Tag: global christianity

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 134

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. ‘Walk­ing a line’: The shrewd tac­tics of the White House’s evan­gel­i­cal gate­keep­er (Michelle Boorstein & Sarah Pul­liam Bai­ley, The Wash­ing­ton Post):  “The Sen­ate race in Alaba­ma and Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist Roy Moore? ‘I’m not involved.’ Trump’s pen­chant for lying? ‘I don’t want to get into it. Because I don’t focus on those things.’ The GOP tax law that bit­ter­ly divid­ed reli­gious lead­ers? ‘I don’t think there’s an answer.’ ‘For me, that’s all noise,’ he said. ‘It’s not that it isn’t impor­tant, but I don’t have time for all that… If I did dig into it, I might have stronger opin­ions, and that would be a dis­trac­tion for me.’”
  2. The Top 50 Coun­tries Where It’s Most Dan­ger­ous to Fol­low Jesus (Sarah Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “For decades, North Korea has clear­ly been the world’s worst per­se­cu­tor of Chris­tians. But now, anoth­er nation near­ly match­es it.” Spoil­er alert: Afghanistan.
  3. Clas­si­cal Lib­er­al­ism Strikes Out (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Thus, the irony: indi­vid­u­al­ism and sta­tism are not oppo­sites, but grow togeth­er in tan­dem. In our dai­ly par­ti­san pol­i­tics, we have tend­ed to pit indi­vid­u­al­ism against sta­tism – Ayn Rand against Karl Marx – with con­ser­v­a­tives claim­ing to be indi­vid­u­al­ists and pro­gres­sives claim­ing to sup­port an expan­sive state. But what we have wit­nessed is the simul­ta­ne­ous growth of both the state and the rise of indi­vid­u­al­ism, not as oppo­sites, but as nec­es­sary part­ners. The world has nev­er seen a more indi­vid­u­al­is­tic soci­ety nor a more encom­pass­ing state. The state has empow­ered itself by claim­ing to empow­er the indi­vid­ual.” This is a very stim­u­lat­ing inter­view with Notre Dame pro­fes­sor Patrick Deneen. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
  4. High­er Edu­ca­tion Is Drown­ing In BS (Chris­t­ian Smith, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “Ideas and their accom­pa­ny­ing prac­tices have con­se­quences. What is formed in col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties over decades shows up for bet­ter or worse in the char­ac­ter and qual­i­ty of our pub­lic ser­vants, polit­i­cal cam­paigns, pub­lic-pol­i­cy debates, cit­i­zen par­tic­i­pa­tion, social cap­i­tal, media pro­gram­ming, low­er school edu­ca­tion, con­sumer pref­er­ences, busi­ness ethics, enter­tain­ments, and much more. And the long-term cor­ro­sive effects on pol­i­tics and cul­ture can also be repaired only over the long term, if ever. There are no quick fix­es here.” Side note: I’ve met Dr. Smith, who is a soci­ol­o­gist at Notre Dame, before. He’s a smart cook­ie. 
  5. Oprah: Prophet, Priest­ess … Queen? (Ross Douthat, New York Times):  “Amer­i­can cul­ture is divid­ed between three broad approach­es to reli­gious ques­tions: one tra­di­tion­al, one spir­i­tu­al and one sec­u­lar. The tra­di­tion­al approach takes var­i­ous forms (Catholic and Protes­tant, Mus­lim and Ortho­dox Jew­ish) but its instincts are creedal, con­fes­sion­al, dog­mat­ic; it believes in a spe­cif­ic rev­e­la­tion, a spe­cif­ic author­i­ty and a spe­cif­ic holy book, and seeks to con­form itself to teach­ings hand­ed down from the reli­gious past. The sec­u­lar approach is post-reli­gious, sci­en­tis­tic, con­vinced that the lab­o­ra­to­ry and the micro­scope will ulti­mate­ly account for every­thing that mat­ters, while hope­ful­ly jus­ti­fy­ing a lib­er­al society’s still-some­what-Chris­t­ian moral com­mit­ments along the way. But in between sec­u­lar­ism and tra­di­tion­al­ism lies the most Amer­i­can approach to mat­ters of faith….”
  6. Can We Teach Our­selves to Believe? (Agnes Callard, New York Times): “Pas­cal seems to con­cede that try­ing to believe is a mat­ter of wish­ful think­ing, self-decep­tion or self-manip­u­la­tion. He thinks we should do it any­way. But I think our hope of becom­ing bet­ter peo­ple — whether in respect of reli­gion, friend­ship or jus­tice, or in any num­ber of dif­fer­ent ways — rests on the pos­si­bil­i­ty that there is a more straight­for­ward and less self-abas­ing way to try to believe.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go. 
  7. The Legion Lone­ly (Steven Thomas, Hazlitt): “Friend­ship in adult­hood is a chal­lenge for a lot of peo­ple. On aver­age, both men and women start to lose friends around age 25, and con­tin­ue to lose friends steadi­ly for the rest of our lives.”

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 On Obsti­na­cy In Belief (C.S. Lewis, The Sewa­nee Review): this is a reward­ing essay from way back in 1955. (first shared in vol­ume 6).

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 125

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. In my ser­mon this week I allud­ed to the glob­al impact of the Protes­tant Ref­or­ma­tion and men­tioned two out­comes you might have found sur­pris­ing — the spread of democ­ra­cy and the rise of sci­ence. To learn more about the first, check out Robert Wood­ber­ry’s arti­cle The Mis­sion­ary Roots of Lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy, for the sec­ond go inspect Peter Har­rison’s book The Bible, Protes­tantism, and the Rise of Nat­ur­al Sci­ence. For sim­i­lar­ly edi­fy­ing aca­d­e­m­ic reads, check the list of resources at The Gospel and Green Library.
  2. Tues­day was the 500th anniver­sary of the Protes­tant Ref­or­ma­tion. I found two unex­pect­ed­ly sim­i­lar respons­es to it:
    • From a Protes­tant: Which Hen­ry Caused The Ref­or­ma­tion (Carl True­man, First Things): “But if we are tru­ly to under­stand the prob­lems the church faces in today’s world, and respond appro­pri­ate­ly to them, we need to move beyond the blame game, and beyond see­ing the mat­ter in pure­ly the­o­log­i­cal or ide­o­log­i­cal terms. It was the motor car, not Luther nor Calvin, that made the church just one more con­sumer choice. And there­in lies the prob­lem.”
    • From a Catholic: Who Won The Ref­or­ma­tion? (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “First, [the dom­i­nant cul­tur­al nar­ra­tive] goes, Protes­tantism replaced the author­i­ty of the church with the author­i­ty of the Bible. Then, once it became clear that nobody could agree on what the Bible meant, the author­i­ty of con­science became pre-emi­nent — and from there we entered nat­u­ral­ly (if with some bloody resis­tance from var­i­ous reac­tionary forces) into the age of lib­er­ty, democ­ra­cy and human rights.”
  3. How the pros­per­i­ty gospel is spark­ing a major change in pre­dom­i­nant­ly Catholic Brazil (Sarah Pul­liam Bai­ley, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Brazil, which has the most Catholics of any coun­try in the world, is under­go­ing reli­gious debates sim­i­lar to those sparked in 1517 by a fiery Ger­man preach­er named Mar­tin Luther — over church rich­es and cor­rup­tion, polit­i­cal pow­er, and the prop­er way to read the Bible. By 2030, Catholics, now the reli­gious major­i­ty in Brazil, are pro­ject­ed to become a reli­gious minor­i­ty.” Rec­om­mend­ed.
  4. Across Myan­mar, Denial of Eth­nic Cleans­ing and Loathing of Rohingya (Han­nah Beech, New York Times): “‘We do some­thing that we call edu­cat­ing the peo­ple,’ said U Pe Myint, the nation’s infor­ma­tion min­is­ter. He acknowl­edged, ‘It looks rather like indoc­tri­na­tion, like in an author­i­tar­i­an or total­i­tar­i­an state.’” This is insane. Also, read­ing this may cause you to revise your opin­ion of the intrin­si­cal­ly peace­ful nature of Bud­dhism and the sig­nif­i­cance of the Nobel Peace Prize.
  5. Jobs Are A Cost, Not A Ben­e­fit (Tim Worstall, Forbes): “It is sim­ply non­sense that we should pre­fer using the labour of more peo­ple to achieve a goal than using less labour to achieve the same goal. Absolute, arrant, non­sense…. Labour is, after all, the sweat of the brow and the break­ing of the back for those who have to do it: peo­ple who would prob­a­bly pre­fer to be enjoy­ing a lit­tle more of that work life bal­ance and some leisure with loved ones if they did­n’t have to be climb­ing wind­mills in the mid­dle of a North Sea gale.” Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
  6. ‘I Am a Man With Down Syn­drome and My Life Is Worth Liv­ing’ (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “Par­ents who car­ry a fetus with Down syn­drome to term, or who are con­flict­ed about whether or not to do so, will almost cer­tain­ly speak with a med­ical pro­fes­sion­al, and per­haps with a coun­selor or reli­gious advis­er. But they are unlike­ly to hear from an adult with Down syndrome—and per­haps unaware that many are lov­ing their lives, bring­ing joy to oth­ers, and giv­ing them­selves to their com­mu­ni­ties.”
  7. Is Athe­ism Irra­tional? (Kel­ly J. Clark, Big Ques­tions Online): “Accord­ing to a cul­tur­al­ly influ­en­tial nar­ra­tive, reli­gious beliefs are irra­tional because they are caused by unre­li­able cog­ni­tive mech­a­nisms, where­as athe­ism is ratio­nal because it is the prod­uct of ratio­nal reflec­tion on true beliefs. We have debunked a por­tion of the nar­ra­tive: athe­ism, at least in some cas­es, is cor­re­lat­ed with and medi­at­ed by a cog­ni­tive deficit.”
  8. Pros­ti­tu­tion Reduces Rape (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): Huh. I find it inter­est­ing that even though pros­ti­tu­tion is con­demned through­out the Bible, it was not actu­al­ly out­lawed in Old Tes­ta­ment Israel except in cer­tain spe­cif­ic cir­cum­stances. In light of this research, that makes a lot of sense. See http://www.openbible.info/topics/prostitution to skim some of the key Bible vers­es.

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 some thoughts about slav­ery and the Bible – Does The Bible Sup­port Slav­ery? (a lec­ture giv­en by the war­den of Tyn­dale House at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, the link is to the video with notes) and Does God Con­done Slav­ery In The Bible? (Part One – Old Tes­ta­ment) and also Part Two – New Tes­ta­ment (longer pieces from Glenn Miller at Chris­t­ian Think­tank). All three are quite help­ful. (first shared in vol­ume 76)

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 124

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. Nepal Crim­i­nal­izes Chris­t­ian Con­ver­sion and Evan­ge­lism (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Last week, Nepal enact­ed a law to curb evan­ge­lism by crim­i­nal­iz­ing reli­gious con­ver­sion, join­ing neigh­bor­ing coun­tries like India and Pak­istan, where the region’s small-but-grow­ing Chris­t­ian minor­i­ty faces gov­ern­ment threats to their faith.”
  2. Police Cam­eras Had No Effect. Why? (Megan McAr­dle, Bloomberg View): “That data is now in, and it shows that [police body cam­eras] did… basi­cal­ly noth­ing.… This is flab­ber­gast­ing.”
  3. Who Wrote Eccle­si­astes and What Does It Mean? (John Wal­ton, Zon­der­van Aca­d­e­m­ic): A good essay over­all, but one of his argu­ments real­ly annoyed me, “The claim in 1:16 and 2:9 that he sur­passed all who were before him in Jerusalem would mean lit­tle if his father were his only pre­de­ces­sor.” Umm… no. There were pre-Israelite kings who reigned in Jerusalem (see Joshua 10, for exam­ple) and the author of Eccle­si­astes is com­par­ing him­self to them as well. 
  4. The Age of Con­sent And Its Dis­con­tents (Ross Douthat, New York Times): Con­sent is an inad­e­quate foun­da­tion for sex­u­al ethics. “…the most self-con­scious­ly pro­gres­sive schools — [tell] us more about the inher­ent prob­lems with ‘con­sent alone’ than does the mess in Hol­ly­wood, because it’s a case where there’s more social equal­i­ty, less boss-on-min­ion pres­sure, and a gen­er­al­ly sex-pos­i­tive cul­ture of exper­i­men­ta­tion … and yet young peo­ple still clear­ly desire and need a sys­tem of rules stronger than con­sent alone to pro­tect them from feel­ing unex­pect­ed rage or shame over how a par­tic­u­lar encounter hap­pened.”
  5. Shrews Shrink Their Heads to Sur­vive Win­ter (Jake Buehler, Giz­mo­do): I some­times for­get how amaz­ing the world is. “The shrews expe­ri­enced some rather incred­i­ble changes, los­ing as much as 20 per­cent of their skulls in the win­ter months, and regain­ing 15 per­cent lat­er in the year…. Along­side the shrink­ing skulls, shrew brains lose a hefty por­tion of their mass, and there is also win­ter reduc­tion in organ size and spine length. In this study, the shrews man­aged to lose about a fifth of their body mass over­all.”
  6.  Pence: US Will Bypass UN and Aid Per­se­cut­ed Iraqi Chris­tians Direct­ly (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): this is encour­ag­ing. Chris­tians in the Mid­dle East are suf­fer­ing great­ly.
  7. Is the Mod­ern Mass Extinc­tion Over­rat­ed? (Kevin Berg­er, Nau­tilus): Appar­ent­ly new species are form­ing faster than old species are becom­ing extinct. “Yes, we’ve wiped out wool­ly mam­moths and ground sloths, and are fin­ish­ing off black rhi­nos and Siber­ian tigers, but the doom is not all gloom. Myr­i­ad species, thanks in large part to humans who inad­ver­tent­ly trans­port them around the world, have blos­somed in new regions, mat­ed with like species and formed new hybrids that have them­selves gone forth and pros­pered. We’re talk­ing mam­mals, birds, trees, insects, microbes—all your flo­ra and fau­na.”

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 To Pray A Psalm (Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coali­tion): prayer life need a boost? Give this a try. (first shared in vol­ume 69)

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 120

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. Divine To Divid­ed: How Occu­py Cen­tral Split Hong Kong’s Chris­t­ian Lead­ers (Jayson Albano, Mar­ta Colom­bo And Maria Cristhin Kuiper, South Chi­na Morn­ing Post): “Once on the street, he could see clear­ly. He could see the crowds form­ing, and he could see the mount­ing ranks of riot police. And when he saw those same police­men fir­ing tear gas into the assem­bled mass­es one thing became clear in his mind: that his faith in God demand­ed he act.”
  2. The old­est human lived to 122. Why no per­son will like­ly break her record. (Bri­an Resnick, Vox): “The authors pro­pose this is a built-in ‘nat­ur­al lim­it’ to our longevi­ty, an ‘inad­ver­tent byprod­uct’ of our biol­o­gy. And to increase the nat­ur­al lim­it we’d need to fun­da­men­tal­ly alter our genet­ics.”
    • This is based on a very read­able piece in Nature Evi­dence for a lim­it to human lifes­pan (Xiao Dong, Bran­don Mil­hol­land & Jan Vijg, Nature).
    • This find­ing reminds me of Gen­e­sis 6:3, “Then the Lord said, ‘My Spir­it will not con­tend with humans for­ev­er, for they are mor­tal; their days will be a hun­dred and twen­ty years.’”
  3. I used to sup­port legal­iz­ing all drugs. Then the opi­oid epi­dem­ic hap­pened. (Ger­man Lopez, Vox): “By the time I began as a drug pol­i­cy reporter in 2010, I was all in on legal­iz­ing every drug, from mar­i­jua­na to hero­in and cocaine. It all seemed so obvi­ous to me. Pro­hi­bi­tion had failed…. Then I began report­ing on the opi­oid epi­dem­ic.” FYI: this arti­cle is long: only read the first two sec­tions unless you’re real­ly into the sub­ject.
  4. Authors’ note: Deep neur­al net­works are more accu­rate than humans at detect­ing sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion from facial images (Michal Kosin­s­ki and Yilun Wang, self-pub­lished on Google Docs): this note by two Stan­ford researchers to explain their recent paper is extreme­ly inter­est­ing. “We used wide­ly avail­able off-the-shelf tools, pub­licly avail­able data, and stan­dard meth­ods well known to com­put­er vision prac­ti­tion­ers. We did not cre­ate a pri­va­cy-invad­ing tool, but rather showed that basic and wide­ly used meth­ods pose seri­ous pri­va­cy threats.”
  5. I called Hugh Hefn­er a pimp, he threat­ened to sue. But that’s what he was. (Suzanne Moore, The Guardian): “But this man is still being cel­e­brat­ed by peo­ple who should know bet­ter. You can dress it up with talk of glam­our and bun­ny ears and fish­nets, you can talk about his con­tri­bu­tion to gonzo jour­nal­ism, you can con­tex­tu­alise his dri­ve to free up sex as part of the sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion. But strip it all back and he was a man who bought and sold women to oth­er men.”
    • Con­cep­tu­al­ly relat­ed: STD rates hit anoth­er record high, with Cal­i­for­nia near the top (Soumya Kar­la­mangla, LA Times): “More than a quar­ter-mil­lion Cal­i­for­ni­ans were infect­ed with either syphilis, chlamy­dia or gon­or­rhea last year, which con­sti­tutes a 40% jump com­pared with five years ago, state offi­cials said.” I am often struck by the fact that STDs would effec­tive­ly dis­ap­pear in one gen­er­a­tion if peo­ple obeyed the Bible.
    • Dit­to: Pas­tor­ing Sin­gles in a Sex-Crazed, Gen­der-Con­fused World (Juan Sanchez, Life­way): “Celi­bate sin­gle­ness is a gift from God with a pur­pose.” This one isn’t just for pas­tors — rec­om­mend­ed to all sin­gles.
  6. Col­in Kaeper­nick vs. Tim Tebow: A tale of two Chris­tians on their knees (Michael Frost, Wash­ing­ton Post): “They’re both Chris­t­ian foot­ball play­ers, and they’re both known for kneel­ing on the field, although for very dif­fer­ent rea­sons. One grew up the son of Bap­tist mis­sion­ar­ies to the Philip­pines. The oth­er was bap­tized Methodist, con­firmed Luther­an, and attend­ed a Bap­tist church dur­ing col­lege. Both have made a pub­lic dis­play of their faith. Both are prayer­ful and devout.” It’s a clever piece, although you should also read the gen­tle crit­i­cism of it at Kaeper­nick vs. Tebow? Wash­ing­ton Post pass­es along flawed take on a cru­cial heresy (Ter­ry Mat­ting­ly, GetRe­li­gion)
    • Inter­est­ing­ly, Kaeper­nick began kneel­ing after a meet­ing with a vet­er­an who told him that mere­ly sit­ting was dire­spect­ful. Kaeper­nick Meets With Vet­er­an Nate Boy­er, Then Kneels Dur­ing Anthem (Under the Radar) (an arti­cle I found after an alum­nus shared it on twit­ter this week — thanks, Han­nah!)
    • The Abbie Hoff­man of the Right: Don­ald Trump (David Brooks, New York Times): “The mem­bers of the edu­cat­ed class saw this past weekend’s N.F.L. fra­cas as a fight over racism. They felt mobi­lized and uni­fied in that fight and full of right­eous ener­gy. Mem­bers of the work­ing class saw the fra­cas as a fight about Amer­i­can iden­ti­ty. They saw Pitts­burgh Steel­ers coach Mike Tom­lin try to dis­suade Ale­jan­dro Vil­lanue­va, a three-time com­bat vet­er­an, from cel­e­brat­ing the flag he risked his life for. Mem­bers of this class also felt mobi­lized, uni­fied and full of right­eous ener­gy.”
  7. A lot of you seemed to like the graph­ic I used in this week’s ser­mon. Here’s a thumb­nail, you can down­load a high-res ver­sion from the source at Visu­al The­ol­o­gy: The Books of the Bible (Tim Chal­lies).
Books of the Bible — Peri­od­ic Table

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 Every Place Has Detrac­tors. Con­sid­er Where They’re Com­ing From.(Megan McCar­dle, Bloomerg View): “There is grave dan­ger in judg­ing a neigh­bor­hood, or a cul­ture, by the accounts of those who chose to leave it. Those peo­ple are least like­ly to appre­ci­ate the good things about where they came from, and the most like­ly to dwell on its less attrac­tive qual­i­ties.” Bear this in mind when lis­ten­ing to con­ver­sion tes­ti­monies (both sec­u­lar and reli­gious). (first shared in vol­ume 62)

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 118

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. Eat, pray, live: the Lagos megachurch­es build­ing their very own cities (Ruth Mclean, The Guardian): “Redemp­tion Camp has 5,000 hous­es, roads, rub­bish col­lec­tion, police, super­mar­kets, banks, a fun fair, a post office – even a 25 megawatt pow­er plant. In Nige­ria, the line between church and city is rapid­ly van­ish­ing.”
  2. An Open Let­ter to Ta-Nehisi Coates (Jason D. Hill, Com­men­tary Mag­a­zine): a gay black man strong­ly believes in the Amer­i­can dream and takes issue with Coates’ dis­par­age­ment of it. “I expect­ed no spe­cial treat­ment because, as an Amer­i­can, I was already part of an excep­tion­al process. My ideas, I had decid­ed on the flight over, would one day be taught in col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties. I will tell you present­ly the extent to which that willed deci­sion became real­i­ty, and why it was pos­si­ble only in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.” (inci­den­tal­ly, I fea­tured an essay by Coates back in issue 80)
  3. The Ques­tion of Race in Cam­pus Sex­u­al-Assault Cas­es (Emi­ly Yoffe, The Atlantic): “Kagle believes that men of color—and espe­cial­ly for­eign men of col­or, stu­dents from Africa and Asia—were unique­ly defense­less when charged with sex­u­al assault, typ­i­cal­ly lack­ing finan­cial resources, a net­work of sup­port, and an under­stand­ing of their rights.” I linked Yof­fe’s two pre­vi­ous arti­cles in last week’s edi­tion. They should be read in con­junc­tion with Cam­pus Rape, A Sur­vivor’s Sto­ry (Bret Stephens, NY Times).
  4. They Serve Gay Clients All The Time. So Why Won’t They Cater A Same-Sex Wed­ding? (Josh Shep­herd, The Fed­er­al­ist): “Phillips choked up with emo­tion as he con­tin­ued: ‘You can’t serve God and mon­ey. I didn’t open this so I could make a lot of mon­ey. I opened it up so it would be a way that I could cre­ate my art, do the bak­ing that I love and serve the God that I love in ways that would hope­ful­ly hon­or Him.’” See also Icing on the Cake: Jus­tice Dept. Backs Chris­t­ian Bak­er Bound for Supreme Court (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today). The lat­ter is tremen­dous news, and pre­sum­ably due to the influ­ence of Mike Pence.
  5. How Many Church­es Does Amer­i­ca Have? More Than Expect­ed (Rebec­ca Ran­dall, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Accord­ing to a recent paper pub­lished by soci­ol­o­gist Simon Brauer in the Jour­nal for the Sci­en­tif­ic Study of Reli­gion, the num­ber of reli­gious con­gre­ga­tions in the Unit­ed States has increased by almost 50,000 since 1998.” You can see the orig­i­nal research here — the researcher is a soci­ol­o­gist at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty. Inter­est­ing news. It’s almost like the gates of hell can­not pre­vail against the church. 
  6. Faith groups pro­vide the bulk of dis­as­ter recov­ery, in coor­di­na­tion with FEMA (Paul Singer, USA Today):  “ ‘About 80% of all recov­ery hap­pens because of non-prof­its, and the major­i­ty of them are faith-based,’ said Greg For­rester, CEO of the nation­al VOAD. The mon­ey is ‘all raised by the indi­vid­u­als who go and serve, raised through cor­po­rate con­nec­tions, raised through church con­nec­tions,’ and amounts to bil­lions of dol­lars worth of dis­as­ter recov­ery assis­tance, he said.”
  7. The Human Fetus Pref­er­en­tial­ly Engages with Face-like Visu­al Stim­uli (Cur­rent Biol­o­gy, Reid et al): appar­ent­ly about a month and a half before birth babies can per­ceive faces through the uter­ine wall. You can read a pop­u­lar sum­ma­ry of the research at Seek­er: Human Fetus­es Can See and React to Faces From Inside the Womb. I found this research both amaz­ing and depress­ing. I won­der how many babies were excit­ed to be mak­ing a new friend up until they were abort­ed.
  8. Har­vard Calls Chelsea Man­ning Invite A ‘Mis­take,’ Rescinds Fel­low­ship Offer — Here’s What’s Going On (Ben­jamin Gog­gin, Digg). For a good expla­na­tion of rea­sons so many were opposed to this appoint­ment, read When Trans­gen­der Trumps Treach­ery (James Kirchick, NY Times). Kirchick is gay, which makes his piece all the more inter­est­ing to read.

Things Glen Found Amusing

  • Mag­ic 8 Ball (red­dit)
  • Too Dumb To Under­stand (Dil­bert)
  • A Frog Prince — Penn and Teller (Youtube)
  • Study: Col­lege Stu­dents Spend Far More Time Play­ing Than Study­ing (Megan Oprea, The Fed­er­al­ist): “The sad truth is that uni­ver­si­ties have begun to exist for the sake of their own exis­tence, rather than the edu­ca­tion of their under­grads. Mean­while, stu­dents are tak­ing their stud­ies less and less seri­ous­ly as they real­ize that they need only go through the motions to grad­u­ate and get on the job mar­ket, which is their ulti­mate goal. No won­der they’re spend­ing their time on every­thing except their stud­ies.” Dis­claimer: yes, I know the num­bers are dif­fer­ent at Stan­ford. I also know you spend more time on non-aca­d­e­m­ic activ­i­ties than you think. #just­sayin

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Mak­ing Sense of the Num­bers of Gen­e­sis [pdf link] (Car­ol Hill, Per­spec­tives on Sci­ence and the Chris­t­ian Faith): “Joseph and Joshua were each record­ed as dying at age 110—a num­ber con­sid­ered ‘per­fect’ by the Egyp­tians. In ancient Egypt­ian doc­trine, the phrase ‘he died aged 110’ was actu­al­ly an epi­taph com­mem­o­rat­ing a life that had been lived self­less­ly and had result­ed in out­stand­ing social and moral ben­e­fit for oth­ers. And so for both Joseph and Joshua, who came out of the Egypt­ian cul­ture, quot­ing this age was actu­al­ly a trib­ute to their char­ac­ter. But, to be described as ‘dying at age 110’ bore no nec­es­sary rela­tion­ship to the actu­al time of an individual’s life span.” You will not agree with every­thing in this arti­cle, but it is full of fas­ci­nat­ing insights. (first shared in vol­ume 51)

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 100

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. Chris­tians, in an Epochal Shift, Are Leav­ing the Mid­dle East (Maria Abi-Habib, Wall Street Jour­nal): “Like the Jews before them, Chris­tians are flee­ing the Mid­dle East, emp­ty­ing what was once one of the world’s most-diverse regions of its ancient reli­gions. They’re being dri­ven away not only by Islam­ic State, but by gov­ern­ments the U.S. counts as allies in the fight against extrem­ism.” You might need to search for an ungat­ed copy.
  2. The Col­or of Law (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Call­ing itself the Penin­su­la Hous­ing Asso­ci­a­tion of Palo Alto, the co-op pur­chased a 260-ranch [sic] adja­cent to the Stan­ford cam­pus and planned to build 400 hous­es as well as shared recre­ation­al facil­i­ties, a shop­ping area, a gas sta­tion, and a restau­rant on com­mon­ly owned land.  But the bank would not finance con­struc­tion costs nor issue mort­gages to the co-op or its mem­bers with­out gov­ern­ment approval, and the FHA would not insure loans to a coop­er­a­tive that includ­ed African Amer­i­can mem­bers.”
  3. Sil­i­con Val­ley: A Real­i­ty Check (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “…peo­ple should lay off the crit­i­cism a lit­tle. When Capi­tol Hill screws up, tens of thou­sands of inno­cent Iraqis get killed. When Wall Street screws up, the coun­try is plunged into reces­sion and poor fam­i­lies lose their homes. When Sil­i­con Val­ley screws up, peo­ple who want a point­less Wi-Fi enabled juicer get a point­less Wi-Fi enabled juicer. Which by all accounts makes pret­ty good juice.”
  4. The Case for Idol­a­try: Why Chris­tians Can Wor­ship Idols (Andrew Wil­son, Gospel Coali­tion): this is a reprint of a satir­i­cal piece from a few years back. I thought I had linked to it when it first came out, but can’t find it in the archives. 
  5. The Rise of Café Church­es in South Korea (Jason Strother, The Atlantic): “‘Church­es and cafés have the hard­est time sur­viv­ing in Korea,’ said Ahn Min-ho, a 42-year-old ordained min­is­ter and cer­ti­fied barista. ‘Com­bin­ing the two is mutu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial.’”

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 98

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. Pre­emie Lambs Suc­cess­ful­ly Grown To Term In Arti­fi­cial Womb (Jason Kot­tke, per­son­al blog): what an amaz­ing age we live in. These arti­fi­cial wombs are trans­par­ent, so this fif­teen sec­ond video of a lamb in one is def­i­nite­ly worth watch­ing.
  2. In ‘China’s Jerusalem’, ‘anti-ter­ror cam­eras’ the new cross for church­es to bear (Alice Yan, South Chi­na Morn­ing Post): “Gov­ern­ment offi­cials came to the church­es and put up ­cam­eras by force. Some pas­tors and wor­ship­pers who didn’t agree to the move were dragged away.… Some peo­ple need­ed to be treat­ed in hos­pi­tal after fight­ing the offi­cials.”
  3. Rod Dreher’s Monas­tic Vision (Joshua Roth­man, New York­er): “The most suc­cess­ful peo­ple nowa­days are flex­i­ble and root­less; they can live any­where and believe any­thing. Dreher thinks that liq­uid moder­ni­ty is a more or less unstop­pable force—in part because cap­i­tal­ism and tech­nol­o­gy are unstop­pable. He urges Chris­tians, there­fore, to remove them­selves from the cur­rents of moder­ni­ty.”
  4. The Cru­cible of the Appli­ca­tion Process (Dil­lon Bowen, Quil­lette) — “This essay is about my expe­ri­ence with the [elite grad school] appli­ca­tion process—specifically how I was repeat­ed­ly encour­aged to alter my appli­ca­tions to con­form with far-Left polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy.” Rec­om­mend­ed to me by an alum­nus.
  5. A bap­tism, then a mur­der con­fes­sion (The Chris­t­ian Chron­i­cle, Bob­by Ross Jr): “Lucin­da Wil­son might have got­ten away with mur­der. Except that she became a Chris­t­ian and con­fessed to her crime. Now 48, Wil­son has served 20-plus years of a life sen­tence for the cap­i­tal mur­der of her ex-fiancé’s girl­friend, Mar­garet Morales.”
  6. The Survivor’s Guide To Adult­hood (Wyatt Hong, Yale Dai­ly News): “Many of you will leave col­lege as I did, believ­ing that you will change the world, but you will soon dis­cov­er that the truth is the reverse. The world will change you. This is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a bad thing, but it can be fright­en­ing.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent as “a thought­ful, well-writ­ten piece.” The author is a Stan­ford grad in med school at Yale.
  7. I learned today that the Nation­al Chi Alpha Min­istry Cen­ter is on Pin­ter­est. I knew about the Insta­gram, Twit­ter and YouTube accounts, but some­how I nev­er expect­ed Pin­ter­est.

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 95

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. ‘You Can’t Give In’: Mon­ty Williams On Life After Tragedy (Chris Bal­lard, Sports Illus­trat­ed): “He puts on a good face, but talk­ing about what hap­pened, as he does over the course of the next three days, often paus­ing for min­utes at a time, remains dif­fi­cult. ‘I just couldn’t under­stand it,’ he says. ‘And nev­er will. But my faith in God nev­er wavered. Just, some­times your faith and your feel­ings don’t line up.’” This is the pick of the week. Very pow­er­ful.
  2. When Char­ac­ter No Longer Counts (Alan Jacobs, Nation­al Affairs): “What is required of seri­ous reli­gious believ­ers in a plu­ral­is­tic soci­ety is the abil­i­ty to code-switch: nev­er to for­get or neglect their own native reli­gious tongue, but also nev­er to for­get that they live in a soci­ety of peo­ple for whom that lan­guage is gib­ber­ish. To speak only in the lan­guage of prag­ma­tism is to bring noth­ing dis­tinc­tive to the table; to speak only a pri­vate lan­guage of rev­e­la­tion and self-pro­claimed author­i­ty is to leave the table alto­geth­er. For their own good, but also for the com­mon good, reli­gious believ­ers need to be always bilin­gual­ly present.” Includ­ing for the sum­ma­ry para­graph. That’s gold.
  3. Count­ing The Cost: DR Con­go Demon­strates Dif­fi­cul­ty of Mea­sur­ing Mar­tyr­dom (Sarah Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Why do cal­cu­la­tions of Chris­tians killed for their faith world­wide each year range from 1,000 to 100,000? The rea­son large­ly comes down to one coun­try: the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of the Con­go (DRC).” Many sur­pris­ing pieces of infor­ma­tion. Worth­while.
  4. Book Review: See­ing Like A State (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “Peas­ants didn’t like per­ma­nent sur­names. Their own sys­tem was quite rea­son­able for them: John the bak­er was John Bak­er, John the black­smith was John Smith, John who lived under the hill was John Under­hill, John who was real­ly short was John Short. The same per­son might be John Smith and John Under­hill in dif­fer­ent con­texts, where his sta­tus as a black­smith or place of ori­gin was more impor­tant. But the gov­ern­ment insist­ed on giv­ing every­one a sin­gle per­ma­nent name, unique for the vil­lage, and track­ing who was in the same fam­i­ly as whom. Resis­tance was intense.” This is long and amaz­ing.
  5. Chi­na’s Suc­cess Explains Author­i­tar­i­an­is­m’s Allure (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg View): “…if there is a pow­er­ful sys­tem on the world stage, many of us will be drawn to it and seek to emu­late it, with­out always being con­scious of the rea­sons for those attrac­tions. This process is actu­al­ly not so dif­fer­ent from how neolib­er­al­ism attract­ed greater sup­port dur­ing the 1990s, when it was per­ceived as the major vic­tor on the world stage.”

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 87

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

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 Helped Cre­ate the Milo Trolling Play­book. You Should Stop Play­ing Right Into It (Ryan Hol­l­i­day, The Observ­er): “It was a mas­ter­ful bit of trolling that admit­ted­ly felt a lot more mean­ing­ful and excit­ing when I was younger than it does to me today: We encour­aged protests at col­leges by send­ing out­raged emails to var­i­ous activist groups and clubs on cam­pus­es where the movie was being screened. We sent fake tips to Gawk­er, which duti­ful­ly ate them up.” Fas­ci­nat­ing. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
  2. Meet the Pas­tor Who Chal­lenged Africa’s Old­est Dic­ta­tor with Sur­pris­ing Suc­cess (Ann Thomp­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Last sum­mer, Mawarire led nation­al protests against the gov­ern­ment, includ­ing call­ing for every­one to stay home from work for a day; hun­dreds of thou­sands did. Mawarire was arrest­ed in July and charged with incit­ing pub­lic vio­lence. After thou­sands ral­lied to sup­port him and a court tossed the charges, Mawarire and his fam­i­ly fled to Amer­i­ca. The pas­tor returned to Zim­bab­we alone last week.”
  3. Remind me what was so great about trade? (Tim Har­ford, Finan­cial Times): “…there are two ways to make cheese in the UK: the obvi­ous way, using cows, and the indi­rect way, by mak­ing cars and then trad­ing the cars in exchange for cheese. The British cheese indus­try is, in a very real sense, direct­ly com­pet­ing with the British car indus­try. Pro­tect one with a tar­iff, and you hurt the oth­er.”
  4. The Preach­er and the Sher­iff (Nathaniel Rich, NY Times): “The police said that Vic­tor White III, while detained in the back seat of a locked police car, his hands shack­led behind his back, had com­mit­ted sui­cide by shoot­ing him­self in the back with a hand­gun that an offi­cer had not found dur­ing an ear­li­er search.”
  5. Not ‘Lone Wolves’ After All: How ISIS Guides World’s Ter­ror Plots From Afar (Ruk­mi­ni Cal­li­machi, NY Times): “Inves­ti­ga­tion doc­u­ments from Europe show that a grow­ing share of attacks bear signs of con­tact with the Islam­ic State’s strong­hold, even though the attack­er was ini­tial­ly described as act­ing alone.”
  6. The Com­forts of the Bet­sy DeVos War (Ross Douthat, NY Times): “It’s not that lib­er­als aren’t gen­uine­ly wor­ried about every­thing that makes Trump­ism poten­tial­ly abnor­mal and un-repub­li­can and author­i­tar­i­an. But a more nor­mal threat to a deep-pock­et­ed inter­est group’s pref­er­ences still turned out to be a more nat­ur­al ral­ly­ing point than the specter of creep­ing Putin­ism.”

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.