Tag: Israel

TGFI, Volume 556: therapeutic misadventures, tolerant Protestants, and a dweebocracy

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. Is Ther­a­py Tear­ing Us Apart? (Jonathan Alpert, The Free Press): “Too many ther­a­pists now func­tion less as clin­i­cians than as rein­forcers of the most self-pro­tec­tive inter­pre­ta­tion avail­able, teach­ing patients to locate the prob­lem every­where but them­selves.… The patient doesn’t gain greater agency, but instead, a more pol­ished sto­ry about why some­one else is to blame. If you feel injured, the injury must be real. If you feel unsafe, the threat must be there. If a rela­tion­ship cre­ates dis­com­fort, the rela­tion­ship itself becomes the prob­lem.… This is how ther­a­py can qui­et­ly become an engine that keeps peo­ple stuck. Patients leave not more capa­ble of tol­er­at­ing frus­tra­tion, ambi­gu­i­ty, or ordi­nary dis­ap­point­ment, but less. They become more flu­ent in explain­ing why they feel the way they do while becom­ing less prac­ticed at chang­ing what they do next.”
  2. Which reli­gions are the least tol­er­ant of cam­pus speak­ers? (Chapin Lenthall-Cleary, FIRE): “When it comes to near­ly every ide­ol­o­gy or gen­der, Protes­tants are sig­nif­i­cant­ly more tol­er­ant than their non-Protes­tant coun­ter­parts, and not only that, they’re usu­al­ly more tol­er­ant of both sides. So the Protes­tant effect isn’t (pri­mar­i­ly) a result of gen­der or ide­ol­o­gy. For some rea­son, Protes­tants are just unusu­al­ly tol­er­ant of con­tro­ver­sial speak­ers.” — This is super inter­est­ing! (rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent)
  3. Actu­al­ly, Democ­ra­cy Dies in H.R. (Aman­da Taub, New York Times): “The incen­tives for elites to stay loy­al [to dic­ta­tors] have been stud­ied exten­sive­ly, but the rank and file have remained some­thing of a black box.… It turns out that the kinds of career pres­sures famil­iar to employ­ees every­where — the desire to revive a stalled career or obtain a minor pro­mo­tion — can be enough to incen­tivize low­er- and midlev­el offi­cials to vio­late pro­fes­sion­al oblig­a­tions, fun­da­men­tal norms and even basic moral­i­ty. The peo­ple who make those deci­sions, the research sug­gests, are nei­ther extrem­ists nor vic­tims. They are often just mid­dling work­ers look­ing for a way to get ahead.”
    • This is a fas­ci­nat­ing insight.
  4. Two arti­cles reflect­ing on sex­u­al vio­lence in the war between Israel and Hamas.
    • What I Learned Cat­a­loging the Sex­u­al Vio­lence of Octo­ber 7 (Cochav Elka­yam-Levy, The Free Press): “Some acts were car­ried out with a lev­el of cru­el­ty that expos­es a dif­fi­cult truth: Our vocab­u­lary is insuf­fi­cient to describe what human beings are capa­ble of doing to one anoth­er.… Sex­u­al vio­lence, when used as an instru­ment of ter­ror, is too often imag­ined in ways that dimin­ish its grav­i­ty, cru­el­ty, and func­tion. It is fre­quent­ly reduced, mis­char­ac­ter­ized, and at times resist­ed pre­cise­ly because it defies com­pre­hen­sion. The dif­fi­cul­ty, even now, lies not in the absence of evi­dence, but in the lim­its of com­pre­hen­sion.”
      • This is a high-lev­el sum­ma­ry with­out the dis­turb­ing graph­ic details that some reports fore­ground.
    • Your Ques­tions About Nicholas Kristof’s Col­umn on Pales­tini­ans and Sex­u­al Assault (Kath­leen Kings­bury and Nicholas Kristof, New York Times): “Before pub­li­ca­tion, Nick’s report­ing under­went a rig­or­ous vet­ting process by Opinion’s fact-check­ing depart­ment to ensure that every tes­ti­mo­ny and anec­dote he per­son­al­ly report­ed was sup­port­ed by inde­pen­dent sources, as is the case with all sen­si­tive pieces. The Times’s stan­dards and legal teams also reviewed the col­umn and offered feed­back. After pub­li­ca­tion, we reviewed the fac­tu­al chal­lenges that read­ers and oth­ers raised, as is stan­dard prac­tice with any pub­lished piece. Edi­tors found no errors.… Crit­ics who focus on the back­grounds of spe­cif­ic sources often over­look the over­whelm­ing vol­ume and con­sis­ten­cy of such accounts. Nick’s col­umn, ulti­mate­ly, was a call to action, urg­ing those in pow­er to con­demn sex­u­al vio­lence in all its forms.”
  5. An Ope­nAI mod­el has dis­proved a cen­tral con­jec­ture in dis­crete geom­e­try (Ope­nAI): “This proof is an impor­tant mile­stone for the math and AI com­mu­ni­ties. It marks the first time that a promi­nent open prob­lem, cen­tral to a sub­field of math­e­mat­ics, has been solved autonomous­ly by AI. It also demon­strates the depth of rea­son­ing these sys­tems now sup­port.… Fields medal­ist Tim Gow­ers, writ­ing in the com­pan­ion paper, calls the result ‘a mile­stone in AI math­e­mat­ics.’ ”
  6. Stu­dents deserve bet­ter than COLLEGE (Iván Mari­novic, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “By my count, the syl­labus assigns rough­ly 45 pages of canon­i­cal West­ern philo­soph­i­cal writ­ing across the entire quar­ter, against more than 500 pages of con­tem­po­rary work orga­nized around iden­ti­ty, oppres­sion and indige­nous ways of know­ing — Freire, Dan­garem­b­ga, West­over and Kim­mer­er. The ratio is 11:1. There is no Aris­to­tle, no Augus­tine, no Aquinas, no Mon­taigne, no Locke, no Mill, no New­man, no Stein­er, no Bloom — none of the writ­ers who built the case for lib­er­al edu­ca­tion that the course claims to defend. A course adver­tised as a defense of lib­er­al edu­ca­tion has been built with­out the thinkers who defined it.”
    • The author is an account­ing pro­fes­sor in the GSB. This was picked up and reprint­ed by The Free Press as Stan­ford’s War on the West­ern Canon. The bit at the end com­par­ing Stan­ford to its peer insti­tu­tions was instruc­tive.
    • This one gen­er­at­ed a lot of stu­dent dis­cus­sion on our Slack, most­ly empha­siz­ing that more stu­dents should choose to enroll in SLE rather than the default route of COLLEGE. In one stu­den­t’s words, “Espe­cial­ly with COLLEGE being expand­ed to 3 quar­ters, it’s hard to see why stu­dents would pre­fer to take it over SLE. SLE feels, at least for me, to be more effi­cient (cov­er­ing COLLEGE, PWR, and sev­er­al of the WAYS) and effec­tive (in terms of the learn­ing and prepar­ing stu­dents for the rest of their aca­d­e­m­ic career).” Anoth­er stu­dent not­ed “even when SLE does get noticed by the press it still seems hat­ed on. Before frosh year I read an Atlantic piece that crit­i­cized it for hav­ing too much of a mod­ern focus and not engag­ing with old­er sta­ples of the West­ern canon like Gil­gamesh and the Odyssey. The prob­lem is that WE DO cov­er those texts and it was clear that the author mis­un­der­stood the premise of the pro­gram and only read the spring syl­labus.… Any­ways, the point is that SLE is great and every­one should take it!” Incom­ing frosh, take note!
  7. The Secret Elite One Fresh­man Dis­cov­ered at Stan­ford (Anand Girid­haradas, New York Times): “Baker’s first book, ‘How to Rule the World,’ is a rig­or­ous, self-assured, propul­sive, at times ter­ri­fy­ing por­trait of a dwee­boc­ra­cy that ‘sets the agen­da for the plan­et.’ In every age, there is some place that epit­o­mizes how pow­er works. Baker’s Stan­ford is a strong can­di­date, and his book fol­lows in the tra­di­tion of Michael Lewis’s Wall Street chron­i­cle ‘Liar’s Pok­er,’ but with more pim­ples and less eye con­tact.”
    • I love this para­graph. This is the same book I post­ed anoth­er review of a few weeks ago.

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 555: optimizing everything is foolish

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. Your Deci­sion Mak­ing Is All Wrong (David Epstein, New York Times): “If in mak­ing deci­sions you are often guid­ed by a search for the best, you are going about deci­sion mak­ing all wrong — and you’re also prob­a­bly less hap­py for it. In an age of infor­ma­tion and choice abun­dance, we assume we can find the best of every­thing if we look long and hard enough. Psy­chol­o­gists call that ten­den­cy max­i­miz­ing. But search­ing for the best is the wrong goal. That is because search­ing is itself a cost, and most peo­ple for­get to account for it. If you did, you would see that the opti­mal strat­e­gy isn’t opti­miz­ing at all.… Max­i­miz­ers tend to be less sat­is­fied with their deci­sions and their lives. They are typ­i­cal­ly less hap­py, more prone to regret and more like­ly to com­pare them­selves end­less­ly with oth­ers. Sat­is­fi­cers don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have low stan­dards. Their stan­dard is ‘good enough for me’ rather than ‘the best out there,’ and that makes it pos­si­ble to feel sat­is­fied with their choic­es, instead of haunt­ed by the ones they didn’t make.”
  2. Chi­na Is Much Weak­er Than It Seems. That’s the Prob­lem. (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “ ‘Busi­ness debt has dou­bled since 2019, while rev­enues are only 30 per­cent high­er,’ reports For­tune. This eco­nom­ic house of cards rests, if you’ll for­give the mixed metaphor, on a foun­da­tion of sand: an aging and declin­ing work force, net emi­gra­tion, wide­spread youth unem­ploy­ment, plum­met­ing for­eign direct invest­ment, an arbi­trary rule of law that ter­ri­fies busi­ness lead­ers, repeat­ed purges of the mil­i­tary that project far more para­noia than con­fi­dence and a tru­cu­lent for­eign pol­i­cy that does lit­tle more than alarm and alien­ate China’s neigh­bors.… Ris­ing nations, which is what Chi­na was under Deng Xiaop­ing and Jiang Zemin, have the lux­u­ry of being able to bide their time. Declin­ing nations don’t. It tends to make them more inclined to gam­ble with their future. It’s why Putin invad­ed Ukraine after he real­ized the coun­try was mov­ing inex­orably into the West’s orbit. It’s also why Xi will be pow­er­ful­ly tempt­ed to seize Tai­wan by inva­sion or block­ade despite the enor­mous risks it pos­es not only to the world’s econ­o­my but also to his own.”
    • Some­what relat­ed: Why Chi­na Is So Much Less Scared of A.I. (Jacob Dry­er, New York Times): “The real­i­ty is that Chi­na and the Unit­ed States are rac­ing in dif­fer­ent direc­tions, because the two coun­tries con­cep­tu­al­ize A.I. very dif­fer­ent­ly. Amer­i­cans want to cre­ate the most pow­er­ful tech­nol­o­gy humans have ever known. In the quest for super­in­tel­li­gence, the U.S. gov­ern­ment is encour­ag­ing pri­vate firms to move full speed ahead, reg­u­la­tion be damned. Under the very tight­est reg­u­la­tion, by con­trast, the Chi­nese want to make A.I. more prac­ti­cal and embed­ded in soci­ety, more care­ful­ly select­ing how it is deployed and used by the pop­u­la­tion.… In that way, as Chi­na exports those A.I. mod­els, it will be export­ing Chi­nese gov­er­nance as well, with all of the safe­ty, abun­dance, sur­veil­lance and embed­ded hier­ar­chies that entails. That’s why the dif­fer­ence between these two coun­tries in the A.I. race mat­ters so much.”
  3. The Athe­ist and the Machine God (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “There is no obvi­ous escape from mys­tery here. If you bite the bul­let and just say that Clau­dia has already attained con­scious­ness, then that implies we some­how built a con­scious mind with­out hav­ing any idea of how con­scious­ness works or where it comes from. That’s sci­ence with extreme­ly spooky char­ac­ter­is­tics: Like Kevin Cost­ner sum­mon­ing base­ball ghosts to the Iowa corn­field, we put up a mate­r­i­al archi­tec­ture and the mys­te­ri­ous ‘I’ mag­i­cal­ly appeared. Alter­na­tive­ly, if you say that A.I. isn’t con­scious but mere­ly capa­ble, then the ques­tion of why we expe­ri­ence real­i­ty through con­scious­ness — the inter­nal ‘I,’ the sense of per­son­al iden­ti­ty and will — becomes much more dif­fi­cult to answer. If con­scious­ness isn’t nec­es­sary for capa­bil­i­ty, then pre­sum­ably evo­lu­tion should default to zom­bies.… As cer­tain philoso­phers have argued, this har­mo­ny between the psy­cho­log­i­cal and the phys­i­cal seems more much like­ly to appear in a uni­verse where con­scious­ness is fun­da­men­tal, where mat­ter isn’t every­thing and Mind is where things start. In which case maybe the achieve­ment of Claude, or Clau­dia if you pre­fer, is to show us what intel­li­gence might look like in the materialist’s uni­verse — even as our own con­scious­ness indi­cates that this uni­verse is a much, much stranger place.”
    • I real­ly appre­ci­at­ed this essay.
  4. Chi­na vs God (Fran­nie Block, The Free Press): “I’ve obtained hours of inter­views with Jin that the Drex­els record­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2025, a month before he was arrest­ed. I’ve viewed nev­er-before-seen footage of Chi­nese police arrest­ing Chris­tians. I’ve lis­tened to audio of police inter­ro­ga­tions, and read near­ly a dozen tes­ti­monies of those who wit­nessed first­hand the arrests and raids on church­es. More than half a dozen peo­ple who have been impris­oned or had fam­i­ly mem­bers impris­oned by the Chi­nese regime have shared their sto­ries with me. ‘A gov­ern­ment moves from author­i­tar­i­an­ism into total­i­tar­i­an­ism when it wants to infil­trate and direct the most inti­mate parts of your­self, of your com­mu­ni­ty, of your fam­i­ly,’ Bill told me. ‘What we’re see­ing now,’ he con­tin­ued, ‘is a renewed desire from the state under Chair­man Xi, basi­cal­ly, to engi­neer souls.’ ”
  5. We’re Think­ing About Men­tal Health Diag­noses All Wrong (Awais Aftab, New York Times): “In my prac­tice, I rou­tine­ly see patients who have been diag­nosed with depres­sion and anx­i­ety by one clin­i­cian, bipo­lar dis­or­der by anoth­er and post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der by a third, at dif­fer­ent points in their lives. They arrive con­fused and frus­trat­ed, ask­ing: What dis­or­der do I _really_ have? The hon­est answer is: all of them and none of them. Each of these labels can cap­ture some­thing use­ful and inform treat­ment options, but none of them do jus­tice to the dimen­sion­al and dynam­ic nature of men­tal ill­ness. Your men­tal health prob­lems are not caused by a sim­ple thing that you either have or don’t have. They are pat­terns shaped by who we are as peo­ple and that, in turn, shape the peo­ple we become. This is a more com­pli­cat­ed sto­ry than ‘chem­i­cal imbal­ance’ or ‘brain dis­ease.’ But it is clos­er to the truth.”
    • The author is a psy­chi­a­trist at Case West­ern.
  6. The Silence That Meets the Rape of Pales­tini­ans (Nicholas Kristof, New York Times): “It’s impos­si­ble to know how com­mon sex­u­al assaults against Pales­tini­ans are. My report­ing for this arti­cle is based on con­ver­sa­tions with 14 men and women who said they had been sex­u­al­ly assault­ed by Israeli set­tlers or mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces. I also spoke to fam­i­ly mem­bers, inves­ti­ga­tors, offi­cials and oth­ers.… How does this kind of vio­lence hap­pen? Decades of cov­er­ing con­flict has taught me that a com­bi­na­tion of dehu­man­iza­tion and impuni­ty can pro­pel peo­ple into a Hobbe­sian state of nature. I’ve encoun­tered this drift toward sav­agery in killing fields from Con­go to Sudan to Myan­mar, and I think it also rough­ly explains how Amer­i­can sol­diers came to sex­u­al­ly abuse pris­on­ers at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. The blunt real­i­ty is that when there are no con­se­quences, we humans are capa­ble of immense deprav­i­ty toward those we are taught to scorn as sub­hu­man.”
    • A dis­turb­ing read which I, for the record, find large­ly plau­si­ble even if cer­tain lurid details wind up not with­stand­ing scruti­ny. This isn’t root­ed in think­ing that Israel is any way worse than oth­er nations. I think Israel is far more praise­wor­thy than her rivals — and I also think that praise­wor­thy nations can have very dark cor­ners. This op-ed set off a firestorm on the inter­net, and some note­wor­thy respons­es fol­low:
    • How ‘The New York Times’ Laun­dered a Con­spir­a­cy (Mat­ti Fried­man and Dan Senor, The Free Press): “When you read the piece, you have to use your own com­pass to decide which charges could plau­si­bly be true and which charges come from the world of con­spir­a­to­r­i­al, anti-Israel fan­ta­sy. I think there is a plau­si­ble rea­son for con­cern about sex­u­al assaults of pris­on­ers. I don’t think we can dis­miss every account of sex­u­al assaults against Pales­tin­ian detainees. But the piece kind of goes off the deep end by being cred­u­lous about charges that are much, much hard­er to believe. After all, the facil­i­ties are equipped with cam­eras. There are com­man­ders, there are lawyers.… It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t inves­ti­gate cred­i­ble alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al assault. I remain con­cerned about the peo­ple in charge of deten­tion facil­i­ties and law enforce­ment in Israel. I do not have com­plete faith that the right peo­ple are run­ning this, to be hon­est, or that we’re pur­su­ing every alle­ga­tion of mis­deeds by our own sol­diers.”
      • This is a debunk­ing of the Kristof piece, but it hon­est­ly seems to agree with the sub­stance of what Kristof said. I don’t know why peo­ple find it so hard to say, “Peo­ple who are ‘on my side’ some­times do real­ly vile things.”
    • The Paper Trail of Nicholas Kristof’s Smear (Haviv Ret­tig Gur, The Free Press): “The Israeli Prison Ser­vice has a rep­u­ta­tion for incom­pe­tence. There have been cas­es of abuse, even famous cas­es of pris­on­ers abus­ing female Israeli guards. We know, too, that all prison sys­tems strug­gle with the prob­lem: New York pris­ons face huge num­bers of abuse claims. Pris­ons are not nice places, wher­ev­er they are in the world. So mis­treat­ment of pris­on­ers by Israeli guards isn’t mere­ly pos­si­ble, it’s almost cer­tain, as in any prison sys­tem any­where in the world. And con­di­tions were espe­cial­ly prob­lem­at­ic in recent years. Octo­ber 7 and the ensu­ing war sent thou­sands of Pales­tin­ian detainees into the pris­ons, togeth­er with under­trained reservist guards in the ear­ly months—guards who had seen Hamas’s videos glee­ful­ly doc­u­ment­ing mas­sacres that the new pris­on­ers had com­mit­ted.… And it must be said, as I’ve said before: Nei­ther Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Ita­mar Ben-Gvir nor Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu seems inter­est­ed in fix­ing it. Our lead­ers do not seem to care about the sim­ple break­down of dis­ci­pline that these abus­es rep­re­sent, the kind of break­down we saw again and again with the inci­dents of loot­ing in Gaza and in the ear­ly cas­es of pris­on­er abuse that came to light.”
      • Again, a debunk­ing that con­tests details but con­cedes the basic point.
    • “Every­thing Is Legit­i­mate To Do! Every­thing!” (Andrew Sul­li­van, Sub­stack): “…the con­text for claims of Israeli excess­es is obvi­ous: a trau­ma­tized Israeli psy­che that has rad­i­cal­ized even more dur­ing this war, in which inhi­bi­tions around hat­ing the ene­my have obvi­ous­ly loos­ened. And the man in charge of the prison sys­tem is Ita­mar Ben-Gvir — a far-right Kahanist, Jew­ish suprema­cist. He’s as close to a neo­fas­cist as you can get. His view of Arabs, let alone sus­pect­ed ter­ror­ists, is, shall we say, not great. So a recent Abu Ghraib-like case in the sys­tem he pre­sides over is worth look­ing at. A pris­on­er in Sde Teiman, Israel’s tor­ture and prison camp, was hand­cuffed, blind­fold­ed, beat­en, tased, and sodom­ized with a broom han­dle, end­ing up in the hos­pi­tal with bro­ken ribs and a rup­tured bow­el. The inci­dent was even caught on video­tape, but the gris­ly details were con­cealed behind IDF shields.”
  7. The Con­gress­woman Who Wants to Shoot Sea Lions (Will Rahn, The Free Press): “…By the 1950s, there were only about 10,000 sea lions left. And so, in the 1970s, they imple­ment­ed some­thing called the Marine Mam­mal Pro­tec­tion Act (MMPA). And the great news was that they recov­ered, going up to about 300,000 of them. In fact, they are now inva­sive in the Colum­bia Riv­er trib­u­taries, where they were nev­er his­tor­i­cal­ly dom­i­nant. The prob­lem is that they are now real­ly evis­cer­at­ing native vul­ner­a­ble and endan­gered salmon and steel­head pop­u­la­tions. So we basi­cal­ly have an inva­sive species con­sum­ing an endan­gered species.… I think we clear­ly need to amend the MMPA to allow for more trib­al con­trol, and allow them or their designees to engage in lethal removal of sea lions in the Colum­bia Riv­er and its trib­u­taries.”
    • 100% rec­om­mend this inter­view. A fas­ci­nat­ing read.

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 552: why Stanford will endure, AIs erasing anonymity

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. Col­lege Won’t Get Fixed. But It Also Won’t Dis­ap­pear. (Tyler Cowen, The Free Press): “The Ivies and oth­er top schools will prove invul­ner­a­ble. Their val­ue for net­work­ing, and also as a dat­ing and mar­riage ser­vice, is unpar­al­leled. There are no trends that threat­en to dis­rupt those func­tions. If these insti­tu­tions can prove use­ful in oth­er ways too, such as learn­ing and research, con­sid­er that gravy.”
  2. I can nev­er talk to an AI anony­mous­ly again (Kelsey Piper, The Argu­ment): “From only the above text, 125 words, Claude Opus 4.7 informed me that the like­li­est author is Kelsey Piper. This is an Opus 4.7‑specific pow­er; Chat­G­PT guessed Ygle­sias, and Gem­i­ni guessed Scott Alexan­der. I did not have mem­o­ry enabled, nor did I have infor­ma­tion about me asso­ci­at­ed with my account; I did these tests in Incog­ni­to Mode. To make sure it wasn’t some­how feed­ing my account infor­ma­tion to Claude even in Incog­ni­to Mode, I asked a friend to run these tests on his com­put­er, and he received the same result; I also got the same result when I test­ed it through the API.…. I think the amount of pub­lic text that is need­ed for this kind of deanonymiza­tion to work is like­ly to even­tu­al­ly decrease. You should expect that, if you leave a detailed anony­mous review on Glass­door after leav­ing your job, with­in a year or two it will be pos­si­ble for com­pa­nies to paste that text into an AI and learn exact­ly who wrote it. How long it takes for this to hap­pen will depend on how much data about you is in the train­ing data and on how much anony­mous text you pro­duced.”
  3. AI Is Not Drain­ing the Col­orado Riv­er. I Mea­sured It. (Len Nece­fer, Out­side): “I work on the Col­orado Riv­er water for a liv­ing as a film­mak­er and sto­ry­teller. I have a PhD in engi­neer­ing and pub­lic pol­i­cy. I am Diné. The threats to the riv­er are not abstract to me; they are very real. So ear­li­er this year, I decid­ed to quan­ti­fy some­thing that has been miss­ing in the con­ver­sa­tion about AI and water: I mea­sured my own AI water use. For 11 weeks, I tracked all of my AI use. One hun­dred ses­sions. I count­ed the tokens processed and applied pub­licly avail­able num­bers on per-token ener­gy and water inten­si­ty from Epoch AI and oper­a­tor-report­ed data from Microsoft and Google. Any­one can run this math. In those 11 weeks, I built an iOS app from scratch and wrote pol­i­cy briefs on extreme heat for non­prof­its I work with. I pro­duced doc­u­men­tary pitch decks and draft­ed a 15,000-word cli­mate fic­tion piece about the Col­orado Riv­er col­lapse. I used AI every sin­gle day, often for hours at a time. Total life­cy­cle water foot­print of all that work: about five gal­lons. That accounts for every­thing: the water used to cool the data cen­ters, the water con­sumed at pow­er plants to gen­er­ate the elec­tric­i­ty, and the water embed­ded in man­u­fac­tur­ing the hard­ware.”
  4. Anthrop­ic Wants Claude to Be Moral. Is Reli­gion Real­ly the Answer? (David DeSteno, New York Times): “Anthropic’s inten­tions are admirable, but the project of draw­ing on reli­gion to cul­ti­vate the eth­i­cal behav­ior of Claude (or any oth­er chat­bot) is like­ly to fail. Not because there isn’t moral wis­dom in Scrip­ture, ser­mons and the­o­log­i­cal trea­tis­es — texts that Claude has undoubt­ed­ly already scraped from the web and inte­grat­ed — but because Claude is miss­ing a cru­cial mech­a­nism by which reli­gion fos­ters moral growth: a body.” — Far more inter­est­ing than I expect­ed. I almost skipped because I imag­ined I knew where the author was going. I was quite wrong. The author is a psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor at North­east­ern. FYI: the author is not per­son­al­ly reli­gious, he just stud­ies reli­gion.
  5. A Brief His­to­ry of Singing in the Ear­ly Chris­t­ian Church (pod­cast, 33 min­utes): Accord­ing to Augus­tine, Ambrose re-intro­duced the prac­tice of con­gre­ga­tion­al singing of hymns in the west­ern church, which rais­es the ques­tion of what had hap­pened to singing before that. An inter­est­ing lis­ten. Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  6. There’s a Rea­son Amer­i­cans Hold Israel to a High­er Stan­dard (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “…Amer­i­cans have a fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent rela­tion­ship to Jews, Judaism, Zion­ism and Israel than to any of the ‘much worse gov­ern­ments’ that Gur is refer­ring to — Sau­di Ara­bia and its war in Yemen is his prime exam­ple, but one could make a much longer list of author­i­tar­i­an states whose war crimes pass with­out suf­fi­cient notice.… So part of the answer to Gur’s ques­tion — why do West­ern­ers freak out in a unique way about Israel pol­i­cy? — is con­nect­ed to iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, not hos­til­i­ty, and to the feel­ing that Israel is part of our zone of iden­ti­ty and respon­si­bil­i­ty in a way that the Sau­di monar­chy is not.”
  7. Three arti­cles about the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter case:
    • The SPLC Tar­get­ed Me. Now Its Reck­on­ing Has Come. (Ayaan Hir­si Ali, The Free Press): “A fed­er­al grand jury in Mont­gomery, Alaba­ma, on Tues­day issued an 11-count indict­ment against the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter (SPLC). The charges include wire fraud, bank fraud, and con­spir­a­cy to com­mit mon­ey laun­der­ing. Pros­e­cu­tors allege that between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC fun­neled more than $3 mil­lion of donors’ mon­ey to mem­bers of groups like the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, and the Nation­al Social­ist Movement—groups it simul­ta­ne­ous­ly con­demned in fundrais­ing let­ters and press releas­es. To move the mon­ey, the SPLC alleged­ly used fic­ti­tious busi­ness names. For many of us who spent years on the receiv­ing end of the organization’s lists and labels, the indict­ment itself was no sur­prise. What sur­prised us was that it took until 2026 to arrive.”
    • The SPLC Has Spread Hate. Is It Guilty of a Crime? (Jed Ruben­field, The Free Press): “Is there any evi­dence that the SPLC col­lect­ed sub­stan­tial dona­tions by ‘stok­ing’ the ‘racial hatred’ it told donors it was fight­ing? That’s a shock­ing, vicious accu­sa­tion, and the sto­ry recount­ed in the indict­ment con­tains near­ly noth­ing specif­i­cal­ly sup­port­ing it.… At the end of the day, the non­le­gal case against the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter may be stronger than the legal case.”
      • The author is a law pro­fes­sor at Yale.
    • How the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter Drew the Ire of Con­ser­v­a­tives (Richard Faus­set, New York Times): “For much of the 21st cen­tu­ry, the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter has been at the cen­ter of a bit­ter par­ti­san war in Amer­i­ca over what con­sti­tutes hate. The law cen­ter, which is based in Alaba­ma, began in 1971, earn­ing a rep­u­ta­tion for bat­tling the Ku Klux Klan in court and help­ing reporters and law enforce­ment keep tabs on far-right domes­tic extrem­ists. More recent­ly, how­ev­er, the S.P.L.C. has earned the ire of con­ser­v­a­tives by crit­i­ciz­ing a num­ber of orga­ni­za­tions — includ­ing Moms For Lib­er­ty, the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil and Turn­ing Point USA — that many on the right con­sid­er to be square­ly with­in the Amer­i­can main­stream.”

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 526: academic biases, reasonable faith, and wild AI

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. We Ana­lyzed Uni­ver­si­ty Syl­labi. There’s a Mono­cul­ture (Jon A. Shields, Yuval Avnur, and Stephanie Muravchik, Per­sua­sion): “We just com­plet­ed a study that draws on a data­base of mil­lions of col­lege syl­labi to explore how pro­fes­sors teach three of the nation’s most con­tentious topics—racial bias in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, the Israel-Pales­tine con­flict, and the ethics of abor­tion. Since all these issues sharply divide schol­ars, we want­ed to know whether stu­dents were expect­ed to read a wide or nar­row range of per­spec­tives on them. We won­dered how well pro­fes­sors are intro­duc­ing stu­dents to the moral and polit­i­cal con­tro­ver­sies that divide intel­lec­tu­als and roil our democ­ra­cy. Not well, as it turns out. Across each issue we found that the aca­d­e­m­ic norm is to shield stu­dents from some of our most impor­tant dis­agree­ments.”
    • The authors are pro­fes­sors at the Clare­mont Col­leges (two of polit­i­cal sci­ence and the oth­er of phi­los­o­phy).
  2. Can Sci­ence Reck­on With the Human Soul? (Charles Mur­ray, Wall Street Jour­nal): “…the most robust, hard­est-to-ignore evi­dence comes from a phe­nom­e­non called ter­mi­nal lucid­i­ty: a sud­den, tem­po­rary return to self-aware­ness, mem­o­ry and lucid com­mu­ni­ca­tion by a per­son whose brain is no longer func­tion­al usu­al­ly because of advanced demen­tia but occa­sion­al­ly because of menin­gi­tis, brain tumors, strokes or chron­ic psy­chi­atric dis­or­ders.… A strict mate­ri­al­ist expla­na­tion must posit a so-far-unknown capa­bil­i­ty of the brain. But the brain has been mapped for years, and a great deal is known about the func­tions of its regions. Dis­cov­er­ing this new fea­ture would be akin to find­ing a way that blood can cir­cu­late when the heart stops pump­ing. I see the strict mate­ri­al­is­tic view of con­scious­ness as being in rough­ly the same fix as New­ton­ian physics was in 1887, when the Michel­son-Mor­ley exper­i­ment proved that the speed of light doesn’t behave as Newton’s laws said it should.”
    • By the same author: I Thought I Didn’t Need God. I Was Wrong. (Charles Mur­ray, The Free Press): “My dog is smart enough to per­ceive a few things about me—the fact that I exist as a dis­tinct indi­vid­ual and that I feed her every morn­ing. She also has some per­cep­tions about my moods and what I want her to do. But these under­stand­ings rep­re­sent only a few triv­ial aspects of who I am. I am not invis­i­ble to my dog, just as God is not invis­i­ble to me (I have come to believe), but I am nonethe­less unknow­able to my dog in any mean­ing­ful sense. God is just as unknow­able to me.”
    • Mur­ray, an agnos­tic for most of his life, has just writ­ten a new book about faith called Tak­ing Reli­gion Seri­ous­ly and these are arti­cles meant to gen­er­ate inter­est in it.
  3. An AI became a cryp­to mil­lion­aire. Now it’s fight­ing to become a per­son (Aidan Walk­er, BBC): “Regard­less of what you call Truth Ter­mi­nal – an art project, a scam, an emer­gent sen­tient enti­ty, an influ­encer – the bot like­ly made more mon­ey than you did last year. It also made a lot of mon­ey for var­i­ous humans: not just Ayrey, but for the gam­blers who turned the quips and rid­dles the AI post­ed on X into meme­coins, joke-based cryp­tocur­ren­cies built around trends. At one point, one of these meme­coins reached a val­ue of more than $1bn (£740m) before set­tling around $80m (about £60m).… Many of the details sur­round­ing Truth Ter­mi­nal are dif­fi­cult to con­firm. The project sits some­where between tech­nol­o­gy and spec­ta­cle, a dizzy­ing blur of gen­uine inno­va­tion and inter­net myth.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed to me by a stu­dent. Wild.
  4. Har­vard Stu­dents Skip Class and Still Get High Grades, Fac­ul­ty Say (Anemona Har­to­col­lis, New York Times): “Har­vard may be part­ly to blame for encour­ag­ing stu­dent absences, with a pol­i­cy that allows stu­dents to enroll in two class­es that meet at the same time.”
  5. The Inside Sto­ry of the Gaza Deal (Amit Segal, The Free Press): “The Amer­i­cans’ genius was to con­vert that neg­a­tive ener­gy into fuel to pro­pel nego­ti­a­tions to their goal. You want Israel to stop? Then let’s end the war, they told the Sun­ni coun­tries, and thus enlist­ed them in a frame­work that seemed impos­si­ble: a pan-Arab, almost pan-Mus­lim com­mit­ment to the elim­i­na­tion of Hamas. [Israeli Min­is­ter of Strate­gic Affairs] Der­mer draft­ed Netanyahu’s apol­o­gy for the death of the Qatari secu­ri­ty offi­cial in the airstrike; in Doha they rec­i­p­ro­cat­ed with a good­will ges­ture by dra­mat­i­cal­ly ton­ing down Al Jazeera’s hos­tile tone.”
    • ‘Bring Them Home’: The Call Final­ly Being Answered (Mat­ti Fried­man, The Free Press): “But of course Israel can’t return to Octo­ber 6. In the sto­ry of Joseph, the cap­tive does reappear—but he’s so dif­fer­ent that his own broth­ers don’t rec­og­nize him. About 40 hostages tak­en alive are now dead, either exe­cut­ed by their cap­tors or killed mis­tak­en­ly by Israel’s army. In the fight­ing that has fol­lowed Octo­ber 7, more than 550 sol­diers have been killed, and many thou­sands wound­ed. The reserve army has been forced past the lim­its of its man­pow­er and will need years to recov­er. Israel is, in many ways, a dif­fer­ent coun­try.”
  6. The Evil That Is AI Child Porn (Charles Fain Lehman, The Dis­patch): “But while OpenAI’s inno­va­tion is impres­sive, it is hard to avoid think­ing about how such tech­nol­o­gy might be mis­used. That’s in part because it comes just months after a fed­er­al court dis­missed a charge for pos­ses­sion of arti­fi­cial­ly-gen­er­at­ed child pornog­ra­phy, claim­ing it was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al to enforce under the rel­e­vant fed­er­al child obscen­i­ty statute. Such con­cerns are par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant giv­en some AI com­pa­nies’ irre­spon­si­ble approach to issues of child sex­u­al­iza­tion, as in the recent rev­e­la­tion that Meta had pre­vi­ous­ly allowed its AI ser­vices to con­duct ‘sen­su­al’ con­ver­sa­tions with minors. (It changed its poli­cies after press inquiries and back­lash.)”
  7. The Great Fem­i­niza­tion (Helen Andrews, Com­pact Mag­a­zine): “The New York Times staff became major­i­ty female in 2018 and today the female share is 55 per­cent. Med­ical schools became major­i­ty female in 2019. Women became a major­i­ty of the col­lege-edu­cat­ed work­force nation­wide in 2019. Women became a major­i­ty of col­lege instruc­tors in 2023. Women are not yet a major­i­ty of the man­agers in Amer­i­ca but they might be soon, as they are now 46 per­cent. So the tim­ing fits. Wok­e­ness arose around the same time that many impor­tant insti­tu­tions tipped demo­graph­i­cal­ly from major­i­ty male to major­i­ty female. The sub­stance fits, too. Every­thing you think of as wok­e­ness involves pri­or­i­tiz­ing the fem­i­nine over the mas­cu­line: empa­thy over ratio­nal­i­ty, safe­ty over risk, cohe­sion over com­pe­ti­tion.”
    • This one is con­tro­ver­sial, just FYI. Unde­ni­ably inter­est­ing.
    • Sec­u­lar push­back: The “Fem­i­niza­tion” Dis­course as Par­ti­san Hack­ery (Richard Hana­nia, Sub­stack): “I would’ve prob­a­bly nod­ded along to the Andrews piece if I read it four years ago. But a lot has changed since then, and being a ratio­nal, dare I say mas­cu­line, thinker means updat­ing as new infor­ma­tion comes in. Estab­lish­ment insti­tu­tions have got­ten much bet­ter since the height of the Great Awok­en­ing, as their crit­ics have been cir­cling the drain. This has hap­pened at the same time the right has become more mas­cu­line-cod­ed, which has to be fac­tored into any analy­sis about the sup­posed dan­gers of fem­i­niza­tion.”
    • Some the­o­log­i­cal push­back from an Aus­tralian Angli­can the­olo­gian: https://x.com/danitreweek/status/1979002052811657289

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 519: our therapeutic age and transparent mice scalps

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 Chris­t­ian in a Ther­a­peu­tic Age (Ian Har­ber, Mere Ortho­doxy): “What are ways that Chris­tians can live, wit­ness, and nav­i­gate the com­plex­i­ties of a ther­a­peu­tic cul­ture? I believe there are at least three. 1) Occu­py a dif­fer­ent exis­ten­tial space, 2) Embody a dif­fer­ent sto­ry, and 3) Cul­ti­vate a dif­fer­ent qual­i­ty of life.… The ther­a­peu­tic cul­ture is try­ing to solve real ail­ments. We’re more frac­tured, iso­lat­ed, and devoid of mean­ing-mak­ing roles and insti­tu­tions than ever before. The dig­i­tal age has rap­tured us from our bod­ies and com­mu­ni­ties and drained us of the very things that make us human. But the good truth for our time—and all eternity—is that the God-human, Jesus, has made a way for us to recov­er our human­i­ty”
  2. Researchers turn mouse scalp trans­par­ent to image brain devel­op­ment (Stan­ford News): “Now, by sim­ply rub­bing a solu­tion into a juve­nile mouse’s scalp, researchers at Stan­ford can make the skin trans­par­ent to all vis­i­ble light, allow­ing them to image the devel­op­ing con­nec­tions in a liv­ing mouse’s brain. And because the tech­nique is reversible and non-inva­sive, the researchers can return to the same ani­mal over days and weeks.”
    • Chi Alpha alum­nus and Stan­ford pro­fes­sor Guosong Hong at it again!
  3. Robin West­man and the Rise of Amer­i­can Nihilism (Peter Savod­nik, The Free Press): “All that fin­ger-point­ing obscures a deep­er point: West­man seems to have been dri­ven by an all-con­sum­ing, destruc­tive force, a nihilism—the con­vic­tion that life is mean­ing­less; that words like truth, jus­tice and God are emp­ty slo­gans; that every­thing must be razed. Nihilism is not some obscure aca­d­e­m­ic notion. It stretch­es back to the 19th century—early Russ­ian rad­i­cals were called nihilists—and it has waxed and waned across the past 150 years. Today, you can feel the nihilist impulse cours­ing through Amer­i­ca, which has been most­ly stripped of its faith and a shared nation­al cul­ture and has seen once-great institutions—universities, cor­po­ra­tions, church­es, non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions, the media, the military—become engulfed in scan­dal and politi­ciza­tion.”
  4. They Became Sym­bols for Gazan Star­va­tion. But All 12 Suf­fer from Oth­er Health Prob­lems. (Olivia Rein­gold and Tanya Lukyano­va, The Free Press): “Uncov­er­ing this miss­ing con­text didn’t require in-depth, on-the-ground reporting—or months of inves­tiga­tive work. It took min­utes, and required noth­ing more than a com­put­er with a sta­ble inter­net con­nec­tion. We sim­ply ran the sto­ry sub­jects’ names through Google Trans­late to get the Ara­bic spelling, then searched those names in Ara­bic-lan­guage media. Even a quick scan of the results revealed that many of these chil­dren suf­fer from mus­cle atro­phy, head injuries, or oth­er seri­ous med­ical con­di­tions that help explain their ema­ci­at­ed appear­ance.”
    • A fol­low-up: Jour­nal­ists Against Jour­nal­ism (The Free Press): “Jour­nal­is­tic out­lets love to boast about ‘impact,’ and this sto­ry has had more than its share.… In a nor­mal time, this is the kind of work that would be praised by our peers for get­ting to ground truth. But we don’t live in nor­mal times. And that is not how some of our col­leagues in the news media saw things.… You’ll notice one impor­tant aspect about the uproar: No one is dis­put­ing the facts in our piece.”
  5. Two on Chi­na (or more specif­i­cal­ly, the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty):
    • How Chi­na Influ­ences Elec­tions in America’s Biggest City (Michael Forsythe, Jay Root, Bian­ca Pal­laro & David A. Fahren­thold, New York Times): “In New York City, social clubs backed by Chi­na under­mined a con­gres­sion­al can­di­date who once chal­lenged the regime on Chi­nese tele­vi­sion. They helped unseat a state sen­a­tor for attend­ing a ban­quet with the pres­i­dent of Tai­wan. And they con­demned a City Coun­cil can­di­date on social media for sup­port­ing Hong Kong democ­ra­cy. In the past few years, these orga­ni­za­tions have qui­et­ly foiled the careers of politi­cians who opposed China’s author­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ment while back­ing oth­ers who sup­port­ed poli­cies of the country’s rul­ing Com­mu­nist Par­ty.”
    • I’m a Stan­ford stu­dent. A Chi­nese agent tried to recruit me as a spy (Elsa John­son, The Times): “After that I start­ed screen­shot­ting our con­ver­sa­tions. I was begin­ning to sus­pect that Charles might be work­ing for the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty (CCP) and he could be try­ing to recruit me as a spy. I know it sounds para­noid, but I had heard of oth­er Stan­ford stu­dents receiv­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions like this out of the blue — espe­cial­ly those study­ing sci­ence, tech, engi­neer­ing or math­e­mat­ics.…. Thanks to Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ties’ open-door pol­i­cy, Chi­nese aca­d­e­mics are allowed to col­lab­o­rate with our smartest researchers and sci­en­tists, and take our advance­ments in AI, robot­ics, weapon­ry and nuclear tech­nol­o­gy back home. This is not an exag­ger­a­tion — it’s the con­clu­sion of a report on the CCP pub­lished last Sep­tem­ber by the House select com­mit­tee on the CCP.”
  6. The Wrong Def­i­n­i­tion of Love (David Brooks, New York Times): “In [our ther­a­py-dri­ven] cul­ture peo­ple are nat­u­ral­ly going to define love as the feel­ing they get when some­body sat­is­fies their crav­ing for pos­i­tive and ten­der atten­tion, not as some­thing they self­less­ly give to anoth­er. In oth­er, less self-ori­ent­ed cul­tures, and in oth­er times, love was seen as some­thing clos­er to self-abne­ga­tion than to self-com­fort. It was seen as a force so pow­er­ful that it could over­come our nat­ur­al self­ish­ness.”
  7. As Stan­ford lays off work­ers, 18 employ­ees made $1 mil­lion or more (Top 25 list­ed) (Braden Cartwright, Palo Alto Dai­ly Post): “At a time when Stan­ford is fir­ing employ­ees to save mon­ey, new­ly released IRS doc­u­ments show the uni­ver­si­ty paid 18 employ­ees $1 mil­lion or more in the pre­vi­ous fis­cal year. Stan­ford announced in July that it was lay­ing off 363 employ­ees this fall as part of a $140 mil­lion bud­get cut caused by reduced fed­er­al research fund­ing and a high­er endow­ment tax.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • Cat­a­stro­phe (Pearls Before Swine)
  • There’s a Sim­ple Trick to Unshrink Your Clothes, Thanks to Sci­ence (Nisa Sal­im, Sci­enceAl­ert): “If a favourite gar­ment has shrunk in the wash, you can try to res­cue it with this sim­ple method. Gen­tly soak the item in luke­warm water mixed with hair con­di­tion­er or baby sham­poo (approx­i­mate­ly one table­spoon per litre). Then, care­ful­ly stretch the fab­ric back into shape and dry it flat or under gen­tle ten­sion – for exam­ple, by peg­ging the gar­ment to a dry­ing rack.”
    • Read­ing this arti­cle is like read­ing one of those recipe blogs that goes on and on before it gets to the point, but the final bit is inter­est­ing.
  • Gen­era (SMBC)
  • Man Ful­fills The Great Com­mis­sion By Occa­sion­al­ly Wear­ing Nov­el­ty Chris­t­ian T‑Shirt In Pub­lic (Baby­lon Bee)
  • Bill Belichick’s Girl­friend, 24, Wants to Trade­mark ‘Gold Dig­ger’ (Amber Lewis, The Dai­ly Beast): “Jor­don Hud­son wants to make some gold from the gold-dig­ging accu­sa­tions levied at her amid her rela­tion­ship with Bill Belichick, who is esti­mat­ed to be worth $70 mil­lion. The for­mer cheer­leader, 24, filed a trade­mark appli­ca­tion this week through the com­pa­ny she man­ages, TCE Rights Man­age­ment, to cash in on her ‘gold dig­ger’ epi­thet. If her bid is suc­cess­ful, she will launch her own trade­marked jew­el­ry and key chains line, Peo­ple reports.”
  • See­ing infrared: sci­en­tists cre­ate con­tact lens­es that grant ‘super-vision’ (Ian Sam­ple, The Guardian): “In pre­vi­ous work, the research team gave mice near-infrared vision by inject­ing upcon­ver­sion nanopar­ti­cles under the reti­na, the light-sen­si­tive mem­brane at the back of the eye. But not­ing that this ‘may not be read­i­ly accept­ed by humans,’ they searched for a less inva­sive strat­e­gy. Writ­ing in the jour­nal Cell, the sci­en­tists describe how they made soft con­tact lens­es seed­ed with upcon­ver­sion nanopar­ti­cles. When worn, peo­ple could see Morse code-like sig­nals flashed from an infrared LED and tell what direc­tion infrared light came from. Their infrared vision improved when they closed their eyes, because eye­lids block vis­i­ble light more than infrared, so there was less vis­i­ble light to inter­fere.”
    • The arti­cle is a few months old. Wild times.

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 516: God in history & confused physicists

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. Why Did God Favor France? (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “[Joan of Arc’s] sto­ry is one of the most exten­sive­ly doc­u­ment­ed cas­es of a mirac­u­lous-seem­ing inter­ven­tion into sec­u­lar his­to­ry, cal­cu­lat­ed to baf­fle, fas­ci­nate and even charm like almost noth­ing else in West­ern his­to­ry. Every­thing in the sto­ry sounds like a pious leg­end con­fab­u­lat­ed cen­turies after the fact. A peas­ant girl with zero polit­i­cal or mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence shows up at a roy­al court, announces a divine mis­sion and makes a series of prophe­cies about what God wants for France that she con­sis­tent­ly ful­fills — a ful­fill­ment that requires not mere­ly some for­tu­nate hap­pen­stance, but her tak­ing com­mand of a medieval army and win­ning an imme­di­ate series of vic­to­ries over an intim­i­dat­ing adver­sary with Alexan­drine or Napoleon­ic skill.”
    • Worth a pon­der.
  2. Physi­cists dis­agree wild­ly on what quan­tum mechan­ics says about real­i­ty, Nature sur­vey shows (Eliz­a­beth Gib­ney, Nature): “Nature asked researchers what they thought was the best inter­pre­ta­tion of quan­tum phe­nom­e­na and inter­ac­tions — that is, their favourite of the var­i­ous attempts sci­en­tists have made to relate the math­e­mat­ics of the the­o­ry to the real world. The largest chunk of respons­es, 36%, favoured the Copen­hagen inter­pre­ta­tion — a prac­ti­cal and often-taught approach. But the sur­vey also showed that sev­er­al, more rad­i­cal, view­points have a healthy fol­low­ing. Asked about their con­fi­dence in their answer, only 24% of respon­dents thought their favoured inter­pre­ta­tion was cor­rect; oth­ers con­sid­ered it mere­ly ade­quate or a use­ful tool in some cir­cum­stances. What’s more, some sci­en­tists who seemed to be in the same camp didn’t give the same answers to fol­low-up ques­tions, sug­gest­ing incon­sis­tent or dis­parate under­stand­ings of the inter­pre­ta­tion they chose.”
  3. How a Chris­t­ian col­lege min­istry glo­ri­fied a sex offend­er and enabled him to keep abus­ing stu­dents (Mike Hix­en­baugh, NBC News): “The pas­tors who shep­herd­ed hun­dreds of high school and col­lege stu­dents to Savala’s home were part of Chi Alpha, a Chris­t­ian min­istry that evan­ge­lizes on uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus­es. Stu­dents seek out Chi Alpha to con­nect with God and each oth­er, through small Bible stud­ies and rol­lick­ing wor­ship ser­vices — and, for more than 30 years, through Savala. Gen­er­a­tions of Chi Alpha lead­ers hailed him as a spir­i­tu­al savant who could answer life’s deep­est mys­ter­ies.”
    • Heart­break­ing. I’ve post­ed about this scan­dal in Texas before (in oth­er words, this is the same scan­dal from a few years ago with addi­tion­al report­ing). Now that it is being cov­ered on NBC the high­er-qual­i­ty jour­nal­ism is uncov­er­ing even more trag­ic details.
  4. Put Down the Sho­far (Brad East, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “You’re like­ly famil­iar with sho­fars blown in pub­lic, Seder meals for Passover, and cir­cum­ci­sion for baby boys. But as com­mon and well-intend­ed as these may be, I want to explain why I told my stu­dent that, yes, his house church was wrong—or at least, mis­guid­ed.”
    • A the­o­log­i­cal­ly rich arti­cle.
  5. The Sim­ple Truth About the War in Gaza (Cole­man Hugh­es, The Free Press): “Amid these devel­op­ments, it may seem car­toon­ish, even obscene, to say that in the war between Israel and Hamas, Israel is the good guy. But it’s the truth. And it’s a truth that’s incred­i­bly easy to for­get amid the day-to-day cov­er­age of this ter­ri­ble war.… Israel’s goal is to live in peace with its neigh­bors. Through­out its 77-year his­to­ry, it has agreed to half a dozen peace deals with the Pales­tini­ans. It vol­un­tar­i­ly left Gaza in 2005. If it had any inter­est in wip­ing Gaza off the map, it could have done so any time in the last sev­er­al decades.”
  6. How the Elite Changed Its Mind on Chris­tian­i­ty (Emma Camp, Rea­son): “As the decline in reli­gious atten­dance has slowed, the past few years have also seen a clear rise in the sta­tus of reli­gion. It’s becom­ing more and more social­ly accept­able to be reli­gious in elite intel­lec­tu­al spaces—something that could have a real impact on how reli­gion is per­ceived by every­one else.… Reli­gion became cool again among the edu­cat­ed elite once it gained an asso­ci­a­tion with good aes­thet­ics, high art, and sacred music—not Bush-era Repub­li­can soft theoc­ra­cy.  Today, one can belong to the ideas-mak­ing class—an aspir­ing pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al or artist—and still be reli­gious, so long as one steers clear of evan­gel­i­cal kitsch. Whether or not a real reli­gious revival is under­way in Amer­i­can pub­lic life, one thing is clear: The cool kids aren’t the smug, stri­dent athe­ists anymore—they’re the Chris­tians.”
    • Fas­ci­nat­ing, although it reminds me I need to write that essay I’ve been mulling over defend­ing low-church Protes­tantism as the best and most authen­tic expres­sion of Chris­tian­i­ty.
  7. Influ­encer Mis­sion­ar­ies (Lau­ren Jack­son, New York Times): “Church­es are turn­ing to the inter­net to reach new audi­ences. Evan­gel­i­cal pas­tors are bring­ing their famous­ly high-pro­duc­tion ser­mons into ver­ti­cal video. The Church of Jesus Christ of Lat­ter-day Saints is pre­sent­ing a diverse, younger image to its 1.4 mil­lion Insta­gram fol­low­ers.”
    • A short arti­cle, not super-infor­ma­tive. Most­ly inter­est­ing because of the trend reach­ing the point that the Times is tak­ing note of it. Also because of some of the small vignettes: “Per­haps that explains the celebri­ty of Father Rafael Capo, 57, a body­build­ing priest in Mia­mi who fus­es fit­ness with faith for his 112,000 Insta­gram fol­low­ers. He often posts pho­tos of him­self lift­ing weights and con­se­crat­ing com­mu­nion.”

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 515: go deep in community, plus missionaries with shotguns

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. Com­pound Inter­est in an Atten­tion Econ­o­my (Austin Car­ty, Front Porch Repub­lic): “The pre­vail­ing log­ic of twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can cul­ture sug­gests that the pur­suit of new expe­ri­ence is, in and of itself, a nec­es­sary form of cap­i­tal with­out which one is ipso fac­to barred from the pos­si­bil­i­ty of liv­ing a rich life. But my own expe­ri­ence, cor­rob­o­rat­ed by many of the peo­ple I’ve talked with, sug­gests that the pur­suit of new expe­ri­ence is, just as often as not, the cause of our despair not the cure; for to keep shift­ing atten­tion from one thing to the next is almost always to drain one’s spir­i­tu­al and men­tal and emo­tion­al bank account, not to deliv­er a mean­ing­ful return. Mean­while, con­tra pop­u­lar opin­ion, there is some­thing life-giv­ing about root­ing one­self in a sin­gle community—about invest­ing our­selves in a mutu­al fund, so to speak—and watch­ing the invest­ment slow­ly grow at com­pound inter­est.”
  2. ‘A com­put­er, a radio, a drone and a shot­gun’: how mis­sion­ar­ies are reach­ing out to Brazil’s iso­lat­ed peo­ples (John Reid and Daniel Biaset­to, The Guardian): “Mis­sion­ary activ­i­ty now threat­ens 13 of the 29 iso­lat­ed peo­ples that Brazil offi­cial­ly recog­nis­es as defin­i­tive­ly con­firmed, accord­ing to the fed­er­al prosecutor’s office.”
    • This was actu­al­ly a pret­ty encour­ag­ing arti­cle over­all, despite the use of lan­guage like “threat­ens.”
  3. Trend­ing thoughts about Gaza:
    • The Price of Flour Shows the Hunger Cri­sis in Gaza (Amit Segal, The Free Press): “Dis­cussing these find­ings, The Free Press’s Haviv Ret­tig Gur high­light­ed Spitzer’s key chal­lenge in con­vinc­ing Israelis that Gaza is indeed fac­ing a hunger cri­sis: ‘It’s hard to con­vince Israelis of that because lit­er­al­ly every­thing said to them for 22 months on this top­ic has been a fic­tion.’ ”
    • Is Gaza Starv­ing? Search­ing for the Truth in an Infor­ma­tion War. (Mat­ti Fried­man, The Free Press): “Over the years, Israelis have been accused of fake mas­sacres and rapes. The country’s actions are lied about almost dai­ly by peo­ple describ­ing them­selves as jour­nal­ists, ana­lysts, and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Unit­ed Nations, often using sta­tis­tics that are them­selves untrue. For peo­ple here in Israel, the con­stant bar­rage of libel—like the more lit­er­al bar­rages of rockets—is sim­ply a fact of life. After years of this, aver­age Israelis do what peo­ple do when con­front­ed with lunatics on the New York sub­way: They tune it out.… a senior fig­ure in the Israeli mil­i­tary told one of my col­leagues at the end of last week that while there isn’t mass star­va­tion as claimed by pro-Hamas pro­pa­gan­da, Gaza real­ly is on the brink this time.”
    • How Israel’s War Became Unjust (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “…Israel has made a strate­gic choice, try­ing to sep­a­rate food dis­tri­b­u­tion from a sys­tem that it argues Hamas was exploit­ing for its own pur­pos­es. But if your strate­gic choice leads to chil­dren dying of star­va­tion when the food is avail­able to feed them, then a civ­i­lized nation has to make a dif­fer­ent choice — even if that makes things eas­i­er for its ene­mies to some degree.”
  4. Till Words Do Us Part (Leah Libresco Sargeant, The Dis­patch): “Clas­si­cal­ly, the mar­riage vows are not about the par­tic­u­lar cou­ple stand­ing at the altar—they’re about the insti­tu­tion the cou­ple is choos­ing to enter. Clas­si­cal vows (for bet­ter, for worse, etc) have last­ed with only minor revi­sions for a thou­sand years. They are intend­ed to suit every cou­ple, uncus­tomized, and they enu­mer­ate the promis­es that must be kept for a mar­riage to be a mar­riage. But cus­tomized vows fre­quent­ly min­gle seri­ous promis­es with ones that can­not or should not be kept.”
  5. The Nat­ur­al Law Is Not Enough. The Nat­ur­al Law Is All We Have. (Andrew T. Walk­er, Pub­lic Dis­course): “…any attempt to con­struct a moral and polit­i­cal order must grap­ple with two com­pet­ing truths: the ima­go Dei makes moral rea­son­ing pos­si­ble, but orig­i­nal sin ensures that moral rea­son­ing will often be con­test­ed, sup­pressed, cor­rupt­ed, or ignored. This is the para­dox of our moment. The nat­ur­al law is writ­ten on every heart (Romans 2:15), but hearts are wound­ed and rea­son cloud­ed. We have access to moral truth, but not con­sen­sus. Hence, the nat­ur­al law is not enough. But it is still the best we have.”
  6. Desider­a­ta for a Protes­tant The­ol­o­gy of the Body (Sub­stack): “But I think there are, in fact, dis­tinc­tive­ly Protes­tant ways to approach the ques­tion of sex­u­al­i­ty and repro­duc­tion- and I sus­pect some of the dearth of con­ver­sa­tion about these top­ics reflects a cer­tain Protes­tant sen­si­bil­i­ty. It also reflects the bound­aries of what might be pos­si­ble with a Protes­tant view. So here are a few ‘desider­a­ta’- a fan­cy way of say­ing ‘things we ought to con­sid­er’, in order to build a Protes­tant the­ol­o­gy of the body.”
    • The author is a the­olo­gian at Gor­don-Con­well.
  7. How the Sec­ond Great Awak­en­ing Helped Make Amer­i­ca (Thomas Kidd, The Dis­patch): “Amer­i­cans might assume that the height of their nation’s reli­gious com­mit­ment was around its Found­ing. Some like­wise fig­ure that spir­i­tu­al­ly, it’s been going down­hill ever since. But in many ways, Amer­i­ca became increas­ing­ly reli­gious through the first half of the 19th cen­tu­ry.”
    • Kidd is one of the great­est liv­ing evan­gel­i­cal his­to­ri­ans.

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 513: elite colleges, pathologizing personality, and the fastest woman in the world

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. Elite Col­leges Have Found a New Virtue for Appli­cants to Fake (Alex Bronzi­ni-Vender, New York Times): “[There is] a new ques­tion: ‘Tell us about a moment when you engaged in a dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tion or encoun­tered some­one with an opin­ion or per­spec­tive that was dif­fer­ent from your own. How did you find com­mon ground?’ It’s known as the dis­agree­ment ques­tion, and since the stu­dent encamp­ments of spring 2024 and the Amer­i­can right’s attacks on uni­ver­si­ties, a grow­ing num­ber of elite col­leges have added it to their appli­ca­tions. Car­o­line Kop­pel­man, a pri­vate admis­sions con­sul­tant, has called it the ‘hot new it girl’ of col­lege essays. There’s no evi­dence that civil­i­ty mania will improve cam­pus dis­course, but it seems poised to widen the inequal­i­ties that already plague hyper­s­e­lec­tive col­lege admis­sions. The trou­ble is that the dis­agree­ment ques­tion — like much of the appli­ca­tion process — isn’t built for hon­esty.”
  2. Nobody Has a Per­son­al­i­ty Any­more (Freya India, The Free Press): “Today, every per­son­al­i­ty trait is seen as a prob­lem to be solved. Any­thing too human—every habit, every eccen­tric­i­ty, every feel­ing that’s too strong—has to be labeled and explained. Ther­a­py-speak has tak­en over our lan­guage. It is ruin­ing how we talk about romance and rela­tion­ships, nar­row­ing how we think about hurt and suf­fer­ing, and now, we are los­ing the words for who we are. Nobody has a per­son­al­i­ty any­more.… This is part of a deep­er instinct in mod­ern life to explain everything—psychologically, sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly, evo­lu­tion­ar­i­ly. Every­thing about us is caused, cat­e­go­rized, and can be cor­rect­ed. We talk in the­o­ries, frame­works, sys­tems, struc­tures, dri­ves, moti­va­tions, and mech­a­nisms. But in exchange for expla­na­tion, we lost mys­tery, romance, and late­ly, our­selves.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  3. Huck­abee threat­ens to declare Israel does not wel­come Chris­tians, as visa row blows open (Lazar Berman, Times of Israel): “Giv­en Huckabee’s long­stand­ing sup­port for Israel and close ties with the cur­rent gov­ern­ment in par­tic­u­lar, the rhetoric in his let­ter rep­re­sent­ed a shock­ing­ly quick dete­ri­o­ra­tion. But the issue at hand — the abil­i­ty of Chris­t­ian groups to tour Israel — is close to Huckabee’s heart, giv­en that he has led count­less such trips as an evan­gel­i­cal pas­tor over the past half a cen­tu­ry.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed to me by a stu­dent. Quite inter­est­ing.
  4. My health and my pol­i­tics walk into a doctor’s office… (Kim Fell­ner, New York Times): “The vision of a diverse, equi­table and inclu­sive democ­ra­cy that seems the best of Amer­i­ca to me and my com­mu­ni­ty is locked in an exis­ten­tial bat­tle with a MAGA counter-vision that ele­vates White­ness and Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism, and that seems to be col­o­niz­ing insti­tu­tions and cul­ture at warp speed. I did not antic­i­pate, how­ev­er, that the per­son­al and the polit­i­cal would col­lide in my doctor’s office.… Over a series of writ­ten and in-per­son con­ver­sa­tions, we have been shar­ing some of the tenets of our respec­tive faiths and the impli­ca­tions for how we nav­i­gate the world. She and I have sharply diver­gent views about when life begins and what hap­pens after we die. She believes that the only true sal­va­tion lies in accept­ing Jesus as one’s sav­ior.”
  5. A Stark Reminder That Sex Dif­fer­ences Mat­ter in Elite Sport (James Smoli­ga, Per­sua­sion): “The goal was for Kipye­gon to become the first woman ever to run a sub‑4 minute mile. Nike set her up with the very best con­di­tions that any ath­lete could ever expect. Kipye­gon ran a mile in 4:06—a remark­able per­for­mance by any mea­sure, and a per­son­al best, but well short of the sub‑4 minute goal. While Kipye­gon wasn’t direct­ly rac­ing her pac­ers, they were there to pull her to a time that hun­dreds of male ath­letes have already achieved. Rather than charg­ing down the final straight­away alone, leav­ing the best women in her wake, as she so often does, we saw Kipye­gon strain­ing to hang on behind a group of male run­ners who weren’t even near their lim­it, as they turned around to cheer her on. This race mat­ters because it offered some­thing exceed­ing­ly rare: an hon­est, direct com­par­i­son of male and female per­for­mance at the high­est lev­el.”
  6. Israeli Researcher Says Stan­ford Shunned and Sab­o­taged Him After Hamas Attack (Maya Sulkin, The Free Press): “[For­mer IDF offi­cer] Laps alleges that the research assis­tant in the Dan­ny Chou Lab told Laps dur­ing their first inter­ac­tion on his first day nev­er to speak to her. She alleged­ly delayed his orders for lab equip­ment, made him sit else­where at lunch, and reas­signed her cus­to­di­al duties to him. Col­leagues fol­lowed her lead, ostra­ciz­ing him from the lab com­mu­ni­ty, the suit claims. The most explo­sive alle­ga­tion is that the same research assis­tant, Ter­ra Lin, tam­pered with Laps’s research.”
  7. What YouTube Can’t Teach Stu­dents About Jesus (Dylan Muss­er, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “‘Who (or what) has shaped your faith the most?’ As a cam­pus min­is­ter, I have asked this ques­tion to many col­lege stu­dents over the years. Late­ly, I have noticed a shift in their answers.  This past fall, I sat across from Luke—a fresh­man at Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty. We were chat­ting over tacos when I posed the ques­tion. I watched the gears spin in his head. Would it be a church from back home? A great book? An old­er men­tor who dis­ci­pled him? Maybe his par­ents? He leaned back. ‘Youtube.’ I stared blankly, try­ing my best not to show my sur­prise.”
    • The author leads the Nav­i­ga­tors at Van­der­bilt.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • The Joy of Cook­ing Your Sprite (Jenée Desmond-Har­ris, Slate): “After a day walk­ing around the dusty grounds, rid­ing a giant swing, and dress­ing up for old-timey pho­tos, we made it back to the car exhaust­ed and thirsty. And in the back seat (I don’t know if it had been pur­chased as part of post-out­ing lunch or was just rolling around back there) was a six-pack of Sprite that had been, well, cook­ing all day. We each cracked one open, and that’s when I real­ized some­thing impor­tant was hap­pen­ing. It was so good! The soda was hot but some­how still refresh­ing. The sweet­ness was soft­ened and the bub­bles felt big­ger and more luxurious—not like the sharp, sneeze-trig­ger­ing ones you get when it’s cold. We locked eyes and smiled mis­chie­vous­ly. It felt rebel­lious (look, we were very shel­tered kids) and wild­ly inno­v­a­tive. ‘Cooked Sprite’ was born.” 
  • What Is ‘Aura Farm­ing’? This Tween Will Show You. (Ben­jamin Hoff­man, New York Times): “On Tues­day, the gov­ern­ment in Riau, cit­ing the impact of the video and the fact that he had been ‘inspir­ing local kids to embrace and pre­serve their tra­di­tions,’ named Dika as a tourism ambas­sador for the province, and its gov­er­nor, Abdul Wahid, award­ed him a schol­ar­ship for 20 mil­lion rupi­ah (around $1,200) for his edu­ca­tion. Dika also per­formed a ren­di­tion of his dance along with Gov­er­nor Wahid and oth­er offi­cials.”

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.