Tag: gender

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 103

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. Praise & Ques­tions: How Kendrick & Chance Talk to God in Dif­fer­ent Ways (Migueli­to, DJ Booth): “I’ve encoun­tered two dif­fer­ent kinds of reli­gious believ­ers, gen­er­al­ly speak­ing. The first are those who focus on the gifts of God and the bless­ings in their life and take an opti­mistic approach to human­i­ty. The oth­er group is made up of those who become gripped by the mys­tery sur­round­ing such a fig­ure and keep an air of skep­ti­cism about them.”
  2. How Oxford and Peter Singer drove me from athe­ism to Jesus (Sarah Irv­ing-Stone­brak­er, Ver­i­tas): “I grew up in Aus­tralia, in a lov­ing, sec­u­lar home, and arrived at Syd­ney Uni­ver­si­ty as a crit­ic of ‘reli­gion.’  I didn’t need faith to ground my iden­ti­ty or my val­ues…. [how­ev­er, while at Oxford] I began to realise that the impli­ca­tions of my athe­ism were incom­pat­i­ble with almost every val­ue I held dear.” The author is a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at West­ern Syd­ney Uni­ver­si­ty.
  3. Lis­ten­ing: An Anti­dote to the Mod­ern University’s Inco­her­ence (Dominic Bur­bidge, The Pub­lic Dis­course): insight­ful break­down of the three sub-uni­ver­si­ties we dwell with­in: the uni­ver­si­ty of ratio­nal­ism, the uni­ver­si­ty of rev­o­lu­tion, and the uni­ver­si­ty of sub­jec­tivism. The author is an admin­is­tra­tor at Oxford.
  4. Won­der Woman and the Gen­der Wars (Rus­sell Moore, per­son­al blog): “Won­der Woman does indeed rep­re­sent pow­er, but she also is, in every iter­a­tion, designed to be sex­u­al­ly attrac­tive to men. The 1970s-era tele­vi­sion series not­ed in its theme song, ‘Fight­ing for your rights, in your satin tights, and the old red, white, and blue.’ The rights and the tights were both part of the package—and, from the looks of things, still are.” This piece is quite good.
  5. The Marines Can Treat Women Hon­or­ably With­out Putting Them in the Infantry (David French, Nation­al Review): “The women-in-infantry debate is the lux­u­ry of a soci­ety that hasn’t fought a large-scale ground war in gen­er­a­tions, and a seri­ous mixed-gen­der exper­i­ment wouldn’t sur­vive first con­tact with a well-equipped and well-trained oppos­ing force.” The author is both a vet­er­an of the Iraq war and a grad­u­ate of Har­vard Law School. A short but thought­ful response to the wide­ly-shared Vox arti­cle The Marine Corps has a “tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty” prob­lem
  6. If you haven’t seen it yet, there’s quite the con­tro­ver­sy at Ever­green Col­lege. There’s a good sum­ma­ry at The blas­phe­my case against Bret Wein­stein, and its four lessons for pro­fes­sors (Jonathan Haidt, Het­ero­dox Acad­e­my): “I gen­er­al­ly oppose zero-tol­er­ance poli­cies, but if we are to have one, it should be for vio­lence and intim­i­da­tion on cam­pus.” And this is a good op-ed on the sit­u­a­tion: When the Left Turns on Its Own (Bari Weiss, NY Times): “Lib­er­als shouldn’t cede the respon­si­bil­i­ty to defend free speech on col­lege cam­pus­es to con­ser­v­a­tives. After all, with­out free speech, what’s lib­er­al­ism about?”
  7. I’ve seen lots of opin­ions about Trump pulling Amer­i­ca out of the Paris cli­mate agree­ment. I was most struck by these two reac­tions that both grant that the agree­ment was in some sense just for show but arrive at dif­fer­ent con­clu­sions from that premise:
    • From the right: The Place­bo Pol­i­tics of Paris (Jason Willick, The Amer­i­can Inter­est): “Pres­i­dent Trump’s repu­di­a­tion of the agree­ment… delights his nation­al­is­tic base and sends his inter­na­tion­al­ist-mind­ed crit­ics into parox­ysms of rage and despair—all with­out actu­al­ly doing any­thing, because the Paris agree­ment con­sists sim­ply of vol­un­tary, unen­force­able emis­sions pledges that are already being flout­ed.”
    • From the left: The Odd Kabu­ki of the Cli­mate Pact With­draw­al (Eric Pos­ner, per­son­al blog): “[the pact] was mean­ing­ful-sym­bol­ic rather than mean­ing­less-sym­bol­ic. Mean­ing­ful-sym­bol­ic means that the coun­tries were tak­ing a first step toward actu­al­ly reduc­ing green­house gas­es rather than a first step toward pre­tend­ing to reduce them.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

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 91

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 Cri­sis of Lib­er­ty In The West (Ryan Ander­son, Her­itage Foun­da­tion): “Free­dom today is under­stood as a mat­ter of indifference—a free­dom from con­straint. But free­dom right­ly under­stood is a free­dom for—a free­dom for excel­lence.” This. Read this.
  2. Gen­der Rever­sal Teach­es Uncom­fort­able Lessons (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “How would the Trump-Clin­ton debates have been per­ceived if the gen­ders had been reversed? Two pro­fes­sors worked with trained actors to dupli­cate not just the words but also the man­ner­isms of Trump and Clinton–only with a female actor play­ing Trump, now called Bren­da King, and a male actor play­ing Clin­ton, now called Jonathan Gor­don.” The pro­fes­sors found the oppo­site of what they expect­ed. There is a video clip so you can judge for your­self. A lit­tle mind-blow­ing.
  3. Amer­i­can Car­nage (Christo­pher Cald­well, First Things): “Call­ing addic­tion a dis­ease use­ful­ly describes cer­tain mea­sur­able aspects of the problem—particularly tol­er­ance and with­draw­al. It fails to cap­ture what is spe­cial and dan­ger­ous about the way drugs bind with people’s minds. Almost every known dis­ease is some­thing peo­ple wish to be rid of. Addic­tion is dif­fer­ent. Addicts resist known cures—even to the point of death.” A pow­er­ful arti­cle.
  4. There’s Enough Time To Change Every­thing (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “If I were loose­ly gath­er­ing top­ics of study into cat­e­gories, I might call them arts, reli­gion, schol­ar­ship, and sci­ence. As impor­tant as schol­ar­ship and sci­ence are, arts and reli­gion are more impor­tant” A wide-rang­ing and fas­ci­nat­ing inter­view with Yale pro­fes­sor David Gel­ern­ter. This one is long.
  5. Faith Is Chang­ing The Way Peo­ple Think About Music (Marc Barnes, Rel­e­vant): “The cre­ative arts have a long his­to­ry of tak­ing to what is taboo in the pub­lic square. It is no sur­prise that they are tak­ing reli­gion, the ugly duck­ling of mod­ern sec­u­lar life, under their wing.”
  6. North Korea Is Prac­tic­ing For Nuclear War (Jef­frey Lewis, For­eign Pol­i­cy): “What­ev­er restraint Kim or Trump might show — and let’s be hon­est, our expec­ta­tions here are not high — each will face enor­mous pres­sure to start the attack lest his oppo­nent beat him to the punch.” Ouch.
  7. 10 Ques­tions for Sha­di Hamid (Raz­ib Khan, per­son­al blog): “It’s not so much that [devout Mus­lims] want to die; it’s more that they are ready to die, and it doesn’t fright­en them as much as it might fright­en some­one else, because they believe there’s a pret­ty good chance that they’ll be grant­ed par­adise espe­cial­ly if they hap­pen to killed while they’re in the mid­dle of an act that they con­sid­er to be in the ser­vice of God and his mes­sage.” The inter­view­er is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in genet­ics at UC Davis and the inter­vie­wee is a senior fel­low at the Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion. Also worth read­ing is Rod Dreher’s reac­tion piece Islam: The Last Badass Reli­gion.

Things Glen Found Amusing

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.