Tag: India

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 364

a mix of links more rar­i­fied and more spicy than nor­mal

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.

This, the 364th install­ment, can also be expressed as the sum of con­sec­u­tive primes: 11 + 13 + 17 + 19 + 23 + 29 + 31 + 37 + 41 + 43 + 47 + 53

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. One Man­ner of Law (Mar­i­lynne Robin­son, Harpers): “Almost fifty years ago, I learned by pure acci­dent that a code of law was drawn up in Mass­a­chu­setts in 1641 that sub­stan­tial­ly antic­i­pat­ed the Bill of Rights. I hap­pened to read a let­ter to the edi­tor in the New York Times that men­tioned the Mass­a­chu­setts Body of Lib­er­ties. I had a PhD by then and was sup­pos­ed­ly an Amer­i­can­ist by train­ing, yet I was learn­ing of this for the first time. When I final­ly read these laws, I won­dered why the nar­ra­tive of Amer­i­can his­to­ry did not begin with them.”
  2. The Girls Who Resist­ed Boko Haram (Jonathon Van Maren, First Things): “While the world demand­ed their return, the cap­tive girls were under relent­less pres­sure to con­vert to Islam and mar­ry mil­i­tants cho­sen for them. They were threat­ened with behead­ing or bru­tal slav­ery if they refused. Many of the girls, par­a­lyzed with fear, suc­cumbed. Oth­ers buck­led under the brain­wash­ing of a mil­i­tant assigned to incul­cate them into the doc­trines of Islam. He forced the ‘daugh­ters of infi­dels’ to take hours-long class­es in which they mem­o­rized the Quran. The girls were told that if they mar­ried, they would receive homes, slaves, and hon­or. In secret, the girls shared Bible pas­sages and prayed fer­vent­ly togeth­er for strength and res­cue. They sang hymns into their hands and cups of water to sti­fle the sound.”
  3. Why I Left Acad­e­mia (Since You’re Won­der­ing) (William Dere­siewicz, Quil­lette): “…it wasn’t so much that I want­ed to be treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly than every­body as that I want­ed every­body to be treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly. I want­ed the rules to change; I played by the ones that I thought we should have. I insist­ed on behav­ing as if I exist­ed in an envi­ron­ment that val­ued teach­ing as much as schol­ar­ship and intel­lec­tu­al­ism as much as spe­cial­iza­tion. Where open­ing the eyes of a hun­dred under­grad­u­ates was worth as much as super­vis­ing one more dis­ser­ta­tion, and pub­lish­ing an essay in a peri­od­i­cal that’s read by tens of thou­sands was as valu­able as adding one more item to the pile of dis­re­gard­ed stud­ies.” This is quite good, more rel­e­vant to the human­i­ties than to the sci­ences. 
  4. I Didn’t Want It to Be True, but the Medi­um Real­ly Is the Mes­sage (Ezra Klein, New York Times): “Amer­i­cans are cap­i­tal­ists, and we believe noth­ing if not that if a choice is freely made, that grants it a pre­sump­tion against cri­tique. That is one rea­son it’s so hard to talk about how we are changed by the medi­ums we use. That con­ver­sa­tion, on some lev­el, demands val­ue judg­ments. This was on my mind recent­ly, when I heard Jonathan Haidt, a social psy­chol­o­gist who’s been col­lect­ing data on how social media harms teenagers, say, blunt­ly, ‘Peo­ple talk about how to tweak it — oh, let’s hide the like coun­ters. Well, Insta­gram tried — but let me say this very clear­ly: There is no way, no tweak, no archi­tec­tur­al change that will make it OK for teenage girls to post pho­tos of them­selves, while they’re going through puber­ty, for strangers or oth­ers to rate pub­licly.’ ”
    • Relat­ed: When Bots Write Your Love Sto­ry (Samuel D. James, Sub­stack): “That machines are telling us par­tic­u­lar sto­ries about our world is one of the main rea­sons I keep com­ing back time and again to dig­i­tal cul­ture, epis­te­mol­o­gy, and the­ol­o­gy. Our default pos­ture toward the Inter­net is still, to this day, a pos­ture of intu­itive belief: to gen­uine­ly accept that what we see on the screen is a piece of ‘real life,’ rep­re­sen­ta­tive of some­one who is real­ly some­where. And in many cas­es, of course, this is more or less true. But there are also very real cas­es where the inten­si­ty or the vivid­ness of what we see online is dis­pro­por­tion­ate to its weight or valid­i­ty out­side.”
    • Relat­ed: Speech With­out Account­abil­i­ty: Reck­on­ing with Anony­mous Chris­t­ian Trolls (Patrick Miller, Mere Ortho­doxy): “…there is at least one clear ana­log to anon speech in the Bible that I have not yet touched on: the speech of the ser­pent in Eden. He was the first char­ac­ter in Gen­e­sis to con­ceal his iden­ti­ty in order to cri­tique a person—God him­self. The first anon words in human his­to­ry set human his­to­ry on fire.”
      • This piece is far too long, ram­bles need­less­ly, and at one point says some­thing I think very sil­ly. Nonethe­less, I read to the end with inter­est. The best parts were the reflec­tions on anonymous/disguised speech in the Bible.
    • Relat­ed: The Seat of Mock­ers (Bri­an Matt­son, Sub­stack): “The defend­ers and prac­ti­tion­ers of smash-mouth incen­di­ary rhetoric insist that we must do this so as to ade­quate­ly com­bat the world and the infil­tra­tion of world­li­ness into the church. It seems to me that in real­i­ty, it is the world and the infil­tra­tion of world­li­ness into the church.” This is quite good, and I found it by fol­low­ing a link in the pre­ced­ing point.
  5. Some links relat­ed to the ongo­ing sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion, most­ly crit­i­cal:
    • Chris­tians Vol­un­teer­ing Pro­nouns? (Andrew T. Walk­er, Amer­i­can Reformer): “We should name the pro­noun issue for what it is: A lan­guage game. Lan­guage is about nam­ing real­i­ty. Pro­nouns of any sort are instru­ments that indi­vid­u­als use to wield pow­er. Pro­nouns pos­sess pow­er only because the cul­ture we live in deems one’s cho­sen indi­vid­ual iden­ti­ty to be absolute­ly cen­tral to who one is. Pro­nouns serve the sub­jec­tive self, so if one rejects another’s cho­sen pro­nouns, it is doubtless­ly inter­pret­ed as reject­ing the person’s attempt at self-descrip­tion and self-auton­o­my. That’s what this is all fun­da­men­tal­ly about—creating a pri­vate field of real­i­ty defined by the wish­es and fan­tasies of indi­vid­u­als who know they can pro­voke sub­mis­sion for fear of can­cel­la­tion. We should be clear-eyed about this and refuse to go along with it.”
    • Zoophil­ia: The Last Taboo Will Fall (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Seri­ous­ly, how do you stop legal­iz­ing zoophil­ia, espe­cial­ly in a pop­u­lar cul­ture in which inter­nal bar­ri­ers with­in the mass­es will have been bro­ken down by wide­spread hard­core pornog­ra­phy? ‘What does my neigh­bor’s habit of being corn­holed by his Ger­man shep­herd have to do with my mar­riage?’ say the nitwit lib­er­tar­i­ans. ‘Ani­mals can’t con­sent!’ squeal the nitwit lib­er­als, though I hope they have the sense not to say so with their mouth full of ham.”
      • This is a well-doc­u­ment­ed piece and the updates at the end are very much worth read­ing, espe­cial­ly the Scalia quote.
    • I Regret Being A Slut (Brid­get Pheta­sy, Sub­stack): “I know regret­ting most of my sex­u­al encoun­ters is not some­thing a sex-pos­i­tive fem­i­nist who used to write a col­umn for Play­boy is sup­posed to admit. And for years, I didn’t. Let me be clear, being a ‘slut’ and sleep­ing with a lot of men is not the only behav­ior I regret. Even more dam­ag­ing was what I told myself in order to jus­ti­fy the fact that I was dis­pos­able to these men: I told myself I didn’t care. I didn’t care when a man ghost­ed me. I didn’t care when he left in the mid­dle of the night or hint­ed that he want­ed me to leave. The walks of shame. The black­outs. The anx­i­ety. The lie I told myself for decades was: I’m not in pain—I’m empow­ered. Look­ing back, it isn’t a sur­prise that I lied to myself. Because from a young age, sex was some­thing I was lied to about.” This is in no way a Chris­t­ian arti­cle — but it is inter­est­ing.
    • Mon­key­pox And The Face Of Gay Promis­cu­ity (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “I remem­ber being told by the media that gay men were vast­ly more promis­cu­ous than straight men because soci­ety com­pelled them to be. Nor­mal­ize homo­sex­u­al­i­ty and grant same-sex mar­riage, and that would change. I nev­er believed it because I knew per­fect­ly well that gay men were insane­ly promis­cu­ous not because they were gay, but because they were men. An ordi­nary male unre­strained by reli­gious or moral scru­ple, and faced with a wide vari­ety of will­ing part­ners who demand no emo­tion­al com­mit­ment, or even to know one’s name, before hav­ing sex — that man will like­ly behave exact­ly as most gay men do.”
      • WARNING — the pic­ture in the link is jar­ring. The com­ments at the end are quite inter­est­ing and not at all what most observers would expect — Dreher real­ly does appre­ci­ate his audi­ence even when they dis­agree with him.
  6. ‘Dis­turb­ing’: Experts trou­bled by Canada’s euthana­sia laws (Maria Cheng, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Cana­da prides itself on being lib­er­al and accept­ing, said David Jones, direc­tor of the Anscombe Bioethics Cen­tre in Britain, ‘but what’s hap­pen­ing with euthana­sia sug­gests there may be a dark­er side.’”
  7. As India marks its first 75 years, Gand­hi is down­played, even derid­ed (Ger­ry Shih, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Today, at ral­lies of Hin­du nation­al­ist hard-lin­ers, Gand­hi is rou­tine­ly vil­i­fied as fee­ble in his tac­tics against the British and over­ly con­cil­ia­to­ry to India’s Mus­lims, who broke off and formed their own state, Pak­istan, on Aug. 14, 1947. On social media and online forums, exag­ger­a­tions and false­hoods abound about Gandhi’s alleged betray­al of Hin­dus. And in pop­u­lar films and the polit­i­cal main­stream, Gand­hi and Jawa­har­lal Nehru — the first prime min­is­ter — are side­lined, while nation­al­ists who advo­cat­ed the force of arms have been ele­vat­ed.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have  Hav­ing Kids (Paul Gra­ham, per­son­al blog): “I remem­ber per­fect­ly well what life was like before. Well enough to miss some things a lot, like the abil­i­ty to take off for some oth­er coun­try at a moment’s notice. That was so great. Why did I nev­er do that? See what I did there? The fact is, most of the free­dom I had before kids, I nev­er used. I paid for it in lone­li­ness, but I nev­er used it.” First shared in vol­ume 233.

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 299

so many enter­tain­ing tid­bits at the end — way more than nor­mal

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.

This is the 299th install­ment of these emails. 299 is, I am told, the most pieces into which a sim­ple object (like a cube or a sphere — some­thing with­out a weird struc­ture) can be split using 12 straight cuts.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Why You’re Chris­t­ian (David Per­rell, per­son­al blog): “…I’m a tepid non-believ­er myself.… [How­ev­er] I real­ized that society’s most pas­sion­ate crit­ics, most of whom claim to be sec­u­lar, usu­al­ly have the most Chris­t­ian val­ues of all. They’ve stud­ied in elite uni­ver­si­ties, they live in major cities, and they’re proud mem­bers of the intel­li­gentsia. Human rights, a cen­ter­piece of their moral out­look, is incon­sis­tent with the rest of their world­view. Though they pride them­selves on evi­dence-based think­ing, they’re intel­lec­tu­al­ly bank­rupt on the top­ic of human rights.”
    • Relat­ed (at least in my mind): What Became of Athe­ism, Part One: Wear­ing the Uni­form (Fred­die deBoer, Sub­stack): “…if God exists then that is the sin­gle most impor­tant fact in the his­to­ry of cre­ation and noth­ing else can take its crown, ever. If a being exists, of what­ev­er nature, who cre­at­ed real­i­ty, exists with­in all of real­i­ty, set reality’s phys­i­cal and moral rules, watch­es over all of real­i­ty, judges all of us on how devout and moral we are, and deter­mines reward and pun­ish­ment based on that judge­ment, that clear­ly is the truth that trumps all oth­er truths. Strange to let it slip out of the debate qui­et­ly in the night. But then I sup­pose that’s cul­ture war; soon­er or lat­er the only ques­tion that remains is who is on what side of the line, and all the rest dis­solves.”
  2. Jus­tice-relat­ed thoughts:
    • ‘The Voice of Your Broth­er’s Blood Is Cry­ing to Me From the Ground’ (David French, The Dis­patch): “…we can artic­u­late three truths of sim­ple, indi­vid­ual jus­tice. First, a grave wrong cre­ates a moral and spir­i­tu­al cry for redress. Sec­ond, it is the role of gov­ern­ment to pro­vide that redress. And third, the gov­ern­ment must be impar­tial, treat­ing ‘great and small’ alike. All too many Amer­i­cans are com­plete­ly unaware of the extent to which the present struc­tures and habits of Amer­i­can law fail to meet those basic oblig­a­tions, espe­cial­ly when injus­tice is vis­it­ed upon the cit­i­zen by the state.”
    • Chau­vin Was Con­vict­ed. Some­thing Is Still Very Wrong. (Eliz­a­beth Bru­enig, New York Times): “For­give­ness doesn’t feel par­tic­u­lar­ly tri­umphant. It’s a gift no one wants to be in the posi­tion to give; it releas­es a wrong­do­er from moral debt — for their own good and the com­mon good, not for the sake of the wronged.… But I want to live in a world where it is pos­si­ble to for­give and to be for­giv­en. In fact, I think it’s nec­es­sary.”
    • The Real Rea­son to End the Death Penal­ty (Paul Gra­ham, Sub­stack): “But in prac­tice the debate about the death penal­ty is not about whether it’s ok to kill mur­der­ers. It’s about whether it’s ok to kill inno­cent peo­ple, because at least 4% of peo­ple on death row are inno­cent.” I find this a real­ly inter­est­ing line of argu­ment. Clear­ly we want to have a 100% accu­ra­cy rate in all crim­i­nal con­vic­tions. But is 96% accu­ra­cy out­ra­geous­ly intol­er­a­ble? To the extent that it becomes a per­sua­sive argu­ment against the death penal­ty isn’t that then also an argu­ment against impris­on­ment? Or vir­tu­al­ly any pun­ish­ment?
    • Unjust Sec­u­lar Jus­tice (Matthew Schmitz,First Things): “While in the colo­nial era most cas­es went to tri­al (and most tri­als last­ed a stun­ning­ly short thir­ty min­utes), more and more are now resolved by a plea bar­gain. Nowhere is our aban­don­ment of colo­nial ideas of crim­i­nal jus­tice more appar­ent than in no-con­test pleas that allow defen­dants to receive lighter sen­tences with­out any admis­sion of guilt.” This is an old­er book review (2013) but is quite good.
    • Out­rage Over­load (Jon­ah Gold­berg, The Dis­patch): “Mod­ern policing—or even polic­ing qua policing—owes far less to slave patrolling than NASA owes to Hitler’s rock­et pro­gram. And yet no one talks about the trou­bling Nazi roots of mod­ern space explo­ration, or asks Elon Musk if he’s exor­cised the ghost of Wern­er Von Braun from SpaceX. I have seen this slave patrol thing brought up count­less times in inter­views, and not once have I seen an inter­view­er say, ‘Real­ly?’ nev­er mind, ‘What the hell are you talk­ing about?’ It’s as bat­ty as any con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry, and it’s a delib­er­ate attempt to heap innu­en­do on polic­ing in lieu of mak­ing an intel­li­gent argu­ment. And that’s what frus­trates me to no end. It’s the job of jour­nal­ists to call out B.S. when it’s being thrown in their faces.”
  3. Where Two or Three Are Gath­ered (William J. Haun & Daniel L. Chen, Law & Lib­er­ty): “Over 40 ami­cus briefs lam­bast­ed this embrace of open-end­ed gov­ern­ment surveillance—reflecting an ide­o­log­i­cal agree­ment so wide that NARAL Pro-Choice North Car­oli­na and Wis­con­sin Right to Life joined the same brief. On the sur­face, wide­spread con­sen­sus in favor of asso­ci­a­tion­al pri­va­cy is sure­ly wel­come. But this agree­ment masks equal­ly wide­spread, decades-long con­fu­sion over how and why the Con­sti­tu­tion pro­tects free asso­ci­a­tion.” Quite good, a bit dry. The authors are lawyers with the Beck­et Fund.
  4. “Wok­e­ness is a prob­lem and we all know it” (Sean Illing inter­view­ing James Carville, Vox): “We won the White House against a world-his­tor­i­cal buf­foon. And we came with­in 42,000 votes of los­ing. We lost con­gres­sion­al seats. We didn’t pick up state leg­is­la­tures. So let’s not have an argu­ment about whether or not we’re off-key in our mes­sag­ing. We are. And we’re off because there’s too much jar­gon and there’s too much eso­ter­i­ca and it turns peo­ple off.” Carville is a leg­endary Demo­c­ra­t­ic polit­i­cal strate­gist and he is in full-on old man rant mode here.
  5. ‘This Is a Cat­a­stro­phe.’ In India, Ill­ness Is Every­where. (Jef­frey Get­tle­man, New York Times): “New Del­hi, India’s sprawl­ing cap­i­tal of 20 mil­lion, is suf­fer­ing a calami­tous surge. A few days ago, the pos­i­tiv­i­ty rate hit a stag­ger­ing 36 per­cent — mean­ing more than one out of three peo­ple test­ed were infect­ed. A month ago, it was less than 3 per­cent.”
    1. Relat­ed: ‘Death Is the Only Truth.’ Watch­ing India’s Funer­al Pyres Burn. (Aman Sethi, New York Times): “The Indi­an gov­ern­ment has ordered Twit­ter, Face­book and Insta­gram to take down dozens of posts crit­i­ciz­ing its han­dling of the pan­dem­ic. But the graph­ic images of mass cre­ma­tions have cut through this wall of noise, mis­in­for­ma­tion and pro­pa­gan­da, cap­tur­ing what epi­demi­ol­o­gists call ‘excess mor­tal­i­ty’ in grue­some detail.”
  6. Colum­bia Stone (T.A. Kras­ni­can, Sub­stack): “This pub­lic for­get­ful­ness is the same indif­fer­ence that in 1938 inspired Adolf Hitler, after issu­ing orders for his Nazi ‘death-head for­ma­tions’ to ‘send to death mer­ci­less­ly and with­out com­pas­sion, men, women, and chil­dren of Pol­ish deriva­tion and lan­guage,’ to write the famous phrase, ‘Who, after all, speaks today of the anni­hi­la­tion of the Arme­ni­ans?’ Pub­lic ambiva­lence about human tragedy embold­ened him.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  7. Indi­vid­u­al­ism is asso­ci­at­ed with hap­py coun­tries, but not peo­ple (Zaid Jilani, Sub­stack): “In a recent­ly released study, team of researchers stud­ied young adults across four coun­tries — Chi­na, the Unit­ed States, Rus­sia, and Italy — start­ing with the hypoth­e­sis that lev­els of life sat­is­fac­tion would be high­er among indi­vid­u­als who have indi­vid­u­al­is­tic val­ues. At the coun­try lev­el, this is indeed what they found. Coun­tries with a high­er index of indi­vid­u­al­is­tic val­ues had more life sat­is­fac­tion — that put Amer­i­ca on top, fol­lowed by Italy, Rus­sia, and then Chi­na. But an entire­ly dif­fer­ent pic­ture emerged when they looked at the indi­vid­ual lev­el. There, they found that indi­vid­u­al­ism had no impact on life sat­is­fac­tion. Instead, life sat­is­fac­tion was pos­i­tive­ly cor­re­lat­ed with col­lec­tivism, regard­less of the wider cul­ture of the coun­try.” My take: Amer­i­cans are on aver­age hap­pi­er than the Chi­nese because of the free­doms which emerge from our indi­vid­u­al­ism, but the hap­pi­est indi­vid­u­als in each coun­try are those that freely choose to embrace fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). 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 252

There was an abun­dance of sad news this week, which match­es this month, which match­es this year.

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Bible tells us to weep with those who weep, and this is a good week for that. I’ve had to share arti­cles about sim­i­lar wicked­ness too many times, begin­ning all the way back in vol­ume 4.
    • I think this 8 minute Face­book video by my friend Jamil Stell is good. He filmed it a few hours before George Floyd’s death, which is why he doesn’t ref­er­ence it. Jamil, who spoke at our fall retreat four years ago, is the Chi Alpha direc­tor at Cal State Stanis­laus.
    • I Specif­i­cal­ly Request­ed The Oppo­site of This (Imgur) — if a pic­ture is worth 1,000 words, a pic­ture with a great cap­tion is an entire trea­tise.
    • The Sor­rows of Min­neapo­lis: A Prayer for Our City (John Piper, Desir­ing God): dif­fi­cult to excerpt, quite good.
    • When the Law Does­n’t Con­tain All the Answers (Bob Driscoll, The Dis­patch): “The law, even applied cor­rect­ly, doesn’t rem­e­dy what we know is wrong. We can hope that the George Floyd killing can pro­vide some insight into the feel­ing of frus­tra­tion in many minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties sur­round­ing polic­ing issues, because we can see, or at least sense, the depth of the prob­lem. Assum­ing the sys­tem prop­er­ly tries and con­victs the kneel­ing offi­cer of some seri­ous offense, will you feel any bet­ter about George Floyd’s death? I won’t.”
    • George Floyd Left a Gospel Lega­cy in Hous­ton (Kate Shell­nutt, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The rest of the coun­try knows George Floyd from sev­er­al min­utes of cell phone footage cap­tured dur­ing his final hours. But in Houston’s Third Ward, they know Floyd for how he lived for decades—a men­tor to a gen­er­a­tion of young men and a ‘per­son of peace’ ush­er­ing min­istries into the area.”
    • Did George Floyd and Then-Offi­cer Derek Chau­vin Work Togeth­er in Min­neapo­lis? (Snopes): “So while it’s true that Floyd and Chau­vin worked at the club at the same time, it’s unknown, and unlike­ly, accord­ing to the for­mer own­er of the build­ing where the club was locat­ed, that the two men knew each oth­er.”
    • Cooped up: A shame­ful Cen­tral Park encounter demands all New York­ers be bet­ter peo­ple (Robert A. George, NY Dai­ly News) : “In the lat­est episode of the every­day-fresh-hell that is New York City under quar­an­tine, one white female, Amy Coop­er, was caught on video call­ing the cops on one black male, Chris­t­ian Coop­er. Sor­ry, folks, I’d encour­age every­one to push back on the reflex­ive instinct to make this into a sto­ry about racism as it’s more a mod­ern para­ble of bad behav­ior between two indi­vid­u­als.” Super-inter­est­ing.
    • White Peo­ple Behav­ing Bad­ly (Zaid Jilani, Arc Dig­i­tal): “The truth is, mea­sured explic­it and implic­it racial bias has rapid­ly declined, inter­ra­cial crimes are rare, and whites are actu­al­ly under­rep­re­sent­ed com­pared to their share of the pop­u­la­tion in the FBI’s index of hate crimes. No racial group has a monop­oly on hate, what­ev­er anec­dotes ele­vat­ed to news cov­er­age may lead us to believe.”
    • Anger Is Jus­ti­fied, Riots Nev­er Are (Michael Bren­dan Dougher­ty, Nation­al Review): “Riots are bad. Riots are nev­er a coher­ent or moral response to injus­tice, they just mul­ti­ply injus­tices and the riot­ers them­selves often suf­fer more in the long run…. Riots dis­suade indi­vid­u­als, fam­i­lies, and busi­ness­es from stay­ing in or join­ing a com­mu­ni­ty. Who wants to raise their kids in the neigh­bor­hood where the police sta­tion had to be evac­u­at­ed before it was set ablaze?” Some research on the effects of riots The Eco­nom­ic After­math of the 1960s Riots in Amer­i­can Cities: Evi­dence from Prop­er­ty Val­ues (Collins & Mar­go, Jour­nal of Eco­nom­ic His­to­ry on JSTOR) and this Twit­ter thread by a Prince­ton pro­fes­sor.
    • A dif­fer­ing per­spec­tive: What the news does­n’t show about protests in Min­neapo­lis and Louisville (Jason John­son, Vox): “Night­time cov­er­age will sel­dom show a full city map demon­strat­ing that, two blocks over from a street that looks like a ‘city engulfed in flames,’ there’s a CVS still open for busi­ness. The press flock­ing to dra­mat­ic images as a protest metaphor is not a new phe­nom­e­non.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of pol­i­tics and jour­nal­ism at Mor­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty.
    • George Floyd protests: Pho­tos show upris­ings across Amer­i­ca (Jen Kir­by and Kainaz Amaria, Vox): strik­ing images.
  2. About Chi­na:
    • The Infi­nite Heart­break of Lov­ing Hong Kong (Wil­fred Chan, The Nation): “Some­thing pro­found has been lost. It is not democ­ra­cy, because Hong Kong was nev­er demo­c­ra­t­ic. It is not auton­o­my, because Hong Kong nev­er enjoyed self-deter­mi­na­tion. It is cer­tain­ly not the will to resist; as I write this, activists are already plan­ning a full cal­en­dar of mass protests, deter­mined to fight until the bit­ter end. What is lost is the feel­ing that Hong Kong’s future could be an open ques­tion.”
    • Pom­peo declares Hong Kong no longer autonomous from Chi­na (Car­ol Morel­lo, Wash­ing­ton Post): “‘Hong Kong and its dynam­ic, enter­pris­ing, and free peo­ple have flour­ished for decades as a bas­tion of lib­er­ty, and this deci­sion gives me no plea­sure,’ [Pom­peo] added. ‘But sound pol­i­cy­mak­ing requires a recog­ni­tion of real­i­ty. While the Unit­ed States once hoped that free and pros­per­ous Hong Kong would pro­vide a mod­el for author­i­tar­i­an Chi­na, it is now clear that Chi­na is mod­el­ing Hong Kong after itself.’”
    • What to Make of Sec­re­tary Pom­peo Decer­ti­fy­ing Hong Kong Auton­o­my (Julian Ku, Law­fare): “Although Pompeo’s dra­mat­ic announce­ment drew head­lines around the world, his deci­sion should not have sur­prised observers, giv­en the new require­ments on any such cer­ti­fi­ca­tion imposed by Con­gress in Novem­ber 2019.”
    • ‘All-out com­bat’ feared as India, Chi­na engage in bor­der stand­off (Saif Khalid, Al Jazeera): “A video shot by an Indi­an sol­dier and shared on social media showed sol­diers from both nations engaged in fist­fights and stone-pelt­ing at the de fac­to bor­der, known as Line of Actu­al Con­trol (LAC). The inci­dent, which con­tin­ued until the next day, result­ed in 11 sol­diers being injured on both sides.” The head­line seems a bit over-the-top. I talked with a friend who has some rel­e­vant exper­tise and he is not that con­cerned. Still worth keep­ing an eye on. 
    • Chi­na-India bor­der: Clash­es raise fears of broad­er con­fronta­tion as Bei­jing pur­sues sov­er­eign­ty claims on all fronts (Anna Fifield and Joan­na Slater, Wash­ing­ton Post): “The rela­tion­ship between the two coun­tries remains tense, exac­er­bat­ed by efforts from both cap­i­tals to stoke nation­al­ist sen­ti­ment. The obvi­ous place for this to erupt is at the point where the two coun­tries bump up against each oth­er.” 
  3. ‘AKA Jane Roe’ and the humil­i­a­tion of the pro-life move­ment (Karen Swal­lows Pri­or, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): “Even before the film aired, head­line after head­line heaped humil­i­a­tion on pro-lif­ers. The Los Ange­les Times report­ed that McCor­vey had been paid to change her mind. This was mis­lead­ing: McCor­vey wasn’t paid to change her mind — she was paid to speak at pro-life events after she claimed she had changed her posi­tion.”
    • Relat­ed: FX doc­u­men­tary on Nor­ma McCor­vey omits key Catholic sources who knew her best (Julia Duin, GetRe­li­gion): “Also, the doc­u­men­tary is coy about one impor­tant thing. To get access to McCor­vey, sure­ly they had to pay up too? We call that ‘check­book jour­nal­ism’ and eth­i­cal news orga­ni­za­tions don’t offer mon­ey to their inter­vie­wees. When pressed by the Wash­ing­ton Post, the film’s pro­duc­er admit­ted he paid her a ‘mod­est licens­ing fee’ for use of fam­i­ly pho­tos and doc­u­men­tary footage.” 
  4. Pan­dem­ic Per­spec­tives:
    • Con­ser­v­a­tives who refuse to wear masks under­cut a cen­tral claim of their beliefs (Megan McAr­dle, Wash­ing­ton Post): “[Refus­ing to wear masks] also under­cuts a more cen­tral claim of con­ser­vatism: that big, coer­cive gov­ern­ment pro­grams are unnec­es­sary because pri­vate insti­tu­tions could pro­vide many ben­e­fits that we think of as ‘pub­lic goods.’ For that to be true, the civic cul­ture would have to be such that indi­vid­u­als are will­ing to make seri­ous sac­ri­fices for the com­mon good, and espe­cial­ly to pro­tect the most vul­ner­a­ble among us.”
    • Reopen­ing church­es safe­ly: What pas­tors in Utah, Geor­gia have learned (Kelsey Dal­las, Deseret News): “The Rev. Leroy Davis wants his church to feel as safe as Cost­co. The ser­vice will hope­ful­ly be a lit­tle more per­son­al, he said, but the envi­ron­ment should seem just as clean.“
    • The Reg­u­la­to­ry State Is Fail­ing Us (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “It is impor­tant not to make this a par­ti­san con­flict. I do not view the admin­is­tra­tive state as extra-con­sti­tu­tion­al. That said, it has become far too inflex­i­ble, and not suf­fi­cient­ly focused on out­comes. It is time we woke up and real­ized that we have a sys­tem that sim­ply is not work­ing.”
    • COVID-19 Has Exposed Crit­i­cal Weak­ness­es in Glob­al High­er Edu­ca­tion (Chris­tos Makridis and Soula Paras­sidis): “While pub­licly avail­able data does not seem to exist to iden­ti­fy the source of the increas­ing pro­lif­er­a­tion of degree pro­grams, many stu­dents have been fun­neled into degree pro­grams with­out an accu­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tion of what they are going to learn and their post-grad­u­a­tion labor mar­ket prospects.” Chris­tos is an alum­nus of our min­istry. 
  5. Have Pen­te­costals Out­grown Their Name? (Daniel Sil­li­man, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Names can be tricky. What do you call a Pen­te­costal who isn’t called a Pen­te­costal? The ques­tion sounds like a rid­dle, but it’s a real chal­lenge for schol­ars. They have strug­gled for years to set­tle on the best term for the broad and diverse move­ment of Chris­tians who empha­size the indi­vid­ual believer’s rela­tion­ship to the Holy Spir­it and talk about being Spir­it-filled, Spir­it-bap­tized, or Spir­it-empow­ered.”
  6. Conn. trans­gen­der pol­i­cy found to vio­late Title IX (ESPN): “Con­necti­cut’s pol­i­cy allow­ing trans­gen­der girls to com­pete as girls in high school sports vio­lates the civ­il rights of ath­letes who have always iden­ti­fied as female, the U.S. Edu­ca­tion Depart­ment has deter­mined in a deci­sion that could force the state to change course to keep fed­er­al fund­ing and influ­ence oth­ers to do the same.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Why Being a Fos­ter Child Made Me a Con­ser­v­a­tive (Rob Hen­der­son, New York Times): “Indi­vid­u­als have rights. But they also have respon­si­bil­i­ties. For instance, when I say par­ents should pri­or­i­tize their chil­dren over their careers, there is a sense of unease among my peers. They think I want to blame indi­vid­u­als rather than a neb­u­lous foe like pover­ty. They are most­ly right.” The author just grad­u­at­ed from Yale. Worth read­ing regard­less of your polit­i­cal alle­giances. First shared in vol­ume 153.

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 227

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.

In case you were won­der­ing, so far I have found the impeach­ment hear­ings and the com­men­tary on them unin­ter­est­ing. Let me know if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing about them, though.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Dis­hon­esty of the Abor­tion Debate (Caitlin Flana­gan, The Atlantic): “The argu­ment for abor­tion, if made hon­est­ly, requires many words: It must evoke the recent past, the dire con­se­quences to women of mak­ing a very sim­ple med­ical pro­ce­dure ille­gal. The argu­ment against it doesn’t take even a sin­gle word. The argu­ment against it is a pic­ture…. The truth is that the best argu­ment on each side is a damn good one, and until you acknowl­edge that fact, you aren’t speak­ing or even think­ing hon­est­ly about the issue. You cer­tain­ly aren’t going to con­vince any­body. Only the truth has the pow­er to move.”
    • This arti­cle has received praise from across the ide­o­log­i­cal spec­trum. There is an inter­est­ing Twit­ter response thread by Char­lie Camosy, a pro­fes­sor of ethics at Ford­ham. 
  2. India is try­ing to build the world’s biggest facial recog­ni­tion sys­tem (Julie Zaugg, CNN): “‘We were able to match 10,561 miss­ing chil­dren with those liv­ing in insti­tu­tions,’ he told CNN. ‘They are cur­rent­ly in the process of being reunit­ed with their fam­i­lies.’ Most of them were vic­tims of traf­fick­ing, forced to work in the fields, in gar­ment fac­to­ries or in broth­els, accord­ing to Rib­hu. This momen­tous under­tak­ing was made pos­si­ble by facial recog­ni­tion tech­nol­o­gy pro­vid­ed by New Del­hi’s police. ‘There are over 300,000 miss­ing chil­dren in India and over 100,000 liv­ing in insti­tu­tions,’ he explained. ‘We could­n’t pos­si­bly have matched them all man­u­al­ly.’”
    • That’s a real­ly won­der­ful use of the tech­nol­o­gy and it makes me very afraid, because the obvi­ous pos­i­tive uses are like­ly to pre­vent us from build­ing in ade­quate legal safe­guards against the out­landish tyran­ni­cal pow­er this tech­nol­o­gy makes pos­si­ble.
  3. Men­tal Health, Bul­ly­ing, Career Uncer­tain­ty (Colleen Fla­her­ty, Inside High­er Ed): “More than a third of Ph.D. stu­dents have sought help for anx­i­ety or depres­sion caused by Ph.D. study, accord­ing to results of a glob­al sur­vey of 6,300 stu­dents from Nature. Thir­ty-six per­cent is a very large share, con­sid­er­ing that many stu­dents who suf­fer don’t reach out for help. Still, the fig­ure par­al­lels those found by oth­er stud­ies on the top­ic. A 2018 study of most­ly Ph.D. stu­dents, for instance, found that 39 per­cent of respon­dents scored in the mod­er­ate-to-severe depres­sion range. That’s com­pared to 6 per­cent of the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion mea­sured with the same scale.”
  4. Pete Buttigieg wants to build a bridge to the reli­gious right. But ten­sion with­in his in-laws’ fam­i­ly high­lights how dif­fi­cult that may be. (Amy B. Wang, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Three days after Christ­mas 2017, Rhyan Glez­man got a text from his youngest broth­er, Chas­ten, say­ing he was engaged to his boyfriend of 2½ years — Pete Buttigieg, may­or of South Bend, Ind. Rhyan, an evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian pas­tor, texted back: ‘I love you and is the only rea­son I’m going to share this one ques­tion to you. Are you will­ing to sur­ren­der to God ‘the one who cre­at­ed you and I’ to what­ev­er he says? I love you beyond what you will ever think or know. I think the world of you and Pete, you need to know that. Have a great day broth­er!!!’”
  5. Why my col­lege pals went to Yale while my high school friends went to jail (Rob Hen­der­son, NY Post): “It is fas­ci­nat­ing to hear afflu­ent peo­ple dis­cuss the rea­sons for upward mobil­i­ty. They sug­gest solu­tions like ‘oppor­tu­ni­ty’ and ‘edu­ca­tion.’ Sel­dom do they men­tion ‘par­ents’ or ‘fam­i­ly.’ This is why: Afflu­ent peo­ple take their fam­i­lies for grant­ed. They’re so used to hav­ing sta­ble fam­i­lies, it doesn’t occur to them what it would be like to go with­out. It’s like ask­ing a fish about the impor­tance of water.”
    • This is some­thing I’ve been fas­ci­nat­ed by for years — Stan­ford stu­dents are far more like­ly to come from intact fam­i­lies than are the stu­dents I meet while doing retreats for oth­er Chi Alphas. The author is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in psy­chol­o­gy at Cam­bridge.
  6. State­ment from Medill Dean Charles Whitak­er (North­west­ern University):”…I patent­ly reject the notion that our stu­dents have no right to report on com­mu­ni­ties oth­er than those from which they hail, and I will nev­er affirm that stu­dents who do not come from mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties can­not under­stand or accu­rate­ly con­vey the strug­gles of those pop­u­la­tions. And, unlike our young charges at The Dai­ly, who in a heart­felt, though not well-con­sid­ered edi­to­r­i­al, apol­o­gized for their work on the Ses­sions sto­ry, I absolute­ly will not apol­o­gize for encour­ag­ing our stu­dents to take on the much-need­ed and very dif­fi­cult task of report­ing on our life and times at North­west­ern and beyond.” This is straight fire. Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
    • The back­sto­ry: Jeff Ses­sions (for­mer US Attor­ney Gen­er­al) spoke at North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty. The cam­pus paper cov­ered the event and the pro­tes­tors, and received sharp crit­i­cism from activists for so doing. The edi­to­r­i­al board of the Dai­ly North­west­ern issued an apol­o­gy via op-ed. A lot of peo­ple (includ­ing high-pro­file pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­ists) expressed strong opin­ions about the cov­er­age of the event and the apol­o­gy, and this is the dean’s response.
  7. The Place of Chris­t­ian Reli­gion in the Amer­i­can Found­ing (Thomas Taco­ma, Pub­lic Dis­course): “Take the notion that ‘almost all’ of the Amer­i­can founders were deists. Ethan Allen was the lone con­firmed Amer­i­can deist of any influ­ence in the found­ing peri­od. Thomas Paine, who spent rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle time in the Unit­ed States—and became deeply unpop­u­lar in Amer­i­ca after writ­ing The Age of Rea­son—was the era’s oth­er famous deist. Jef­fer­son, Adams, and Franklin were much qui­eter about their het­ero­dox beliefs, and even they were not dyed-in-the-wool deists. Franklin, for exam­ple, often spoke of Prov­i­dence, and of a God who did in fact inter­vene in the affairs of men.” The author is a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at Blue Moun­tain Col­lege and is review­ing a book by Mark Hall, a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at George Fox Uni­ver­si­ty.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have On Obsti­na­cy In Belief (C.S. Lewis, The Sewa­nee Review): this is a reward­ing essay from way back in 1955. (first shared in vol­ume 6)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). 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 203

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Heart of the Evan­gel­i­cal Cri­sis (Mark Gal­li, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “My next thought was, ‘Well, if I call myself a Chris­t­ian, I should have greater love and desire to know God more deeply. Per­haps I should pray for that.’ And that’s when some­thing occurred to me with great force: I wasn’t sure I want­ed that. I rec­og­nize that was an odd admis­sion for a per­son who claimed to be a good Chris­t­ian. But there it was. I didn’t think I real­ly want­ed to love God more. The rea­sons for that are com­plex and will be touched on lat­er, but the bot­tom line was: I real­ly didn’t want to love God.” First essay in a series.
  2. Abor­tion in Amer­i­ca, explained in 10 facts (Anna North, Vox): “Even though the abor­tion rate has declined, the pro­ce­dure remains com­mon­place. Accord­ing to a 2017 analy­sis by the Guttmach­er Insti­tute, 23.7 per­cent of women in the Unit­ed States will have an abor­tion by the age of 45. Nine­teen per­cent will have one by age 30, and 4.6 per­cent will have one by age 20.”
    • Debunk­ing 9 Myths Sur­round­ing Alabama’s Abor­tion Law (Car­ole Noviel­li, Live Action): “This bill, HB314, was spon­sored by a female law­mak­er, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ter­ri Collins, and was signed into law by female Gov­er­nor Kay Ivey. Pro-life orga­ni­za­tions are led by women. The Roe v. Wade Supreme Court deci­sion, on the oth­er hand, was imposed by all men.”
    • Alaba­ma and Geor­gia Are Throw­ing Down the Gaunt­let against Roe. Good. (David French, Nation­al Review): dif­fi­cult to excerpt. A good sum­ma­ry of the legal strat­e­gy the south­ern states are pur­su­ing.
    • I’m an anti-abor­tion Chris­t­ian. But Alabama’s ban will do more harm than good. (Kather­ine Kelaidis, Vox): “Dra­con­ian bans on abor­tion — and frankly any­thing oth­er than lib­er­al access to abor­tions along with com­pre­hen­sive sex edu­ca­tion and access to con­tra­cep­tion — fail to pro­tect human life, both in the womb and out­side of it. This, in itself, should be intol­er­a­ble to any Chris­t­ian, par­tic­u­lar­ly one who views abor­tion as moral­ly sus­pect.”
    • Why some anti-abor­tion con­ser­v­a­tives think Alabama’s abor­tion law goes too far (Jane Coas­ton, Vox): “A 2018 Gallup poll found that just 29 per­cent of Amer­i­cans believe abor­tion should be legal in all cir­cum­stances, but that out­weighs the 18 per­cent of Amer­i­cans who believe abor­tion should be ille­gal in all cir­cum­stances. The vast major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans think abor­tion should be legal, with restric­tions of some kind (abor­tions being per­mit­ted only with­in the first three months of preg­nan­cy, for exam­ple).”
    • That lat­est Pat Robert­son juridi­cal quote: Jour­nal­ists may want to note these inter­est­ing facts (Ter­ry Mat­ting­ly, GetRe­li­gion): “Robert­son is (a) mak­ing a com­ment about legal ques­tions linked to this Alaba­ma law and, (b) also about the polit­i­cal real­i­ties sur­round­ing it. Thus, I am ask­ing: Should jour­nal­ists con­sid­er adding one or two sen­tences to their reports not­ing that Robert­son is (a) a grad­u­ate of Yale Law School and (b) some­one who grew up in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., as the son of a U.S. Sen­a­tor? How many read­ers know these two facts about this famous reli­gious leader?” Wait. What? I had no idea.
    • Most Abor­tion-Mind­ed Women Aren’t Cal­cu­lat­ing Killers. They’re Afraid (Maria Baer, Gospel Coali­tion): the whole thing is worth read­ing — this bit caught my atten­tion but isn’t real­ly close to her main point: “Evil often begets more evil. While many who sup­port so-called abor­tion rights believe they’re serv­ing needy women, they’re over­look­ing one crit­i­cal real­i­ty: Women are often brought—reluctantly—to the abor­tion doc­tor. These women are com­pelled toward abor­tion not by their own empow­er­ing, my-body-is-my-own sense of auton­o­my, but by anoth­er per­son seek­ing con­trol. Angry boyfriends, angry hus­bands, angry moth­ers, angry employers—these are so often the wind at the back of an abor­tion-mind­ed woman.”
  3. Too many men: Chi­na and India bat­tle with the con­se­quences of gen­der imbal­ance (Simon Deny­er & Annie Gowen,South Chi­na Morn­ing Post): this arti­cle is a year old, it’s long but good. “Noth­ing like this has hap­pened in human his­to­ry. A com­bi­na­tion of cul­tur­al pref­er­ences, gov­ern­ment decree and mod­ern med­ical tech­nol­o­gy in the world’s two largest coun­tries has cre­at­ed a gen­der imbal­ance on a con­ti­nen­tal scale. Men out­num­ber women by 70 mil­lion in Chi­na and India…. In any giv­en age group, a pro­por­tion of men will fail to find brides, but they will stay in the mar­riage mar­ket, com­pet­ing with younger men to mar­ry younger women. The dis­pro­por­tion keeps grow­ing. By 2050, French demog­ra­ph­er Christophe Guil­mo­to esti­mates, there could be between 150 to 190 men for every 100 women in China’s mar­riage mar­ket.”
  4. A few brief obser­va­tions about think­ing clear­ly:
    • Account­ing Iden­ti­ties and the Implic­it The­o­ry of Iner­tia (Nick Rowe, Worth­while Cana­di­an Ini­tia­tive): “Ani­mals can be divid­ed into Car­ni­vores and Non-Car­ni­vores: A = C + NC. There­fore, if we add some wolves to an island of sheep, the num­ber of ani­mals on that island will increase. It’s easy to see why that argu­ment might not be right. Wolves kill sheep. But if you did­n’t know that fact about wolves and sheep, the argu­ment looks very appeal­ing. But the equa­tion A = C + NC tells us absolute­ly noth­ing about the world; it’s an account­ing iden­ti­ty that is true by def­i­n­i­tion. The only thing it tells you is how I have cho­sen to divide up the world into parts. And I can choose an infi­nite num­ber of dif­fer­ent ways to divide the world up into parts.” This is an impor­tant insight.
    • Why Do Exper­i­ments Make Peo­ple Uneasy? (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “One fac­tor which comes out of respon­dent com­ments is that the exper­i­ment forces peo­ple to reck­on with the idea that even experts don’t know what the right thing to do is and that con­fes­sion of igno­rance both­ers peo­ple. (This is also one rea­son why peo­ple may pre­fer pun­dits who always ‘know’ the right thing to do even when they man­i­fest­ly do not).”
    • Our first instinct is far too often wrong (Tim Har­ford, Finan­cial Times): “In a mul­ti­ple-choice test, you some­times write down an answer and then have sec­ond thoughts. Is it wise to stay with your first instincts, or bet­ter to switch? Most peo­ple would advise that the ini­tial answer is usu­al­ly bet­ter than the doubt-plagued sec­ond guess…. Researchers have been study­ing this ques­tion since the 1920s. They have over­whelm­ing­ly con­clud­ed both that indi­vid­ual answer changes are more like­ly to be from wrong to right, and that stu­dents who change their answers tend to improve their scores.”
    • The Big Sto­ry You Don’t Read About (David Brooks, New York Times): “How did we in our busi­ness get in the spot where we spend 90 per­cent of our cov­er­age on the 10 per­cent of our lives influ­enced by pol­i­tics and 10 per­cent of our cov­er­age on the 90 per­cent of our lives influ­enced by rela­tion­ship, com­mu­ni­ty and the places we live in every day?”
  5. When Male Run­ners Lose to Women (Ley­land Cec­co, The Wal­rus): “Stud­ies are start­ing to show that male and female bod­ies respond dif­fer­ent­ly to fatigue: dur­ing long peri­ods of exer­cise, the brain mon­i­tors and triages the body’s out­put, reg­u­lat­ing feel­ings of exhaus­tion to ensure the run­ner doesn’t overex­tend them­selves. If the cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem sens­es the activ­i­ty is becom­ing too intense, it reduces the muscle’s out­put…. ‘It turns out women have a slight­ly, it seems, bet­ter resis­tance to that kind of fatigue.’”
  6. The Incom­pat­i­bil­i­ty of Crit­i­cal The­o­ry and Chris­tian­i­ty (Neil Shen­vi & Pat Sawyer, Gospel Coali­tion): “Chris­tian­i­ty pro­vides us with an over­ar­ch­ing meta­nar­ra­tive that runs from cre­ation to redemp­tion: We are crea­tures made in God’s image, who have sinned against him, who need to be res­cued through the aton­ing work of Jesus, and who are called to love both God and neigh­bor. In con­trast, crit­i­cal the­o­ry is asso­ci­at­ed with a meta­nar­ra­tive that runs from oppres­sion to lib­er­a­tion: We are mem­bers either of a dom­i­nant group or of a mar­gin­al­ized group with respect to a giv­en iden­ti­ty mark­er. As such, we either need to divest our­selves of pow­er and seek to lib­er­ate oth­ers, or we need to acquire pow­er and lib­er­ate our­selves by dis­man­tling all struc­tures and insti­tu­tions that sub­ju­gate and oppress. In crit­i­cal the­o­ry, the great­est sin is oppres­sion, and the great­est virtue is the pur­suit of lib­er­a­tion.”
    • Relat­ed (at least in my mind): Chris­tians Can­not Be Mis­treat­ed (George Yancey, Patheos): “I believe that some indi­vid­u­als are unable to see anti-Chris­t­ian dis­crim­i­na­tion no mat­ter what evi­dence is pre­sent­ed to them. For them the cul­tur­al nar­ra­tive that Chris­tians are the dom­i­nant group is sim­ply too pow­er­ful for them to con­sid­er alter­na­tive infor­ma­tion.” The author, whose work I have fea­tured before, is a soci­ol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Texas.
  7. The ‘3.5% Rule’: How A Small Minor­i­ty Can Change The World (David Rob­son, BBC): “Look­ing at hun­dreds of cam­paigns over the last cen­tu­ry, Chenoweth found that non­vi­o­lent cam­paigns are twice as like­ly to achieve their goals as vio­lent cam­paigns. And although the exact dynam­ics will depend on many fac­tors, she has shown it takes around 3.5% of the pop­u­la­tion active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in the protests to ensure seri­ous polit­i­cal change.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have an eye-open­ing (and dis­may­ing) arti­cle, What The Media Gets Wrong About Israel (Mat­tie Fried­man, The Atlantic). (first shared back in vol­ume 5): “one of the most impor­tant aspects of the media-sat­u­rat­ed con­flict between Jews and Arabs is also the least cov­ered: the press itself. The West­ern press has become less an observ­er of this con­flict than an actor in it, a role with con­se­quences for the mil­lions of peo­ple try­ing to com­pre­hend cur­rent events, includ­ing pol­i­cy­mak­ers who depend on jour­nal­is­tic accounts to under­stand a region where they con­sis­tent­ly seek, and fail, to pro­duc­tive­ly inter­vene.”

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 85

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Recen­cy Illu­sions (Alan Jacobs, The New Atlantis): “I have come to believe that it is impos­si­ble for any­one who is reg­u­lar­ly on social media to have a bal­anced and accu­rate under­stand­ing of what is hap­pen­ing in the world. To fol­low a minute-by-minute cycle of news is to be con­stant­ly threat­ened by illu­sion.”
  2. The Fan­ta­sy Of Addic­tion (Peter Hitchens, First Things): “Even hero­in abusers, and gam­blers, can and do just stop. Rea­son has over­come desire. In which case the whole idea of ‘addic­tion,’ as a pow­er greater than will, is over­thrown.”
  3. Nige­ria Could Teach The West A Few Things (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg View): “…in essence Nige­ria has in a few decades cre­at­ed an almost entire­ly new, coun­try-sized city [Lagos] built on the ideals and prac­tice of reli­gious tol­er­ance.”
  4. Com­pas­sion Has ‘Very Lit­tle Hope’ for India, Sets Dead­line to Shut Down Spon­sor­ships (Sarah Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The Indi­an gov­ern­ment objects to Compassion’s Chris­tian­i­ty, accord­ing to the ministry’s tes­ti­mo­ny to US law­mak­ers. Hin­du nation­al­ists have put increas­ing pres­sure on Chris­tians in India since the elec­tion of Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi in 2014.”
  5. Why Trump’s Staff Is Lying (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg View): “If you want to ascer­tain if some­one is tru­ly loy­al to you, ask them to do some­thing out­ra­geous or stu­pid. If they balk, then you know right away they aren’t ful­ly with you.”
  6. Will There Be An Inter­nal Revolt Against Trump? (Tevi Troy, Com­men­tary Mag­a­zine): “Can­di­date Trump ran on repeal­ing Oba­macare, com­bat­ing polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness, and law and order. Many career offi­cials in these agen­cies have seen their mis­sion in oppo­site terms—they were tasked with pro­mot­ing the Afford­able Care Act, main­tain­ing speech regimes on cam­pus, and cre­at­ing new guid­ance on how to mon­i­tor alle­ga­tions of racism by police offi­cers.”
  7. Planned Parenthood’s Most Mis­lead­ing Sta­tis­tic (Joe Carter, Gospel Coali­tion): this arti­cle seems to be inspired by a three-minute sting video show­ing how dif­fi­cult it is to receive any­thing oth­er than an abor­tion at Planned Par­ent­hood. 

Things Glen Found Amusing:

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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