Tag: journalism

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

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

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 511: CPS, prosperity, & journalism



On Fri­days — some­times Sat­ur­days when Fri­day is a hol­i­day — 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. ICE Goes After Church Lead­ers and Chris­tians Flee­ing Per­se­cu­tion (Andy Olsen, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The pas­tor asks if he can go with them or even fol­low them. ‘They need me,’ he says. An agent says the pas­tor can­not go with them. Torosian tells the agents that the cou­ple was per­se­cut­ed in Iran and fled because of their faith. The agents don’t respond. ‘They came here for free­dom, not like this,’ Torosian tells the agents. ‘I know you are doing your job, but shame on you. Shame on this gov­ern­ment.’”
  2. Does CPS Inves­ti­gate One Third of All Chil­dren in the US? (Maxwell Tabar­rok, Sub­stack): “Does CPS inves­ti­gate one out of every three Amer­i­can chil­dren? The answer to this one is not avail­able direct­ly in the pri­ma­ry source reports and the under­ly­ing data is only avail­able after an appli­ca­tion for research use, so we’ll have to trust a group of researchers at the Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty school of pub­lic health. They down­load and de-dupli­cate the mas­ter data files from 2003–2014 and con­firm that 37% of Amer­i­can chil­dren are the sub­ject of at least one screened-in refer­ral to CPS from ages 0–18.”
  3. Have You Heard the Good News? (Clif­ford S. Asness and Michael R. Strain, The Free Press): “Yes, we have real prob­lems. But widen the aper­ture, and you’ll see that there has nev­er been a bet­ter time to be alive than the present day.… a rel­a­tive stan­dard will always find rel­a­tive pover­ty. But using an absolute stan­dard finds that income pover­ty is below 6 per­cent. On a con­sump­tion basis, well over 20 per­cent of house­holds were in pover­ty in the 1960s, and 11 per­cent were in pover­ty in 1990. Today, the con­sump­tion pover­ty rate is around 1 per­cent.”
  4. When We Start­ed To Lie (Mat­ti Fried­man, The Free Press): “Peo­ple writ­ing let­ters com­plain­ing about press errors and demand­ing cor­rec­tions, then and now, miss the point: These aren’t errors. They’re the result of the press doing a dif­fer­ent job cor­rect­ly.”
  5. Duke Law Jour­nal Sent a Secret Memo to Minor­i­ty Appli­cants Telling Them They’d Get Extra Points for Writ­ing About Their Race (Aaron Sibar­i­um, Wash­ing­ton Free Bea­con): “When the Supreme Court banned affir­ma­tive action in 2023, it said that col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties could not use essays as a Tro­jan horse for racial pref­er­ences. The doc­u­ments from Duke illus­trate how a top law review has skirt­ed that direc­tive, cre­at­ing a points-based sys­tem that fore­grounds race and could put the law school in legal jeop­ardy.… The pack­et was over­seen by jour­nal edi­tor in chief Gabriela Nagle Alve­rio, who received her B.A. in Gen­der and Sex­u­al­i­ty Stud­ies from Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty…”
  6. You Don’t Need the Same Pol­i­tics to Surf Togeth­er (David Litt, The Free Press): “But over the years, Matt and I got to know each oth­er bet­ter, and the bet­ter we got to know each oth­er, the clear­er it became that we had absolute­ly noth­ing in com­mon. He was into Ulti­mate Fight­ing; I was into Ulti­mate Fris­bee. He was cov­ered in tat­toos; I was cov­ered in J.Crew. His def­i­n­i­tion of a work­place injury was death by vio­lent elec­tric shock; mine was carpal tun­nel syn­drome.”
  7. Where I Learned the Pow­er of Look­ing at Every­thing (Rachel Kush­n­er, New York Times): “Hav­ing arrived ear­ly for the cer­e­mo­ny, I lin­gered near Sather Gate, with its ornate pati­nat­ed met­al­work, and then head­ed toward Doe Library, where I used to not study and stared at peo­ple instead. Every­thing glowed with a kind of insti­tu­tion­al grandeur. My super­ego scold­ed me fur­ther: ‘Look where you were! The best pub­lic uni­ver­si­ty in the world, only to squan­der your luck!’ The beau­ty of the cam­pus, which I had no mem­o­ry of appre­ci­at­ing, seemed almost crush­ing in its majesty.”

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 444

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

This is vol­ume 444, which is just the same dig­it repeat­ed. I like that. Clean. Classy. Ele­gant.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Rant About Wor­ship Songs (Jere­my Pierce, First Things): “Here are some of the things I real­ly hate in a wor­ship song.”
    • This is bril­liant, from back in 2010.
  2. Top Only­Fans cre­ator mak­ing $300,000 a month turns to Christ, walks away from porn indus­try (John Knox, Not The Bee): “From what I can tell, Nala here isn’t going through a Lil’ Nas X ‘Chris­t­ian era’ where she’s aging out of porn and wants to rebrand her­self as a good girl again before piv­ot­ing to anoth­er grift. All I see is gen­uine joy, like the pros­ti­tute who wept and was for­giv­en at Jesus’ feet.”
    • Includes a video of her shar­ing her tes­ti­mo­ny. I love this part: “The dev­il can tru­ly give you things in this life. He has a bud­get, though. He can only go so far.… The dev­il has a bud­get, but God does not.”
  3. Lati­nos Are Flock­ing to Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tian­i­ty (Marie Arana, The Free Press): “In fact, some researchers project that by 2030, half of the entire pop­u­la­tion of Amer­i­can Lati­nos will iden­ti­fy as Protes­tant evan­gel­i­cals. Com­pare that growth with white evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tants, whose num­bers have declined from 23 per­cent of the Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tion in 2006 to 14 per­cent in 2020. With the His­pan­ic population’s pro­ject­ed growth, in less than a decade, we may see forty mil­lion Latinos—a con­gre­ga­tion the size of California—heading to Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cal church­es every Sun­day.”
  4. Is Rome a True Church? (Chris Castal­do, Mere Ortho­doxy): “Protes­tants tend to answer the ques­tion of Roman Catholicism’s sta­tus in one of two ways. Look­ing through the lens of the ear­ly creeds (i.e., Nicene and Apos­tles’), some under­stand it to be fun­da­men­tal­ly ortho­dox. The ratio­nale is sim­ple: because the creeds uphold the basic tenets of Chris­tian­i­ty, and Rome upholds those creeds, her apos­tolic­i­ty is affirmed. Roman Catholi­cism is thus regard­ed as ‘inside the pale.’ An alter­na­tive read­ing, one that prob­a­bly informed the Face­book com­ment, is to view the Roman Catholic Church through the lens of the six­teenth-cen­tu­ry Ref­or­ma­tion in which the Coun­cil of Trent anath­e­ma­tized (pro­nounced to be cursed) the doc­trine of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion by faith alone. Because such faith is rec­og­nized as the dri­ving cen­ter of the bib­li­cal gospel, and Rome force­ful­ly repu­di­ates the doc­trine, the Roman Church is there­fore con­sid­ered incom­pat­i­ble with bib­li­cal faith.  I rec­og­nize the log­ic in these posi­tions, but in my opin­ion, both are incom­plete.”
  5. Jour­nal­ism Has a Reli­gion Prob­lem (Andrew T. Walk­er, Nation­al Review): “Jour­nal­ism has a reli­gion prob­lem. More specif­i­cal­ly, jour­nal­ists are either unaware or unwill­ing to admit that their own views, pre­sum­ably untouched by ‘reli­gion,’ are nonethe­less pas­sion­ate­ly held con­vic­tions ground­ed, well, some­where. What do I mean by that? Well, jour­nal­ism that touch­es on reli­gion and pol­i­tics tends to see reli­gious view­points as car­ry­ing a spe­cial bur­den. It goes some­thing like this: ‘Tell me, Mr. Pious, why a diverse pop­u­la­tion should accept your views on moral­i­ty, con­sid­er­ing they come from reli­gion.’ ”
  6. Har­vard Tram­ples the Truth (Mar­tin Kulldorff,City Jour­nal): “…as I dis­cov­ered, truth can get you fired. This is my story—a sto­ry of a Har­vard bio­sta­tis­ti­cian and infec­tious-dis­ease epi­demi­ol­o­gist, cling­ing to the truth as the world lost its way dur­ing the Covid pan­dem­ic.… Two Har­vard col­leagues tried to arrange a debate between me and oppos­ing Har­vard fac­ul­ty, but just as with Stan­ford, there were no tak­ers. The invi­ta­tion to debate remains open. The pub­lic should not trust sci­en­tists, even Har­vard sci­en­tists, unwill­ing to debate their posi­tions with fel­low sci­en­tists.”
  7. How the Gaza Min­istry of Health Fakes Casu­al­ty Num­bers (Abra­ham Wyn­er, Tablet Mag­a­zine): “If Hamas’ num­bers are faked or fraud­u­lent in some way, there may be evi­dence in the num­bers them­selves that can demon­strate it. While there is not much data avail­able, there is a lit­tle, and it is enough: From Oct. 26 until Nov. 10, 2023, the Gaza Health Min­istry released dai­ly casu­al­ty fig­ures that include both a total num­ber and a spe­cif­ic num­ber of women and chil­dren.”
    • The author is a pro­fes­sor of sta­tis­tics at the Whar­ton School, and I find his analy­sis com­pelling.

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 426

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

This is vol­ume 426, and I am absurd­ly pleased that 4+2=6. In some regards I am very easy to amuse.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Keep­ing the Faith at Stan­ford (Isabel­la Griepp, The Stan­ford Review): “Stay­ing true to your faith is a seri­ous under­tak­ing at a place like Stan­ford, but it can also be the most reward­ing part of your time on cam­pus. It is vital that you use your first quar­ter in col­lege to get plugged into Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty.”
    • The author is in Chi Alpha.
  2. How Rich Donors and Loose Rules Are Trans­form­ing Col­lege Sports (David A. Fahren­thold and Bil­ly Witz, New York Times): “One play­er at Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty now makes $750,000 a year, accord­ing to the group that pays him. At Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty, some play­ers not only get a pay­check — they get a free car lease to boot, cour­tesy of a donor col­lec­tive.… The New York Times iden­ti­fied more than 120 col­lec­tives, includ­ing at least one for every school in each of the five major col­lege foot­ball con­fer­ences. The aver­age starter at a big-time foot­ball pro­gram now takes in about $103,000 a year, accord­ing to Open­dorse, a com­pa­ny that process­es pay­ments to the play­ers for the col­lec­tives.”
  3. 15 Rea­sons Why Mass Media Employ­ees Act Like Pro­pa­gan­dists (Caitlin John­ston, per­son­al blog): “Just because a lot of the mass media’s pro­pa­gan­dis­tic behav­ior can be explained with­out secret con­spir­a­cies doesn’t mean secret con­spir­a­cies aren’t hap­pen­ing. In 1977 Carl Bern­stein pub­lished an arti­cle titled ‘The CIA and the Media’ report­ing that the CIA had covert­ly infil­trat­ed America’s most influ­en­tial news out­lets and had over 400 reporters who it con­sid­ered assets in a pro­gram known as Oper­a­tion Mock­ing­bird. We are told that this sort of covert infil­tra­tion doesn’t hap­pen any­more today, but that’s absurd.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus in response my com­men­tary last week on how to think about jour­nal­ism. Most of the 15 rea­sons seem to revolve around this insight: jour­nal­ists respond to incen­tives and the sys­tem pro­vides rewards that ben­e­fit them but not their readers/viewers. We should remain mind­ful of this.
  4. Two arti­cles about man­hood:
    • Under­stand­ing the Young Male Syn­drome (Rob K Hen­der­son, Sub­stack): “In his cross-cul­tur­al research, the psy­chol­o­gist Mar­tin J. Sea­ger has found 3 con­sis­tent require­ments to achieve the sta­tus of man­hood in var­i­ous soci­eties around the world. First, the indi­vid­ual must be a fight­er and a win­ner. Sec­ond, he must be a provider and pro­tec­tor. And third, he must main­tain mas­tery and con­trol of him­self at all times. Across cul­tures, there seems to be an implic­it under­stand­ing of what being a man is… Indeed, mas­culin­i­ty is wide­ly con­sid­ered to be an arti­fi­cial­ly induced sta­tus, achiev­able only through test­ing and care­ful instruc­tion. Real men do not sim­ply emerge like but­ter­flies from their boy­ish cocoons. Rather, they must be care­ful­ly shaped, nur­tured, coun­seled, and prod­ded into man­hood.”
      • This is long and worth read­ing for any­one who has an inter­est in gen­der dynam­ics.
    • News Men Can Use (Aaron Renn, Sub­stack): “I also do these prac­ti­cal posts because it’s impor­tant for those of us Chris­t­ian lay peo­ple who have skills and knowl­edge to step up and share them. The truth is, pas­tors aren’t life coach­es and often don’t know what they are talk­ing about in areas out­side of their core com­pe­ten­cy in preach­ing the Bible and the­ol­o­gy. So it’s unfair and even dan­ger­ous to rely on them to be gen­er­al pur­pose guides to life. That means lay peo­ple have to be will­ing to step up in the areas where they have real insight and expe­ri­ence.”
      • I can­not endorse the point Renn makes in this excerpt strong­ly enough. There’s a lot pas­tors don’t know. I get ner­vous when I hear a min­is­ter opin­ing pub­licly on a top­ic I know the Bible says very lit­tle about.
      • When you look for pas­tors, look for those with enough humil­i­ty to know that they are not an expert in things like busi­ness, law, pol­i­tics, lead­er­ship, inter­na­tion­al rela­tions, con­sult­ing, biol­o­gy, astro­physics, invest­ment bank­ing, immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy, etc. There may be spe­cif­ic state­ments in some of those fields that pas­tors can make with God’s author­i­ty, but they are sure­ly lim­it­ed.
      • You want a pas­tor who speaks con­fi­dent­ly where the Bible speaks clear­ly and speaks cau­tious­ly where the Bible is silent. But as a Chris­t­ian layper­son, you should feel empow­ered to speak con­fi­dent­ly when you have rel­e­vant knowl­edge in your field of exper­tise.
  5. Two Chris­tians — one on the left and one on the right.
    • On the left: Shawn Fain’s Old-Time Reli­gion (Eliz­a­beth Bru­enig, The Atlantic): “ ‘One of the first things I do every day when I get up is I crack open my devo­tion­al for a dai­ly read­ing, and I pray. Ear­li­er this week, I was struck by the dai­ly read­ing, which seemed to speak direct­ly to the moment we find our­selves in,’ Fain explained in his speech. The com­men­tary Fain read observed that great acts of faith are rarely born of care­ful cal­cu­la­tion, and most often include an ele­ment of fear. ‘When I made the deci­sion to run for pres­i­dent of our union, it was a test of my faith, because I sure as hell had doubts,’ Fain said. ‘So I told myself: Either you believe it’s pos­si­ble to stand up and make a dif­fer­ence, or you don’t. And if you don’t believe, then shut up and stay on the side­line.’ ”
    • On the right: Evan­gel­i­cal Mike John­son ‘Raised Up’ as House Speak­er (Jack Jenk­ins, a Reli­gion News Ser­vice wire sto­ry reprint­ed in Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “John­son has been tied to mul­ti­ple Bap­tist church­es over the years and cur­rent­ly attends Cypress Bap­tist Church in Ben­ton, Louisiana, accord­ing to the Louisiana Bap­tist Mes­sage. He is also a for­mer lawyer and com­mu­ni­ca­tions staffer with the Alliance Defense Fund, which lat­er became known as Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom, a con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian legal firm.”
  6. What “Lati­no” Miss­es (Luis Par­rales, Per­sua­sion): “Lati­nos are proud of their ances­try, espe­cial­ly when it’s relat­ed to nation­al ori­gin. But most don’t accept the sig­nif­i­cance or the weight of eth­no­ra­cial iden­ti­ty that our dis­course projects onto them. It’s an atti­tude that’s not exact­ly col­or-blind or post-racial; it sim­ply rec­og­nizes how race, eth­nic­i­ty, nation­al ori­gin (or what­ev­er label we use to cat­e­go­rize peo­ple) often blend togeth­er.”
  7. More com­men­tary on the Israel/Gaza war:
    • I Don’t See a Bet­ter Way Out (Ned Lazarus, The Atlantic): “I have ded­i­cat­ed much of my pro­fes­sion­al life to seek­ing peace­ful change in this con­flict, try­ing to lis­ten to and under­stand Israelis and Pales­tini­ans and find ways to work toward peace or jus­tice or coex­is­tence or mutu­al under­stand­ing or any­thing bet­ter than what there is now.… I see no way out of the night­mare so long as Hamas con­tin­ues to rule the Gaza Strip, and no viable way to remove it from pow­er with­out an Israeli ground offen­sive.”
      • The author is a pro­fes­sor of inter­na­tion­al affairs at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty.
    • The Prob­lem of West Bank Set­tle­ments (Tomas Pueyo, Sub­stack): “You can’t under­stand the Pales­tin­ian per­spec­tive with­out under­stand­ing the issue of set­tle­ments in the West Bank. It’s their biggest source of irri­ta­tion, it makes many Pales­tini­ans’ lives insuf­fer­able, and it’s prob­a­bly Israel’s most con­tentious pol­i­cy. So let’s under­stand why Israel is there in the first place, why it’s build­ing set­tle­ments there, and what will hap­pen to them.”
      • Look­ing over his Sub­stack, the author has writ­ten sev­er­al arti­cles about Israel and Pales­tine late­ly and they seem to be well-researched and are also try­ing to present the strongest, fairest argu­ments from both sides. Rec­om­mend­ed.
    • Debunk­ing Myths About Israel & Pales­tine (Gur­winder, Sub­stack): “Israel must curb its fanat­i­cal ele­ments — its bombs are hit­ting too many civil­ians, its set­tle­ment-build­ing is out of con­trol, its Supreme Court is under attack by its own gov­ern­ment, and its ultra-ortho­dox cit­i­zens are rapid­ly out­breed­ing its sec­u­lar ones. But Israel’s excess­es are Hamas’s norms. Fur­ther, it’s the only lib­er­al democ­ra­cy in a sea of autoc­ra­cies, and unlike all of them it’s will­ing to open­ly crit­i­cize itself and set high human­i­tar­i­an stan­dards even if it can’t always meet them.”
    • Holo­caust Memo­r­i­al Day (Antonin Scalia, C‑SPAN): eleven min­utes of now-deceased Supreme Court Jus­tice Antonin Scalia speak­ing about the Holo­caust and the high­ly-edu­cat­ed and refined soci­ety that pro­duced it.
    • For Israel, There Are No Good Options Now (Andrew Sul­li­van, Sub­stack): “I wish I had some sane idea of what hap­pens now. We can only grieve for all those inno­cents trapped in this hell. All I can say is that if Israel con­tin­ues to wage war in Gaza with this lev­el of civil­ian casu­al­ties, and con­tin­ues to expand its foot­print on the West Bank this aggres­sive­ly at the same time, and responds to West­ern requests to take a pause and think things through with anger and defi­ance, it will be hard to sus­tain West­ern sup­port indef­i­nite­ly.”
    • A War Against the Jews (Michael Oren, Sub­stack): “…dead Jews buy us only so much sym­pa­thy. In fact, there is prob­a­bly a for­mu­la. Six mil­lion dead in the Holo­caust pro­cured us rough­ly 25 years of grace before the Euro­peans refused to refu­el the U.S. planes bring­ing life­sav­ing muni­tions to Israel dur­ing the Yom Kip­pur War in 1973. Four­teen hun­dred butchered Jews bought us a lit­tle less than two weeks’ worth of pos­i­tive cov­er­age.”
      • The author is a for­mer Israeli politi­cian and served as Israel’s ambas­sador to the US.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • Wrong Psalm (Tim Hawkins, YouTube): four amus­ing min­utes
  • AI Humor (SMBC): the mouseover text on this one is actu­al­ly wise
  • Self-Esteem (SMBC)
  • The Flori­da Man Games: includ­ing such gems as “EVADING ARREST OBSTACLE COURSE: Jump over fences, through back yards, and away from actu­al police offi­cers to earn your free­dom!” and “A CATALYTIC CONVERTER, 2 BIKES, AND A HANDFUL OF COPPER PIPES: RACE AGAINST TIME: Com­pete head to head in a race that lets you live a day in the life of a Flori­da man head­line” 
  • A store let cus­tomers steal shoes — if they could out­run a pro sprint­er (Kyle Mel­nick, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Some cus­tomers thought­the man­agers were jok­ing, but they still took the chance. Most did not rec­og­nize Zeze — who has run the 100-meter dash in 9.99 sec­onds and the 200-meter dash in 19.97 sec­onds — or know he was a pro­fes­sion­al sprint­er. Zeze wore a black polo and a band on his left arm that said ‘SECURITY.’ Zeze eas­i­ly caught the first run­ner, who grabbed a pair ofblack shoes around 11:30 a.m. and ran away on a busy side­walk. Zeze said he sprint­ed at about 35 per­cent of his max­i­mum speed to catch most cus­tomers.”

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 425

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

This is vol­ume 425, the sum of 3 con­sec­u­tive primes. 425 = 137 + 139 + 149

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. I’m going to start today’s roundup off with an expla­na­tion of why this email is the way it is. First read this brief arti­cle by Nate Sil­ver: It’s easy to screw up on break­ing news. But you have to admit when you do. (Nate Sil­ver, Sub­stack): “This morn­ing, Gallup pub­lished its annu­al poll on trust in the media. Over­all, only 32 per­cent of Amer­i­cans say they trust the mass media ‘a great deal’ or ‘a fair amount’ to ‘report the news ful­ly, accu­rate­ly and fair­ly’ — tied with 2016 for a record low. ”
    • Sil­ver’s arti­cle made me reflect on how I think about mod­ern jour­nal­ism and then made me want to explain it. First, I do believe jour­nal­ists try to get things right. Places like the NYT and the Wash­ing­ton Post rarely pub­lish false infor­ma­tion and gen­er­al­ly cor­rect false­hoods when they become aware of them. The more spe­cif­ic a claim is the more like­ly it is to be true.
    • Jour­nal­ists do, how­ev­er, fre­quent­ly fail to report true infor­ma­tion they are not inter­est­ed in or excit­ed about. This is rarely a con­scious choice — it’s just a byprod­uct of the way they think about real­i­ty. This comes up espe­cial­ly on so-called “cul­ture war” issues. Many top-notch reporters are simul­ta­ne­ous­ly unaware of and strange­ly incu­ri­ous about many of the facts and sto­ries around trans­gen­derism, mar­riage, reli­gious lib­er­ty, and so on.
    • In fact, news­rooms are so ide­o­log­i­cal­ly mono­cul­tur­al that there are often mas­sive holes in what is report­ed. Not only are reporters blind to incon­ve­nient facts, they are often blind to entire sto­ries and trends. An excel­lent his­tor­i­cal exam­ple of this is when­ev­er the 60s and 70s are remem­bered. Amer­i­ca legit expe­ri­enced a Great Awak­en­ing (the Jesus Peo­ple move­ment) that hap­pened in par­al­lel with the Sex­u­al Rev­o­lu­tion. We only ever talk about the sec­ond not because reporters/commentators are sup­press­ing knowl­edge of the Jesus Peo­ple but because they gen­uine­ly are not even aware that they exist­ed or that what hap­pened then is still shap­ing our cul­ture today.
    • And so when I want a fact, I turn to some­place like the NYT, WaPo, WSJ, Reuters or to a cred­i­ble expert who writes direct­ly to the pub­lic (Ryan Burge is a good exam­ple of this). But when I want an analy­sis, I look for cred­i­ble, sane voic­es both with­in and with­out the con­fines of the media estab­lish­ment. I fre­quent­ly look to places like Sub­stack or niche web­sites like Mere Ortho­doxy or to main­stream media com­men­ta­tors like Ross Douthat or David French or Megan McAr­dle who have a track record of syn­the­siz­ing infor­ma­tion accu­rate­ly and form­ing opin­ions wise­ly.
    • And when I’m read­ing some­thing, I often ask, “Does this per­spec­tive seem plau­si­ble in light of my expe­ri­ence?” Espe­cial­ly when it is a claim about evan­gel­i­cal­ism or charismatic/Pentecostal Chris­tian­i­ty — I like­ly know more about that world than 98% of the staff of the New York Times (and after read­ing some arti­cles I think I know more about it than all their staff put togeth­er). Some­times they take an odd­ball church or reli­gious leader and put their sto­ry for­ward as rep­re­sen­ta­tive when it is not at all.
    • Any­way, there is prob­a­bly a lot more to say about mod­ern media, but what I just said is pret­ty much why this week­ly update fea­tures the mix of con­tent that it does: main­stream media sources for facts and a diverse array of experts for analy­sis, all fil­tered through evan­gel­i­cal sen­si­bil­i­ties.
    • A relat­ed thought on news con­sump­tion: peri­od­ic­i­ty (Alan Jacobs, per­son­al blog): “The more unsta­ble a sit­u­a­tion is, the more rapid­ly it changes, the less valu­able minute-by-minute report­ing is. I don’t know what hap­pened to the hos­pi­tal in Gaza, but if I wait until the next issue of the Econ­o­mist shows up I will be bet­ter informed about it than peo­ple who have been rage-refresh­ing their brows­er win­dows for the past sev­er­al days, and I will have suf­fered con­sid­er­ably less emo­tion­al stress.… If you’re read­ing the news sev­er­al times a day, you’re not being informed, you’re being stim­u­lat­ed.”
  2. Mov­ing on, here are some arti­cles that give con­text for the Israel war on Hamas:
    • Pales­tin­ian right of return mat­ters (Matt Ygle­sias, Sub­stack): “Because it seems to me that what­ev­er you per­son­al­ly think about [the Pales­tin­ian right of return], it is absolute­ly cen­tral to how the Arab world and dias­po­ra Jews and sec­u­lar Israelis all view the con­flict. Which in turn means that it’s cen­tral to the col­lapse of the Two-State Solu­tion as a polit­i­cal con­struct and to the col­lapse of the peace camp in Israeli pol­i­tics that might have been inclined make a deal that was favor­able to Pales­tin­ian inter­ests. There is, in fact, a whole school of thought asso­ci­at­ed with Bill Clin­ton and Amer­i­can nego­tia­tor Den­nis Ross that holds the right of return almost sin­gle-hand­ed­ly respon­si­ble for scut­tling the Camp David talks and pre­vent­ing the emer­gence of an inde­pen­dent Pales­tine. Of course, many oth­er well-informed peo­ple deny that’s the case or believe it’s an over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion. But even if you think it is fac­tu­al­ly incor­rect to say the res­o­lu­tion of this con­flict hinges on the right of return, its cen­tral­i­ty to so many of the nar­ra­tives around this issue makes it an impor­tant con­cept to under­stand.”
    • The For­got­ten His­to­ry of the Term “Pales­tine” (Dou­glas J. Fei­th, Mosa­ic): “The term ‘Pales­tine’ was used for mil­len­nia with­out a pre­cise geo­graph­ic def­i­n­i­tion. That’s not uncommon—think of ‘Tran­scau­ca­sus’ or ‘Mid­west.’ No pre­cise def­i­n­i­tion exist­ed for Pales­tine because none was required. Since the Roman era, the name lacked polit­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance. No nation ever had that name.”
      • This is from back in 2021. Super inter­est­ing stuff.
    • Hamas does not yet under­stand the depth of Israeli resolve (Haviv Ret­tig Gur, Times of Israel): “That ene­my is not the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple, of course, even though sup­port for ter­ror attacks is wide­spread among Pales­tini­ans. The ene­my is not exact­ly Hamas either, though Hamas is part of it. The ene­my is the Pales­tin­ian the­o­ry of Israelis that makes the vio­lence seen on Octo­ber 7 seem to many of them a ratio­nal step on the road to lib­er­a­tion rather than, as Israelis judge it, yet anoth­er in a long string of self-inflict­ed dis­as­ters for the Pales­tin­ian cause.… A tragedy is about to unfold in Gaza made worse by the long learn­ing curve it will take for Hamas to grasp the depth of Israeli resolve. It has robbed Israel of any oth­er inter­est but its destruc­tion. In the Israeli mind, any bru­tal­i­ty Hamas can com­mit it will com­mit. And so it can­not be allowed to ever com­mit any act ever again.”
  3. Some Chris­t­ian per­spec­tives
    • Anti­se­mit­ic Vio­lence and Its Shame­ful Defense (Mike Cosper, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “To be hor­ri­fied by the slaugh­ter of Israeli inno­cents doesn’t require deny­ing the suf­fer­ing of the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple. And car­ing for Pales­tin­ian inno­cents doesn’t require being cold or numb to the hor­rors of anti­semitism and Hamas. We can con­demn Hamas while demand­ing account­abil­i­ty from Israeli lead­ers who have foment­ed vio­lence, ele­vat­ed right-wing extrem­ists, and excused vio­la­tions of inter­na­tion­al law. Indeed, Chris­tians should be marked by our will­ing­ness to oppose all injus­tice and to care for Israeli and Pales­tin­ian vic­tims alike. And while that includes under­stand­ing that Pales­tini­ans have suf­fered great injus­tices from the gov­ern­ment of Israel—as well as neigh­bor­ing states of Egypt, Jor­dan, Iran, Lebanon, Syr­ia, and Sau­di Ara­bia, as well as Hamas and the Pales­tin­ian Author­i­ty itself—it must also include active rejec­tion of anti­semitism.”
    • With­er the Poi­so­nous Plant of Hamas (Tamir Khouri, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “In this envi­ron­ment of hatred, racism, and vio­lence, Hamas has exploit­ed young peo­ple with false promis­es. With no hori­zon of hope, Hamas’s adher­ents in Pales­tine sank into dark­ness and helped Hamas vic­tim­ize Israelis too. But it does not have to be this way. As Chris­tians, we believe in the pow­er of redemp­tion. With real hope for the future of this land, these hate­ful move­ments will with­er. For a last­ing peace, we must respect the image of God in Israelis and Pales­tini­ans alike. Is it too much to ask that we don’t see this as a zero-sum game? Shouldn’t both Israelis and Pales­tini­ans live in the dig­ni­ty God intend­ed for us?”
      • The pseu­do­ny­mous author is a Pales­tin­ian Chris­t­ian who is an Israeli cit­i­zen.
  4. Some arti­cles about mod­ern acad­e­mia:
    • Why Big Mon­ey Can’t Eas­i­ly Change Cam­pus Pol­i­tics (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “…donors should find ways to give mon­ey to the actu­al stu­dents — through the Hil­lel or oth­er Jew­ish or Israeli stu­dent groups if you’re espe­cial­ly con­cerned with the Jew­ish place on cam­pus, but more gen­er­al­ly through polit­i­cal or reli­gious groups that promise to work against the school’s dom­i­nant assump­tions, or through stu­dent asso­ci­a­tions that seem to fos­ter free debate, or through cam­pus-adja­cent insti­tu­tions that serve stu­dents but are inde­pen­dent of the schools. But not with the goal of using such stu­dent groups as a means of con­flict with the admin­is­tra­tion or the fac­ul­ty. Rather, with the goal that such groups can become micro­cosms of the uni­ver­si­ty you loved once and fear no longer exists, cells in a body yet to be restored, whose health and flour­ish­ing with­in the large world of Penn or Har­vard or wher­ev­er is an end unto itself.”
      • Ross Douthat speaks noth­ing but truth through­out this essay. If you know any gazil­lion­aires who want to influ­ence the tra­jec­to­ries of elite uni­ver­si­ties have them read this essay and then tell them about Chi Alpha. Men­tion we’d like a build­ing near cam­pus.
    • The War Comes to Stan­ford (Pamela Paul, New York Times): “Alma Andi­no, a Jew­ish senior at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, spent the day of Hamas’s attacks against Israel cry­ing and dis­traught. Like many Jews around the coun­try, much of the week­end passed on the phone with fam­i­ly mem­bers, fear­ing for the safe­ty of friends and extend­ed fam­i­ly in Israel. Andino’s fel­low stu­dents in Colum­bae, the social jus­tice and anti­war res­i­den­tial house where she is a res­i­den­tial assis­tant, held her through her pan­ic attacks. ‘I felt so pow­er­less,’ she recalled when we spoke this week. On Mon­day, a friend asked if she’d seen the ban­ner some of her house­mates were prepar­ing to hang on the front of Colum­bae, the house she con­sid­ered to be her com­mu­ni­ty and her home. The sheet bore the slo­gan ‘Zion­ism is geno­cide’ in red let­ters, styled to look as if they were drip­ping with blood.… For Alma Andi­no, events on cam­pus have already reached a break­ing point. After beg­ging her house­mates not to hang the ban­ner, she said the group debat­ed for hours, with the impli­ca­tion they would desist only if a suit­able jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for Israel’s exis­tence could be giv­en. They told her they felt that as stu­dent activists, they need­ed to dis­play a mes­sage that would put them on the right side of his­to­ry. We should be advo­cat­ing for mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties, they said. ‘Except for Jews?’ Alma replied. The group scoffed.”
    • What Con­ser­v­a­tives Mis­un­der­stand About Rad­i­cal­ism at Uni­ver­si­ties (Tyler Austin Harp­er, The Atlantic): “The ten­sion burst­ing into view right now—between a major­i­ty of schol­ars, for whom ‘decol­o­niza­tion’ means putting few­er white Euro­peans on their syl­labi, and a small minor­i­ty who believe it entails any­thing-goes vio­lent revolution—is the unwel­come and unsur­pris­ing result of uni­ver­si­ties want­i­ng to cos­play rebel­lion while still churn­ing out Wall Street–executive alum­ni who will one day pad endow­ments that are larg­er than Israel’s annu­al defense bud­get.”
      • The title makes this sound more par­ti­san than it is. 100% worth a read and pon­der.
    • Stu­dents for Pogroms in Israel (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “Look­ing back on the Man­son killings, Joan Did­ion wrote, ‘Many peo­ple I know in Los Ange­les believe that the Six­ties end­ed abrupt­ly on August 9, 1969, end­ed at the exact moment when word of the mur­ders on Cielo Dri­ve trav­eled like brush­fire through the com­mu­ni­ty, and in a sense this is true. The ten­sion broke that day. The para­noia was ful­filled.’ A few peo­ple I know believe last Saturday’s attack on Israel and the respons­es from left­ist stu­dent groups mark the end of the ‘Great Awok­en­ing.’ Although it is too ear­ly to eval­u­ate the accu­ra­cy of that hypoth­e­sis, cam­pus pol­i­tics have cer­tain­ly trans­formed in recent days. Now we are left won­der­ing whether what comes next is bet­ter or worse than what pre­ced­ed it.”
      • He makes spe­cif­ic men­tion of Stan­ford at one point, although it is hard­ly his focus.
    • Moral con­tro­ver­sies and aca­d­e­m­ic pub­lic health: Notes on nav­i­gat­ing and sur­viv­ing aca­d­e­m­ic free­dom chal­lenges (Tyler Van­der­Weele, Glob­al Epi­demi­ol­o­gy): “I think that there needs to be more open dis­cus­sion in acad­e­mia, and in soci­ety, about these mat­ters. Most peo­ple, even those who are deeply con­cerned, seem very uneasy dis­cussing these issues, for fear of being attacked for sim­ply rais­ing them. Col­leagues at Har­vard, rang­ing from an expert in child devel­op­ment to a clin­i­cian pro­vid­ing men­tal health care for teenage girls, have told me that they are uncom­fort­able shar­ing their con­cerns on these mat­ters in many or most set­tings at Har­vard. An evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist at Har­vard like­wise recent­ly came under attack because she explic­it­ly stat­ed that sex was bio­log­i­cal and bina­ry, even though she also not­ed that we can nev­er­the­less respect a per­son­’s gen­der iden­ti­ty. The attack was suf­fi­cient­ly severe, and the admin­is­tra­tion’s response suf­fi­cient­ly weak, that she even­tu­al­ly felt she had no choice but to resign. Rather than open dis­cus­sion, it seems we are often now rely­ing on anony­mous arti­cles, or brave, and sub­se­quent­ly vil­i­fied, authors and whis­tle-blow­ers to raise alter­na­tive view­points. One may strong­ly dis­agree with their posi­tions, but it is not unrea­son­able to raise the ques­tions.”
      • I removed hyper­linked foot­notes from this excerpt for read­abil­i­ty. This is worth read­ing as a mod­el of mature­ly and wise­ly respond­ing to aca­d­e­m­ic intol­er­ance. Not many schol­ars have com­port­ed them­selves with as much class as Van­der­Weele when their views came under attack. Also, I learned in this arti­cle that Van­der­Weele is Catholic. I had assumed he was an evan­gel­i­cal based on some­thing I heard else­where.
  5. Think­ing about the moral dimen­sions of the war
    • The Moral Ques­tions at the Heart of the Gaza War (David French, New York Times): “This is the prob­lem Israeli sol­diers and com­man­ders face. They must pro­tect their cit­i­zens from sav­agery. They must com­ply with the laws of war. And they must make a series of moral choic­es, under extreme duress, that can define them and their nation — all while they face a ter­ror­ist ene­my that appears to pos­sess no con­science at all.”
      • Worth read­ing. As I men­tioned when I shared French’s pre­vi­ous arti­cle, he is more qual­i­fied than any oth­er colum­nist I know to weigh in on this.
    • This Way for the Geno­cide, Ladies and Gen­tle­men (Chris Hedges, Scheer­Post): “I spent sev­en years report­ing on the con­flict, four of them as the Mid­dle East Bureau Chief of The New York Times. I stood over the bod­ies of Israeli vic­tims of bus bomb­ings in Jerusalem by Pales­tin­ian sui­cide-bombers. I saw rows of corpses, includ­ing chil­dren, in the cor­ri­dors in Dar Al-Shi­fa Hos­pi­tal in Gaza City. I watched Israeli sol­diers taunt small boys who in response threw rocks and were then cal­lous­ly shot in the Khan You­nis refugee camp. I shel­tered from bombs dropped by Israeli war­planes. I climbed over the rub­ble of demol­ished Pales­tin­ian homes and apart­ment blocks along the bor­der with Egypt. I inter­viewed the blood­ied and dazed sur­vivors. I heard the soul crush­ing wails of moth­ers keen­ing over the corpses of their chil­dren.… it is not Israel’s assault on Gaza I fear most. It is the com­plic­i­ty of an inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty that licens­es Israel’s geno­ci­dal slaugh­ter and accel­er­ates a cycle of vio­lence it may not be able to con­trol.”
      • Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
  6. Smart­phones Have Tur­bocharged the Dan­ger of Porn (Mary Har­ring­ton, Wall Street Jour­nal): “It should come as no sur­prise that the per­son­al­ized, tac­tile, portable smart­phone would be the dig­i­tal por­tal of choice for some­thing as inti­mate as porn con­sump­tion. But of the new com­pul­sive behav­iors enabled by smart­phones, few have as intense and imme­di­ate a reward cycle as porn—or as many far-reach­ing con­se­quences.”
  7. Is It Wrong to Cure Blind­ness? (Francesca Block, The Free Press): “The Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health, the $40 bil­lion-endowed fund­ing arm of the Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices, recent­ly took a stand against ableism by propos­ing a change to its mis­sion state­ment, which promis­es to ‘enhance health, length­en life, and reduce ill­ness and dis­abil­i­ty.’ An advi­so­ry com­mit­tee with­in the NIH took issue with the phrase ‘reduce… dis­abil­i­ty,’ writ­ing in a 66-page report pub­lished last Decem­ber that it ‘could be inter­pret­ed as per­pet­u­at­ing ableist beliefs that dis­abled peo­ple are flawed and need to be ‘fixed.’ ”
    • There are legit insane per­spec­tives being nor­mal­ized in the world right now. Cur­ing blind­ness is an unequiv­o­cal good.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

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

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 408

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

This is vol­ume 408, the 8th Pell Num­ber, a sequence use­ful in approx­i­mat­ing the square root of 2.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Com­pe­ti­tion for Believ­ers in Africa Is Trans­form­ing Chris­tian­i­ty and Islam (Fran­cis X. Roc­ca, Nicholas Bariyo & Gben­ga Aking­bule, Wall Street Jour­nal): “On a recent Sun­day morn­ing in Lagos, Nigeria’s biggest city, mem­bers of the faith­ful clutched their hymn books and chant­ed God’s prais­es as they danced to the beat of tam­bourines. A preach­er led the con­gre­ga­tion in pray­ing for the health of their chil­dren and suc­cess at work. The ser­vice resem­bled Pen­te­costal Chris­tian­i­ty, a move­ment that orig­i­nat­ed in the U.S. and has swept Africa in the last few decades. But the par­tic­i­pants weren’t Chris­tians. They were Mus­lims, prac­tic­ing an ecsta­t­ic style of wor­ship that has devel­oped in response to the chal­lenge posed by Pen­te­costal­ism. Across sub-Saha­ran Africa, reli­gion today is in fer­ment as dif­fer­ent ver­sions of Chris­tian­i­ty and Islam vie for believers—a con­test that is trans­form­ing both faiths and dis­rupt­ing long-estab­lished terms of coex­is­tence.”
    • High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. I believe I have unlocked the pay­wall on this one.
  2. Cal­i­for­nia restau­rant used fake priest to get work­ers to con­fess “sins,” feds say (Aimee Pic­chi, CBS News): “In court doc­u­ments, a serv­er at the restau­rant, Maria Par­ra, tes­ti­fied that she found her con­ver­sa­tion with the alleged priest ‘unlike nor­mal con­fes­sions,’ where she would talk about what she want­ed to con­fess, accord­ing to a court doc­u­ment reviewed by CBS Mon­ey­Watch. Instead, the priest told her that he would ask ques­tions ‘to get the sins out of me.’ ”
  3. Slav­ery in the Bible | Dr. Esau Mccaul­ley (Jude 3 Project, YouTube): sev­en min­utes.
  4. Sports Writ­ers Out, Zoomer Tik­Tok­ers In (Ethan Strauss, Sub­stack): “There’s a real malev­o­lent genius to con­coct­ing a cuck­ish char­ac­ter who pals around with the high-sta­tus Cavin­ders, but only as the butt of their jokes. He’s lit­er­al­ly mod­el­ing los­ing mon­ey towards the Betr cof­fers, while hang­ing out with mod­els. Some­one actu­al­ly came up with a means for habit­u­at­ing young men into an attrac­tive form of fail­ing as part of an ‘organic’-looking humil­i­a­tion fan­ta­sy.”
  5. Data Fal­si­fi­ca­da (Part 1): “Clus­ter­fake” (Uri Simon­sohn, Leif Nel­son & Joe Sim­mons, Data Cola­da): “That’s right: Two dif­fer­ent peo­ple inde­pen­dent­ly faked data for two dif­fer­ent stud­ies in a paper about dis­hon­esty.”
    • There was empha­sis in orig­i­nal which I removed for read­abil­i­ty.
  6. U.S.-Funded Sci­en­tist Among Three Chi­nese Researchers Who Fell Ill Amid Ear­ly Covid-19 Out­break (Michael R. Gor­don, Wall Street Jour­nal): “A promi­nent sci­en­tist who worked on coro­n­avirus projects fund­ed by the U.S. gov­ern­ment is one of three Chi­nese researchers who became sick with an unspec­i­fied ill­ness dur­ing the ini­tial out­break of Covid-19, accord­ing to cur­rent and for­mer U.S. offi­cials.”
    • A less san­i­tized pre­sen­ta­tion of the same facts: First Peo­ple Sick­ened By COVID-19 Were Chi­nese Sci­en­tists At Wuhan Insti­tute Of Virol­o­gy, Say US Gov­ern­ment Sources (Michael Shel­len­berg­er, Matt Taib­bi & Alex Gutentag, Sub­stack): “Sources with­in the US gov­ern­ment say that three of the ear­li­est peo­ple to become infect­ed with SARS-CoV­‑2 were Ben Hu, Yu Ping, and Yan Zhu. All were mem­bers of the Wuhan lab sus­pect­ed to have leaked the pan­dem­ic virus. As such, not only do we know there were WIV sci­en­tists who had devel­oped COVID-19-like ill­ness­es in Novem­ber 2019, but also that they were work­ing with the clos­est rel­a­tives of SARS-CoV­‑2, and insert­ing gain-of-func­tion fea­tures unique to it.”
  7. REVIEW EXCLUSIVE—Catch Him if You Can: Meet Will Cur­ry (Josi­ah Jon­er, Stan­ford Review): “Will Curry’s sto­ry is long and complex—but most of all, enthralling. He is a liv­ing sto­ry of some­one who lived the adven­tur­ous life that so many desire yet nev­er actu­al­ly live, includ­ing many at Stan­ford trapped in a cul­ture of monot­o­ny. Is all of the sto­ry he told me true? Maybe, or maybe not. Will is, after all, a com­pet­i­tive pok­er play­er who has pulled off bluffs in the past. But regard­less, Will’s sto­ry is far from over. In fact, I think it’s real­ly only begun.”

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The New Nation­al Amer­i­can Elite (Michael Lind, Tablet Mag­a­zine): “…from the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion until the late 20th cen­tu­ry, the Amer­i­can elite was divid­ed among region­al oli­garchies. It is only in the last gen­er­a­tion that these region­al patri­ci­ates have been absorbed into a sin­gle, increas­ing­ly homo­ge­neous nation­al oli­garchy, with the same accent, man­ners, val­ues, and edu­ca­tion­al back­grounds from Boston to Austin and San Fran­cis­co to New York and Atlanta. This is a tru­ly epochal devel­op­ment.” Lind is a pro­fes­sor at UT Austin in the school of pub­lic affairs. From vol­ume 286.

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 383

On Fri­days (Sat­ur­days when I offi­ci­ate a wed­ding on Fri­day — con­grats Alex & Andrea!) 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.

Hap­py New Year! Most of my read­ers know this, but this bun­dle of links is an over­flow from a min­istry called Chi Alpha Chris­t­ian Fel­low­ship at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. Today is Decem­ber 31st, which is the biggest giv­ing day of the year. If you are inclined toward gen­eros­i­ty on New Year’s Eve, con­sid­er mak­ing a year-end dona­tion to sup­port the min­istry.

This is vol­ume 383, which is both a prime num­ber and a palin­drome. Not too shab­by, 383. Hold your head up high among the num­bers.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Rea­sons to believe, Christ­mas edi­tion:
    • How Would You Prove That God Per­formed a Mir­a­cle? (Mol­ly Worthen, New York Times): “Josh Brown directs the pro­gram in neu­ro­science at Indi­ana Uni­ver­si­ty Bloom­ing­ton. He has pub­lished dozens of arti­cles on top­ics like the neur­al basis of deci­sion mak­ing in the brain. He has wire-rimmed glass­es and a calm, method­i­cal way of speak­ing. And after almost two decades of keep­ing rel­a­tive­ly qui­et, he is now speak­ing open­ly about his most sur­pris­ing research find­ing: He believes that God mirac­u­lous­ly healed him of a brain tumor.”
      • High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. The author is a his­to­ri­an at UNC.
    • When Mary Met the Angel (Rebec­ca McLaugh­lin, Wall Street Jour­nal): “ ‘Sci­ence is the descrip­tion of how God choos­es to work most of the time,’ writes Rus­sell Cow­burn, a pro­fes­sor of physics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge. ‘We know dead bod­ies don’t come back to life accord­ing to sci­ence. And yet Chris­tian­i­ty is built on the obser­va­tion that Jesus came back to life. I am very hap­py to say that at that spe­cial moment, God was act­ing dif­fer­ent­ly.’ Like many oth­er world-class sci­en­tists I’ve interviewed—including Fran­cis Collins, for­mer direc­tor of the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health—Prof. Cow­burn came to faith in Jesus as an adult. He is not just try­ing to make sci­en­tif­ic sense of a child­hood faith that he can­not shed.”
      • Dis­claimer: I know the author and am thrilled she was invit­ed to write about faith for the WSJ.
    • A Christ­mas Con­ver­sa­tion About Christ (Nico­las Kristof inter­view­ing Rus­sell Moore, New York Times): “The most impor­tant blind spot is per­haps miss­ing why so many of us are drawn to faith in the first place. We real­ly do believe the Gospel is Good News that answers the deep­est long­ings of the human heart. I would just rec­om­mend that peo­ple read one of the Gospels with an open mind. Jesus loves New York Times read­ers, too.”
  2. A Dark­ness Revealed (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “…the great chal­lenge here, as ever, is to strive to see our ances­tors and our con­tem­po­raries with moral clar­i­ty, not white­wash­ing their sins and fail­ings with poet­ic mem­o­ry, while also rec­og­niz­ing their virtues — and in all cas­es, nev­er, ever allow­ing their full human­i­ty, the good and the bad alike, to be assim­i­lat­ed into the realm of ideas.”
    • I found this grip­ping. A man wres­tles with the not-entire­ly-sur­pris­ing rev­e­la­tion that his father was in the KKK.
  3. Urbana Mis­sions Con­fer­ence That Once Drew 20,000 Expect­ed to Fall Far Short (Bob Smi­etana, Min­istry Watch): “Jao said that lin­ger­ing con­cerns over COVID-19 and the country’s eco­nom­ic woes are help­ing to dri­ve pro­ject­ed atten­dance down for the con­fer­ence, usu­al­ly held every three years, but delayed until this year by the pan­dem­ic. Like many church­es, he said, Inter­Var­si­ty and oth­er cam­pus min­istries are still rebuild­ing their atten­dance.”
  4. Our First Close­up Image of Mars Was a Paint-By-Num­bers Pas­tel Draw­ing (Jason Kot­tke, per­son­al blog): “On July 15, 1965, NASA’s Mariner 4 probe flew with­in 6,118 miles of the sur­face of Mars, cap­tur­ing images as it passed over the plan­et. The image data was trans­mit­ted back to sci­en­tists on Earth, but they didn’t have a good way to quick­ly ren­der a pho­to­graph from it. They deter­mined that the fastest way to see what Mariner 4 had seen was to print out the imag­ing data as a series of num­bers, paste them into a grid, buy a set of pas­tels from a near­by art store, and do a paint-by-num­bers job with the pas­tels on the data grid.”
    • This is actu­al­ly beau­ti­ful.
  5. Amer­i­cans Have Found Their Hap­py Place (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg): “Two econ­o­mists, David G. Blanch­flower of Dart­mouth and Alex Bryson of Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don, have come up with a new and more intu­itive way to mea­sure well-being. The results are strik­ing. If you con­sid­er US states as com­pa­ra­ble to coun­tries, 16 of the top 20 polit­i­cal units in the world for well-being are in the US — includ­ing the top sev­en.”
  6. The Media Very Rarely Lies (Scott Alexan­der, Astral Codex Ten): “The point is: the media rarely lies explic­it­ly and direct­ly. Reporters rarely say spe­cif­ic things they know to be false. When the media mis­in­forms peo­ple, it does so by mis­in­ter­pret­ing things, exclud­ing con­text, or sig­nal-boost­ing some events while ignor­ing oth­ers, not by par­tic­i­pat­ing in some bright-line cat­e­go­ry called ‘mis­in­for­ma­tion’.”
    • Fol­low-up: Sor­ry, I Still Think I Am Right About The Media Very Rarely Lying (Scott Alexan­der, Astral Codex Ten): “…I find it real­ly inter­est­ing that so many com­menters were so resis­tant to the idea that the worst and dumb­est con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries of our time don’t involve out­right lies. I think all of us — not just cen­sors — want to main­tain the com­fort­ing illu­sion that the bad peo­ple are doing some­thing fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent than the good peo­ple, some­thing that marks them as Obvi­ous­ly Bad in bright neon paint.”
  7. Is the right win­ning the com­e­dy wars? (Con­stance Grady, Vox): “It’s as though there’s some sort of fun­da­men­tal dis­con­nect between right and left on the issue of com­e­dy. On a very basic lev­el, the two sides seem to dis­agree on the ques­tion of what a joke should look like, what it’s okay to joke about, and what is so under threat that to joke about it would be unthink­able. No one seems sure how to talk about the dif­fer­ence, exact­ly. They just know that they want to be the fun­ny ones.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Fer­til­i­ty rate: ‘Jaw-drop­ping’ glob­al crash in chil­dren being born (James Gal­lagher, BBC): “Chi­na, cur­rent­ly the most pop­u­lous nation in the world, is expect­ed to peak at 1.4 bil­lion in four years’ time before near­ly halv­ing to 732 mil­lion by 2100. India will take its place.” From a long-term per­spec­tive, this is pos­si­bly the most sig­nif­i­cant news you will read this year. Some of you will still be alive when China’s pop­u­la­tion is half what it is now. And it’s not just Chi­na — many nations are on the same path (with only a few siz­able ones head­ed in the oppo­site direc­tion). From vol­ume 259

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 376

My favorite line from this week: “Men bond by insult­ing each oth­er and not real­ly mean­ing it; women bond by com­pli­ment­ing each oth­er and not real­ly mean­ing it.”

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

This, vol­ume 376, is an auto­mor­phic num­ber because when raised to a pow­er it ends in itself. 3762 = 141376. It con­tin­ues: 3763 = 53157376 and so on. 37615 = 424441337012461701988020381601157349376 and so on.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Male-War­rior Hypoth­e­sis (Rob Hen­der­son, Sub­stack): “…young human males often address each oth­er with abu­sive insults. The rit­u­al tests the strength of the friend­ship. If light­heart­ed ver­bal quips do not dam­age the rela­tion­ship, then the bonds are like­ly rel­a­tive­ly strong. In con­trast, women and girls sel­dom insult their friends, and often work extra hard to praise them to avoid any signs of hos­til­i­ty. Men bond by insult­ing each oth­er and not real­ly mean­ing it; women bond by com­pli­ment­ing each oth­er and not real­ly mean­ing it.”
    • This arti­cle is engross­ing even if you already know the gist.
  2. The Fever Is Break­ing (David Brooks, New York Times): “The sin­gle most impor­tant result of this elec­tion was the tri­umph of the normies. Estab­lish­men­tar­i­an, prac­ti­cal lead­ers who are not always scream­ing angri­ly at you did phe­nom­e­nal­ly well, on right and left: Mike DeWine in Ohio, Josh Shapiro in Penn­syl­va­nia. Work­man­like incum­bents from John Thune in South Dako­ta to Ron Wyden in Ore­gon had suc­cess­ful nights. Gov. Tony Evers of Wis­con­sin had the quo­ta­tion that sum­ma­rized the elec­tion: ‘Bor­ing wins.’ ”
    • Relat­ed (in that it is about pol­i­tics): 3 Prin­ci­ples for Set­tling Polit­i­cal Spats in the Church (Daniel K. Williams, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Any attempt to make soci­ety more moral through leg­is­la­tion will inevitably be selec­tive and incom­plete and may offer mixed results. Which major polit­i­cal par­ty in the Unit­ed States is com­mit­ted to address­ing the prob­lems of divorce, gam­bling addic­tions, mar­i­tal infi­deli­ty, and alco­hol abuse? Which par­ty will do the most to pro­tect the poor from being exploit­ed through pay­day loans? Which par­ty will fight against the pornog­ra­phy indus­try? If you haven’t seen any polit­i­cal ads this elec­tion sea­son that address any of these issues, per­haps that’s a sign of the moral selec­tiv­i­ty in our cur­rent par­ti­san pol­i­tics.”
    • The author is a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of West Geor­gia. Empha­sis in orig­i­nal.
  3. A Tra­di­tion of Anti-Tra­di­tion­al­ists (Mark Bauer­lein, First Things): “All the talk in the human­i­ties back then turned on ‘open­ing up the canon’ and break­ing up the dom­i­nance of Dead White Males—less John Dry­den and more Aphra Behn, more diver­si­ty and few­er idols—but in the the­o­ry area, these fig­ures were as canon­i­cal as the saints.… What this bias has pro­duced is two gen­er­a­tions of col­lege teach­ers who don’t real­ize their bias. They got a nar­row edu­ca­tion that they trust­ed was the broad­est one. They gen­uine­ly don’t know that anoth­er crit­i­cal tra­di­tion besides the progressive/transgressive one exists.” This essay is a bulls­eye.
    • Relat­ed: An Exis­ten­tial Threat to Doing Good Sci­ence (Lua­na Maro­ja, Bari Weis­s’s Sub­stack): “The restric­tion of aca­d­e­m­ic free­dom comes in two forms: what we teach and what we research. Let’s start with teach­ing. I need to empha­size that this is not hypo­thet­i­cal. The cen­so­ri­ous, fear­ful cli­mate is already affect­ing the con­tent of what we teach.”
    • There’s a Stan­ford con­nec­tion in this sec­ond arti­cle, btw. The arti­cle is an adap­ta­tion of a speech giv­en at a pri­vate con­fer­ence at Stan­ford quite recent­ly.
  4. Con­tra Res­i­dent Con­trar­i­an On Unfal­si­fi­able Inter­nal States (Scott Alexan­der, Astral Codex Ten): “But in the sto­ries these peo­ple told me, it was more about — they found that this effort was pro­duc­ing some­thing unex­pect­ed, and devel­op­ing new per­son­al­i­ty aspects that they need­ed, so they kept going. If you take one step towards Darth Vad­er, he will take two steps toward you (sor­ry if I am sound­ing like a Sith youth pas­tor).”
    • This is absolute­ly fas­ci­nat­ing and the excerpt does not do it any jus­tice. Rec­om­mend­ed.
  5. New Endorse­ments for Col­lege Ath­letes Resur­face an Old Con­cern: Sex Sells (Kurt Streeter, New York Times): “Haley Jones, an All-Amer­i­ca guard at Stan­ford and a can­di­date for the Play­er of the Year Award, said she didn’t want to play up sex appeal. Her endorse­ment income is dri­ven by a social media image that por­trays her as a light­heart­ed stu­dent-ath­lete with­out an overt­ly provoca­tive tone.”
    • Inter­est­ing in its own right, also a stronger Stan­ford angle than I expect­ed.
  6. It’s Always a ‘Neg­a­tive World’ for Chris­tian­i­ty (David French, The Dis­patch): “One of [the] core con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian cri­tiques of Amer­i­can cul­ture is that Amer­i­ca is grow­ing ever-more hos­tile to the authen­tic Chris­t­ian faith. We’ve left a friend­ly and hos­pitable past, and now we’re con­fronting a hos­tile future.… But this analy­sis is fun­da­men­tal­ly wrong. It’s dan­ger­ous­ly wrong. It’s wrong not because the present moment is par­tic­u­lar­ly hos­pitable to the Chris­t­ian faith, but because it fun­da­men­tal­ly mis­un­der­stands both Amer­i­can his­to­ry and Amer­i­can Chris­ten­dom, and it fun­da­men­tal­ly mis­un­der­stands the per­ma­nent coun­ter­cul­tur­al real­i­ty of authen­tic Chris­tian­i­ty.”
  7. Pay­walls or Con­stant Intru­sive Ads: Pick One (Fred­die deBoer, Sub­stack): “And I also want to say, if you’re annoyed that you can’t get past a pay­wall — tough. Because an era of ris­ing pay­walls is absolute­ly nec­es­sary if you want writ­ing to sur­vive as a pro­fes­sion, and if you want good jour­nal­ism and analy­sis to endure.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Small World Net­work of Col­lege Class­es: Impli­ca­tions for Epi­dem­ic Spread on a Uni­ver­si­ty Cam­pus (Wee­den & Corn­well, Soci­o­log­i­cal Sci­ence): “If one chose a giv­en stu­dent at ran­dom, that stu­dent is like­ly to attend class with a stu­dent who, in turn, attends class with any oth­er ran­dom­ly cho­sen stu­dent. Put dif­fer­ent­ly, although it is unlike­ly that any two ran­dom­ly cho­sen stu­dents would be enrolled in the same course, it is high­ly like­ly that they would be enrolled in dif­fer­ent cours­es that both include the same third par­ty.“

The authors, pro­fes­sors at Cor­nell, were curi­ous about the poten­tial for dis­ease spread among under­grads at their school. Tak­ing this in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent direc­tion: the aver­age stu­dent at Stan­ford is like­ly only one or two steps away from Chi Alpha. WOW! Invite your friends! From vol­ume 246

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 329

a short­er than usu­al roundup

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

This is the 329th install­ment. 329 is, appar­ent­ly, the num­ber of forests (a type of graph) with 10 ver­tices.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Lov­ing Lies (Bill Adair, Air Mail): “Inter­view­ing Glass can be frus­trat­ing, because he frets so much about get­ting every detail right. He’ll stop mid­sen­tence to pon­der the month or day that some­thing hap­pened. Was that lunch in late 2014 or ear­ly 2015? He’ll check. He knows he has a rep­u­ta­tion as a liar and that he has already blown a life­time of cred­i­bil­i­ty.”
    • Quite a sto­ry. You will need to pro­vide your email address to unlock it and it is 100% worth it.
  2. Den­zel Wash­ing­ton, Man on Fire (Mau­reen Dowd, New York Times): “The ene­my is the inner me,” he said. “The Bible says in the last days — I don’t know if it’s the last days, it’s not my place to know — but it says we’ll be lovers of our­selves. The No. 1 pho­to­graph today is a self­ie, ‘Oh, me at the protest.’ ‘Me with the fire.’ ‘Fol­low me.’ ‘Lis­ten to me.’ We’re liv­ing in a time where peo­ple are will­ing to do any­thing to get fol­lowed. What is the long or short-term effect of too much infor­ma­tion? It’s going fast and it can be manip­u­lat­ed obvi­ous­ly in a myr­i­ad of ways. And peo­ple are led like sheep to slaugh­ter.”
  3. What I told the stu­dents of Prince­ton (Abi­gail Shri­er, Sub­stack): “…I want you to think for a moment about a young woman here at Prince­ton. She’s a mag­nif­i­cent ath­lete named Ellie Mar­quardt, an all-Amer­i­can swim­mer who set an Ivy League record in the 500-meter freestyle event as a fresh­man. Just before Thanks­giv­ing, Ellie was defeat­ed in the 500-meter, the event she held the record in, by almost 14 sec­onds by a 22 year old bio­log­i­cal male at Penn who was com­pet­ing on the men’s team as recent­ly as Novem­ber of 2019. That male ath­lete now holds mul­ti­ple U.S. records in women’s swim­ming, eras­ing the hard work of so many of our best female ath­letes, and mak­ing a mock­ery of the rights women fought for gen­er­a­tions to achieve.” Empha­sis in orig­i­nal.
  4. Even on U.S. Cam­pus­es, Chi­na Cracks Down on Stu­dents Who Speak Out (Sebas­t­ian Rotel­la, ProP­ub­li­ca): “As the regime of Chi­nese Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping reach­es across bor­ders to con­trol its cit­i­zens wher­ev­er they are, its assaults on aca­d­e­m­ic free­dom have inten­si­fied, accord­ing to U.S. nation­al secu­ri­ty offi­cials, aca­d­e­mics, dis­si­dents and oth­er experts. Chi­nese intel­li­gence offi­cers are mon­i­tor­ing cam­pus­es across the Unit­ed States with online sur­veil­lance and an array of infor­mants moti­vat­ed by mon­ey, ambi­tion, fear or authen­tic patri­o­tism. A com­ment in class about Tai­wan or a speech at a ral­ly about Tibet can result in retal­i­a­tion against stu­dents and their rel­a­tives back home.”
  5. Polit­i­cal arti­cles which caught my atten­tion:
    • I Couldn’t Vote for Trump, but I’m Grate­ful for His Supreme Court Picks (Eri­ka Bachiochi, New York Times): “Mr. Trump’s eco­nom­ic pop­ulism (at least in rhetoric) blast­ed through the lib­er­tar­i­an­ism that has tend­ed to dom­i­nate the G.O.P., a lib­er­tar­i­an­ism that has made the party’s alliance with pro-lif­ers one of strange bed­fel­lows indeed. If the G.O.P. wants to be of any rel­e­vance in a post-Roe world — after all, with Roe gone, those sin­gle-issue vot­ers will be free to look else­where — it will have to offer the coun­try the matrix of eth­nic diver­si­ty and eco­nom­ic sol­i­dar­i­ty that Mr. Trump stum­bled upon, but with­out the divi­sive­ness of the man him­self.”
    • Democ­rats fall flat with ‘Lat­inx’ lan­guage (Marc Caputo & Sab­ri­na Rodriguez, Politi­co): “The num­bers sug­gest that using Lat­inx is a vio­la­tion of the polit­i­cal Hip­po­crat­ic Oath, which is to first do no elec­toral harm,” said Aman­di, whose firm advised Barack Obama’s suc­cess­ful His­pan­ic out­reach nation­wide in his two pres­i­den­tial cam­paigns. “Why are we using a word that is pre­ferred by only 2 per­cent, but offends as many as 40 per­cent of those vot­ers we want to win?” Shared with me by a stu­dent well-suit­ed to assess this con­tro­ver­sy. 
    • [Stan­ford] Sen­ate again denies Mike Pence event fund­ing at meet­ing revot­ing on grants (Itzel Luna, Stan­ford Dai­ly):  “Five sen­a­tors vot­ed in favor of SCR’s $6,000 fund­ing request to bring for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence to cam­pus in the win­ter quar­ter. Eight sen­a­tors abstained and no one vot­ed against the fund­ing which, accord­ing to the sen­a­tors, con­sti­tut­ed a fail­ure to receive major­i­ty approval.” This reads like a par­o­dy of stu­dent gov­ern­ment.
    • Young Dems more like­ly to despise the oth­er par­ty (Neal Roth­schild, Axios): “[Among col­lege stu­dents,] 5% of Repub­li­cans said they would­n’t be friends with some­one from the oppo­site par­ty, com­pared to 37% of Democ­rats. 71% of Democ­rats would­n’t go on a date with some­one with oppos­ing views, ver­sus 31% of Republicans.30% of Democ­rats — and 7% of Repub­li­cans — would­n’t work for some­one who vot­ed dif­fer­ent­ly from them.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Is Christ­mas a Pagan Rip-off? (Kevin DeY­oung, Gospel Coali­tion): “…what­ev­er the Christ­mas hol­i­day has become today, it start­ed as a copy­cat of well-estab­lished pagan hol­i­days. If you like Christ­mas, you have Sat­ur­na­lia and Sol Invic­tus to thank. That’s the sto­ry, and every­one from lib­er­al Chris­tians to con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians to non-Chris­tians seem to agree that it’s true. Except that it isn’t.” From vol­ume 280.

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 288

I keep think­ing one week there won’t be enough con­tent… this isn’t that week

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

This is vol­ume 288. The num­ber 288 is inter­est­ing in that it can also be writ­ten 4! â‹… 3! â‹… 2! â‹… 1!

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. How Long Can COVID Cas­es Keep Plum­met­ing? (David Wal­lace-Wells, NY Mag­a­zine): “It’s insane. It’s total­ly crazy. And so, you’re absolute­ly right, we have cho­sen that the best way for­ward is to live in a state of uncer­tain­ty rather than giv­ing peo­ple all the tools and infor­ma­tion, even if it isn’t per­fect. It turns out that in many cas­es we’d rather not engage with that knowl­edge at all than have any sources of error in what­ev­er it is we’re doing.“An inter­view with a Har­vard epi­demi­ol­o­gist. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed, although be warned that it will frus­trate you with how rea­son­able and yet under­im­ple­ment­ed his sug­ges­tions are. The title is poor­ly cho­sen.
    • The Vac­cine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired. (Dan Bar­ry, New York Times): “The Texas doc­tor had six hours. Now that a vial of Covid-19 vac­cine had been opened on this late Decem­ber night, he had to find 10 eli­gi­ble peo­ple for its remain­ing dos­es before the pre­cious med­i­cine expired. In six hours. [He did and for] his actions, Dr. Gokal was fired from his gov­ern­ment job and then charged with steal­ing 10 vac­cine dos­es worth a total of $135 — a shun-wor­thy mis­de­meanor that sent his name and mug shot rock­et­ing around the globe.” The doc­tor comes across as a hero and the pros­e­cu­tor as a vil­lain. Not even a real vil­lain — car­toon vil­lain. I am actu­al­ly a lit­tle worked up about this.
  2. 10 Lessons of an MIT Edu­ca­tion (Gian-Car­lo Rota, Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty): “At cer­tain lib­er­al arts col­leges, sports appear to be more impor­tant than class­room sub­jects, and with good rea­son. A sport may be the only train­ing in ‘know­ing how’-in demon­strat­ing cer­ti­fi­able pro­fi­cien­cy-that a stu­dent under­takes at those col­leges. At MIT, sports are a hob­by (how­ev­er pas­sion­ate­ly pur­sued) rather than a cen­tral focus because we offer a wide range of absorb­ing ‘know­ing how’ activ­i­ties.” Appar­ent­ly one of an MIT pro­fes­sor’s advisees archived his fac­ul­ty web­site after his death.
    • Relat­ed: Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught (Gian-Car­lo Rota, Notices Of The AMS): “You have to keep a dozen of your favorite prob­lems con­stant­ly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dor­mant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve prob­lems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and peo­ple will say, ‘How did he do it? He must be a genius!’ ” This link is a PDF.
  3. With a Star Sci­ence Reporter’s Purg­ing, Mob Cul­ture at The New York Times Enters a Strange New Phase (Quil­lette edi­to­r­i­al): “So what we’re left with is the spec­ta­cle of an acclaimed reporter being purged not for malev­o­lent actions, nor even malev­o­lent intent, but rather for mak­ing a cer­tain kind of sound. This is an impor­tant depar­ture from ordi­nary mob­bings because, even in their most dog­mat­ic form, the­o­ries of social jus­tice gen­er­al­ly are at least nom­i­nal­ly con­cerned with the improve­ment of human moral­i­ty, which, cru­cial­ly, is insep­a­ra­ble from the ques­tion of intent. McNeil, on the oth­er hand, is being judged accord­ing to a the­o­ry of wrong­do­ing that presents cer­tain words or phras­es as evil by their mere utter­ance, as with a Har­ry Pot­ter spell.” This is very clev­er­ly writ­ten. Also, extreme­ly cor­rect.
  4. All In One (John Tasioulas, Aeon): “If, for exam­ple, human rights are demands that are gen­er­al­ly high-pri­or­i­ty in nature, such that it’s sel­dom if ever jus­ti­fied to over­ride them, then we lose our grip on that impor­tant idea if we start includ­ing under the head­ing of ‘human rights’ valu­able objec­tives – for exam­ple, access to a high-qual­i­ty inter­net con­nec­tion – that don’t plau­si­bly enjoy that kind of pri­or­i­ty.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. The author is a philoso­pher at Oxford.
  5. Ravi Zacharias Hid Hun­dreds of Pic­tures of Women, Abuse Dur­ing Mas­sages, and a Rape Alle­ga­tion (Daniel Sil­li­man and Kate Shell­nutt, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “A 12-page report released Thurs­day by Ravi Zacharias Inter­na­tion­al Min­istries (RZIM) con­firms abuse by Zacharias at day spas he owned in Atlanta and uncov­ers five addi­tion­al vic­tims in the US, as well as evi­dence of sex­u­al abuse in Thai­land, India, and Malaysia.” The full report is here (pdf).
  6. We Need Bal­ance When It Comes To Gen­der Dys­phor­ic Kids. I Would Know (Scott New­gent, Newsweek): “So if we are now wak­ing up to the fact that gen­der dys­pho­ria is over-sim­plis­ti­cal­ly con­flat­ed with trans­gen­derism, med­ical treat­ments have under­stud­ied long-term con­se­quences, some are get­ting rich off trans­gen­der med­i­cine and de-tran­si­tion­ers are speak­ing up in sky­rock­et­ing num­bers, why are we only mak­ing it eas­i­er for chil­dren to unques­tion­ing­ly tran­si­tion? We now have the oblig­a­tion to work togeth­er to slow trans med­ical­iza­tion of minors until they are adults and have the capac­i­ty to tru­ly under­stand the life­long con­se­quences of tran­si­tion­ing. As a for­mer les­bian and cur­rent trans man, I main­tain this is not trans­pho­bic.”
  7. How To Be Pro-Life in Joe Biden’s Amer­i­ca (David French, The Dis­patch): “There remains no bar­ri­er for pro-life Amer­i­cans to love their neigh­bor and direct­ly sup­port moth­ers and chil­dren who face dire need. There is even an oppor­tu­ni­ty to enact leg­is­la­tion that can fur­ther ease the fears of young moth­ers and increase their con­fi­dence that they can raise and sup­port a child… Pol­i­tics do mat­ter, cer­tain­ly, but there’s a deep­er truth. Chris­tians don’t need to win Sen­ate races to love their neigh­bors.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Impor­tance of Stu­pid­i­ty in Sci­en­tif­ic Research (Mar­tin A. Schwartz, Jour­nal of Cell Sci­ence): “At some point, the con­ver­sa­tion turned to why she had left grad­u­ate school. To my utter aston­ish­ment, she said it was because it made her feel stu­pid. After a cou­ple of years of feel­ing stu­pid every day, she was ready to do some­thing else. I had thought of her as one of the bright­est peo­ple I knew and her sub­se­quent career sup­ports that view. What she said both­ered me. I kept think­ing about it; some­time the next day, it hit me. Sci­ence makes me feel stu­pid too. It’s just that I’ve got­ten used to it. So used to it, in fact, that I active­ly seek out new oppor­tu­ni­ties to feel stu­pid.” The author is a pro­fes­sor at Yale. First shared in vol­ume 221.

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.