish­es (Baby­lon Bee) — appro­pri­ate for some of you over the sum­mer
• Peo­ple Who Are Bet­ter Than You (Dil­bert)
• After Sec­ond Failed Launch, NASA Decides To Scrap Artemis Pro­gram And Just Fake Anoth­er Moon Land­ing (Baby­lon Bee)
• Artemis Quote (xckd) — this would be amaz­ing
• This is the most inter­est­ing roof in Lon­don. (Tom Scott, YouTube): six min­utes. The video does not dis­ap­point.
• YouTube Tuto­ri­als (Corey Rodrigues, YouTube): five min­utes

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Big Data+Small Bias « Small Data+Zero Bias (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Sup­pose you want to esti­mate who will win the 2016 US Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. You ask 2.3 mil­lion poten­tial vot­ers whether they are like­ly to vote for Trump or not. The sam­ple is in all ways demo­graph­i­cal­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the US vot­ing pop­u­la­tion but poten­tial Trump vot­ers are a tiny bit less like­ly to answer the ques­tion, just .001 less like­ly to answer (note they don’t lie, they just don’t answer).” I was stunned. From vol­ume 234.

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.