Tag: media

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 111

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. Meet the Megadonor Behind the LGBTQ Rights Move­ment (Andy Kroll, Rolling Stone): “More broad­ly, for Gill and his allies, nondis­crim­i­na­tion is the new front of the move­ment: a cam­paign that pits LGBTQ advo­cates against a reli­gious right that respond­ed to mar­riage equal­i­ty by redou­bling its efforts…. Gill refus­es to go on the defense. ‘We’re going into the hard­est states in the coun­try,’ he says. ‘We’re going to pun­ish the wicked.’.… ‘We have been fight­ing for [nondis­crim­i­na­tion] since the Six­ties,’ he says. ‘It’s the reli­gious right that decid­ed to make mar­riage an issue. They worked tire­less­ly on it for decades and they lost.’”
  2. Fusion GPS Illu­mi­nates the Brave New World of Man­u­fac­tured News For Hire (Lee Smith, Tablet Mag­a­zine) “There is no accu­rate account­ing of how many of the sto­ries you read in the news are the fruit of oppo­si­tion research, because no jour­nal­ist wants to admit how many of their top ‘sources’ are just infor­ma­tion packagers—which is why the blind­ing suc­cess of Fusion GPS is the least-cov­ered media sto­ry in Amer­i­ca right now.”
  3. The Death Of Read­ing Is Threat­en­ing The Soul (Philip Yancey, Wash­ing­ton Post): “I am read­ing many few­er books these days, and even few­er of the kinds of books that require hard work. The Inter­net and social media have trained my brain to read a para­graph or two, and then start look­ing around.”
  4. Ask Andrew W.K.: My Dad Is a Right-Wing Ass­hole (Andrew W.K., The Vil­lage Voice): apolo­gies for the title, this is a sur­pris­ing­ly good piece (pub­lished back in 2014).
  5. Char­lie Gard and the Experts (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “The rights of par­ents are essen­tial to a free society’s archi­tec­ture, and fathers and moth­ers are far more like­ly than any oth­er par­ty to have their child’s best inter­ests close to heart. To inter­vene on behalf of experts against the fam­i­ly is some­times nec­es­sary but always dan­ger­ous, fraught with total­i­tar­i­an temp­ta­tions to which the mod­ern West is not immune.” Char­lie Gard died after this col­umn was writ­ten, which makes the piece even more impor­tant.
  6. How Cool Works In Amer­i­ca Today (David Brooks, New York Times): argues that being woke is a cul­tur­al replace­ment for being cool. “The woke men­tal­i­ty became promi­nent in 2012 and 2013 with the Trayvon Mar­tin case and the rise of Black Lives Mat­ter. Embrace it or not, B.L.M. is the most com­plete social move­ment in Amer­i­ca today, as a com­mu­nal, intel­lec­tu­al, moral and polit­i­cal force.”
  7. Free Mar­kets and Uni­corns (Andrew Strain, First Things): “In the age of cor­po­ra­tions, a tru­ly free mar­ket is as myth­i­cal as a uni­corn.” This essay called forth the response piece Why is social­ism being pro­mot­ed by con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian out­lets? (Joe Carter, Acton Insti­tute): “by ana­lyz­ing his essay we can see a com­mon pat­tern that is emerg­ing, even in once con­ser­v­a­tive pub­li­ca­tions: writ­ers who don’t know the first thing about free mar­kets explain­ing why they are infe­ri­or to social­ist poli­cies.” Read­ing them togeth­er is illu­mi­nat­ing.

Things Glen Found Amusing/Entertaining

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Chris­t­ian Mis­sions and the Spread of Democ­ra­cy (Greg Scan­dlen, The Fed­er­al­ist): This is a sum­ma­ry of some rather won­der­ful research Robert Wood­ber­ry pub­lished in The Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Review back in 2012: The Mis­sion­ary Roots of Lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy. If it looks famil­iar it’s because I allude to it from time to time in my ser­mons and con­ver­sa­tions. (first shared in vol­ume 14)

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 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 72

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. Some­one is Learn­ing How To Take Down The Inter­net (Bruce Schneier, per­son­al blog): Schneier is one of the most trust­ed voic­es in the field of com­put­er secu­ri­ty. For a fol­low-up, see this arti­cle which includes thought­ful mus­ings on the prob­a­bil­i­ty and con­se­quences of such a take­down.
  2. Scan­dal? What Scan­dal? (Mark Hem­ing­way, The Week­ly Stan­dard):  “A recent NBC poll found that only 19 per­cent of Amer­i­cans approve of the media, a rat­ing well below that of Clin­ton or even Trump. And the mis­sives in Podesta’s inbox reveal good rea­sons for the medi­a’s rep­u­ta­tion to be in the dump­ster.” For a less alarmed take, see Wik­iLeaks and the Oily Wash­ing­ton Press (Jack Schafer, Politi­co).
  3. Relat­ed: The Fact Check­ers Keep Destroy­ing Fact-Check­ing (Tim­o­thy Car­ney, Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er): “Lots of jour­nal­ists, includ­ing myself, wor­ry about what hap­pens when the pub­lic broad­ly los­es faith in the media.”
  4. The Guilt-free Gospel of Don­ald Trump (Daniel Burke, CNN): a help­ful expla­na­tion of Trump’s reli­gious beliefs.
  5. One third-par­ty can­di­date has a real shot at gain­ing elec­toral votes, and you may not have even heard of him: How Evan McMullin Could Win Utah And The Pres­i­den­cy (Ben­jamin Mor­ris, FiveThir­tyEight): for what it’s worth, I have heard a sur­pris­ing num­ber of peo­ple I respect say that they will vote for McMullin instead of Trump or Clin­ton. These peo­ple are gen­er­al­ly Chris­t­ian intel­lec­tu­als and are not at all rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion. As a result they know he will not win the elec­tion, but feel he is some­one they can vote for with a clear con­science.
  6. How to Cut Cake Fair­ly and Final­ly Eat It Too (Eri­ca Klar­re­ich, Quan­ta Mag­a­zine): “Two young com­put­er sci­en­tists have fig­ured out how to fair­ly divide cake among any num­ber of peo­ple, set­ting to rest a prob­lem math­e­mati­cians have strug­gled with for decades. Their work has star­tled many researchers who believed that such a fair-divi­sion pro­to­col was prob­a­bly impos­si­ble.”
  7. This Is The Most Under-Report­ed Con­flict In The World Right Now (Chris Blattman, per­son­al blog): Ethiopia is fac­ing tough times.

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.