Tag: mental health

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 435

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

This is vol­ume 435, a tri­an­gu­lar num­ber.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Ground of Our Assur­ance (D. A. Car­son, YouTube): three and a half excel­lent min­utes
  2. No, Not Every­one Needs Ther­a­py (Freya India, Sub­stack): “… there are peo­ple who now feel pres­sured to get pro­fes­sion­al help for nor­mal neg­a­tive emotions—teens and pre-teens con­vinced the rea­son they’re sad some­times is because they’re bro­ken and haven’t paid enough to be healed. Now not going to ther­a­py is a red flag. Seek­ing sup­port from friends and fam­i­ly is exploit­ing their ’emo­tion­al labour’. And men are shamed for pre­fer­ring to chat to their mates about their prob­lems than pay a stranger, like that one Bet­ter­Help ad where a woman dis­miss­es a guy she’s dat­ing because he ‘doesn’t do ther­a­py’. Think about that! How have we reached the point where we’re stig­ma­tis­ing peo­ple for not need­ing men­tal health sup­port?”
  3. What If There Is No Such Thing as ‘Bib­li­cal’ Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty? (Brady Bow­man, Mere Ortho­doxy): “…the ‘pro­duc­tiv­i­ty mind­set’ seems to me, at least in some ways, deeply incon­gru­ent with the Bible’s vision of real­i­ty. To say it more sim­ply, to adopt an out­look dom­i­nat­ed by speed and effi­cien­cy and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is to adopt a per­spec­tive that is alien to the writ­ers of Scrip­ture.…”
  4. New tech­nol­o­gy inter­prets archae­o­log­i­cal find­ings from Bib­li­cal times (Tel Aviv Uni­ver­si­ty, Phys.org): “Apply­ing their method to find­ings from ancient Gath (Tell es-Safi in cen­tral Israel), the researchers val­i­dat­ed the Bib­li­cal account, ‘About this time Haz­a­el King of Aram went up and attacked Gath and cap­tured it. Then he turned to attack Jerusalem’ (2 Kings 12, 18). They explain that, unlike pre­vi­ous meth­ods, the new tech­nique can deter­mine whether a cer­tain item (such as a mud brick) under­went a fir­ing event even at rel­a­tive­ly low tem­per­a­tures, from 200°C and up.”
  5. US Intel­li­gence Shows Flawed Chi­na Mis­siles Led Xi to Purge Army (Peter Mar­tin and Jen­nifer Jacobs, Bloomberg): “The cor­rup­tion inside China’s Rock­et Force and through­out the nation’s defense indus­tri­al base is so exten­sive that US offi­cials now believe Xi is less like­ly to con­tem­plate major mil­i­tary action in the com­ing years than would oth­er­wise have been the case, accord­ing to the peo­ple, who asked not to be named dis­cussing intel­li­gence.”
    • This may be the most impor­tant bit of geopo­lit­i­cal news you read this year.
  6. The Mis­guid­ed War on the SAT (David Leon­hardt, New York Times): “With the Supreme Court’s restric­tion of affir­ma­tive action last year, emo­tions around col­lege admis­sions are run­ning high. The debate over stan­dard­ized test­ing has become caught up in deep­er ques­tions about inequal­i­ty in Amer­i­ca and what pur­pose, ulti­mate­ly, the nation’s uni­ver­si­ties should serve. But the data sug­gests that test­ing crit­ics have drawn the wrong bat­tle lines. If test scores are used as one fac­tor among oth­ers — and if col­leges give appli­cants cred­it for hav­ing over­come adver­si­ty — the SAT and ACT can help cre­ate diverse class­es of high­ly tal­ent­ed stu­dents. Restor­ing the tests might also help address a dif­fer­ent frus­tra­tion that many Amer­i­cans have with the admis­sions process at elite uni­ver­si­ties: that it has become too opaque and uncon­nect­ed to mer­it.”
    • Not the main point of the essay, but worth com­ment­ing that pol­i­tics poi­sons what­ev­er it polar­izes.
  7. The Pecu­liar Sto­ry of C. S. Lewis and Janie King Moore (Bethel McGrew, First Things): “Lewis’s let­ters from this peri­od are marked by an under­stat­ed deep relief. He wrote to a fre­quent cor­re­spon­dent that he was only just begin­ning to appre­ci­ate ‘how bad it was’ in hind­sight. And yet, though we miss the works he might have writ­ten under dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances, we might also won­der whether the books we have would have been the same, had duty not com­pelled him to die to self every day for the sake of one frag­ile, impos­si­ble old woman. In the end, his own words rang as true for him­self as they did for every­one else: ‘Whether we like it or not God intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want.’”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 399

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

This is vol­ume 399, a Har­shad num­ber. That means it is divis­i­ble by the sum of its dig­its. 3+9+9=21 and 399÷21 = 19.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Sci­ence is a strong-link prob­lem (Adam Mas­troian­ni, Sub­stack): “There are two kinds of prob­lems in the world: strong-link prob­lems and weak-link prob­lems. Weak-link prob­lems are prob­lems where the over­all qual­i­ty depends on how good the worst stuff is. You fix weak-link prob­lems by mak­ing the weak­est links stronger, or by elim­i­nat­ing them entire­ly.… Sci­ence is a strong-link prob­lem. In the long run, the best stuff is basi­cal­ly all that mat­ters, and the bad stuff doesn’t mat­ter at all.”
    • High­ly rec­om­mend­ed, has appli­ca­tion to mul­ti­ple domains.
  2. The Myth of Sex­u­al Expe­ri­ence (Jason S. Car­roll & Bri­an J. Willough­by, Insti­tute for Fam­i­ly Stud­ies): “…we review a series of recent stud­ies using dif­fer­ent nation­al datasets that show that hav­ing mul­ti­ple sex­u­al part­ners dur­ing the dat­ing years leads to high­er divorce rates in future mar­riages. We also report the find­ings of a new study that exam­ined how sex­u­al expe­ri­ence his­to­ries are asso­ci­at­ed with the qual­i­ty of cur­rent mar­riage rela­tion­ships. Over­all, we found that ‘sex­u­al­ly inex­pe­ri­enced’ indi­vid­u­als, or the ones who have only had sex with their spouse, are the one’s most­ly like­ly to be flour­ish­ing in mar­riage.  These ‘sex­u­al­ly inex­pe­ri­enced’ indi­vid­u­als report the high­est lev­els of rela­tion­ship sat­is­fac­tion, rela­tion­ship sta­bil­i­ty, sex­u­al sat­is­fac­tion, and emo­tion­al close­ness with their spous­es.”
    • The arti­cle ends with this won­der­ful line: “While the ben­e­fit of expe­ri­ence can be seen in many aspects of life, sex­u­al inexpe­ri­ence appears to still be the best path­way to mar­i­tal flour­ish­ing.”
    • The authors are pro­fes­sors at BYU.
  3. The Tox­ic Real­i­ty of a Post-Famil­ial Soci­ety (Aaron M. Renn, Sub­stack): “South Korea is a par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing case study. It has the world’s low­est fer­til­i­ty rate, with a total fer­til­i­ty rate or TFR of 0.78 (2.1 is need­ed just to keep pop­u­la­tion con­stant). It has also devel­oped par­tic­u­lar­ly unhealthy gen­der rela­tions, ele­ments of which we see echoed in our own coun­try. As here, these have even start­ed to car­ry over into pol­i­tics. What we see in South Korea is that post-famil­ial­ism can pro­duce unhap­pi­ness and dys­func­tion­al social and polit­i­cal dynam­ics.”
    • Relat­ed: Stop Treat­ing Women Like Men (Sophie Fuji­wara, Stan­ford Review): “In col­lege, we don’t dif­fer­en­ti­ate between men and women when advis­ing stu­dents about their careers, as if their life arcs will fol­low the same tra­jec­to­ry. The great­est priv­i­lege that high-earn­ing, edu­cat­ed women have is the priv­i­lege of choice, but this notion of per­fect­ly equal career tra­jec­to­ries dis­ad­van­tages women.”
  4. When Ide­ol­o­gy Dri­ves Social Sci­ence (Michael Jin­dra & Arthur Sakamo­to, The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “In com­plex areas like the study of racial inequal­i­ty, a fun­da­men­tal­ism has tak­en hold that dis­cour­ages sound method­ol­o­gy and the use of reli­able evi­dence about the roots of social prob­lems. We are not talk­ing about mere dif­fer­ences in inter­pre­ta­tion of results, which are com­mon. We are talk­ing about mis­takes so clear that they should cause research to be seri­ous­ly ques­tioned or even dis­re­gard­ed. A great deal of research… rigs its sta­tis­ti­cal meth­ods in order to arrive at ide­o­log­i­cal­ly pre­ferred con­clu­sions.”
    • The authors are a cul­tur­al anthro­pol­o­gist at BU and a soci­ol­o­gist at Hong Kong Bap­tist Uni­ver­si­ty, respec­tive­ly.
  5. I was a teenage evan­gel­i­cal mis­sion­ary (Jon Ward, Yahoo News): “These lead­ers want­ed a mus­cu­lar faith that didn’t shrink back from a fight. They want­ed a dra­mat­ic faith too, full of spec­ta­cle. They were all big per­son­al­i­ties, which they used to com­pen­sate for their lack of train­ing, exper­tise, and expe­ri­ence. Faith, for them, was not the act of extend­ing one’s self beyond the realm of what could be known to trust in what one hoped could be true. They had more cer­tain­ty than any­thing. Chris­tian­i­ty was true, no ques­tions asked. For them, faith was a belief that they could call down mir­a­cles from heav­en to heal the sick or pre­dict the future or change world events. Lead­ers like Engle and Ahn didn’t come across as char­la­tans. They were very sin­cere. But ear­ly on in their lives, they got locked into a par­tic­u­lar type of faith min­istry, and they built audi­ences and fol­low­ings based on that brand and that kind of faith. At that point, their liveli­hoods and incomes became depen­dent on cater­ing to those same types of Chris­tians. Per­son­al evo­lu­tion or growth became con­strained by their busi­ness mod­el.”
  6. Some­thing inter­est­ing is hap­pen­ing in Tul­sa (Trevor Klee, Sub­stack): “I vis­it­ed Tul­sa through Tul­sa Tomor­row, a pro­gram that flies out young Jews to Tul­sa for a week­end to try to get them to live there. So far, from their own num­bers, they’ve flown out about 150 Jews over the last 6 years and about 70–80 have moved.”
    • A fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry, not very long.
  7. A Rad­i­cal Exper­i­ment in Men­tal Health Care, Test­ed Over Cen­turies (Mati­na Ste­vis-Grid­neff and Koba Ryck­e­waert, New York Times): “By the end of the 19th cen­tu­ry, near­ly 2,000 [peo­ple with men­tal health prob­lems] lived among the Geel­ians, as the locals call them­selves.… That has made Geel both some­thing of a mod­el for a par­tic­u­lar par­a­digm of psy­chi­atric care and an out­lier, often regard­ed over the cen­turies with sus­pi­cion (includ­ing by The New York Times, which, in a head­line from March 23, 1891, called Geel ‘a colony where lunatics live with peas­ants’ that had been ‘pro­duc­tive of mis­ery and evil results’).”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.

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 Q: What Is a Hole? A: We’re Not Sure! (Jason Kot­tke, per­son­al web­site): “As for straws — rea­son tells me they only have one hole but I know in my heart they have two.”  From vol­ume 276.

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 395

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

This is vol­ume 395, which feels like it ought to have a lot of fac­tors but only has 79 and 5.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. What if Kids Are Sad and Stressed Because Their Par­ents Are? (David French, New York Times): “The same year that 44 per­cent of teenagers report­ed suf­fer­ing from seri­ous sad­ness, accord­ing to the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion, 41.5 per­cent of adults report­ed ‘recent symp­toms of an anx­i­ety or depres­sive dis­or­der,’ an increase from an already high base­line of 36.4 per­cent just months before. More­over, while sui­cide rates have gone up in the youngest cohort of Amer­i­cans, they still mate­ri­al­ly lag sui­cide rates among their par­ents and grand­par­ents.… Teens do not exist on an island. The con­nec­tion between parental emo­tion­al health and the emo­tion­al health of their kids is well estab­lished. More­over, the way par­ents raise their kids can, of course, direct­ly affect emo­tion­al health.”
    • I have unlocked the pay­wall on this one.
  2. Com­pa­ny that Trade­marked ‘Wor­ship Leader’ Makes Oth­ers Drop the Term (Kelsey Kramer McGin­nis, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Since 2016, Authen­tic Media has owned the rights to the phrase ‘wor­ship leader’ when applied to peri­od­i­cals, online pub­li­ca­tions, and web­sites with resources around wor­ship. Pri­or to that, the trade­mark had been owned by Maranatha Music, Wor­ship Leader’s pre­vi­ous own­er, since 1993. The com­pa­ny also holds trade­marks for ‘wor­ship leader work­shop’ and ‘song dis­cov­ery.’ ”
  3. Is It Time to Quit ‘Qui­et Time’? (Dru John­son and Celi­na Dur­gin, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “If today’s com­mon rit­u­als of Bible engage­ment are not work­ing, then we must dis­rupt them in favor of deep learn­ing prac­tices. These new habits could con­sist of com­mu­nal lis­ten­ing, deep div­ing, repeat­ed read­ing of whole books of the Bible, or some oth­er strat­e­gy. But the assump­tion that dai­ly devo­tions alone will yield scrip­tur­al lit­er­a­cy and flu­en­cy no longer appears ten­able, because it nev­er was.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent, who says, “The title is very click­baitish, but the arti­cle itself has good points. It’s cri­tiquing the prac­tice of only super­fi­cial­ly and pas­sive­ly read­ing short pas­sages of Scrip­ture iso­lat­ed from their con­text in the rest of the Bible and iso­lat­ed from oth­er believ­ers.”
  4. Edu­ca­tion Com­men­tary is Dom­i­nat­ed by Opti­mism Bias (Fred­die deBoer, Sub­stack): “The opti­mism bias in edu­ca­tion cir­cles has sev­er­al ortho­dox­ies. 1. Every stu­dent is capa­ble of aca­d­e­m­ic flour­ish­ing, and every time a stu­dent does not flour­ish, it must be the result of some sort of error or injus­tice.… 5. Any­one who dis­agrees with this doc­trine hates chil­dren, sup­ports inequal­i­ty, and doesn’t care about poor peo­ple.”
  5. How to Learn and Teach Eco­nom­ics with Large Lan­guage Mod­els, Includ­ing GPT (Tyler Cowen & Alexan­der T. Tabar­rok, SSRN): “One gen­er­al rule is that you should keep on ask­ing GPT fol­low-up ques­tions to get more out of it. It is more like squeez­ing a lemon than throw­ing a dart at a tar­get.… Don’t be pas­sive, as with GPTs you always need to ask, and it rewards you when you are being demand­ing.”
    • A lot of very good advice about using GPT and oth­er LLMs in here in here.
  6. How to Under­stand the Well-Being Gap between Lib­er­als and Con­ser­v­a­tives (Musa al-Ghar­bi, Amer­i­can Affairs Jour­nal): “The well-being gap between lib­er­als and con­ser­v­a­tives [show­ing that con­ser­v­a­tives are hap­pi­er and bet­ter-adjust­ed than lib­er­als] is one of the most robust pat­terns in social sci­ence research. It is not a prod­uct of things that hap­pened over the last decade or so; it goes back as far as the avail­able data reach. The dif­fer­ences man­i­fest across age, gen­der, race, reli­gion, and oth­er dimen­sions. They are not mere­ly present in the Unit­ed States, but in most oth­er stud­ied coun­tries as well.”
    • The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at Colom­bia.
  7. A lot of Stan­ford-relat­ed sto­ries, most­ly neg­a­tive:
    • The Mar­vel­lous Boys of Palo Alto (David Leav­itt, The New York­er): “To grow up in Stan­ford is to be a son of Stan­ford in a way that no mere grad­u­ate can ever know. Bankman-Fried is a son of Stan­ford if there ever was one, as am I. And what are sons of Stan­ford taught? That if we should get into trou­ble, even real bad trou­ble, we can rest assured that our par­ents will bail us out, which is tan­ta­mount to rest­ing assured that Stan­ford will bail us out, since Stan­ford has tak­en our par­ents to its heart and feeds mon­ey reg­u­lar­ly into their bank accounts and owns the land on which they live. This faith in the cer­ti­tude of pro­tec­tion, if not unique to the Stan­ford nation-state, is, I am con­vinced, one of its most essen­tial aspects.”
      • The author grew up in the house in which Sam Bankman-Fried is now under house arrest.
    • Stanford’s War Against Its Own Stu­dents (Francesca Block, The Free Press): “Any place that sets a bar so high that you have to be lit­er­al­ly per­fect to get there; and when you get here, if you don’t stay per­fect, [Stan­ford] will pun­ish you with every admin­is­tra­tive resource they have for embar­rass­ing them,” Paul­meier added. “To me, that just sounds like an abu­sive par­ent, not like an edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tion you should mod­el your kid’s life around.”
    • Stan­ford’s Dark Hand in Twit­ter Cen­sor­ship (Thomas Adamo & Josi­ah Jon­er, The Stan­ford Review): “Emails revealed that the Stan­ford Inter­net Obser­va­to­ry (SIO) active­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed with Twit­ter to sup­press infor­ma­tion they knew was fac­tu­al­ly true. Taibbi’s inves­ti­ga­tion revealed that Stanford’s Viral­i­ty Project ‘rec­om­mends that mul­ti­ple plat­forms take action even against ‘sto­ries of true vac­cine side effects’ and ‘true posts which could fuel hes­i­tan­cy.’”
      • Empha­sis in orig­i­nal.
    • Next Steps on Protests and Free Speech (Dean Jen­ny S. Mar­tinez, let­ter to the Stan­ford Law School): “I want to set expec­ta­tions clear­ly going for­ward: our com­mit­ment to diver­si­ty, equi­ty, and inclu­sion is not going to take the form of hav­ing the school admin­is­tra­tion announce insti­tu­tion­al posi­tions on a wide range of cur­rent social and polit­i­cal issues, make fre­quent insti­tu­tion­al state­ments about cur­rent news events, or exclude or con­demn speak­ers who hold views on social and polit­i­cal issues with whom some or even many in our com­mu­ni­ty dis­agree. I believe that focus on these types of actions as the hall­mark of an ‘inclu­sive’ envi­ron­ment can lead to cre­at­ing and enforc­ing an insti­tu­tion­al ortho­doxy that is not only at odds with our core com­mit­ment to aca­d­e­m­ic free­dom, but also that would cre­ate an echo cham­ber that ill pre­pares stu­dents to go out into and act as effec­tive advo­cates in a soci­ety that dis­agrees about many impor­tant issues.”
      • The dean is spit­ting straight fire in this let­ter.

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 The Sins That Cry Out to Heav­en (Eduar­do Andi­no, First Things): “The Chris­t­ian tra­di­tion speaks of four pec­ca­ta cla­man­tia, or sins that cry out to heav­en for vengeance: mur­der, sodomy, oppres­sion of the poor, and defraud­ing work­ers of their wages…. This is not an arbi­trary col­lec­tion of sins.” From vol­ume 274

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 393

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

This is vol­ume 393, which I find inter­est­ing because it only has two fac­tors: 131 and 3.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Some AI thoughts
    • The Walui­gi Effect (mega-post) (Cleo Nar­do, Less Wrong): “Here’s an exam­ple — in 101 Dal­ma­tions, we meet a pair of pro­tag­o­nists (Roger and Ani­ta) who love dogs, show com­pas­sion, seek sim­ple plea­sures, and want a fam­i­ly. Can you guess who will turn up in Act One? Yep, at 13:00 we meet Cruel­la De Vil — she hates dogs, shows cru­el­ty, seeks mon­ey and fur, is a child­less spin­ster, etc. Cruel­la is the com­plete inver­sion of Roger and Ani­ta. She is the walui­gi of Roger and Ani­ta. Recall that you expect­ed to meet a char­ac­ter with these traits more­so after meet­ing the pro­tag­o­nists. Cruel­la De Vil is not a char­ac­ter you would expect to find out­side of the con­text of a Dis­ney dog sto­ry, but once you meet the pro­tag­o­nists you will have that con­text and then the Cruel­la becomes a nat­ur­al and pre­dictable con­tin­u­a­tion. [And since LLMs are all about con­tin­u­a­tion, sim­u­lat­ed Cruel­las emerge pre­dictably.]”
      • This was eas­i­ly the most inter­est­ing thing I read this week. A very clever argu­ment.
    • Why am I not ter­ri­fied of AI? (Scott Aaron­son, per­son­al blog): “In the Ortho­dox AI-doomers’ own account, the paper­clip-max­i­miz­ing AI would’ve mas­tered the nuances of human moral phi­los­o­phy far more com­plete­ly than any human—the bet­ter to deceive the humans, en route to extract­ing the iron from their bod­ies to make more paper­clips. And yet the AI would nev­er once use all that learn­ing to ques­tion its paper­clip direc­tive. I acknowl­edge that this is pos­si­ble. I deny that it’s triv­ial.”
      • The author is a CS prof from UT who works at Ope­nAI
  2. Why the Men­tal Health of Lib­er­al Girls Sank First and Fastest (Jonathan Haidt, Sub­stack): “We are now 11 years into the largest epi­dem­ic of ado­les­cent men­tal ill­ness ever record­ed. I know so many fam­i­lies that have been thrown into fear and tur­moil by a child’s sui­cide attempt. You prob­a­bly do too, giv­en that the recent CDC report tells us that one in ten ado­les­cents now say they have made an attempt to kill them­selves. It is hit­ting all polit­i­cal and demo­graph­ic groups. The evi­dence is abun­dant that social media is a major cause of the epi­dem­ic, and per­haps the major cause. It’s time we start­ed treat­ing social media and oth­er apps designed for ‘engage­ment’ (i.e., addic­tion) like alco­hol, tobac­co, and gam­bling, or, because they can harm soci­ety as well as their users, per­haps like auto­mo­biles and firearms.”
    • A well-writ­ten and dis­tress­ing sum­ma­ry of the cur­rent state of ado­les­cent and young adult men­tal health. The author is a social psy­chol­o­gist at NYU.
    • Relat­ed: Review of 1,039 stud­ies indi­cates exer­cise can be more effec­tive than coun­selling or med­ica­tion for depres­sion (Ben Singh, Car­ol Maher, & Jac­in­ta Brins­ley, Psy­Post): “When com­par­ing the size of the ben­e­fits of exer­cise to oth­er com­mon treat­ments for men­tal health con­di­tions from pre­vi­ous sys­tem­at­ic reviews, our find­ings sug­gest exer­cise is around 1.5 times more effec­tive than either med­ica­tion or cog­ni­tive behav­iour ther­a­py.”
      • I expect this will be con­test­ed in future stud­ies. Fas­ci­nat­ing, though. The authors are all at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Aus­tralia. The lead author seems to be the Aus­tralian equiv­a­lent of a MD/PhD.
    • Relat­ed: Lynch­ing the Deplorables (Chris Hedges, Sub­stack): “The Jan. 6 pro­tes­tors were not the first to occu­py Con­gres­sion­al offices, includ­ing Nan­cy Pelosi’s office. Young envi­ron­men­tal activists from the Sun­rise Move­ment, anti-war activists from Code Pink and even con­gres­sion­al staffers have engaged in numer­ous occu­pa­tions of con­gres­sion­al offices and inter­rupt­ed con­gres­sion­al hear­ings. What will hap­pen to groups such as Code Pink if they occu­py con­gres­sion­al offices with Repub­li­cans in con­trol of the White House, the Con­gress and the courts? Will they be held for years in pre­tri­al deten­tion? Will they be giv­en lengthy prison terms based on dubi­ous inter­pre­ta­tions of the law? Will they be con­sid­ered domes­tic ter­ror­ists? Will protests and civ­il dis­obe­di­ence become impos­si­ble?”
      • This is a sane and sober­ing essay.
  3. Test­ing Com­mon The­o­ries on the Rela­tion­ship Between Pre­mar­i­tal Sex and Mar­i­tal Sta­bil­i­ty (Jesse Smith and Nicholas H. Wolfin­ger): “The table below shows the wide range of vari­ables we used to try to explain the rela­tion­ship between pre­mar­i­tal sex part­ners and divorce. Do any of them mat­ter? The answer is a clear no. With­out con­trols, peo­ple with pre­mar­i­tal part­ners are 161% more like­ly to dis­solve their mar­riages com­pared to peo­ple who tie the knot as vir­gins. In oth­er words, pre­mar­i­tal sex increas­es the chances of divorce between twofold and three­fold. After includ­ing the laun­dry list of covari­ates shown in the table, the odds of divorce remain 151% higher—in oth­er words, a sta­tis­ti­cal arti­fact away from being iden­ti­cal.”
    • This falls into the cat­e­go­ry of “research which is obvi­ous­ly true but which many peo­ple wish to dis­be­lieve”
  4. Some COVID thoughts:
    • Covid back­lash hob­bles pub­lic health and future pan­dem­ic response (Lau­ren Weber and Joel Achen­bach, Wash­ing­ton Post): “When the next pan­dem­ic sweeps the Unit­ed States, health offi­cials in Ohio won’t be able to shut­ter busi­ness­es or schools, even if they become epi­cen­ters of out­breaks. Nor will they be empow­ered to force Ohioans who have been exposed to go into quar­an­tine. State offi­cials in North Dako­ta are barred from direct­ing peo­ple to wear masks to slow the spread. Not even the pres­i­dent can force fed­er­al agen­cies tois­sue­vac­ci­na­tion or test­ing man­dates to thwart its march.”
      • Amer­i­ca usu­al­ly comes through in the end. The arti­cle is super-angsty about all this, but I view it as an inevitable response to admin­is­tra­tive over­reach and also a fun­da­men­tal­ly good thing. Dis­trib­uted pow­er is safer pow­er.
    • Relat­ed: When a Rene­gade Church and a Zeal­ous Coun­ty Health Depart­ment Col­lide (David Zweig, Sub­stack): “…exten­sive legal doc­u­ments, total­ing more than a thou­sand pages, reveal a coun­ty, and its health depart­ment, that went to extra­or­di­nary, and poten­tial­ly unlaw­ful, lengths to enforce its decrees. These efforts include levy­ing more than $2 mil­lion in fines against Cal­vary, and a mul­ti-faceted sur­veil­lance pro­gram of the church and its mem­bers, breath­tak­ing in scope and rem­i­nis­cent of total­i­tar­i­an regimes, rather than an Amer­i­can coun­ty health depart­ment — the spy oper­a­tion includ­ed stake­outs, forced in-per­son mon­i­tor­ing of prayer groups and oth­er inti­mate activ­i­ties, and track­ing the cel­lu­lar mobil­i­ty data of church­go­ers.”
      • The details in here are pret­ty wild. The com­ments are inter­est­ing — one of the pas­tors of a neigh­bor­ing church dis­putes part of the account, but the author is like, “I’ve read sworn affi­davits tes­ti­fy­ing to the con­trary.”
      • So much going on — my main take­away is that it real­ly was worse in San­ta Clara Coun­ty than almost any­where else in Amer­i­ca. The tech­nocrats felt empow­ered to an absurd degree.
    • Hav­ing said that: Here’s Why the Sci­ence Is Clear That Masks Work (Zeynep Tufek­ci, New York Times): “Brown, who led the Cochrane review’s approval process, told me that mask man­dates may not be ten­able now, but he has a stark­ly dif­fer­ent feel­ing about their effects in the first year of a pan­dem­ic. ‘Mask man­dates, social dis­tanc­ing, the oth­er shut­downs we had in terms of even restau­rants and things like that — if places like New York City didn’t do that, the num­ber of deaths would have been much high­er,” he told me. “I’m very con­fi­dent of that state­ment.’ So the evi­dence is rel­a­tive­ly straight­for­ward: Con­sis­tent­ly wear­ing a mask, prefer­ably a high-qual­i­ty, well-fit­ting one, pro­vides pro­tec­tion against the coro­n­avirus.”
  5. Earn­ings Are Greater and Increas­ing in Occu­pa­tions That Require Intel­lec­tu­al Tenac­i­ty (Chris­tos Makridis, Louis Hick­man & Ben­jamin Man­ning, SSRN): “…we iden­ti­fy two broad occu­pa­tion­al per­son­al­i­ty require­ments, which we label intel­lec­tu­al tenac­i­ty and social adjust­ment. Intel­lec­tu­al tenac­i­ty encom­pass­es achievement/effort, per­sis­tence, ini­tia­tive, ana­lyt­i­cal think­ing, inno­va­tion, and inde­pen­dence. Social adjust­ment encom­pass­es emo­tion reg­u­la­tion, con­cern for oth­ers, social ori­en­ta­tion, coop­er­a­tion, and stress tol­er­ance. Both occu­pa­tion­al per­son­al­i­ty require­ments relate sim­i­lar­ly to occu­pa­tion­al employ­ment growth between 2007 and 2019. How­ev­er, among over 10 mil­lion respon­dents to the Amer­i­can Com­mu­ni­ty Sur­vey, jobs requir­ing intel­lec­tu­al tenac­i­ty pay high­er wages…”
    • Chris­tos is one of our alum­ni.
  6. Sam Bankman-Fried is under house arrest at Stan­ford. Stu­dents are obsessed. (Lisa Bonos, Wash­ing­ton Post): “The uni­ver­si­ty seems keen to play down his pres­ence. Offi­cial­ly, the uni­ver­si­ty doesn’t talk about Bankman-Fried. Stan­ford Law School didn’t respond to requests for com­ment. When asked whether they could con­firm a rumor that a near­by stu­dent co-op had attacked the Bankman-Fried home with eggs, Stan­ford cam­pus police did not respond.”
    • I have unlocked the pay­wall for this arti­cle.
  7. Drop­ping the SAT Require­ment Is a Lux­u­ry Belief (Rob K. Hen­der­son, Sub­stack): “Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, has just become the first Ivy League school to per­ma­nent­ly aban­don the SAT/ACT require­ment for col­lege admis­sion. Elite col­leges are elim­i­nat­ing stan­dard­ized tests before they elim­i­nate lega­cy admis­sions. Tells you all you need to know.…  Stan­dard­ized test­ing should be freely avail­able and com­pul­so­ry for all high school stu­dents.”
    • This is 100% true.

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 Stop Being Shocked (Bari Weiss, Tablet): “The hatred we expe­ri­ence on cam­pus has noth­ing to do with the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict. It’s because Jews defy anti-racist ide­ol­o­gy sim­ply by exist­ing. So it’s not so much that Zion­ism is racism. It’s that Jew­ish­ness is.“ From vol­ume 272.

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 372

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

This is vol­ume 372, a num­ber I think is cool because it can be expressed as the sum of suc­ces­sive primes: 31 + 37 + 41 + 43 + 47 + 53 + 59 + 61 = 372.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. How Con­ve­nient, That Kanye West­’s Behav­ior Could Not Pos­si­bly Be Influ­enced by His Men­tal Ill­ness (Fred­die deBoer, Sub­stack): “Two things I real­ly hate: morals of con­ve­nience and false friends. The types of peo­ple who say ‘men­tal ill­ness doesn’t do that’ are the types to pro­fess sup­port for those with psy­chi­atric dis­or­ders, but only when it’s easy, when the men­tal­ly ill are doing the social­ly approved things like talk­ing to them­selves on the sub­way. Which of course means that they are no friend to the men­tal­ly ill at all; sup­port only means some­thing when it comes at a cost.”
    • Some­what relat­ed: How Kanye West’s Break­down Makes Sense of Our Social Cri­sis (Rus­sell Moore, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Insta­bil­i­ty from this artist is hard­ly sur­pris­ing. Sev­er­al years ago, I not­ed that I was wor­ried for the rapper—not because of his men­tal health chal­lenges but because of what Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cals often do to celebri­ties who pro­fess faith. Too often we claim them as, at best, mas­cots for ‘our side’ and, at worst, as tro­phies from the cul­ture wars. Over and over, the church has expect­ed things from these fig­ures that they do not have the matu­ri­ty, wis­dom, or even sta­bil­i­ty to han­dle.”
  2. Review: When Nar­cis­sism Comes to Church (Samuel D. James, Sub­stack): “But this book makes a mon­u­men­tal deci­sion: a deci­sion to put the Bible’s moral lan­guage to the side, to call a dis­or­der what the Bible calls sin, to call self-actu­al­iza­tion what the Bible calls repen­tance. This book’s aver­sion to bib­li­cal cat­e­gories does not empow­er read­ers to con­front spir­i­tu­al­ly abu­sive sys­tems. It instead makes those sys­tems hard­er to dis­rupt.”
    • This is an out­stand­ing book review that puts its fin­ger on a prob­lem I fre­quent­ly notice — when we dis­re­gard Bib­li­cal analy­sis we make it need­less­ly hard to bring Bib­li­cal solu­tions to bear.
  3. The Woman Who Gave the World a Thou­sand Names for God (Jor­dan K. Mon­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Has there been a sin­gle trans­la­tor in church his­to­ry with Barnwell’s sway? We could talk about Jerome and his Latin Vul­gate, used by the Roman Catholic Church as its prin­ci­pal trans­la­tion for over 1,500 years. There was Luther and his Ger­man-lan­guage Bible. There was England’s King James I, if you cred­it him for com­mis­sion­ing his KJV—or William Tyn­dale if you feel like the KJV was most­ly cribbed from his work.” The claim feels like hyper­bole until you read the arti­cle. Wowsers. What a lega­cy!
  4. How California’s Bul­let Train Went Off the Rails (Ralph Vartabe­di­an, New York Times): “ ‘There were so many things that went wrong,’ Mr. McNa­ma­ra said. ‘[The rail com­pa­ny] was very angry. They told the state they were leav­ing for North Africa, which was less polit­i­cal­ly dys­func­tion­al. They went to Moroc­co and helped them build a rail sys­tem.’ Morocco’s bul­let train start­ed ser­vice in 2018.”
  5. 10 Affir­ma­tions and Denials on Eth­nic Har­mo­ny, Jus­tice, and the Church (Justin Tay­lor, The Gospel Coali­tion): “We sim­ply can­not allow pol­i­tics or sec­u­lar cul­ture to define our terms or deter­mine our beliefs. Jesus puts his fin­ger on eth­nic har­mo­ny and says, ‘Mine.’ There­fore, the aim of these affir­ma­tions and denials is to right­ly rep­re­sent the voice of Jesus Christ. The One who designed eth­nic diver­si­ty has unpar­al­leled author­i­ty and has the final word on the whole issue.”
    • Some­what relat­ed: The Place­bo Of Affir­ma­tive Action (Andrew Sul­li­van, Sub­stack): “A recent David Shor analy­sis found that, among Demo­c­ra­t­ic poli­cies, affir­ma­tive action was among the most unpop­u­lar — with even less sup­port than ‘defund the police.’ More tan­gi­bly: on the nine occa­sions the pol­i­cy has been put to the elec­toral test since 1996, it has lost eight times, most recent­ly in super-lib­er­al Cal­i­for­nia in 2020.”
  6. Three Para­dox­es of Athe­ism (Neil Shen­vi, per­son­al web­site): “His­tor­i­cal­ly, one of the most attrac­tive fea­tures of athe­ism has been its claim to stark real­ism. No mat­ter how unap­peal­ing a god­less uni­verse may turn out to be, athe­ists claim to be com­mit­ted to adher­ing to the truth at all costs. How­ev­er, in this essay I would like to show that at the very heart of athe­ism are sev­er­al extreme­ly unex­pect­ed para­dox­es, areas in which athe­ism is shown to be in ten­sion with a com­mit­ment to real­ism and a life con­sis­tent with truth.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  7. Spread of Catholic hos­pi­tals lim­its repro­duc­tive care across the U.S. (Frances Stead Sell­ers and Meena Venkatara­manan, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Catholic sys­tems now con­trol about 1 in 7 U.S. hos­pi­tal beds, requir­ing reli­gious doc­trine to guide treat­ment, often to the sur­prise of patients.”
    • The above arti­cle annoyed me and I was pleased to see this response: As Wash­ing­ton Post tar­gets Catholic hos­pi­tals, every reli­gious insti­tu­tion needs to build defens­es (Tim­o­thy P. Car­ney, Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er):  “These jour­nal­ists write as if the base­line is total accep­tance of abor­tion, gay mar­riage, and trans­gen­der ide­ol­o­gy and that the scary new thing is the reli­gious hos­pi­tals or teach­ings that have been around for cen­turies or mil­len­nia. ‘Spread of Catholic hos­pi­tals’ is a fun­ny head­line because Catholics were the ones who invent­ed hos­pi­tals. If you want­ed to write a trend piece, you should real­ly write about the spread of laws and law­suits threat­en­ing Catholic hos­pi­tals, which are actu­al­ly new.”

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 Is Joshua’s Altar on Mount Ebal in Israel Myth? Or Real­i­ty? (Ralph Hawkins, Logos): “When I was work­ing on my doc­tor­al dis­ser­ta­tion about the Ebal site, I spent a week with Zer­tal. One morn­ing while we were dri­ving to the site, he told me his crit­ics had accused him of try­ing to prove the Bible. They said he imposed a cul­tic inter­pre­ta­tion onto the stone struc­ture he had found. He explained, though, that he had been born and raised in Ein She­mer, Israeli kib­butz that was affil­i­at­ed with a sec­u­lar move­ment. He said he had grown up believ­ing that the Bible was full of myths. When he did his grad­u­ate work in archae­ol­o­gy, he did it at Tel Aviv, the most lib­er­al uni­ver­si­ty in Israel, where those views were rein­forced. He insist­ed he had not embarked on his exca­va­tion at Mount Ebal in order to prove the Bible. What he found there, how­ev­er, had a pro­found effect on him. He said, ‘I became a believ­er at Mount Ebal.’” I love sto­ries like this. Archae­ol­o­gy and the Bible is fas­ci­nat­ing to me. From vol­ume 243.

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 312

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.

312 is an idoneal num­ber (which appar­ent­ly there are only 65, 66 or 67 of — it’s wild how in math you can prove things that seem total­ly impos­si­ble to prove).

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Bere­ans Had No Bibles: Re-envi­sion­ing Acts 17 (Grif­fin Gulledge, The Gospel Coali­tion): “The Bere­ans had no Bibles. It was rare for aver­age folks in the ear­ly church to have an indi­vid­ual copy of the Scrip­tures. Indeed, it wasn’t until the Ref­or­ma­tion era that mass pro­duc­tion of God’s Word was even pos­si­ble. What they had instead was a community—in this case the synagogue—which had a col­lec­tion of writ­ings we know as the Old Tes­ta­ment.”
  2. How Big Tech Tar­gets Faith Groups for Cen­sor­ship (Joshua D. Hold­en­ried, Real Clear Reli­gion): “Most tech com­pa­nies’ user agree­ments ban con­tent that dis­crim­i­nates on the basis of reli­gion, yet their poli­cies enable them to engage in such dis­crim­i­na­tion them­selves.”
    • That is a very suc­cinct way to express the hypocrisy. Put that sen­tence in your pock­et — you will have occa­sion to use it more than you’d like in the future.
  3. Becer­ra and Biden Betray Med­ical Pro­fes­sion­als Being Forced to Assist in Abor­tions (Roger Sev­eri­no, Nation­al Review):  “The facts were stun­ning in their clar­i­ty, the vic­tim was extreme­ly cred­i­ble and sym­pa­thet­ic, and the vio­la­tor remained entire­ly cal­lous and unre­pen­tant. The UVMMC mat­ter was the most open and shut con­science case in over a decade. I say was, because on Fri­day, the DOJ qui­et­ly, and vol­un­tar­i­ly, dis­missed the case. No admis­sion of guilt, no injunc­tion, no cor­rec­tive action, no set­tle­ment, no noth­ing.”
  4. Relat­ed to health care:
    • Mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty lands man in Hawaii men­tal hos­pi­tal (Jen­nifer Sin­co Kelle­her, Asso­ci­at­ed Press): “Instead, against Spriestersbach’s protests that he wasn’t Castle­ber­ry, he was even­tu­al­ly com­mit­ted to the Hawaii State Hos­pi­tal. ‘Yet, the more Mr. Spriesters­bach vocal­ized his inno­cence by assert­ing that he is not Mr. Castle­ber­ry, the more he was declared delu­sion­al and psy­chot­ic by the H.S.H. staff and doc­tors and heav­i­ly med­icat­ed… despite his con­tin­u­al denial of being Mr. Castle­ber­ry and pro­vid­ing all of his rel­e­vant iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and places where he was locat­ed dur­ing Mr. Castleberry’s court appear­ances, no one would believe him or take any mean­ing­ful steps to ver­i­fy his iden­ti­ty and deter­mine that what Mr. Spriesters­bach was telling the truth – he was not Mr. Castle­ber­ry.’ No one believed him — not even his var­i­ous pub­lic defend­ers — until a hos­pi­tal psy­chi­a­trist final­ly lis­tened.”
    • Dance Till We Die (Ari Schul­man, The New Atlantis): “Covid secu­ri­ty the­ater is when we claim our actions are aimed at fight­ing Covid, but actu­al­ly part of our moti­va­tion is just to give the impres­sion that we’re fight­ing Covid. Gen­uine­ly fight­ing Covid may or may not be one of our goals too, but what makes the­ater the­ater is that per­for­mance is one of our goals.”
      • Pro­vides an inter­est­ing defense of wise secu­ri­ty the­ater while also absolute­ly slam­ming what we got in its place.
    • Adum­bra­tions Of Adu­canum­ab (Scott Alexan­der, Astral Codex Ten): “I wor­ry that peo­ple are going to come away from this with some con­clu­sion like ‘wow, the FDA seemed real­ly unpre­pared to han­dle COVID.’ No. It’s not that spe­cif­ic. Every sin­gle thing the FDA does is like this. Every sin­gle hour of every sin­gle day the FDA does things exact­ly this stu­pid and destruc­tive, and the only rea­son you nev­er hear about the oth­ers is because they’re about some dis­ease with a name like Schmoe’s Syn­drome and a few hun­dred cas­es nation­wide instead of some­thing big and media-wor­thy like coro­n­avirus. I am a doc­tor and some­times I have to deal with the Schmoe’s Syn­dromes of the world and every f@$king time there is some sto­ry about the FDA doing some­thing exact­ly this awful and coun­ter­pro­duc­tive.”
    • We Walk Among You (Fred­die deBoer, Sub­stack): “I do not want my men­tal ill­ness to be accept­ed by strangers. I hate it and I hate myself for hav­ing it. Men­tal ill­ness is not an expres­sion of the beau­ty of every indi­vid­ual who has it but the most ugly ele­ment of their most ugly selves.… The worst part of this car­i­ca­ture of kind­ness towards the men­tal­ly ill may seem con­tra­dic­to­ry: it extin­guish­es the capac­i­ty for mer­cy. For only the guilty can be shown mer­cy; that is the most essen­tial qual­i­ty of mer­cy, its only mean­ing. And I am guilty. Many of us who suf­fer from men­tal ill­ness are. Per­haps some­day our cul­ture will mature enough to under­stand that what we need is not to be absolved, nor to be exon­er­at­ed, nor to be excused, but to be for­giv­en.”
  5. Anato­my of a Bad Idea: Affir­ma­tive Con­sent (Fred­die deBoer, Sub­stack): “So you get this huge pol­i­cy change at hun­dreds of uni­ver­si­ties that does effec­tive­ly noth­ing to stop sex­u­al assault, infringes on the rights of the accused, and func­tions as a make-work pro­gram for over­paid ‘con­sul­tants’ and lib­er­al writ­ers, all while most peo­ple qui­et­ly rec­og­nize that nobody fol­lows it, and sup­port for that emp­ty pol­i­cy is enforced with mis­sion­ary zeal not by true believ­ers but almost entire­ly by peo­ple who are too scared to ask whether any of it makes any sense.”
    • My hot take? “No means no” and “yes means yes” are both pale imi­ta­tions of “I do means I do” — and until we move back from con­sent to covenant we’re going to have lots of need­less suf­fer­ing.
  6. On Hun­gary
    1. Hun­gary is No Mod­el for the Amer­i­can Right (David French, The Dis­patch): “If you’ve been a con­ser­v­a­tive for any length of time, you’ve like­ly had what I like to call the ‘Swe­den con­ver­sa­tion,’ or per­haps the ‘Den­mark debate.’ A social­ist-lean­ing pro­gres­sive friend will wax elo­quent about the Scan­di­na­vian coun­tries that com­bine high stan­dards of liv­ing with gen­er­ous wel­fare states and ask, ‘Why not here?’ .… Well, Hun­gary is the new right’s Den­mark. Except that Hun­gary is a much worse place to live than Den­mark.”
    2. “My favorite things Hun­gary” — my revi­sion­ist take (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Way back in 2011, when I was vis­it­ing Hun­gary, I did a post in typ­i­cal MR style: My Favorite Things Hun­gary. I had no par­tic­u­lar polit­i­cal point in mind, and indeed the cur­rent dis­putes over Hun­gary did not quite exist back then. Nonethe­less, if you sur­vey the list, just about every one of my favorites list­ed end­ed up leav­ing Hun­gary. The one excep­tion, as far as I can tell, is film direc­tor Béla Tarr, but he is a crit­ic of both nation­al­ism and Orban. All the rest left Hun­gary.”
    3. Unpa­tri­ot­ic Con­ser­v­a­tivesTM 2021 (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “I can’t think of any­thing in recent mem­o­ry that has been more reveal­ing of where we Amer­i­cans actu­al­ly stand polit­i­cal­ly than Tuck­er Carlson’s vis­it to Hun­gary. As I wrote in The Spec­ta­tor a cou­ple of days ago, Hun­gary is a coun­try with lots of trou­bles, includ­ing cor­rup­tion. I won’t go once again into list­ing all the rea­sons why it’s impor­tant for West­ern right-of-cen­ter peo­ple to come here and learn from the Hun­gar­i­ans — I’ve been blog­ging about that all sum­mer; I invite you to go through the archives here — so I’m going to try to boil it down.”
      • Dreher has a very dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive than most Amer­i­can com­men­ta­tors, and I include him because his argu­ment is inter­est­ing. I tru­ly know almost noth­ing about Orban or Hun­gar­i­an pol­i­tics — but I am intrigued by how divi­sive Orban is in Amer­i­ca.

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 20 Argu­ments For God’s Exis­tence (Peter Kreeft, per­son­al web­site): “You may be blessed with a vivid sense of God’s pres­ence; and that is some­thing for which to be pro­found­ly grate­ful. But that does not mean you have no oblig­a­tion to pon­der these argu­ments. For many have not been blessed in that way. And the proofs are designed for them—or some of them at least—to give a kind of help they real­ly need. You may even be asked to pro­vide help.” I was remind­ed of this by a con­ver­sa­tion with an alum­nus. The author is a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor at Boston Col­lege. (first shared in vol­ume 116)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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