Tag: LGBTQ

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 92

Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the earth and the sky. How is it that you don't know how to interpret this present time? Luke 12:56

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. On Polit­i­cal Cor­rect­ness (William Dere­siewicz, The Amer­i­can Schol­ar): a long and thought­ful arti­cle. “Selec­tive pri­vate col­leges have become reli­gious schools. The reli­gion in ques­tion is not Method­ism or Catholi­cism but an extreme ver­sion of the belief sys­tem of the lib­er­al elite: the lib­er­al pro­fes­sion­al, man­age­r­i­al, and cre­ative class­es, which pro­vide a large major­i­ty of stu­dents enrolled at such places and an even larg­er major­i­ty of fac­ul­ty and admin­is­tra­tors who work at them. To attend those insti­tu­tions is to be social­ized, and not infre­quent­ly, indoc­tri­nat­ed into that reli­gion.… I say this, by the way, as an athe­ist, a demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist, a native north­east­ern­er, a per­son who believes that col­leges should not have sports teams in the first place—and in case it isn’t obvi­ous by now, a card-car­ry­ing mem­ber of the lib­er­al elite.”
  2. Sim­i­lar: Is Inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty a Reli­gion? (NY Mag, Andrew Sul­li­van): “It posits a clas­sic ortho­doxy through which all of human expe­ri­ence is explained — and through which all speech must be fil­tered. Its ver­sion of orig­i­nal sin is the pow­er of some iden­ti­ty groups over oth­ers. To over­come this sin, you need first to con­fess, i.e., ‘check your priv­i­lege,’ and sub­se­quent­ly live your life and order your thoughts in a way that keeps this sin at bay. The sin goes so deep into your psy­che, espe­cial­ly if you are white or male or straight, that a pro­found con­ver­sion is required.”
  3. Con­sis­tent Veg­e­tar­i­an­ism and the Suf­fer­ing of Wild Ani­mals (Thomas Sit­tler-Adam­czews­ki, Jour­nal of Prac­ti­cal Ethics): argues that “…wild ani­mals have worse lives than farmed ani­mals, and that con­sis­tent veg­e­tar­i­ans should there­fore reduce the num­ber of wild ani­mals as a top pri­or­i­ty.”
  4. What Chris­tian­i­ty in Chi­na Is Real­ly Like (Col­in Clark, Gospel Coali­tion): “First and fore­most, house church lead­ers aren’t under­ground because of the extent of gov­ern­men­tal med­dling, but because of the mere fact of it…. Extend all the appar­ent olive branch­es you want, but Jesus Christ is still the head of the church, not the TSPM and not the CCC.”
  5. Why the courts were wrong to rule against a florist who declined ser­vice to a gay wed­ding (Robert Vis­ch­er, Amer­i­ca Mag­a­zine): “The florist, Bar­ronelle Stutz­man, had served the gay cus­tomers, Robert Inger­soll and Curt Freed, many times over a num­ber of years, includ­ing by pro­vid­ing flow­ers for birth­days and oth­er per­son­al events; she object­ed only to pro­vid­ing flow­ers for their wed­ding. The court declined to rec­og­nize such a dis­tinc­tion, find­ing that a refusal to pro­vide ser­vices for a wed­ding between mem­bers of the same sex amounts to dis­crim­i­na­tion based on sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion.” The author is the dean of a law school and this is one of the more thought­ful and com­pre­hen­sive pieces I have seen on this issue. Relat­ed: UW Madi­son Stu­dents On Reli­gious Free­dom (YouTube): I am skep­ti­cal of videos like this (how many peo­ple did they inter­view and cut out?), but it def­i­nite­ly reflects a ten­den­cy many col­lege stu­dents have — they instinc­tive­ly sup­port reli­gious free­dom when it’s not for evan­gel­i­cals.
  6. Dream­ing of life with­out the GOP? Wel­come to California—where things are far from per­fect (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, LA Times): “We’re a case study in what a polit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty looks like when Repub­li­cans wield lit­tle or no pow­er — and an ongo­ing refu­ta­tion of the con­ceit that but for the GOP, the Unit­ed States would be free of dys­func­tion.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

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 89

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. Are Gen­der Fem­i­nists and Trans­gen­der Activists Under­min­ing Sci­ence? (Debra Soh, LA Times): “Dis­tor­tion of sci­ence hin­ders progress. When gen­der fem­i­nists start refut­ing basic biol­o­gy, peo­ple stop lis­ten­ing, and the larg­er point about equal­i­ty is lost.” The author has a Ph.D. in neu­ro­science and con­sid­ered her­self trans­gen­der as a child.
  2. The Masa­da Mys­tery (Eric Cline, Aeon): some fas­ci­nat­ing insights on one of the most famous tragedies that occurred short­ly after the events described in the New Tes­ta­ment. The author is a pro­fes­sor of clas­sics and anthro­pol­o­gy.
  3. Use Of Weaponized Drones By ISIS Spurs Ter­ror­ism Fears (Joby War­rick, Wash­ing­ton Post): “They’re now show­ing that these devices can be effec­tive on the bat­tle­field,” said Steven Stal­in­sky.… “With the way these groups use social media, my wor­ry is that they’re also putting the idea into people’s heads that this is some­thing you can now do.”
  4. 4 Recent Exam­ples Show Why Nobody Trusts Media ‘Fact Checks’ (Mol­lie Hem­ing­way, The Fed­er­al­ist): “The upshot is that the arti­cle does a nice job of prov­ing Mark Twain’s point that the three types of lies are lies, damn lies and sta­tis­tics, as it uses a sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis of ques­tion­able mer­it to ‘dis­prove’ a state­ment that was lit­er­al­ly true.”
  5. I Ignored Trump News For A Week. Here’s What I Learned. (Farhad Man­joo, NY Times): “On most days, Mr. Trump is 90 per­cent of the news on my Twit­ter and Face­book feeds, and prob­a­bly yours, too. But he’s not 90 per­cent of what’s impor­tant in the world.”
  6. 4 Ways To Make Sure Your Protest Real­ly Makes A Dif­fer­ence (David Christo­pher Bell, Cracked): “But what if I told you that if you fol­low the rules his­to­ry has laid out, protests and boy­cotts absolute­ly can work? For when you look down the annals of suc­cess­ful civ­il dis­obe­di­ence, a clear pat­tern emerges.” This being Cracked, lan­guage warn­ing. Also, the URL is fun­ny: the slug is a‑be­gin­ners-guide-to-over­throw­ing-gov­ern­ment
  7. Two arti­cles that I did not expect to find fas­ci­nat­ing but did: Sports­writ­ing Has Become A Lib­er­al Pro­fes­sion: Here’s How It Hap­pened (Bryan Cur­tis, The Ringer): “I’m a lib­er­al sports­writer myself. The new world suits me just fine. Would it be nice to have a David Frum or Ross Douthat of sports­writ­ing, mak­ing wrong­head­ed-but-inter­est­ing argu­ments about NCAA ama­teurism? Sure. As long as nobody believed them.” This arti­cle led to the con­ser­v­a­tive fol­lowup The Arro­gant Think­ing Of Lib­er­al Sports Writ­ers (Michael Bren­dan Dougher­ty, The Week): “Has no one stopped to notice there is some­thing odd about an anti-racism that will cause an ever­more diverse coun­try to declare root­ing for white-faced mas­cots the only safe thing to do? How will this dele­tion of all non-white faces look in 50 years?”

Things Glen Found Amusing

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 88

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. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Sleep-Deprived Judges Dole Out Harsh­er Pun­ish­ments (Chris Barnes, Har­vard Busi­ness Review): this is clever. The author turned day­light sav­ings time into a nat­ur­al exper­i­ment and ana­lyzed the effects of mild sleep depri­va­tion on judge’s deci­sions. After los­ing 40 min­utes of sleep the judges appar­ent­ly became 5% harsh­er in their ver­dicts. Apply to your own sleep debt and moral conun­drums. 
  2. The Hottest Invite In Town: Don­ald Trump’s Sup­per Club (Sara Mur­ray, CNN): “Long after the Pres­i­den­t’s offi­cial day has end­ed, his worka­holic ten­den­cies have him host­ing a rotat­ing sup­per club at the most cov­et­ed address in Wash­ing­ton. At least four nights a week, he wel­comes a steady stream of Cab­i­net mem­bers, staffers and mem­bers of Con­gress to the res­i­dence to brush up on nation­al secu­ri­ty issues and for­eign affairs over steak, fish and sal­ads, accord­ing to Trump aides.” This is sur­pris­ing­ly infor­ma­tive.
  3. Watch­ing Wikipedi­a’s extinc­tion event from a dis­tance (Andrea James, Boing Boing): “Wikipedia went from peo­ple writ­ing an ency­clo­pe­dia to peo­ple writ­ing rules about writ­ing an ency­clo­pe­dia…” I can attest to the ten­den­cy the author describes and am gen­uine­ly wor­ried about Wikipedia’s tra­jec­to­ry.
  4. The Soul Of Evan­gel­i­cal­ism: What Will Become Of Us? (Scot McK­night): “Let’s get the stan­dard def­i­n­i­tion of evan­gel­i­cal­ism on the table first: an evan­gel­i­cal is com­mit­ted to these four ele­ments: the Bible, the cross as the place of atone­ment, the neces­si­ty of per­son­al con­ver­sion, and an active Chris­t­ian life both in missions/evangelism as well as jus­tice, peace and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. On top of this, evan­gel­i­cal­ism is non-denom­i­na­tion­al and cross-denom­i­na­tion­al.”
  5. The Great Shame Of Our Pro­fes­sion: How The Human­i­ties Sur­vive on Exploita­tion (Kevin Birm­ing­ham , The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): it doesn’t get good until para­graph six (search for the word ‘remiss’ and begin there). “If his­to­ry is any guide, there will be about nine times as many new Ph.D.s this year as there are jobs…. Why do our nation’s Eng­lish depart­ments con­sis­tent­ly accept sev­er­al times as many grad­u­ate stu­dents as their bespoke job mar­ket can sus­tain? Eng­lish depart­ments are the only employ­ers demand­ing the cre­den­tials that Eng­lish doc­tor­al pro­grams pro­duce.”
  6. An Ivy League pro­fes­sor who spent 4 months work­ing in a South Bronx check-cash­ing store says we’re get­ting it all wrong (Alex Mor­rell, Busi­ness Insid­er): “Over and over again, Ser­von heard and observed that check cash­ers met cus­tomers’ needs bet­ter than banks did. She dis­cov­ered there were three main rea­sons peo­ple used these ser­vices instead of banks: cost, trans­paren­cy, and ser­vice.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

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 79

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

  1. First Dinosaur Tail Found Pre­served In Amber (Kristin Romey, Nation­al Geo­graph­ic): this is awe­some. And yo, it’s got feath­ers. Feath­ers! I’ve heard for years that dinosaurs like­ly had feath­ers, but see­ing them is super-cool. Quick, some­one redo the CGI in Juras­sic Park.
  2. Requiem For A Despot (Car­los Eire, First Things): some of you have asked what I thought of Fidel Cas­tro. This sums it up well. He was a car­toon­ish­ly wicked man. The author is a pro­fes­sor of his­to­ry at Yale.
  3. The Neces­si­ty Of Cred­i­bil­i­ty (Nathan J. Robin­son, Cur­rent Affairs): “Cur­rent­ly, peo­ple don’t trust the main­stream media. And the first thing the media must do is acknowl­edge that part of that mis­trust is entire­ly ratio­nal and rea­son­able” (empha­sis in orig­i­nal). An insight­ful cri­tique of the media from the left.
  4. The Media Kow­tow (Mark Hem­ing­way, The Week­ly Stan­dard): this is an old­er piece but still very rel­e­vant.  “For the last sev­er­al years, a huge­ly influ­en­tial por­tion of the Amer­i­can media has vac­il­lat­ed between open­ly admir­ing the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment and pro­vid­ing a forum for its apol­o­gists.” With that in mind, read this — Tsai calls Trump, World Com­men­tari­at IQ drops 50 points (Michael Tur­ton, per­son­al blog). The author lives in Tai­wan and has a unique per­spec­tive. His fol­low-up is also worth read­ing.
  5. Sev­en Rea­sons You Should Not Indulge In Pornog­ra­phy (Andy Nasel­li, Theme­lios): “You should not indulge in pornog­ra­phy for at least sev­en rea­sons: (1) It will send you to hell. (2) It does not glo­ri­fy God with your body. (3) It is a poi­so­nous, fleet­ing plea­sure. (4) It fool­ish­ly wastes your life. (5) It betrays your wife and chil­dren. (6) It ruins your mind and con­science. (7) It par­tic­i­pates in sex slav­ery.”
  6. Jen Hat­mak­er: Hermeneu­tics, Hurt, and Human Affec­tion (Joe Dal­las, per­son­al blog): the fol­low-up con­tains this nugget, “Gen­er­al­ly, when you feel right about your­self, you can live with some­one else’s dis­agree­ment or dis­ap­proval. You may not like them say­ing you’re wrong, but you don’t feel a need to pre­vent them from doing so.”
  7. Con­tra Robin­son on School­ing (Slate Star Codex): like all Slate Star Codex arti­cles, this is long, thought­ful, and well-researched. The fol­low-up post is extreme­ly infor­ma­tive.

Things Glen Found Amusing

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 78

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

  1. On Wednes­day I men­tioned how some mod­ern research about speak­ing in tongues aligns very well with Paul’s com­ments about tongues strength­en­ing believ­ers even while their mind is unfruit­ful (1 Cor 14:4, 14). A read­able sum­ma­ry from a few years back is A Neu­ro­sci­en­tif­ic Look At Speak­ing In Tongues (Bene­dict Carey, NYT) and also Speak­ing in Tongues: Glos­salalia and Stress Reduc­tion (The Dana Foun­da­tion). If you want to see the actu­al research they are allud­ing to, check out the uni­ver­si­ty press release Lan­guage Cen­ter of the Brain Is Not Under the Con­trol of Sub­jects Who “Speak in Tongues” (U Penn, 2006) or the aca­d­e­m­ic papers Sali­vary Alpha-Amy­lase and Cor­ti­sol Among Pen­te­costals on a Wor­ship and Non­wor­ship Day (Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Human Biol­o­gy, 2013) and Glos­so­lalia is asso­ci­at­ed with dif­fer­ences in bio­mark­ers of stress and arousal among Apos­tolic Pen­te­costals (Reli­gion, Brain and Behav­ior, 2012).
  2. A hor­ri­fy­ing look into the mind of 9/11’s mas­ter­mind, in his own words (Marc Thiessen, Wash­ing­ton Post): Indis­putably inter­est­ing. Two caveats: you should look up the name James E. Mitchell for con­text and there are sure­ly those who tes­ti­fy dif­fer­ent­ly than Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Hav­ing said that… fas­ci­nat­ing.
  3. Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Experts Stand Togeth­er, on Cas­es Inside Prison Walls (Ter­ry Mat­ting­ly, On Reli­gion): “There is space enough in our cul­ture to allow dif­fer­ent peo­ple with dif­fer­ent beliefs to live peace­ably in the same land.”
  4. Texas elec­tor who crit­i­cized Trump says he’s resign­ing (Kyle Cheney, Politi­co): “Since I can’t in good con­science vote for Don­ald Trump, and yet have sin­ful­ly made a pledge that I would, the best option I see at this time is to resign my posi­tion as an Elec­tor…. I will sleep well at night know­ing I nei­ther gave in to [the people’s] demands nor caved to my con­vic­tions. I will also mourn the loss of our repub­lic.” The elec­tor is clear­ly a thought­ful Chris­t­ian who made his deci­sion very the­o­log­i­cal­ly. Read his own words about it at Con­flict­ed Elec­tor In A Cor­rupt Col­lege. Even if you dif­fer with his the­ol­o­gy at points, applaud his con­sis­ten­cy. Also note how much Politi­co edit­ed out his the­o­log­i­cal con­vic­tions in their report­ing — a very com­mon occur­rence in major media out­lets.
  5. Gays, Bias, And Pho­ny Sci­ence (Nao­mi Schae­fer Riley,  NY Post): “In the end, nei­ther LaCour nor Hatzen­buehler actu­al­ly did the work to prove their the­ses — because there would be no real con­se­quences if they were caught, and any­way acad­e­mia writ large didn’t want to ‘catch’ them at all.”
  6. The Under­stud­ied Female Sex­u­al Preda­tor (Conor Frieder­dorf, The Atlantic): “In inci­dents of sex­u­al vio­lence report­ed to the Nation­al Crime Vic­tim­iza­tion Sur­vey, 38 per­cent of vic­tims were men…”
  7. Cheat or Go Home: Inside the ‘Dys­func­tion­al Hell’ of Becom­ing a CFB Coach (Matt Hayes, Bleach­er Report): “Auburn offi­cials have always denied it, the NCAA could nev­er nail it down and the statute of lim­i­ta­tions on infrac­tions has long since passed. But here’s the catch: I’ve seen the ledger.” Even if you don’t like sports, this is a worth­while read.

Things Glen Found Amusing

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 66

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

  1. “Me too” social sci­ence is not fight­ing inequal­i­ty (Kevin T. Leicht, Work in Progress): an arti­cle about how aca­d­e­mics can improve soci­ety. The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois Urbana-Cham­paign.
  2. U.S. inves­ti­gat­ing poten­tial covert Russ­ian plan to dis­rupt Novem­ber elec­tions (Dana Priest, Ellen Nakashima and Tom Ham­burg­er, Wash­ing­ton Post): “U.S. intel­li­gence and law enforce­ment agen­cies are inves­ti­gat­ing what they see as a broad covert Russ­ian oper­a­tion in the Unit­ed States to sow pub­lic dis­trust in the upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and in U.S. polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions, intel­li­gence and con­gres­sion­al offi­cials said.” The 2016 elec­tions will make an amaz­ing tele­vi­sion series a gen­er­a­tion from now. 
  3. The Idle Army: America’s Unwork­ing Men (Nico­las Eber­stadt, Wall Street Jour­nal): the author doesn’t say it here, but video games and pornog­ra­phy are huge enablers of this phe­nom­e­non. This is one of those trends that every­one will be talk­ing about in 10–15 years.
  4. You are not your brain: Why a head trans­plant is not what you think it is (Charles Camosy, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): this was mind-blow­ing. Pun intend­ed. With me, the pun is always intend­ed.
  5. How A Cake­mak­er Became An Ene­my Of The State (David Harsyani, The Fed­er­al­ist): “Chris­tians are reg­u­lar­ly com­pared to South­ern seg­re­ga­tion­ists and racists, when in real­i­ty the com­par­i­son is best reversed. Yes, the pow­er of Jim Crow reflect­ed pop­u­lar will, but it was sanc­tioned by the state. The Col­orado Civ­il Rights Com­mis­sion is sim­i­lar­ly empow­ered by the state to use its arbi­trary pow­er to destroy the rep­u­ta­tions, busi­ness­es, and lives of those who hap­pen to offend their sen­si­bil­i­ties.” See also the alarm­ing com­ments of the US Com­mis­sion on Civ­il Rights Chair­man.
  6. Reverse Voxs­plain­ing: Drugs vs. Chairs (Slat­eStar­Codex, the author is a doc­tor who writes under pseu­do­nym). This was a stim­u­lat­ing piece about the EpiPen con­tro­ver­sy to which Vox had a rejoin­der to which the author offered a sur­re­join­der.  Infor­ma­tive and full of provoca­tive state­ments such as “pre­scrip­tion drug price reg­u­la­tion would cost one bil­lion life-years, which would very slight­ly edge out Com­mu­nist Chi­na for the title of Worst Thing Ever.” For an inter­est­ing unre­lat­ed-yet-relat­ed com­pan­ion piece, see the brief Two “The Rest of the Sto­ry” Sto­ries (Alex Tab­barok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion).
  7. What Does The Bible Say About Trans­gen­derism? (Kevin DeY­oung., Gospel Coali­tion): “We under­stand that fol­low­ing Christ means dying to our­selves (Matt. 16:24), being renewed in our minds (Rom. 12:2), and no longer walk­ing as we once did (Eph. 4:17–18). Being ‘true to our­selves’ is always a false choice when it means going against God’s Word.”
  8. Porn Is Bad (Pas­cal-Emmanuel Gob­ry, The Week): “It took decades to rec­og­nize smok­ing for the pub­lic health dis­as­ter that it is, and to final­ly get a grip on it soci­etal­ly. Although porn does­n’t cause can­cer, there’s good evi­dence that it does destroy lives and fam­i­lies.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

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 65

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

  1. The health effects of reli­gious ser­vice atten­dance (red­dit AMA): the researcher, Tyler Van­der­Weele, is a Har­vard pro­fes­sor and a believ­er. You can see his Ver­i­tas talks here.
  2. If you’re not a sports per­son, you may not know that the San Fran­ci­c­so 49’s quar­ter­back recent­ly refused to stand for the nation­al anthem because Amer­i­ca is unjust. Con­tro­ver­sy ensued. Two alum­ni shared rel­e­vant arti­cles: Col­in Kaeper­nick Is Righter Than You Know: The Nation­al Anthem Is a Cel­e­bra­tion of Slav­ery and the salti­er Why I’ll Nev­er Stand Again For ‘The Star-Span­gled Ban­ner’. Doug Wil­son offered good insights at The Seat­ed Col­in Kaeper­nick. See also Be Use­ful (A Post About Col­in Kaepernik) by Scott Adams and Insult­ing Col­in Kaeper­nick Says More About Our Patri­o­tism Than His by Kareem Abdul-Jab­bar. For a con­trary view, see Col­in Kaeper­nick, Meet Hen­ry John­son (David French, Nation­al Review).
  3. Framed. (Christo­pher Gof­fard, LA Times): this is one of the cra­zi­est things I have read all year. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. Heads up: there is a Stan­ford con­nec­tion in the sto­ry and it is not a pos­i­tive one.
  4. What sci­ence real­ly has to say about sex­u­al­i­ty and gen­der (Joe Carter, ERLC): this is a read­able sum­ma­ry of a 144 page PDF writ­ten by Paul McHugh (a psy­chi­a­trist at Johns Hop­kins) and Lawrence May­er (an bio­sta­tis­ti­cian at Ari­zona State). From the orig­i­nal arti­cle: “Sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and gen­der iden­ti­ty resist expla­na­tion by sim­ple the­o­ries. There is a large gap between the cer­tain­ty with which beliefs are held about these mat­ters and what a sober assess­ment of the sci­ence reveals.”
  5. How The Catholic Church Doc­u­ment­ed Moth­er Tere­sa’s 2 Mir­a­cles (Tom Gjel­ten, NPR): “The group rea­soned that if Duf­fin, as an athe­ist, found there was no sci­en­tif­ic rea­son the woman should have recov­ered, who could doubt it was a mir­a­cle? In fact, after her inves­ti­ga­tion of the wom­an’s recov­ery, Duf­fin agreed that the wom­an’s heal­ing was — for lack of a bet­ter word — mirac­u­lous.” The Pope and I dis­agree about a lot of things (includ­ing saints), but I have long been impressed with the way the Catholic Church crit­i­cal­ly eval­u­ates mir­a­cles.
  6. FBI Says For­eign Hack­ers Pen­e­trat­ed State Elec­tion Sys­tems (Michael Isikoff, Yahoo News): I am con­vinced we are way more vul­ner­a­ble on this front than most peo­ple know.
  7. The Sneaky Pro­gram To Spy On Bal­ti­more From Above (Conor Frieder­dorf, The Atlantic): “In real­i­ty, unlike in 1984, Big Broth­er may watch for awhile with­out reveal­ing that there is a Big Broth­er.”
  8. Wait­ing To Die (Michael Pat­ton): well worth your time.

Things Glen Found Amusing

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 64

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

  1. Stu­dents seem upset about Stanford’s new alco­hol pol­i­cy. Check out this Har­vard prof’s NY Times op-ed from 1989 argu­ing Actu­al­ly, Pro­hi­bi­tion Was a Suc­cess. For the record, I think the new pol­i­cy is a step in the right direc­tion. I stand by my ear­li­er com­ments and am also amused at how sim­i­lar the argu­ments I hear today are to those I heard back in 2003.
  2. Kay­la Mueller in Cap­tiv­i­ty: Courage, Self­less­ness as She Defend­ed Chris­t­ian Faith to ISIS Exe­cu­tion­er ‘Jiha­di John’ (James Gor­don Meek, Megan Christie, Bri­an Epstein, Bri­an Ross, ABC News): a pow­er­ful and dis­turb­ing sto­ry. Doc­tors With­out Bor­ders comes off bad­ly.
  3. How USA Today unrav­eled Ryan Lochte’s Rio dra­ma (Kris­ten Hare, Poyn­ter): An insight­ful win­dow into jour­nal­ism and why we should trust news cov­er­age a lit­tle less than we think. Lochte still does­n’t come out look­ing awe­some, but nei­ther does he look like the out­ra­geous vil­lain many assumed (and seemed delight­ed to see him as). Proverbs 18:17 wins again.
  4. Sex on cam­pus isn’t what you think: what 101 stu­dent jour­nals taught me (Lisa Wade, The Guardian): “Hookup cul­ture pre­vails, even though it serves only a minor­i­ty of stu­dents, because cul­tures don’t reflect what is, but a spe­cif­ic group’s vision of what should be….  [it] isn’t what the major­i­ty of stu­dents want, it’s the priv­i­leg­ing of the sex­u­al lifestyle most strong­ly endorsed by those with the most pow­er on cam­pus, the same peo­ple we see priv­i­leged in every oth­er part of Amer­i­can life.”
  5. On David Gushee’s Dis­hon­esty (Jake Meador, Mere Ortho­doxy): this is a fas­ci­nat­ing essay with sur­pris­ing insights about the role of gram­mar in polit­i­cal argu­men­ta­tion. Real­ly.
  6. Evan­gel­i­cals For Trump: In Pow­er or Per­se­cut­ed (S.D. Kel­ly, Christ and Pop Cul­ture): “Not only do most evan­gel­i­cals not believe they are the cen­ter of pow­er, they con­sid­er them­selves to be one wed­ding cake away from jail time.” 
  7. Giv­en the per­pet­u­al Bay Area hous­ing cri­sis, I found these arti­cles stim­u­lat­ing: Lais­sez-Faire in Tokyo Land Use and the fol­low-up The Japan­ese Zon­ing Sys­tem (both by George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty econ pro­fes­sor Alex Tabar­rok): “Japan’s zon­ing laws are more ratio­nal, more effi­cient and fair­er than those used in the Unit­ed States.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

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 62

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, with a pref­er­ence for con­tent from aca­d­e­mics and influ­en­tial voic­es. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

A Quote That Grabbed Glen’s Attention

“I real­ly only love God as much as I love the per­son I love the least” — Dorothy Day

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Cal­i­for­nia Law­mak­er Drops Con­tro­ver­sial Pro­pos­al to Reg­u­late Reli­gious Col­leges (Sarah Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): this was a goofy bill and I’m hap­pi­ly sur­prised it has been sub­stan­tial­ly amend­ed. For one influ­en­tial take on it, see www.sb1146discriminates.org
  2. Every Place Has Detrac­tors. Con­sid­er Where They’re Com­ing From. (Megan McCar­dle, Bloomerg 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).
  3. In Defense Of The Gun Emo­ji (John Brown­lee, Fast Co Design): “They’re send­ing a sym­bol­ic mes­sage about gun con­trol through emo­ji. The prob­lem, though, is that mess­ing with the way that peo­ple com­mu­ni­cate with one anoth­er isn’t sym­bol­ic. It’s deeply lit­er­al.”
  4. What’s Miss­ing From The Con­ver­sa­tion About Trans­gen­der Kids (Jesse Sin­gal, New York Mag­a­zine): this one is an impor­tant read — the pro-LGBT author is con­cerned with the way sci­ence is being ignored when try­ing to help kids who think they were born the wrong gen­der. I shared a relat­ed arti­cle by the same author back in vol­ume 50.
  5. It’s O.K., Lib­er­al Par­ents, You Can Freak Out About Porn (Judith Shule­vitz, NY Times): “Left-lean­ing par­ents shy away from a cause they iden­ti­fy with right-wing cul­ture war­riors, but I chal­lenge any par­ent to affirm that it’s O.K. for her kids to become dig­i­tal porn con­sumers at 11, the aver­age age of a child’s first encounter.”

Something Glen Found Amusing

  • What I Love About The Olympics (Ultra Spir­i­tu­al Life): this is a video. 3.5 min­utes of bru­tal com­men­tary. “Race walk­ing. Now this is a sport that makes sense. Who can go the fastest at not going their fastest? It’s like who can be the best at medi­oc­rity. So para­dox­i­cal. I love it.”

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 you have a non-Stan­ford friend who might be inter­est­ed in these emails, they can sign up at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/subscribe, and if you want to view the archives they are at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 56

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues, with a pref­er­ence for con­tent from aca­d­e­mics and influ­en­tial voic­es. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Articles I Found Interesting

  1. Your Unchurched Friends Want to Know About Your Faith (Bob Smi­etana, Chris­tian­i­ty Today):  “Almost half [of unchurched Amer­i­cans] say they dis­cuss reli­gion freely if the top­ic comes up (47%). A third say they lis­ten with­out respond­ing (31%), while 11 per­cent change the sub­ject. Only about a third say some­one has explained the ben­e­fits of being a Chris­t­ian to them (35%).”
  2. Oberge­fell and the New Gnos­ti­cism (Sherif Gir­gis, First Things): “For decades, the Sex­u­al Rev­o­lu­tion was sup­posed to be about free­dom. Today, it is about coer­cion. Once, it sought to free our sex­u­al choic­es from restric­tive laws and unwant­ed con­se­quences. Now, it seeks to free our sex­u­al choic­es from oth­er peo­ple’s dis­ap­proval.” Sherif has spo­ken for Chi Alpha before.
  3. As a Psy­chi­a­trist I Diag­nose Men­tal Ill­ness. And, Some­times, Demon­ic Pos­ses­sion (Richard Gal­lagher, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Ques­tions about how a sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly trained physi­cian can believe ‘such out­dat­ed and unsci­en­tif­ic non­sense,’ as I’ve been asked, have a sim­ple answer. I hon­est­ly weigh the evi­dence.”
  4. Most Amer­i­can Chris­tians Believe They’re Vic­tims of Dis­crim­i­na­tion (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “Almost half of Amer­i­cans say dis­crim­i­na­tion against Chris­tians is as big of a prob­lem as dis­crim­i­na­tion against oth­er groups, includ­ing blacks and minori­ties.”
  5. Nine Prayers For The Not-Yet-Mar­ried (Mar­shall Segal, Desir­ing God): rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent, rel­e­vant to many of you.
  6. Man Seeks Euthana­sia To End His Sex­u­al­i­ty Strug­gle (Jonathan Blake, BBC): sanc­tion­ing euthana­sia is unwise and leads to unex­pect­ed out­comes. For a the­o­log­i­cal argu­ment see Is There No Moral Law? (Dou­glas Far­row, First Things).
  7. Russia’s Pro­posed Law: No Evan­ge­liz­ing Out­side of Church (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “To share their faith, cit­i­zens must secure a gov­ern­ment per­mit through a reg­is­tered reli­gious orga­ni­za­tion, and they can­not evan­ge­lize any­where besides church­es and oth­er reli­gious sites. The restric­tions even apply to activ­i­ty in pri­vate res­i­dences and online.”
  8. Some more on Brex­it:
    • Why Brex­it Hap­pened And What It Means (Tyler Cowen): “The actu­al prac­ti­cal prob­lems with immi­gra­tion are much greater here in Brus­sels, but the coun­try is much fur­ther from ‘doing any­thing about it,’ whether pru­dent­ly or not, and indeed to this day Bel­gium is not actu­al­ly a mature nation-state and it may splin­ter yet.  That Eng­land did some­thing is one reflec­tion of the fact that Eng­land is a bet­ter-run region than Bel­gium, even if you feel as I do that the vote was a big mis­take…. Most of all, I con­clude that the desire to pre­serve the Eng­lish nation [sic] as Eng­lish is stronger than I or indeed most oth­ers had thought.  There is a pos­i­tive side to that.  And if all along you thought there was no case for Leave, prob­a­bly it is you who is the provin­cial one.” Odd­ly, the [sic] is in the orig­i­nal.
    • A great piece from short­ly before the vote: Reflec­tions Of A Ref­er­en­dum Fence-Sit­ter (David Good­hart, Prospect Mag­a­zine)
    • An inter­est­ing piece on the the­ol­o­gy of Brex­it: For hard-line Protes­tants, leav­ing Europe is a mat­ter of escha­tol­ogy (“Eras­mus”, The Econ­o­mist)

Interesting Research Findings

  • Why Peo­ple With No Reli­gion Are Pro­ject­ed To Decline As A Share Of The World’s Pop­u­la­tion (Michael Lip­ka, Pew Research): “These pro­jec­tions, which take into account demo­graph­ic fac­tors such as fer­til­i­ty, age com­po­si­tion and life expectan­cy, fore­cast that peo­ple with no reli­gion will make up about 13% of the world’s pop­u­la­tion in 2050, down from rough­ly 16% as of 2010.”
  • The Data On Chil­dren In Same-Sex House­holds Get More Depress­ing (Mark Reg­nerus, Pub­lic Dis­course): “…dur­ing ado­les­cence the chil­dren of same-sex par­ents report­ed mar­gin­al­ly less depres­sion than the chil­dren of oppo­site-sex par­ents. But by the time the sur­vey was in its fourth wave—when the kids had become young adults between the ages of 24 and 32—their expe­ri­ences had reversed. Indeed, dra­mat­i­cal­ly so: over half of the young-adult chil­dren of same-sex par­ents report ongo­ing depres­sion, a surge of 33 per­cent­age points (from 18 to 51 per­cent of the total). Mean­while, depres­sion among the young-adult chil­dren of oppo­site-sex par­ents had declined from 22 per­cent of them down to just under 20 per­cent. A few oth­er find­ings are worth men­tion­ing as well. Obe­si­ty surged among both groups, but the dif­fer­ences became sig­nif­i­cant over time, with 31 per­cent obe­si­ty among young-adult chil­dren of oppo­site-sex par­ents, well below the 72 per­cent of those from same-sex house­holds.”
  • Church Atten­dance Linked With Reduced Sui­cide Risk, Espe­cial­ly For Catholics, Study Says (Melis­sa Healy, LA Times): “Com­pared with women who nev­er par­tic­i­pat­ed in reli­gious ser­vices, women who attend­ed any reli­gious ser­vice once a week or more were five times less like­ly to com­mit sui­cide between 1996 and 2010, says a study pub­lished Wednes­day by JAMA Psy­chi­a­try.” See the under­ly­ing study in JAMA Psy­chi­a­try.
  • Researchers Have Found That War Has A Remark­able and Mirac­u­lous Effect (Jeff Guo, Wonkblog): “the expe­ri­ence of wartime vio­lence some­how changes peo­ple for the bet­ter, mak­ing them more coop­er­a­tive and more trust­ing.”
  • Con­crete Prob­lems in AI Safe­ty (mul­ti­ple impres­sive authors, arXiv.org): CS peo­ple please read this, espe­cial­ly in con­junc­tion with AI Downs Fight­er Pilot.

A Quote To Ponder

“Being part of com­mu­ni­ty takes time and involves restric­tions. Mere­ly hav­ing an iden­ti­ty doesn’t. In our cul­tur­al empha­sis and life, we’ve gone from a com­mu­ni­ty focus to an iden­ti­ty focus.” David Brooks (source)

Something Amusing To End On

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 you have a non-Stan­ford friend who might be inter­est­ed in these emails, they can sign up at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/subscribe, and if you want to view the archives they are at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.