Tag: law

TGFI, Volume 549: AI academia and Christian judges

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. AI and research papers (Arnold Kling, Sub­stack): “PubMed and Google Schol­ar are index­es of doc­u­ments. What we actu­al­ly want is an indexed, queryable map of _claims_ with their evi­dence and con­fi­dence lev­els. The paper is the prove­nance trail; the claim is the search­able unit. AI is already rea­son­ably good at extract­ing claims from papers; in 3–4 years it should be good enough to main­tain these data­bas­es reli­ably. A researcher ask­ing ‘what do we know about X’ should get a struc­tured con­fi­dence-weight­ed answer, not a list of PDFs to read.”
    • The bit I excerpt­ed is from Claude answer­ing a ques­tion from the author.
  2. How Reverse Game The­o­ry Could Solve The Hous­ing Short­age (Hen­nyGe Wich­ers, Noe­ma): “Tra­di­tion­al game the­o­ry assumes that the rules are fixed — the chess­board is set, the laws cod­i­fied — and asks how ratio­nal peo­ple will behave with­in them. It pre­dicts out­comes based on exist­ing incen­tives. Mech­a­nism design turns that ques­tion around: It asks, for exam­ple, what rules should we write to get a dif­fer­ent out­come — say, preser­va­tion and hous­ing?”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a read­er.
  3. What Does it Mean to Be a Chris­t­ian on the Bench? (Matthew J. Kac­s­maryk and James C. Ho, Jour­nal of Law and Civ­il Gov­er­nance at Texas A&M): “Many judges shy away from talk­ing open­ly about their faith— and even think such dis­cus­sions vio­late the judi­cial canons. That’s why I thought this dis­cus­sion was so valu­able. What’s your answer to the ques­tion: What does it mean to be a Chris­t­ian and a judge?”
    • A fas­ci­nat­ing con­ver­sa­tion. Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus. Link is to a PDF.
  4. The Women Who Believe Women Should Lose the Right to Vote (Vivian Yee, New York Times): “On social media, the pas­tor has attract­ed a fol­low­ing by post­ing incen­di­ary com­men­tary: rail­ing against fem­i­nists, Catholics and gay peo­ple, describ­ing immi­gra­tion as ‘nation­al sui­cide,’ and label­ing Islam and Hin­duism ‘demon­ic.’ He also calls for eras­ing women’s suf­frage, which he lists as one rea­son ‘the world is falling apart.’ The 1920 pas­sage of the 19th Amend­ment, the land­mark leg­isla­tive achieve­ment of the move­ment to make women equal cit­i­zens, made it pos­si­ble for women across Amer­i­ca to vote. But for Mr. Par­tridge and a grow­ing num­ber of like-mind­ed Chris­tians, it drove Amer­i­ca into nation­al decline. Instead, they sup­port ‘house­hold vot­ing.’ One house­hold, one vote — the husband’s.”
  5. It’s Cool to Keep Calm (Rob K. Hen­der­son, Wall Street Jour­nal): “How you react dur­ing a con­flict doesn’t only change how oth­ers see _you_. Your reac­tion also changes how observers see the per­son with whom you’re argu­ing. Mak­ing some­one cry makes you look cold or insen­si­tive. So tears can dam­age the oth­er side’s rep­u­ta­tion. There’s a catch, though. The per­son who cries is also seen as less com­pe­tent, less pro­fes­sion­al and less desir­able as a friend or col­league. This cre­ates a trade-off. Cry­ing can hurt your opponent’s rep­u­ta­tion, but it hurts yours as well. Behav­ioral stoicism—maintaining a calm out­ward demeanor dur­ing a conflict—does the oppo­site. It pro­tects your own rep­u­ta­tion, but does lit­tle to dimin­ish the oth­er per­son.” — Remem­ber you have free access through Stan­ford.
  6. In a rare event, the moon got a mas­sive new crater (Lisa Gross­man, Sci­ence News): “The crater is 225 meters wide and formed in April or May 2024, Robin­son said. Accord­ing to pre­dic­tions based on oth­er lunar land­marks, a crater that big should form only once in 139 years. The dis­cov­ery can help high­light the risks impacts pose to future astro­nauts.”
  7. 9 things you (prob­a­bly) didn’t know were invent­ed at Stan­ford (Rebec­ca Bey­er, Stan­ford Report): “Long before the start-up era took hold, Stan­ford fac­ul­ty and stu­dents were dream­ing up inven­tions that trans­formed (and in some cas­es estab­lished) domains as far-rang­ing as genet­ic engi­neer­ing, nan­otech­nol­o­gy, organ trans­plan­ta­tion – even the inter­net itself.” — Heart trans­plants, the one-hand­ed bas­ket­ball shot, the com­put­er mouse, and recom­bi­nant DNA stood out to me.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • I Was Not Ready for the DMV (Greg War­ren, YouTube): eight and a half min­utes. Paula and I were so tick­led by this that we searched up one of his spe­cials and were equal­ly pleased.

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 389

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 389, a prime num­ber.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty Can Still Come Back (Tim Keller, The Atlantic): “There was no such thing as monasticism—through which pagan North­ern Europe was turned Christian—until there was. There was no Ref­or­ma­tion until there was. There was no revival that turned Methodists and Bap­tists into cul­tur­al­ly dom­i­nant forces in the mid­west­ern and south­east­ern Unit­ed States—until there was. There was no East African Revival, led pri­mar­i­ly by African peo­ple, that helped turn Africa from a 9 per­cent Chris­t­ian con­ti­nent in 1900 into a 50 per­cent Chris­t­ian con­ti­nent today—until there was. Chris­tian­i­ty, like its founder, does not go from strength to strength but from death to res­ur­rec­tion.”
  2. Is the Pub­lic Domain Just?: Bib­li­cal Stew­ard­ship and Legal Pro­tec­tion For Tra­di­tion­al Knowl­edge Assets (Ruth L. Okedi­ji, The Colum­bia Jour­nal of Law and the Arts): “The Arti­cle pro­pos­es a the­o­log­i­cal frame­work of ‘bib­li­cal stew­ard­ship’ root­ed in ima­go Dei—the foun­da­tion­al con­cept inform­ing Jew­ish and Chris­t­ian under­stand­ings of human nature and social interaction—to address the socio-moral dimen­sions that are con­sti­tu­tive of TK [tra­di­tion­al knowl­edge] sys­tems and the insti­tu­tion­al con­text in which they unfold. The bib­li­cal stew­ard­ship frame­work focus­es on the coop­er­a­tive and kin­ship arrange­ments that enable and sus­tain pro­duc­tive capac­i­ty for TK.”
    • The author is a pro­fes­sor at Har­vard Law and a sol­id Chris­t­ian. I just heard her speak and the per­son intro­duc­ing her men­tioned this arti­cle as an exam­ple of how bold she is in inte­grat­ing her faith into her schol­ar­ship.
  3. Some COVID per­spec­tives
    • Sure­ly Right (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “…the only sen­si­ble posi­tion is to advo­cate for ear­ly and wide­spread vac­cine access, be high­ly crit­i­cal of all the pol­i­tick­ing about vac­cine tim­ing around the elec­tion, and to avoid man­dates unless you intend to enforce them at gun­point.… Because we live in a world where the default is not to vac­ci­nate, pol­i­tics poi­sons every­thing it touch­es, and the child­hood man­dates are his­tor­i­cal acci­dents that could very well fall to con­cert­ed polit­i­cal action.”
      • A brief, fas­ci­nat­ing read.
    • Why the Odds Are Stacked Against a Promis­ing New Covid Drug (Ben­jamin Mueller, The New York Times): “By for­ti­fy­ing the body’s own mech­a­nisms for quash­ing an invad­ing virus, they can poten­tial­ly help defend against not only Covid, but also the flu and oth­er virus­es with the poten­tial to kin­dle future pan­demics.… For all of its promise, though, the drug — called pegy­lat­ed inter­fer­on lamb­da — faces an uncer­tain road [due to the FDA].”
    • Not pay­walled. Infu­ri­at­ing. Out­ra­geous. Ridicu­lous.
    • Bureau­crats: “COVID is so bad we need to change every aspect of soci­ety to deal with it. But don’t change our bureau­cra­cy. It’s not THAT bad.”
  4. Boston Uni­ver­si­ty pro­vides update on CTE study, dis­cov­ers brain dis­ease in 92 per­cent of ex-NFL play­ers ana­lyzed (Vic­to­ria Her­nan­dez, USA Today): “The Boston Uni­ver­si­ty CTE Cen­ter stud­ied the brains of 376 deceased for­mer NFL play­ers and diag­nosed 345 of them with chron­ic trau­mat­ic encephalopa­thy. This is 91.7 per­cent of those stud­ied.”
    • I’ve been say­ing this for about two stu­dent gen­er­a­tions now, but foot­bal­l’s days are num­bered in Amer­i­ca. It’s hard to imag­ine the sport sur­viv­ing the sorts of reforms that would be nec­es­sary.
  5. I Thought I Was Sav­ing Trans Kids. Now I’m Blow­ing the Whis­tle. (Jamie Reed, The Free Press): “I am a 42-year-old St. Louis native, a queer woman, and polit­i­cal­ly to the left of Bernie Sanders.… I’m now mar­ried to a trans man, and togeth­er we are rais­ing my two bio­log­i­cal chil­dren from a pre­vi­ous mar­riage and three fos­ter chil­dren we hope to adopt.… Giv­en the secre­cy and lack of rig­or­ous stan­dards that char­ac­ter­ize youth gen­der tran­si­tion across the coun­try, I believe that to ensure the safe­ty of Amer­i­can chil­dren, we need a mora­to­ri­um on the hor­mon­al and sur­gi­cal treat­ment of young peo­ple with gen­der dys­pho­ria.”
    • Not sur­pris­ing if you’ve been fol­low­ing this top­ic, but depress­ing and with new anec­dotes.
  6. Chat­G­PT Is a Blur­ry JPEG of the Web (Ted Chi­ang, The New York­er): “Think of Chat­G­PT as a blur­ry JPEG of all the text on the Web. It retains much of the infor­ma­tion on the Web, in the same way that a JPEG retains much of the infor­ma­tion of a high­er-res­o­lu­tion image, but, if you’re look­ing for an exact sequence of bits, you won’t find it; all you will ever get is an approx­i­ma­tion. But, because the approx­i­ma­tion is pre­sent­ed in the form of gram­mat­i­cal text, which Chat­G­PT excels at cre­at­ing, it’s usu­al­ly accept­able. You’re still look­ing at a blur­ry JPEG, but the blur­ri­ness occurs in a way that doesn’t make the pic­ture as a whole look less sharp.”
    • This is a good anal­o­gy.
  7. A Black Pro­fes­sor Trapped in Anti-Racist Hell (Vin­cent Lloyd, Com­pact Mag­a­zine): “Each stu­dent read from a pre­pared state­ment about how the sem­i­nar per­pet­u­at­ed anti-black vio­lence in its con­tent and form, how the black stu­dents had been harmed, how I was guilty of count­less microag­gres­sions, includ­ing through my body lan­guage, and how stu­dents didn’t feel safe because I didn’t imme­di­ate­ly cor­rect views that failed to treat anti-black­ness as the cause of all the world’s ills.… I am a black pro­fes­sor, I direct­ed my university’s black-stud­ies pro­gram, I lead anti-racism and trans­for­ma­tive-jus­tice work­shops, and I have pub­lished books on anti-black racism and prison abo­li­tion. I live in a pre­dom­i­nant­ly black neigh­bor­hood of Philadel­phia, my daugh­ter went to an Afro­cen­tric school, and I am on the board of our local black cul­tur­al orga­ni­za­tion.”
    • The author is a pro­fes­sor at Vil­lano­va (which is not, to be clear, the loca­tion of this deba­cle).

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 Uncon­scious Learn­ing Under­lies Belief in God – Stronger Beliefs in Peo­ple Who Can Uncon­scious­ly Pre­dict Com­plex Pat­terns (Sci Tech Dai­ly): “Indi­vid­u­als who can uncon­scious­ly pre­dict com­plex pat­terns, an abil­i­ty called implic­it pat­tern learn­ing, are like­ly to hold stronger beliefs that there is a god who cre­ates pat­terns of events in the uni­verse, accord­ing to neu­ro­sci­en­tists at George­town Uni­ver­si­ty.” Shock­er: peo­ple who see real­i­ty clear­ly are more like­ly to per­ceive God’s hand at work in real­i­ty. From vol­ume 267.

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 313

a dis­turbing­ly high num­ber of pan­dem­ic-relat­ed arti­cles

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.

313 is the 65th prime num­ber.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Pan­dem­ic relat­ed
    • How the Pan­dem­ic Now Ends (Ed Yong, The Atlantic): “Here, then, is the cur­rent pan­dem­ic dilem­ma: Vac­cines remain the best way for indi­vid­u­als to pro­tect them­selves, but soci­eties can­not treat vac­cines as their only defense.”
      • First, this is a free arti­cle that won’t use up a pay­wall click. Sec­ond, this is dis­cour­ag­ing to read and makes me think Stan­ford is going to be way more restric­tive than I was hop­ing come fall.
    • What We Lose When We Livestream Church (Collin Hansen, New York Times): “The very word we trans­late from Greek as ‘church’ in the New Tes­ta­ment sug­gests we must assem­ble in per­son. The church wasn’t just a bridge of 2,000 years until human­i­ty reached Peak Zoom. It’s essen­tial for the reli­gion where God took on flesh and dwelt among us. It’s essen­tial in a faith that believes Jesus phys­i­cal­ly rose from the dead and then sat down to enjoy a meal with his stunned friends.”
    • Covid incom­pe­tence (John Cochrane, per­son­al blog): “Delta is the fourth wave of covid, and amaz­ing­ly the US pol­i­cy response is even more irres­olute than the first time around. Our gov­ern­ment is like a child, sent next door to get a cup of sug­ar, who gets as far as the front stoop and then wan­ders off fol­low­ing a pup­py.”
      • The author is a senior fel­low at Stan­ford’s Hoover Insti­tu­tion.
    • “What Do Full Hos­pi­tals Real­ly Tell Us About COVID?” (Eugene Volokh, Rea­son): “The pub­lic argu­ment for spe­cial­ty hos­pi­tals is more exper­tise and low­er costs because of effi­cien­cy. The real mod­el was no emer­gency room, and thus no way for un- and under-insured peo­ple to get into the hos­pi­tal. All of the finan­cial ben­e­fits of being a hos­pi­tal with­out any of the respon­si­bil­i­ties. So we get wom­en’s hos­pi­tals, ortho­pe­dic hos­pi­tals, etc., suck­ing the prof­itable work from com­mu­ni­ty hos­pi­tals, with­out tak­ing any of the bur­den of com­mu­ni­ty care for the indi­gent.… The hos­pi­tals in Louisiana which take indi­gent patients and patients though the ER—pretty much all COVID patients—are slammed. The spe­cial­ty hos­pi­tals have lots of staff and lots of beds and don’t have much in the way of COVID patients, if there are any at all.”
      • I did not know any of that. Real­ly inter­est­ing. Writ­ten a law prof at Louisiana State Uni­ver­si­ty.
    • Porn­dem­ic? A Lon­gi­tu­di­nal Study of Pornog­ra­phy Use Before and Dur­ing the COVID-19 Pan­dem­ic in a Nation­al­ly Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Sam­ple of Amer­i­cans (Grubbs et al, Archives of Sex­u­al Behav­ior): “In gen­er­al, pornog­ra­phy use trend­ed down­ward over the pan­dem­ic, for both men and women. Prob­lem­at­ic pornog­ra­phy use trend­ed down­ward for men and remained low and unchanged in women.”
      • The excerpt is from the abstract. It’s a lit­tle sur­pris­ing but also I think peo­ple are less like­ly to watch porn with their fam­i­lies around, which hap­pened a lot dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. I do won­der how their find­ings cross-check with traf­fic stats from porn web­sites. It seems like an obvi­ous way to do a sim­ple check on their find­ings.
  2. The Gap Between Law and Moral­i­ty (Helen Dale, Law & Lib­er­ty): “The planet’s two great legal sys­tems devel­oped in two Euro­pean civil­i­sa­tions, Rome and Eng­land. Their wide prove­nance is not only due to both peo­ples con­quer­ing great empires. It’s also because they worked: they did things no oth­er legal regime did before them, and those oth­ers are still inca­pable of doing now.… Incred­i­bly, these devel­oped inde­pen­dent­ly of each oth­er. The Eng­lish com­mon law did not bor­row from Rome: when it first emerged, Roman law was lost.”
    • This is sur­pris­ing­ly engross­ing. In the words of an alum­nus, “This one was a sleep­er hit. Start­ed slow, blew me away by the end.”
  3. Why a Mas­cu­line Min­istry Rose and Fell (David French, The Dis­patch): “When coun­ter­ing a cul­ture that often attacks tra­di­tion­al mas­cu­line incli­na­tions as inher­ent vice, the answer isn’t to indulge tra­di­tion­al mas­cu­line incli­na­tions as inher­ent virtue.… Driscoll, in all his tough­ness and swag­ger, tried to make men out of Chris­tians. The church, how­ev­er, should make Chris­tians out of men.”
  4. Cor­nel West on Why the Left Needs Jesus (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “When I was in Char­lottesville, look­ing at these sick white broth­ers in neo-Nazi par­ties and the Klan spit­ting and cussing and car­ry­ing on, I could see the hounds of hell rag­ing on the bat­tle­field of their souls. But I also know that there’s greed in me. There’s hatred in me. Peo­ple say, ‘Oh, you’re so qual­i­ta­tive­ly dif­fer­ent than those gang­sters.’ I say, ‘No, I’ve got gang­ster in me. I was a gang­ster before I met Jesus. Now I’m a redeemed sin­ner with gang­ster pro­cliv­i­ties.’ It is a very dif­fer­ent way of look­ing at things than many of my sec­u­lar com­rades.”
  5. Crim­i­nal-Jus­tice Reform­ers Chose the Wrong Slo­gan (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “Before the pub­lic sours on crim­i­nal-jus­tice reform more broadly—as it may amid ris­ing fears about crime and dis­or­der in cities—a new focus and ral­ly­ing cry are need­ed. And giv­en the spike in homi­cides that has afflict­ed the Unit­ed States dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly killing Black peo­ple, there’s an espe­cial­ly strong case for this over­due slo­gan: Solve All Mur­ders. Pre­cise­ly because Black lives mat­ter, peo­ple who take Black lives shouldn’t get away with it.”
  6. Assem­blies of God Grow­ing with Pen­te­costal Per­sis­tence (Ryan P. Burge, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “It’s dif­fi­cult to pin­point exact­ly why the Assem­blies of God has con­tin­ued to increase over the past 15 years. Research shows that mem­ber­ship of the Assem­blies of God has become more polit­i­cal­ly con­ser­v­a­tive and more reli­gious­ly active today than just a decade ago, but its own num­bers indi­cate that it has achieved incred­i­ble racial diversity—44 per­cent of mem­bers in the Unit­ed States are eth­nic minori­ties.”
    • Since the Assem­blies of God is the group with which I am ordained and is the par­ent orga­ni­za­tion of Chi Alpha, file under “arti­cles that make me hap­py.”
  7. We Need to Build Our Way Out of This Mess (Eli Doura­do, New York Times): “How did the most dynam­ic coun­try on the plan­et become so scle­rot­ic? We did it to our­selves. We enact­ed laws that priv­i­lege the sta­tus quo at the expense of change and progress. We lib­er­al­ly passed out veto rights to any­one with the mon­ey and where­with­al to hire a lawyer. If we want to reverse the dam­age and cre­ate a more pros­per­ous future, we must make it easy to build.”
    • The author is an econ­o­mist at Utah State Uni­ver­si­ty.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have a provoca­tive read, In Defense of Flog­ging (Peter Moskos, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion) — the author is a for­mer police offi­cer and now a crim­i­nol­o­gist at the City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York. This one was shared back before I start­ed send­ing these emails in a blog post called Pun­ish­ment.

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 218

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. “We May Have To Shoot Down This Air­craft” (Gar­rett Graff, Politi­co): “We can’t see the air­craft. We don’t know where it is because we don’t have any radars point­ing into the U.S. Any­thing in the Unit­ed States was con­sid­ered friend­ly by def­i­n­i­tion.” A grip­ping account of the Flight 93 sto­ry.
  2. Active Learn­ing Works But Stu­dents Don’t Like It (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “A care­ful­ly done study that held stu­dents and teach­ers con­stant shows that stu­dents learn more in active learn­ing class­es but they dis­like this style of class and think they learn less. It’s no big surprise–active learn­ing is hard and makes the stu­dents feel stu­pid. It’s much eas­i­er to sit back and be enter­tained by a great lec­tur­er who makes every­thing seem sim­ple.”
  3. How Evan­gel­i­cals Invent­ed Lib­er­als’ Favorite Legal Doc­trine (Matthew Lee Ander­son, The Fed­er­al­ist): “…with­in the many ironies of his­to­ry, the social and polit­i­cal instru­ments a per­fec­tion­ist move­ment deploys may be eas­i­ly co-opt­ed for ends and pur­pos­es nev­er imag­ined in their devel­op­ment. That is, if late-twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry evan­gel­i­cal activists sowed the wind, today’s activists have reaped the whirl­wind.” I love arti­cles that present a top­ic I think I know some­thing about and pro­ceed to show me some­thing I had nev­er known before.
  4. A Famous Argu­ment Against Free Will Has Been Debunked (Bahar Gholipour, The Atlantic): “It would be quite an achieve­ment for a brain sig­nal 100 times small­er than major brain waves to solve the prob­lem of free will. But the sto­ry of the Bere­itschaftspo­ten­tial has one more twist: It might be some­thing else entire­ly.”
  5. Vik­tor Orban Among The Chris­tians (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Orban is what Trump’s biggest fans wish he was (but isn’t), and what Trump’s ene­mies think him to be (but isn’t). If Don­ald Trump had the smarts and skills of Vik­tor Orban, the polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in the US would be much, much dif­fer­ent — for bet­ter or for worse, depend­ing on your point of view.” I don’t have much inter­est in Hun­gar­i­an pol­i­tics, but this fas­ci­nat­ed me. 
  6. When the Cul­ture War Comes for the Kids (George Pack­er, The Atlantic): “I asked myself if I was mov­ing to the wrong side of a great moral cause because its tone was too loud, because it shook loose what I didn’t want to give up. It took me a long time to see that the new pro­gres­sivism didn’t just car­ry my own pol­i­tics fur­ther than I liked. It was actu­al­ly hos­tile to prin­ci­ples with­out which I don’t believe democ­ra­cy can sur­vive.” This arti­cle came high­ly rec­om­mend­ed, but it only got inter­est­ing to me about halfway through — and then wow.
  7. Con­ser­v­a­tives Clash on the Goal of Gov­ern­ment (Jonathan Lee­man, Prov­i­dence): “There is no neu­tral­i­ty. The pub­lic square is a bat­tle­ground of gods. Our cul­ture wars are wars of reli­gion. For the time being, lib­er­al­ism keeps us from pick­ing up six­teenth-cen­tu­ry swords for those wars, which is no small achieve­ment. But don’t assume it won’t con­trol us with the sub­tler tools of a twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry legal total­i­tar­i­an­ism.” Insight­ful reflec­tions on how Chris­tians should form their polit­i­cal posi­tions.

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 Elisha and the She‐bears (Peter J Williams, Twit­ter): an insight­ful Twit­ter thread about a dis­turb­ing OT sto­ry. The author is the War­den of Tyn­dale House at Cam­bridge. First shared in vol­ume 179.

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 143

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. I’m a schol­ar of the “pros­per­i­ty gospel.” It took can­cer to show me I was in its grip. (Kate Bowler, Vox): “Every day I pray the same prayer: God, save me. Save me. Save me. Oh, God, remem­ber my baby boy. Remem­ber my son and my hus­band before you return me to ash­es. Before they walk this earth alone. I plead with a God of Maybe, who may or may not let me col­lect more years. It is a God I love, and a God that breaks my heart.” The author is a pro­fes­sor at Duke Divin­i­ty School.
  2. Two intrigu­ing arti­cles on the trans­gen­der move­ment in Amer­i­ca:
    • The Dis­ap­pear­ance of Desire (Sohrab Ahmari, Com­men­tary Mag­a­zine):  “Sex­u­al­i­ty is a bod­i­ly expe­ri­ence. It stretch­es creduli­ty to sug­gest that a trans person’s deci­sion to alter his or her sexed body has noth­ing to do with what he or she wish­es to do with that body—and whom he or she wish­es to attract. Yet, as with gen­der itself, the trans activists treat sex­u­al desire as an abstract and dis­em­bod­ied thing.”
    • Divorc­ing The Trans­gen­der Com­mu­ni­ty (Gretchen Rachel Ham­mond, Tablet Mag­a­zine): the lan­guage in this one is uncouth. “It was then that I began to notice that those trans­gen­der peo­ple who start­ed to speak out as an activist, jour­nal­ist, celebri­ty, orga­niz­er, com­men­ta­tor or even via a social media post were com­ing under attack, not just from the usu­al crowd of Evan­gel­i­cal Con­ser­v­a­tive hys­ter­ics, but increas­ing­ly and unnerv­ing­ly from their own com­mu­ni­ty.”
  3. For the lawyers: Dis­agree­ment is Not Always Dis­crim­i­na­tion: On Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop and the Anal­o­gy to Inter­ra­cial Mar­riage (Ryan Ander­son, George­town Jour­nal of Law and Pub­lic Pol­i­cy): “Col­orado is part of a larg­er nation­al trend in which author­i­ties are using antidis­crim­i­na­tion statutes as swords to pun­ish already mar­gin­al­ized peo­ple (such as sup­port­ers of the con­ju­gal under­stand­ing of mar­riage), rather than as shields to pro­tect peo­ple from unjust dis­crim­i­na­tion (such as African Amer­i­cans in the wake of Jim Crow and today).… sup­port for mar­riage as the union of hus­band and wife is essen­tial­ly dif­fer­ent from oppo­si­tion to inter­ra­cial mar­riage, and that the sta­tus of African Amer­i­cans is impor­tant­ly dif­fer­ent from that of Amer­i­cans who iden­ti­fy as gay. As a result, First Amend­ment pro­tec­tions for peo­ple who act on the belief that mar­riage unites hus­band and wife dif­fer in crit­i­cal ways from hypoth­e­sized First Amend­ment pro­tec­tions for racists—and the courts can dis­tin­guish the two cas­es…. pro­tec­tions for cit­i­zens who sup­port the con­ju­gal under­stand­ing of mar­riage bear much more sim­i­lar­i­ty to pro­tec­tions for pro-life cit­i­zens.”
  4. The Igno­ble Lie (Patrick Deneen, First Things): “This helps explain the strange and often hys­ter­i­cal insis­tence upon equal­i­ty ema­nat­ing from our nation’s most elite and exclu­sive insti­tu­tions. The most absurd recent instance was Har­vard University’s offi­cial effort to elim­i­nate social clubs due to their role in ‘enact­ing forms of priv­i­lege and exclu­sion at odds with our deep­est val­ues,’ in the words of its pres­i­dent. Harvard’s oppo­si­tion to exclu­sion sits com­fort­ably with its admis­sions rate of 5 per­cent (2,056 out of 40,000 appli­cants in 2017). The denial of priv­i­lege and exclu­sion seems to increase in pro­por­tion to an institution’s exclu­siv­i­ty.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Stud­ies at Notre Dame.
  5. Sex, Lies, and Spies (Dar­rell Cole, Prov­i­dence): “Once the case for employ­ing a spy in the first place has been made, the ques­tion of how to spy comes into focus, and thus one of the major moral prob­lems for spies is try­ing to make a case that lying and sex are just (com­bat) tac­tics…. We can make a clear and con­vinc­ing case that the Chris­t­ian tra­di­tion may sup­port the idea that lies told for the pub­lic good are jus­ti­fi­able. When spies tell such lies in the line of duty, their decep­tions fall into that cat­e­go­ry and, so, are jus­ti­fi­able. Can the same be said for sex in the line of duty? Can manip­u­la­tive sex for the pub­lic good be jus­ti­fi­able?” A fas­ci­nat­ing dis­cus­sion of a ques­tion that had nev­er crossed my mind. The author is an ethics pro­fes­sor at Drew Uni­ver­si­ty.
  6. The Last Temp­ta­tion (Michael Ger­son, The Atlantic): “In a remark­ably free coun­try, many evan­gel­i­cals view their rights as frag­ile, their insti­tu­tions as threat­ened, and their dig­ni­ty as assailed. The sin­gle largest reli­gious demo­graph­ic in the Unit­ed States—representing about half the Repub­li­can polit­i­cal coalition—sees itself as a besieged and dis­re­spect­ed minor­i­ty. In this way, evan­gel­i­cals have become simul­ta­ne­ous­ly more engaged and more alien­at­ed…. It is true that inso­far as Chris­t­ian hos­pi­tals or col­leges have their reli­gious lib­er­ty threat­ened by hos­tile lit­i­ga­tion or gov­ern­ment agen­cies, they have every right to defend their insti­tu­tion­al identities—to advo­cate for a prin­ci­pled plu­ral­ism. But this is dif­fer­ent from evan­gel­i­cals regard­ing them­selves, hys­ter­i­cal­ly and with self-pity, as an oppressed minor­i­ty that requires a strong­man to res­cue it. This is how Trump has invit­ed evan­gel­i­cals to view them­selves.” The author worked in the Bush White House and describes him­self as an evan­gel­i­cal.
    • In response: The True Sin of Amer­i­can Evan­gel­i­cals in the Age of Trump (David French, Nation­al Review): “it mat­ters exact­ly how Evan­gel­i­cals arrived where they are today. It wasn’t the hys­ter­i­cal reac­tion of a self-pity­ing peo­ple. For most it was the sad result of a series of tough choic­es — made in response to dif­fi­cult and unrea­son­able chal­lenges. Even today there are mil­lions of Evan­gel­i­cals — peo­ple who still count them­selves reluc­tant Trump sup­port­ers — who are deeply uneasy with the pres­i­dent and the state of their own reli­gious move­ment. It serves no one’s inter­ests to min­i­mize the legit­i­ma­cy of their deep polit­i­cal con­cern.”
    • My take: Gerson’s essay is very good and French adds a need­ed per­spec­tive. Bonus quote from Gerson’s essay: “The ban­ish­ment of fun­da­men­tal­ism from the cul­tur­al main­stream cul­mi­nat­ed dra­mat­i­cal­ly in a Ten­nessee cour­t­house in 1925. William Jen­nings Bryan, the most promi­nent Chris­t­ian politi­cian of his time, was set against Clarence Dar­row and the the­o­ry of evo­lu­tion at the Scopes ‘mon­key tri­al,’ in which a Ten­nessee edu­ca­tor was tried for teach­ing the the­o­ry in high school. Bryan won the case but not the coun­try. The jour­nal­ist and crit­ic H. L. Menck­en pro­vid­ed the account accept­ed by his­to­ry, dis­miss­ing Bryan as ‘a tin pot pope in the Coca-Cola belt and a broth­er to the for­lorn pas­tors who bela­bor half-wits in gal­va­nized iron taber­na­cles behind the rail­road yards.’ Fun­da­men­tal­ists became com­ic fig­ures, sub­ject to world-class con­de­scen­sion. It has large­ly slipped the mind of his­to­ry that Bryan was a peace activist as sec­re­tary of state under Woodrow Wil­son and that his pol­i­tics fore­shad­owed the New Deal. And Menck­en was even­tu­al­ly revealed as a racist, an anti-Semi­te, and a eugen­ics advo­cate.” Empha­sis mine. I con­sid­er myself fair­ly well-informed about Amer­i­can reli­gious his­to­ry and found the bold­ed details sur­pris­ing.
  7. The real Down syn­drome prob­lem: Accept­ing geno­cide (George Will, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Ice­land must be pleased that it is close to suc­cess in its pro­gram of geno­cide, but before con­grat­u­lat­ing that nation on its final solu­tion to the Down syn­drome prob­lem, per­haps it might answer a ques­tion: What is this prob­lem? To help under­stand why some peo­ple might ask this ques­tion, meet two chil­dren. One is Agus­ta, age 8, a cit­i­zen of Ice­land. The oth­er is Lucas, age 1, an Amer­i­can cit­i­zen in Dal­ton, Ga., who recent­ly was select­ed to be 2018 ‘Spokes­ba­by’ for the Ger­ber baby food com­pa­ny. They are two exam­ples of the prob­lem. Now, before Ice­land becomes snip­py about the descrip­tion of what it is doing, let us all try to think calm­ly about geno­cide, with­out get­ting judg­men­tal about it. It is sim­ply the delib­er­ate, sys­tem­at­ic attempt to erase a cat­e­go­ry of peo­ple. So, what one thinks about a geno­cide depends on what one thinks about the cat­e­go­ry involved. In Iceland’s case, the cat­e­go­ry is peo­ple with Down syn­drome.”
    • Relat­ed: a Face­book post from one of our sopho­mores (shared with his per­mis­sion): “My par­ents were told that I would be born with down syn­drome and advised to abort me. In response my father pulled us out of the hos­pi­tal’s manda­to­ry coun­sel­ing pro­gram, spent a lot of time in prayer, and decid­ed emphat­i­cal­ly that I would be born. I had no say in the mat­ter, as I was too small to com­mu­ni­cate or under­stand. I could­n’t cry or plead for my life. I could­n’t even look the peo­ple in the eyes who want­ed to kill me. 20 years lat­er, I have my God and my par­ents to thank for defend­ing me, defend­ing an unborn child wrong­ly accused of a crime that car­ried a death sen­tence: a defect. My par­ents had no idea exact­ly where God want­ed to take me, but because of their defense, I’m here, down syn­drome free, sit­ting in a class­room at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty.” (source) By the way, he was was not only admit­ted to Stan­ford. He was admit­ted to every sin­gle Ivy League school.

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 Every Place Has Detrac­tors. Con­sid­er Where They’re Com­ing From.(Megan McCar­dle, Bloomberg View): “There is grave dan­ger in judg­ing a neigh­bor­hood, or a cul­ture, by the accounts of those who chose to leave it. Those peo­ple are least like­ly to appre­ci­ate the good things about where they came from, and the most like­ly to dwell on its less attrac­tive qual­i­ties.” Bear this in mind when lis­ten­ing to con­ver­sion tes­ti­monies (both sec­u­lar and reli­gious). (first shared in vol­ume 62)

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 109

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 We Are Ruin­ing Amer­i­ca (David Brooks, NYT): “To feel at home in oppor­tu­ni­ty-rich areas, you’ve got to under­stand the right barre tech­niques, sport the right baby car­ri­er, have the right pod­cast, food truck, tea, wine and Pilates tastes, not to men­tion pos­sess the right atti­tudes about David Fos­ter Wal­lace, child-rear­ing, gen­der norms and inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty.” This col­umn spawned much deri­sion on social media, but I strong­ly agree with Brooks — and so do many com­men­ta­tors. Here are sym­pa­thet­ic reac­tions from Fred­die deBoer on the left and from Rod Dreher on the right. Dan Drezn­er takes it in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion, and the Mon­key Cage says “duh” while Alan Jacobs calls peo­ple unwill­ing to acknowl­edge Brooks’ obser­va­tion “will­ful­ly blind”.
  2. Luther’s Rev­o­lu­tion (The Nation, Eliz­a­beth Bru­enig): “The­ol­o­gy is moral­i­ty is pol­i­tics is law—and whether or not it’s imme­di­ate­ly obvi­ous, the world is steeped in the­ol­o­gy. In con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­ca, and espe­cial­ly in the more sec­u­lar precincts of West­ern Europe, it seems unlike­ly that one could look at a prop­er­ty deed or a gov­ern­ment bud­get and find, just beneath its explic­it rea­son­ing, traces of old the­o­log­i­cal dis­putes and their res­o­lu­tions. But they’re there…”
  3. I’ve Worked with Refugees for Decades. Europe’s Afghan Crime Wave Is Mind-Bog­gling. (Cheryl Benard, The Nation­al Inter­est): “Euro­peans were pre­dis­posed to be pos­i­tive towards Afghan refugees. But it quick­ly became obvi­ous that some­thing was wrong, very wrong, with these young Afghan men: they were com­mit­ting sex crimes to a much greater extent than oth­er refugees… It took a while for the pat­tern to be rec­og­nized because, until recent­ly, west­ern Euro­pean media delib­er­ate­ly refrained from iden­ti­fy­ing an assailant’s refugee or asy­lum sta­tus, or his coun­try of ori­gin.”
  4. Per­son­al­i­ty, Gen­der, and Age in the Lan­guage of Social Media: The Open-Vocab­u­lary Approach (Schwartz HA, Eich­staedt JC, Kern ML, Dzi­urzyn­s­ki L, Ramones SM, Agraw­al M, et al., PLOS One) — This one is from 2013. Pay par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to Fig­ure 6 and notice the clus­ter of words asso­ci­at­ed with emo­tion­al sta­bil­i­ty. #blessed #on_my_way to #church
  5. No Retreat: Lecrae’s Approach to “Cul­ture-Mak­ing” (Jemar Tis­by, Christ and Pop Cul­ture): “But Lecrae couldn’t ful­fill his mis­sion if his beats only banged in Chris­t­ian ears, though not because Chris­tians aren’t impor­tant to him. It was Chris­t­ian fans who pro­pelled him to pop­u­lar­i­ty and still con­tin­ue to sup­port him. Nev­er­the­less, hav­ing tes­ti­fied in Jerusalem, so to speak, Lecrae felt com­pelled to tes­ti­fy also in Rome (Acts 23:11).” This is relat­ed to what we’re cov­er­ing in our sum­mer read­ing project, and you’re wel­come to join us. 
  6. In Praise of Extreme Med­i­cine (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “It’s odd that we allow some crazy things and ban others—even more that the crazy things we allow are some­times social­ly use­less while the crazy things that we ban are some­times social­ly valu­able. The case for ban­ning extreme sports, for exam­ple, is much stronger than the case for ban­ning extreme med­i­cine.”
  7. ‘Born this way’? It’s way more com­pli­cat­ed than that (Alia E. Dasta­gir, USA Today): “Get­ting Amer­i­ca to believe that peo­ple are born gay — that it’s not some­thing that can be cho­sen or ever changed — has been cen­tral to the fight for gay rights. If some­one can’t help being gay any more than they can help the col­or of their skin, the log­ic goes, deny­ing them rights is wrong. But many mem­bers of the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty reject this nar­ra­tive…”
  8. Why Roman con­crete still stands strong while mod­ern ver­sion decays (Nico­la Davis, The Guardian): rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus. I some­times hear peo­ple state it like a self-evi­dent truth that we are smarter than the ancients. I see no evi­dence we are any more intel­li­gent than them. We just have more accu­mu­lat­ed knowl­edge in cer­tain domains.

Things Glen Found Entertaining

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have On Obsti­na­cy In Belief (C.S. Lewis, The Sewa­nee Review). Lewis explains why Chris­tians are jus­ti­fied in con­tin­u­ing to believe even when they encounter an argu­ment they can’t imme­di­ate­ly answer (first shared in vol­ume 6).

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 106

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. One Amer­i­can fam­i­ly’s mis­sion to res­cue civil­ians in Mosul (Mar­co Wer­man, PRI’s The World): I heard this sto­ry on NPR this week and was floored. Lis­ten to the thir­teen-minute inter­view (don’t just read the sur­round­ing text ‑the siz­zle is in the audio ver­sion). Amaz­ing. For more about David Eubank’s min­istry, read Jun­gle Cow­boys (Sophia Lee, World Mag­a­zine).
  2. The Legal Mean­ing of the Cos­by Mis­tri­al (Jean­nie Suk Gersen, New York­er): “The extra­or­di­nar­i­ly high pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al bur­den of proof in any crim­i­nal tri­al is inten­tion­al­ly designed to heav­i­ly favor defen­dants, because we long ago embraced as a soci­ety Blackstone’s prin­ci­ple. For­mu­lat­ed in the sev­en­teen-six­ties by the Eng­lish jurist William Black­stone, the pre­sump­tion is that it is bet­ter to have ten guilty peo­ple go free than that one inno­cent per­son suf­fer. Hard as it is to stom­ach today, embrac­ing that cal­cu­lus means that we should even want ten rapists (not to men­tion ter­ror­ists and mur­der­ers) to go free in order to pro­tect the one false­ly accused.” Gersen, a Har­vard Law prof, also has anoth­er sol­id arti­cle this week: Why Racial­ly Offen­sive Trade­marks Are Now Legal­ly Pro­tect­ed.
  3. Phi­lan­do Castile After­math (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Still, I can’t grasp why Castile’s killer got away scot-free, and why there hasn’t been much of an out­cry. If a police offi­cer can shoot to death a motorist who was obey­ing all his com­mands, and walk away a free man from that shoot­ing, how safe are any of us?” On Slate, Leon Ney­fakh writes Phi­lan­do Castile Should Be the NRA’s Per­fect Cause Célèbre. There’s Just One Prob­lem. See also David French’s The Unwrit­ten Law That Helps Bad Cops Go Free.
  4. Camille Paglia: On Trump, Democ­rats, Trans­gen­derism, and Islamist Ter­ror (Jonathan V. Last, The Week­ly Stan­dard): “Although I describe myself as trans­gen­der (I was don­ning flam­boy­ant male cos­tumes from ear­ly child­hood on), I am high­ly skep­ti­cal about the cur­rent trans­gen­der wave, which I think has been pro­duced by far more com­pli­cat­ed psy­cho­log­i­cal and soci­o­log­i­cal fac­tors than cur­rent gen­der dis­course allows. Fur­ther­more, I con­demn the esca­lat­ing pre­scrip­tion of puber­ty block­ers (whose long-term effects are unknown) for chil­dren. I regard this prac­tice as a crim­i­nal vio­la­tion of human rights.”
  5. Mis-Edu­cat­ing The Young (David Brooks, NY Times): “Child­hood is more struc­tured than it has ever been. But then the great engine of the mer­i­toc­ra­cy spits peo­ple out into a young adult­hood that is less struc­tured than it has ever been.”
  6. The most impor­tant truth about hard work, and also read­ing, that you can find (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Giv­en two peo­ple of approx­i­mate­ly the same abil­i­ty and one per­son who works ten per­cent more than the oth­er, the lat­ter will more than twice out­pro­duce the for­mer. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the oppor­tu­ni­ty – it is very much like com­pound inter­est.”
  7. Two minds: The cog­ni­tive dif­fer­ences between men and women (Bruce Gold­man, Stan­ford Med­i­cine): “In a study of 34 rhe­sus mon­keys, for exam­ple, males strong­ly pre­ferred toys with wheels over plush toys, where­as females found plush toys lik­able. It would be tough to argue that the mon­keys’ par­ents bought them sex-typed toys or that simi­an soci­ety encour­ages its male off­spring to play more with trucks.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.

Things Glen Found Entertaining

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 83

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

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

There are a few more links than nor­mal because I missed send­ing out last week­s’s email.

  1. North­west­ern Grad Stu­dent Sues Evanston Police; Dash­cam Arrest Video Released (Lau­ra Podes­ta, ABC Chica­go Eye­wit­ness News): Lawrence is an alum­nus of our min­istry. This one hits close to home.
  2. The Sex Bureau­cra­cy (Jacob Gersen & Jean­nie Suk Gersen, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “Under the rubric of pre­vent­ing sex­u­al vio­lence, col­leges are now deep in the busi­ness of pro­vid­ing advice on sex and rela­tion­ships. And they’re not good at it.” Even from a sec­u­lar per­spec­tive, col­lege admin­is­tra­tors are act­ing absurd­ly.
  3. We’re Liv­ing Through The First World Cyber­war — But Just Haven’t Called It That (Marin Belam, The Guardian): “It is impor­tant to remem­ber that the inter­net orig­i­nal­ly came from defence research….. we are liv­ing through the first time it is being used in anger.”
  4. Putin’s Real Long Game (Mol­ly McK­ew, Politi­co): “What both admin­is­tra­tions fail to real­ize is that the West is already at war, whether it wants to be or not…. This war seeks, at home and abroad, to erode our val­ues, our democ­ra­cy, and our insti­tu­tion­al strength; to dilute our abil­i­ty to sort fact from fic­tion, or moral right from wrong; and to con­vince us to make deci­sions against our own best inter­ests.”
  5. Sug­ar, Explained (Julia Bel­luz and Javier Zarraci­na, Vox): “The back­lash against sug­ar, and the sci­ence behind it, is a lot more com­pli­cat­ed than it seems.”
  6. The Life And Death Of Evangelicalism’s Lit­tle Mag­a­zine (John Schmalzbauer,Comment): this was extreme­ly inter­est­ing to me, although prob­a­bly less so to many oth­ers.
  7. When There’s No Ther­a­pist, How Can The Depressed Find Help? (Joanne Sil­bern­er, NPR): Dif­fi­cult to excerpt — very inter­est­ing sto­ry.
  8. Some­times the Peo­ple Need to Call the Experts (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg View): There are some good insights here. My favorite line, though, was this: “It’s a good rule of gov­er­nance that pol­i­cy can­not race too far ahead of the cit­i­zen­ry, and I don’t view fac­ul­ty as a class of peo­ple well-suit­ed for that kind of humil­i­ty.”
  9. The Ide­o­log­i­cal Rea­sons Why Democ­rats Have Neglect­ed Local Pol­i­tics (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “The pro­gres­sive project is ulti­mate­ly about work­ing toward a soci­ety built on one uni­fied vision of pol­i­cy and cul­ture, rather than a diverse array of poli­cies and cul­tures.”
  10. Intel­lec­tu­als For Trump (Kele­fah San­neh, New York­er):  “We have grown accus­tomed to hear­ing sto­ries about the lib­er­al bub­ble, but the real sto­ry of this year’s elec­tion was about the con­ser­v­a­tive bub­ble: the results showed how sharply the pri­or­i­ties of the movement’s lead­ers dif­fered from those of their puta­tive fol­low­ers.”
  11. Harvard’s George J. Bor­jas (Robert Ver­bruggen, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Per­haps odd­ly for some­one who gained immense­ly from mov­ing from one coun­try to anoth­er, Bor­jas has spent much of his career try­ing to answer the ques­tions of who los­es from immi­gra­tion and how much.”

Things Glen Found Entertaining

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 17

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.

To that end, on Fri­days I’ve been shar­ing articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al and soci­etal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). May these give you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar. Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

  1. Fear (Mar­i­lynne Robin­son, NY Review Of Books): I don’t often find overt­ly the­o­log­i­cal pieces in the New York Review of Books, much less ones whose open­ing lines are, “Amer­i­ca is a Chris­t­ian coun­try. This is true in a num­ber of sens­es.” She’s gonna get some hate mail.
  2. Some things that made me chuck­le:
  3. Why Do Good Uni­ver­si­ties Tend To Be Good At Every­thing? (Quo­ra ques­tion): Short but insight­ful.
  4. What Stan­ford Taught Me About Grace (Seth Vil­le­gas, per­son­al blog): Seth is an alum­nus of our min­istry who is cur­rent­ly doing grad work at Fuller The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary.
  5. Reli­gion and the Repub­lic (David Forte, With­er­spoon Insti­tute): the author (a law pro­fes­sor) explains the impor­tance of reli­gious speech in the pub­lic square. This seems like a good place to men­tion one of my favorite aca­d­e­m­ic papers: The Mis­sion­ary Roots of Lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy.
  6. From the I‑know-I-shared-this-last-week-but-want-to-share-it-with-the-new-stu­dents depart­ment: How To Stay Chris­t­ian On Cam­pus (David Math­is, Desir­ing God): I expect­ed some­thing very dif­fer­ent than what I got. Rec­om­mend­ed.

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 16

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.

To that end, on Fri­days I’ve been shar­ing articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al and soci­etal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). May these give you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar. Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

  1. From the rec­om­mend­ed-by-a-stu­dent depart­ment: How To Stay Chris­t­ian On Cam­pus (David Math­is, Desir­ing God): I expect­ed some­thing very dif­fer­ent than what I got. Rec­om­mend­ed.
  2. From the per­ilous times depart­ment:
  3. From the unex­pect­ed-insights-from his­to­ry-depart­ment: Morals Leg­is­la­tion, Revis­it­ed (Books and Cul­ture, David Skeel): Books and Cul­ture is an evan­gel­i­cal ver­sion of the NY Times Review of Books. This arti­cle is writ­ten by a law prof at Penn review­ing a Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty Press book about the evan­gel­i­cal ori­gins of the liv­ing con­sti­tu­tion approach to law.
  4. From the every­body-is-quot­ing-it depart­ment: Microag­gres­sion and Moral Cul­tures (Camp­bell and Man­ning, Com­par­a­tive Soci­ol­o­gy): I have seen so many peo­ple pump­ing this aca­d­e­m­ic arti­cle I am astound­ed. Three to take a look at: Conor Frieder­s­dorf in the Atlantic, Megan McAr­dle in Bloomberg View, and Jonathan Haidt on his per­son­al blog. The orig­i­nal arti­cle is descrip­tive — the response pieces tend to be eval­u­a­tive.
  5. From the prin­ci­ples-you-will-prob­a­bly-need-to-know-one-day depart­ment: When Does Your Reli­gion Legal­ly Excuse You From Doing Part of Your Job? (Wash­ing­ton Post. Eugene Volokh): this one came out right after my last email update. Volokh is a law prof at UCLA.

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.