Tag: journalism

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 188

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Assess­ing Bet­sy DeVos’s Pro­posed Rules on Title IX and Sex­u­al Assault (Jean­nie Suk Ger­son, New York­er): “The truth is that there is much to crit­i­cize in DeVos’s pro­pos­al but also much that would help to make schools’ process­es for han­dling sex­u­al mis­con­duct fair­er to all par­ties.” Ger­son, a Har­vard law prof, con­sis­tent­ly offers insight­ful per­spec­tive on issues sur­round­ing cam­pus sex­u­al assault.
  2. Cru­el and Unusu­al Pun­ish­ment (Lionel Shriv­er, Harpers): “The con­tem­po­rary impulse to rebuke dis­graced cre­ators by van­ish­ing their work from the cul­tur­al mar­ket­place exhibits a mean-­spirit­ed­ness, a venge­ful­ness even, as well as an illog­ic. Why, if you catch some­one doing some­thing bad, would you nec­es­sar­i­ly rub out what they’ve done that’s good? If you’re con­vict­ed of break­ing and enter­ing, the judge won’t send bailiffs around to tear down the tree house you built for your daugh­ter and to pour bleach on your home­made pie.”
  3. How I Knew the #Cov­ing­ton­Boys Video Was Click­bait (Clair Pot­ter, Pub­lic Sem­i­nar): “I think the most under­re­port­ed sto­ry about #Cov­ing­ton­Boys is how it got to us in the first place. It orig­i­nat­ed with a piece of click­bait that was cho­sen and edit­ed, by per­sons unknown, to pro­duce out­rage on the right and the left. Orig­i­nat­ing in a fake account, and pro­lif­er­at­ed by oth­er fake accounts, it was part of a pro­fes­sion­al social media cam­paign intend­ed to dis­rupt.”
    • Relat­ed: Bad, Press (Charles Cooke, Nation­al Review): “For a neat illus­tra­tion of how far­ci­cal things have become, take a look at the Wash­ing­ton Post’s most recent ‘fact check,’ which help­ful­ly informs its read­ers that the claimed ‘one thou­sand burg­ers’ Pres­i­dent Trump bought for the Clem­son foot­ball team were not, in fact, ‘piled up a mile high’ because, ‘at two inch­es each, a thou­sand burg­ers would not reach one mile high.’ Democ­ra­cy dies in dark­ness, indeed.”
  4. Imag­ine Nations Were Selfless—It’s No Par­adise (Brad Lit­tle­john, Prov­i­dence): “We hear often today about how we live in “a glob­al soci­ety” and have to take up the respon­si­bil­i­ties of “glob­al cit­i­zen­ship.” But what these exhor­ta­tions miss is that the expo­nen­tial growth in human knowl­edge over the past cen­tu­ry has not been matched by near­ly as rapid growth in human agency. It is now pos­si­ble for a house­wife in Ten­nessee to be aware of a rape in Bangladesh with­in hours or min­utes, but she is only mar­gin­al­ly more able to do any­thing about it now than she was 100 years ago.” The arti­cle as a whole is not great, but it makes a very inter­est­ing argu­ment: patri­o­tism is a nec­es­sary way to make our empa­thy pro­duc­tive.
  5. In polar­ized Wash­ing­ton, a Demo­c­rat anchors bipar­ti­san friend­ships in faith (Jack Jenk­ins, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): “A bridge builder with Repub­li­cans, Coons is known for help­ing cre­ate rare flick­ers of bipar­ti­san agree­ment. Part of his secret, it seems, is reli­gion…. Coons, who grew up attend­ing Red Clay Creek Pres­by­ter­ian Church in Hockessin, Del., explained that his faith has not only pro­vid­ed ground­ing for his own life but has also emerged as a point of con­nec­tion with Repub­li­cans, with whom he has forged last­ing rela­tion­ships — and leg­is­la­tion.”
  6. What The Estab­lish­ment Right Doesn’t Get (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): this essay, a large part of which is actu­al­ly com­men­tary from a read­er, is like a flamethrow­er. “…those who preach the bour­geois virtues can’t get a hear­ing if there is no sta­ble employ­ment for peo­ple who do the right thing. And, if those who do the right thing (by which I mean play by the rules: live lives of hard work, fair play, and self-dis­ci­pline) can find every­thing kicked out from under them all of a sud­den, it desta­bi­lizes the entire soci­ety.”
    • The fol­low-up, Lib­er­ty, Equal­i­ty — But Where’s The Fra­ter­ni­ty? is also stim­u­lat­ing.
    • Read­ing the lat­ter one brought to my atten­tion a very short essay by G.K. Chester­ton. I high­ly rec­om­mend it. “The Eng­lish peo­ple as a body went blind, as the say­ing is, for inter­pret­ing democ­ra­cy entire­ly in terms of lib­er­ty. They said in sub­stance that if they had more and more lib­er­ty it did not mat­ter whether they had any equal­i­ty or any fra­ter­ni­ty. But this was vio­lat­ing the sacred trin­i­ty of true pol­i­tics; they con­found­ed the per­sons and they divid­ed the sub­stance.”
  7. 4 Facts Every Amer­i­can Should Know About Third-Trimester Abor­tions (Joe Carter, Gospel Coali­tion): “As I not­ed in an arti­cle last week, Demo­c­ra­t­ic leg­is­la­tors in places like New York and Vir­ginia are mov­ing to cod­i­fy abor­tion rights in state law to pre­pare for the day when Roe and Doe are over­turned. When the Supreme Court throws the abor­tion issue back to the indi­vid­ual states, third-trimester abor­tions will still be pro­tect­ed in states that reit­er­ate Doe’s stan­dards for ‘via­bil­i­ty’ or ‘health.’”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 176

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Mass Shoot­ings at Hous­es of Wor­ship: Pitts­burgh Attack Was Among the Dead­liest (Sarah Mer­vosh, NY Times): “Mass shoot­ings have become a recur­ring part of Amer­i­can life, and reli­gious insti­tu­tions a recur­ring set­ting. In each case, the shock is com­pound­ed by the vio­lence at what is sup­posed to be a safe space for peace and heal­ing.”
    • Relat­ed: If You Hate Jews, You Hate Jesus (Rus­sell Moore, per­son­al blog): “I will often hear Chris­tians say, ‘Remem­ber that Jesus was Jew­ish.’ That’s true enough, but the past tense makes it sound as though Jesus’ Jew­ish­ness were some­thing he sloughed off at the res­ur­rec­tion. Jesus is alive now, enthroned in heav­en…. When Jesus appeared before Saul of Tar­sus on the Road to Dam­as­cus, the res­ur­rect­ed Christ intro­duced him­self as ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ (Acts 22:8). Jesus is Jew­ish, present tense.”
    • Relat­ed: Holi­ness & Dr. Cohen (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “What Dr. Cohen — who is a mem­ber of Tree of Life syn­a­gogue — and his Jew­ish staff showed is moral courage, but more than that, it is holi­ness.”
    • Relat­ed: The Jews of Pitts­burgh Bury Their Dead (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “‘We, the Jews, are good at death,’ says Rab­bi Seth Adel­son, whose syn­a­gogue, Beth Shalom, is less than a mile from Tree of Life. ‘The cus­toms that we ful­fill at this time are real­ly help­ful for those who have suf­fered a loss.’ In the face of extra­or­di­nary tragedy—the dead­liest attack on Jews in Amer­i­can his­to­ry, accord­ing to the Anti-Defama­tion League—ordinary rit­u­als help Jews grieve.”
  2. ‘God Is Going to Have to For­give Me’: Young Evan­gel­i­cals Speak Out (Eliz­a­beth Dias, New York Times): “With just days left before the midterm elec­tions — two years after Pres­i­dent Trump won the White House with a record share of white, evan­gel­i­cal sup­port — we asked young evan­gel­i­cals to tell The Times about the rela­tion­ship between their faith and their pol­i­tics.” These are inter­est­ing inter­views, although I sus­pect a skew in the sam­ple.
  3. The Big and Small World of Bible Geog­ra­phy (David Bar­rett, The Gospel Coali­tion): “As I have stud­ied and mapped the events of Scrip­ture over the years, I have been struck by an intrigu­ing para­dox: The world of the Bible was at the same time very small and very large.” Rec­om­mend­ed for the pic­tures even more than the text.
  4. What Pro­gres­sives Can Learn From Michael Avenatti’s Mis­take (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “Inso­far as Democ­rats are con­vinced that Amer­i­ca is a white-suprema­cist patri­archy, that racism and sex­ism were the deci­sive fac­tors cost­ing Democ­rats the 2016 elec­tion, and that fas­cism is nigh, you can see how they would con­clude that a Cory Book­er or an Eliz­a­beth War­ren can’t real­ly best Trump, or would face much longer odds than a white man, and that win­ning should be the pri­or­i­ty. Con­jure in your mind an insti­tu­tion­al­ly racist, white-suprema­cist patri­archy. Does its pop­u­lar­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent look like Kamala Har­ris?” This is the most provoca­tive­ly insight­ful thing I read this week.
    • Not real­ly relat­ed, just sim­i­lar­ly provoca­tive: The Real Rea­son They Hate Trump (David Gel­ern­ter, Wall Street Jour­nal): “The dif­fer­ence between cit­i­zens who hate Mr. Trump and those who can live with him—whether they love or mere­ly tol­er­ate him—comes down to their views of the typ­i­cal Amer­i­can: the farmer, fac­to­ry hand, auto mechan­ic, machin­ist, team­ster, shop own­er, clerk, soft­ware engi­neer, infantry­man, truck dri­ver, house­wife.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of com­put­er sci­ence at Yale..
  5. Free rent in Seat­tle, no catch: Land­lords’ faith inspired a gift for ten­ants (Mike Rosen­berg, Seat­tle Times): “They’re also devout Pen­te­costal Chris­tians. When Slaatthaug, a 74-year-old retired car­pen­ter, does repairs at the build­ing, he dri­ves there in a Jeep with a 4‑foot-tall Bible on top. The Old Tes­ta­ment has a pas­sage about the year of jubilee — every 50 years, debts are to be for­giv­en. So Slaatthaug and Bam­brick are cel­e­brat­ing the family’s 50 years as prop­er­ty own­ers by doing some­thing unheard of for a land­lord: For the month of Novem­ber, every­one in the 11-unit build­ing goes rent-free.”
  6. Kiss­ing Puri­ty Cul­ture Good­bye (Abi­gail Rine Favale, First Things): “Chris­tian­i­ty does not offer mere pre­scrip­tions; it offers a world­view, one cen­tered on a God who descend­ed into our bod­i­ly nature and there­by viv­i­fied it. With­in the con­text of this world­view, the sex­u­al mores of Chris­tian­i­ty become com­pelling, con­nect­ed as they are to the cos­mos as a whole. Removed from this con­text, they enslave.”
  7. Lack Of Atten­tion To Chi­nese Inter­pol Chief’s Dis­ap­pear­ance Shows The Khashog­gi Furor’s Fak­ery (Ben Wein­garten, The Fed­er­al­ist): “Why do cer­tain indi­vid­ual vic­tims of tyran­ni­cal regimes become cause célèbres, wor­thy of dra­mat­i­cal­ly alter­ing U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy, while oth­ers dis­ap­pear into the ether? …con­cur­rent with the Khashog­gi affair, Meng, the pres­i­dent of Inter­pol, also dis­ap­peared, and may have suc­cumbed to a sim­i­lar­ly grim fate at the hands of Chi­nese hench­men. Let me repeat that: The pres­i­dent of Inter­pol, the world’s largest inter­na­tion­al police orga­ni­za­tion, dis­ap­peared.” I dis­like the title of this piece and the way it frames a few things, but it rais­es a very impor­tant point.

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 Sis­ter… Show Mer­cy! (Dan Phillips, Team Pyro): “Sis­ter, if there’s one thing you and I can cer­tain­ly agree on, it’s this: I don’t know what it’s like to be a woman, and you don’t know what it’s like to be a man. We’re both prob­a­bly wrong where we’re sure we’re right, try as we might. So let me try to dart a telegram from my camp over to the distaff side.” (first shared in vol­ume 148)

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 162

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. How to Wit­ness to a Dis­tract­ed World (O. Alan Noble, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Let me give you a sce­nario. I believe it’s entire­ly pos­si­ble today to sit down with a non-believ­ing friend and have a pas­sion­ate, lengthy con­ver­sa­tion about the gospel and nev­er plant a seed deeply. Because as soon as you both rise from the table, he pulls out his phone and checks Face­book or responds to a text from his wife…. It was all a kind of rhetor­i­cal dance or game that we play. And the pri­ma­ry pur­pose of the dance is not to win over the oth­er per­son but to define your iden­ti­ty. The game is called expres­sive indi­vid­u­al­ism. And most of us play it.”
  2. A Glob­al Guide To State-Spon­sored Trolling (Michael Riley, Lau­ren Etter, and Bib­hu­dat­ta Prad­han, Bloomberg): “‘Peo­ple some­times wor­ry that Azer­bai­jan will shut down Face­book,’ said Katy Pearce, a com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton who has stud­ied the plat­for­m’s use in that coun­try. ‘Why would it? Face­book is the most effec­tive tool of con­trol the gov­ern­ment has.’”
  3. Hous­ing Costs Reduce The Returns To Edu­ca­tion (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “The return to edu­ca­tion, for exam­ple, has increased in the Unit­ed States but it’s less well appre­ci­at­ed that in order to earn high wages col­lege edu­cat­ed work­ers must increas­ing­ly live in expen­sive cities. One con­se­quence is that the net col­lege wage pre­mi­um is not as large as it appears and inequal­i­ty has been over-esti­mat­ed.”
  4. The many deaths of lib­er­al­ism (Daniel Cole and Aure­lian Craiu­tu, Aeon): “The prob­lem for any­one declar­ing the death of lib­er­al­ism is that it has not one but sev­er­al pil­lars and dimen­sions: legal, polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and moral (or reli­gious). The weak­en­ing or dis­ap­pear­ance of one or two lib­er­al pil­lars or tenets would not be enough to declare lib­er­al­ism as a whole dead.”
  5. Epis­toc­ra­cy: a polit­i­cal theorist’s case for let­ting only the informed vote (Sean Illing inter­view­ing Jason Bren­nan, Vox): “I like to say I’m a fan of democ­ra­cy, and I’m also a fan of Iron Maid­en, but I think Iron Maid­en has quite a few albums that are ter­ri­ble — and I think democ­ra­cy is kind of like this. It’s great, it’s the best sys­tem we have so far, but we shouldn’t accept that it can’t be improved.” The title is inac­cu­rate — Bren­nan goes so far as to favor extend­ing the right to vote to chil­dren.
  6. The Trump Admin­is­tra­tion Con­venes the ‘Super Bowl’ of Reli­gious Free­dom (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “This min­is­te­r­i­al, which is real­ly just a fan­cy word for ‘big meet­ing,’ could be inter­pret­ed as the unveil­ing of an ele­ment of the Trump administration’s for­eign-pol­i­cy strat­e­gy. For the last three days, del­e­ga­tions from around the world have gath­ered to hear vic­tims of reli­gious per­se­cu­tion share their sto­ries. Amer­i­can offi­cials have declared in no uncer­tain terms that they believe the Unit­ed States should evan­ge­lize reli­gious lib­er­ty around the world, and that democ­ra­cy is built on a foun­da­tion of free­dom in faith.”
    • Relat­ed: Pence and Pom­peo Make Big Reli­gious Free­dom Pledges (Mor­gan Lee, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The Vice Pres­i­dent called out coun­tries across the globe, start­ing with Nicaragua where he accused the Orte­ga admin­is­tra­tion of ‘vir­tu­al­ly wag­ing war on the Catholic Church.’ He con­demned China’s per­se­cu­tion of its Tibetan Bud­dhists, Uyghur Mus­lims, and Chris­tians, as well as the actions of its author­i­tar­i­an neigh­bor: North Korea…. Pence also called out Iran. While acknowl­edg­ing that its Chris­tians, Jews, and Baha’i are all per­se­cut­ed by its Shia gov­ern­ment, he specif­i­cal­ly sin­gled out its Sun­ni Kurd pop­u­la­tion…. Russia’s Jehovah’s Wit­ness­es, who have been sub­ject to intense per­se­cu­tion in recent years, were also rec­og­nized by Pence…. The Vice Pres­i­dent also called for an end to anti-Semit­ic attacks in West­ern Europe.”
    • Relat­ed: Turkey Lets Andrew Brun­son Leave Prison (Chris­tian­i­ty Today)
    • Relat­ed: The World’s Next Reli­gious Free­dom Suc­cess Sto­ry: Uzbek­istan? (Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “‘That [pan­el was] dif­fer­ent than any­thing you’ve ever heard from almost any place in the for­mer Sovi­et Union,’ said Chris Seiple, pres­i­dent emer­i­tus of the Insti­tute for Glob­al Engage­ment, who orga­nized the pan­el and will lead a del­e­ga­tion to Uzbek­istan this fall. ‘… They’re insti­tu­tion­al­iz­ing the process of change. That’s the key. The process is the goal.’”
  7. Is There Recourse When Fact Check­ers Get It Wrong? (Kalev Lee­taru, Real­Clear­Pol­i­tics): “In short, through the busi­ness deci­sion of a sin­gle Sil­i­con Val­ley cor­po­ra­tion, fact check­ers have been ele­vat­ed from help­ful ref­er­ence librar­i­ans into a posi­tion of ulti­mate arbi­tra­tor of truth in our online world, with­out the atten­dant checks and bal­ances to mit­i­gate abuse.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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 145

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’ve been trav­el­ing a lot this week, so I haven’t done as much online read­ing as nor­mal. A few of these links are actu­al­ly left­overs from pre­vi­ous weeks that did­n’t quite make the orig­i­nal cut. Let me know if I over­looked some­thing you think I’d find inter­est­ing!

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Why I’m Hap­py My Son Mar­ried at 20 (Rebec­ca Brew­ster Steven­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The preva­lent mes­sage in our cul­ture is that young adult­hood is the time to build a foun­da­tion for a healthy life. Those in their ear­ly 20s are encour­aged to pur­sue edu­ca­tion, trav­el, and gain life expe­ri­ence, all unhin­dered by wed­lock. Mar­riage is viewed by many as some­thing that comes only after ade­quate time to devel­op per­son­al iden­ti­ty and estab­lish a strong finan­cial foot­ing. But inher­ent in this delay is a real­i­ty we as par­ents are very cog­nizant of: Young adults, like all of us, are sex­u­al beings. When mar­riage is delayed, so is the oppor­tu­ni­ty to expe­ri­ence sex­u­al inti­ma­cy with­in God’s para­me­ters of a mar­riage covenant.”
  2. Stan­ford’s Pro­posed Renam­ing Prin­ci­ples: when I read the prin­ci­ples, my ini­tial thought was that Serra’s name was secure on cam­pus. But at least one stu­dent strong­ly dis­agrees.  
  3. The Per­ils of Paid Con­tent (Andrew Pot­ter, In Due Course): “When I was a stu­dent jour­nal­ist, it was axiomat­ic that adver­tis­ing was the biggest threat to inde­pen­dent media. Putting your liveli­hood in the hands of cap­i­tal­ists meant, ipso fac­to, doing their bid­ding. Expe­ri­ence is a great teacher though, and when I start­ed work­ing as an edi­tor at a news­pa­per, I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised to dis­cov­er that you didn’t wake up every day to a swarm of calls from out­raged adver­tis­ers threat­en­ing to pull their cam­paigns if we didn’t smarten up….  But you know who does com­plain a lot? Sub­scribers do, end­less­ly.”
  4. Last Fall This Schol­ar Defend­ed Colo­nial­ism. Now He’s Defend­ing Him­self. (Vimal Patel, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “There are two sep­a­rate issues. One is the sub­stan­tive issue of colo­nial­ism. I think the acad­e­my remains high­ly illib­er­al and intol­er­ant of my view­point. It remains the case that most of the peo­ple who sup­port­ed me didn’t sup­port me because they agreed with my argu­ment. I think my sup­port­ers came in two types: those who agreed with my argu­ment, and oth­ers who said that even bad argu­ments that have gone through the process of being pub­lished should be respond­ed to, not silenced.”
  5. Empire State Of Mind (Doug Mack, Slate): “If you can find Iowa on the map and rat­tle off a few facts about the state (corn, cau­cus­es, Field of Dreams, a real­ly big state fair), you should be able to do the same for Puer­to Rico, which has a larg­er pop­u­la­tion. That’s espe­cial­ly impor­tant for lead­ers in Wash­ing­ton, giv­en that the ter­ri­to­ries have no full-fledged con­gres­sion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion of their own, and giv­en that a cer­tain base­line lev­el of knowl­edge is a pre­req­ui­site for sound pol­i­cy­mak­ing.”
  6. The Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca Scan­dal, in 3 Para­graphs (Robin­son Mey­er, The Atlantic): “About 270,000 peo­ple installed Kogan’s app on their Face­book account. But as with any Face­book devel­op­er at the time, Kogan could access data about those users or their friends. And when Kogan’s app asked for that data, it saved that infor­ma­tion into a pri­vate data­base instead of imme­di­ate­ly delet­ing it. Kogan pro­vid­ed that pri­vate data­base, con­tain­ing infor­ma­tion about 50 mil­lion Face­book users, to the vot­er-pro­fil­ing com­pa­ny Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca. Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca used it to make 30 mil­lion ‘psy­cho­graph­ic’ pro­files about vot­ers.
  7. John Bolton Is Right About the U.N. (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “The U.N. is a nev­er-end­ing scan­dal dis­guised as an ever­last­ing hope. The hope is that dia­logue can over­come dis­trust and col­lec­tive secu­ri­ty can be made to work in the inter­ests of human­i­ty. Real­i­ty says oth­er­wise. Trust is estab­lished by deeds, not words. Col­lec­tive secu­ri­ty is a recipe for inter­na­tion­al paral­y­sis or worse. Just ask the peo­ple of Alep­po.”

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The world will only get weird­er (Steven Coast, per­son­al blog): “We fixed all the main rea­sons air­craft crash a long time ago. Some­times a long, long time ago. So, we are left with the less and less prob­a­ble events.” The piece is a few years old so the exam­ples are dat­ed, but it remains very intrigu­ing. (first shared in vol­ume 67)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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