Tag: music

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 369

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 post 369, which I like sim­ply because 3+6=9.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Sug­ar Babies of Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty (Nico­la Buskirk, Sub­stack): “But decades after the unwind­ing of America’s tra­di­tion­al sex­u­al mores, no new moral­i­ty has clear­ly emerged, and young peo­ple increas­ing­ly find them­selves nav­i­gat­ing a cul­ture of sex­u­al anar­chy, in which — pro­vid­ed an act is con­sen­su­al — there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ Such think­ing has brought us inevitably to the rise of Only­Fans, the nor­mal­iza­tion of sex work, and the curi­ous sto­ry of Stan­ford University’s sug­ar babies.”
    • A curi­ous sto­ry indeed!
  2. Wikipedia Is Mak­ing Us More Polit­i­cal (Samuel D. James, Sub­stack): “There is sim­ply no par­al­lel to this with any oth­er peri­od of media his­to­ry; the dig­i­tal age is the very first to say that we should have access to a repos­i­to­ry of a person’s most con­tro­ver­sial sen­tences, per­ma­nent­ly acces­si­ble through their bio­graph­i­cal data.… All of these exam­ples ampli­fy the role of pol­i­tics in cul­ture, by mak­ing par­ti­san opin­ions a vital part of a person’s bio­graph­i­cal data. There is no dis­tinc­tion any more between the per­son who, through their voca­tion­al or per­son­al choic­es, decides to become a polit­i­cal fig­ure, and the per­son who is per­ceived as polit­i­cal. What we know about the one is pret­ty much what we know about the oth­er. Thus, hyper-politi­ciza­tion of every­thing feels much more nor­mal.”
  3. So you haven’t caught COVID yet. Does that mean you’re a super­dodger? (Michaeleen Doucleff, NPR): “Your immune response and these T cells fire up much more quick­ly [than in a per­son with­out the HLA muta­tion],” Hol­len­bach says. “So for lack of a bet­ter term, you basi­cal­ly nuke the infec­tion before you even start to have symp­toms.… It’s def­i­nite­ly luck,” she says. “But, you know, this muta­tion is quite com­mon. We esti­mate that maybe 1 in 10 peo­ple have it. And in peo­ple who are asymp­to­matic, that ris­es to 1 in 5.”
    • Relat­ed: The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic feels over but is not actu­al­ly over. (Dan Drezn­er, Sub­stack): “For the time being I will still mask at air­ports and on air­planes and occa­sion­al­ly in very large indoor gath­er­ings. Oth­er than that, I’m done. I am vac­ci­nat­ed, boost­ed and had COVID-19 ear­li­er this year, so the prospect of con­tract­ing it again seems both less like­ly and less scary. The thing is, I con­fess to being unsure whether I have made the right prob­a­bil­i­ty cal­cu­la­tions.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of inter­na­tion­al pol­i­tics at Tufts.
  4. Why Is The Cen­tral Val­ley So Bad? (Scott Alexan­der, Astral Codex Ten): “A short dri­ve through [the Cen­tral Val­ley] is enough to notice pover­ty, decay, and home­less camps worse even than the rest of Cal­i­for­nia. But I didn’t real­ize how bad it was until read­ing this piece on the San Joaquin Riv­er. It claims that if the Cen­tral Val­ley were its own state, it would be the poor­est in Amer­i­ca, even worse than Mis­sis­sip­pi. This was kind of shock­ing. I always think of Mis­sis­sip­pi as bad because of a his­to­ry of racial vio­lence, racial seg­re­ga­tion, and get­ting burned down dur­ing the Civ­il War. But the Cen­tral Val­ley has none of those things, plus it has extreme­ly fer­tile farm­land, plus it’s in one of the rich­est states of the coun­try and should at least get good sub­si­dies and infra­struc­ture. How did it get so bad?”
  5. Cov­er­age of church­es:
    • Doug Wil­son in Ida­ho:
      1. Pas­tor Seeks To Make Moscow, Ida­ho A ‘Chris­t­ian Town’  (NBC News, YouTube): twelve min­utes.
      2. What NBC Did­n’t Show You (Dou­glas Wil­son, YouTube): Wilson’s response video, four and a half min­utes.
      3. NBC News Lends a Hand (Dou­glas Wil­son, per­son­al blog): “As I have said else­where, I am grate­ful that it was not a hit piece—they let both sides talk, in oth­er words. It was even-hand­ed in that way. At the same time, it was clear that what we were say­ing must have sound­ed some­thing like Mid­dle Klin­gon to them, and this of course affects the edit­ing process.”
    • Gra­ce­point at Berke­ley:
      1. The Ungod­ly Sur­veil­lance of Anti-Porn ‘Shame­ware’ Apps (Dhruv Mehro­tra, Wired): “At its most basic lev­el, the idea is pret­ty straight­for­ward: Why would any­one watch porn if they are going to have to talk to their par­ents or pas­tor about it?… The trou­ble is, accord­ing to Hao-Wei Lin, pro­vid­ing his church leader with a ledger of every­thing he did online meant his pas­tor could always find some­thing to ask him about, and the way Covenant Eyes flagged con­tent didn’t help. For exam­ple, in Covenant Eyes reports that Hao-Wei Lin shared with WIRED, his online psy­chi­a­try text­book was rat­ed ‘High­ly Mature,’ the most severe cat­e­go­ry of con­tent reserved for ‘anonymiz­ers, nudi­ty, erot­i­ca, and pornog­ra­phy.’ ”
      2. At Gra­ce­point Min­istries, ‘Whole-Life Dis­ci­ple­ship’ Took Its Toll (Cur­tis Yee, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Thir­ty-two for­mer Gra­ce­point mem­bers who spoke with Chris­tian­i­ty Today for this sto­ry described a cul­ture that was ‘con­trol­ling’ and ‘coer­cive’ for the sake of min­istry effi­cien­cy. Mem­bers said they were manip­u­lat­ed into con­fess­ing sins, screamed at by lead­ers, and over­loaded with oblig­a­tions to the point of ill­ness. To keep mem­bers focused on mis­sion work, Gra­ce­point effec­tive­ly restrict­ed dat­ing, media con­sump­tion, and pet own­er­ship. Lead­ers direct­ed staff on how to arrange their homes, where to shop for clothes, and what cars to dri­ve.”
  6. Rich Mullins: Raga­muf­fin, Celebri­ty, Dis­ci­ple (Bethel McGrew, Plough): “You might have called him a frus­trat­ed strug­gling artist: a suc­cess­ful artist who nev­er want­ed to suc­ceed. When Myrrh records first called to say Amy Grant want­ed to record his song ‘Sing Your Praise to the Lord,’ he near­ly hung up. But it would be a hit, the first of many. He wrote nat­u­ral­ly to the peo­ple, com­ple­ment­ing his poet­ic lyri­cism with a good pop writer’s ear for how to con­vey pro­found ideas sim­ply. His arrange­ments were an eclec­tic fusion of pop and folk, most famous­ly intro­duc­ing radio to his sig­na­ture instru­ment, the ham­mered dul­cimer. This was the secret sauce that made hit sin­gles out of songs like the atmos­pher­ic West­ern nature poem ‘Call­ing Out Your Name’ – a tune which, by all the rules of hit sin­gles, should nev­er even have been on the air. As one fan put it, Mullins was weird, but he was also so good that radio had to play him.”
    • Mullins was unique and bril­liant and I am still sad he is dead. He was before your time, so I doubt you will believe me when I say that he by him­self out­weighed the entire Chris­t­ian music indus­try that you have been exposed to. But he was that good. It was more than his music. It was his life.

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: On Killing Human Mon­sters (Mark LiVec­chi, Prov­i­dence): “‘The inter­nal con­di­tion of God’s exter­nal expres­sion of wrath,’ writes the the­olo­gian and rab­bi Abra­ham Joshua Hes­chel, ‘is grief.’ To the best I can deduce, there­in is com­mu­ni­cat­ed the com­plex dis­po­si­tion of the just war­rior.… I do not rejoice that I wor­ship a God who kills. I only rejoice that I wor­ship a God who is will­ing to.” From vol­ume 236.

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 171

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. So much ink about the Ford-Kavanaugh hear­ings! I’m going to avoid post­ing any arti­cles about it until a lit­tle more time has passed and more devel­op­ments have occurred, except for this insight­ful bit from the humor site The Baby­lon Bee: Suc­cess: After A Full Day Of Hear­ings, Every­one Believes Exact­ly What They Already Believed About Kavanaugh.
    • A verse that keeps com­ing to mind is Leviti­cus 19:15 — “Do not per­vert jus­tice; do not show par­tial­i­ty to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neigh­bor fair­ly.” In oth­er words, God’s stan­dard of jus­tice is straight­for­ward and with­out par­tial­i­ty. Rich peo­ple can sin against poor peo­ple, and poor peo­ple can sin against rich peo­ple. Men can sin against women, and women can sin against men. White peo­ple can sin against black peo­ple, and black peo­ple can sin against white peo­ple. True jus­tice comes from judg­ment that tran­scends our sym­pa­thies and prej­u­dices (a type of unjust pre­judg­ment). Per­haps Judge Kavanaugh sinned against Dr. Ford. Per­haps Dr. Ford is sin­ning against Judge Kavanaugh. Per­haps her mem­o­ry is faulty. Per­haps his mem­o­ry is faulty. We must not show par­tial­i­ty to her or favoritism to him. To do oth­er­wise is to per­vert jus­tice.
    • An alum­nus sent me this hymn which he found time­ly (and I con­cur): A Hymn: O God of Earth and Altar (G.K. Chester­ton): “O God of earth and altar, Bow down and hear our cry, Our earth­ly rulers fal­ter, Our peo­ple drift and die; The walls of gold entomb us, The swords of scorn divide, Take not thy thun­der from us, But take away our pride.”
  2. Why Athe­ists Are Not As Ratio­nal As Some Like To Think (Lois Lee, The Con­ver­sa­tion): “Impor­tant­ly, the sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence does not tend to sup­port the view that athe­ism is about ratio­nal thought and the­ism is about exis­ten­tial ful­fil­ments.” The author’s Ph.D. is in soci­ol­o­gy from Cam­bridge and she is a pro­fes­sor of reli­gious stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kent.
  3. Ter­mi­nal Lucid­i­ty: The Researchers Attempt­ing to Prove Your Mind Lives On Even After You Die (Zaron Bur­nett III, Mel): “In essence, ter­mi­nal lucid­i­ty is a mys­te­ri­ous flash of life and vital­i­ty that occurs in peo­ple just before they die. It’s most remark­able in peo­ple who have demen­tia, Alzheimer’s, menin­gi­tis, brain dam­age, strokes or were in a coma. There’s no known med­ical expla­na­tion for where this sud­den surge of vital­i­ty and func­tion­al­i­ty comes from. In large part because as sud­den­ly as it comes, with­in a few hours or even a day or two, it fades and the per­son dies, tak­ing any answers with them.” The open­ing anec­dote is wild.
  4. A Chris­t­ian Singer Is Big­ger Than Drake and Ari­ana Grande This Week (Amy X. Wang, Rolling Stone): “[Lau­ren Daigle’s] suc­cess high­lights some­thing broad­er, how­ev­er: the deep per­sis­tence of Chris­t­ian music in the U.S. audi­ence — an aspect of music con­sump­tion that has been large­ly skipped over by head­lines pro­claim­ing rap as the sole dri­ver of mod­ern music in Amer­i­ca. While rap and R&B have indeed risen to become the lead­ing genre of music con­sump­tion, Chris­t­ian music remains a siz­able minor­i­ty mass. Sol­id num­bers are hard to come by, but at its annu­al con­fer­ence in 2015, the Gospel Music Asso­ci­a­tion report­ed that 68 per­cent of Amer­i­cans had lis­tened to Chris­t­ian or gospel music with­in the last 30 days.”
  5. It’s time to rethink how much booze may be too much (Julia Bel­luz, Vox): “… the sto­ry about the health effects of mod­er­ate drink­ing is shift­ing pret­ty dra­mat­i­cal­ly. New research on alco­hol and mor­tal­i­ty, and a grow­ing aware­ness about the rise in alco­hol-relat­ed deaths in the US, is caus­ing a reck­on­ing among researchers about even mod­er­ate lev­els of alco­hol con­sump­tion.”
  6. Reflect­ing on “Racism Lives Here, Too”, Part One, see also Part Two, and Part Three (James Banker, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “As we’ve ral­lied around our dif­fer­ences, we’ve neglect­ed our com­mon­al­i­ties. We ascribe the max­i­mal­ly offen­sive and hos­tile inter­pre­ta­tions to the words and behav­ior of oth­ers. For fear of giv­ing offense or being offend­ed, we choose silence over dia­logue, as we retreat into ever more con­cen­trat­ed fac­tions of like-mind­ed peo­ple who think and speak like us. Lines have been drawn. Defens­es for­ti­fied. But along the way, we lost a com­mon lan­guage. With only the brute sig­nals for friend and foe, we com­mu­ni­cate across our divides like ships pass­ing in the night: only signs and silence.” The author is a recent Stan­ford law school grad and writes with unusu­al skill. Read­ing this felt more like read­ing an essay in the Atlantic or the New York­er than read­ing a typ­i­cal op-ed in the Dai­ly. Be sure to read all three parts.
  7. Were Evan­gel­i­cals Real­ly Silent about Roe v. Wade? (Thomas Kidd, Gospel Coali­tion): “It has become com­mon­place for his­to­ri­ans to say that evan­gel­i­cals had a mut­ed response to the Roe v. Wade deci­sion, which struck down state laws against abor­tion in 1973.… evan­gel­i­cals, both white and black, reg­is­tered grave con­cern about Roe and abor­tion-on-demand, how­ev­er. Evi­dence of this fact is not hard to find. Flag­ship evan­gel­i­cal mag­a­zine Chris­tian­i­ty Today wrote that ‘the deci­sion runs counter not mere­ly to the moral teach­ings of Chris­tian­i­ty through the ages but also to the moral sense of the Amer­i­can peo­ple.’ Like­wise, the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Evan­gel­i­cals said, ‘We deplore, in the strongest pos­si­ble terms, the deci­sion of the U.S. Supreme Court which has made it legal to ter­mi­nate a preg­nan­cy for no bet­ter rea­son than per­son­al con­ve­nience or soci­o­log­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions.’” The author is a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at Bay­lor Uni­ver­si­ty. I find this arti­cle fas­ci­nat­ing because I have heard the oppo­site pro­claimed con­fi­dent­ly so many times, but Chris­tian­i­ty Today and the NAE def­i­nite­ly rep­re­sent the main­stream of evan­gel­i­cal thought.

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 Deal­ing With Nui­sance Lust (Dou­glas Wil­son, per­son­al blog): “Min­i­mize the seri­ous­ness of this, but not so that you can feel good about indulging your­self. Min­i­mize the seri­ous­ness of it so that you can walk away from a cou­ple of big boobs with­out feel­ing like you have just fought a cos­mic bat­tle with prin­ci­pal­i­ties and pow­ers in the heav­en­ly places, for cry­ing out loud. Or, if you like, in anoth­er strat­e­gy of see­ing things right­ly, you could nick­name these breasts of oth­er woman as the ‘prin­ci­pal­i­ties and pow­ers.’ What­ev­er you do, take this part of life in stride like a grown-up. Stop react­ing like a horny and con­flict­ed twelve-year-old boy.” (first shared in vol­ume 148)

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 109

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. How We Are Ruin­ing Amer­i­ca (David Brooks, NYT): “To feel at home in oppor­tu­ni­ty-rich areas, you’ve got to under­stand the right barre tech­niques, sport the right baby car­ri­er, have the right pod­cast, food truck, tea, wine and Pilates tastes, not to men­tion pos­sess the right atti­tudes about David Fos­ter Wal­lace, child-rear­ing, gen­der norms and inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty.” This col­umn spawned much deri­sion on social media, but I strong­ly agree with Brooks — and so do many com­men­ta­tors. Here are sym­pa­thet­ic reac­tions from Fred­die deBoer on the left and from Rod Dreher on the right. Dan Drezn­er takes it in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion, and the Mon­key Cage says “duh” while Alan Jacobs calls peo­ple unwill­ing to acknowl­edge Brooks’ obser­va­tion “will­ful­ly blind”.
  2. Luther’s Rev­o­lu­tion (The Nation, Eliz­a­beth Bru­enig): “The­ol­o­gy is moral­i­ty is pol­i­tics is law—and whether or not it’s imme­di­ate­ly obvi­ous, the world is steeped in the­ol­o­gy. In con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­ca, and espe­cial­ly in the more sec­u­lar precincts of West­ern Europe, it seems unlike­ly that one could look at a prop­er­ty deed or a gov­ern­ment bud­get and find, just beneath its explic­it rea­son­ing, traces of old the­o­log­i­cal dis­putes and their res­o­lu­tions. But they’re there…”
  3. I’ve Worked with Refugees for Decades. Europe’s Afghan Crime Wave Is Mind-Bog­gling. (Cheryl Benard, The Nation­al Inter­est): “Euro­peans were pre­dis­posed to be pos­i­tive towards Afghan refugees. But it quick­ly became obvi­ous that some­thing was wrong, very wrong, with these young Afghan men: they were com­mit­ting sex crimes to a much greater extent than oth­er refugees… It took a while for the pat­tern to be rec­og­nized because, until recent­ly, west­ern Euro­pean media delib­er­ate­ly refrained from iden­ti­fy­ing an assailant’s refugee or asy­lum sta­tus, or his coun­try of ori­gin.”
  4. Per­son­al­i­ty, Gen­der, and Age in the Lan­guage of Social Media: The Open-Vocab­u­lary Approach (Schwartz HA, Eich­staedt JC, Kern ML, Dzi­urzyn­s­ki L, Ramones SM, Agraw­al M, et al., PLOS One) — This one is from 2013. Pay par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to Fig­ure 6 and notice the clus­ter of words asso­ci­at­ed with emo­tion­al sta­bil­i­ty. #blessed #on_my_way to #church
  5. No Retreat: Lecrae’s Approach to “Cul­ture-Mak­ing” (Jemar Tis­by, Christ and Pop Cul­ture): “But Lecrae couldn’t ful­fill his mis­sion if his beats only banged in Chris­t­ian ears, though not because Chris­tians aren’t impor­tant to him. It was Chris­t­ian fans who pro­pelled him to pop­u­lar­i­ty and still con­tin­ue to sup­port him. Nev­er­the­less, hav­ing tes­ti­fied in Jerusalem, so to speak, Lecrae felt com­pelled to tes­ti­fy also in Rome (Acts 23:11).” This is relat­ed to what we’re cov­er­ing in our sum­mer read­ing project, and you’re wel­come to join us. 
  6. In Praise of Extreme Med­i­cine (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “It’s odd that we allow some crazy things and ban others—even more that the crazy things we allow are some­times social­ly use­less while the crazy things that we ban are some­times social­ly valu­able. The case for ban­ning extreme sports, for exam­ple, is much stronger than the case for ban­ning extreme med­i­cine.”
  7. ‘Born this way’? It’s way more com­pli­cat­ed than that (Alia E. Dasta­gir, USA Today): “Get­ting Amer­i­ca to believe that peo­ple are born gay — that it’s not some­thing that can be cho­sen or ever changed — has been cen­tral to the fight for gay rights. If some­one can’t help being gay any more than they can help the col­or of their skin, the log­ic goes, deny­ing them rights is wrong. But many mem­bers of the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty reject this nar­ra­tive…”
  8. Why Roman con­crete still stands strong while mod­ern ver­sion decays (Nico­la Davis, The Guardian): rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus. I some­times hear peo­ple state it like a self-evi­dent truth that we are smarter than the ancients. I see no evi­dence we are any more intel­li­gent than them. We just have more accu­mu­lat­ed knowl­edge in cer­tain domains.

Things Glen Found Entertaining

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have On Obsti­na­cy In Belief (C.S. Lewis, The Sewa­nee Review). Lewis explains why Chris­tians are jus­ti­fied in con­tin­u­ing to believe even when they encounter an argu­ment they can’t imme­di­ate­ly answer (first shared in vol­ume 6).

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 103

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. Praise & Ques­tions: How Kendrick & Chance Talk to God in Dif­fer­ent Ways (Migueli­to, DJ Booth): “I’ve encoun­tered two dif­fer­ent kinds of reli­gious believ­ers, gen­er­al­ly speak­ing. The first are those who focus on the gifts of God and the bless­ings in their life and take an opti­mistic approach to human­i­ty. The oth­er group is made up of those who become gripped by the mys­tery sur­round­ing such a fig­ure and keep an air of skep­ti­cism about them.”
  2. How Oxford and Peter Singer drove me from athe­ism to Jesus (Sarah Irv­ing-Stone­brak­er, Ver­i­tas): “I grew up in Aus­tralia, in a lov­ing, sec­u­lar home, and arrived at Syd­ney Uni­ver­si­ty as a crit­ic of ‘reli­gion.’  I didn’t need faith to ground my iden­ti­ty or my val­ues…. [how­ev­er, while at Oxford] I began to realise that the impli­ca­tions of my athe­ism were incom­pat­i­ble with almost every val­ue I held dear.” The author is a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at West­ern Syd­ney Uni­ver­si­ty.
  3. Lis­ten­ing: An Anti­dote to the Mod­ern University’s Inco­her­ence (Dominic Bur­bidge, The Pub­lic Dis­course): insight­ful break­down of the three sub-uni­ver­si­ties we dwell with­in: the uni­ver­si­ty of ratio­nal­ism, the uni­ver­si­ty of rev­o­lu­tion, and the uni­ver­si­ty of sub­jec­tivism. The author is an admin­is­tra­tor at Oxford.
  4. Won­der Woman and the Gen­der Wars (Rus­sell Moore, per­son­al blog): “Won­der Woman does indeed rep­re­sent pow­er, but she also is, in every iter­a­tion, designed to be sex­u­al­ly attrac­tive to men. The 1970s-era tele­vi­sion series not­ed in its theme song, ‘Fight­ing for your rights, in your satin tights, and the old red, white, and blue.’ The rights and the tights were both part of the package—and, from the looks of things, still are.” This piece is quite good.
  5. The Marines Can Treat Women Hon­or­ably With­out Putting Them in the Infantry (David French, Nation­al Review): “The women-in-infantry debate is the lux­u­ry of a soci­ety that hasn’t fought a large-scale ground war in gen­er­a­tions, and a seri­ous mixed-gen­der exper­i­ment wouldn’t sur­vive first con­tact with a well-equipped and well-trained oppos­ing force.” The author is both a vet­er­an of the Iraq war and a grad­u­ate of Har­vard Law School. A short but thought­ful response to the wide­ly-shared Vox arti­cle The Marine Corps has a “tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty” prob­lem
  6. If you haven’t seen it yet, there’s quite the con­tro­ver­sy at Ever­green Col­lege. There’s a good sum­ma­ry at The blas­phe­my case against Bret Wein­stein, and its four lessons for pro­fes­sors (Jonathan Haidt, Het­ero­dox Acad­e­my): “I gen­er­al­ly oppose zero-tol­er­ance poli­cies, but if we are to have one, it should be for vio­lence and intim­i­da­tion on cam­pus.” And this is a good op-ed on the sit­u­a­tion: When the Left Turns on Its Own (Bari Weiss, NY Times): “Lib­er­als shouldn’t cede the respon­si­bil­i­ty to defend free speech on col­lege cam­pus­es to con­ser­v­a­tives. After all, with­out free speech, what’s lib­er­al­ism about?”
  7. I’ve seen lots of opin­ions about Trump pulling Amer­i­ca out of the Paris cli­mate agree­ment. I was most struck by these two reac­tions that both grant that the agree­ment was in some sense just for show but arrive at dif­fer­ent con­clu­sions from that premise:
    • From the right: The Place­bo Pol­i­tics of Paris (Jason Willick, The Amer­i­can Inter­est): “Pres­i­dent Trump’s repu­di­a­tion of the agree­ment… delights his nation­al­is­tic base and sends his inter­na­tion­al­ist-mind­ed crit­ics into parox­ysms of rage and despair—all with­out actu­al­ly doing any­thing, because the Paris agree­ment con­sists sim­ply of vol­un­tary, unen­force­able emis­sions pledges that are already being flout­ed.”
    • From the left: The Odd Kabu­ki of the Cli­mate Pact With­draw­al (Eric Pos­ner, per­son­al blog): “[the pact] was mean­ing­ful-sym­bol­ic rather than mean­ing­less-sym­bol­ic. Mean­ing­ful-sym­bol­ic means that the coun­tries were tak­ing a first step toward actu­al­ly reduc­ing green­house gas­es rather than a first step toward pre­tend­ing to reduce them.”

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 91

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 Cri­sis of Lib­er­ty In The West (Ryan Ander­son, Her­itage Foun­da­tion): “Free­dom today is under­stood as a mat­ter of indifference—a free­dom from con­straint. But free­dom right­ly under­stood is a free­dom for—a free­dom for excel­lence.” This. Read this.
  2. Gen­der Rever­sal Teach­es Uncom­fort­able Lessons (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “How would the Trump-Clin­ton debates have been per­ceived if the gen­ders had been reversed? Two pro­fes­sors worked with trained actors to dupli­cate not just the words but also the man­ner­isms of Trump and Clinton–only with a female actor play­ing Trump, now called Bren­da King, and a male actor play­ing Clin­ton, now called Jonathan Gor­don.” The pro­fes­sors found the oppo­site of what they expect­ed. There is a video clip so you can judge for your­self. A lit­tle mind-blow­ing.
  3. Amer­i­can Car­nage (Christo­pher Cald­well, First Things): “Call­ing addic­tion a dis­ease use­ful­ly describes cer­tain mea­sur­able aspects of the problem—particularly tol­er­ance and with­draw­al. It fails to cap­ture what is spe­cial and dan­ger­ous about the way drugs bind with people’s minds. Almost every known dis­ease is some­thing peo­ple wish to be rid of. Addic­tion is dif­fer­ent. Addicts resist known cures—even to the point of death.” A pow­er­ful arti­cle.
  4. There’s Enough Time To Change Every­thing (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “If I were loose­ly gath­er­ing top­ics of study into cat­e­gories, I might call them arts, reli­gion, schol­ar­ship, and sci­ence. As impor­tant as schol­ar­ship and sci­ence are, arts and reli­gion are more impor­tant” A wide-rang­ing and fas­ci­nat­ing inter­view with Yale pro­fes­sor David Gel­ern­ter. This one is long.
  5. Faith Is Chang­ing The Way Peo­ple Think About Music (Marc Barnes, Rel­e­vant): “The cre­ative arts have a long his­to­ry of tak­ing to what is taboo in the pub­lic square. It is no sur­prise that they are tak­ing reli­gion, the ugly duck­ling of mod­ern sec­u­lar life, under their wing.”
  6. North Korea Is Prac­tic­ing For Nuclear War (Jef­frey Lewis, For­eign Pol­i­cy): “What­ev­er restraint Kim or Trump might show — and let’s be hon­est, our expec­ta­tions here are not high — each will face enor­mous pres­sure to start the attack lest his oppo­nent beat him to the punch.” Ouch.
  7. 10 Ques­tions for Sha­di Hamid (Raz­ib Khan, per­son­al blog): “It’s not so much that [devout Mus­lims] want to die; it’s more that they are ready to die, and it doesn’t fright­en them as much as it might fright­en some­one else, because they believe there’s a pret­ty good chance that they’ll be grant­ed par­adise espe­cial­ly if they hap­pen to killed while they’re in the mid­dle of an act that they con­sid­er to be in the ser­vice of God and his mes­sage.” The inter­view­er is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in genet­ics at UC Davis and the inter­vie­wee is a senior fel­low at the Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion. Also worth read­ing is Rod Dreher’s reac­tion piece Islam: The Last Badass Reli­gion.

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.