Tag: marriage

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 144

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. Exten­sive Data Shows Pun­ish­ing Reach of Racism for Black Boys (Emi­ly Bad­ger, Claire Cain Miller, Adam Pearce And Kevin Quealy, NY Times): “The authors, includ­ing the Stan­ford econ­o­mist Raj Chet­ty and two cen­sus researchers, Mag­gie R. Jones and Sonya R. Porter, tried to iden­ti­fy neigh­bor­hoods where poor black boys do well, and as well as whites. ‘The prob­lem,’ Mr. Chet­ty said, ‘is that there are essen­tial­ly no such neigh­bor­hoods in Amer­i­ca.’ And, intrigu­ing­ly, these pock­ets — includ­ing parts of the Mary­land sub­urbs of Wash­ing­ton, and cor­ners of Queens and the Bronx — were the places where many low­er-income black chil­dren had fathers at home. Poor black boys did well in such places, whether their own fathers were present or not.”
    • The main take­away from this research is that Amer­i­can soci­ety is fail­ing black men. The sole ray of hope I saw in the arti­cle was in the para­graph above: poor black boys appar­ent­ly do as well as sim­i­lar­ly-sit­u­at­ed poor white boys if there are black fathers near­by. It’s stun­ning: a dense gath­er­ing of fathers can bring health even into father­less sit­u­a­tions. The fam­i­ly is a basic build­ing block of soci­ety and we weak­en it at great risk. I’m shocked this result from the study hasn’t received more cov­er­age.
  2. Mar­riage Has Become a Tro­phy (Andrew Cher­lin, The Atlantic): “For many peo­ple, regard­less of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, a wed­ding is no longer the first step into adult­hood that it once was, but, often, the last. It is a cel­e­bra­tion of all that two peo­ple have already done, unlike a tra­di­tion­al wed­ding, which was a cel­e­bra­tion of what a cou­ple would do in the future.” The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at Johns Hop­kins.
  3. This Preach­er Would Be Hap­py to Share Your Bowl of Açaí (Lau­ra Wil­son, New York Times): “Pas­tors today who want to start a min­istry for those 40 and under fol­low a well-trav­eled path. First, they lease an old the­ater or club. Next, they find great singers and back­up musi­cians. A fog machine on stage is nice. A church should also have a catchy logo or catch­phrase that can be stamped onto mer­chan­dise and brand­ed — socks, knit hats, shoes and sweat­shirts. (An online pop-up shop on Memo­r­i­al Day sold $10,000 in mer­chan­dise its first hour, Mr. Veach said.) And last­ly, church­es need a mon­ey app — Zoe uses Push­pay — to make it easy for church­go­ers to tithe with a swipe on their smart­phones.”
    • I thought this was an odd para­graph: “‘Insta­gram built our church,’ he said one after­noon at his office here a block from the El Rey The­ater. ‘Isn’t that fas­ci­nat­ing?’ Mr. Veach believes he can save souls by being the hip and hap­py-go-lucky preach­er, the one you want to share a bowl of açaí with at Back­yard Bowls on Bev­er­ly Boule­vard, who declines to pub­licly dis­cuss pol­i­tics in the Trump era because it’s hard to min­is­ter if no one wants to come to church. Jesus is sup­posed to be fun, right? ‘I want to be loud and dumb,’ Mr. Veach said with a wide, toothy grin. ‘That’s my goal. If we aren’t mak­ing peo­ple laugh, what are we doing? What is the point?’”
  4. Why Cloud­flare Let An Extrem­ist Strong­hold Burn (Steven John­son, Wired): “Lit­er­al­ly, I woke up in a bad mood and decid­ed some­one shouldn’t be allowed on the inter­net. No one should have that pow­er.” I shared one of the relat­ed arti­cles back in issue 136, but didn’t real­ize it was the theme of the whole issue: The (Divi­sive, Cor­ro­sive, Democ­ra­cy-Poi­son­ing) Gold­en Age of Free Speech. The oth­er arti­cles are worth check­ing out as well. Rec­om­mend­ed by a friend.
  5. Ter­ry Crews: How to Have, Do and Be All You Want (Tim Fer­riss Pod­cast): this is a mov­ing inter­view. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. Worth men­tion­ing: Ter­ry Crews is pub­lic about his Chris­t­ian faith on social media, although it does not come through in this inter­view. I men­tion that because he says some things about guilt and shame towards the end that are not quite right the­o­log­i­cal­ly, but are still worth think­ing about.  
  6. God Made Me Black On Pur­pose (Tim Alber­ta, Politi­co): “A pil­lar of the area’s African-Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty, the shop fea­tures aging walls cov­ered in pho­tos, news clip­pings and oth­er para­pher­na­lia. Two indi­vid­u­als in par­tic­u­lar are lion­ized: Barack Oba­ma, the country’s first black pres­i­dent; and Scott, the first black sen­a­tor from the South since Reconstruction—and the only African-Amer­i­can ever to serve in both cham­bers of Con­gress. Both are chil­dren of sin­gle moth­ers, but polit­i­cal­ly, the pair have lit­tle in com­mon: Oba­ma, a lib­er­al Demo­c­rat raised pri­mar­i­ly by well-off whites in Hawaii before adopt­ing Chicago’s impov­er­ished South Side as his polit­i­cal base; Scott, a con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­can who grew up poor in North Charleston, and whose ini­tial tick­et to D.C. was punched by afflu­ent vot­ers in the state’s three-quar­ters-white 1st Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict. Still, they are mem­bers of a small fraternity—two of just 10 African-Amer­i­cans ever to serve in the Senate—and both are an immea­sur­able source of pride for the bar­ber shop and its cus­tomers.”
    • One detail from lat­er in the arti­cle that stood out to me: Scott got saved in col­lege at a Bible study. Col­lege min­istry mat­ters. Also, the way he became a Repub­li­can is actu­al­ly real­ly fun­ny. Search the arti­cle for the phrase, “Scott knew imme­di­ate­ly he would run; what he didn’t know was for which par­ty.”
  7. How many hours does it take to make a friend? (Jef­frey Hall, Jour­nal of Social and Per­son­al Rela­tion­ships):  “Tak­en togeth­er, results sug­gest that the chance of tran­si­tion­ing from casu­al friend to friend is greater than 50% after around 80–100 hr togeth­er. Results sug­gest that the chance of tran­si­tion­ing from friends to good/best friends is greater than 50% after 119 hr over 3 weeks and 219 hr over 3 months.” The author is a com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kansas.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have How Can I Learn To Receive – And Give – Crit­i­cism In Light Of The Cross?(Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coali­tion): “A believ­er is one who iden­ti­fies with all that God affirms and con­demns in Christ’s cru­ci­fix­ion. In oth­er words, in Christ’s cross I agree with God’s judg­ment of me; and in Christ’s cross I agree with God’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of me. Both have a rad­i­cal impact on how we take and give crit­i­cism.” This is based on a longer arti­cle (4 page PDF). (first shared in vol­ume 63)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 128

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

Since this is issue 128 and that’s an impor­tant num­ber in base 2 and I’m a nerd, I’m going to tweak this issue slight­ly by giv­ing my actu­al opin­ion (or at least the brief ver­sion of it) after each arti­cle.

Also, I am sad that so much of this week’s email is about sex­u­al harass­ment. There’s a lot of stuff I would glad­ly link to if I saw it. To give a few exam­ples: I’d love to see thought­ful arti­cles about what’s hap­pen­ing in Zim­bab­we, some insights about the amaz­ing tumult in Sau­di Ara­bia, some­thing more com­pre­hen­sive about Richard Spencer’s vis­it to cam­pus (ide­al­ly some­thing that deals with the way he treat­ed stu­dents, with the accu­ra­cy of his core claims about Islam, and with the admin­is­tra­tion’s deci­sion to bar the doors once peo­ple left con­sid­ered in light of the heck­ler’s veto), and a piece about how India is devel­op­ing com­pared with Chi­na. But nope — this week there’s a ton of stuff about men being jerks sprin­kled with a hand­ful of oth­er obser­va­tions.

If you find more edi­fy­ing fare, please send it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. There are so many sex­u­al assault sto­ries in the news right now. It’s over­whelm­ing. The one I find most inter­est­ing at the moment is the sto­ry of Repub­li­can state leg­is­la­tor Wes Good­man, who made vul­gar and unwel­come sex­u­al advances to many young men. Rod Dreher has a strong series of posts about it.
    • Wes Good­man And Reli­gious Con­ser­vatism, Inc. (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Turns out that Ohio State Rep. Wes Good­man, has been lead­ing a secret promis­cu­ous gay life, despite being mar­ried and oppos­ing LGBT rights in his career as a con­ser­v­a­tive activist and leg­is­la­tor. The sto­ry is lurid, includ­ing alle­ga­tions (with screen­shots) that he propo­si­tioned col­lege stu­dents who were polit­i­cal activists, invit­ing them to join him (and some­times him and his wife) for sex.”
    • More Wes Good­man Fall­out (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “ You can­not judge an entire reli­gion — any reli­gion — entire­ly by the worst behav­ior of its adher­ents, any more than you can judge it entire­ly by the best behav­ior of its adher­ents. Nev­er­the­less, it’s a dodge when Chris­t­ian lead­ers say, ‘Oh, Bil­ly Gra­ham is who Evan­gel­i­cals are, not Wes Good­man,’ or ‘St. Tere­sa of Cal­cut­ta is who Catholics are, not Father Geoghan.’ All of us are the best and the worst of our com­mu­nions. You, with all your sins and all your virtues, are who Catholics/Orthodox/Protestants are, or who Jews are, or Mus­lims, and so forth. We are both our ideals and our fail­ure to live up to those ideals.”
    • One Of Wes Goodman’s Marks Speaks (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “But I hope that Wes is, like me, a sin­ner with a future. And this is the sec­ond rea­son that I have not de-friend­ed him yet. Now is the time for him to hearti­ly repent of his sins, believe in Jesus Christ and sin­cere­ly and hon­est­ly intend by the help of God and the Holy Spir­it hence­forth to amend his life. Often, the jour­ney in sack­cloth and ash­es is a lone­some one and one fraught with depres­sion. I have been there. But I hope that if Wes intends to make it, he real­izes he doesn’t have to do so alone.”
    • How Wash­ing­ton, DC Preda­tors Tar­get Interns (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “To answer the sec­ond question—how sex­u­al preda­tors operate—I want to begin by talk­ing a bit about the kind of place Wash­ing­ton was when I lived there in the ear­ly 2010s. Wash­ing­ton is a city that turns over a large sec­tor of its work­force every four months. Rough­ly cor­re­spond­ing with the aca­d­e­m­ic year, thou­sands of interns — for the branch­es of gov­ern­ment, for the non-prof­its, for the con­sult­ing firms, for the star­tups — arrive, some­times by plane with a sin­gle suit­case and some­times in their par­ents’ SUVs with the back seats cov­ered with card­board box­es.”
    • Glen’s take: I know some of you are con­sid­er­ing a life in pub­lic ser­vice. Keep Num­bers 32:23  — “your sin will find you out” — close to your heart. The reck­on­ing is com­ing not only for the state leg­is­la­tor in ques­tion but also for those who cov­ered up for him.
    • Relat­ed: The absurd argu­ments we make to defend Roy Moore and Al Franken are get­ting dan­ger­ous (Rus­sell Moore, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Once the next gen­er­a­tion comes to see that pro­gres­sives don’t real­ly care about ‘social jus­tice’ or that con­ser­v­a­tives don’t real­ly care about ‘fam­i­ly val­ues’ except as rhetor­i­cal tools, they will walk away, toward some­thing else. Note the col­laps­ing trust in insti­tu­tions, seen in vir­tu­al­ly every sur­vey of younger Amer­i­cans. Many fac­tors account for this, but one dri­ving fac­tor is cyn­i­cism, the idea that insti­tu­tions are just about keep­ing pow­er for those who already have it.”
    • Also relat­ed: The Dan­ger of Know­ing You’re on the ‘Right Side of His­to­ry’ (Andrew Sul­li­van, NY Mag): “There is a moment here. No par­ty is immune from evil; no tribe has a monop­oly of good. If these bipar­ti­san sex-abuse rev­e­la­tions can begin to under­mine the trib­al­ism that so poi­sons our pub­lic life, to reveal that beneath the tribes, we are all flawed and human, they may not only be a long-over­due turn­ing point for women. They may be a water­shed for all of us.”
  2. What Do We Do with the Art of Mon­strous Men? (Claire Ded­er­er, The Paris Review): “They did or said some­thing awful, and made some­thing great. The awful thing dis­rupts the great work; we can’t watch or lis­ten to or read the great work with­out remem­ber­ing the awful thing. Flood­ed with knowl­edge of the maker’s mon­strous­ness, we turn away, over­come by dis­gust. Or … we don’t. We con­tin­ue watch­ing, sep­a­rat­ing or try­ing to sep­a­rate the artist from the art.” The lan­guage in this piece is vul­gar.
    • Glen’s take: From a Chris­t­ian per­spec­tive, some­one like Bill Cos­by or Woody Allen is only a extreme exam­ple of a larg­er issue. Most Hol­ly­wood prod­ucts were made by peo­ple who sleep around or watch porn or oth­er­wise vio­late basic Bib­li­cal norms. If wicked­ness in the cre­ator taints all their cre­ative prod­ucts then there’s very lit­tle for a Chris­t­ian to read, to lis­ten to, or to watch. Cre­ative works stand or fall on their own apart from the moral virtue of the cre­ator. 1 Corinthi­an 5:9–13 has rel­e­vance for how we relate to cul­ture at large.
  3. Apple Sab­o­tages Itself (Justin Lee, First Things): “A def­i­n­i­tion of speech nar­row enough to exclude dec­o­ra­tive arts will almost cer­tain­ly exclude source code as well. The FBI could eas­i­ly use such a prece­dent in court to com­pel Apple to write code capa­ble of breach­ing their iPhone users’ pri­va­cy.”
    • Glen’s take: I am 100% on the side of Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop. Jack Phillips is right and his crit­ics are dan­ger­ous­ly wrong. If he los­es his case, unin­tend­ed con­se­quences will abound. This arti­cle high­lights one.
  4. Report­ing on Paula White and the White House (Julia Duin, GetRe­li­gion): this is a fol­low-up to the pro­file of White I shared last week and it con­tains more fas­ci­nat­ing anec­dotes. “Much of what she told me about 2007, her year from hell when she got divorced, her church was los­ing mem­bers and she was inves­ti­gat­ed by a U.S. Sen­ate com­mit­tee didn’t make it into the final draft but she lost 20 pounds dur­ing that time. ‘I had my first glass of wine in 2007,’ she said. ‘I asked God per­mis­sion to cuss. I used every word except His in vain. I searched for what door I’d left open for all this to go wrong.’”
    • Glen’s take: Read­ing these arti­cles makes me think I would like Paula White. Then again, I’m par­tial to Paulas. 🙂
  5. Repub­li­cans’ beliefs are bend­ing to Trump. Here’s why they might not even notice. (Bri­an Resnick, Vox): “…when peo­ple change their mind on a sub­ject, they have a hard time recall­ing that they ever felt anoth­er way. It’s an intrigu­ing find­ing in part because it affirms that peo­ple think their beliefs are more sta­ble than they actu­al­ly are.”
    • Glen’s take: As a pas­tor I observe this all the time. We are all less ratio­nal than we believe. “Who­ev­er trusts in his own mind is a fool” (Proverbs 28:26a, ESV).
  6. Why would-be par­ents should choose to get mar­ried (The Econ­o­mist): “You could make enough con­fet­ti for a sum­mer of wed­dings with all the aca­d­e­m­ic papers that show how much chil­dren gain from being brought up in sta­ble, lov­ing fam­i­lies, and how much they suf­fer when those fam­i­lies break down…. And one strong claim that can be made for mar­riage is that it appears to glue par­ents togeth­er more tight­ly than any oth­er arrange­ment.”
    • Glen’s take: It’s enough to make you think God’s plan is wise. Shock­ing. Also, in case you’ve ever won­dered: the Econ­o­mist does­n’t iden­ti­fy which authors wrote which arti­cles. It’s a phi­los­o­phy of theirs.
  7. What Are the Lessons of the Post-Wein­stein Moment? (Rebec­ca Trais­ter and Ross Douthat, The Cut): “I do think porn has had some sort of weird effect on the male imag­i­na­tion. And that mas­tur­ba­tion plus a moral­i­ty of con­sent con­vinces some men to think, Okay, I accept that the rules say, I can’t actu­al­ly rape you but under the rules of con­sent, I’m just stand­ing over here, you know, doing my own thing.”
    • Glen’s take: Wow. A civ­il and intel­li­gent con­ver­sa­tion between two very dif­fer­ent peo­ple who find com­mon ground amidst their dif­fer­ences (where they dif­fer I large­ly agree with Douthat). A hun­dred mil­lion more con­ver­sa­tions like this and our cul­ture might get health­i­er.

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have the hilar­i­ous Every­thing That’s Wrong Of Rac­coons (Mal­lo­ry Ort­berg, The Toast): “Once when my dog died a pas­sel of rac­coons showed up in the back­yard as if to say ‘Now that he’s gone, we own the night,’ and they didn’t flinch when I yelled at them, and I found it dis­re­spect­ful to 1) me per­son­al­ly and 2) the entire flow of the food chain. Don’t dis­re­spect me if you can’t eat me, you false-night-dogs.” (first shared in vol­ume 97)

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 112

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. ‘God’s ACLU’ Seeks Free­dom For The Faith­ful (Tunku Varadara­jan, Wall Street Jour­nal): “The pro­gres­sive or lib­er­al approach is to equate free exer­cise of reli­gion with the free­dom to wor­ship and to deny that it has any­thing to do with how a per­son orga­nizes his life. The Beck­et Fund and oth­ers assert that most reli­gions have com­plete codes gov­ern­ing not only wor­ship but oth­er aspects of con­duct. This com­pre­hen­sive Way of Life—which leads a devout­ly Chris­t­ian bak­er to decline to dec­o­rate a cake for a same-sex wed­ding, for instance—commands much more from believ­ers than pro­gres­sives will allow.” Beck­et is Chi Alpha’s pro bono legal team. The author is a fel­low at Stan­ford’s Hoover Insti­tu­tion.
  2. For Cul­tur­al­ly Illit­er­ate Sci­ence Reporters, Canaan­ite DNA Yields Occa­sion to Slap Bible Around (David Kling­hof­fer, Evo­lu­tion News): Did you see all those head­lines sug­gest­ing that a DNA study proved the Bib­li­cal accounts wrong? Yeah… don’t lose any sleep over that. When some­one tells you that the Bible is wrong, don’t assume they actu­al­ly know what the Bible says. See also a longer and more reflec­tive post from an OT schol­ar Break­ing News: Sci­ence Dis­proves The Bible (but I real­ly like the short and punchy one that’s the main link).
  3. The ‘Prophets’ and ‘Apos­tles’ Lead­ing the Qui­et Rev­o­lu­tion in Amer­i­can Reli­gion (Bob Smi­etana, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “It’s very spon­ta­neous. We went to a con­fer­ence where a num­ber of apos­tles were speak­ing and Bill John­son was doing a Bible teach­ing. He had prob­a­bly talked 20 or 30 min­utes, and you could feel the rest­less­ness in the room. He said, ‘I know you are just wait­ing for me to stop preach­ing because you want the pow­er. But just hang with me here.’ Peo­ple weren’t there to lis­ten to him. What they want­ed was for him to lay hands on them.” Inter­est­ing read that is not entire­ly fair but also fair­ly insight­ful. 
  4. Venezue­la’s Unprece­dent­ed Col­lapse (Ricar­do Haus­mann, Project Syn­di­cate). “Mea­sured in the cheap­est avail­able calo­rie, the min­i­mum wage declined from 52,854 calo­ries per day to just 7,005 dur­ing the same peri­od, a decline of 86.7% and insuf­fi­cient to feed a fam­i­ly of five, assum­ing that all the income is spent to buy the cheap­est calo­rie.” The author is a Har­vard pro­fes­sor and for­mer Venezue­lan offi­cial.
  5. Why The Scari­est Nuclear Threat May Be Com­ing From Inside The White House (Michael Lewis, Van­i­ty Fair): “The Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment might be the most com­pli­cat­ed orga­ni­za­tion on the face of the earth. Two mil­lion fed­er­al employ­ees take orders from 4,000 polit­i­cal appointees. Dys­func­tion is baked into the struc­ture of the thing: the sub­or­di­nates know that their boss­es will be replaced every four or eight years, and that the direc­tion of their enter­pris­es might change overnight—with an elec­tion or a war or some oth­er polit­i­cal event.” Fas­ci­nat­ing and fright­en­ing, even once you fac­tor in the author’s hos­til­i­ty to the Trump admin­is­tra­tion.
  6. Mar­riage Mat­ters (W. Brad­ford Will­cox, City Jour­nal): “…young adults who fol­low three steps—getting at least a high school degree, then work­ing full-time, and then mar­ry­ing before hav­ing any chil­dren, in that order—are very unlike­ly to become poor.” The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at UVA.
  7. From the Enlight­en­ment to the Dark Ages: How “new athe­ism” slid into the alt-right (Phil Tor­res, Salon): “As a philoso­pher — some­one who cares deeply about intel­lec­tu­al hon­esty, ver­i­fi­able evi­dence, crit­i­cal think­ing and moral thought­ful­ness — I now find myself in direct oppo­si­tion with many new athe­ist lead­ers. That is, I see my own advo­ca­cy for sci­ence, crit­i­cal thought and basic moral­i­ty as stand­ing in direct oppo­si­tion to their posi­tions.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Read­ing The Whole Bible in 2016: A FAQ (Gospel Coali­tion, Justin Tay­lor). How much time each day would it take you to read the entire Bible in a year? “There are about 775,000 words in the Bible. Divid­ed by 365, that’s 2,123 words a day. The aver­age per­son reads 200 to 250 words per minute. So 2,123 words/day divid­ed by 225 words/minute equals 9.4 min­utes a day.” This arti­cle is full of good advice for what could be the best com­mit­ment you make all year. Do it! (first shared in vol­ume 31 and use­ful for any year)

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 97

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. The ben­e­fits and harms of mar­i­jua­na, explained by the most thor­ough research review yet (Ger­man Lopez, Vox): “the bot­tom line is that mar­i­jua­na does pose some harms — par­tic­u­lar­ly for peo­ple at risk of devel­op­ing men­tal health dis­or­ders, preg­nant women, those vul­ner­a­ble to res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems, and any­one get­ting into a car. And while some of these harms may be over­come by marijuana’s ben­e­fits or cur­tailed by con­sum­ing pot with­out smok­ing it, the evi­dence shows that weed’s rep­u­ta­tion as a safe drug is unde­served.”
  2. What do slave­hold­ers think? (Austin Choi-Fitz­patrick, Aeon):  “The con­tem­po­rary traf­fick­ers and slave­hold­ers I spoke with are not moti­vat­ed by a love of injus­tice. They are instead dri­ven by cul­tur­al iner­tia, a desire for prof­it or, more fre­quent­ly, a need for basic sus­te­nance…. The terms used here – slav­ery and slave­hold­er – nev­er crossed the lips, nor per­haps even the minds, of the men I spoke with.” The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of San Diego.
  3. The Cri­sis of West­ern Civ (David Brooks, NY Times): “These days, the whole idea of West­ern civ is assumed to be reac­tionary and oppres­sive. All I can say is, if you think that was reac­tionary and oppres­sive, wait until you get a load of the world that comes after it.”
  4. Charles Murray’s ‘Provoca­tive’ Talk (Wendy M. Williams and Stephen J. Ceci, NY Times): two Cor­nell pro­fes­sors “tran­scribed Mr. Murray’s speech and — with­out indi­cat­ing who wrote it — sent it to a group of 70 col­lege pro­fes­sors (women and men, of dif­fer­ent ranks, at dif­fer­ent uni­ver­si­ties)… the 57 pro­fes­sors who respond­ed to our request gave Mr. Murray’s talk an aver­age score of 5.05, or ‘mid­dle of the road.’” This, of course, is the speech which faced a back­lash result­ing in a pro­fes­sor need­ing a neck brace. Fas­ci­nat­ing.
  5. This Is About That (Andrew Wil­son, Vimeo): this 3.5 minute video starts slow but ends strong. A med­i­ta­tion on the rela­tion­ship between mar­riage and the gospel. Rec­om­mend­ed.
  6. Inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty Is a Polit­i­cal Foot­ball; Here’s Why It Doesn’t Have to Be (Chris Mar­tin, Het­ero­dox Acad­e­my): “Pro­gres­sives have adopt­ed an over­am­bi­tious mod­el of inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty in which every­one lies on axes of oppres­sion, and I will explain this model’s three flaws. Con­ser­v­a­tives gen­er­al­ly believe that inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty is use­less, but I explain how inter­sec­tion­al schol­ar­ship can be use­ful to researchers, regard­less of whether they are lib­er­al, cen­trist, con­ser­v­a­tive, lib­er­tar­i­an, or eclec­tic.”
  7. Here’s the Mil­lion-Dol­lar Answer to How Per­se­cut­ed Chris­tians Per­se­vere (Sarah Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Researchers grouped respons­es to per­se­cu­tion into three cat­e­gories: sur­vival, asso­ci­a­tion, and con­fronta­tion…. ‘Evan­gel­i­cals are divid­ed between those who are will­ing to take up arms and those who view wit­ness and non-retal­i­a­tion as the respons­es to which the Bible calls Chris­tians,’ the report stat­ed. They tend to be more skep­ti­cal of the inter­re­li­gious dia­logue favored by Catholics and main­line Protes­tants, and more like­ly to pur­sue evan­ge­liza­tion.”

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 94

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. Sor­ry, but if you’re a Chris­t­ian, you need to go to church. Reg­u­lar­ly. (Paul Prather, Lex­ing­ton Her­ald-Leader): “You might see your­self as a ter­rif­ic base­ball pitch­er. But if you only throw base­balls in your back­yard at a ply­wood cutout, you won’t progress. You’re not even real­ly play­ing base­ball. To dis­cov­er the full extent of your abil­i­ties, to under­stand the true game, you need a catch­er, a coach, infield­ers and out­field­ers — and even some­one stand­ing in the batter’s box ready to swat your best fast­ball right back at you.”
  2. Review­ing Rod Dreher’s “The Bene­dict Option” (Jake Meador, Mere Ortho­doxy): The Bene­dict Option is a much-dis­cussed book which lays out a strat­e­gy for Chris­tians in the mod­ern world — delib­er­ate with­draw­al from some aspects of cul­ture, delib­er­ate engage­ment with oth­ers. This is one of the most insight­ful reviews I’ve read.
  3. Just Who Are These ‘Peo­ple of Faith’ Any­way? (John Stack­house, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The Ther­ava­da form of Bud­dhism, still the dom­i­nant ver­sion of that reli­gion in Sri Lan­ka and South­east Asia, does not ven­er­ate a deity. The Chi­nese tra­di­tions of Con­fu­cian­ism and Dao­ism do not, either. Many forms of belief in the super­nat­ur­al do not require faith so much as knowl­edge of the divine and of the cor­rect prac­tices to align one­self with it in order to best nego­ti­ate the world.”
  4. Can Reli­gious Char­i­ties Take the Place of the Wel­fare State? (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “Keis­ter [a pro­fes­sor of soci­ol­o­gy at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty] has argued that reli­gious engage­ment is close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with finan­cial generosity—in a recent paper, for exam­ple, she found that those who attend reli­gious ser­vices every week give near­ly three times as much as those who don’t.”
  5. Read the above in con­junc­tion with How Utah Keeps The Amer­i­can Dream Alive (Megan McAr­dle, Bloomberg View): “The vast wel­fare infra­struc­ture from the Mor­mon Church nat­u­ral­ly makes it eas­i­er to have small­er gov­ern­ment. Per­haps that could be repli­cat­ed by oth­er com­mu­ni­ties. But the val­ues of the Mor­mon Church may cre­ate a pub­lic that sim­ply needs less help. That’s hard­er for anoth­er com­mu­ni­ty to imi­tate. I’m not sure this key ingre­di­ent is avail­able in a sec­u­lar ver­sion; I think reli­gion might only come in reli­gion fla­vor. How the heck is some state gov­ern­ment sup­posed to get peo­ple to mar­ry, and stay mar­ried?”
  6. In Europe, cohab­i­ta­tion is stable…right? (Brad Wilcox and Lau­rie DeRose, Brook­ings): “It is easy to see why some con­clude that mar­riage per se does not mat­ter. But here’s the thing: mar­riage is itself strong­ly asso­ci­at­ed with fam­i­ly sta­bil­i­ty. U.S. chil­dren born to cohab­it­ing par­ents are twice as like­ly to see their par­ents’ rela­tion­ship end com­pared to chil­dren born to mar­ried par­ents…”
  7. Does it pay to get a dou­ble major? (Chris­tos Makridis, Quartz): our very own Chris­tos ana­lyzes whether get­ting a techie plus a fuzzy major yields a high­er salary than get­ting either alone.
  8. Why Amer­i­can Farm­ers Are Hack­ing Their Trac­tors With Ukrain­ian Firmware (Jason Koe­bler, Vice): “It’s quite sim­ple, real­ly. John Deere sold farm­ers their trac­tors, but has used soft­ware to main­tain con­trol of every aspect of its use after the sale.”

    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 84

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 World’s Most Out­stand­ing Med­ical Mis­sion­ary (Sarah Eekhoff Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): the fam­i­ly of God fre­quent­ly makes me proud.
  2. ‘Worst Year Yet’: The Top 50 Coun­tries Where It’s Hard­est To Be A Chris­t­ian (Jere­my Weber, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Per­se­cu­tion rose glob­al­ly again for the third year in a row, indi­cat­ing how volatile the sit­u­a­tion has become,” stat­ed Open Doors. “Coun­tries in South and South­east Asia rapid­ly rose to unprece­dent­ed lev­els and now rank among such vio­lent areas as the Mid­dle East and Sub-Saha­ran Africa.”
  3. When The Brain Scram­bles Names, It’s Because You Love Them (Michelle Trudeau, NPR): This is my defense to you all. Also, I found this bit fun­ny — in a fam­i­ly “you are much more like­ly to be [acci­den­tal­ly] called the dog’s name than you are to be called the cat’s name.”
  4. It’s inau­gu­ra­tion day, so a lot of the arti­cles relate to the new­ly sworn-in Pres­i­dent.
    • How To Live Under An Unqual­i­fied Pres­i­dent (John Piper, Desir­ing God): this is good.
    • Trump Takes Jezreel (Dou­glas Wil­son, per­son­al blog): “Polit­i­cal fac­tions want every­thing to be a sim­ple bina­ry choice on the human lev­el. You either are all in for Jezebel or all in for Jehu. What Scrip­ture invites us to is qual­i­fied sup­port, or per­haps qual­i­fied dis­ap­proval. So and so was a good king, but did not remove the high places.”
    • The Church’s Integri­ty in the Trump Years (Mark Gal­li, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Our main polit­i­cal task in this new admin­is­tra­tion is more urgent than ever… we can speak char­i­ta­bly to one anoth­er about our dis­agree­ments, tak­ing the time to find out what each of us real­ly believes and why.”
    • The Pol­i­tics of Answered Prayer (Peter Lei­thart, First Things): sure to dis­qui­et and/or offend.
    • A Bit Of Con­text on Trump, NATO, and Ger­many (Tyler Cowen, per­son­al blog): “I strong­ly favor NATO and I don’t think you can trust the Rus­sians with just about any­thing, or for that mat­ter make much of a deal with them.” (this piece is not about the inau­gu­ra­tion, but I found it very stim­u­lat­ing)
  5. Bon­ho­ef­fer On Why God Does Not Fill The Empti­ness When A Loved One Dies (Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coalition): “to the extent the empti­ness tru­ly remains unfilled one remains con­nect­ed to the oth­er per­son through it.”
  6. Author­i­tar­i­ans Dis­tract Rather than Debate (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “it has long been assumed that pro­pa­gan­da posts would sup­port the gov­ern­ment with praise or crit­i­cize crit­ics of the gov­ern­ment. Not so. In fact, pro­pa­gan­da posts active­ly steer away from con­tro­ver­sial issues.”
  7. Men’s Bread­win­ning Still Mat­ters For Mar­riage (Chris­tos Makridis, Insti­tute For Fam­i­ly Stud­ies): yes, that’s our Chris­tos. “The col­lege-edu­cat­ed may embrace egal­i­tar­i­an ideals of fam­i­ly life, but their behav­ior is more com­pli­cat­ed.”

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 15

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world.

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

  1. From the help­ing-you-get-bet­ter-grades depart­ment: Here’s The Best Way To Guess Cor­rect­ly On A Mul­ti­ple-Choice Test (Justin Couch­man, Quartz): the author, a psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor, describes a tech­nique you can use to tell whether to trust your first instinct or revise the answer. You’re wel­come.
  2. From the kim-davis-no-rela­tion depart­ment:
  3. From the with-this-ring-I-thee-wed depart­ment:
  4. From the rag­ing-debates-which-enrage-peo­ple depart­ment: Hun­gry For Souls: Was Junipero Ser­ra A Saint? (Gre­go­ry Orfalea, Com­mon­weal): this is a help­ful sum­ma­ry of the case for Junipero Ser­ra. I’m not sure — is it J‑Ro that is named after him, Ser­ra, or both?

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 8

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world.

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

  1. From the unex­pect­ed con­se­quences depart­ment The Col­lege Majors Most Like­ly To Mar­ry Each Oth­er (Wonkblog, Ana Swan­son): pre­sent­ed with­out com­ment as a pub­lic ser­vice.
  2. From the pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment depart­ment:
  3. From the cel­e­brat­ing-our-fam­i­ly depart­ment: Under­stand­ing the roles of faith-based health-care providers in Africa: review of the evi­dence with a focus on mag­ni­tude, reach, cost, and sat­is­fac­tion (sev­er­al authors, The Lancet): Michelle Park’s fiance Har­ri­son Hines is a coau­thor. The jour­nal has sev­er­al relat­ed arti­cles in their faith-based health care series. If you pub­lish some­thing, let me know.
  4. From the rec­om­mend­ed-by-a-stu­dent depart­ment: How Wide the Divide: Sex­u­al­i­ty at the Fore­front, Cul­ture at the Cross­roads (Ravi Zacharias blog): a reflec­tion on the dif­fer­ences that make us dif­fer. This one was drawn to my atten­tion by one of you. If you find an arti­cle help­ful, route it my way. There’s a good chance I’ll pass it on.
  5. From the make-up-your-mind depart­ment: Humans Are Nowhere Near As Spe­cial As We Like To Think and The Traits That Make Human Beings Unique (both by Melis­sa Hogen­boom, BBC): these two arti­cles go togeth­er. It’s an inter­est­ing approach — argue both sides of a case in sep­a­rate arti­cles so that peo­ple can link to the one they like. I’m going to go with Jesus on this one: “you are worth more than many spar­rows” (Matthew 10:31).

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.