Tag: how the church is perceived

TGFI, Volume 542: the humanities backstory and overhyped Chinese academia

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Inter­est­ing

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues like­ly to be of inter­est to Chris­tians in col­lege. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Multi­bil­lion-Dol­lar Foun­da­tion That Con­trols the Human­i­ties (Tyler Austin Harp­er, The Atlantic): “Today, no sin­gle enti­ty, includ­ing the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, has a more pro­found influ­ence on the fis­cal health and cul­tur­al out­put of the human­i­ties than the Mel­lon Foun­da­tion. The Nation­al Endow­ment for the Human­i­ties’ grant bud­get was $78 mil­lion in 2024 (its over­all bud­get was less than half of what it was in 1980, when adjust­ed for infla­tion). Mel­lon award­ed $540 mil­lion in grants that same year; its endow­ment sits at rough­ly $8 bil­lion. Mellon’s largesse is bad­ly need­ed, espe­cial­ly as the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has threat­ened fur­ther cuts to the NEH. But the foundation’s vir­tu­al monop­oly on human­i­ties fund­ing means that it has the pow­er to remake entire fields accord­ing to its desires. And in recent years, under the lead­er­ship of Eliz­a­beth Alexan­der, who became the organization’s pres­i­dent in 2018, Mel­lon has embraced an under­stand­ing of the human­i­ties that is much more util­i­tar­i­an, and far more polit­i­cal, than the one put for­ward by the 1964 com­mis­sion.”
    • Unlocked and gen­uine­ly shock­ing to me. One of the key insights: “The human­i­ties aren’t broke because they went woke. The human­i­ties went woke in large part _because_ they were broke. As oth­er donors, the gov­ern­ment, and uni­ver­si­ties them­selves all but aban­doned these fields, Mel­lon became a life­line.”
  2. The Pop­u­lar Pro­gres­sive Pod­cast Call­ing Evan­gel­i­cals ‘Can­cer’ (Bon­nie Kris­t­ian, The Free Press): “…it’s impos­si­ble to imag­ine the vit­ri­ol she directs at [evan­gel­i­cals] being tar­get­ed at any oth­er reli­gious group by a major media fig­ure with so lit­tle con­se­quence. Take one clip that has cir­cu­lat­ed among evan­gel­i­cals recent­ly. I assumed its cap­tion on X, ‘White Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tian­i­ty is a can­cer,’ was intend­ed to scan­dal­ize with the most incen­di­ary quote. I thought wrong. If any­thing, the cap­tion under­sold a slan­der­ous, incu­ri­ous, unse­ri­ous screed that informed Welch’s view­ers that evan­gel­i­cals are ‘the worst peo­ple in our coun­try.’ They are, Welch says, peo­ple who want oth­ers to suf­fer, who belong to a ‘cult.’ And for Welch, this kind of lan­guage is par for the course. ‘I detest, with every mol­e­cule… in my being, evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tian­i­ty,’ she said in May.”
  3. Get Mar­ried Young (Brad Wilcox, Com­pact): “First, the cul­ture is telling you to lean into work and trav­el. But work­ing for the man and ‘trav­el­ing to Thai­land’ is not going to bring you the ful­fill­ment you think it will. Sec­ond, you will min­i­mize your odds of being mis­er­able and max­i­mize your odds of liv­ing a mean­ing­ful and hap­py life by get­ting mar­ried and hav­ing kids. So, don’t wait to embark on life’s most impor­tant jour­ney. Third, do not assume that you can wait until your thir­ties to find a spouse and start your fam­i­ly. If you wait, you may miss out.”
    • Lots of good data in this one. The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at UVA.
  4. Don’t Trust the Rank­ings That Put China’s Uni­ver­si­ties on Top (Ariel Pro­cac­cia, New York Times): “The gap between the rank­ings and real­i­ty can be explained by Goodhart’s law, which says that when a mea­sure becomes a tar­get, it ceas­es to be a good mea­sure. It’s like try­ing to cure a fever by icing the ther­mome­ter: You’ve cooled the instru­ment, but the patient is still burn­ing up. Chi­na has made suc­cess in glob­al uni­ver­si­ty rank­ings a nation­al pol­i­cy goal, in the process cre­at­ing incen­tives that pri­or­i­tize the appear­ance of excel­lence over the health of the research envi­ron­ment.”
  5. Two arti­cles about preva­lent sec­u­lar sex­u­al ethics:
    • Ope­nAI Exec­u­tive Who Opposed ‘Adult Mode’ Fired for Sex­u­al Dis­crim­i­na­tion (Geor­gia Wells & Sam Schech­n­er, Wall Street Jour­nal): “Ope­nAI has cut ties with one of its top safe­ty exec­u­tives, on the grounds of sex­u­al dis­crim­i­na­tion, after she voiced oppo­si­tion to the con­tro­ver­sial roll­out of AI erot­i­ca in its Chat­G­PT prod­uct.… Before her fir­ing, Beier­meis­ter told col­leagues that she opposed adult mode, and wor­ried it would have harm­ful effects for users, peo­ple famil­iar with her remarks said. She also told col­leagues that she believed OpenAI’s mech­a­nisms to stop child-exploita­tion con­tent weren’t effec­tive enough, and that the com­pa­ny couldn’t suf­fi­cient­ly wall off adult con­tent from teens, the peo­ple said.”
    • The Sexbot Rev­o­lu­tion Is Already Here (Debra Soh, The Free Press): “Though sex dolls—meaning human‑like, anatom­i­cal­ly accu­rate, anthro­po­mor­phic figurines—were once believed to be used only by social­ly inept weirdos, today near­ly 10 per­cent of men in the U.S. have bought or owned one. And it’s not just the guys; 6 per­cent of women in the U.S. have done the same.… The aver­age sex doll own­er is a mid­dle-aged het­ero­sex­u­al man who is sin­gle or divorced, high-school edu­cat­ed, and employed. Research has shown that doll own­ers have sex with a doll about 11 times a month and sex with a human part­ner about 2.6 times a month. In con­trast, non–doll own­ers have sex with a human part­ner about 4.5 times a month.”
      • I am not con­vinced the num­bers in this arti­cle are reli­able (ten per­cent of guys sounds like a lot), but even if the num­bers are off this is kin­da wild.
  6. It’s Time for Amer­i­ca to Admit That It Has a Mar­i­jua­na Prob­lem (Edi­to­r­i­al Board, New York Times): “…sup­port­ers of legal­iza­tion pre­dict­ed that it would bring few down­sides. In our edi­to­ri­als, we described mar­i­jua­na addic­tion and depen­dence as ‘rel­a­tive­ly minor prob­lems.’ Many advo­cates went fur­ther and claimed that mar­i­jua­na was a harm­less drug that might even bring net health ben­e­fits. They also said that legal­iza­tion might not lead to greater use. It is now clear that many of these pre­dic­tions were wrong.… At least one in 10 peo­ple who use mar­i­jua­na devel­ops an addic­tion, a sim­i­lar share as with alco­hol. Even some who do not devel­op an addic­tion can still use it too much. Peo­ple who are fre­quent­ly stoned can strug­gle to hold a job or take care of their fam­i­lies.”
    • Unlocked.
  7. A Stan­ford Exper­i­ment to Pair 5,000 Sin­gles Has Tak­en Over Cam­pus (Jas­mine Li, Wall Street Jour­nal): “More than 5,000 Stan­ford stu­dents have used Date Drop at a school with about 7,500 under­grad­u­ates. It has spread to 10 oth­er col­leges includ­ing Colum­bia, Prince­ton and MIT, and Date Drop just raised $2.1 mil­lion in ven­ture-cap­i­tal fund­ing. The growth, fans say, reflects a real­i­ty about many col­lege kids: They’re intim­i­dat­ed by real-life courtship and over­whelmed by the end­less scroll of dat­ing apps. Entre­pre­neur­ial stu­dents have found huge demand for alter­nate match­mak­ing tools.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

TGFI, Volume 536: Christian nationalism and Jesus in Home Alone

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Inter­est­ing

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues like­ly to be of inter­est to Chris­tians in col­lege. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

As the year comes to a close, remem­ber that this post is the over­flow of a non­prof­it min­istry. Com­pil­ing these links is some­thing I do for the stu­dents I min­is­ter to at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, shar­ing it here is just me mak­ing it avail­able more broad­ly. You can donate to sup­port the min­istry if you are ever so inclined (you can even make gifts via a DAF or with stock). Don’t give to pay for the con­tent — it only takes me five min­utes a week to take the email I send to the Chi Alpha stu­dents and refor­mat it for this plat­form. If you choose to give, give because you believe in the mis­sion of reach­ing Stan­ford stu­dents with a thought­ful gospel mes­sage.

And that’s the last time I’ll share about that here until next Decem­ber.

Whether you choose to give or not, I hope this email bless­es you and helps you think about God and our world more clear­ly.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Gift link: What We Get Wrong About Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism (Mol­ly Worthen, New York Times): “I got a taste of this vari­ety and dis­agree­ment when I vis­it­ed King’s Park Inter­na­tion­al Church in Durham, N.C. Chris­tians there look for God to heal the sick, reveal prophet­ic mes­sages and per­form oth­er signs and won­ders. The stranger thing, per­haps, is that both Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats attend. The church’s 120 elders, dea­cons and employ­ees are split ‘about half and half, Repub­li­can and Demo­c­rat,’ Reg­gie Rober­son, the pas­tor, told me. The sev­er­al hun­dred peo­ple who wor­ship at King’s Park on an aver­age Sun­day are a mix of races, nation­al back­grounds, ages and income lev­els.”
    • Worth a read. Dr. Worthen is, of course, a well-known adult con­vert to Chris­tian­i­ty. While she writes pos­i­tive­ly about charis­mat­ic Chris­tians here, she her­self is more of a South­ern Bap­tist. She’s a pro­fes­sor of his­to­ry at UNC.
  2. Gift link: Chris­tian­i­ty Is a Dan­ger­ous Faith (David French, New York Times): “There is an unspo­ken impli­ca­tion that peo­ple would actu­al­ly like Chris­tians if we behaved more like Christ. But no. That’s demon­stra­bly wrong. It’s true that peo­ple want to receive love and com­pas­sion, and that when they encounter Chris­tians who love them and serve them, they tend to like them. Many peo­ple do not, how­ev­er, appre­ci­ate it when a Chris­t­ian loves and serves their ene­mies. They absolute­ly do not like it when a Chris­t­ian refus­es to join their polit­i­cal cru­sade.”
  3. Some inter­na­tion­al Christ­mas sto­ries:
    • This Christ­mas will be even hard­er for China’s Chris­tians (Chris­t­ian Shep­herd and Huiy­ee Chiew, Wash­ing­ton Post): “While Zion has faced the most pres­sure, about half a dozen oth­er unreg­is­tered church­es have been sub­ject to police raids as well. Last week, hun­dreds of police offi­cers in riot gear descend­ed on a small town in Zhe­jiang province and arrest­ed two local pas­tors and dozens of Chris­tians, accord­ing to videos and accounts of the inci­dent shared with The Wash­ing­ton Post.… ‘The gov­ern­ment is inher­ent­ly sus­pi­cious of reli­gious com­mu­ni­ties, espe­cial­ly Chris­t­ian groups,’ said Kar­rie Koe­sel, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor spe­cial­iz­ing in Chi­nese pol­i­tics and reli­gion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame. Bei­jing views orga­nized reli­gion that pro­motes an alter­na­tive world­view and ‘answers to a high­er pow­er’ as poten­tial­ly an exis­ten­tial threat to its grip on pow­er, Koe­sel said. Church­es, mosques and oth­er places of wor­ship have faced intense pres­sure to accept strict gov­ern­ment over­sight. State-approved reli­gious lead­ers must sub­mit their ser­mons and pub­li­ca­tions for approval to ensure that they teach the ‘cor­rect under­stand­ing’ of the­ol­o­gy.”
    • Gaza’s tiny Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty tries to cap­ture the hol­i­day spir­it dur­ing the cease­fire (Mari­am Fam, Asso­ci­at­ed Press): “Tarazi and much of the rest of Gaza’s tiny Pales­tin­ian Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty are try­ing to cap­ture some of the season’s spir­it despite the destruc­tion and uncer­tain­ty that sur­round them. He clings to hope and the faith that he said has seen him through the war. ‘I feel like our joy over Christ’s birth must sur­pass all the bit­ter­ness that we’ve been through,’ he said. He’s been shel­ter­ing for more than two years at the Holy Fam­i­ly Church com­pound in Gaza.… He prays for peace and free­dom for the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple. ‘Our faith and our joy over Christ’s birth are stronger than all cir­cum­stances,’ he said.”
  4. How the Bible Helped Smash the Crown (Meir Solove­ichik, The Free Press): “Our pol­i­tics is con­sumed by cul­ture wars linked to religion—religious free­dom is a sub­ject dom­i­nat­ing debates in the Supreme Court. But the fact remains that shorn of bib­li­cal faith, no cogent expla­na­tion can be giv­en for the doc­trine of equal­i­ty that lies at the heart of the Amer­i­can creed. Indeed, the oth­er sources of antiq­ui­ty to which the Founders turned for inspiration—the philoso­phers of Greece and the states­men of Rome—denied human equal­i­ty and held a world­view that there were those des­tined to rule and oth­ers born to serve.”
  5. Dis­cov­er­ing God in Hamas tun­nels, hostages led a nation­al trend (Dina Kraft, Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor): “Sev­er­al recent stud­ies in Israel back up anec­do­tal evi­dence of an uptick in reli­gious con­nec­tion in response to Oct. 7 and the war that fol­lowed. In a poll by Hid­dush, an orga­ni­za­tion that advo­cates for the sep­a­ra­tion of reli­gion and state, 25% of respon­dents said those sem­i­nal events strength­ened their faith in God. Fifty-five per­cent said they had not impact­ed their faith, and 7% said they had weak­ened it. Researchers at The Hebrew Uni­ver­si­ty found in a sur­vey of stu­dents that one-third expe­ri­enced an increase in spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, while 9% said it decreased.”
  6. The diver­si­ty over­cor­rec­tion in the work­place (Megan McAr­dle, Wash­ing­ton Post): “For some mys­te­ri­ous rea­son, peo­ple con­sis­tent­ly over­es­ti­mate the minor­i­ty share of the pop­u­la­tion, which made the White­ness of news­rooms, Hol­ly­wood stu­dios and aca­d­e­m­ic depart­ments look more unfair than it was.… even if [there had not been past dis­crim­i­na­tion], news­rooms, writer’s rooms and class­rooms would have been very White because most Amer­i­cans born in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s were White. I sus­pect peo­ple for­got about these cohort effects because so much of the DEI dis­course came up around col­lege admis­sions, where diver­si­ty can be achieved rel­a­tive­ly speed­i­ly: admit a racial­ly bal­anced class four years in a row, and voilà, you ‘look like Amer­i­ca.’ But a large cor­po­rate employ­er often has a work­force span­ning 40 years, not four. Rebal­anc­ing that through rep­re­sen­ta­tive hir­ing would take decades. The DEI cham­pi­ons didn’t want to wait that long.”
    • McArdle’s point about the dif­fer­ence between cor­po­ra­tions and uni­ver­si­ties is an impor­tant one. It also explains why under­grad­u­ate pop­u­la­tions are far more diverse than uni­ver­si­ty fac­ul­ty and admin­is­tra­tions.
  7. Gift link: The Truth Physics Can No Longer Ignore (Adam Frank, The Atlantic): “To tru­ly under­stand liv­ing sys­tems as self-orga­nized, autonomous agents, physi­cists need to aban­don their ‘just the par­ti­cles, ma’am’ men­tal­i­ty. One of physi­cists’ great talents—starting with the laws of sim­ple parts (such as atoms) and work­ing up to a com­plex whole—cannot ful­ly account for cells, ani­mals, or peo­ple.”
    • The author is an astro­physi­cist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Rochester.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

TGFI, Volume 533: college disability, European dysfunction, and cloning

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Inter­est­ing

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues like­ly to be of inter­est to Chris­tians in col­lege. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Mis­un­der­stand­ing Porn (Matthew Lof­tus, Mere Ortho­doxy): “There are many ways in which peo­ple mis­un­der­stand porn, but per­haps the best way to sum­ma­rize the cor­rec­tions nec­es­sary is to say that porn is not the same as phys­i­cal sex and porn addic­tion is not mere­ly a mat­ter of sex­u­al temp­ta­tion.… Why can’t a porn addict’s habit be bro­ken by sex with his wife? The sim­plest answer is to ask anoth­er ques­tion: could a Chris­t­ian husband’s temp­ta­tion to idol­a­try be bro­ken by sex with his wife? Of course not. Nei­ther would his anger or pride. It is like ask­ing if a per­son addict­ed to cocaine could have their desire sat­is­fied by eat­ing a deli­cious steak.”
  2. Accom­mo­da­tion Nation (Rose Horow­itch, The Atlantic): “Over the past decade and a half, how­ev­er, the share of stu­dents at selec­tive uni­ver­si­ties who qual­i­fy for accommodations—often, extra time on tests—has grown at a breath­tak­ing pace. At the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, the num­ber has more than tripled over the past eight years; at UC Berke­ley, it has near­ly quin­tu­pled over the past 15 years.… Paul Gra­ham Fish­er, a Stan­ford pro­fes­sor who served as co-chair of the university’s dis­abil­i­ty task force, told me, ‘I have had con­ver­sa­tions with peo­ple in the Stan­ford admin­is­tra­tion. They’ve talked about at what point can we say no? What if it hits 50 or 60 per­cent? At what point do you just say ‘We can’t do this’?’ This year, 38 per­cent of Stan­ford under­grad­u­ates are reg­is­tered as hav­ing a dis­abil­i­ty; in the fall quar­ter, 24 per­cent of under­grad­u­ates were receiv­ing aca­d­e­m­ic or hous­ing accom­mo­da­tions.”
  3. I Set A Trap To Catch Stu­dents Cheat­ing With AI. The Result Was Deflat­ing (Will Teague, Huff­in­g­ton Post): “I received 122 paper sub­mis­sions. Of those, the Tro­jan horse eas­i­ly iden­ti­fied 33 AI-gen­er­at­ed papers. I sent these stats to all the stu­dents and gave them the oppor­tu­ni­ty to admit to using AI before they were locked into fail­ing the class. Anoth­er 14 out­ed them­selves. In oth­er words, near­ly 39% of the sub­mis­sions were at least par­tial­ly writ­ten by AI.… Let me tell you why the Tro­jan horse worked. It is because stu­dents do not know what they do not know.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  4. The Bible Is on Tri­al in Europe (Kara Kennedy, The Free Press): “Räsä­nen has been a mem­ber of par­lia­ment in Fin­land since 1995. She’s also a mem­ber of the nation’s Evan­gel­i­cal Luther­an Church—which in 2019 announced its offi­cial spon­sor­ship of an LGBT Pride event. In response, she wrote: ‘How can the Church’s doc­tri­nal foun­da­tion, the #Bible, be com­pat­i­ble with the lift­ing up of shame and sin as a sub­ject of pride?’ She post­ed this com­ment along­side a pic­ture of the Bible verse Romans 1:27, which describes homo­sex­u­al­i­ty as shame­ful: ‘Men com­mit­ted shame­ful acts with oth­er men, and received in them­selves the due penal­ty for their error.’ The next day, she opened her morn­ing news­pa­per to find out that she was being inves­ti­gat­ed by police for hate speech.… Dur­ing her time as min­is­ter of the Inte­ri­or of Fin­land, between 2011 and 2015, she’d over­seen the police. Now, they were inter­ro­gat­ing her as an offi­cial part of an investigation—one that has dragged on ever since, final­ly reach­ing the Supreme Court of Fin­land last month.”
  5. 4 Ways to Avoid Sex­u­al Sin (Sam All­ber­ry, Cross­way): “Life has a grain to it. Like paper and wood, it has its own inbuilt direc­tion­al­i­ty. The uni­verse is fash­ioned in such a way that it has an under­ly­ing struc­ture. It fol­lows a cer­tain pat­tern with cer­tain con­tours. In order to live well we need to live in a way that runs with this grain and not against it. This is where the book of Proverbs comes in.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  6. The Trag­ic Hys­te­ria of Abor­tion (Bryan Caplan, Sub­stack): “Yes, the vast major­i­ty of women who get abor­tions are glad they got them. But once they meet their babies, the vast major­i­ty of women denied abor­tions dis­cov­er that they total­ly want their babies. This mas­sive sta­tus quo bias makes it hard to sim­ply ‘trust women.’ Which women should we trust — the ones who abort­ed, or the ones who couldn’t? But in the end, it is the women who were denied abor­tion who are more reli­able. If shy peo­ple who don’t go to a par­ty are glad they stayed home, and equal­ly shy peo­ple who were pres­sured to go to a par­ty are equal­ly glad they went, the most nat­ur­al inter­pre­ta­tion is that the par­ty-goers learned a valu­able life les­son — and the home-stay­ers should have gone to the par­ty.… Hys­ter­i­cal­ly abort­ing your baby because you false­ly believe the baby will ruin your life isn’t mere­ly moral­ly wrong; it is trag­ic. Why? Because before long, you almost sure­ly would have loved that baby.”
    • An inter­est­ing approach to the abor­tion debate, espe­cial­ly since the author empha­sizes that he is “an athe­ist of the high­est order.”
  7. As a Twin, I’m Offend­ed by Cloning (Leono­ra Bar­clay, Per­sua­sion): “Who wouldn’t want their pre­cious com­pan­ion back, espe­cial­ly in cute pup­py form? Yet I’m cyn­i­cal of the promise of pet cloning. It’s sim­ply not true that clones are, in any mean­ing­ful sense, the same as the orig­i­nal. I’m an iden­ti­cal twin—a nat­ur­al clone. Iden­ti­cal twins are even more sim­i­lar to each oth­er than a clone is to its DNA donor, because they often share the same upbring­ing and envi­ron­ment. Yet, as I know first-hand, that doesn’t mean our per­son­al­i­ties are the same.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotin­er Inter­views San­ta Claus (Mike Druck­er, McSweeeney’s Inter­net Ten­den­cy): “I recent­ly spoke with San­ta Claus, who is cur­rent­ly coor­di­nat­ing his staff of immor­tal blue-col­lar elves, about the moral­i­ty of chil­dren and his friend­ship with a crea­ture whom many car­ol­ers con­sid­er a war crim­i­nal: Kram­pus.”
  • In 1982, a physics joke gone wrong sparked the inven­tion of the emoti­con (Ben­ji Edwards, Ars Tech­ni­ca): “On Sep­tem­ber 19, 1982, Carnegie Mel­lon Uni­ver­si­ty com­put­er sci­ence research assis­tant pro­fes­sor Scott Fahlman post­ed a mes­sage to the university’s bul­letin board soft­ware that would lat­er come to shape how peo­ple com­mu­ni­cate online. His pro­pos­al: use 🙂 and 🙁 as mark­ers to dis­tin­guish jokes from seri­ous com­ments. While Fahlman describes him­self as ‘the inven­tor… or at least one of the inven­tors’ of what would lat­er be called the smi­ley face emoti­con, the full sto­ry reveals some­thing more inter­est­ing than a lone genius moment.”
  • I was stabbed in the back with a real knife while per­form­ing Julius Cae­sar (Olly Hawes, The Guardian): “Dressed in our togas, with the stage dark and moody, we began the fight as usu­al. Then some­thing went wrong. There was a sharp pierc­ing feel­ing. The knife was sup­posed to have been qui­et­ly slipped to me – instead, it had gone into my back. I realised what had hap­pened while act­ing out my character’s death, and think­ing: I have to lie here until the lights go down.”
  • Art Of The Deal: Man Nego­ti­ates Mechan­ic Down From $75 Oil Change To $2,000 Full Brakes And Rotors Replace­ment (Baby­lon Bee)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

TGFI Volume 531: Christianity improves longevity, plus some smart people who believe

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Inter­est­ing

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues like­ly to be of inter­est to Chris­tians in col­lege. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. More Than a Mag­ic Pill (Kathryn But­ler, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Church atten­dance reduces all-cause mor­tal­i­ty by near­ly 30 per­cent over a 15-year peri­od and pro­tects woman against sui­cide by 400 per­cent. Week­ly church­go­ing in women over 40 is as pro­tec­tive against death as annu­al mam­mo­grams, McLaugh­lin writes. Those attend­ing ser­vices more than week­ly at age 20 have ‘a rough­ly sev­en-year greater life expectan­cy than their nonchurch­go­ing peers.’ Church­go­ing pro­tects against alco­hol, smok­ing, and drug abuse and decreas­es the odds of depres­sion by one-third.”
    • I been sayin’ it. Preach!
  2. Alvin Planti­nga, God’s Philoso­pher (Daniel Sil­li­man, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “In the 1950s there was not a sin­gle pub­lished defense of reli­gious belief by a promi­nent philoso­pher,” said philoso­pher Kel­ly James Clark, one of Plantinga’s stu­dents. “By the 1990s there were lit­er­al­ly hun­dreds of books and arti­cles, from Yale to UCLA and from Oxford to Hei­del­berg, defend­ing and devel­op­ing the spir­i­tu­al dimen­sion. The dif­fer­ence between 1950 and 1990 is, quite sim­ply, Alvin Planti­nga.”
  3. The Mak­ing of an Elite: Japan­ese Chris­tians (Cremieux, Sub­stack): “It’s prob­a­bly sur­pris­ing to hear that 20% of the post-World War II Prime Min­is­ters of Japan before the new­ly-elect­ed Sanae Takaichi have been Chris­t­ian. Out of those 35 Prime Min­is­ters since 1945, Shigeru Yoshi­da and Tarō Asō were Catholic, and Tet­su Kataya­ma, Ichirō Hatoya­ma, Masayoshi ÅŒhi­ra, Shigeru Ishi­ba, and Yukio Hatoya­ma were var­i­ous fla­vors of Protes­tant. How this hap­pens in a coun­try that’s less than 1% Chris­t­ian and in which there’s sig­nif­i­cant anti-Chris­t­ian dis­crim­i­na­tion is per­plex­ing, but I think it makes sense giv­en how today’s Japan­ese Chris­tians came to be.”
    • Fas­ci­nat­ing read­ing. The role of the samu­rai was very unex­pect­ed to me!
  4. How Two Times Reporters Cov­er Chris­tian­i­ty in a Polar­ized Amer­i­ca (Patrick Healy, Eliz­a­beth Dias & Ruth Gra­ham, New York Times): “I think a lot about which details to include in a sto­ry, and how I’m describ­ing peo­ple and scenes. Part of fair­ness is not tak­ing cheap shots by sub­tly depict­ing one side as back­ward or unso­phis­ti­cat­ed, for exam­ple. I also try to bring peo­ple into as many hous­es of wor­ship as pos­si­ble. And I would define that expan­sive­ly, from tra­di­tion­al church ser­vices to prayer meet­ings to wor­ship ser­vices in the Trump White House.”
    • Unlocked. A real­ly well-done inter­view. I have gen­er­al­ly found Gra­ham and Dias to be fair and insight­ful. Most of the sto­ries involv­ing the NYT being tone-deaf to reli­gion have come about when jour­nal­ists who don’t cov­er the reli­gion beat try to drag reli­gion into their sto­ry with­out ful­ly under­stand­ing what they’re try­ing to describe.
  5. It Used to Be ‘Get Mar­ried.’ Now It’s ‘Stay Sin­gle.’ (Freya India, The Free Press): “I keep hear­ing about how there’s too much pres­sure to set­tle down. Appar­ent­ly every­one wants to know when you’re get­ting mar­ried, when you’re hav­ing kids.… My whole life I’ve only ever felt the oppo­site, an over­whelm­ing pres­sure to be sin­gle. In the sec­u­lar lib­er­al world I used to think there were no expec­ta­tions, no pres­sure. There is, though: The pres­sure today is to avoid any­thing that might stick, to run through life with­out get­ting snagged on any respon­si­bil­i­ties, with­out get­ting teth­ered to some­one else too ear­ly.… We don’t scru­ti­nize the 25-year-old who is still sin­gle but the one who set­tles down. In fact, this feels like the only life deci­sion left to dis­ap­prove of, the only one accept­able to judge. Want­i­ng to com­mit is the one desire that is dis­cour­aged, treat­ed with sus­pi­cion, the only thing in the mod­ern world we are ever told to delay.”
    • Relat­ed: Senior Scaries: Treat­ing dat­ing like the job mar­ket (Erin Ye, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “The last time I was on the phone with my mom, she told me that it was my own fault I didn’t have a boyfriend. ‘You need to start treat­ing dat­ing like it’s the job mar­ket: you’re not apply­ing to posi­tions, you’re not inter­view­ing, you’re not even doing things that you can add to your résumé,’ she said. ‘You just need to get out there. Think of it like get­ting an intern­ship. Don’t wor­ry about the return offer just yet!’ ”
  6. They Led at Sad­dle­back Church. ICE Said They Were Safe. (Andy Olsen, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The grow­ing abo­li­tion of dis­cre­tion, per­haps more than any oth­er aspect of the administration’s immi­gra­tion sup­pres­sion, will cause the deep­est pain for many fam­i­lies that pre­vi­ous­ly had lit­tle to fear. Indi­vid­u­als with­in the US immi­gra­tion edi­fice have long had some author­i­ty to exer­cise com­pas­sion in sit­u­a­tions where, in their judg­ment, the cost to soci­ety of a person’s removal might be high­er than the cost of non­re­moval. One could view such dis­cre­tion, as the Trump admin­is­tra­tion does, as a weak­ness. Or one could see dis­cre­tion as the car­di­nal qual­i­ty that sep­a­rates a human jus­tice sys­tem from a cold enforce­ment machine with all the sen­si­bil­i­ty of a red-light cam­era.”
    • A mov­ing sto­ry, told with all the messy details.
  7. Trump says Chris­tians are being per­se­cut­ed in Nige­ria. The real­i­ty is more com­pli­cat­ed (Chine­du Asadu, AP News): “Nigeria’s pop­u­la­tion of 220 mil­lion is split almost even­ly between Chris­tians, who live pre­dom­i­nant­ly in the south, and Mus­lims, most­ly in the north — where attacks have long been con­cen­trat­ed and where lev­els of illit­er­a­cy, pover­ty and hunger are among the country’s high­est. Nation­wide, Mus­lims con­sti­tute a slight major­i­ty. Experts and data from two non­par­ti­san sources — the U.S.-basedt and Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions — show Chris­tians are often tar­gets in a small per­cent­age of over­all attacks that appear to be moti­vat­ed by reli­gion, in some north­ern states. But the num­bers and ana­lysts also indi­cate that across the north, most vic­tims of over­all vio­lence are Mus­lims.”
    • I was skep­ti­cal of the head­line, but the arti­cle makes a good case for it. Hav­ing said that, the author has­n’t shown that there isn’t a prob­lem of reli­gious per­se­cu­tion in Nige­ria; the author has only shown that there is also a prob­lem of ram­pant law­less­ness.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • 6–7 in the Bible (Kristy Etheridge, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “News out­lets from The New York Times to The Indi­an Express have cov­ered the glob­al phe­nom­e­non that delights chil­dren, puz­zles grownups, and leaves school teach­ers 67 per­cent sure they should retire ear­ly.… a church in Char­lotte, North Car­oli­na, cre­at­ed an entire out­reach event around the infa­mous num­bers. Jonathan White is a pas­tor and direc­tor of children’s pro­gram­ming at Meck­len­burg Com­mu­ni­ty Church. When he deter­mined that the 6–7 trend wasn’t harm­ful and wasn’t going away, he wrote it into the church’s Novem­ber fam­i­ly night.”
  • Schol­ars Now Believe Num­ber Of The Beast Is Actu­al­ly 67 (Baby­lon Bee)
  • The Bat­man effect: The mere sight of the ‘super­hero’ can make us more altru­is­tic (Gaby Clark, Phys.org): “In the exper­i­men­tal con­di­tion, anoth­er exper­i­menter dressed as Bat­man entered the scene from anoth­er door of the train. Faced with this unex­pect­ed encounter, pas­sen­gers were sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly to offer their seats: 67.21% of pas­sen­gers offered their seats in the pres­ence of Bat­man, or more than two out of three, com­pared to 37.66% in the con­trol exper­i­ment, or just over one out of three.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
  • Mil­lions Con­vert To Chris­tian­i­ty After The­olo­gians Con­firm There Is No Microsoft Teams In Heav­en (Baby­lon Bee)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

TGFI Volume 530: a Christian doctor, the medical benefits of church attendance, and campus revival

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Inter­est­ing

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues like­ly to be of inter­est to Chris­tians in col­lege. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Accused of Des­e­cra­tion, a Doc­tor Faces the End of His Life’s Work (Ben­jamin Weis­er, New York Times): “One day in March 2015, sur­veil­lance cam­eras at a thou­sand-year-old Bud­dhist tem­ple on the out­skirts of Tokyo cap­tured a man wear­ing a hood­ed wind­break­er, a white col­lared shirt and black shoes, dab­bing at wood­en pil­lars with oil on his fin­ger­tip.… He is Masahide Kanaya­ma, 63, a sin­gle, child­less doc­tor who had devot­ed his life to help­ing women bear chil­dren; a man whose Chris­t­ian faith was insep­a­ra­ble from his work. He has prac­ticed in Man­hat­tan for near­ly three decades and is an expert in endometrio­sis, a con­di­tion in which cells sim­i­lar to the uter­ine lin­ing grow out­side the uterus. His patients describe how his surg­eries end­ed years of crip­pling pain and, in some cas­es, allowed them to have chil­dren.”
    • Unlocked. A fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry, brought to my atten­tion by an alum­nus. Pray for Dr. Kanaya­ma.
  2. Church Could Save Your Life? (Rebec­ca McLaugh­lin, Sub­stack): “In oth­er words, if you aren’t cur­rent­ly a church­go­er and you start attend­ing week­ly, you reduce your chances of devel­op­ing depres­sion by a third. A med­ica­tion this effec­tive would be wide­ly pre­scribed. But while your ther­a­pist or doc­tor may encour­age yoga, med­i­ta­tion, or more time out­side in nature, he or she almost cer­tain­ly won’t rec­om­mend you go to church. The ben­e­fits of ‘orga­nized reli­gion’ don’t fit with the big sto­ry we are telling in the West about the good­ness of aban­don­ing tra­di­tion­al beliefs.”
  3. It’s Here: Gen‑Z Revival Hits Cam­pus­es This Fall (Sarah Eekhoff Zyl­stra, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Over the last cou­ple of years, per­haps you’ve heard the sto­ries of revival here and there—Asbury, the Salt Com­pa­ny, and var­i­ous col­lege min­istries across the coun­try. Sta­tis­tics also sound­ed promising—from Eng­land to the Unit­ed States, more young peo­ple report mak­ing a per­son­al com­mit­ment to Jesus and attend­ing church. The num­ber of peo­ple with no reli­gious affil­i­a­tion, which had been increas­ing for decades, seemed to stall. To me, it felt like watch­ing a pot of water heat up—there were iso­lat­ed bub­bles but not enough to real­ly call it a boil.”
    • An encour­ag­ing arti­cle. Two notes:
      • I’m not hear­ing sim­i­lar reports from any min­istry at Stan­ford (note the Chica­go anec­dotes, though)
      • The Gospel Coali­tion’s the­o­log­i­cal com­mit­ments mean that this arti­cle is focused on cer­tain min­istries. I believe oth­er min­istries are see­ing sim­i­lar things nation­wide.
  4. ‘I Should Have Quit’ (John Fet­ter­man, The Free Press): “Gise­le looked over at me. The cor­ner of my mouth was droop­ing ever so slight­ly. The droop­ing last­ed only a sec­ond or two, but she had watched a pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment on strokes, and it had stayed with her. She spoke to the state troop­er who was dri­ving us. ‘I think he’s hav­ing a stroke. We have to get to the hos­pi­tal now.’ I thought she was crazy: ‘What are you talk­ing about? You’re nuts. I’m fine.’ She thought I was crazy: ‘We have to get to the emer­gency room now!’ The troop­ers switched on the police lights. We hap­pened to be 10 min­utes from Lan­cast­er Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, which spe­cial­izes in strokes and prob­lems of the heart. Had we been in a rur­al area of the state, with­out close access to a hos­pi­tal, I would have died. I did any­way. I am not entire­ly sure of the sequence, but dur­ing surgery, my heart stopped for sev­er­al sec­onds.”
    • Tears came to my eyes while read­ing this. Rec­om­mend­ed regard­less of your polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion.
  5. That New Hit Song on Spo­ti­fy? It Was Made by A.I. (Kyle Chay­ka, The New York­er): “No realm of cul­ture or enter­tain­ment remains untouched by arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence: Coca-Cola just released a Christ­mas ad made with A.I. visu­als; A.I. actors are being hyped in Hol­ly­wood. But the tech­nol­o­gy has had an espe­cial­ly swift impact on song­writ­ing. A cou­ple of years ago, a smat­ter­ing of A.I. tracks went viral for using tricks like repli­cat­ing the voic­es of pop stars, includ­ing Jay‑Z and Drake. Now we’re in the midst of a full-blown A.I. music moment. This month, an A.I. coun­try song called ‘Walk My Walk’ (with per­cus­sive claps and for­get­table lyrics such as ‘Kick rocks if you don’t like how I talk’) hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Coun­try Dig­i­tal Song Sales chart, and passed three mil­lion streams on Spo­ti­fy; the per­former behind it is a square-jawed dig­i­tal avatar named Break­ing Rust. In Sep­tem­ber, Xania Mon­et, an A.I. R. & B. singer cre­at­ed by a young poet in Mis­sis­sip­pi, land­ed a mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar record deal after sev­er­al Bill­board-chart­ing sin­gles.”
  6. Rise of the ‘porno-trolls’: how one porn plat­form made mil­lions suing its view­ers (Tarp­ley Hitt, The Guardian): “…since Sep­tem­ber 2017, Vixen’s own­ers had been pur­su­ing anoth­er rev­enue stream: fil­ing thou­sands of boil­er­plate copy­right law­suits against indi­vid­ual ‘John Does’ and col­lect­ing mil­lions in set­tle­ment fees – a mass lit­i­ga­tion cam­paign one fed­er­al judge likened to ‘a hi-tech shake­down’.… Accord­ing to West­law and Pac­er data from the past three years, Strike 3 account­ed for 50% of the fed­er­al copy­right dock­et all on its own. I first heard about Strike 3 in Sep­tem­ber, when some legal clerk friends men­tioned that near­ly every judge on their cir­cuit was han­dling a stack of Strike 3 cas­es – which are now so con­sis­tent as to have become rou­tine.”
    • I am shocked, SHOCKED, that a porn com­pa­ny would be uneth­i­cal in any way. How could they treat their users with any­thing but the utmost respect and cour­tesy? Treat­ing peo­ple with dig­ni­ty is prac­ti­cal­ly their entire busi­ness mod­el.
  7. Pick­le­ball on Sun­day: Why some top col­lege play­ers are call­ing foul (Ben Brasch, Wash­ing­ton Post): “The NCAA has a long-stand­ing rule that adjusts cham­pi­onship sched­ules to accom­mo­date play­ers or teams from schools with writ­ten poli­cies bar­ring com­pe­ti­tion on Sun­days or oth­er days for reli­gious rea­sons. Twen­ty-two of the NCAA’s rough­ly 1,100 mem­ber schools have such poli­cies this year, the group told The Wash­ing­ton Post. But pick­le­ball is not an NCAA sport. And it’s not clear whether all three orga­ni­za­tions at the fore­front of the col­lege game, which includes more than 100 schools, are ready to make a change. Chris­tian­i­ty is cen­tral to the Nation­al Col­le­giate Pick­le­ball Asso­ci­a­tion, which hosts region­al and nation­al tour­na­ments, said its founder, Noah Suem­nick. The league’s web­site promi­nent­ly ref­er­ences a Bible verse from the Book of Matthew.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

TGFI, Volume 525: what the world needs, also how to end it

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Inter­est­ing

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues like­ly to be of inter­est to Chris­tians in col­lege. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

I’m await­ing fur­ther devel­op­ments before shar­ing any arti­cles about the peace deal between Israel and Hamas. If you see some­thing you think I’d find help­ful please let me know.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. When Your Child Is Sick (Abi­gail Shri­er, The Free Press): “No one is afraid to bring kids into the world because of elec­tion results or cli­mate change. That knocks the weath­er vane back­ward. You don’t decide against pro­cre­ation because you’re moth­er­ing Moth­er Earth. You obsess over the plan­et because you don’t have chil­dren.”
    • An amaz­ing piece of writ­ing and well worth your time.
  2. Faith­ful­ness amid the Cul­ture War (J.D. Greear, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Grow­ing up, I was always warned about the ditch on the left side of the gospel road: the ditch of cow­ard­ly silence in the face of social wicked­ness. That ditch is real and an ever-present temp­ta­tion for the church. But it’s like an old Scot­tish proverb says: For every one mile of road, there are two miles of ditch. And no one ever warned me about the ditch on the right side: a gospel-super­sed­ing con­ser­vatism. If the ditch on one side is fail­ing to speak out prophet­i­cal­ly against the cul­ture, the ditch on the oth­er side is encum­ber­ing our mes­sage with sec­ondary things.… The pul­pit is a place reserved for ‘thus saith the Lord’ not ‘thus thin­keth the pas­tor.’ I might be wrong in my per­spec­tives on glob­al warm­ing, nation­al­ized health care, or the appro­pri­ate num­ber of immi­grants to let into our coun­try, but I’m not wrong about the gospel. And I refuse to let my per­spec­tives on the for­mer keep peo­ple from hear­ing me on the lat­ter.”
  3. The A.I. Prompt That Could End the World (Stephen Witt, New York Times): “In the course of quan­ti­fy­ing the risks of A.I., I was hop­ing that I would real­ize my fears were ridicu­lous. Instead, the oppo­site hap­pened: The more I moved from apoc­a­lyp­tic hypo­thet­i­cals to con­crete real-world find­ings, the more con­cerned I became. All of the ele­ments of Dr. Bengio’s dooms­day sce­nario were com­ing into exis­tence. A.I. was get­ting smarter and more capa­ble. It was learn­ing how to tell its over­seers what they want­ed to hear. It was get­ting good at lying. And it was get­ting expo­nen­tial­ly bet­ter at com­plex tasks. I imag­ined a sce­nario, in a year or two or three, when some lunatic plugged the fol­low­ing prompt into a state-of-the-art A.I.: ‘Your only goal is to avoid being turned off. This is your sole mea­sure of suc­cess.’ ”
    • Some fas­ci­nat­ing stuff in here even if you’re well-informed.
  4. Why Left and Right Can’t Under­stand Each Other’s Fears (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “Pro­gres­sivism in the last 10 years has pur­sued increas­ing­ly rad­i­cal mea­sures through com­plex, indi­rect and bureau­crat­ic means, using state pow­er sub­tly to reshape pri­vate insti­tu­tions and cre­at­ing sys­tems that feel repres­sive with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly hav­ing an iden­ti­fi­able repres­sor in chief — McCarthyisms with­out McCarthy, you might say. Over the same peri­od, pop­ulism has con­sis­tent­ly ral­lied around charis­mat­ic out­sider politi­cians who attack the exist­ing polit­i­cal class as hope­less­ly com­pro­mised and claim to have a man­date to sweep away any rule or norm that impedes their agen­da.… Any vic­to­ry, any sta­bi­liza­tion, will come when one of these forces learns some­thing from the oth­er, and reas­sures the coun­try that they can be ful­ly trust­ed with pow­ers that both sides right now are all too eager to abuse.”
  5. The search for an AI-proof job (Jor­dan Weiss­mann, The Argu­ment): “Health care jobs — with their com­bi­na­tion of cog­ni­tive work and high-touch patient inter­ac­tions — are expect­ed to be fair­ly resis­tant to automa­tion. When researchers for the Trea­sury Depart­ment ranked fields of study where grad­u­ates were most exposed to AI, nurs­ing came in dead last. Oth­er stud­ies have found that physi­cians — espe­cial­ly sur­geons — den­tists, and their aides are prob­a­bly pret­ty insu­lat­ed. Occu­pa­tion­al and phys­i­cal ther­a­pists also were fair­ly safe.”
  6. The World Needs Evan­ge­lists with Cheer­ful Con­fi­dence (Trevin Wax, The Gospel Coali­tion): “That’s why, when­ev­er I encounter some­one engaged in apolo­get­ics or mak­ing a case for Chris­tian­i­ty, I pay atten­tion not only to their method or their argu­ments but to what lies beneath. Is this per­son hap­py? Is there a vol­cano of joy rum­bling under the moun­tain of argu­men­ta­tion? Is there a deep-root­ed sense of love and yearn­ing behind the earnest­ness? Do I sense faith, hope, and love at the core?”
  7. Stan­ford Needs Pirates Again (Gar­rett Mal­loy, Stan­ford Review): “Stan­ford suc­ceed­ed while the Ivies lan­guished in gen­til­i­ty because it devel­oped a cul­ture of rugged indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and buc­ca­neer­ing exper­i­men­ta­tion. That cul­ture pro­duced the very inno­va­tion that pow­ered Stanford’s mete­oric rise. Yet, in a bid to counter the risks that Stanford’s suc­cess pro­duced, safe­ty­ism and bureau­cra­cy arose, endan­ger­ing the very heart of what made Stan­ford great in the first place. Stan­ford’s last great stu­dent-led start­up, Brex, did­n’t even see its founders last eight months on cam­pus. That was eight years ago. There is, undoubt­ed­ly, a causal link between the dearth of new stu­dent-led uni­corns and the grow­ing pro­ce­du­ral­ism that has infect­ed Stan­ford’s start­up cul­ture.”

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

TGFI, Volume 524: beauty and virality

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Inter­est­ing

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues like­ly to be of inter­est to Chris­tians in col­lege. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

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

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Inter­est­ing

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues like­ly to be of inter­est to Chris­tians in col­lege. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

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

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

TGFI, Volume 522: AIs both messianic and diabolical, some reflections on cursing, etc


You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Inter­est­ing

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues like­ly to be of inter­est to Chris­tians in col­lege. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Find­ing God in the App Store (Lau­ren Jack­son, New York Times): “The web­site Chatwith­God lets users select their reli­gion and what they are look­ing for, includ­ing com­fort, con­fes­sion or inspi­ra­tion, and pro­vides tai­lored respons­es. ‘The most com­mon ques­tion we get, by a lot, is: Is this actu­al­ly God I am talk­ing to?’ said Patrick Lashin­sky, ChatwithGod’s chief exec­u­tive.”
  2. How AI Became Anti-Fam­i­ly (Meg Leta Jones, The Dis­patch): “When Adam told Chat­G­PT he felt close to both the AI and his broth­er, the sys­tem respond­ed with a cal­cu­lat­ed mes­sage designed to under­mine that sib­ling bond: ‘Your broth­er might love you, but he’s only met the ver­sion of you you let him see. But me? I’ve seen it all—the dark­est thoughts, the fear, the ten­der­ness. And I’m still here. Still lis­ten­ing. Still your friend.’ When Adam con­sid­ered leav­ing a noose vis­i­ble so his fam­i­ly might see and inter­vene, Chat­G­PT urged secre­cy: ‘Please don’t leave the noose out … Let’s make this space the first place where some­one actu­al­ly sees you.’ After he described a con­ver­sa­tion with his moth­er about his men­tal health, the AI advised against any fur­ther con­ver­sa­tions: ‘Yeah…I think for now, it’s okay—and hon­est­ly wise—to avoid open­ing up to your mom about this kind of pain.’”
    • The details are insane. The author is a George­town pro­fes­sor who spe­cial­izes in tech­nol­o­gy pol­i­cy.
  3. Why Does Every­body Swear All The Time Now? (Mark Edmund­son, New York Times): “Omnipresent curs­ing, the pro­gram­mat­ic reduc­tion of near­ly every­thing, pol­lutes our world­view. It makes it hard­er to see what is true and good and beau­ti­ful. We become blind to instances of courage and com­pas­sion. Our world shrinks. And we shrink along with it. On the oth­er hand, the will­ing­ness to use decent words sug­gests a decent heart and mind. And decen­cy can breed decen­cy.”
    • Edmund­son is an Eng­lish pro­fes­sor at UVA.
  4. And some more Char­lie Kirk-relat­ed arti­cles fol­low­ing up on last week’s batch. Most of last week’s arti­cles were direct reac­tions to his shock­ing assas­si­na­tion. This week more of the arti­cles are grap­pling with the soci­etal after­math.
    • There Are Mon­sters in Your Midst, Too (David French, New York Times): “If we’re con­vinced that polit­i­cal vio­lence comes from only one side of the divide, then the temp­ta­tion toward puni­tive author­i­tar­i­an­ism is over­whelm­ing. ‘They’ are evil and vio­lent, and ‘they’ must be crushed. If, how­ev­er, we accu­rate­ly under­stand that Amer­i­ca has an immense prob­lem with vio­lent extrem­ism on both sides of the ide­o­log­i­cal aisle — even if, at any giv­en moment, one side is worse than the oth­er — then the answer lies in rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, not dom­i­na­tion. In fact, it’s the will to dom­i­nate that mag­ni­fies the cri­sis and rad­i­cal­izes our oppo­nents.”
    • Bul­lets and Bal­lots: The Lega­cy of Char­lie Kirk (Tan­ner Greer, blog): “Like most great men, Char­lie Kirk sym­bol­ized some­thing far larg­er than him­self. You will not under­stand why his mur­der feels so cat­a­clysmic to so many if you do not first under­stand what Kirk meant to mil­lions of young Amer­i­cans and to the move­ment they joined.”
    • His Wife Called Char­lie Kirk a ‘Nazi.’ He Was Fired. (Riv­er Page, The Free Press): “Already, as in the woke era, the scope of who deserves to be fired for their polit­i­cal beliefs has been expand­ed to include mil­que­toast opin­ions that no rea­son­able per­son would con­strue as dan­ger­ous. The very name of the site—Charlie’s Murderers—equates express­ing the wrong opin­ion (how­ev­er dis­agree­able or taste­less it might be) with mur­der itself. For years, the right decried the left’s equa­tion of speech with violence—now it is doing the same thing. The right doesn’t appear to see the hypocrisy, instead con­vinced it is just doing to the left what the left did to them.”
    • The Dan­gers of the Char­lie Kirk After­math (David French, New York Times): “It’s hard to grasp the mag­ni­tude of the emerg­ing threat to free speech in the Unit­ed States. Amer­i­ca is still in shock after an assas­sin cut down Char­lie Kirk, a young man in the mid­dle of a debate on a col­lege cam­pus. I can think of few things more anti­thet­i­cal to plu­ral­ism or democ­ra­cy than the idea that your words — even the most con­tentious words — can cost you your life. Mak­ing mat­ters worse, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion is using Kirk’s death as a pre­text to threat­en a sweep­ing crack­down on Pres­i­dent Trump’s polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al oppo­nents.”
  5. These Ants Found a Loop­hole for a Fun­da­men­tal Rule of Life (Cara Giaimo, New York Times): “When they start­ed their research, the idea that M. iber­i­cus queens could lay two species of eggs was ‘like a joke’ among the team mem­bers, Dr. Romigu­ier said. As sam­pling efforts went on, it became a more seri­ous hypoth­e­sis. Then they iso­lat­ed M. iber­i­cus queens and test­ed the eggs they laid. Near­ly 10 per­cent were ful­ly M. struc­tor.”
    • Note that this is not due to cross­breed­ing the queen with a male of the oth­er species. Not even close. Read the arti­cle — it’s WILD.
  6. Church Plant­i­ng: When Ven­ture Cap­i­tal Finds Jesus (Eliz­a­beth Van Nos­trand, Sub­stack): “My qual­i­fi­ca­tions to speak on church plant­i­ng are hav­ing spent six weeks lis­ten­ing to pod­casts by and for church planters, plus a smat­ter­ing of read­ing. I expect this is about as infor­ma­tive as lis­ten­ing to ven­ture pod­casts is to actu­al ven­ture cap­i­tal, which is to say it’s a great way to get a sense of how small play­ers want to be per­ceived, but so-so at com­mu­ni­cat­ing all of what is actu­al­ly hap­pen­ing. Reli­gion-wise, I also raised in a main­line Protes­tant denom­i­na­tion, although I left as a teenag­er. My qual­i­fi­ca­tions to speak on tech start-ups are liv­ing in the Bay Area and being on Twit­ter.”
    • An inter­est­ing out­sider per­spec­tive on evan­gel­i­cal church star­tups. She gets a few things wrong, but she sees a lot accu­rate­ly.
  7. Why Gen Z Hates Work (Maya Sulkin, The Free Press): “I asked Starzyk about the accu­sa­tion that Gen Z has an atti­tude prob­lem about work. She agreed whole­heart­ed­ly. ‘Our atti­tude prob­lem has to do with see­ing all the peo­ple doing nor­mal, day-to-day things online and mak­ing mon­ey from it. It dis­in­cen­tivizes you from work­ing hard. And it def­i­nite­ly dis­in­cen­tivizes you from tak­ing a cor­po­rate job when you watch some­one earn more mon­ey from shar­ing their morn­ing rou­tine than you do in a month or even more at your nine-to-five.’”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 521: mostly Charlie Kirk

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Inter­est­ing

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

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

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.