Tag: health

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 185

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

In case you’re won­der­ing: I just don’t find sto­ries about the Rus­sia inves­ti­ga­tion or the gov­ern­ment shut­down inter­est­ing. I think they’re impor­tant, but few peo­ple are writ­ing things about them that catch my atten­tion. Rec­om­men­da­tions are wel­come.

Also, one of you men­tioned that you some­times can’t open the links. If you, being a broke col­lege stu­dent, ever can’t access an arti­cle because of a pay­wall, try putting http://outline.com/ in front of the link. I did it for the first arti­cle as an exam­ple. Hav­ing said that, please sup­port jour­nal­ism once you are able.

  1. Is Mar­i­jua­na as Safe as We Think? (Mal­colm Glad­well, The New York­er): “The authors assumed that alco­hol use among stu­dents would be a pre­dic­tor of vio­lent behav­ior, and that mar­i­jua­na use would pre­dict the oppo­site. In fact, those who used only mar­i­jua­na were three times more like­ly to be phys­i­cal­ly aggres­sive than abstain­ers were; those who used only alco­hol were 2.7 times more like­ly to be aggres­sive. Obser­va­tion­al stud­ies like these don’t estab­lish cau­sa­tion. But they invite the sort of research that could.”
    • This Reporter Took a Deep Look Into the Sci­ence of Smok­ing Pot. What He Found Is Scary. (Stephanie Mencimer, Moth­er Jones): “I smoked plen­ty of weed in high school and so did all my friends, and none of us jumped off a bal­cony or killed anyone—we could bare­ly get off the couch. But the mar­i­jua­na sold today is not what we smoked, which at 1 per­cent to 2 per­cent THC was the equiv­a­lent of smok­ing oregano. Today’s weed is insane­ly more potent, as are prod­ucts like “wax” and “shatter”—forms of butane hash oil designed to be vaped or dabbed that come pret­ty close to 100 per­cent THC. And these high-poten­cy prod­ucts usu­al­ly con­tain very lit­tle CBD oil, the ingre­di­ent in cannabis that’s sup­posed to account for many of its sup­posed health ben­e­fits.”
  2. Is Sun­screen the New Mar­garine? (Rowan Jacob­sen, Out­side): “Peo­ple of col­or rarely get melanoma. The rate is 26 per 100,000 in Cau­casians, 5 per 100,000 in His­pan­ics, and 1 per 100,000 in African Amer­i­cans. On the rare occa­sion when African Amer­i­cans do get melanoma, it’s par­tic­u­lar­ly lethal—but it’s most­ly a kind that occurs on the palms, soles, or under the nails and is not caused by sun expo­sure. At the same time, African Amer­i­cans suf­fer high rates of dia­betes, heart dis­ease, stroke, inter­nal can­cers, and oth­er dis­eases that seem to improve in the pres­ence of sun­light, of which they may well not be get­ting enough. Because of their genet­i­cal­ly high­er lev­els of melanin, they require more sun expo­sure to pro­duce com­pounds like vit­a­min D, and they are less able to store that vit­a­min for dark­er days. They have much to gain from the sun and lit­tle to fear.”
  3. Leav­ing Reli­gion at Home: Engag­ing Reli­gious Thought and Action in Amer­i­can Soci­ety (Nathalie Kier­sznows­ki, Stan­ford Pol­i­tics): “People’s beliefs about the world will inevitably influ­ence their posi­tions on issues like moral­i­ty, pol­i­tics, dress, gen­der, sex and more. Sim­i­lar­ly, politi­cians will nat­u­ral­ly sup­port leg­is­la­tion in accor­dance with their val­ues, reli­gious or not. Many politi­cians, like Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence, have faced crit­i­cism for allow­ing reli­gion to shape their polit­i­cal deci­sions. It would be unwar­rant­ed, though, to expect Pence to act ‘un-Chris­t­ian’ or ‘non-reli­gious’ exclu­sive­ly at his place of work. The notion of hav­ing both a ‘sec­u­lar pub­lic self’ and a ‘reli­gious pri­vate self’ is impos­si­ble: any pri­vate val­ue sys­tem will influ­ence deci­sions through­out all areas of life.”
  4. The case for going to bed at 2:30 am (Kate Shell­nut, Vox): “My faith doused our cul­tur­al pref­er­ence for ear­ly birds with bib­li­cal back­ing, too, mak­ing me feel even guilti­er. With­in Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cal­ism, many expect faith­ful Chris­tians to ded­i­cate the ‘first fruits’ of each day to ‘qui­et time’ with the Lord (prayers, devo­tion­al read­ing, Bible study). Researchers even found peo­ple to be more ‘spir­i­tu­al­ly aware’ ear­ly in the morn­ings. Faced with these expec­ta­tions, I real­ly did ques­tion whether my habits were sin­ful: Was I being self­ish by stay­ing up late? Was I putting pro­duc­tiv­i­ty over the nat­ur­al pat­terns of work and rest?”
  5. China’s Gulag for Mus­lims (Mustafa Aky­ol, New York Times): “…Russia’s gulags are long gone, as is the Com­mu­nist Par­ty of the Sovi­et Union that oper­at­ed them. But now anoth­er dic­ta­tor­ship, ruled by anoth­er Com­mu­nist Par­ty, is oper­at­ing a new chain of pris­ons that evoke mem­o­ry of the gulags — more mod­ern, more high-tech, but no less enslav­ing.”
    • Where Did the One Mil­lion Fig­ure for Deten­tions in Xinjiang’s Camps Come From? (Jes­si­ca Batke, Chi­naFile): “Two key stud­ies inde­pen­dent­ly arrived around the one mil­lion mark, by using lim­it­ed data sam­ples to esti­mate what per­cent­age of the eth­nic minor­i­ty Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion is detained. Both stud­ies arrive at a deten­tion rate of 10 per­cent —at least in some areas of Xinjiang—suggesting that just over one mil­lion of the region’s 11 mil­lion eth­nic Uighur pop­u­la­tion could be in the camps.”
  6. Con­querors of the Courts (David Mont­gomery, Wash­ing­ton Post): “The soci­ety itself lob­bies for no poli­cies; it nev­er signs ami­cus briefs or rep­re­sents clients in cas­es. No one at Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety head­quar­ters in Wash­ing­ton dic­tat­ed Barnett’s moves or told him how to advo­cate for what posi­tions. It’s just that at a few gath­er­ings made pos­si­ble by the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety that Bar­nett hap­pened to attend, synaps­es fired, a cor­ner of the hive mind engaged, and Bar­nett took it from there. Mul­ti­ply that chem­istry tens of thou­sands of times over the past 36 years and you have the Fed­er­al­ist Society’s true source of pow­er.”
  7. Elect­ed lead­ers who weaponize reli­gion are play­ing a dan­ger­ous game (Tul­si Gab­bard, The Hill): “While I absolute­ly believe in the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state as a neces­si­ty to the health of our nation, no Amer­i­can should be asked to renounce his or her faith or mem­ber­ship in a faith-based, ser­vice orga­ni­za­tion in order to hold pub­lic office.” Gab­bard is a Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­gress­woman rep­re­sent­ing Hawaii.

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 the unfor­tu­nate­ly date-spe­cif­ic Read­ing The Whole Bible in 2016: A FAQ (Gospel Coali­tion, Justin Tay­lor): “There are about 775,000 words in the Bible. Divid­ed by 365, that’s 2,123 words a day. The aver­age per­son reads 200 to 250 words per minute. So 2,123 words/day divid­ed by 225 words/minute equals 9.4 min­utes a day.” This arti­cle is full of good advice for what could be the best com­mit­ment you make all year. Do it! (first shared in vol­ume 31 — use­ful for any year)

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent.

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 158

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.

Before I share this week’s links: yes, I am aware that Antho­ny Kennedy retired from the Supreme Court and think it is like­ly to be one of the most sig­nif­i­cant polit­i­cal devel­op­ments of my life­time. I don’t have any links about it because not much inter­est­ing has been writ­ten about it yet sim­ply because Trump has not nom­i­nat­ed a suc­ces­sor yet. Once he does, please let me know if you find any­thing fas­ci­nat­ing about either his nom­i­nee or the process.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Sus­pect in Stan­ford church mur­der kills self (Palo Alto Dai­ly News): this is a trag­ic and freaky sto­ry. A less hor­rif­ic detail which amused me: “Craw­ford stayed on at Stan­ford until 1976, but he found ways to exact revenge against the uni­ver­si­ty, Her­hold said. ‘He began steal­ing stuff from offices,’ said Her­hold, who added exam­ples, includ­ing a human skull, a walk­ing cane giv­en to uni­ver­si­ty founder Leland Stan­ford and rare books. ‘The kick­er was he went down to a print shop and got a degree from Stan­ford,’ he said, using a blank Stan­ford diplo­ma.”
  2. Ebo­la Deaths Rise As Patients Turn to Mir­a­cles Over Med­i­cine (Grif­fin Paul Jack­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Two Ebo­la patients died last month after flee­ing a hos­pi­tal iso­la­tion ward so they could be tak­en to a prayer meet­ing, where they exposed up to 50 oth­ers.” Wow. Bad the­ol­o­gy leads to tragedy. Some­body nev­er taught them Leviti­cus 13:46. If you’re infec­tious, pay atten­tion to the phrase “call for” in James 5:14–16 and ask the elders to come to you. Quar­an­tine Laws and the Bible (Lar­ry Ball, The Aquila Report) is worth read­ing in this regard.
  3. The Span­ish Inqui­si­tion Was a Mod­er­ate Court by the Stan­dard of Its Time (Ed Con­don, Nation­al Review): “Because it was a seri­ous court, metic­u­lous case files and court records were kept. Libraries in Tole­do, Sala­man­ca, and oth­er cities are home to thou­sands of such case files. In the sec­ond half of the 20th cen­tu­ry, Hen­ry Kamen and oth­er his­to­ri­ans were giv­en access to them. What they dis­cov­ered changed the schol­ar­ly under­stand­ing of the Inqui­si­tion. So, what of those dank dun­geons and hot pok­ers? Well, for a start, the jails of the Inqui­si­tion were uni­ver­sal­ly known to be hygien­ic and well main­tained. They were nei­ther built nor run as places of pun­ish­ment. The stan­dard of care that inmates received was high enough that pris­on­ers held by the Crown would often peti­tion to be moved to Inqui­si­tion jails. There are record­ed cas­es of crim­i­nals com­mit­ting pub­lic heresy with the express pur­pose of being held and tried by the Inqui­si­tion, rather than the sec­u­lar courts.” This is not a fringe view among schol­ars, but is def­i­nite­ly con­trary to the pop­u­lar under­stand­ing of the Span­ish Inqui­si­tion.
  4. Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez on her Catholic faith and the urgency of a crim­i­nal jus­tice reform (Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez, Amer­i­ca): “By nature, a soci­ety that for­gives and reha­bil­i­tates its peo­ple is a soci­ety that for­gives and trans­forms itself. That takes a rad­i­cal kind of love, a secret of which is giv­en in the Lord’s Prayer: For­give us our tres­pass­es, as we for­give those who tres­pass against us. And let us not for­get the guid­ing prin­ci­ple of “the least among us” found in Matthew: that we are com­pelled to care for the hun­gry, thirsty, home­less, naked, sick and, yes—the impris­oned.” This, of course, is the social­ist can­di­date who unseat­ed pow­er­ful incum­bent Joe Crow­ley in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry. She is almost cer­tain to become the youngest woman ever elect­ed to Con­gress.
    • Relat­ed: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ists of Amer­i­ca Mem­ber­ship Surges After Alexan­dria Ocasio-Cortez’s Stun­ning Vic­to­ry (Gideon Resnick, The Dai­ly Beast): “Accord­ing to Lawrence Drey­fuss, a pro­gram asso­ciate for DSA, the orga­ni­za­tion saw a surge of 1,152 new mem­ber­ships on Wednesday—about 35 times more sign-ups than on an aver­age day. The last major mem­ber­ship bump DSA expe­ri­enced was in the month fol­low­ing Pres­i­dent Trump’s elec­tion, dur­ing which time they had about six times more sign-ups than in the pre­vi­ous month.” Note that the orga­ni­za­tion itself is still rel­a­tive­ly small (40,000 mem­bers).
    • Pos­si­bly relat­ed: Democ­rats are los­ing the mil­len­ni­al vote and need to change mes­sage (Cas Mud­de, The Guardian): “a recent Reuters/Ipsos mega poll of 16,000 respon­dents, found that the Democ­rats are los­ing ground with mil­len­ni­als. While mil­len­ni­als still pre­fer the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty over the Repub­li­cans, that sup­port is tank­ing. In just two years, it dropped sharply from 55% to 46%. Mean­while, their sup­port for Repub­li­cans has remained rough­ly sta­ble in the past two years, falling from 28% to 27%.… their dis­like of the Repub­li­cans should not be inter­pret­ed as a like of Democ­rats.” Caveats apply: this is based on the results of one poll.
    • Def­i­nite­ly relat­ed: Dear Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ists Who Think You’re Hav­ing a Moment: It’s Me, a Lib­er­tar­i­an, Who’s Been Through This. (Rob­by Soave, Rea­son): “Demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism, the ide­ol­o­gy with which Oca­sio-Cortez iden­ti­fies, appears to be hav­ing a polit­i­cal moment. To which I say, as a lib­er­tar­i­an who has been through the whole an-idea-whose-time-has-final­ly-come expe­ri­ence: good luck with that, com­rades. The signs are easy to mis­read.”
  5. Right-to-work laws make unions work hard­er for their mem­bers (Chris­tos Makridis, The Hill): “RTW [Right To Work] laws force unions to become more com­pet­i­tive. When unions are guar­an­teed a per­ma­nent income stream, they don’t need to work as hard to win the hearts and minds of their employ­ees; that is, they face weak­er incen­tives to pro­vide valu­able ser­vices. The adop­tion of RTW laws changes that by mak­ing union dues a vol­un­tary con­tri­bu­tion.” Yes, this is our very own recent­ly-grad­u­at­ed Chris­tos.
  6. Are Satanists of the MS-13 gang an under-cov­ered sto­ry on the reli­gion beat? (Julia Duin, GetRe­li­gion): this is a fas­ci­nat­ing bit of news com­men­tary. My favorite bit: “How does one get out of MS-13? An opin­ion piece in the New York Times this past April gives a sur­pris­ing response: Go to a Pen­te­costal church.” High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
  7. How The Democ­rats Lost Their Way On Immi­gra­tion (Peter Bein­ert, The Atlantic): “Lib­er­als must take seri­ous­ly Amer­i­cans’ yearn­ing for social cohe­sion. To pro­mote both mass immi­gra­tion and greater eco­nom­ic redis­tri­b­u­tion, they must con­vince more native-born white Amer­i­cans that immi­grants will not weak­en the bonds of nation­al iden­ti­ty. This means dust­ing off a con­cept many on the left cur­rent­ly hate: assim­i­la­tion.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.

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.

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 101

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 Curi­ous Rise Of The ‘White Left” As A Chi­nese Inter­net Insult (Chenchen Zhang, Open Democ­ra­cy): “If you look at any thread about Trump, Islam or immi­gra­tion on a Chi­nese social media plat­form these days, it’s impos­si­ble to avoid encoun­ter­ing the term baizuo (白左), or lit­er­al­ly, the ‘white left’.… Crit­i­cisms of the ‘white left’ against the back­ground of the Euro­pean refugee cri­sis fit espe­cial­ly well with the ‘ris­ing Chi­na’ ver­sus ‘Europe in decline’ nar­ra­tive.”
  2. The True Heart­break Of Read­ing The Bible (Rebec­ca McLaugh­lin, Ver­i­tas): “When we humans make metaphors, we’re notic­ing con­nec­tions.  Love is a sick­ness. Life is a marathon. Par­ents can be heli­copters.  But if the mes­sage of the Bible is true – if there is a God who cre­at­ed the uni­verse  – then bib­li­cal metaphors are dif­fer­ent. God did not notice how human fathers love their chil­dren and decide to call him­self our Father (e.g. Isa­iah 63:16, Matthew 6:9).  Rather, God cre­at­ed father­hood, so that the best of human fathers could give us some small glimpse of how he loves us.”
  3. Beau­ty sleep is a real thing, research shows (Michelle Roberts, BBC): “Beau­ty sleep is a real thing, accord­ing to researchers who have shown that peo­ple who miss out on sleep do appear less attrac­tive to oth­ers. A cou­ple of bad nights is enough to make a per­son look “sig­nif­i­cant­ly” more ugly, their sleep exper­i­ments sug­gest.” Bad news for Stan­ford stu­dents.
  4. Way More Amer­i­cans May Be Athe­ists Than We Thought (Daniel Cox, Five Thir­ty Eight): I sus­pect that even the high­est esti­mate in the arti­cle is low­er than what many at Stan­ford assume.
  5. The Dam­age We Would Do To Each Oth­er If We Had “The Expla­na­tion”  (Richard Beck, per­son­al blog): “Imag­ine, if you will, that the Bible gave us an expla­na­tion for why there is so much pain and suf­fer­ing in the world. Imag­ine that the Bible gave us ‘The Expla­na­tion’ in a spe­cif­ic text, some­thing we could eas­i­ly quote and share…. Then imag­ine how The Expla­na­tion would be used.”
  6. What Makes A Par­ent? (Ian Park­er, New York­er): “…at the end she stood to make a skep­ti­cal point or two. In her view, the speak­ers had under­es­ti­mat­ed the legal con­se­quences of mak­ing a per­son a par­ent. The panel’s chair, a judge, asked Rabin to stop lec­tur­ing the room. It was a pecu­liar moment. Rabin—who is gay, and a par­ent, and who has no argu­ment with Barone’s vic­to­ry, and who is admired for her own chal­lenge to Ali­son D., in 2010—seemed to have been cast as a reac­tionary, intrud­ing on a cel­e­bra­tion.” This is a long, fas­ci­nat­ing piece which (in my view but not the author’s) high­lights some of the neg­a­tive con­se­quences of the LGBT rev­o­lu­tion in soci­ety.

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 83

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting

There are a few more links than nor­mal because I missed send­ing out last week­s’s email.

  1. North­west­ern Grad Stu­dent Sues Evanston Police; Dash­cam Arrest Video Released (Lau­ra Podes­ta, ABC Chica­go Eye­wit­ness News): Lawrence is an alum­nus of our min­istry. This one hits close to home.
  2. The Sex Bureau­cra­cy (Jacob Gersen & Jean­nie Suk Gersen, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “Under the rubric of pre­vent­ing sex­u­al vio­lence, col­leges are now deep in the busi­ness of pro­vid­ing advice on sex and rela­tion­ships. And they’re not good at it.” Even from a sec­u­lar per­spec­tive, col­lege admin­is­tra­tors are act­ing absurd­ly.
  3. We’re Liv­ing Through The First World Cyber­war — But Just Haven’t Called It That (Marin Belam, The Guardian): “It is impor­tant to remem­ber that the inter­net orig­i­nal­ly came from defence research….. we are liv­ing through the first time it is being used in anger.”
  4. Putin’s Real Long Game (Mol­ly McK­ew, Politi­co): “What both admin­is­tra­tions fail to real­ize is that the West is already at war, whether it wants to be or not…. This war seeks, at home and abroad, to erode our val­ues, our democ­ra­cy, and our insti­tu­tion­al strength; to dilute our abil­i­ty to sort fact from fic­tion, or moral right from wrong; and to con­vince us to make deci­sions against our own best inter­ests.”
  5. Sug­ar, Explained (Julia Bel­luz and Javier Zarraci­na, Vox): “The back­lash against sug­ar, and the sci­ence behind it, is a lot more com­pli­cat­ed than it seems.”
  6. The Life And Death Of Evangelicalism’s Lit­tle Mag­a­zine (John Schmalzbauer,Comment): this was extreme­ly inter­est­ing to me, although prob­a­bly less so to many oth­ers.
  7. When There’s No Ther­a­pist, How Can The Depressed Find Help? (Joanne Sil­bern­er, NPR): Dif­fi­cult to excerpt — very inter­est­ing sto­ry.
  8. Some­times the Peo­ple Need to Call the Experts (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg View): There are some good insights here. My favorite line, though, was this: “It’s a good rule of gov­er­nance that pol­i­cy can­not race too far ahead of the cit­i­zen­ry, and I don’t view fac­ul­ty as a class of peo­ple well-suit­ed for that kind of humil­i­ty.”
  9. The Ide­o­log­i­cal Rea­sons Why Democ­rats Have Neglect­ed Local Pol­i­tics (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “The pro­gres­sive project is ulti­mate­ly about work­ing toward a soci­ety built on one uni­fied vision of pol­i­cy and cul­ture, rather than a diverse array of poli­cies and cul­tures.”
  10. Intel­lec­tu­als For Trump (Kele­fah San­neh, New York­er):  “We have grown accus­tomed to hear­ing sto­ries about the lib­er­al bub­ble, but the real sto­ry of this year’s elec­tion was about the con­ser­v­a­tive bub­ble: the results showed how sharply the pri­or­i­ties of the movement’s lead­ers dif­fered from those of their puta­tive fol­low­ers.”
  11. Harvard’s George J. Bor­jas (Robert Ver­bruggen, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Per­haps odd­ly for some­one who gained immense­ly from mov­ing from one coun­try to anoth­er, Bor­jas has spent much of his career try­ing to answer the ques­tions of who los­es from immi­gra­tion and how much.”

Things Glen Found Entertaining

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.