Tag: free speech

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 161

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. Trevor Responds To Crit­i­cism From The French Ambas­sador (Trevor Noah, YouTube): this is a wit­ty and insight­ful 8 minute reflec­tion on the inter­play between eth­nic her­itage and nation­al iden­ti­ty and the ways that Amer­i­cans process things dif­fer­ent­ly than the French.
  2. The New York Yan­kees Are A Moral Abom­i­na­tion (David Bent­ley Hart, New York Times): “Real­ly, how does a Yan­kees fan’s pride in all those pur­chased cham­pi­onships dif­fer from the self-delu­sion of a man stag­ger­ing out of a bawdy house at dawn, com­pli­ment­ing him­self on his mag­nif­i­cent pow­ers of seduc­tion?” A fun­ny piece of cul­tur­al com­men­tary in the New York Times writ­ten by a the­olo­gian? Yes, please. This col­umn is about way more than base­ball.
  3. Uncom­fort­able Ques­tions in the Wake of Rus­sia Indict­ment 2.0 and Trump’s Press Con­fer­ence With Putin (Jack Gold­smith, Law­fare): “It is no response to say that the Unit­ed States doesn’t med­dle in for­eign elec­tions, because it has in the past—at least as recent­ly as Bill Clinton’s inter­ven­tion in the Russ­ian pres­i­den­tial elec­tion of 1996 and pos­si­bly as recent­ly as the Hillary Clin­ton State Department’s alleged inter­ven­tion in Russia’s 2011 leg­isla­tive elec­tions. And dur­ing the Cold War the Unit­ed States inter­vened in numer­ous for­eign elec­tions, more than twice as often as the Sovi­et Union.” The author is a pro­fes­sor at Har­vard Law School. The whole thing is fas­ci­nat­ing.
  4. Free Speech, Cen­sor­ship, Hate Speech, Twit­ter (Steven Brust, per­son­al blog): “Here’s the thing: every defense, every anal­o­gy I’ve seen to jus­ti­fy ask­ing twit­ter to shut down hate speech, has come down, in the last analy­sis, to a defense of prop­er­ty rights. And yet, the most casu­al obser­va­tion ought to tell you that we are now locked in a bat­tle between prop­er­ty rights and human rights. If you must resort to a defense of prop­er­ty rights to bol­ster your argu­ment, I beg to sub­mit that you should either take anoth­er look at what you’re defend­ing, or stop call­ing your­self a pro­gres­sive.” A social­ist defense of free speech.
    • Relat­ed: I Was the Mob Until the Mob Came for Me (Bar­rett Wil­son, Quil­lette): “In my pre­vi­ous life, I was a self-right­eous social jus­tice cru­sad­er. I would use my mid-sized Twit­ter and Face­book plat­forms to sig­nal my wok­e­ness on top­ics such as LGBT rights, rape cul­ture, and racial injus­tice…. Then one day, sud­den­ly, I was accused of some of the very trans­gres­sions I’d called out in oth­ers. I was guilty, of course: There’s no such thing as due process in this world.”
    • Also relat­ed: Plan­et of Cops (Fred­die de Boer, per­son­al blog): “The woke world is a world of snitch­es, infor­mants, rats. Go to any space con­cerned with social jus­tice and what will you find? End­less sur­veil­lance. Every­body is to be judged. Every­one is under sus­pi­cion. Every­thing you say is to be scoured, picked over, ana­lyzed for any pos­si­ble offense. Everyone’s a detec­tive in the Divi­sion of Prob­lem­at­ics, and they walk the beat 24/7…. I don’t know how peo­ple can simul­ta­ne­ous­ly talk about prison abo­li­tion and restor­ing the idea of for­give­ness to lit­er­al crim­i­nal jus­tice and at the same time turn the entire social world into a kan­ga­roo court sys­tem.” This is an old­er piece but I saw it for the first time recent­ly.
  5. For Some Gang Mem­bers In El Sal­vador, The Evan­gel­i­cal Church Offers A Way Out (Emi­ly Green, NPR): “Becom­ing a devot­ed mem­ber of an evan­gel­i­cal church at a young age is the only way many ado­les­cent boys are able to avoid being roped into a gang, Cruz says. And it’s also the only way for them to get out of a gang if they’re in it, short of leav­ing the coun­try.”
  6. Sanc­tu­ary amid hous­ing cri­sis (Wendy Lee, San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle): “With no end in sight to soar­ing hous­ing costs, sev­er­al Bay Area faith orga­ni­za­tions have become a sanc­tu­ary of sorts — not just chan­nel­ing dona­tions and dis­trib­ut­ing food, but also offer­ing a safe place for peo­ple liv­ing in cars or RVs. The arrange­ment has some­times grat­ed on neigh­bors, but for pas­tors, it’s sim­ply an exten­sion of their mis­sion to serve human­i­ty.”
  7. Bald­ing Out (Christo­pher Bald­ing, per­son­al blog): “In Chi­na, there are very few peo­ple who I wit­ness live a tes­ta­ment of their belief. Who knows if the Par­ty mem­ber is a mem­ber because he believes in Marx­ism, Com­mu­nism, Xi-ism, or sim­ply wants a bet­ter apart­ment? Who knows if the per­son who claims to be a believ­er in democ­ra­cy but com­plies with the Par­ty actu­al­ly believes that or just tells the for­eign­er? For­eign­ers in Chi­na in posi­tions of influ­ence who claim to believe in human rights but col­lab­o­rate with the Par­ty to deny Chi­nese cit­i­zens rights need to answer for their actions. I have lit­tle idea what peo­ple in Chi­na believe but I know that if the Par­ty ever falls, there will be more than a bil­lion more peo­ple claim­ing they were clos­et democ­ra­cy advo­cates.” An Amer­i­can pro­fes­sor reflects on Chi­na as he pre­pares to leave. Very inter­est­ing, a bit ram­bly.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have This Is What Makes Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats So Dif­fer­ent (Vox, Ezra Klein): the title made me skep­ti­cal, but there are some good insights in this arti­cle (first shared in vol­ume 32 back in 2016).

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).

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 151

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. These Bombs Led Me To Christ (Kim Phuc Phan Thi, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “You have seen my pic­ture a thou­sand times. It’s a pic­ture that made the world gasp—a pic­ture that defined my life. I am nine years old, run­ning along a pud­dled road­way in front of an expres­sion­less sol­dier, arms out­stretched, naked, shriek­ing in pain and fear, the dark con­tour of a napalm cloud bil­low­ing in the dis­tance.” WHOA.
  2. If I Were 22 Again (John Piper, Desir­ing God): “There have been about 18,340 days since I turned 22, and I think I have read my Bible on more of those days than I have eat­en. I have cer­tain­ly read my Bible on more of those days that I have watched tele­vi­sion or videos.… Read your Bible every day of your life. If you have time for break­fast, nev­er say that you don’t have time for God’s word.” This whole thing is real­ly good. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
  3. What Hap­pened To Alan Der­showitz? (Evan Man­dery, Politi­co Mag­a­zine): “Talk­ing to him, it’s not hard to get the impres­sion that expos­ing that truth—the hypocrisy of both sides—may be his ulti­mate project. As he sees it, the best way to achieve his goal—and to get it the atten­tion it deserves—is by defend­ing the most odi­ous clients in the most provoca­tive pos­si­ble way on the very prin­ci­ples lib­er­als claim to love.” I real­ly liked this arti­cle.
  4. A Mus­lim Among Israeli Set­tlers (Waja­hat Ali, The Atlantic): “Ever since the cre­ation of the mod­ern state of Israel—a mir­a­cle for the Jews, the Nak­ba (‘cat­a­stro­phe’) for the Palestinians—Jerusalem’s dai­ly weath­er fore­cast could be described as sun­ny with a slight chance of apoc­a­lypse.”
  5. Give Amnesty for Col­lege Writ­ings (David Lat, Wall Street Jour­nal): “Col­le­giate scrib­blings from decades ago should have no bear­ing on one’s fit­ness for pub­lic office, and mak­ing an issue of them is bad for the coun­try. Col­lege is tra­di­tion­al­ly a time of exper­i­men­ta­tion and explo­ration. We adopt and dis­card ideas and try out dif­fer­ent iden­ti­ties, some­times in rapid suc­ces­sion. These iden­ti­ties often bear lit­tle resem­blance to our mature selves— Hillary Clin­ton was once a ‘Gold­wa­ter girl,’ while Clarence Thomas was a Black Pan­ther sympathizer—but explor­ing them is how we learn about our­selves and acquire wisdom—how we grow up.”
    • Speak­ing of col­lege writ­ings, here are two pieces by Stan­ford stu­dents. They are pre­sent­ed with­out any impli­ca­tion that these are views the authors will lat­er recant; rather, by putting them here as sub-bul­let points I can tell myself I lim­it­ed myself to sev­en top­ics this week.
    • Think the Right Cares About Free Speech? Not Always. (Anni­ka Nordquist, Stan­ford Review): “With­in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, free­dom of speech is a top­ic of great self-right­eous­ness on both fronts. As the Left adopts an increas­ing­ly politi­cized def­i­n­i­tion of ‘hate speech,’ includ­ing even the most mun­dane top­ics like ‘microag­gres­sions,’ the Right pats itself on the back for defend­ing nat­ur­al lib­er­ties. Yet in Poland, where pro­gres­sives have been vot­ed almost entire­ly out of gov­ern­ment, the Right instead restricts the speech of the Left.” That’s our very own Anni­ka.
    • The Orig­i­nal Sin of Stan­ford Din­ing (Andrew Fried­man, Stan­ford Review): “Cur­rent­ly 12 admin­is­tra­tors run R&DE, along with numer­ous assis­tants. If admin­is­tra­tors object to turn­ing the school’s food ser­vice into a land­lord, it is like­ly because they know leas­ing space to third par­ty ven­dors, besides being bet­ter for every­one else, could be done by a sin­gle per­son, with­out the bureau­crat­ic bloat of the cur­rent sys­tem.”
  6. A real-life Lord of the Flies: the trou­bling lega­cy of the Rob­bers Cave exper­i­ment (David Shari­at­madari, The Guardian): “The ‘Rob­bers Cave exper­i­ment’ is con­sid­ered sem­i­nal by social psy­chol­o­gists, still one of the best-known exam­ples of ‘real­is­tic con­flict the­o­ry’. It is often cit­ed in mod­ern research. But was it sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly rig­or­ous? And why were the results of the Mid­dle Grove exper­i­ment – where the researchers couldn’t get the boys to fight – sup­pressed? … [The researcher’s method was] think of the the­o­ry first and then find a way to get the results that match it. If the results say some­thing else? Bury them.”
  7. A Design Lab Is Mak­ing Rit­u­als for Sec­u­lar Peo­ple (Sigal Samuel, The Atlantic): “Rit­u­al Design Lab has its roots in Stanford’s Insti­tute of Design, where Ozenc and Hagan both teach. In 2015, they pro­posed a new course on rit­u­al design. To their sur­prise, more than 100 stu­dents signed up. Most were sec­u­lar.” I large­ly agree with Rod Dreher’s take: New Rit­u­als For Self-Wor­ship

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Let­ter To My Younger Self (Ryan Leaf, The Player’s Tri­bune): “Con­grat­u­la­tions. You offi­cial­ly have it all — mon­ey, pow­er and pres­tige. All the things that are impor­tant, right?… That’s you, young Ryan Leaf, at his absolute finest: arro­gant, boor­ish and nar­cis­sis­tic. You think you’re on top of the world and that you’ve got all the answers. Well I’m sor­ry to have to tell you this, but the truth is….” Such a grip­ping let­ter. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. (first shared in vol­ume 99)

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).

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 144

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. Exten­sive Data Shows Pun­ish­ing Reach of Racism for Black Boys (Emi­ly Bad­ger, Claire Cain Miller, Adam Pearce And Kevin Quealy, NY Times): “The authors, includ­ing the Stan­ford econ­o­mist Raj Chet­ty and two cen­sus researchers, Mag­gie R. Jones and Sonya R. Porter, tried to iden­ti­fy neigh­bor­hoods where poor black boys do well, and as well as whites. ‘The prob­lem,’ Mr. Chet­ty said, ‘is that there are essen­tial­ly no such neigh­bor­hoods in Amer­i­ca.’ And, intrigu­ing­ly, these pock­ets — includ­ing parts of the Mary­land sub­urbs of Wash­ing­ton, and cor­ners of Queens and the Bronx — were the places where many low­er-income black chil­dren had fathers at home. Poor black boys did well in such places, whether their own fathers were present or not.”
    • The main take­away from this research is that Amer­i­can soci­ety is fail­ing black men. The sole ray of hope I saw in the arti­cle was in the para­graph above: poor black boys appar­ent­ly do as well as sim­i­lar­ly-sit­u­at­ed poor white boys if there are black fathers near­by. It’s stun­ning: a dense gath­er­ing of fathers can bring health even into father­less sit­u­a­tions. The fam­i­ly is a basic build­ing block of soci­ety and we weak­en it at great risk. I’m shocked this result from the study hasn’t received more cov­er­age.
  2. Mar­riage Has Become a Tro­phy (Andrew Cher­lin, The Atlantic): “For many peo­ple, regard­less of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, a wed­ding is no longer the first step into adult­hood that it once was, but, often, the last. It is a cel­e­bra­tion of all that two peo­ple have already done, unlike a tra­di­tion­al wed­ding, which was a cel­e­bra­tion of what a cou­ple would do in the future.” The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at Johns Hop­kins.
  3. This Preach­er Would Be Hap­py to Share Your Bowl of Açaí (Lau­ra Wil­son, New York Times): “Pas­tors today who want to start a min­istry for those 40 and under fol­low a well-trav­eled path. First, they lease an old the­ater or club. Next, they find great singers and back­up musi­cians. A fog machine on stage is nice. A church should also have a catchy logo or catch­phrase that can be stamped onto mer­chan­dise and brand­ed — socks, knit hats, shoes and sweat­shirts. (An online pop-up shop on Memo­r­i­al Day sold $10,000 in mer­chan­dise its first hour, Mr. Veach said.) And last­ly, church­es need a mon­ey app — Zoe uses Push­pay — to make it easy for church­go­ers to tithe with a swipe on their smart­phones.”
    • I thought this was an odd para­graph: “‘Insta­gram built our church,’ he said one after­noon at his office here a block from the El Rey The­ater. ‘Isn’t that fas­ci­nat­ing?’ Mr. Veach believes he can save souls by being the hip and hap­py-go-lucky preach­er, the one you want to share a bowl of açaí with at Back­yard Bowls on Bev­er­ly Boule­vard, who declines to pub­licly dis­cuss pol­i­tics in the Trump era because it’s hard to min­is­ter if no one wants to come to church. Jesus is sup­posed to be fun, right? ‘I want to be loud and dumb,’ Mr. Veach said with a wide, toothy grin. ‘That’s my goal. If we aren’t mak­ing peo­ple laugh, what are we doing? What is the point?’”
  4. Why Cloud­flare Let An Extrem­ist Strong­hold Burn (Steven John­son, Wired): “Lit­er­al­ly, I woke up in a bad mood and decid­ed some­one shouldn’t be allowed on the inter­net. No one should have that pow­er.” I shared one of the relat­ed arti­cles back in issue 136, but didn’t real­ize it was the theme of the whole issue: The (Divi­sive, Cor­ro­sive, Democ­ra­cy-Poi­son­ing) Gold­en Age of Free Speech. The oth­er arti­cles are worth check­ing out as well. Rec­om­mend­ed by a friend.
  5. Ter­ry Crews: How to Have, Do and Be All You Want (Tim Fer­riss Pod­cast): this is a mov­ing inter­view. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. Worth men­tion­ing: Ter­ry Crews is pub­lic about his Chris­t­ian faith on social media, although it does not come through in this inter­view. I men­tion that because he says some things about guilt and shame towards the end that are not quite right the­o­log­i­cal­ly, but are still worth think­ing about.  
  6. God Made Me Black On Pur­pose (Tim Alber­ta, Politi­co): “A pil­lar of the area’s African-Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty, the shop fea­tures aging walls cov­ered in pho­tos, news clip­pings and oth­er para­pher­na­lia. Two indi­vid­u­als in par­tic­u­lar are lion­ized: Barack Oba­ma, the country’s first black pres­i­dent; and Scott, the first black sen­a­tor from the South since Reconstruction—and the only African-Amer­i­can ever to serve in both cham­bers of Con­gress. Both are chil­dren of sin­gle moth­ers, but polit­i­cal­ly, the pair have lit­tle in com­mon: Oba­ma, a lib­er­al Demo­c­rat raised pri­mar­i­ly by well-off whites in Hawaii before adopt­ing Chicago’s impov­er­ished South Side as his polit­i­cal base; Scott, a con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­can who grew up poor in North Charleston, and whose ini­tial tick­et to D.C. was punched by afflu­ent vot­ers in the state’s three-quar­ters-white 1st Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict. Still, they are mem­bers of a small fraternity—two of just 10 African-Amer­i­cans ever to serve in the Senate—and both are an immea­sur­able source of pride for the bar­ber shop and its cus­tomers.”
    • One detail from lat­er in the arti­cle that stood out to me: Scott got saved in col­lege at a Bible study. Col­lege min­istry mat­ters. Also, the way he became a Repub­li­can is actu­al­ly real­ly fun­ny. Search the arti­cle for the phrase, “Scott knew imme­di­ate­ly he would run; what he didn’t know was for which par­ty.”
  7. How many hours does it take to make a friend? (Jef­frey Hall, Jour­nal of Social and Per­son­al Rela­tion­ships):  “Tak­en togeth­er, results sug­gest that the chance of tran­si­tion­ing from casu­al friend to friend is greater than 50% after around 80–100 hr togeth­er. Results sug­gest that the chance of tran­si­tion­ing from friends to good/best friends is greater than 50% after 119 hr over 3 weeks and 219 hr over 3 months.” The author is a com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kansas.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have How Can I Learn To Receive – And Give – Crit­i­cism In Light Of The Cross?(Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coali­tion): “A believ­er is one who iden­ti­fies with all that God affirms and con­demns in Christ’s cru­ci­fix­ion. In oth­er words, in Christ’s cross I agree with God’s judg­ment of me; and in Christ’s cross I agree with God’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of me. Both have a rad­i­cal impact on how we take and give crit­i­cism.” This is based on a longer arti­cle (4 page PDF). (first shared in vol­ume 63)

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).

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 136

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. Trump has been pres­i­dent for about a year now. Here are some per­spec­tives (if you only read one, read the one you think you’ll dis­agree with most):
    • Trump’s first year was even worse than feared (Eugene Robin­son, Wash­ing­ton Post):  “Many of us began 2017 with the con­sol­ing thought that the Don­ald Trump pres­i­den­cy couldn’t pos­si­bly be as bad as we feared. It turned out to be worse.”
    • I wasn’t a Trump sup­port­er. I am now. (Mol­lie Hem­ing­way, Wash­ing­ton Post): “My expec­ta­tions were low — so low that he could have met them by sim­ply not being Pres­i­dent Hillary Clin­ton. But a year into this pres­i­den­cy, he’s exceed­ed those expec­ta­tions by quite a bit. I’m thrilled.”
    • ‘Vision, Chutz­pah and Some Testos­terone’ (New York Times): “Grant­ed we have the most unpres­i­den­tial pres­i­dent of our time. Crude, rude, clue­less dude — but I believe, with the help of his friends, he’s stum­bling through one of the most effec­tive pres­i­den­cies in mem­o­ry.” This is from a col­lec­tion of let­ters to the NY Times by Trump sup­port­ers.
    • This one trick explains the pat­tern of con­ser­v­a­tive praise for Trump’s first year (Dan Drezn­er, Wash­ing­ton Post): “All of this is con­sis­tent with assess­ments that Trump’s first year, even from a con­ser­v­a­tive per­spec­tive, has been pret­ty mediocre.”
    • Trump So Far Is More Farce Than Tragedy (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “A vast gulf between the things Trump says he wants — which are, indeed, often author­i­tar­i­an — and the things that actu­al­ly hap­pen is the essen­tial char­ac­ter­is­tic of his presidency’s first year.… his cab­i­net looks a lot like a gener­ic Repub­li­can admin­is­tra­tion, whose efforts lib­er­als under­stand­ably oppose and some­times deplore, but which are not remote­ly like the work­ings of a fas­cist cabal cir­ca 1935.”
    • Pres­i­dent Trump’s First Year, in 14 Met­rics (Mike Niz­za, Blomberg View): “Last year our colum­nists select­ed a range of con­ven­tion­al and whim­si­cal met­rics by which to judge the suc­cess of the new pres­i­dent. We revis­it them here. Bot­tom line: By these mea­sures, he’s doing bet­ter than his oppo­nents will admit and worse than his sup­port­ers believe.”
  2. Is every­thing you think you know about depres­sion wrong? (Johann Hari, The Guardian): “Once you set­tle into a sto­ry about your pain, you are extreme­ly reluc­tant to chal­lenge it. It was like a leash I had put on my dis­tress to keep it under some con­trol. I feared that if I messed with the sto­ry I had lived with for so long, the pain would run wild, like an unchained ani­mal. Yet the sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence was show­ing me some­thing clear, and I couldn’t ignore it.”
    • This reminds me of an arti­cle that made an impres­sion upon me back in 2003: The Pur­suit of Hap­pi­ness (Ben­jamin Healy inter­view­ing Carl Elliott, The Atlantic): “On Prozac, Sisy­phus might well push the boul­der back up the moun­tain with more enthu­si­asm and more cre­ativ­i­ty. I do not want to deny the ben­e­fits of psy­choac­tive med­ica­tion. I just want to point out that Sisy­phus is not a patient with a men­tal health prob­lem. To see him as a patient with a men­tal health prob­lem is to ignore cer­tain larg­er aspects of his predica­ment con­nect­ed to boul­ders, moun­tains, and eter­ni­ty.”
    • See also Stay­ing Awake Is A Sur­pris­ing­ly Effec­tive Way To Treat Depres­sion (Lin­da Ged­des, Digg):  “‘Sleep depri­va­tion real­ly has oppo­site effects in healthy peo­ple and those with depres­sion,’ says Benedet­ti. If you’re healthy and you don’t sleep, you’ll feel in a bad mood. But if you’re depressed, it can prompt an imme­di­ate improve­ment in mood, and in cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties.”
  3. Fol­low up to last week: Bolivia’s Pres­i­dent Revokes Evan­ge­lism Restric­tions (Mor­gan Lee, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Pres­i­dent Evo Morales Ayma announced that he will tell the South Amer­i­can nation’s Leg­isla­tive Assem­bly to repeal the entire penal code in the wake of recent changes that, among oth­er tweaks, intro­duced severe restric­tions on reli­gious free­dom.”
  4. Of Mon­ey and Morals (Alex Mayyasi, Aeon): “Today, a banker lis­ten­ing to a the­olo­gian seems like a curios­i­ty, a cat­e­go­ry error. But for most of his­to­ry, this kind of dia­logue was the norm.” I was reluc­tant to read this piece because I’ve read oth­ers that were off-putting­ly ill-informed, but I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised.
  5. It’s the (Democ­ra­cy-Poi­son­ing) Gold­en Age of Free Speech (Zeynep Tufek­ci, Wired): “The most effec­tive forms of cen­sor­ship today involve med­dling with trust and atten­tion, not muz­zling speech itself. As a result, they don’t look much like the old forms of cen­sor­ship at all. They look like viral or coor­di­nat­ed harass­ment cam­paigns, which har­ness the dynam­ics of viral out­rage to impose an unbear­able and dis­pro­por­tion­ate cost on the act of speak­ing out.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Chris­t­ian Mis­sions and the Spread of Democ­ra­cy (Greg Scan­dlen, The Fed­er­al­ist): This is a sum­ma­ry of some rather won­der­ful research Robert Wood­ber­ry pub­lished in The Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Review back in 2012: The Mis­sion­ary Roots of Lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy. If it looks famil­iar it’s because I allude to it from time to time in my ser­mons and con­ver­sa­tions. (first shared in vol­ume 14)

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 130

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. There is a small but vocal group of skep­tics who claim that Jesus nev­er exist­ed. Lar­ry Hur­ta­do, a pro­fes­sor of ear­ly Chris­tian­i­ty, takes them down in a series of blog posts.
    • Why The Myth­i­cal Jesus Claim Has No Trac­tion With Schol­ars (Lar­ry Hur­ta­do, per­son­al blog): “The attempts to deny Jesus’ his­tor­i­cal exis­tence are, for any­one acquaint­ed with the rel­e­vant evi­dence, bla­tant­ly sil­ly.”
    • Focus, Focus, Focus! (Lar­ry Hur­ta­do, per­son­al blog): “Anoth­er read­er seems great­ly exer­cised over how much of the Jesus-tra­di­tion Paul recounts in his let­ters, and how much Paul may have known…. Paul ascribes to Jesus a human birth, a min­istry among fel­low Jews, an exe­cu­tion specif­i­cal­ly by Roman cru­ci­fix­ion, named/known sib­lings, and oth­er named indi­vid­u­als who were Jesus’ orig­i­nal com­pan­ions (e.g., Kephas/Peter, John Zebedee).  Indeed, in Paul’s view, it was essen­tial that Jesus is a real human, for the res­ur­rect­ed Jesus is Paul’s mod­el and pro­to-type of the final redemp­tion that Paul believes God will bestow on all who align them­selves with Jesus.”
    • Gee, Dr. Car­ri­er, You’re Real­ly Upset! (Lar­ry Hur­ta­do, per­son­al blog): “This exam­ple will ade­quate­ly serve to illus­trate why Carrier’s work hasn’t had any impact in schol­ar­ly cir­cles.  He gets him­self into a mud­dle.”
  2. Four Ques­tions About Amer­i­can Great­ness (Bret Stephens, New York Times): Dif­fi­cult to excerpt but good. Stephens says Amer­i­ca is great and that to retain our great­ness we must have a prop­er atti­tude toward immi­grants, inde­pen­dent think­ing, fail­ure, and glob­al lead­er­ship. Rec­om­mend­ed by a friend — thank you!
  3. A Police Killing With­out a Hint of Racism (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “No unjust killing of a black per­son should go uncov­ered. But I sus­pect it would be in everyone’s inter­est if jour­nal­ists and activists paid more atten­tion to egre­gious police killings of white peo­ple. If you’re hor­ri­fied by Daniel Shaver’s untime­ly death, yet against Black Lives Mat­ter, con­sid­er that Shaver might well be alive if only the Mesa police depart­ment had long ago adopt­ed reforms of the sort that Black Lives Mat­ter sug­gests.” There is a fol­low-up arti­cle — Footage Of A Police Shoot­ing Jurors Chose Not To Pun­ish.
  4. The world is rely­ing on a flawed psy­cho­log­i­cal test to fight racism (Olivia Gold­hill, Quartz): “meta-analy­ses showed that the [Implic­it Asso­ci­a­tion Test] is no bet­ter at pre­dict­ing dis­crim­i­na­to­ry behav­ior (includ­ing microag­gres­sions) than explic­it mea­sures of explic­it bias, such as the Mod­ern Racism Scale, which eval­u­ates racism sim­ply by ask­ing par­tic­i­pants to state their lev­el of agree­ment with [racist state­ments].”
  5. Sur­vey: Evan­gel­i­cal Label, Beliefs Often At Odds (Bob Smi­etana, Bap­tist Press): “Few­er than half of those who iden­ti­fy as evan­gel­i­cals (45 per­cent) strong­ly agree with core evan­gel­i­cal beliefs…. Only two-thirds (69 per­cent) of evan­gel­i­cals by belief self-iden­ti­fy as evan­gel­i­cals.” This is impor­tant to remem­ber both when read­ing the news and when talk­ing with oth­ers — the label evan­gel­i­cal does­n’t mean what it should. Use­ful­ly illus­trat­ed in visu­al form on Twit­ter.
  6. The Ori­gin of Sil­i­con Valley’s Dys­func­tion­al Atti­tude Toward Hate Speech (Noam Cohen, The New York­er): “Cen­sor­ing a news­group, he explained to those who might not be famil­iar with Usenet, was like pulling a book from cir­cu­la­tion. Since ‘Mein Kampf’ was still on the library shelves, it was hard to imag­ine how any­thing else mer­it­ed removal.” The arti­cle is about Stan­ford, and it led me to entire­ly dif­fer­ent con­clu­sions than the author intend­ed.
  7. The Church’s Fate Is Not Elec­toral: Our Roy Moore Moment (Greg Forster, Gospel Coali­tion): ”There are no Flight 93 moments for the church; there nev­er have been and nev­er will be. Cer­tain­ly God’s peo­ple will con­tin­ue to face per­se­cu­tion from world­ly pow­ers, as we always have. But the idea that we have to com­pro­mise moral stan­dards in order to pre­vent the destruc­tion of the church reflects an appalling fail­ure to grasp where the church’s fate real­ly lies. The church’s fate is not elec­toral; it’s escha­to­log­i­cal. The church’s tri­umph over its ene­mies comes with the King’s return.”
  8. The Supreme Court heard argu­ments on Tues­day about the Col­orado bak­er who refus­es to bake cakes for events he find objec­tion­able — includ­ing gay wed­dings.
    • Argu­ment analy­sis: Con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty lean­ing toward rul­ing for Col­orado bak­er (Amy Howe, SCO­TUS­blog): “Although mak­ing pre­dic­tions based on oral argu­ment is always dan­ger­ous, it seemed very pos­si­ble that there are five votes for Phillips among the court’s more con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tices, even if it is less clear how broad­ly they will rule.”
    • A Baker’s First Amend­ment Rights (Robert P. George and Sherif Gir­gis, New York Times): “You need the First Amend­ment pre­cise­ly when your ideas offend oth­ers or flout the majority’s ortho­dox­ies. And then it pro­tects more than your free­dom to speak your mind; it guards your free­dom not to speak the mind of anoth­er.”
    • We’re lawyers who sup­port same-sex mar­riage. We also sup­port the Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop bak­er. (Dou­glas Lay­cock & Thomas Berg, Vox): “The case tests the nation’s com­mit­ment to lib­er­ty and jus­tice for all. And we aren’t doing well on the part about ‘for all.’ Too many Amer­i­cans, left and right, reli­gious and sec­u­lar, want lib­er­ty for their own side in the cul­ture wars, but not for the oth­er side.” The authors are not just lawyers — they are pro­fes­sors of con­sti­tu­tion­al law.
    • How Not To Advance Gay Mar­riage (David Brooks, New York Times): “If you want to know why we have such a polar­ized, angry and bit­ter soci­ety, one rea­son is we take every dis­agree­ment that could be addressed in con­ver­sa­tion and com­mu­ni­ty and we turn it into a law­suit. We take every moral­ly sup­ple sit­u­a­tion and we hand it over to the legal priest­hood, which by neces­si­ty is a sys­tem of tech­no­crat­ic ratio­nal­ism, strained slip­pery-slope analo­gies and implied coer­cion.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have 20 Argu­ments For God’s Exis­tence (Peter Kreeft, per­son­al web­site): “You may be blessed with a vivid sense of God’s pres­ence; and that is some­thing for which to be pro­found­ly grate­ful. But that does not mean you have no oblig­a­tion to pon­der these argu­ments. For many have not been blessed in that way. And the proofs are designed for them—or some of them at least—to give a kind of help they real­ly need. You may even be asked to pro­vide help.” The author is a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor at Boston Col­lege. (first shared in vol­ume 116)

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 122

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. I knew the fires north of us were bad, but this floored me: Seen From Above: Cal­i­for­nia Fires Reduced Entire Com­mu­ni­ties to Ash (Josh Han­er, Troy Grig­gs and Anjali Singhvi, New York Times).
  2. America’s Many Divides Over Free Speech (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “An under-appre­ci­at­ed fea­ture of the First Amend­ment is that even as it assures that almost every­one will hear that which offends them, it spares the coun­try lots of thorny pol­i­cy fights over speech and expres­sion that would divide an already-polar­ized coun­try deeply along par­ti­san and racial lines.” This arti­cle is full of fas­ci­nat­ing sta­tis­tics. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
  3. 6 Things Trump’s Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Memo Does (and Doesn’t) Do (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “While crit­ics have char­ac­ter­ized such pro­tec­tions as a ‘license’ to dis­crim­i­nate, reli­gious lib­er­ty experts state that the memo—while a major move—does not do every­thing that advo­cates have hoped or that oppo­nents have feared.”
  4. Study: Anti-Chris­t­ian Bias Has­n’t Grown. It’s Just Got­ten Rich­er (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Soci­ol­o­gist George Yancey ana­lyzed 30-plus years of data to track approval rat­ings for evan­gel­i­cal and fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­tians. His big take­away: What has changed is not the num­ber of Amer­i­cans who dis­like con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians, but which Amer­i­cans.”
  5. From Aggres­sive Over­tures to Sex­u­al Assault: Har­vey Weinstein’s Accusers Tell Their Sto­ries (Ronan Far­row, New York­er): This is super-dis­turb­ing. I include it only in case you have not heard of the wicked events because the next few entries require an aware­ness of both the charges and their sever­i­ty.
    • The Pigs of Lib­er­al­ism (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “Con­sent alone is not a suf­fi­cient guide to ethics…. Old­er rules of moral restraint were broad­er for a rea­son. If your culture’s code is lib­er­tine, don’t be sur­prised that worse things than lib­er­tin­ism flour­ish.”
    • The Integri­ty of Har­vey Weinstein’s Work (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Artists are very rarely saints, but that does not com­pro­mise the worth of the work that they do. Purg­ing his name from the artis­tic record is an injus­tice not sim­ply to Har­vey Wein­stein, but to the truth. We can­not allow our­selves to get into the habit of lying about his­to­ry for moral rea­sons. This is cor­rupt. Yes, this involves stand­ing up for Har­vey Wein­stein, but more than that, it involves stand­ing up for the truth.”
    • Har­vey Wein­stein Con­tract With TWC Allowed For Sex­u­al Harass­ment  (TMZ): Wow. You’d think the board would say, “That’s an odd­ly spe­cif­ic pro­vi­sion to add to the con­tract. Why are you so keen on this?”
  6. Pro­duc­tive on six hours of sleep? You’re delud­ing your­self, expert says (Keri Wig­in­ton, Chica­go Tri­bune): “If you were not to set an alarm clock, would you sleep past it? If the answer is yes, then there is clear­ly more sleep that is need­ed.”
  7. ‘Our minds can be hijacked’: the tech insid­ers who fear a smart­phone dystopia (Paul Lewis, The Guardian): “Rosen­stein pur­chased a new iPhone and instruct­ed his assis­tant to set up a parental-con­trol fea­ture to pre­vent him from down­load­ing any apps. He was par­tic­u­lar­ly aware of the allure of Face­book ‘likes’, which he describes as ‘bright dings of pseu­do-plea­sure’ that can be as hol­low as they are seduc­tive. And Rosen­stein should know: he was the Face­book engi­neer who cre­at­ed the ‘like’ but­ton in the first place.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have How Can I Learn To Receive – And Give – Crit­i­cism In Light Of The Cross? (Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coali­tion): “A believ­er is one who iden­ti­fies with all that God affirms and con­demns in Christ’s cru­ci­fix­ion. In oth­er words, in Christ’s cross I agree with God’s judg­ment of me; and in Christ’s cross I agree with God’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of me. Both have a rad­i­cal impact on how we take and give crit­i­cism.” This is based on a longer arti­cle (4 page PDF). (first shared in vol­ume 63)

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 119

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

A note to our new stu­dents: no, you don’t have to read the whole thing. What a lot of Chi Alphans do is skim the list and find one or two that seem inter­est­ing to them and open them in new tabs.

Be sure to read the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Views among col­lege stu­dents regard­ing the First Amend­ment: Results from a new sur­vey (John Vil­lasenor, Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion): “Stu­dents act as de fac­to arbiters of free expres­sion on cam­pus. The Supreme Court jus­tices are not stand­ing by at the entrances to pub­lic uni­ver­si­ty lec­ture halls ready to step in if First Amend­ment rights are cur­tailed. If a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of stu­dents believe that views they find offen­sive should be silenced, those views will in fact be silenced.” The author is an  absurd­ly accom­plished Stan­ford grad: he is a simul­ta­ne­ous­ly a pro­fes­sor of elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing and pub­lic pol­i­cy while also serv­ing as a vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor of law (all at at UCLA) as well as a senior fel­low at the Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion.
  2. I Went To North Korea: What You’ve Heard vs What I Saw (Mark Hill, Cracked): “Sev­en care­ful­ly con­trolled days isn’t enough time to become an expert in any coun­try, let alone one this com­pli­cat­ed, and the best peo­ple to tell the sto­ry are Kore­ans them­selves. But they’re not real­ly avail­able right now…” The arti­cle is inter­est­ing and most­ly con­firms my impres­sions of North Korea.
  3. Is Inter­net Porn Mak­ing Young Men Impo­tent? (EJ Dick­son, Rolling Stone): “A num­ber of fac­tors have been spec­u­lat­ed as being behind this trend, from eat­ing processed foods to tak­ing psy­chotrop­ic drugs. Yet it’s porn that is most fre­quent­ly cit­ed as the like­ly cul­prit, prompt­ing the cre­ation of the term ‘porn-induced erec­tile dys­func­tion,’ which was coined by Dr. Abra­ham Mor­gen­taler, an asso­ciate clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor of urol­o­gy at Har­vard Med­ical School.”
  4. Protes­tants: The Most ‘Catholic’ of Chris­tians (Caleb Lind­gren, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The ‘Reform­ing Catholic Con­fes­sion,’ released today, aims to demon­strate that—despite “denominationalism”—Protestants are remark­ably uni­fied.” See A Reform­ing Catholic Con­fes­sion for the text of the state­ment.
  5. Big Data Sur­veil­lance: The Case of Polic­ing (Sarah Brayne, Amer­i­can Soci­o­log­i­cal Review): “In some instances, it is sim­ply eas­i­er for law enforce­ment to pur­chase pri­vate­ly col­lect­ed data than to rely on in-house data because there are few­er con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions, report­ing require­ments, and appel­late checks on pri­vate sec­tor sur­veil­lance and data col­lec­tion.… More­over, respon­dents explained, pri­vate­ly col­lect­ed data is some­times more up-to-date.” (hat tip: Big Data Sur­veil­lance by Alex Tabar­rok at Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion). The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at UT Austin.
  6. The Aca­d­e­m­ic Rea­son Why There Are So Few Con­ser­v­a­tives In Acad­e­mia (George Yancey, Patheos): “…over the last sev­er­al years, I have been doing empir­i­cal work in anti-Chris­t­ian bias in soci­ety and acad­e­mia. The way my work has been treat­ed has changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly although I became bet­ter, not worse, in doing research. Review­ers are clear­ly more hos­tile to my work on anti-Chris­t­ian bias than my work in race and eth­nic­i­ty, and some of their cri­tiques are almost laugh­able. Those who want to state that we can trust sci­ence because it enables an open search for the truth have nev­er tried to pub­lish work that vio­lates the polit­i­cal and moral sen­si­bil­i­ties of aca­d­e­mics.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of soci­ol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Texas.
  7. A Third of Veg­e­tar­i­ans Eat Meat When They’re Drunk (Phoebe Hurst, Vice):  this research does not appear to be of the high­est qual­i­ty, but I found it intrigu­ing nonethe­less.

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have A His­to­ry of the Sec­ond Amend­ment in Two Paint­ings (Ezra Klein, Wonkblog): this brief arti­cle from a few years ago is still one of the most insight­ful things I’ve read about firearms in Amer­i­ca. The Yale pro­fes­sor inter­viewed, Dr. Amar, also wrote a length­i­er arti­cle about this for Slate. (first shared in vol­ume 54)

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 116

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 flood­ing in Hous­ton is crazy, and I say this as some­one who grew up fac­ing hur­ri­canes in Louisiana on a reg­u­lar basis. If you want to help, Con­voy of Hope is our rec­om­mend­ed dis­as­ter-relief orga­ni­za­tion. You can learn more about what they’re doing at Hur­ri­cane Har­vey Response. So far they’ve served over forty thou­sand peo­ple. More hur­ri­cane read­ing:
  2. 20 Argu­ments For God’s Exis­tence (Peter Kreeft, per­son­al web­site): “You may be blessed with a vivid sense of God’s pres­ence; and that is some­thing for which to be pro­found­ly grate­ful. But that does not mean you have no oblig­a­tion to pon­der these argu­ments. For many have not been blessed in that way. And the proofs are designed for them—or some of them at least—to give a kind of help they real­ly need. You may even be asked to pro­vide help.” I was remind­ed of this by a con­ver­sa­tion with an alum­nus. The author is a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor at Boston Col­lege.
  3. A Beat­ing In Berke­ley (Matt Labash, Week­ly Stan­dard): “One of them, Will John­son, announces that he is a black Amer­i­can and a Chris­t­ian. ‘This is not a neo-Nazi, white suprema­cist ral­ly,’ he says. ‘I don’t know where they got that from. I actu­al­ly called Nan­cy Pelosi’s office and asked her to change that. There’s no way I am a white suprema­cist.’” An amaz­ing arti­cle. Well worth read­ing.
  4. Some Thoughts and Advice for Our Stu­dents and All Stu­dents (an open let­ter from some Har­vard, Yale and Prince­ton pro­fes­sors): “Think­ing for your­self means ques­tion­ing dom­i­nant ideas even when oth­ers insist on their being treat­ed as unques­tion­able. It means decid­ing what one believes not by con­form­ing to fash­ion­able opin­ions, but by tak­ing the trou­ble to learn and hon­est­ly con­sid­er the strongest argu­ments to be advanced on both or all sides of questions—including argu­ments for posi­tions that oth­ers revile and want to stig­ma­tize and against posi­tions oth­ers seek to immu­nize from crit­i­cal scruti­ny.” Inter­est­ing­ly, at least four of the sig­na­to­ries (near­ly 20%) are peo­ple who have pre­vi­ous­ly made an appear­ance in these emails.
  5. Wait, Do Peo­ple Actu­al­ly Know Just How Evil This Man Is? (Nathan J. Robin­son, Cur­rent Affairs): “And I am wor­ried that even those who detest Trump and are appalled by this par­don do not entire­ly appre­ci­ate the depth of Arpaio’s evil, or under­stand quite how inde­fen­si­ble what Don­ald Trump just has done is. Frankly I think even Trump may not ful­ly real­ize the extent of the wrong­do­ing that he has just sig­naled his approval of.” Depress­ing read­ing.
  6. The Pre­mi­um Mediocre Life of Maya Mil­len­ni­al (Venkatesh Rao, Rib­bon­farm): “Pre­mi­um mediocre is the finest bot­tle of wine at Olive Gar­den. Pre­mi­um mediocre is cup­cakes and froyo. Pre­mi­um mediocre is ‘truf­fle’ oil on any­thing (no actu­al truf­fles are harmed in the mak­ing of ‘truf­fle’ oil), and extra-leg-room seats in Econ­o­my. Pre­mi­um mediocre is cruise ships, arti­san piz­za, Game of Thrones, and The Bel­la­gio. Pre­mi­um mediocre is food that Insta­grams bet­ter than it tastes…. pre­mi­um medi­oc­rity is cre­at­ing an aura of exclu­siv­i­ty with­out actu­al­ly exclud­ing any­one.” The arti­cle is far too long. Read the first few para­graphs and you’ll get the idea.
  7. My IRB Night­mare (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “We, as the patient’s doc­tors, would make the diag­no­sis and write it down on the chart. But we (as study inves­ti­ga­tors) need­ed a full signed con­sent form before we were allowed to access the diag­no­sis we had just made.” This is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly dis­turb­ing and enter­tain­ing, and so is the fol­low-up post.
  8. The Cost of Run­ning Har­vard (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): I assume broad­ly sim­i­lar sta­tis­tics are true of Stan­ford.

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Weight of Glo­ry (C.S. Lewis): orig­i­nal­ly preached as a ser­mon and then print­ed in a the­ol­o­gy mag­a­zine. Relat­ed: see the C. S. Lewis Doo­dle YouTube chan­nel – it’s real­ly good! (first shared in vol­ume 36)

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 115

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 Most Short­sight­ed Attack on Free Speech in Mod­ern U.S. His­to­ry (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “Under a legal regime where hate speech was not con­sid­ered free speech, Trump and Ses­sions could like­ly pun­ish words used by mem­bers of Antifa and Black Lives Mat­ter. Do you think he’d police their speech more or less vig­or­ous­ly than white suprema­cists?”
  2. Everyone’s Sus­pi­cious of Athe­ists — Even Oth­er Athe­ists (Thomas MacMil­lan, NY Mag): “Accord­ing to a new study pub­lished last week in Nature, peo­ple all over the world con­nect immoral­i­ty with athe­ism. In fact, the moral prej­u­dice against athe­ists is so strong that it holds even in coun­tries like the Nether­lands, where most peo­ple aren’t reli­gious. Even athe­ists them­selves, accord­ing to the study, are inclined to see non­be­liev­ers as more wicked than the faith­ful.” The Nature paper is Glob­al evi­dence of extreme intu­itive moral prej­u­dice against athe­ists.
  3. I Won’t Make Jesus Bow Down to Xi Jin­ping (Derek Lam, New York Times): “Of Hong Kong’s six major reli­gions, five are already firm­ly under the con­trol of the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty. Judg­ing by recent events, the par­ty is very close to com­plet­ing its mis­sion of bring­ing Chris­tian­i­ty under its thumb.”
  4. The Dri­ve For Per­fect Chil­dren Gets A Lit­tle Scary (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg View): “If you could direct­ly alter your kids’ genet­ic pro­file, what would you want? It’s hard to know how the social debate would turn out after years of back and forth, but I was dis­mayed to read one recent research paper by psy­chol­o­gists Rachel M. Lath­am and Sophie von Stumm. The descrip­tive title of that work, based on sur­vey evi­dence, is ‘Moth­ers want extra­ver­sion over con­sci­en­tious­ness or intel­li­gence for their chil­dren.’ Upon reflec­tion, maybe that isn’t so sur­pris­ing, because par­ents pre­sum­ably want chil­dren who are fun to spend time with.”
  5. Math­e­mat­i­cal mys­tery of ancient Baby­lon­ian clay tablet solved (Phys.org): “Plimp­ton 322 pre­dates Hip­parchus by more than 1000 years,” says Dr Wild­berg­er. “It opens up new pos­si­bil­i­ties not just for mod­ern math­e­mat­ics research, but also for math­e­mat­ics edu­ca­tion. With Plimp­ton 322 we see a sim­pler, more accu­rate trigonom­e­try that has clear advan­tages over our own.” The aca­d­e­m­ic paper is Plimp­ton 322 is Baby­lon­ian exact sex­a­ges­i­mal trigonom­e­try (His­to­ria Math­e­mat­i­ca). Anoth­er reminder that our ances­tors were pret­ty clever.
  6. Robert E. Lee opposed Con­fed­er­ate mon­u­ments (Lisa Des­jardins, PBS New­sHour):  “But while he was alive, Lee stressed his belief that the coun­try should move past the war. He swore alle­giance to the Union and pub­licly decried south­ern sep­a­ratism, whether mil­i­tant or sym­bol­ic.”
  7. This Is How Sex­ism Works in Sil­i­con Val­ley  My law­suit failed. Oth­ers won’t. (Ellan Pao, The Cut): “Before suing, I’d con­sult­ed oth­er women who had sued big, pow­er­ful com­pa­nies over harass­ment and dis­crim­i­na­tion, and they all gave me pret­ty much the same advice: ‘Don’t do it.’ One woman told me, ‘It’s a com­plete mis­match of resources. They don’t fight fair. Even if you win, it will destroy your rep­u­ta­tion.’”
  8. James Kennedy Min­istries Sues SPLC over Hate Map (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): see also Politico’s June arti­cle Has a Civ­il Rights Stal­wart Lost Its Way? (short answer: yes, yes it has)

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have No Food Is Healthy. Not Even Kale. (Michael Ruhlman, Wash­ing­ton Post). Peo­ple can be healthy. Food can be nutri­tious. This is a won­der­ful essay about how we mis­use lan­guage to our detri­ment. If you’re sur­prised I includ­ed this, I believe that our cul­ture has a qua­si-reli­gious rela­tion­ship to health and to food, and I also believe that the use of lan­guage is pro­found­ly moral and that our cul­ture is a lin­guis­tic mess (to which I know of no fin­er guide than The Under­ground Gram­mar­i­an). (first shared in vol­ume 33)

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 41

On Fri­days I share articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

  1. Since yes­ter­day was St. Patrick’s Day, here are his Con­fes­sion (of faith) and his Let­ter To The Sol­diers of Coroti­cus. The open­ing lines of his con­fes­sion, “My name is Patrick. I am a sin­ner, a sim­ple coun­try per­son, and the least of all believ­ers. I am looked down upon by many.” Skip down to verse 16 for some of the wild stuff.
  2. The Shame Cul­ture (David Brooks, BYT): “The guilt cul­ture could be harsh, but at least you could hate the sin and still love the sin­ner. The mod­ern shame cul­ture alleged­ly val­ues inclu­sion and tol­er­ance, but it can be strange­ly unmer­ci­ful to those who dis­agree and to those who don’t fit in.” See also Scape­goats in the Cul­ture War (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic).
  3. OKC Thun­der Coach’s Words Res­onate With Many (Jen­ni Carl­son, The Okla­homan): this is a bit late, but I final­ly watched the eulo­gy that recent­ly gripped the sports world’s inter­est. Wow. Watch the YouTube video first (7 min­utes) and then read the arti­cle.
  4. Three Num­bers That Explain The Mod­ern Polit­i­cal Ecosys­tem (Kevin Drum, Moth­er Jones): how media and pol­i­tics inter­sect.
  5. The Glar­ing Evi­dence That Free Speech Is Threat­ened On Cam­pus (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “To sum up: free speech on cam­pus is threat­ened from a dozen direc­tions. It is threat­ened by police spies, overzeal­ous admin­is­tra­tors, and stu­dents who are intol­er­ant of dis­sent.”
  6. Now that you’re on break, please reg­is­ter to vote if you have not already done so. If you are reg­is­ter­ing in Cal­i­for­nia, I strong­ly sug­gest you reg­is­ter as a Per­ma­nent Vote-By-Mail Vot­er, which sim­ply means that you will receive a bal­lot in the mail before every elec­tion. It gives you plen­ty of time to research the can­di­dates and issues from the com­fort of your dorm room with your bal­lot in front of you. If you pre­fer to vote in anoth­er state then vis­it http://www.brennancenter.org/student-voting). If you’re a cit­i­zen of anoth­er coun­try, do what­ev­er you’re sup­posed to do there. 🙂
  7. Quick Reads:

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).

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.