Tag: famous Christians

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 527: beyond adolescent atheism, counterproductive peer review, and Girls Gone Bible

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. As we grow out of intellectual adolescence, religion’s popularity soars (Charles Murray, New York Post): “…I had concluded that when religion no longer supplies a framework for thinking about transcendent qualities, artists tend to make their work about their personal preferences, and their personal preferences tended to be self-absorbed and banal. As an unbeliever, what was I to make of that? One option was to infer that the great artists of the past had foolishly imagined they were tapping into the transcendent, and their delusion inspired them. But that line of thought became embarrassing when I confronted their work. Is it plausible that those individuals who achieved things so far beyond the rest of us were uniformly stupid about the great questions? I decided they understood things we don’t. Johann Sebastian Bach does not need to explain himself.”
  2. 1 in 5 chemists have deliberately added errors into their papers during peer review, study finds (Dalmeet Singh Chawla, Chemical and Engineering News): “More than 20% of chemistry researchers have deliberately added information they believe to be incorrect into their manuscripts during the peer review process, in order to get their papers published.”
  3. The Girls Who Found God in a Podcast (Kara Kennedy, The Free Press): “Girls Gone Bible launched in 2023, with a weekly show, and has since amassed more than 20 million listens, and nearly two million followers on Instagram and TikTok combined.… what struck me most about the audience at the Keswick Theater was how normal, how cool, they all were. These weren’t the caricature of ‘Jesus freaks,’ but more like Regina George with eyelash extensions. They spoke about burnout, and loneliness, and how hard it is to get a guy to commit to you, and wanting to take life seriously.”
  4. Two articles about a widespread sin: 
    • Escape the Little Hell of Porn (Marc Sims, The Gospel Coalition): “Hating yourself in the aftermath of habitual sin feels so right because it feels so close to repentance. But it isn’t. Judas hated himself for his sin, but he didn’t repent. What’s the difference between self-hatred and repentance? Real repentance begins with what the sinful woman in Luke 7 does as she weeps over Jesus’s feet. She’s aware of her sin, so she weeps. But she’s also aware of her Savior, so she brings her tears to him.”
    • What Porn Does to Us (Christine Emba, Christianity Today): “That understanding of what women are for can spill out into real life and into real interactions with other people. People say, ‘It’s just pornography. It’s just something I’m watching. It doesn’t have anything to do with my real life.’ That’s not how people work. Our brains aren’t wired like that. And our souls are not wired like that.”
  5. My Dad Is in a Chinese Prison (Grace Jin Drexel, The Free Press): “My dad’s name is Ezra Jin. He is the head pastor of the Zion Church in China, a community with a reach of tens of thousands of Christians across the country who primarily practice their faith online or via small underground churches in rented spaces. They are a community of people whose faith has endured despite a years-long campaign by the Chinese Communist Party to intimidate them into renouncing their faith. In 2018, Chinese police shut down my dad’s church in Beijing, a beautiful sanctuary with over 1,500 congregants. Refusing to cower in the face of a totalitarian regime, my dad got creative. He moved his sermons online, making them accessible to people across the country, and from there, he continued to build his congregation.”
  6. The Appeal of the Campus Right (Julia Steinberg, The Atlantic): “I arrived at Stanford in the fall of 2021 as a progressive from Los Angeles, where most of my peers and I had thought of conservatives as, essentially, evil. At a club fair, I signed up for the Stanford Young Democratic Socialists of America, as well as the leftist magazine, The Stanford Sphere. I hoped to live in one of Stanford’s co-op houses, communal living spaces largely focused on left-leaning activism. As the school year got under way, however, I began to notice something that grated on me. Debates in the classroom, whether about socialism or Plato or the Quran, felt highly delicate, as if everyone was afraid of offending everyone else.” 
    • Including largely because of the Stanford-specific observations. I don’t believe I ever crossed paths with the author when she was an undergrad.
  7. If You Ask A.I. for Marriage Advice, It’ll Probably Tell You to Get Divorced (Samuel D. James, Substack): “…users who ask AI bots for counseling or therapy—which is right now a lot of people, and is going to be a lot more people in the future—are going to get a lot of answers pulled from Reddit. In other words, these LLMs are going to spitting out answers to questions like, ‘Should I get divorced,’ by repeating how users on Reddit answer those kinds of question. And we know how users on Reddit tend to answer those questions!”

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.

TGFI, Volume 524: beauty and virality

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. ‘The Idea of the Beautiful Is a Signature of God’: A Q&A With Marilynne Robinson (Peter Wehner, New York Times): “Calvin says there is not a blade of grass that God created that was not meant to ravish us with its beauty. The idea of the beautiful is a signature of God, I think for Calvin and Jonathan Edwards and many other people. This distillation of the joy, the sensory joy, of being among things in the world. I think the loss of beauty is a loss of an intellectual discipline, which science never lost because scientists always have the right to say a formula is beautiful. We in the outside world, we’ve abandoned the word and the concept. It’s suggestive that the scientists use it.”
  2. Performing Gender, Left and Right (Richard Hanania, Substack): “How each side behaves is a metaphor for its strengths and weaknesses as a movement. Conservatives fundamentally get human nature and are more in tune with it, but tend to indulge in their instincts and act like idiots. Liberals are thoughtful and polite but place a high priority on emotional safety and avoiding dangerous or uncomfortable situations.… These personality and aesthetic differences are central to political divides. So much of politics is who you know, and it’s difficult to go somewhere in a movement if you don’t get along with the people in it. Elites therefore sort according to personality in addition to ideology.”
  3. Why Evangelicalism Is Built for TikTok (River Page, The Free Press): “Of course evangelicals went viral on TikTok. The medium is perfect for the message; but also, the message is perfect for the medium. Catholics have art and ancient rituals. Evangelicals have rhetoric and emotion—the kind of stuff that travels far and wide on a platform where you have 15 seconds to grab people’s attention.”
  4. Craft Is the Antidote to Slop. (Will Manidis, Substack): “From Genesis, man enters not a paradise without labor but a world of intentional creation. The LORD God places man in the Garden of Eden ‘to dress it and to keep it’ (Genesis 2:15) establishing labor not as punishment but as sacred vocation. This original calling invites us to co-create the Kingdom, tending and developing the world with intention and care. Our fundamental purpose is not consumption but participation in the ongoing work of creation. The serpent’s temptation represents the first shortcut in human history.… Humanity’s first sin was, in part, choosing the easy shortcut over the meaningful process – preferring effortless gain to the demanding but fulfilling work of tending the garden.”
  5. Realizing a desired family size: when should couples start? (Habbema et al, Human Reproduction): “Without IVF, couples should start no later than age 32 years for a [90% chance of a] one-child family, at 27 years for a two-child family, and at 23 years for three children. When couples accept 75% or lower chances of family completion, they can start 4–11 years later.” 
    • An alumnus passed this along to me and I found it fascinating.
  6. He’s Christian. In Nigeria, That Meant Torture and Prison. (Josh Code, The Free Press): “What came to my mind when I was in detention was that death could be the final result. I knew the consequences of helping Muslims who have converted to Christianity—and also the fact that the police were looking for them. So death was what was on my mind.… From the point of my detention to the point where I was released, I was constantly praying and fasting. Because of the way I was praying, the other men detained with me thought I was a pastor and were even calling me ‘reverend’ and asking me to remember them in my prayers, so that the Lord would also deliver them from captivity. Mind you, they were Muslims, not Christians—their detention was not on account of their faith.”
  7. There Are Only Two Gametes (Carol Hooven, Tablet): “We call animals that produce sperm ‘male’ and those that produce eggs ‘female.’ That’s about it. The bottom line is that there are two gamete types and thus two sexes. There are no other sexes, no other reproductive categories. Among mainstream evolutionary biologists, there is simply no disagreement on these basic points: The ‘gametic view’ is the established orthodoxy of our field. It applies across sexually reproducing animals and accommodates all the complexity and variation within the sexes. It holds in nonreproductively viable animals—like postmenopausal me—that don’t produce gametes; it holds in male seahorses that get pregnant; in clownfish who change from male to female (first producing sperm and then eggs); in females who identify as male (trans men) and take male levels of testosterone and have a deep voice and a thick, bushy beard.”

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.

TGFI, Volume 523: religion makes you happy and war is terrifying

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. Religious People Are Happier Than Non-Religious People (Ryan Burge, Substack): “To go back to where I started — let me just say the one true thing again. Highly active religious people are happier than non-religious people. There’s no other way to spin this data than this simple conclusion.” 
    • Emphasis in original. The author is a political scientist at Washington University in St. Louis.
  2. I’ve Seen the Future of War. Europe Isn’t Ready for It. (Niall Ferguson, The Free Press): : “Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine is now in its fourth year—or its 12th, if you date it from the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Since February 2022, the country has cycled through three wars. First it was a tank war, in which columns of Russian tanks fought a bungled blitzkrieg. Then it became an artillery war, in which the two sides traded fire from entrenched positions. Now, however, it’s almost entirely a drone war, with a supporting role for small and highly vulnerable infantry units. The question is how well Europeans understand this. The people of Poland, Romania, Estonia, and (perhaps) Denmark all now know that Russian drones are capable of entering their airspace. But have they truly grasped what that implies?” 
    • The author is a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. I am told he is a fairly recent convert to Christianity, although I have never met him personally and only know of his faith through public sources.
  3. What Women Wish They’d Known Before Trying to Get Pregnant (Olga Khazan, The Atlantic): “When Anna De Souza was in her early 30s, she asked her ob-gyn when she should start thinking about having kids. ‘When you were 26,’ she remembers the doctor saying. She was surprised. She’d had some sense that fertility decreases with age but didn’t know how significant the drop-off was. No doctor had ever told her, and she certainly didn’t learn about it in school.” 
    • Unlocked. This is a drum I will keep beating — most of you should plan to have kids earlier than your peers!
  4. Some thoughts on free speech: 
    • The Censorship You Practice Today Will Be Used Against You Tomorrow (Greg Lukianoff, New York Times): “I don’t like having to make a case for human rights such as freedom of speech by appealing to self-interest; these are supposed to be rights whose importance transcends one’s personal needs. But for political partisans, it’s often the only argument that cuts through. So here’s my practical warning: The weapon that you reach for today will be used against you tomorrow. Using your opponents’ nastiest tools doesn’t persuade them to disarm; it inspires retaliation. Tit for tat, forever and ever.”
    • How not to limit free speech (Ed Feser, personal blog): “There is a presumption, then, in favor of free expression, precisely because it facilitates the natural end of our rational powers. However, not all forms of expression are protected by this presumption, because not all forms of expression have anything to do with our rational powers. For example, pornography does not appeal to our rationality and in no way contributes to discovering truth or to debate by which we might root out error.… pornography is in no way protected by the natural right to free speech.” 
      • The author is a devout Catholic who is also a philosophy professor. This is a helpful essay that covers a lot of ground.
  5. How My Dad Helped Me Master My Autism (Leland Vittert, The Free Press): “Today, most parents would probably send a kid like me to therapy. Even back then, a diagnosis might have gotten me significant special treatment. But my dad knew that there wasn’t a teacher or therapist who could step in and suddenly make me fit in. The world wasn’t going to adapt to me, and he wasn’t going to try to make it. There would be no therapists or accommodations. If I was going to succeed, he would have to adapt me to the world.”
  6. I visited Gaza. The food aid surprised me. (Ken Isaacs, Washington Post): “The main provider of food assistance in the Gaza Strip today arguably is the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an organization backed by the United States and Israel. GHF has faced harsh criticism for its work in Gaza, with United Nations agencies and nongovernmental organizations publishing a letter in July urging donors and countries not to fund the foundation’s work and to instead revert to a solely U.N.-led response. I arrived in Gaza a skeptic of GHF but left an advocate. Simply put, the common portrayal of this organization radically distorts reality.” 
    • The author works for Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian relief agency.
  7. Two viral clips from the same event (Charlie Kirk’s memorial service). 
    • Erika Kirk on Husband’s Assassin: “I forgive him.” (C‑SPAN, YouTube): two minutes
    • “I hate my opponent and I don’t want the best for them.” (C‑SPAN, YouTube): five minutes (the famous bit is at about the one minute mark)
    • Watch them both before you read the articles that comment on them. Having watched them, I think some commentators are subtly distorting them. Watch for yourself, and then mull the responses.
    • Why MAGA Evangelicals Can Cheer Love and Hate at the Same Time (David French, New York Times): “Many people who saw or read about the rally were puzzled by what they perceived as a contradiction. How can you cheer love and hate at the same time? How can you worship Jesus and cheer such a base and gross description of other human beings, people who are created in the image of God? My reaction was different. Finally, I thought, curious Americans who tuned in got to see MAGA theology more completely — and what they witnessed was the best and worst of MAGA Christianity.”
    • The Biggest Tent (The Dispatch): “The funeral was what I thought it would be. Until Erika Kirk spoke, and then it was something else.… The last place you would look for grace in American public life in 2025 is at a Republican political rally, especially one where the usual lust for ruthlessness has been juiced by wrath and grief. For Mrs. Kirk to muster it in this setting, at this moment, despite the singular anguish with which she’s been burdened, felt almost miraculous even to a non-believer like me.… I’ve heard of political ‘big tents,’ but I’ve never heard of one big enough to accommodate two moral systems that aren’t just contradictory but irreconcilable. ‘Christ’s message, followed by its very antithesis,’ philosophy professor Edward Feser wrote of the contrast between Kirk’s and Trump’s remarks. ‘It’s almost as if the audience is being put to a test.’ ”
    • Erika Kirk and America’s Religious Revival (Maya Sulkin, The Free Press): “By dawn, the lines to get into State Farm Stadium stretched for blocks. People camped out overnight to secure a place.… By mid-morning, the 73,000-seat stadium was full. Organizers opened the arena next door for overflow, but even that quickly reached capacity. In total, an estimated 200,000 people turned out—more than Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral in 1968.”
    • Is Erika Kirk the Future of MAGA? (Matthew Continetti, The Free Press): “Never had I seen someone upstage President Trump. It happened Sunday. Trump spoke for longer than Erika. But she had already brought down the house. Her forgiveness and hope moved the nation. Clearly Trump was mulling over her eulogy. When he slyly contrasted his style with Charlie’s, Trump kiddingly apologized. ‘I hate my opponent and don’t want the best for them,’ he said. ‘Sorry, Erika.’ When was the last time Trump apologized? Then he added, ‘Erika, you can talk to me and the whole group, but maybe they can convince me that that’s not right, but I can’t stand my opponent.’ Even the president can learn from Erika Kirk.”
    • ‘I Hate My Opponent’: Trump’s Remarks at Kirk Memorial Distill His Politics (Nick Catoggio, New York Times): “When asked about the divergent messages from the president and Mrs. Kirk, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said on Monday that the president was ‘authentically himself.’” 

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • Meet the 2025 Ig Nobel Prize winners (Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica): “Diet sodas and other zero-calorie drinks are a mainstay of the modern diet, thanks to the development of artificial sweeteners whose molecules can’t be metabolized by the human body. The authors of this paper are intrigued by the notion of zero-calorie foods, which they believe could be achieved by increasing the satisfying volume and mass of food without increasing the calories. And they have just the additive for that purpose: polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), more commonly known as Teflon. Yes, the stuff they use on nonstick cookware. They insist that Teflon is inert, heat-resistant, impervious to stomach acid, tasteless, cost-effective, and available in handy powder form for easy mixing into food. They recommend a ratio of three parts food to one part Teflon powder.” 
    • I lowkey wanna eat a teflon-stuffed meal now.
  • Sheep (SMBC)
  • ‘Very mean squirrel’ seeking food has sent at least 2 people to the ER in a California city (AP News)
  • Sinful, Rebellious Homeschooler Stays Up Past 9:30 To Read Chronicles Of Narnia (Babylon Bee)

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 521: mostly Charlie Kirk

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. 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. A lot of articles about the murder of Charlie Kirk. Even people who barely knew who Kirk was seem to have been deeply moved by his assassination. 
    • Student acceptance of violence in response to speech hits a record high (Ryne Weiss & Chapin Lenthall-Cleary, FIRE): “According to FIRE’s annual College Free Speech Rankings survey, in 2020, the national average showed about 1 in 5 students said it was ever acceptable to use violence to stop a speaker. That number has since risen to a disturbing 1 in 3 students.”
    • How Great the Chasm That Lay Between Us (Samuel D. James, Substack): “Where to begin? The murder of Charlie Kirk feels different.… Charlie Kirk was not an elected official, but a private citizen. He was a commentator and media personality. Because of that, this killing feels wider in symbolism. Tonight, a lot of Americans feel like someone died on their behalf. And there’s some truth in that.”
    • Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics the Right Way (Ezra Klein, New York Times): “You can dislike much of what Kirk believed and the following statement is still true: Kirk was practicing politics in exactly the right way. He was showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him. He was one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion.… In the inaugural episode of his podcast, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California hosted Kirk, admitting that his son was a huge fan. What a testament to Kirk’s project.”
    • After Kirk Killing, Americans Agree on One Thing: Something Is Seriously Wrong (Shawn Hubler, Edgar Sandoval and Audra D. S. Burch, New York Times): “No matter their politics, people said they were deeply unsettled after the killing of Mr. Kirk… Mr. Kirk’s death at 31 symbolized for many the collapse of what they thought was a basic, common-sense, need-not-be-debated American value: that people expressing a political opinion should not be shot for it.”
    • Je Suis Charlie (Bethel McGrew, Substack): “It is uniquely, viscerally horrifying: the political assassination of a young husband and father who held no political office, nor was he campaigning for one. He was a political figure, true, but still a private citizen. A private citizen who, to his killer, for the great crime of existing while vocally middle-of-the-road conservative, deserved to die. And not just in the eyes of his killer, as we quickly learned.” 
      • McGrew is a Christian essayist/journalist with a Ph.D. in math and I when I run across her content I usually find it helpful.
    • Conservative Christians Mourn Kirk as a Martyr (Elizabeth Dias and Ruth Graham, New York Times): “‘I’m racking my brain trying to think of another political figure that had a similar impact and following who was assassinated, and the only person I can think of is Martin Luther King Jr.,’ Mr. Schilling said.”
    • If We Keep This Up, Charlie Kirk Will Not Be the Last to Die (David French, New York Times): “That’s one thing I respected about Charlie — and it’s worth emphasizing because the assassin attacked him as he spoke on campus — he wasn’t afraid of a debate. He was willing to talk to anyone. And when he was shot in the middle of a debate, the assassin didn’t just take aim at a precious human being, created in the image of God, he took aim at the American experiment itself.”
    • Hitting The Jugular Of Liberal Democracy (Andrew Sullivan, Substack): “…I [do not] think it is wrong to ‘politicize’ his own horrible assassination. Because it was an expressly political act. It was political because it struck Kirk in the core act of liberal democracy: debating his opponents. We don’t know the precise motive behind the murder right now, but that’s irrelevant. This was aimed literally and figuratively at the jugular of a free society.”
  2. One of our military alumni liked the “honesty tax” article I shared last week and sent me this monograph about the same dynamic in the military: Lying to Ourselves: Dishonesty in the Army Profession (Leonard Wong & Stephen J. Gerras, US Army War College): “For example, one colonel described how his brigade commander needed to turn in his situation report on Friday, forcing the battalions to do theirs on Thursday, and therefore the companies submitted their data on Wednesday—necessitating the companies to describe events that had not even occurred yet. The end result was that, while the companies gave it their best shot, everyone including the battalion commander knew that the company reports were not accurate.” 
    • This fact was striking: “In the rush by higher headquarters to incorporate every good idea into training, the total number of training days required by all mandatory training directives literally exceeds the number of training days available to company commanders. Company commanders somehow have to fit 297 days of mandatory requirements into 256 available training days.” It is literally impossible for them to fulfill the requirements they have to affirm they fulfilled!
  3. The Serial Killer’s Apologist (Zac Bissonnette, The Free Press): “He then led police to the bodies of young men he and Corll had murdered with the help of another accomplice, David Brooks. In all, 27 men and boys had been killed; Henley was tried and convicted on six counts of murder with malice.… Ramsland’s treatment of Henley represents therapy culture taken to its logical extreme. There is no villain so odious that he can’t be recast through the lens of a trauma framework—and a sympathetic explanation can always be found through extensive talking.”
  4. NASA discovers ‘clearest sign of life that we’ve ever found on Mars’ (Kasha Patel, Washington Post): “But the colorful speckles on the rocks pose an even more alluring mystery. These features are two well-known minerals made of iron, phosphorus and sulfur. One called vivianite — also sometimes referred to as corpse crystals — forms during the decay of organic material and is blue-green. The other, called greigite, shows up as a dull brown. But when these two minerals are found together in sediments on Earth, Hurowitz said, it’s usually a result of microbial metabolisms.… The authors acknowledge that these minerals could have formed without microbes — with the involvement of heat, for instance. But the new study determined the Martian rocks don’t appear to have been heated.”
  5. Strange Gifts of the Spirit (Sarah Killam Crosby, Plough): “Irenaeus, the great second-century bishop of Lyons, wrote that true disciples of Christ received and exercised spiritual gifts granted them through the grace of God. ‘Some really and truly drive out demons, … some have foreknowledge of the future, and visions and prophetic speech, and others lay their hands on the sick and make them well, and as we said, even the dead have been raised and have remained with us for many years.’ Origen likewise claimed that miraculous signs and wonders were still performed, though with greater scarcity, in the churches of his day, and Augustine’s City of God recounts several miracles, including healings and exorcisms. For these and other patristic theologians, it was clear that supernatural gifts of the Spirit were still present in the life of the church. These texts show that healings, prophecies, and other phenomena were viewed as part of the pattern which had been initiated at Pentecost.”
  6. Experiences Shape Beliefs. They Shouldn’t Determine Them. (Samuel James, Gospel Coalition): “When someone talks about why they’ve changed their convictions about something, they increasingly refer to negative experiences more often than persuasive arguments.… It’s not so much about losing faith in a creed, but losing faith in somebody. There’s a growing tendency to then identify the person in whom we have lost faith as the sum total of their beliefs, and change our thinking accordingly. ‘Because X person did Y bad thing, this must mean X person was wrong about Z idea.’”
  7. Tanks Were Just Tanks, Until Drones Made Them Change (Marco Hernandez & Thomas Gibbons-Neff, New York Times): “…Russia’s and Ukraine’s Soviet-era tanks rumble across the battlefield covered in anti-drone nets and spikes, dangling chains and unwieldy cages. The exterior transformations of these hulking vehicles are a testament to how quickly drones have changed the war in Ukraine in just over three years.”

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 517: being timely for church and some Chi Alpha props

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. Why Being Late to Church Matters (Joe Carter, The Gospel Coalition): “If we believe the service is primarily about what we can get out of it—uplifting music, an encouraging sermon, fellowship with friends—then arriving late makes sense. After all, we can still catch most of the ‘good stuff.’ But if you understand corporate worship as something we do together as the body of Christ—if you see it as our collective offering of praise to our Creator—then showing up late takes on a different meaning entirely. We’re not just showing up late; we’re missing the opportunity to fully participate in something the Lord has designed to form us as his people.”
  2. My experience at the Stanford Veritas Forum: Hennessy and Gelsinger on leadership, ethics and AI (Pedro David Espinoza, Stanford Daily): “The forum was moderated by Elli Schulz ’25, president of Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship and vice president of Vox Clara, a student-run magazine partnered with Veritas. It offered a unique opportunity to connect with leaders who have shaped the tech world while reflecting on identity, purpose, ethics, and faith. Elli, whom I’ve known since 2022 through Chi Alpha — one of Stanford’s most diverse and largest Christian organizations — brought calm confidence, lighthearted humor and sharp questions to guide the hour-long conversation. She was the ideal moderator, given her passion for apologetics and dedication to faith and work.” 
    • Including entirely because it makes Chi Alpha look good. 
  3. My Religion is “Something Else” (Ryan Burge, Substack): “…young people don’t know what the word Protestant means anymore, and that’s going to cause major problems in measuring religion going forward.… Among the youngest adults in the sample, almost none of them selected Protestant. In fact, fewer than 10% did so until you get into respondents in their late 30s. In contrast, large numbers simply said they were Christian—at least 20% of those in their late teens and early 20s.”
  4. The Book That Can Inspire Both a Pope and a Politician (Randy Boyagoda, New York Times): “In other words, the two most prominent American Catholics [J. D. Vance and Pope Leo] have each been profoundly influenced by a 1,600-year-old book about why the Roman Empire was falling apart. What makes it so convincing, and why are powerful people still turning to it for guidance and insight?” 
    • The author is an English professor. Recommended by the mother of an alumnus. 
  5. Stop Asking Kids If They’re Depressed (Abigail Shrier, The Free Press): “Kids are wildly suggestible, especially where psychiatric symptoms are concerned. Ask a kid repeatedly if he might be depressed—how about now? Are you sure?—and he just might decide that he is. Introduce ‘gender dysphoria’ into a peer group, and a swath of seventh grade girls are likely to decide they were born in the wrong body. Introduce ‘testing anxiety’ or ‘social phobia,’ or ‘suicidality’ to them, and many teens are likely to decide: I have that, too. There is a reason clinicians keep anorexia patients from socializing unsupervised in a hospital ward; anorexia is profoundly socially contagious.”
  6. Canada Is Killing Itself (Elaina Plott Calabro, The Atlantic): “One day, administering a lethal injection to a patient was against the law; the next, it was as legitimate as a tonsillectomy, but often with less of a wait. MAID now accounts for about one in 20 deaths in Canada—more than Alzheimer’s and diabetes combined—surpassing countries where assisted dying has been legal for far longer.” 
    • A sad read with some genuinely shocking quotes. Unlocked.
  7. What Kids Told Us About How to Get Them Off Their Phones (Lenore Skenazy, Zach Rausch, and Jonathan Haidt, The Atlantic): “Children want to meet up in person, no screens or supervision. But because so many parents restrict their ability to socialize in the real world on their own, kids resort to the one thing that allows them to hang out with no adults hovering: their phones.” 
    • Recommended by a student

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • Forgiveness (Pearls Before Swine)
  • Apostles Quickly Start Acting Pious As They Notice Luke Watching And Taking Notes (Babylon Bee)
  • Panama Playlists: “I found the real Spotify accounts of celebrities, politicians, and journalists. Many use their real names. With a little investigating, I could say with near-certainty: yep, this is that person.  I’ve been scraping their playlists for over a year. Some individuals even have a setting enabled that displays their last played song. I scraped this continuously, so I know what songs they played, how many times, and when.  The Panama Papers revealed hidden bank accounts. This reveals hidden tastes.”

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 509: a Christian assassin, Harvard Law Review, Juneteenth

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. Stop Striving and Have a Baby (Nicholas Clairmont, The Free Press): “…having kids isn’t just possible, thinkable, or doable. It’s actually super fun, massively easier than anyone tells you, and so energizing and clarifying that if you are an ambitious person, you should have a kid out of pure personal selfishness.”
  2. Friends say Minnesota shooting suspect was deeply religious and conservative (Jim Mustian & Michael Biesecker, Associated Press): “Friends and former colleagues interviewed by AP described Boelter as a devout Christian who attended an evangelical church and went to campaign rallies for President Donald Trump.” 
    • In response: The Problem of the Christian Assassin (David French, The New York Times): “Our nation is relearning a lesson that it never should have forgotten. Extremist Christian language and theology can lead to extreme Christian violence in the same way that extreme language can lead to extreme violence in other faith traditions and among people who have no faith at all. Christians aren’t better than anyone else. We’re fashioned from the same human clay, and we’re susceptible to the same temptations and failures.”
  3. The Gospel Doesn’t Impart a Lens, but a Life (Steven M. Bryan, Mere Orthodoxy): “I suspect that some of the ways that we speak about those who abandon Christian faith and become secular mirrors a secular understanding of what it means to become a Christian in the first place. To speak about ‘de-construction’ implies that becoming a Christian is a matter of constructing a ‘worldview.’ It risks ratifying the claim that becoming a Christian is something like becoming a Marxist or a nationalist or even a postmodernist. It is simply to dismantle one story about the world and to construct another. To speak about ‘de-conversion’ implies that the Gospel imparts a lens, not life.” 
    • The author is a New Testament professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
  4. What Church Do You Attend? Maybe More Than One, Survey Finds (Adelle Banks, Roys Report): “Researchers for the multiyear Hartford Institute for Religion Research study found that 46% of some 24,000 churchgoers responding to their survey reported active engagement with more than one church.”
  5. Matt Yglesias on debating (Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution): “In practice, one big reason to debate is so you can put four people on the floor and attract an audience and some public attention, yet without slighting any one of the ‘stars’ by making it a panel. As a method of truth-seeking, I do not think public debate does very well.”
  6. Exclusive: Harvard Law Review Axes 85 Percent of Submissions Using Race-Conscious Rubric, Documents Show (Aaron Sibarium, Washington Free Beacon): “The Free Beacon obtained more than 500 documents from the journal’s two latest volumes, including the one currently in production. The new documents are all from 2024 and 2025—after the Supreme Court banned affirmative action at universities—and span four distinct stages of the article selection process. They provide the most comprehensive picture yet of the racial and ideological preferences at the elite law review, which has become a key front in the Trump administration’s war on Harvard and is now the subject of three federal probes. The documents show that at least 42 different editors considered race or gender when making recommendations in 2024. That number accounts for 40 percent of the 104 editors who serve on the journal at any given time, all of whom have a vote in publication decisions. While some editors recommended pieces on the grounds that the author was a minority, others paid more attention to the article’s footnotes, combing through the citations to see how many sources were white, black, or transgender.” 
  7. Articles which appear to have been written in honor of Juneteenth: 
    • Juneteenth Is Our Second Independence Day (Condoleeza Rice, The Free Press): “But even though my family has been celebrating Juneteenth since my childhood, it wasn’t until 2021 that Congress voted, almost unanimously, to make Juneteenth National Independence Day a federal holiday. Because many Americans are unfamiliar with its significance, some, perhaps understandably, wonder why it needed national recognition at all. After all, all Americans celebrate the Fourth of July—the ultimate celebration of our nation’s founding, of our independence and our liberty.  To me, Juneteenth is a recognition of what I call America’s second founding.” 
      • The author is a fellow believer and also the director of Stanford’s Hoover Institution.
      • The article contains this stunning paragraph: “I was eight years old when, on a Sunday morning in September 1963, the 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed. I felt the blast a few blocks away in the church where my father was the pastor. Four little girls, two of whom I knew, were killed.”
    • What American Students Aren’t Taught About Slavery (Coleman Hughes, The Free Press): “What I learned from teaching slavery to a group of college freshmen is that many (perhaps most) American kids graduate high school believing, falsely, that slavery happened only in America. Their minds are not blown by rehearsing the brutal facts of American slavery. Their minds are blown to learn that other brutal slaveries also existed all over the world. Nor is this historical amnesia confined to high school students. The United Nations has deemed March 25 a day of remembrance for the transatlantic slave trade. There is no UN day of remembrance for the Arab slave trade, the Barbary slave trade, the Indian Ocean slave trade, or any of the slaveries localized to specific regions such as the Indian subcontinent, China, Korea, and Eastern Europe—each of which accounted for millions of slaves.… Instead of whitewashing the grim facts of American slavery—as American history textbooks did in the past, and as certain corners of the American right would be all too happy to revive—I recommend taking the opposite approach: adding material rather than subtracting it. We must include the global and ubiquitous nature of slavery in every school curriculum.” 
      • The author, himself African-American and Puerto Rican, is a journalist and a visiting professor at the University of Austin.
    • Frederick Douglass Found His Mission in the Black Church (Jessica Janvier, Christianity Today): “Douglass’s muddled experience with evangelical Christianity mirrored what many other slaves experienced. Many of them came to faith through evangelicalism and were able to grasp the hope of emancipation—and equality. Yet they also saw white evangelical preachers espouse proslavery doctrines and comfort with tearing apart Black families to uphold the lucrative institution. With this hypocrisy in mind, Douglass famously wrote, ‘I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.’ ”

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 506: isms, nonsense responders, and tap water

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. ismism (J. Budziszewski, blog): “Ismism – four syllables, ‘izzum izzum’ — is the bad mental habit of criticizing a proposition not on its own terms, but in terms of the ‘ism’ which one takes it to express. For example, suppose Sheila is concerned that young people who marry are tying the knot later and later in life. Brian snorts, ‘You’re one of those conjugalists.’ Then he criticizes Sheila for other beliefs which he himself associates with so-called conjugalism. For instance, he protests ‘I don’t think everyone has to marry.’ But Sheila didn’t say that everyone has to marry. She may not even think so, and it doesn’t follow as a conclusion from her premise. Ismism is guilt by association: ‘Your belief must be wrong, because I, personally, group it with other beliefs I consider wrong.’ ” 
    • The author is a philosophy prof at UT Austin.
  2. Fascinating: “nonsense responders” significantly affect survey data https://x.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1926128833947738321
    • The entire thread is worth reading. Bottom line from a tweet near the end of the thread: “Mentally adjust survey results in your head if you don’t see the authors rigorously working to remove nonsense responders.”
  3. How to Find Ancient Assyrian Cities Using Economics (Max Tabarrok, Substack): “In ancient Kaneš, court transcripts, trading contracts, and merchant accounting were all recorded on clay tablets. Clay tablets preserve well, so this period is in some ways better known then the next several thousand years of history. The authors claim that ‘the closest comparable corpora of ancient trade data are almost 3,000 years later, coming, for example, from the medieval Italian merchant archives and the Cairo Genizah’.… The cherry on top: the entire city burned in a fire, preserving the clay records to be recovered forty centuries later. The authors use some natural language processing and manual inspection to narrow down from tens of thousands of tablets to several hundred unambiguous mentions of trade between two of 25 Anatolian cities that have enough trade connections with each other to be identified in a gravity model.”
  4. Star Harvard business professor stripped of tenure, fired for manipulating data in studies on dishonesty (Richard Pollina, New York Post): “A renowned Harvard University professor was stripped of her tenure and fired after an investigation found she fabricated data on multiple studies focused on dishonesty.” 
    • Recommended by a student.
  5. Doug Wilson Has Spent Decades Pushing for a Christian Theocracy. In Trump’s DC, the New Right Is Listening. (Ian Ward, Politico): “In Moscow, Wilson explained that his political philosophy is not theocratic in the commonly understood sense of a government run exclusively by the church. To the contrary, he maintains that God ordains earthly authority in three separate spheres of life: the church, the family and the civil government. Within each of these spheres, the relevant authorities must abide by scriptural commandments. In the familial sphere, for instance, parents must educate their children according to Biblical principles, and wives must subordinate themselves to their husbands in accordance with a covenantal view of the family. In the sphere of civil government, officials should strive to bring the law in line with Biblical commandments, although those principles don’t have to be applied ‘woodenly,’ as Wilson put it: Governments do not have to enforce the Biblical mandate that households build balustrades on their roofs, but they should enforce the principle that homeowners are liable for risks incurred on their property. Above all, Wilson believes, the three spheres of earthly authority must remain separate.” 
    • This is a far more informed article than I expected it to be. The journalist (Ian Ward) and the subject (Doug Wilson) have both been featured in these emails before. I highly recommend this article as an example of what fair reporting of a religious person looks like.
    • For a taste of Wilson’s style, check out his response to this and a few other articles about him: Pete Hegseth, Me, and Meeting with Important Jews (Doug Wilson, personal blog).
    • My quick take on Wilson: when he is right he is very right and when he is wrong he is very wrong, and whether he is right or wrong he is almost always confident and entertaining.
  6. The Unparalleled Daily Miracle of Tap Water (A. Cerisse Cohen, New York Times): “During a two-year stint in Montana, I went on long hikes and sipped stream water, shockingly cold and straight from the glaciers, but other than that, I drank from the tap. And then I landed in Los Angeles, where everyone I met used a filter.… Thanks to warnings from seemingly everyone around me in the city, I began to worry about things I never before considered threatening, like dust (could cause cancer), anything with seeds (could cause cancer) or certain planetary configurations (responsible for all other misfortunes). If I put my purse on the floor, or oriented my bed the wrong way, it was endangering my energy! Maybe I’d been lulled into a false sense of security about everyday life.” 
    • Drink tap water. It’s awesome.
  7. U.S. Will ‘Aggressively’ Revoke Visas of Chinese Students, Rubio Says (Edward Wong, New York Times): “Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Wednesday evening that the Trump administration would work to ‘aggressively revoke’ visas of Chinese students, including those with ties to the Chinese Communist Party or who are studying in ‘critical fields.’.… In 2020, officials in the first Trump administration canceled the visas of more than 1,000 Chinese graduate students and researchers after announcing they were banning from campuses Chinese citizens with direct ties to military universities in their country. It was the first time the U.S. government had moved to bar a category of Chinese students from getting access to American universities, a ban the Biden administration kept in place.”

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 505: porn, divorce, and a delightful philosopher

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Delusion of Porn’s Harmlessness (Christine Emba, New York Times): “Despite significant evidence that a deluge of pornography has had a negative impact on modern society, there is a curious refusal, especially in progressive circles, to publicly admit disapproval of porn. Criticizing porn goes against the norm of nonjudgmentalism for people who like to consider themselves forward-thinking, thoughtful and open-minded.… But a lack of judgment sometimes comes at the expense of discernment. As a society, we are allowing our desires to continue to be molded in experimental ways, for profit, by an industry that does not have our best interests at heart.”
  2. Divorce, Family Arrangements, and Children’s Adult Outcomes (Andrew C. Johnston,  Maggie R. Jones  & Nolan G. Pope, NBER): “We find that parental divorce reduces children’s adult earnings and college residence while increasing incarceration, mortality, and teen births.” 
    • This paper will have significant influence — expect to see its findings quoted in op-eds and public debates. The authors are at UT Austin, the Census Bureau, and U of Maryland. Excerpt is from the abstract. It’s a 30 page paper with about 30 more pages of graphs and charts.
  3. Two perspectives on AI: 
    • Everyone’s Using AI To Cheat at School. That’s a Good Thing. (Tyler Cowen, The Free Press): “Unlike many people who believe this spells the end of quality American education, I think this crisis is ultimately good news. And not just because I believe American education was already in a profound crisis—the result of ideological capture, political monoculture, and extreme conformism—long before the LLMs. These models are such great cheating aids because they are also such great teachers. Often they are better than the human teachers we put before our kids, and they are far cheaper at that. They will not unionize or attend pro-Hamas protests.”
    • Why We’re Unlikely to Get Artificial General Intelligence Anytime Soon (Cade Metz, New York Times): “It is indisputable that today’s machines have already eclipsed the human brain in some ways, but that has been true for a long time. A calculator can do basic math faster than a human. Chatbots like ChatGPT can write faster, and as they write, they can instantly draw on more texts than any human brain could ever read or remember. These systems are exceeding human performance on some tests involving high-level math and coding. But people cannot be reduced to these benchmarks.”
  4. Remembering Alasdair MacIntyre (1929–2025) (Christopher Kaczor, Word on Fire): “MacIntyre was proud never to have earned a PhD: ‘I won’t go so far as to say that you have a deformed mind if you have a PhD, but you will have to work extra hard to remain educated.’ However, his prolific research won him ten honorary doctorates and appointments as Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy, and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He held academic positions at Oxford, Yale, Manchester, Leeds, Essex, University of Copenhagen, Aarhus, Brandeis, Boston University, Wellesley College, Vanderbilt, London Metropolitan University, Duke, and three appointments at Princeton. But he found a lasting home at the University of Notre Dame.” 
    • Full of delightful anecdotes about an amazing Catholic philosopher.
  5. An Efilist Just Bombed a Fertility Clinic. Was This Bound To Happen? (Katherine Dee, Substack): “In 2006 the South African philosopher David Benatar published Better Never to Have Been, arguing that existence itself is harm, because, according to him, the absence of pain is always good while the absence of pleasure matters only to someone forced to miss it. His book supplied the term antinatalism and the asymmetrical equation that sustains it: any new birth inevitably adds suffering to the ledger.… To make a long story short—too short, in fact, there’s a documentary worth of story in this—Gary Mosher, an irascible vlogger and erstwhile amateur physicist best known as Inmendham, ended up coining efilism—‘life’ spelled backwards—during this period to insist that every sentient organism is a factory for pain and ought to be snuffed out.” 
    • Actually wild. I often criticize utilitarianism and its offshoots, this story illustrates the things I warn about in a tragic way.
  6. The Man Who Knew When to Step Down (David French, New York Times): “We live in a country that is positively obsessed with career success and thus defines people through their work more than through their family — or even their individual virtue. In many of America’s elite circles, you are your career, and when your career is over, how much of you remains? Again, this isn’t simply a problem for judges and politicians. The problem isn’t solely how the powerful define themselves; it’s how we define them. It’s how we choose whom to respect and honor. It takes a person of real fortitude and self-respect simply to walk away.”
  7. The myth of the single market (Luis Garicano, Substack): “The IMF puts the hidden cost of trading goods inside the EU at the equivalent of a 45% tariff. For services the figure climbs to 110%, higher than Trump’s ‘Liberation day’ tariffs on Chinese imports—measures many saw as a near-embargo.… As a result, actual trade between EU countries is less than half that between US states.” 
    • The author is a professor of public policy at the London School of Economics and a former EU member of parliament.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • Hidden In Oklahoma Is The Only All-You-Can Eat Chick-Fil‑A In America (Natalie Avila, Mashed): “Since 2005, the University of Oklahoma has offered its students all-you-can-eat Chick-fil‑A, serving chicken sandwiches, nuggets, waffle fries, and sauces. It’s located inside the Couch Restaurants Diner, a food hall attached to a freshman dorm that always offers unlimited bites. The dining hall welcomes current university students, employees, and guests of both.”
  • Move Toward The Light (Loose Parts)
  • Gently (SMBC)

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 499: OCD, Morality, and Tariffs



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.

Next week is volume 500. I can’t decide whether it will be just another issue or something a lil’ different.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. In his own words: Colts RT Braden Smith’s desperate, life-threatening fight vs OCD (Joel A. Erickson, Indianapolis Star): “Smith has always gone to church, but he’d committed fully to his Christian faith, and an obsessive-compulsive disorder began to warp his faith into something sinister. From the outside, it looked like Smith was diving deep into his faith. He devoured the Bible, quoted Scripture, sought out believers for conversations. He prayed constantly and started listening to Christian music exclusively. Internally, a disorder Smith didn’t realize he had was twisting the words. ‘There’s the actual, real, true, living God,’ Smith said. ‘And then there’s my OCD god, and the OCD god is this condemning (deity). It’s like every wrong move you make, it’s like smacking the ruler against his hand. “Another bad move like that and you’re out of here.“ ‘” 
    • A gripping story.
  2. Appealing to Moral Sentiments in an Amoral Age (O. Alan Noble, Substack): “…the moral sentiments people have can be real indications of spiritual realities.
    The anxiety a young woman feels about her identity may be a real indication that expressive individualism is hollow. The loneliness a young woman feels in vapid, greedy sexual relationships may be a real indication that sex was created for union (and procreation). Instead of treating emotions as random or irrelevant or conceding that negative emotions are exclusively the purview of the therapist and psychiatrist, we acknowledge that the felt experiences of young women are a sign pointing them to who they were created to be. And this isn’t just true for young women. I think there are many young men who need to hear this approach as well.”
  3. About the tariffs: 
    • Trade deficits do not make a country poorer (Noah Smith, Substack): “Does using your credit card to buy a washing machine from Target mean that Target has ripped you off? No. Does it make you poorer when you use your credit card to buy a washing machine from Target? Nope. You now have less money, but you have more stuff. In just the same way, a trade deficit means that the U.S. has less money and more stuff. It does not mean America is poorer, or that it has been ripped off by foreigners.” 
      • This is a helpful explainer of some key concepts which are in the news.
    • Donald Trump’s economic masterplan (Yanis Varoufakis, Unherd): “Though we risk the abyss staring back when we attempt to gaze into Trump’s mind, we do need a grasp of his thinking on three fundamental questions: why does he believe that America is exploited by the rest of the world? What is his vision for a new international order in which America can be ‘great’ again? How does he plan to bring it about? Only then can we produce a sensible critique of Trump’s economic masterplan.” 
      • Recommended to me by an alumnus. The things I find most interesting about this one is (a) it’s by a foreign expert [an economist who served as the Greek minister of finance] and (b) although written in February it anticipated the type of tariff that was implemented (trade imbalance tariffs) instead of what had been expected (reciprocal tariffs).
    • There’s a Method to Trump’s Tariff Madness (Jennifer Burns, New York Times): “Mr. Trump’s tariffs aren’t really about tariffs. They are the opening gambit in a more ambitious plan to smash the world’s economic and geopolitical order and replace it with something intended to better serve American interests. This plan is often referred to as the Mar-a-Lago Accord.” 
      • The author is a history professor at Stanford.
  4. What Age Do People Around the World Think Is Best to Reach Major Life Milestones? (Janell Fetterolf et al, Pew Research): “When is the right time in life to get married or have a child? What is the best age to buy a home? Is there an ideal age for retirement? We asked adults in 18 mostly middle-income countries what they think is the best age to reach these life milestones. Overall, there is a lot of agreement around the world. On average across the countries surveyed, people say it is best to get married and have a first child around 26 years old.… Generally, people across the 18 countries surveyed think it’s best to get married in one’s mid-20s. Average ideal ages range from 21.2 in Bangladesh to 28.9 in Argentina.” 
    • Emphasis in original.
  5. Why Palestinian Christians Feel Betrayed by American Christians (Nicholas Kristof, New York Times): “Fewer than 2 percent of West Bank Palestinians today are Christian, but they are an influential minority who endure the same land grabs and hardships as the majority Muslim population.” 
    • It is a short column, but one thing I wish Kristof had parsed out were the differences between Palestinian evangelicals and Palestinian Catholics and Palestinian mainline Protestants. I think they each have different things to say. 
    • Recommended by a student.
  6. Nearly 300 Students Have Had Visas Revoked and Could Face Deportation (Vimal Patel, Miriam Jordan & Halina Bennet, New York Times): “Nearly 300 international students were abruptly stripped of their ability to stay in the United States in recent days, according to universities and media reports, sowing fear among students and confusion at schools scrambling to help students facing detention and possible deportation.… In some cases, immigration officers have arrested international students related to their involvement in pro-Palestinian causes. In other cases, students had committed legal infractions, such as driving over the speed limit or while intoxicated, often years ago, several immigration lawyers said in interviews. But lawyers said the Trump administration had often given no reason at all, leaving them to guess why students were targeted.… The United States issued more than 400,000 visas to students in 2024.” 
    • While I am sure almost all international students find the policies distressing, they should find the data in this article reassuring. To date fewer than one tenth of one percent of international students have had their visas revoked. 300/400000 = .00075 
  7. Institutions Don’t Maintain Themselves (James Diddams, Christianity Today): “Jesus told Peter to forgive the brother or sister who sins against him ‘not seven times, but seventy-seven times’ (Matt. 18:21–22). I’ve come to think Christians have some obligation of forgiveness to our institutions, too—some duty of love and sacrifice to preserve and repair these rightfully time-honored ways of organizing and shaping our lives.… Where did we ever get the idea that these institutions would somehow maintain themselves? That they would always be there for us, meeting all our hopes, in perfect working order, without repair or forgiveness from us?”

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 497: Christianity in Space, Redeeming Turkish Delight, and How To Sneeze

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. Stranded Astronaut Held Onto Faith in Darkest Moments: ‘God Was There’ (Sylvia St. Cyr, The Roys Report): “After being stranded for nine months in space, veteran NASA astronaut Barry ‘Butch’ Wilmore is sharing how his faith in God kept him going.… Wilmore, a member and elder of Providence Baptist Church in Pasadena, Texas, stayed connected with his church throughout his time in space. He even made a few calls to some elderly church members throughout his time stranded on the station, to encourage them.”
  2. What Follows from Lab Leak? (Alex Tabarrok, Marginal Revolution): “First, and most importantly, the higher the probability that SARS-CoV‑2 leaked from a lab the higher the probability we should expect another pandemic. Research at Wuhan was not especially unusual or high-tech. Modifying viruses such as coronaviruses (e.g., inserting spike proteins, adapting receptor-binding domains) is common practice in virology research and gain-of-function experiments with viruses have been widely conducted. Thus, manufacturing a virus capable of killing ~20 million human beings or more is well within the capability of say ~500‑1000 labs worldwide. The number of such labs is growing in number and such research is becoming less costly and easier to conduct. Thus, lab-leak means the risks are larger than we thought and increasing.” 
    • Some very practical suggestions in this short piece.
  3. The Hidden Hands: Amanuenses and the Letters Behind the Letters (C. Michael Patton, Credo House): “Yes, the secretaries could write competent Greek. But often, due to the personal additions at the end of these letters, I was able to compare the handwriting and style of the author himself. And get this: in many cases, the author’s own Greek was better than the scribe’s. More refined. More fluid. More legible. This shattered my assumptions. It meant that we can’t assume that people used secretaries only because they were illiterate, uneducated, or of low status. On the contrary, people who were clearly capable writers—sometimes better writers—still made use of amanuenses.” 
    • This is a fascinating look at the way ancient letters were written with the help of assistants — including letters in the New Testament.
    • Vaguely related (in the sense that it’s about the historical background for Bible stuff): Did Jesus teach in Greek? (Ian Paul, blog): “The argument about Jesus and Greek has several layers, starting with the most general. Were the regions Jesus taught in multilingual (polyglot), and how do we know? Is it likely that Jesus himself was multilingual? And is there specific evidence of this in the New Testament, in examples of his teaching?”
  4. Why Christian Men Need Friendship, Not Just “Accountability” (Samuel D. James, Substack): “Accountability is a fruit from a much larger tree. In an age in which millions of American men are so lonely it’s literally killing them, the urgent issue is not finding someone to receive a report of your web activity. It’s finding someone who’ll talk to you at all. Why? Because friendship has a sanctifying power. Not only is it easier to be honest and transparent with someone whom you’re convinced is a true friend, but the friendship itself is a means of grace in the fight against lust.”
  5. The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans (Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic): “I had very strong doubts that this text group was real, because I could not believe that the national-security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans. I also could not believe that the national security adviser to the president would be so reckless as to include the editor in chief of The Atlantic in such discussions with senior U.S. officials, up to and including the vice president.” 
    • A wild story. Lots of follow-up in the news. Just google for it.
    • Seven Ways of Looking at a Group Chat (Nick Cattogio, The Dispatch): “There are three distinct scandals here and different culprits in each one. The first is using Signal instead of secure government channels to discuss something as sensitive as military strikes. Everyone involved, save Jeffrey Goldberg, bears responsibility for that. The second is mistakenly including Goldberg in the discussion, for which Waltz would seem to be at fault. And the third is going so far as to share ‘operational details’ in the chat, potentially placing people in the field at risk, which sure sounds like reckless mishandling of classified information—a subject on which Republicans have had a lot to say in recent years. The blame for that would appear to land on Hegseth.”
    • Investigation Reveals DOGE Had Just Laid Off The Guy Whose Job It Was To Make Sure Jeffrey Goldberg Wasn’t In The War Group Chat (Babylon Bee)
  6. The Inklings:
    • Why JRR Tolkien Made March 25 the Day the Ring Was Destroyed (Joseph Pearce, National Catholic Register): “Frodo Baggins, as the one chosen to be the Ring bearer, is the Cross bearer. He is, therefore, a Christ figure. This is why Tolkien has him leaving Rivendell on Dec. 25 and arriving at Mount Doom (Golgotha) on March 25 (Good Friday). Frodo’s journey, or pilgrimage, begins on Christ’s birthday and ends on the date of Christ’s death.”
    • In Search of Turkish Delight (Valerie Stivers, First Things): “Işin quotes American Naval physician James McKay, writing in 1830: Turkish delight was ‘a delicious pasty-mass which melts away in the mouth, and leaves a fragrant flavor behind.’ The French artist and writer Pretextat Lecomte described it as ‘beautiful’ in color and ‘warm and transparent.’ To make it, Turkish confectioners used hand-sifted wheat starch (produced by a domestic process with a long local tradition), and employed a laborious technique that called for several hours of continuous stirring. They used musk and rose water as flavorings, and also sprinkled musk on the powdered sugar coating. They rubbed the trays used to mold it and the scissors used to cut it with fragrant almond oil. By the 1880s, Işin says, the flavors had multiplied to include clotted cream, mastic, almond, and pistachio. In the 1900s came pine nut and hazelnut, and flavors from essences or syrups such as violet, lemon, and bitter orange. This starts to sound like a dessert a child could dream of, or that an open-minded and pleasure-loving adult like C. S. Lewis would find tempting. It seems likely that very few modern eaters have ever tasted true Turkish delight, at least outside the Grand Bazaar. All contemporary recipes use corn starch. Musk oil is illegal.” 
      • I am both personally disappointed that I can’t taste it and thrilled that Lewis wasn’t crazy.
  7. How worried should legal immigrants be about Trump’s deportations? (Nicole Narea, Vox): “These are uncertain times for many immigrants in the US. There have been reports of individual visa and green card holders and tourists who have been detained and deported. However, the Trump administration does not seem to be indiscriminately targeting legal immigrants who have authorization to be in the US on a large scale. Some have reportedly been targeted based on their political activism.…  And it’s not just immigrants who have been affected. A US citizen said he was walking down the streets of Chicago when he was arrested by immigration agents, who confiscated his ID and held him for 10 hours before releasing him. Even though limited in number, these cases have been going viral — and are understandably causing fear in immigrant communities.”

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.