Tag: LGBTQ

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 514: Jephthah, Europe, and the Enchanted Broccoli Forest

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. Jesus Is the Key to All Scrip­ture (Peter Lei­thart, First Things): “We’re incred­u­lous. ‘All things’ in Scrip­ture are ful­filled in him? Real­ly? Every­thing? Ehud thrust­ing a sword into obese Eglon? Jael crack­ing Sisera’s skull with a tent peg? David clip­ping and heap­ing up two hun­dred Philis­tine fore­skins? Jehu glee­ful­ly slaugh­ter­ing sons of Ahab? We dodge and backpedal, pro­tect­ing Jesus from his hermeneu­ti­cal excess. ‘Every episode and per­son con­tributes to the sto­ry of Jesus,’ we say. ‘But not every sin­gle per­son or event is direct­ly about Jesus.’ There’s some­thing to that, but it’s often a cop-out. And it keeps us from grasp­ing the height and depth of Jesus’s glo­ry. Jeph­thah is a test case.”
    • An engag­ing arti­cle with strong insights about Jeph­thah’s sto­ry.
  2. I Once Thought Euro­peans Lived as Well as Amer­i­cans. Not Any­more. (Tyler Cowen, The Free Press): “I was shocked recent­ly to learn that more Euro­peans die of heat death—largely due to lack of air-conditioning—than Amer­i­cans die from gun­shot wounds. I’m not say­ing Amer­i­ca isn’t more dan­ger­ous in cer­tain ways: We have high­er non-gun mur­der rates and per­ilous weath­er pat­terns, among oth­er prob­lems. But it turns out Euro­pean bureau­cra­cy is lit­er­al­ly dead­ly.… Cir­ca 2025, my sub­jec­tive judg­ment is that Amer­i­can liv­ing stan­dards are 20 to 30 per­cent high­er than those in West­ern Europe. That dif­fer­ence is like­ly to grow.”
  3. Uni­ver­si­ty sus­pends EBF, Kairos after Title VI inves­ti­ga­tions (Francesca Pin­ney, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “Fol­low­ing stu­dent com­plaints to Stanford’s Title VI Office, the Uni­ver­si­ty deter­mined that both hous­es vio­lat­ed Title VI, the fed­er­al law that pro­hibits harass­ment and dis­crim­i­na­tion based on race, col­or or nation­al ori­gin in edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions.”
    • The details are kind of wild and may shock you if you’re not used to Stan­ford rhetoric. One stu­dent com­ment­ed, “Tbh, that’s what most of NSO and my first quar­ter at Stan­ford felt like, and I was def­i­nite­ly told sim­i­lar things by folks in my dorm, etc.”
  4. Some reflec­tions on exer­cise:
    • Don’t Skip Leg Day or the Lord’s Day (Sean DeMars, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Exer­cise pre­vents me from falling into two seri­ous sins: sloth and idol­a­try. When I stop car­ing about my body, I drift toward pas­siv­i­ty and excuse-mak­ing, and I become sloth­ful. When I over­pri­or­i­tize fit­ness, I start build­ing my iden­ti­ty around per­for­mance or image, which is a form of idol­a­try. But when fit­ness is teth­ered to call­ing and is viewed as fuel for long-term min­istry, exer­cise finds its right­ful place. It’s not ulti­mate, but it’s impor­tant. The heart­beat of this lit­tle the­ol­o­gy of exer­cise is that redeemed bod­ies should be used in the ser­vice of joy, love, and mis­sion.”
    • How Exer­cise Fights Anx­i­ety and Depres­sion (Erik Vance, New York Times): “Decades of research have estab­lished that exer­cise has a pos­i­tive effect on men­tal health. In stud­ies of patients with mild to mod­er­ate depres­sion, for exam­ple, a wide range of exer­cise reg­i­mens has been shown to be as effec­tive as med­ica­tions like SSRIs (though the best results gen­er­al­ly involve a com­bi­na­tion of the two).”
  5. Inclu­siv­i­ty In Health­care Should Not Be Val­ued Above Our Para­mount Man­date: First, Do No Harm (Jan­havi Nilekani, Sub­stack): “In the spring of 2022, a 50-year-old grand­fa­ther in North Car­oli­na decid­ed that he want­ed his daughter’s new­born to suck­le at his nip­ple.… Because this par­tic­u­lar man iden­ti­fied as a trans­gen­der woman, doc­tors and aca­d­e­mics from Duke Uni­ver­si­ty whole­heart­ed­ly sup­port­ed his ‘unique desire’. Indeed, they pub­lished a research paper in Breast­feed­ing Med­i­cine, pro­vid­ing details of the cock­tail of hor­mones and drugs they used. With these, he was able to pro­duce secre­tions, that were admin­is­tered to his grand­child. The paper does not have a sin­gle sen­tence about the poten­tial impact on the grand­child. It is an unimag­in­able breach of ethics. An adult male’s desire to be affirmed as a woman should nev­er be met by feed­ing an exper­i­men­tal drug-infused sub­stance to new­borns with no capac­i­ty to con­sent.… Such exper­i­ments are pos­si­ble only because med­i­cine, in the push towards inclu­siv­i­ty, is for­get­ting our own core val­ue: first, do no harm.”
    • Shar­ing most­ly for the shock­ing intro­duc­to­ry sto­ry. The entire thing is long and prob­a­bly does not cov­er new ground for reg­u­lar read­ers. It is well-argued, though.
  6. The Per­verse Eco­nom­ics of Assist­ed Sui­cide (Louise Per­ry, New York Times): “There is a very clear prob­lem with assist­ed sui­cide in its new guise: The state, with its almighty pow­er, is tasked with both pay­ing for the sup­port of the old and dis­abled and reg­u­lat­ing their dying.… organs of the state that are tasked with solv­ing an impos­si­ble finan­cial prob­lem — how to pay for more old peo­ple with less mon­ey — will be inex­orably tugged toward what looks to a mind­less bureau­cra­cy like a ‘solu­tion.’ ”
  7. Rea­son, Rev­e­la­tion, and Rev­o­lu­tion (Joseph Locon­te, The Dis­patch): “Colo­nial assump­tions about nat­ur­al rights, human equal­i­ty, reli­gious lib­er­ty, gov­ern­ment by con­sent, the right of rev­o­lu­tion: Each drew heav­i­ly from Locke’s writ­ings, which were con­sid­ered manda­to­ry read­ing for edu­cat­ed Amer­i­cans. As we’ll see, the colonists were heirs of the Lock­ean tra­di­tion. As a result, free­dom, rea­son, and rev­e­la­tion formed a con­cep­tu­al trin­i­ty in the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion. The pow­er­ful alliance of these ideas helps to explain the aston­ish­ing and endur­ing influ­ence of the Amer­i­can exam­ple. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, non­sense talk about the mean­ing and legit­i­ma­cy of the Amer­i­can exper­i­ment is almost as ingrained in the New Right as in the pro­gres­sive left.”
    • A strong defense of Locke against his crit­ics on the right. The author is a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor and a Chris­t­ian pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al.

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 500: faith, China, and Trump

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

This is the 500th time I’ve com­posed this email. I thought I might do some­thing spe­cial this week to com­mem­o­rate that mile­stone, but there are too many inter­est­ing arti­cles I’ve run across — this will a reg­u­lar install­ment. Enjoy!

Maybe when we get to vol­ume 520 — that will sig­ni­fy ten years of emails.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Amer­i­cans Haven’t Found a Sat­is­fy­ing Alter­na­tive to Reli­gion (Lau­ren Jack­son, New York Times): “America’s sec­u­lar­iza­tion was an immense social trans­for­ma­tion. Has it left us bet­ter off? Peo­ple are unhap­pi­er than they’ve ever been and the coun­try is in an epi­dem­ic of lone­li­ness. It’s not just sec­u­lar­ism that’s to blame, but those with­out reli­gious affil­i­a­tion in par­tic­u­lar rank low­er on key met­rics of well-being. They feel less con­nect­ed to oth­ers, less spir­i­tu­al­ly at peace and they expe­ri­ence less awe and grat­i­tude reg­u­lar­ly.”
    • Unlocked. Note that this is not in the opin­ion sec­tion (some­what sur­pris­ing­ly, it is in the style sec­tion). The author is an ex-Mor­mon.
  2. Ross Douthat: Why It’s Log­i­cal to Believe in God (Bari Weiss inter­view­ing Ross Douthat, The Free Press): “The book of Gen­e­sis begins with an admo­ni­tion: Fill the Earth, and sub­due it. We’ve done that. We have reached an inter­est­ing point in his­to­ry from a reli­gious point of view. And there’s a real­ly open question—where do we go next? Do we col­lapse? Do we go to the stars? Do we become tran­shu­man? Do we merge with the machines and so on? So, it’s a high-stakes moment. And if God exists and he has inten­tions for us, it’s real­ly impor­tant at a high-stakes moment to take those inten­tions into account. I think of peo­ple like Musk and Alt­man. The con­test for their lit­er­al souls is real­ly impor­tant to the whole future of the human race. If God exists, it’s a big moment. You want belief to win out over the alter­na­tives.”
  3. The Con­ven­tion­al Wis­dom Is That Chi­na Is Beat­ing Us. Non­sense. (Tyler Cowen, The Free Press): “The bot­tom line is that the smartest enti­ties in the world—the top AI programs—will not just be West­ern but like­ly even Amer­i­can in their intel­lec­tu­al and ide­o­log­i­cal ori­en­ta­tions for some while to come.… Mov­ing to a world where the AIs are the smartest enti­ties in Chi­na, rather than the CCP, is for Chi­na a rad­i­cal change—and one the CCP is prob­a­bly very afraid of. Much of the legit­i­ma­cy of the CCP sprang from its claim to be a wise man­ag­er of the Chi­nese lega­cy. But now it will be out­sourc­ing that man­age­ment to West­ern-based AI mod­els. From a West­ern geopo­lit­i­cal point of view, that could end up a lot bet­ter, and more effec­tive, than plant­i­ng a bunch of spies in the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment.”
  4. Chris Tomlin’s New Song Res­ur­rects The World’s Old­est Known Hymn (Bob Smi­etana, The Roys Report): “A new ver­sion of the Oxyrhynchus Hymn debuted last week, cour­tesy of a new trans­la­tion from Dick­son and help from Chris Tom­lin and Ben Field­ing, two of the most pop­u­lar mod­ern wor­ship song­writ­ers.… ‘I think the most the­o­log­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant thing is that it’s a hymn to the Trin­i­ty — Father, Son and Holy Spir­it, the cen­tu­ry before the Nicene Creed,’ he said.”
  5. Belief in an After­life is Increas­ing in the Unit­ed States (Ryan Burge, Sub­stack): “In that first data col­lec­tion in 1973, about 76% of folks believed in some­thing beyond this life. But by 1990, that fig­ure had crept up to just about 80% and it con­tin­ued to rise very slow­ly from there. Real­ly, from 2000 all the way through 2022, the esti­mates are all basi­cal­ly the same. Even today, the share of Amer­i­cans who believe in life after death is 82%. When peo­ple ask me, “Is the Unit­ed States a reli­gious coun­try?” This is the stat that I’m going to trot out.’ ”
    • Empha­sis removed for read­abil­i­ty.
  6. The Rot­ten Fruit of Oberge­fell: On the Kel­ly Lov­ing Act (Jake Meador, Mere Ortho­doxy): “For the past ten years we have already held, as a nation, that the state defines mar­riage. Why then should the state not also get to define what a par­ent is or what good par­ent­ing is? The Kel­ly Lov­ing Act, in oth­er words, is an obvi­ous out­work­ing of the log­ic of Oberge­fell, the Supreme Court rul­ing that rede­fined mar­riage.”
  7. Trump is all over the news. Here are some things that caught my inter­est. Remem­ber that my shar­ing an arti­cle is not a sign that I agree with it com­plete­ly, it is a mere­ly a sign that I think it makes points or tells a sto­ry worth con­sid­er­ing. See the dis­claimers at the bot­tom: I assure you they are heart­felt.
    • Get Out by Good Fri­day, Feds Say to Afghan Chris­tians (John McCor­ma­ck, The Dis­patch): “Ahmad’s con­ver­sion to Chris­tian­i­ty after attend­ing a uni­ver­si­ty in Afghanistan led to his impris­on­ment by the Taliban—where he said he was beat­en and tor­tured via elec­tric shock—before fel­low Chris­tians were able to ran­som him from Tal­iban cap­tiv­i­ty. The same Chris­tians who got Ahmad out of prison then got him out of Afghanistan by help­ing him trav­el to Brazil. Ahmad tra­versed on foot the Dar­ién Gap that con­nects Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca for three days and ultimately—after pre­sent­ing him­self at the south­ern U.S. bor­der seek­ing asylum—made a home for him­self in Raleigh.…  Ahmad, like some oth­er Afghans legal­ly liv­ing in the Unit­ed States, received a let­ter from the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty (DHS) telling him he must leave the coun­try by Good Fri­day.”
    • Prece­dent Trump (Jon­ah Gold­berg, The Dis­patch): “It has been a dream of the left for ages to get rid of the tax-exempt sta­tus and rel­a­tive auton­o­my of reli­gious institutions—Christian uni­ver­si­ties, char­i­ties, hos­pi­tals, etc. If Trump suc­ceeds in mak­ing the IRS revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt sta­tus, based in no small part on per­son­al oppo­si­tion to what Har­vard teach­es, what will be the prin­ci­pled objec­tion to a Pres­i­dent Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez or Eliz­a­beth War­ren when the Eye of Mor­dor swings right­ward?”
    • No, the Pres­i­dent Has Not Defied a Supreme Court Rul­ing (Jeb Ruben­feld, The Free Press): “Due process is a bul­wark of the Con­sti­tu­tion and the rule of law, and the courts must not allow its vio­la­tion. But Trump oppo­nents, like Pro­fes­sor Sny­der, are mak­ing a mis­take when they try to paint this case as a mas­sive assault on due process. For now at least, this case is anoth­er exam­ple of the hyper­bole over a Trump run-in with the courts out­run­ning the facts of the case.”
      • The author is a pro­fes­sor of con­sti­tu­tion­al law at Yale. I found this arti­cle reas­sur­ing in the abstract, while still being dis­pleased over the par­tic­u­lars of this case. There’s a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence between deport­ing some­one from the coun­try and deport­ing them into a for­eign prison.
    • Inside the ‘Trop­i­cal Gulag’ in El Sal­vador Where U.S. Detainees Are Being Held (Annie Cor­re­al, New York Times): “Deaths and phys­i­cal abuse in CECOT remain undoc­u­ment­ed because of a lack of access to inmates or any­one who has been released, said Juani­ta Goe­ber­tus, Amer­i­c­as direc­tor at Human Rights Watch. But, she added, ‘Based on the tor­ture and mis­treat­ment we have doc­u­ment­ed in oth­er pris­ons in El Sal­vador, we have every rea­son to believe that peo­ple sent to CECOT are at high risk of abuse.’ The U.S. gov­ern­ment itself spot­light­ed atroc­i­ties in El Salvador’s pris­ons in 2023. At El Salvador’s two dozen oth­er jails, rights groups have doc­u­ment­ed sys­tem­at­ic tor­ture, forced con­fes­sions and what Noah Bul­lock, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Sal­vado­ran human rights group Cristos­al, calls ‘the inten­tion­al denial of access to basic neces­si­ties like food, water, health care, hygiene.’”
      • I find these alle­ga­tions plau­si­ble because of my belief in deprav­i­ty. Humans do bad things when they have peo­ple com­plete­ly under their con­trol, espe­cial­ly when there is lit­tle exter­nal over­sight or account­abil­i­ty. We may learn in time that the details are off, but the essen­tial com­plaint is almost cer­tain­ly cor­rect.
    • White House of Wor­ship: Chris­t­ian Prayer Rings Out Under Trump (Eliz­a­beth Dias & Ruth Gra­ham, New York Times): “Rou­tine­ly, and often at Mr. Trump’s enthu­si­as­tic direc­tion, senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials and allied pas­tors are infus­ing their brand of Chris­t­ian wor­ship into the work­ings of the White House itself, sug­gest­ing that his cam­paign promise to ‘bring back Chris­tian­i­ty’ is tak­ing tan­gi­ble root.… Mr. Trump’s team has host­ed brief­in­gs and lis­ten­ing ses­sions billed as oppor­tu­ni­ties for the lead­ers to share their par­tic­u­lar con­cerns, which have ranged wide­ly: reli­gious lib­er­ty, adop­tion and fos­ter care, the break­down of the nuclear fam­i­ly, human traf­fick­ing, urban pover­ty and anti­semitism, among oth­ers.”
    • All the President’s Pas­tors: Who’s Advis­ing Trump? (Har­vest Prude, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The pres­i­dent hasn’t pub­licly attend­ed a church ser­vice since his inau­gu­ra­tion day, he doesn’t hold mem­ber­ship in a par­tic­u­lar con­gre­ga­tion or denom­i­na­tion, he’s gone back and forth over whether he needs to ask for God’s for­give­ness, and he avoids speak­ing in detail about his per­son­al devo­tion­al life, so what we know about Trump’s faith comes large­ly from the pas­tors around him at the White House—starting with Paula White-Cain.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 481

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. Sales of Bibles Are Boom­ing, Fueled by First-Time Buy­ers and New Ver­sions (Jef­frey A. Tra­cht­en­berg, Wall Street Jour­nal): “Wor­ries about the econ­o­my, con­flicts abroad and uncer­tain­ty over the elec­tion pushed read­ers toward the pub­li­ca­tion in droves. Bible sales are up 22% in the U.S. through the end of Octo­ber, com­pared with the same peri­od last year, accord­ing to book track­er Cir­cana BookScan. By con­trast, total U.S. print book sales were up less than 1% in that peri­od.”
  2. Does Pol­i­tics Belong in the Church? Does the Church Belong in Pol­i­tics? (Carl S. H. Hen­ry, Juicy Ecu­menism): “Does the church belong in pol­i­tics? Inso­far as it owns land and build­ings the church clear­ly has civic oblig­a­tions and should ren­der to Cae­sar what is prop­er­ly Caesar’s. As an insti­tu­tion ground­ed on a divine dis­clo­sure of truth and moral­i­ty, more­over, the church is man­dat­ed to pro­claim pub­licly the revealed prin­ci­ples by which Christ the King of kings will ulti­mate­ly judge nations and states and does so even now. The church as such must also stim­u­late mem­bers to apply scrip­tur­al prin­ci­ples with sound rea­son and in good con­science to cur­rent polit­i­cal con­cerns, in quest of pre­ferred poli­cies and pro­grams pro­mo­tive of jus­tice and peace. Since God wills the state as an instru­men­tal­i­ty for pre­serv­ing jus­tice and restrain­ing dis­or­der, the church should urge mem­bers to engage in polit­i­cal affairs to their utmost com­pe­tence and abil­i­ty, to vote faith­ful­ly and intel­li­gent­ly, to engage in the polit­i­cal process at all lev­els, and to seek and hold pub­lic office. The church is not, how­ev­er, to use the mech­a­nisms of gov­ern­ment to legal­ly impose upon soci­ety at large her the­o­log­i­cal com­mit­ments. The church must increas­ing­ly clar­i­fy when obe­di­ence to God requires dis­obe­di­ence to the state and, no less, when dis­obe­di­ence to the state con­sti­tutes dis­obe­di­ence to God.”
    • From 1984, a tran­scrip­tion of a speech by a key voice in the emer­gence of Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cal­ism. This speech, with updates to replace 80’s ref­er­ences, could be giv­en today.
  3. Ryugu aster­oid sam­ple rapid­ly col­o­nized by ter­res­tri­al life despite strict con­t­a­m­i­na­tion con­trol (Justin Jack­son, Phys.org): “NASA tries to avoid intro­duc­ing Earth microbes to Mars by con­struct­ing probes and lan­ders in clean­room envi­ron­ments and has found the task near­ly impos­si­ble. There have been species of microbes dis­cov­ered in NASA clean rooms that not only evade dis­in­fec­tion meth­ods but also adapt to using clean­ing agents as a food source.”
    • That last sen­tence is stun­ning. This is how British researchers tried (and failed) to pre­vent con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of an aster­oid sam­ple: “Trans­port­ed to Earth in a her­met­i­cal­ly sealed cham­ber, the sam­ple was opened in nitro­gen in a class 10,000 clean room to pre­vent con­t­a­m­i­na­tion. Indi­vid­ual par­ti­cles were picked with ster­il­ized tools and stored under nitro­gen in air­tight con­tain­ers. Before analy­sis, the sam­ple under­went Nano-X-ray com­put­ed tomog­ra­phy and was embed­ded in an epoxy resin block for scan­ning elec­tron microscopy.”
  4. Deus in machi­na: Swiss church installs AI-pow­ered Jesus (Ashifa Kas­sam, The Guardian):“The small, unadorned church… in the Swiss city of Lucerne… installed an arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence-pow­ered Jesus capa­ble of dia­logu­ing in 100 dif­fer­ent lan­guages. After train­ing the AI pro­gram in the­o­log­i­cal texts, vis­i­tors were then invit­ed to pose ques­tions to a long-haired image of Jesus beamed through a lat­tice­work screen… More than 1,000 peo­ple – includ­ing Mus­lims and vis­it­ing tourists from as far as Chi­na and Viet­nam – took up the oppor­tu­ni­ty to inter­act with the avatar… two-thirds of them had found it to be a ‘“‘spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ence.’”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent who calls the arti­cle “har­row­ing.”
  5. Why hous­ing short­ages cause home­less­ness (Sal­im Furth, Works in Progress): “…most peo­ple at risk of home­less­ness man­age to remain housed by stay­ing with oth­ers. The high­er rate of home­less­ness in high-cost areas is most­ly explained by the inabil­i­ty of the fam­i­ly and friends of poten­tial­ly home­less peo­ple to afford extra liv­ing space.”
    • Some thoughts in response: https://x.com/lymanstoneky/status/1864706992369205381
    • This arti­cle match­es my expe­ri­ence: plen­ty of peo­ple in Louisiana and Mis­souri had spare rooms to let peo­ple use. Almost no one I know has a spare room in Sil­i­con Val­ley. Peo­ple bare­ly even have yards here.
  6. Why Chris­tians Should Care About Oak Flat (Robert P. George, First Things): “For those of us who gath­er in tra­di­tion­al hous­es of wor­ship, Apache spir­i­tu­al prac­tices might feel remote or alien. A patch of Ari­zona wilder­ness bears lit­tle resem­blance to the church­es, syn­a­gogues, mosques, and tem­ples we regard as sacred space. Yet our tra­di­tion of reli­gious free­dom, prop­er­ly under­stood, has nev­er been about pro­tect­ing only what is famil­iar or con­ve­nient. Nor has it been a sim­ple live-and-let-live com­pro­mise, a frag­ile truce in which we agree to tol­er­ate one another’s prac­tices for the sake of peace. It is instead a com­mit­ment to a fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple that acknowl­edges our nature as ratio­nal beings, bear­ers of pro­found, inher­ent, and equal dig­ni­ty, capa­ble of order­ing our lives toward the good, the true, and the holy.”
    • Rob­bie George is, of course, a law prof at Prince­ton and an out­spo­ken Catholic.
  7. America’s best-known prac­ti­tion­er of youth gen­der med­i­cine is being sued (Jesse Sin­gal, The Econ­o­mist): “Ms Breen said she is doing sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter today—partly, she believes, sim­ply because she ceased tak­ing testos­terone. But well before that, she ditched the ther­a­pist Dr Olson-Kennedy referred her to, who she said fix­at­ed entire­ly on her gen­der iden­ti­ty. She switched to a dialec­ti­cal behav­iour­al ther­a­pist whom she described as a god­send, with whom she had her first-ever in-depth con­ver­sa­tions about the phys­i­cal and sex­u­al abuse she endured ear­li­er in life. Ms Breen said she was fair­ly con­fi­dent that if she’d had these con­ver­sa­tions at age 12, she wouldn’t have pur­sued med­ical tran­si­tion. She has been left with per­ma­nent med­ical con­se­quences: a low­er voice than she wants, an Adam’s Apple that dis­tress­es her, the prospect of breast recon­struc­tion if she wants to par­tial­ly regain a female shape, and the pos­si­bil­i­ty that she is infer­tile due to the years she spent on testos­terone.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • Defend­er of the Basic (YouTube, Col­lege­Hu­mor): five min­utes with only one mild­ly off-col­or inter­change. I agree with this video direc­tion­al­ly but hap­pen to have dif­fer­ent (but equal­ly basic) aes­thet­ic pref­er­ences than many of those high­light­ed. 
  • NASA Rock­et Engine Fire­place (NASA, YouTube): want a nerdy fire­place on your TV dur­ing the hol­i­days? NASA’s got you. 8 hours of a rock­et in a fire­place in 4k.
  • Who Needs Con­gress When You Have Cameo? (Joseph Bern­stein, New York Times): “He’s avail­able for birth­day wish­es (‘Any time you hit a zero it’s a big one, but turn­ing 70 is pret­ty epic’), wed­ding con­grat­u­la­tions (‘Mar­riage is an amaz­ing insti­tu­tion’) and pep talks (‘Even on tough days, find the good in it, find the pride in the work’) — all start­ing at $500. Mr. Gaetz is hap­py to poke fun at his pro­fes­sion­al set­back, con­trast­ing his failed nom­i­na­tion with the suc­cess of one of his Cameo cus­tomers who just became a part­ner in a law firm.”

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 480

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 Give Thanks in the Bright Dark­ness (Christi­na Gon­za­lez Ho, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “It seems that, his­tor­i­cal­ly, Thanks­giv­ing was not meant to be a pure­ly cel­e­bra­to­ry day, a time to lux­u­ri­ate in self-sat­is­fac­tion, but rather a day to hold grat­i­tude in ten­sion with sor­row, suf­fer­ing, and sin—to acknowl­edge the bright­ness and dark­ness that always exist simul­ta­ne­ous­ly in the world.”
    • Christi­na is an alum­nus of Chi Alpha.
  2. The Con­quest of Canaan Explained in 6 Min­utes (Gavin Ortlund, YouTube). Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. This is a top­ic I think I explain pret­ty well, but Ortlund does it bet­ter. Worth your time if the destruc­tion of the Canaan­ite cul­tures both­ers you.
  3. And They Began to Be Mer­ry (Kevin D. Williamson, The Dis­patch): “The mir­a­cle at Cana isn’t water becom­ing wine—any old magi­cian could do that sort of thing. What­ev­er it was that Jesus was about, it wasn’t stu­pid par­ty tricks. The mir­a­cle is that the Ruler of the Uni­verse cared about such a lit­tle thing as the social anx­i­eties of a bunch of nobod­ies in an obscure lit­tle cor­ner of the world of no par­tic­u­lar impor­tance, and that He loved them the way a father loves his children—and what kind of father offers just enough at a time like that when he has, at his dis­pos­al, the very best?… The super­nat­ur­al stuff is one thing, but con­sid­er the mag­nif­i­cence of that ges­ture, the sheer auda­cious style of it. I do not care if you are the most cyn­i­cal athe­ist walk­ing the Earth—it is impos­si­ble not to admire the panache. He bends real­i­ty into a new shape, makes the uni­verse fol­low new rules, to help out a friend, and He does it cool—nobody even knows what hap­pened except for the wait­ers.”
  4. What I Wish Some­one Had Told Me About Moth­er­hood (Daniela J. Lamas, New York Times): “For my gen­er­a­tion— and, I’d argue, espe­cial­ly for women in my gen­er­a­tion — the deci­sion of whether to have a child has become high­ly fraught. It’s tied up with our desires for ful­fill­ing careers, our will­ing­ness to risk a shift in the iden­ti­ties and lives we have built. It’s tied up in an under­stand­ing of all that went into mak­ing moth­er­hood a choice that we get to make. With so much at stake, it is so easy to become par­a­lyzed by inde­ci­sion. But per­haps what I would have want­ed to hear when I was dither­ing was some­thing like this: Hav­ing a child has been extra­or­di­nary.… And for some rea­son, I feel almost embar­rassed to admit how much I love being a moth­er. I spent my adult life until now with this idea that I was dif­fer­ent from — and maybe even a lit­tle supe­ri­or to — my peers who chose to spend time build­ing their fam­i­lies. I was so wor­ried about what a child would mean for my career. But what I did not antic­i­pate was that what I would want itself would change.”
  5. This Mav­er­ick Thinker Is the Karl Marx of Our Time (Christo­pher Cald­well, New York Times): “Mr. Streeck has a clear vision of some­thing para­dox­i­cal about the neolib­er­al project: For the glob­al econ­o­my to be ‘free,’ it must be con­strained. What the pro­po­nents of neolib­er­al­ism mean by a free mar­ket is a dereg­u­lat­ed mar­ket. But get­ting to dereg­u­la­tion is trick­i­er than it looks because in free soci­eties, reg­u­la­tions are the result of people’s sov­er­eign right to make their own rules. The more demo­c­ra­t­ic the world’s soci­eties are, the more idio­syn­crat­ic they will be, and the more their eco­nom­ic rules will diverge. But that is exact­ly what busi­ness­es can­not tol­er­ate — at least not under glob­al­iza­tion. Mon­ey and goods must be able to move fric­tion­less­ly and effi­cient­ly across bor­ders. This requires a uni­form set of laws. Some­how, democ­ra­cy is going to have to give way.”
    • Cald­well is an inter­est­ing thinker, so as soon as I saw his byline I knew I had to read the arti­cle. Worth a pon­der.
  6. ‘A God Who Con­tin­u­al­ly Sur­pris­es Us’: A Q&A With a The­olo­gian Who Changed His Mind About Gay Mar­riage (Peter Wehn­er, New York Times): “…I would say that the way I was appeal­ing to the Bible or the way I was inter­pret­ing the Bible was too nar­row­ly focused on the few texts in Scrip­ture that do say some­thing explic­it­ly about homo­sex­u­al rela­tion­ships. The dic­tum in Leviti­cus is that for a man to lie with a man as with a woman is an abom­i­na­tion. And those texts had a cer­tain impact on my opin­ion. But I think I was I was far too nar­row in the way I thought about how the Bible speaks to issues like this. What I came to think over time is that what the Bible shows is not some iso­lat­ed proof texts or iso­lat­ed state­ments of law, but it shows us a much big­ger pic­ture of God as a God who con­tin­u­al­ly sur­pris­es us, con­tin­u­al­ly sur­pris­es his peo­ple with the scope of gen­eros­i­ty and grace and mer­cy.”
    • This is one of many reveal­ing moments in this inter­view. Hays stopped believ­ing what the Bible actu­al­ly says in favor of what he takes the deep­er mes­sage of the Bible to be. It’s as though he sub­or­di­nates the real text of the Bible to the hypo­thet­i­cal text of the Bible in his head.
    • This arti­cle makes me sad. Shar­ing because it’s a clear­er-than-usu­al pre­sen­ta­tion of an argu­ment that I often encounter, and its clar­i­ty makes the weak­ness­es of the revi­sion­ist posi­tion more evi­dent.
  7. How Uni­ver­si­ties Cracked Down on Pro-Pales­tin­ian Activism (Isabelle Taft, New York Times): “Uni­ver­si­ties have seen just under 950 protest events this semes­ter so far, com­pared to 3,000 last semes­ter, accord­ing to a log at the Non­vi­o­lent Action Lab at Har­vard University’s Ash Cen­ter. About 50 peo­ple have been arrest­ed so far this school year at protests on high­er edu­ca­tion cam­pus­es, accord­ing to num­bers gath­ered by The New York Times, com­pared to over 3,000 last semes­ter. When stu­dents have protest­ed this fall, admin­is­tra­tors have often enforced — to the let­ter — new rules cre­at­ed in response to last spring’s unrest. The moves have cre­at­ed scenes that would have been hard to imag­ine pre­vi­ous­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly at uni­ver­si­ties that once cel­e­brat­ed their his­to­ry of stu­dent activism.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 475

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. Is the World Ready for a Reli­gious Come­back? (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “It’s one thing to get non­be­liev­ers to offer kind words for ‘cul­tur­al’ Chris­tian­i­ty or endorse the soci­o­log­i­cal util­i­ty of church­go­ing. The chal­lenge is to go fur­ther, to per­suade anx­ious mod­erns that reli­gion is more than mere­ly prag­mat­i­cal­ly use­ful, more than just a wist­ful hope — that a reli­gious frame­work actu­al­ly makes much more sense of real­i­ty than the alleged­ly hard­head­ed mate­ri­al­ist alter­na­tive.”
    • Dis­cuss­es three books Douthat thinks are help­ful.
  2. The Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan Dou­bled Down on D.E.I. What Went Wrong? (Nicholas Con­fes­sore, New York Times): “Striv­ing to touch ‘every indi­vid­ual on cam­pus,’ as the school puts it, Michi­gan has poured rough­ly a quar­ter of a bil­lion dol­lars into D.E.I. since 2016, accord­ing to an inter­nal pre­sen­ta­tion I obtained.… Michigan’s own data sug­gests that in striv­ing to become more diverse and equi­table, the school has also become less inclu­sive: In a sur­vey released in late 2022, stu­dents and fac­ul­ty mem­bers report­ed a less pos­i­tive cam­pus cli­mate than at the program’s start and less of a sense of belong­ing. Stu­dents were less like­ly to inter­act with peo­ple of a dif­fer­ent race or reli­gion or with dif­fer­ent pol­i­tics — the exact kind of engage­ment D.E.I. pro­grams, in the­o­ry, are meant to fos­ter.”
    • Relat­ed: I Don’t Want to Live in a Mono­cul­ture, and Nei­ther Do You (David French, New York Times): “In my expe­ri­ence, the more ide­o­log­i­cal­ly or the­o­log­i­cal­ly ‘pure’ an insti­tu­tion becomes, the more wrong it is like­ly to be, espe­cial­ly if it takes on a dif­fi­cult or com­plex task. Ide­o­log­i­cal mono­cul­tures aren’t just bad for the minor­i­ty that’s silenced, harassed or can­celed when­ev­er its mem­bers raise their voic­es in dis­sent. It’s ter­ri­ble for the con­fi­dent major­i­ty — and for the con­fi­dent majority’s cause.”
  3. U.S. Study on Puber­ty Block­ers Goes Unpub­lished Because of Pol­i­tics, Doc­tor Says (Azeen Gho­rayshi, New York Times): “An influ­en­tial doc­tor and advo­cate of ado­les­cent gen­der treat­ments said she had not pub­lished a long-await­ed study of puber­ty-block­ing drugs because of the charged Amer­i­can polit­i­cal envi­ron­ment.… She said she was con­cerned the study’s results could be used in court to argue that ‘we shouldn’t use block­ers because it doesn’t impact them,’ refer­ring to trans­gen­der ado­les­cents.”
    • JK Rowl­ing sum­ma­rized the sto­ry well: ‘We must not pub­lish a study that says we’re harm­ing chil­dren because peo­ple who say we’re harm­ing chil­dren will use the study as evi­dence that we’re harm­ing chil­dren, which might make it dif­fi­cult for us to con­tin­ue harm­ing chil­dren.’
  4. Our Robot Sto­ries Haven’t Pre­pared Us for A.I. (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “In most of these sto­ries, the defin­ing aspects of human­i­ty are some com­bi­na­tion of free will, strong emo­tion and moral­i­ty. The robot begins as a being fol­low­ing its pro­gram­ming and mys­ti­fied by human emo­tion­al­i­ty, and over time it begins to choose, to act freely, to cut its strings and ulti­mate­ly to love.… We have been trained for a future in which robots think like us but don’t feel like us, and there­fore need to be guid­ed out of mere­ly intel­lec­tu­al self-con­scious­ness into a deep­er aware­ness of emo­tion­al­i­ty, of heart as well as head. We are get­ting a real­i­ty where our bots seem so deeply emo­tion­al — lov­ing, car­ing, heart­felt — that it’s hard to dis­tin­guish them from human beings, and indeed, some of us find their appar­ent warmth a refuge from a dif­fi­cult or cru­el world.”
  5. How I Learned To Stop Crit­i­ciz­ing Every­thing (Eboo Patel, Per­sua­sion): “I’m not sad that I read those crit­i­cal the­o­rists. I think it’s a use­ful per­spec­tive to have. My prob­lem is that I deformed the world to fit a nar­row world­view, and I let it direct my life. The big­ger prob­lem is that this par­a­digm has become a regime in cer­tain quar­ters of high­er edu­ca­tion. You are coerced into hold­ing that world­view and pun­ished if you utter ideas out­side of its scope. Crit­i­cal the­o­ry is like a sharp kitchen knife: very use­ful for some things, like cut­ting meat, but if you eat your cere­al with it, you’ll hurt your­self. And if you point it at some­one else, then it’s a weapon. In some cir­cles, on some cam­pus­es, every oth­er uten­sil has been removed from the intel­lec­tu­al cut­lery draw­er, replaced with sharp kitchen knives.”
  6. Both Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans can pass the Ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing Test (Adam Mas­troian­ni, Sub­stack): “We first chal­lenged each side to pre­tend to be the oth­er side, and then we had both sides try to dis­tin­guish between the truth-tellers and the fak­ers. If par­ti­sans have no idea who the oth­er side is or what they believe, it should be hard for peo­ple to do a con­vinc­ing impres­sion of the oppo­site par­ty. So let’s see!”
    • Inter­est­ing study. In the foot­notes he men­tioned he gath­ered the data in 2019 but nev­er got around to pub­lish­ing it. Just FYI
  7. It’s Ratio­nal And Humane To Lack Strong Polit­i­cal Beliefs (Jesse Sin­gal, Sub­stack): “We don’t need the aver­age per­son to have strong beliefs about what the right anti-pover­ty pol­i­cy is, and I would argue it’s a waste of time to devote too many hours to some­thing like that, because it’s hope­less­ly com­plex and even experts who devote their lives to that sub­ject dis­agree on the basics. Plus, many of the experts — on this and every oth­er sub­ject — are them­selves incom­pe­tent, ide­o­log­i­cal­ly cap­tured, or oth­er­wise unlike­ly to help lead you clos­er to use­ful insights.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. This post is a bit odd in that it’s unlocked but to read the whole thing you have to read it in the Sub­stack app. You can read the first part for free and that’s enough to get the gist and tell whether you want to read the rest of it.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 474

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 Talk About God and Pol­i­tics in Polar­ized Times (Seth Free­man, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The key is three words: para­phrase, praise, and probe. The method: Pri­vate­ly, over cof­fee or a meal, nudge the con­ver­sa­tion into a Big Top­ic and ask your friend what they think about it. Then: 1) Para­phrase: Repeat the gist of your friend’s thoughts so well they say, ‘Exact­ly!’ 2) Praise: High­light any­thing they said that you can sin­cere­ly hon­or.  3) Probe: Ask about your con­cerns, curiosi­ties, and con­fu­sions as a co-seek­er of truth. Do this two or three times. Then, share your own per­spec­tive and let the con­ver­sa­tion unfold from there, return­ing to para­phrase, praise, probe when­ev­er there’s ten­sion.”
    • Prac­ti­cal and rec­om­mend­ed. The author, a Chris­t­ian, is a pro­fes­sor of con­flict man­age­ment and nego­ti­a­tion at the NYU Stern School of Busi­ness and Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty.
  2. What Lad­ders Are You Climb­ing? (Aaron Renn, Sub­stack): “…admit that hier­ar­chy is ubiq­ui­tous, we are all try­ing to achieve goals in life using some the­o­ry of how to get there, and that it’s a good thing if men of good char­ac­ter and com­pe­tence seek and achieve posi­tions of com­men­su­rate pow­er, respon­si­bil­i­ty, influ­ence, and sta­tus.”
  3. Too Many Laws—and Too Lit­tle Judg­ing (Anas­ta­sia Boden, The Dis­patch): “As of 2018, fed­er­al statutes in the U.S. Code span 60,000 pages. The Fed­er­al Reg­is­ter, which con­tains fed­er­al reg­u­la­tions, makes up anoth­er 188,000 pages. Some esti­mate it would take more than three years to read the Fed­er­al Reg­is­ter, let alone under­stand it. And those fig­ures don’t take into account the thou­sands of infor­mal guid­ance doc­u­ments that can also car­ry the force of law.”
  4. For­get the Lies About Wait­ing: Why mar­riage and kids ear­ly are the ulti­mate flex (Antho­ny Bradley, Sub­stack): “The mod­ern world may tell you to wait—to find your­self first, to achieve finan­cial secu­ri­ty, or to expe­ri­ence the world—but the truth is that mar­riage offers all of these things and more.”
    • The author is a research fel­low at the Acton Insti­tute and a pro­fes­sor of reli­gion at Kuyper Col­lege. This arti­cle is tar­get­ed specif­i­cal­ly at young men (although it is like­ly of inter­est to gals as well).
  5. Neg­a­tive effects of child­hood spank­ing may be over­stat­ed, study claims (Adri­ana Diaz, New York Post): “The top­ic of whether or not spank­ing is an effec­tive or harm­ful form of pun­ish­ment has sparked con­sid­er­able dis­cus­sion for gen­er­a­tions. Pre­vi­ous research has estab­lished a strong cor­re­la­tion between phys­i­cal pun­ish­ment and neg­a­tive out­comes for chil­dren, but much of this work did not account for pre-exist­ing behav­ioral issues in chil­dren. This made it chal­leng­ing to deter­mine whether spank­ing direct­ly caus­es prob­lems or if it is more com­mon­ly employed with chil­dren who already exhib­it behav­ioral dif­fi­cul­ties.”
  6. Rachel Levine Must Resign (Andrew Sul­li­van, Sub­stack): “…the dis­cov­ery from a law­suit against the State of Alaba­ma over its ban on the med­ical sex reas­sign­ment of chil­dren has left me reel­ing. It shows a stag­ger­ing lev­el of bad faith from the tran­squeer lob­by, and, also, from Rachel Levine — the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary for Health at HHS. Read the ami­cus brief here. Every­thing in this piece is based on it. The broad con­tours laid out in the brief were already known. But, with dis­cov­ery, the spe­cif­ic details of pri­vate, inter­nal emails make this med­ical scan­dal even more vivid.”
    • Sul­li­van, I remind you, has been called the father of gay mar­riage. Read­ing what pro-trans lob­by­ists and clin­i­cians say to one anoth­er when off the record has left him deeply rat­tled. In his words, “For­give me for the pas­sion. But this ami­cus brief set my head and heart aflame.”
  7. Nobel eco­nom­ics prize goes to 3 econ­o­mists who found that freer soci­eties are more like­ly to pros­per (Daniel Nie­mann, Mike Corder & Paul Wise­man, AP News): “In their work, the win­ners looked, for instance, at the city of Nogales, which strad­dles the U.S.-Mexico bor­der. Despite shar­ing the same geog­ra­phy, cli­mate and a com­mon cul­ture, life is very dif­fer­ent on either side of the bor­der. In Nogales, Ari­zona, to the north, res­i­dents are rel­a­tive­ly well-off and live long lives; most chil­dren grad­u­ate from high school. To the south, in Mexico’s Nogales, Sono­ra, res­i­dents are much poor­er, and orga­nized crime and cor­rup­tion abound. The dif­fer­ence, the econ­o­mists found, is a U.S. sys­tem that pro­tects prop­er­ty rights and gives cit­i­zens a say in their gov­ern­ment.”
    • There is also an inter­est­ing sum­ma­ry of their con­clu­sions about why some col­o­nized coun­tries are doing real­ly well now and oth­ers are not. Rec­om­mend­ed by a  friend.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 473



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 473, the largest known num­ber whose square (223729) uses dif­fer­ent dig­its than when it is raised to the 4th pow­er (50054665441).

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Evan­ge­lis­tic Shift (Jake Meador, Mere Ortho­doxy): “So what accounts for this shift and how should Chris­tians respond? The answer to the first ques­tion might be sur­pris­ing­ly sim­ple: The shift dates back to the grow­ing aware­ness, accep­tance, and pro­mo­tion of trans­gen­der sex­u­al iden­ti­ties in main­stream Amer­i­can cul­ture. This shift, dat­ing to the mid 2010s and prob­a­bly peak­ing in the ear­ly 2020s, did two things that fun­da­men­tal­ly changed the evan­ge­lis­tic land­scape for Chris­tians in Amer­i­ca.”
  2. Will­ful igno­rance of the male sui­cide cri­sis (Richard V. Reeves, Sub­stack): “It’s essen­tial­ly impos­si­ble to come away from this [New York­er] essay with­out a strong sense that the teen sui­cide cri­sis is, in fact, a teen girl sui­cide cri­sis. That is absolute­ly false. In fact, for every five teenagers dying from sui­cide, four are like­ly to be boys.”
  3. Is Evan­gel­i­cal­ism Real­ly Protes­tant? (Aaron Renn, Sub­stack): “Every time I read a book that describes the reli­gious his­to­ry of Amer­i­ca that talks about the nature of Protes­tantism in the coun­try, it strikes me that the Protes­tantism of the Amer­i­can past is alien to today’s evan­gel­i­cal­ism. They are dif­fer­ent enough to raise the ques­tion as to whether or not Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cal­ism is actu­al­ly Protes­tant in impor­tant ways.… All is not well for Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty to say the least. It’s easy to point at trends in the world to explain this, but giv­en the man­i­fest and wide­ly pub­li­cized prob­lems with­in evan­gel­i­cal­ism, I would sub­mit that at least as much time should go into intro­spec­tion and inter­nal reform.”
  4. Yes, Third-Trimester Abor­tions Are Hap­pen­ing in Amer­i­ca (Emma Camp, The Atlantic): “…Col­orado, which is home to clin­ics that per­form third-trimester abor­tions, record­ed 137 third-trimester abor­tions in 2023. That’s only one state—eight oth­er states, plus Wash­ing­ton, D.C., have no restric­tions on third-trimester abor­tions. Just a few min­utes from my office build­ing in D.C., a clin­ic offers abor­tions up to near­ly 32 weeks. In near­by Bethes­da, Mary­land, a clin­ic per­forms abor­tions up to 35 weeks’ ges­ta­tion.… Amer­i­cans are broad­ly uncom­fort­able with third-trimester abor­tions. A 2023 Gallup poll found that although more than two-thirds of Amer­i­cans believe abor­tion should be legal in the first trimester, just 22 per­cent think it should be legal in the third. And a 2021 Asso­ci­at­ed Press poll found that just 8 per­cent of respon­dents believe that third-trimester abor­tions should be legal in all cas­es.”
  5. A Defense of Lega­cy Admis­sions, the Sur­pris­ing Engine of Mer­i­toc­ra­cy (Ted­dy Ganea, Stan­ford Review): “The pur­pose of col­lege admis­sions isn’t to cre­ate a new elite from scratch. It’s to meld mer­i­to­ri­ous non-elites with the exist­ing elite, to incor­po­rate fresh tal­ent and ideas into the high­est ech­e­lons of pow­er. It should be a win-win-win: estab­lished elites ben­e­fit from new mer­it, new mer­it ben­e­fits from elite con­nec­tions and resources, and soci­ety ben­e­fits from a more mer­i­to­crat­ic elite. Lega­cy admis­sions is a pre­req­ui­site for this mis­sion state­ment, because you can’t meld togeth­er two groups if one of them is miss­ing.… Crit­ics of lega­cy admis­sions ignore the key real­i­ty of human his­to­ry: that the exist­ing elite is almost always deeply entrenched, and break­ing into it requires more than just indi­vid­ual tal­ent — it requires access. And this is where lega­cy admis­sions play their most cru­cial role: by enabling mer­i­to­ri­ous non-elites to mix with the exist­ing elite, they open up the real oppor­tu­ni­ty for upward mobil­i­ty.”
    • Well-argued and provoca­tive. My favorite kind of arti­cle!
  6. 55/45 is a real­ly close race (Nate Sil­ver, Sub­stack): “I’ve nev­er seen an elec­tion in which the fore­cast spent more time in the vicin­i­ty of 50/50, and I prob­a­bly nev­er will… on aver­age, since our fore­cast relaunch on July 30, Har­ris has won 49.4 per­cent of sim­u­la­tions, and Trump has won 50.2 per­cent. (These don’t quite add up to 100 because of the slim pos­si­bil­i­ty of a 269–269 Elec­toral Col­lege tie.) Peo­ple under­stand intu­itive­ly that a 50/50 or 49/51 fore­cast is a toss-up. If the fore­cast is 55/45 in some direc­tion instead, how­ev­er, con­fu­sion can abound — even though this isn’t any dif­fer­ent from 50/50 for most prac­ti­cal pur­pos­es. Some of the prob­lem is that peo­ple can con­fuse this fore­cast for a pre­dic­tion of vote share: if Har­ris were to win 55 per­cent of the vote and Trump 45 per­cent, that would be the biggest land­slide in an Amer­i­can elec­tion since Ronald Rea­gan in 1984. But that’s not what this fore­cast is say­ing. Rather, it’s that Har­ris will win the Elec­toral Col­lege about 11 times out of 20 and Trump will win it 9 times out of 20: still basi­cal­ly a toss-up, just with the coin weight­ed ever so slight­ly in Harris’s favor.”
  7. Don’t Vote Like Your Life Depend­ed on It (Chris Stire­walt, The Dis­patch): “Politi­cians and media hype mer­chants tell us every cycle that this is the most impor­tant elec­tion in his­to­ry, but the truth is that in a nation with sta­ble sys­tem of elec­tions held in a free, fair man­ner and abun­dant con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions for polit­i­cal minori­ties, the knowl­edge that no elec­tion is the final word helps us to live in rel­a­tive har­mo­ny.… It’s not the end of any­thing if the par­ty oppo­site your own wins an elec­tion, just the con­tin­u­a­tion of a 235-year long argu­ment that, Lord will­ing, will go on for anoth­er 235.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • Doc­tor admits wear­ing dis­guise to poi­son mom’s part­ner with fake covid shot (Leo Sands, Wash­ing­ton Post): “A British doc­tor has been found guilty of attempt­ing to kill his mother’s long­time part­ner by dis­guis­ing him­self as a nurse and inject­ing his elder­ly vic­tim with a flesh-eat­ing tox­ic sub­stance while pre­tend­ing to admin­is­ter a rou­tine coro­n­avirus vac­ci­na­tion.”
    • I do not mean to sug­gest that attempt­ed mur­der is less seri­ous than the sorts of things includ­ed above — but I do mean to sug­gest this is a sto­ry you will read because it is wild more than because it has any­thing to do with your life.
  • The ‘Goth’ Vol­ley­ball Play­er Was Actu­al­ly Ton­ing Things Down (Cal­lie Holter­mann, New York Times): “I was in a film study meet­ing with my whole team, and I was telling one of my team­mates that I was so con­fused why my Insta­gram was blow­ing up. And Alli­son [Voigt, her team’s head coach] turned to me and showed me Twit­ter, and was like, ‘You’re going viral. You have two mil­lion views right now.’ I was just in shock. I didn’t know what to do or what was going to hap­pen from this.”

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 472



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 472. There are (I am told) 472 ways to tile a 5x5 grid with inte­ger-sized squares (1x1 squares mixed with 2x2 squares and 3x3 squares, etc).

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. “We Lost Our Baby”: North Car­oli­na Fam­i­ly Los­es 3 after Climb­ing to Roof to Escape Helene Floods (FOX Weath­er on YouTube, 11 min­utes long): “I want them to remem­ber that there is joy beyond the pain… My son could­n’t be more proud at me for hang­ing on; my par­ents were prob­a­bly lift­ing me up when I was between the two things that were hold­ing me down. They are rejoic­ing at the fact that I now can tell them what God did for me, because it was God. He said, ‘Be still. I am in con­trol, and you will pass on.’ This is a back­fire for the dev­il, because he tried to take me out, and her I am shar­ing the word that my sev­en-year-old is a hero, and my par­ents live on in God’s glo­ry.”
    • You will absolute­ly cry watch­ing this. Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  2. How Tolkien and Lewis Re-enchant­ed a War-Weary World (Lev Gross­man, New York Times): “‘The Myth­mak­ers’ takes us through 20 years of deep intel­lec­tu­al friend­ship between Lewis and Tolkien — which widened to include the social cir­cle around them, known as the Inklings — but it’s just as inter­est­ing when doc­u­ment­ing the slow, regret­table ship­wreck of that friend­ship. Jack and Tollers turned out to be not so very, very like each oth­er after all. After his con­ver­sion, Lewis, loud as ever, became famous as a radio lec­tur­er on Chris­tian­i­ty; this irked the qui­et, rig­or­ous Tolkien, because Lewis had nev­er for­mal­ly stud­ied the­ol­o­gy, and Tolkien would nev­er have lec­tured on any­thing with­out earn­ing six advanced degrees in it first.”
  3. What Would Lecrae Do? (Christi­na Gon­za­lez Ho, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “…to hear one of the most tal­ent­ed and dec­o­rat­ed rap­pers alive name-check an artist whose work has revolved around Jesus was deeply heart­en­ing. What moves me is not the idea that some­day my own work might be noticed by some­one more famous. It’s the thought that a sin­cere, intel­li­gent, and pro­found artist like Kendrick Lamar, some­one who’s seen no end of good ideas and inter­est­ing art, might find some­thing in straight­for­ward­ly Chris­t­ian music that gives him pause, that makes him recon­sid­er.”
    • Christi­na is one of our alum­ni: a for­mer wor­ship leader and offi­cer in our min­istry.
  4. Held Hostage Over­seas? The IRS Wants Your Back Tax­es. (Emma Camp, Rea­son): “Many Amer­i­cans who return home after being ille­gal­ly detained over­seas arrive to find they’ve been billed thou­sands of dol­lars by the IRS—including late fees for unpaid tax­es.… ‘I got one of those bills from the IRS say­ing, you owe this much on this year, you owe this much on this year because of fail­ure to pay on time—here’s the inter­est that’s accrued,’ Wash­ing­ton Post reporter and for­mer hostage Jason Reza­ian told NPR. He faced more than $6,000 in fees for unpaid tax­es after his release, fol­low­ing 544 days of deten­tion in Iran.”
  5. Become Slaves to One Anoth­er (John M. G. Bar­clay, Plough): “Paul under­stands the world not as an emp­ty space in which indi­vid­u­als carve out their pri­vate sphere of free­dom, but as a ter­rain already pop­u­lat­ed by com­pet­ing pow­ers greater than human actors, who only imag­ine that they are free. As far as Paul is con­cerned, our search for an indi­vid­u­at­ed, atom­ized auton­o­my is itself an enslav­ing delu­sion, because we are, and are meant to be, free only as we are formed by rela­tion­ships with God and with oth­ers.”
    • The author is a pro­fes­sor of ear­ly Chris­tian­i­ty at the Durham Uni­ver­si­ty in Eng­land. He’s a well-regard­ed Bib­li­cal schol­ar.
  6. I Spent 13 Years Liv­ing as a Man. But After My Spouse’s Exposé, I’m Detran­si­tion­ing. (Tiger Reed, The Free Press): “For detran­si­tion­ers, there is no clear path. Gen­der-affirm­ing clin­i­cians have been ignor­ing and dis­miss­ing our con­cerns. While my tran­si­tion was cov­ered by insur­ance, my detran­si­tion is not. To restore my hair­line and remove my body hair will cost me thou­sands. In the next few years I may have breast recon­struc­tive surgery. There are many ques­tions I don’t have the answers to—such as whether my kids, now rang­ing in age from two to 16 years old, should still call me ‘Dad.’ I am plan­ning to change my name back to Rox­xanne, and to change my license so it says ‘female’ again. But I won­der if I’ll ever pass as a woman.  The gen­der-affirm­ing care mod­el relies on vul­ner­a­ble people’s impatience—rushing them toward major med­ical changes rather than stop­ping to under­stand the root of their pain and suf­fer­ing.”
  7. As America’s Mar­i­jua­na Use Grows, So Do the Harms (Megan Twohey, Danielle Ivory and Car­son Kessler, New York Times): “The accu­mu­lat­ing harm is broad­er and more severe than pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed. And gaps in state reg­u­la­tions, lim­it­ed pub­lic health mes­sag­ing and fed­er­al restraints on research have left many con­sumers, gov­ern­ment offi­cials and even med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers in the dark about such out­comes.… as more peo­ple turn to mar­i­jua­na for help with anx­i­ety, depres­sion and oth­er men­tal health issues, few know that it can cause tem­po­rary psy­chosis and is increas­ing­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the devel­op­ment of chron­ic psy­chot­ic dis­or­ders.”
    • This is sad, both because of the human suf­fer­ing involved and also because some peo­ple seem gen­uine­ly shocked that drugs can have neg­a­tive side-effects.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 465



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 465, the 30th tri­an­gu­lar num­ber.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. How Did Planned Par­ent­hood Become One of the Country’s Largest Sup­pli­ers of Testos­terone? (Jen­nifer Block, The Free Press): “The orga­ni­za­tion would not give spe­cif­ic num­bers, or respond to mul­ti­ple requests for com­ment, but the insur­ance claim data (esti­mates that do not include patients who pay out of pock­et) sug­gest that 1 in 6 U.S. teens and young adults who sought gen­der hor­mones last year were seen at Planned Par­ent­hood. Between 2017 and 2023, affil­i­at­ed clin­ics filed gen­der-relat­ed insur­ance claims for 12,000 youths aged 12–17.”
  2. At 28, I Taught Myself to Be Lik­able. Here’s How I Did It (Sub­stack): “The guide­lines you’ll see below are going to seem real­ly rigid and judg­men­tal. But that’s kind of what I need­ed. Plat­i­tudes about how I need­ed to ‘be myself’ and ‘let my freak flag fly’ did way more harm than good. When I asked peo­ple for advice, a lot of them gave the knee­jerk response, ‘Just don’t care what oth­er peo­ple think of you,’ which is much eas­i­er said than done, espe­cial­ly when it’s bla­tant­ly obvi­ous that oth­er peo­ple can’t stand you.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  3. ‘I Just Have Some Ques­tions’: An Inter­view With Jus­tice Gor­such (David French, New York Times): “I didn’t get to ask every ques­tion I want­ed to, but our con­ver­sa­tion cov­ered a lot of ground, includ­ing Gorsuch’s indict­ment of the reg­u­la­to­ry state, his approach to eval­u­at­ing agency exper­tise, the prob­lem of mass incar­cer­a­tion and coer­cive plea bar­gain­ing, his jurispru­dence hold­ing the Unit­ed States account­able for its oblig­a­tions to Native Amer­i­cans and his def­i­n­i­tion of orig­i­nal­ism and the role of his­to­ry in under­stand­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion.”
    • Unlocked.
  4. Israel-relat­ed:
    • For col­lege stu­dents arrest­ed protest­ing the war in Gaza, the fall­out was only begin­ning (Christo­pher Heller et all, Asso­ci­at­ed Press): “Some 3,200 peo­ple were arrest­ed this spring dur­ing a wave of pro-Pales­tin­ian tent encamp­ments protest­ing the war in Gaza. While some col­leg es end­ed demon­stra­tions by strik­ing deals with the stu­dents, or sim­ply wait­ed them out, oth­ers called in police when pro­test­ers refused to leave. Many stu­dents have already seen those charges dis­missed. But the cas­es have yet to be resolved for hun­dreds of peo­ple at cam­pus­es that saw the high­est num­ber of arrests, accord­ing to an analy­sis of data gath­ered by The Asso­ci­at­ed Press and part­ner news­rooms.”
    • Why Israel Esca­lates (Dalia Dasse Kaye, For­eign Affairs): “…Israeli defense offi­cials do not nec­es­sar­i­ly feel com­fort­able rely­ing on deter­rence by denial—that is, by con­vinc­ing adver­saries that attacks would not succeed—as the Unit­ed States prefers. In these offi­cials’ view, the April defense of Israel was not a total suc­cess because, ulti­mate­ly, the defen­sive coali­tion did not pre­vent the attack; it only lim­it­ed the dam­age. Israeli defense plan­ners pre­fer deter­rence by punishment—showing adver­saries that attacks will pro­voke con­se­quences.”
    • Israel Isn’t ‘Risk­ing’ a Region­al War (Kevin Williamson, The Dis­patch): “…Israel is not ‘risk­ing a region­al war.’ Israel is involved in a region­al war, one that was forced upon it by Iran, some­times using prox­ies and some­times using its own forces direct­ly, as it did on April 13, when it attacked Israel with more than 300 mis­siles and drones. The Houthis, Iran’s proxy in Yemen, are wag­ing war on Israel—including a recent drone attack on Tel Aviv—as well as wag­ing a war on the Unit­ed States, attack­ing a U.S. Navy ves­sel in May, and con­duct­ing a wider mil­i­tary cam­paign against ship­ping in the Red Sea.” May be pay­walled.
  5. Sci­en­tists Dis­cov­er ‘Dark Oxy­gen’ on the Ocean Floor Generated—Surprisingly—by Lumps of Met­al (Shi En Kim, Smith­son­ian Mag­a­zine): “Twelve thou­sand feet under the ocean sur­face is a world of eter­nal mid­night. No sun­light can pen­e­trate to this depth to pro­mote pho­to­syn­the­sis, so no plants are pro­duc­ing oxy­gen there. Yet, the life-sup­port­ing gas is abun­dant in this dark­ness-cloaked region, thanks to an unlike­ly oxy­gen fac­to­ry: pota­to-sized, ‘bat­tery rocks’ on the seafloor.”
  6. US abor­tion num­bers have risen slight­ly since Roe was over­turned, study finds (Geoff Mul­vi­hill & Kim­ber­lee Krue­si, Asso­ci­at­ed Press): “The num­ber of women get­ting abor­tions in the U.S. actu­al­ly went up in the first three months of 2024 com­pared with before the Supreme Court over­turned Roe v Wade, a report released Wednes­day found, reflect­ing the lengths that Demo­c­ra­t­ic-con­trolled states went to expand access.”
    • Relat­ed: Kamala’s Abor­tion Extrem­ism (Ryan T. Ander­son, First Things): “…the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty under Har­ris is as rad­i­cal­ly pro-abor­tion as it can pos­si­bly be. Short of com­ing out for killing tod­dlers, there sim­ply is no way to be more extreme than Kamala Har­ris and her par­ty now are. Kamala Har­ris is a hard-core ideologue—an abor­tion extremist—and has been since her first days as an elect­ed offi­cial. As pres­i­dent, she would be no dif­fer­ent.”
  7. Polit­i­cal or polit­i­cal-adja­cent (the dis­claimers at the bot­tom real­ly mat­ter — I did­n’t write these arti­cles, I just found them inter­est­ing and pass them along with non­par­ti­san intent — wait long enough and you’ll see arti­cles mak­ing point­ed obser­va­tions in all direc­tions. They’re focused one way this week because that’s how the news cycle rolled this time around):
    • Are Democ­rats real­ly more like­ly to be child­less cat ladies? (Andrew Van Dam, Wash­ing­ton Post): “…we had no idea what our friend Julie Zauzmer Weil was get­ting at when she asked if there was any evi­dence to sup­port the notion of the ‘child­less left.’ Weil, who you’ll rec­og­nize from her tremen­dous tax and data sto­ries for The Wash­ing­ton Post, clar­i­fied fur­ther: ‘Do Repub­li­cans have more kids than Democ­rats? It doesn’t seem obvi­ous to me that it would be true.’ The sim­ple answer, how­ev­er? Yes! About 38 per­cent of Democ­rats had nev­er had chil­dren as of 2022, com­pared with 26 per­cent of Repub­li­cans, accord­ing to the uni­ver­sal­ly beloved Gen­er­al Social Sur­vey from the uni­ver­sal­ly beloved NORC at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go.”
    • Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party’s choice of Har­ris was unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic − and the lat­est evi­dence of par­ty lead­ers dis­trust­ing par­ty vot­ers (Daniel Kling­hard, The Con­ver­sa­tion): “But for the first time since 1968, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee will win the nom­i­na­tion with­out win­ning a sin­gle pri­ma­ry vote. This may not be as much of a demo­c­ra­t­ic back­slide as that of the pre­vi­ous so-called ‘mixed peri­od.’ But it would be a cul­mi­na­tion of the elite-ori­ent­ed trends that have shaped the nom­i­nat­ing process since 1984, in which par­ty elites have played an increas­ing­ly large role in shap­ing the pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent who said “this arti­cle left me with many thoughts to chew on.”
    • Five faith facts about Har­ris pick Tim Walz, a ‘Min­neso­ta Luther­an’ Dad (Jack Jenk­ins, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): “Walz is Luther­an.… He does not often dis­cuss his faith pub­licly but has post­ed about attend­ing wor­ship dur­ing Christ­mas and oth­er ser­vices at var­i­ous Luther­an church­es. Walz refers to Pil­grim Luther­an Church in St. Paul — a con­gre­ga­tion in the Evan­gel­i­cal Luther­an Church in Amer­i­ca, a main­line denom­i­na­tion — as ‘my parish.’ ”
    • Walz’s Brand Is More Left than Luther­an Among Min­neso­ta Evan­gel­i­cals (Har­vest Prude, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “For the aver­age Mis­souri Syn­od mem­ber, both pas­tor and lay mem­ber, [Walz] absolute­ly will not be seen as one of us,” Hans Fiene, a Luther­an pas­tor in Mis­souri and cre­ator of Luther­an Satire, a mul­ti­me­dia project to teach about the Luther­an faith, told CT. “So there won’t be any kind of sit­u­a­tion like with Biden being a Catholic, where Catholics go, Well, he doesn’t real­ly rep­re­sent us, but he’s still a Catholic.”
      • Luther­an Satire guy! Great YouTube videos.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 464



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 464, which only has two prime fac­tors: 2 and 29.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Stan­ford in Paris 2024 (Stan­ford News): “A school-record 60 Stan­ford-affil­i­at­ed ath­letes have qual­i­fied to com­pete at the Olympic Games Paris 2024.… Nations rep­re­sent­ed include the Unit­ed States (38), Cana­da (5), Aus­tralia (3), Israel (2), Switzer­land (2), Egypt (1), France (1), Ger­many (1), Greece (1), Hong Kong (1), Nige­ria (1), Philip­pines (1), Sin­ga­pore (1), Spain (1) and Venezuela (1).”
  2. Teach­ers and the Trans­mis­sion of Excel­lence (Matt Clan­cy, New Things Under The Sun): “Here’s a strik­ing fact: through 2022, one in two Nobel prize win­ners in physics, chem­istry, and med­i­cine also had a Nobel prize win­ner as their aca­d­e­m­ic advi­sor.”
    • Men­tor­ship mat­ters, and not just in acad­e­mia. I have a friend who once told me, “You always need to learn up. Look above you and find peo­ple who have already achieved what you hope to achieve and spend as much time around them as you can.”
  3. There Is Almost No ‘Lib­er­al­iz­ing Reli­gion’ in the Unit­ed States (Ryan Burge, Sub­stack): “The more peo­ple go to church, the less lib­er­al they are. That’s true across racial lines. That’s also true in a lot of major Protes­tant tra­di­tions includ­ing a few main­line stal­warts like the Unit­ed Methodist Church and the PCUSA.”
    • Empha­sis removed for read­abil­i­ty.
  4. The Most Reveal­ing Moment of a Trump Ral­ly (McK­ay Cop­pins, The Atlantic): “To under­stand the evolv­ing psy­chol­o­gy and beliefs of Trump’s reli­gious sup­port­ers, I attempt­ed to review every prayer offered at his cam­paign events since he announced in Novem­ber 2022 that he would run again. Work­ing with a researcher, I com­piled 58 in total, the most recent from June 2024. The result­ing document—at just over 17,000 words—makes for a strange, reveal­ing reli­gious text: benign in some places, blas­phe­mous in oth­ers; con­tra­dic­to­ry and poignant and fright­en­ing and sad and, per­haps most of all, beg­ging for exe­ge­sis.”
    • Inter­est­ing con­cept for an arti­cle. Note that the author is Mor­mon, so fac­tor that in when eval­u­at­ing his reli­gious com­men­tary.
  5. Peo­ple Say Queer Peo­ple Are Born That Way. It’s More Com­pli­cat­ed. (Charles M. Blow, New York Times): “ ‘Born this way’ may, unfor­tu­nate­ly, have been an over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion. It’s prob­a­bly clos­er to the truth to say that peo­ple are ‘formed this way.’ As the com­plex­i­ty of human sex­u­al­i­ty has become clear­er, sci­en­tists and writ­ers have attempt­ed to add nec­es­sary nuance to the sub­ject. But the slo­gan remains entrenched in the cul­ture.… It is not only unsup­port­able by sci­ence but also does not cap­ture the full real­i­ty of queer expe­ri­ence and is unjust to some mem­bers of the queer com­mu­ni­ty itself.”
    • I am old enough to remem­ber when the “born this way” argu­ment was the dom­i­nant rea­son homo­sex­u­al­i­ty gained widestream accep­tance in Amer­i­ca. Unlocked.
  6. Should Pornog­ra­phy Be Com­plete­ly Banned? (Ryan Burge, Sub­stack): “The share of Amer­i­cans who want no restric­tions on porn has nev­er been that high. It was 10% of the sam­ple back in the ear­ly 1970s and today it’s dropped to a very small frac­tion — just 4% of those who took the sur­vey in 2022. So, there’s lit­tle appetite for a lais­sez-faire approach to pornog­ra­phy.”
  7. Cou­ples, Stop Writ­ing Your Own Wed­ding Vows (Cheryl Mendel­son, The Atlantic): “Tra­di­tion­al vows cre­ate an intense moment of qui­et speech that height­ens the exu­ber­ance of the toasts, drink­ing, and danc­ing that fol­low. Replac­ing them with sen­ti­men­tal or jokey words turns the vow-tak­ing into an iron­ic per­for­mance of some­thing the cou­ple is implic­it­ly dis­avow­ing. One of my friends regards tak­ing vows oth­er than the tra­di­tion­al ones as ‘like being on the wit­ness stand and answer­ing the ques­tions you wish you had been asked.’ He and his wife want­ed ‘no irony’ or attempts at wit in their vows, and ‘redact­ed’ theirs from a church rite.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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