Tag: pornography

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 250

Prob­a­bly my favorite arti­cle in this bunch is the epi­demi­o­log­i­cal analy­sis of the sev­en dead­ly sins. What a genius idea.

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.

Also, this is the 250th of these week­ly roundups I have pub­lished. Even though last week was num­ber 249, I was still sur­prised to type in 250 this week. Some­day I’ll remem­ber a spe­cial num­ber is com­ing up and do some­thing dif­fer­ent for it. But not this day.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Are the Wages of Sin Real­ly Death?: Moral and Epi­demi­o­log­ic Obser­va­tions (David Lyle Jef­frey and Jeff Levin, Chris­t­ian Scholar’s Review): “So, are the wages of sin real­ly death? As far as pop­u­la­tion-health research sug­gests, the answer is a guard­ed yes.” The authors are pro­fes­sors at Bay­lor, one of epi­demi­ol­o­gy and the oth­er of lit­er­a­ture. 
  2. Kids’ TV has a porn prob­lem (Brazy­Day, Medi­um): “In a very real way, the ‘hyper­sex­u­al and tox­ic’ cul­ture that has sprung up around children’s TV car­toons is of com­pa­nies’ own mak­ing. They active­ly allow it to hap­pen sim­ply by doing noth­ing — cre­at­ing a law­less vac­u­um where any­thing goes and porn coex­ists with harm­less fan cre­ations.” This arti­cle was much bet­ter than I expect­ed it to be. 
  3. How We Got the Bible (Dirk Jongkind,Desiring God): “…by under­stand­ing what God had done over the ages, we will see that it is rea­son­able and jus­ti­fied to trust that the Bible in our hands is a trans­la­tion of the trust­wor­thy words of Scrip­ture.” The author is a research fel­low in New Tes­ta­ment text and lan­guage at Tyn­dale House, Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty. 
  4. The real Lord of the Flies: what hap­pened when six boys were ship­wrecked for 15 months (The Guardian): “The kids agreed to work in teams of two, draw­ing up a strict ros­ter for gar­den, kitchen and guard duty. Some­times they quar­relled, but when­ev­er that hap­pened they solved it by impos­ing a time-out. Their days began and end­ed with song and prayer. Kolo fash­ioned a makeshift gui­tar from a piece of drift­wood, half a coconut shell and six steel wires sal­vaged from their wrecked boat – an instru­ment Peter has kept all these years – and played it to help lift their spir­its.“ Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
    • Fas­ci­nat­ing Twit­ter thread in response by Tan­ner Greer: “Lord of the Flies is one of those nov­els that peo­ple remem­ber wrong. Peo­ple remem­ber its cen­tral theme as ‘take away civ­i­liza­tion, and we all turn into Hobbe­sian lit­tle mon­sters.’ But if you read the book as an adult, instead of an 8th grad­er speed­ing through, you find a dif­fer­ent mean­ing.”
  5. Should Reli­gious Con­ser­v­a­tives Aspire to Noto­ri­ety? (Jake Meador, Mere Ortho­doxy): “You don’t go look­ing for pow­er and pres­tige. You aspire to be faith­ful. If pres­tige finds you, then you allow your­self to be extrud­ed into it and pray that God pro­tect you from the spir­i­tu­al dan­gers.” This is essay is part of a swarm of inter­net arti­cles about the tra­jec­to­ry of the mag­a­zine First Things, but you don’t have to read any­thing else about that (or even care much about that) to find this essay worth­while. 
  6. Pan­dem­ic Per­spec­tives
    • “Our reg­u­la­to­ry state is fail­ing us” Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “When the CDC pooh-poohed masks ear­ly on, or botched their test­ing kit there­by delay­ing U.S. test­ing by weeks or maybe months, did the per­ma­nent staff of the CDC rise up and rebel and leak howl­ing protests to the media, real­iz­ing that thou­sands of lives were at stake? That is sure­ly what would hap­pen if say the cur­rent FDA announced it was going to approve thalido­mide.” This is a link to a search result on his blog, keep scrolling after you fin­ish the main arti­cle to see sev­er­al exam­ples of what he is describ­ing. 
    • Coro­n­avirus Pan­dem­ic: A Plea for Gen­eros­i­ty (Michael Bren­dan Dougher­ty, Nation­al Review): “There is a good rea­son to hes­i­tate to judge, name­ly our igno­rance. Plagues are a time for scape­goats and blame-shift­ing pre­cise­ly because they deal out suf­fer­ing such a seem­ing­ly unjust and ran­dom fash­ion. Our lead­ers say they will fol­low the sci­ence, but they can’t, real­ly. With a hereto­fore-unseen virus such as this one, the sci­ence is more like inher­it­ed wis­dom and intu­ition from pre­vi­ous, sim­i­lar mal­adies, at least at the start. What fol­lows is a con­fused rush to catch up through tri­al and error.“
    • The Risks — Know Them — Avoid Them (Erin Bro­mage, per­son­al blog): “I reg­u­lar­ly hear peo­ple wor­ry­ing about gro­cery stores, bike rides, incon­sid­er­ate run­ners who are not wear­ing masks.… are these places of con­cern? Well, not real­ly. Let me explain.” The author is a biol­o­gy pro­fes­sor at U Mass who teach­es cours­es on immunol­o­gy and infec­tious dis­ease. Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus. 
    • No, the super­spread­er choir in Wash­ing­ton does­n’t prove church is dan­ger­ous (Tim­o­thy P. Car­ney, Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er): “It’s hard to blame the choir for not tak­ing more pre­cau­tions, as this was March 10, before stuff real­ly hit the fan (and when our gov­ern­ment was still telling peo­ple NOT to wear masks).”
      • This op-ed is based on a CDC inves­ti­ga­tion: “The March 10 choir rehearsal last­ed from 6:30 to 9:00 p.m. Sev­er­al mem­bers arrived ear­ly to set up chairs in a large mul­ti­pur­pose room. Chairs were arranged in six rows of 20 chairs each, spaced 6–10 inch­es apart with a cen­ter aisle divid­ing left and right stages.”
    • Lock­down is over. Some­one tell the gov­ern­ment (Dominic Green, Spec­ta­tor USA): “Every soci­ety has react­ed to COVID-19 accord­ing to its prin­ci­ples or, if no prin­ci­ples were to hand, its habits. It has been America’s mis­for­tune that its prin­ci­ples and habits are ill-suit­ed to man­ag­ing an epi­dem­ic.”
    • Take the Shut­down Skep­tics Seri­ous­ly (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “The gen­er­al point is that min­i­miz­ing the num­ber of COVID-19 deaths today or a month from now or six months from now may or may not min­i­mize the human costs of the pan­dem­ic when the full spec­trum of human con­se­quences is con­sid­ered. The last glob­al depres­sion cre­at­ed con­di­tions for a cat­a­stroph­ic world war that killed rough­ly 75 to 80 mil­lion peo­ple. Is that a pos­si­bil­i­ty? The down­side risks and costs of every approach are real, fright­en­ing, and depress­ing, no mat­ter how lit­tle one thinks of reopen­ing now.”
    • Coro­n­avirus and The Myopia of Amer­i­can Excep­tion­al­ism (Brad Lit­tle­john, Mere Ortho­doxy): “Rather than prov­ing our­selves excep­tion­al, we sim­ply assume that we are. The ordi­nary rules do not apply to us, because we are Amer­i­ca. We make things bet­ter here, we run things more effi­cient­ly here, we live more hap­pi­ly here, because we are Amer­i­ca. There is no need to look at OECD rank­ings, because we already know that they are wrong if they show us any­where but #1…. this way of think­ing, far from mak­ing Amer­i­ca great, is almost cer­tain to make her the oppo­site. After all, the only way to improve is to learn, and the chief way we learn as human beings is from the exam­ples of oth­ers.”
    • The Mir­a­cle of the Inter­net (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “The surge in traf­fic, on the inter­net as a whole and on AT&T’s part of the net­work, is extra­or­di­nary in a way that the phrase 20 per­cent increase doesn’t quite cap­ture. AT&T’s net­work is car­ry­ing an extra 71 petabytes of data every day. How much is 71 petabytes? One com­par­i­son: Back at the end of 2014, AT&T’s total net­work traf­fic was 56 petabytes a day; in just a few weeks, AT&T has accom­mo­dat­ed more new traf­fic every day than its total dai­ly traf­fic six years ago. (Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, the AT&T net­work has been car­ry­ing about 426 petabytes a day—one petabyte is 1 mil­lion giga­bytes.)”
    • Stan­ford’s $27.7 bil­lion not enough to house stu­dents in need amid pan­dem­ic (Sheikh Sri­jon, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “Har­vard is allow­ing those on cam­pus with demon­strat­ed need to stay for the whole sum­mer for only $200. MIT is offer­ing free hous­ing and meals. Duke is offer­ing free hous­ing and par­tial com­pen­sa­tion for lost sum­mer earn­ings to those with sub­stan­tial finan­cial aid.… Com­pare Stanford’s pol­i­cy to these insti­tu­tions’ poli­cies. Though it has a $27.7 bil­lion dol­lar endow­ment (as of Octo­ber 2019), it is charg­ing stu­dents near­ly $6,000 for sum­mer hous­ing and meals in times of such finan­cial uncer­tain­ty.”
  7. The New York Times Sur­ren­dered to an Out­rage Mob. Jour­nal­ism Will Suf­fer For It. (Pamela Paresky, Jonathan Haidt, Nadine Strossen And Steven Pinker, Politi­co): “…for the Times to ‘dis­ap­pear’ pas­sages of a pub­lished arti­cle into an inac­ces­si­ble mem­o­ry hole is an Orwellian act that, thanks to the newspaper’s actions, might now be seen as accept­able jour­nal­is­tic prac­tice. It is all the worse when the edi­tors’ pub­lished account of what they delet­ed is itself inac­cu­rate. This does a dis­ser­vice to read­ers, his­to­ri­ans and jour­nal­ists, who are left unable to deter­mine for them­selves what the con­tro­ver­sy was about, and to Stephens, who is left unable to defend him­self against read­ers’ worst sus­pi­cions.”

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 If I Were 22 Again (John Piper, Desir­ing God): “There have been about 18,340 days since I turned 22, and I think I have read my Bible on more of those days than I have eat­en. I have cer­tain­ly read my Bible on more of those days that I have watched tele­vi­sion or videos.… Read your Bible every day of your life. If you have time for break­fast, nev­er say that you don’t have time for God’s word.” This whole thing is real­ly good. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. First shared in vol­ume 151.

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 242

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.

A lot of links this week. Can you tell I’m on lock­down in the Bay Area? Since some of you are, too, you’ll have time to read them! 😂

Kid­ding aside, I nev­er assume any­one reads all of these. Skim the links and open the ones that inter­est you in new tabs, but be sure to open all the amus­ing stuff at the end — you need it.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Pan­dem­ic Visu­al­iz­ers:
  2. Chris­t­ian Pan­dem­ic Per­spec­tives:
    • The Emo­tion­al Impact Of Cam­pus Clo­sures (Michele Phoenix, per­son­al blog): “There are few things in life as pre­dictable as one’s col­lege tra­jec­to­ry. From the dread­ed fresh­man-fif­teen to changes in aca­d­e­m­ic majors or find­ing out last minute that you’re two cred­its short… It all plays out accord­ing to an estab­lished time­line. Then comes a virus that upends every­thing and predictability—one of the pri­ma­ry sta­bi­liz­ing fac­tors of our lives—suddenly morphs into a whirl­wind of shift­ing unknowns.”
      • Relat­ed: Unfin­ished nar­ra­tives (Jes­si­ca de la Paz, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “Every­day there’s anoth­er email, and with every email anoth­er string of hope we wear hang­ing around our necks is yanked off, and we’re left with a red impres­sion of where it once was. My immi­grant par­ents who fought tooth and nail for me and my broth­ers won’t get to see me walk across the stage to get my diplo­ma. There will be no pho­tos or laugh­ter-filled recep­tion.” Jes­si­ca is a Chi Alpha stu­dent. She is also quot­ed in this Wall Street Jour­nal arti­cle: To Fight Coro­n­avirus, Col­leges Sent Stu­dents Home. Now Will They Refund Tuition?
    • In Coro­n­avirus Pan­dem­ic, Chris­tian­i­ty Has Ancient Lessons (Lyman Stone, For­eign Pol­i­cy): “The mod­ern world has sud­den­ly become reac­quaint­ed with the old­est trav­el­ing com­pan­ion of human his­to­ry: exis­ten­tial dread and the fear of unavoid­able, inscrutable death. No vac­cine or antibi­ot­ic will save us for the time being. Because this expe­ri­ence has become for­eign to mod­ern peo­ple, we are, by and large, psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly and cul­tur­al­ly under­equipped for the cur­rent coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic.” Side note: I have very much enjoyed the author on Twit­ter.
    • Respond­ing to Pan­demics: 4 Lessons from Church His­to­ry (Glen Scriven­er, Gospel Coali­tion): “Plagues inten­si­fy the nat­ur­al course of life. They inten­si­fy our own sense of mor­tal­i­ty and frailty. They also inten­si­fy oppor­tu­ni­ties to dis­play coun­ter­cul­tur­al, coun­ter­con­di­tion­al love. The church rose to the chal­lenge in the sec­ond cen­tu­ry, win­ning both admir­ers and also con­verts.” High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. A longer ver­sion is avail­able as a 45 minute YouTube video (which, full con­fes­sion, I have not watched). 
    • The­o­log­i­cal Reflec­tions on the Pan­dem­ic (Bri­an Tabb, Gospel Coali­tion): “All people—rich and poor, young and old, reli­gious and non-religious—are sus­cep­ti­ble to sick­ness and are cer­tain to die one day. Yet for fol­low­ers of Jesus, sick­ness tests our faith, reveals our hope, and moves us to be zeal­ous for good works.”
    • Plague and Prov­i­dence: What Huldrych Zwingli Taught Me About Trust­ing God (Stephen Ecch­er, Gospel Coali­tion): “I first came across Huldrych Zwingli’s ‘Plague Song’ while study­ing the Protes­tant Ref­or­ma­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of St. Andrews: ‘Help, Lord God, help in this trou­ble! I think death is at the door. Stand before me, Christ, for you have over­come him.’”
    • Does Reli­gion Impact What Peo­ple Are Afraid Of? (Ryan P. Burge, Reli­gion in Pub­lic): “Among Protes­tants who nev­er attend church, their total num­ber of fears is no dif­fer­ent than Catholics at just about six­teen. How­ev­er, as a Protes­tant increas­es their fre­quen­cy of wor­ship atten­dance their total num­ber of fears begins to decline. Among Protes­tants who attend more than once a week, the mod­el pre­dicts just 11.5 fears – which is sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant from both low attend­ing Protes­tants and all Catholics.”
    • This is not the end of the world, accord­ing to Chris­tians who study the end of the world (Julie Zauzmer and Sarah Pul­liam Bai­ley, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Could this be a sign of the apoc­a­lypse? It sure might feel apoc­a­lyp­tic. But not if you ask Chris­t­ian writ­ers and pas­tors who have spent years focus­ing their mes­sage on the Book of Rev­e­la­tion — the New Testament’s final book.”
  3. Gen­er­al Pan­dem­ic Think­pieces:
    • Buzz Aldrin has some advice for Amer­i­cans in quar­an­tine (Eric Berg­er, Ars Tech­ni­ca): “Buzz Aldrin knows a thing or two about quar­an­tines. After return­ing from the Moon in 1969, Aldrin, Neil Arm­strong, and Michael Collins spent 21 days in quar­an­tine to pre­vent the spread of any con­ta­gions they might have brought back from the lunar sur­face.” Very short. Mild­ly amus­ing.
    • NIH Direc­tor: ‘We’re on an Expo­nen­tial Curve’ (Peter Wehn­er, The Atlantic): “When I asked him how he sees faith now, in his late 60s, com­pared with how he saw things in his late 20s, he told me, ‘I think I’ve also arrived at a place where my faith has become a real­ly strong sup­port for deal­ing with life’s strug­gles. It took me awhile, I think—that sense that God is suf­fi­cient and that I don’t have to be strong in every cir­cum­stance.’” Fran­cis Collins is a sol­id believ­er who we co-host­ed to speak at Stan­ford around a decade ago. Good inter­view. Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
    • A fias­co in the mak­ing? As the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic takes hold, we are mak­ing deci­sions with­out reli­able data (John Ioan­ni­dis, Stat News): “The most valu­able piece of infor­ma­tion for answer­ing those ques­tions would be to know the cur­rent preva­lence of the infec­tion in a ran­dom sam­ple of a pop­u­la­tion and to repeat this exer­cise at reg­u­lar time inter­vals to esti­mate the inci­dence of new infec­tions. Sad­ly, that’s infor­ma­tion we don’t have.” The author is a Stan­ford pro­fes­sor of med­i­cine, of epi­demi­ol­o­gy and pop­u­la­tion health, of bio­med­ical data sci­ence, and of sta­tis­tics.
    • Chi­na Is Avoid­ing Blame by Trolling the World (Sha­di Hamid, The Atlantic): “A gov­ern­ment is not a race. It’s a regime—and eas­i­ly one of the worst and most bru­tal in our life­time. Crit­i­ciz­ing author­i­tar­i­an regimes for what they do out­side their own bor­ders and to their own peo­ple is sim­ply call­ing things as they are. To do oth­er­wise is to for­go analy­sis and accu­ra­cy in the name of assuag­ing a regime that deserves no such con­sid­er­a­tion.”
      • Relat­ed: Don’t blame ‘Chi­na’ for the coro­n­avirus — blame the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty (Josh Rogin, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Let’s stop say­ing ‘Chi­nese virus’ — not because every­one who uses it is racist, but because it need­less­ly plays into the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Party’s attempts to divide us and deflect our atten­tion from their bad actions. Let’s just call it the ‘CCP virus.’ That’s more accu­rate and offends only those who deserve it.”
    • “Dishonesty…Is Always an Indi­ca­tor of Weak­ness”: Tuck­er Carl­son on How He Brought His Coro­n­avirus Mes­sage to Mar-a-Lago (Joe Hagan, Van­i­ty Fair): “I felt I had a moral oblig­a­tion to be use­ful in what­ev­er small way I could, and, you know, I don’t have any actu­al author­i­ty. I’m just a talk show host. But I felt—and my wife strong­ly felt—that I had a moral oblig­a­tion to try and be help­ful in what­ev­er way pos­si­ble. I’m not an advis­er to the per­son or any­one else oth­er than my chil­dren. And I mean that. And you can ask any­body in the White House or out how many times have I gone to the White House to give my opin­ion on things. Because I don’t do that. And in gen­er­al I real­ly dis­ap­prove of peo­ple stray­ing too far out­side their lanes and act­ing like just because they have sol­id rat­ings, they have a right to con­trol pub­lic pol­i­cy. I don’t believe that. I think it’s wrong.” Unex­pect­ed­ly fas­ci­nat­ing.
    • Coro­nalinks 3/19/20 (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “I’m usu­al­ly pret­ty harsh on Bay Area gov­ern­ments here. So I want to give cred­it where cred­it is due: they’ve react­ed to the coro­n­avirus epi­dem­ic with a lev­el of swift­ness and feroc­i­ty they usu­al­ly reserve for attempts to build new hous­ing.” I am includ­ing the link entire­ly for that glo­ri­ous line. The rest is worth­while, but that line is majes­tic.
    • Coro­n­avirus: The Ham­mer and the Dance (Tom­sa Pueyo, Medi­um): “This is prob­a­bly the sin­gle biggest, most impor­tant mis­take peo­ple make when think­ing about this stage: they think it will keep them home for months. This is not the case at all. In fact, it is like­ly that our lives will go back to close to nor­mal.”
      • The author is quite crit­i­cal of the USA. Maybe it’s because I live in Sil­i­con Val­ley and am cur­rent­ly on lock­down, but I think we’re respond­ing pret­ty aggres­sive­ly. Hon­est­ly, I think we’re doing bet­ter than most coun­tries around the world (def­i­nite­ly not Sin­ga­pore, though — respect to that island tech­noc­ra­cy). Also, Amer­i­ca often takes a while to mobi­lize in response to great chal­lenges but once we do the strength of our response is stag­ger­ing. We engage in relent­less and pub­lic self-crit­i­cism that leads us to over­com­pen­sate; for exam­ple, the news keep empha­siz­ing that we are piti­ful­ly behind on test kits. It is true that we were inex­cus­ably behind. How­ev­er, our capac­i­ty for test­ing is explod­ing — pre­cise­ly because every­one believes we are piti­ful­ly behind. There remain oth­er areas in which we are still falling flat, and they are hav­ing bright spot­lights trained upon them. So I’m cau­tious­ly opti­mistic. Things will be bad but not near­ly as bad as they could have been. For all of her faults, Amer­i­ca is still pret­ty amaz­ing.
      • Also, the author inex­plic­a­bly trusts China’s reports about their cur­rent lev­els of infec­tion. Giv­en extreme­ly recent his­to­ry, that is per­plex­ing.
    • Why Telling Peo­ple They Don’t Need Masks Back­fired (Zeynep Tufek­ci, New York Times): “It used to be said that back in the Sovi­et Union, if there was a line, you first got in line and then fig­ured out what the line was for — peo­ple knew that there were going to be short­ages and that the author­i­ties often lied, so they hoard­ed.” The author is a pro­fes­sor at UNC. Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
    • We’re not going back to nor­mal (Gideon Lich­field, MIT Tech­nol­o­gy Review): “…one can imag­ine a world in which, to get on a flight, per­haps you’ll have to be signed up to a ser­vice that tracks your move­ments via your phone. The air­line wouldn’t be able to see where you’d gone, but it would get an alert if you’d been close to known infect­ed peo­ple or dis­ease hot spots. There’d be sim­i­lar require­ments at the entrance to large venues, gov­ern­ment build­ings, or pub­lic trans­port hubs. There would be tem­per­a­ture scan­ners every­where, and your work­place might demand you wear a mon­i­tor that tracks your tem­per­a­ture or oth­er vital signs.” Shared by a con­cerned stu­dent.
  4. Non-pan­dem­ic (YES!!!!):
    • Book Review: Hoover (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “Her­bert Hoover is the first stu­dent at Stan­ford. Not just a mem­ber of the first grad­u­at­ing class. Lit­er­al­ly the first stu­dent. He arrives at the dorms two months ear­ly to get a head start on var­i­ous mon­ey-mak­ing schemes, includ­ing dis­trib­ut­ing news­pa­pers, deliv­er­ing laun­dry, tend­ing live­stock, and help­ing oth­er stu­dents reg­is­ter. He would lat­er sell some of these busi­ness­es to oth­er stu­dents and start more, oper­at­ing a con­stant churn of enter­pris­es through­out his col­lege career. His aca­d­e­mics remain mediocre, and he con­tin­ues to have few friends – until he tries out for the foot­ball team in sopho­more year. He has zero ath­let­ic tal­ent and fails mis­er­ably, but the coach (whose eye for tal­ent appar­ent­ly tran­scends ath­let­ics) spots poten­tial in Hoover and asks him to come on as team man­ag­er. In this role, Hoover is an unqual­i­fied suc­cess. He turns the team’s debt into a sur­plus, and starts the Big Game – a UC Berke­ley vs. Stan­ford foot­ball match played on Thanks­giv­ing which remains a beloved Stan­ford foot­ball tra­di­tion.” Long but good (if you are inter­est­ed in Stan­ford, pres­i­den­tial his­to­ry, or clever thoughts).
      • Relat­ed: Scott Alexan­der on Her­bert Hoover (Scott Sum­n­er, The Library of Eco­nom­ics and Lib­er­ty): “Hoover was not the most tal­ent­ed per­son to ever become Pres­i­dent, but he was prob­a­bly the most com­pe­tent. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, his areas of com­pe­tence did not dove­tail with the prob­lems fac­ing the US dur­ing the ear­ly 1930s. Hoover was very good at orga­niz­ing large endeav­ors, but the prob­lems faced by the US dur­ing the ear­ly 1930s were macro­eco­nom­ic in nature. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, being a good admin­is­tra­tor doesn’t have much cor­re­la­tion with under­stand­ing macro­eco­nom­ics.”
    • ‘Dead Sea Scrolls’ at the Muse­um of the Bible are all forg­eries (Michael Greshko, Nation­al Geo­graph­ic): “Loll insist­ed on inde­pen­dence. Not only would the Muse­um of the Bible have no say on the team’s find­ings, her report would be final—and would have to be released to the pub­lic. The Muse­um of the Bible agreed to the terms. ‘Hon­est­ly, I’ve nev­er worked with a muse­um that was so up-front,’ Loll says.”
      • The Muse­um of the Bible comes off look­ing pret­ty good in this arti­cle. I feel bad for them.
    • Porn Restric­tion for Real­ists (Tan­ner Greer, per­son­al blog): “…a world where the tube-sites are gone and peo­ple must go back to pay­ing for their porn is a sig­nif­i­cant improve­ment over the world we live in now. This world is pos­si­ble: it exist­ed two decades ago. Tech­no­log­i­cal change is part of what hap­pened, but only part. Just as impor­tant in the cre­ation of the new, porn-flushed world we live are legal pro­tec­tions giv­en to web­sites like Porn­Hub and X Ham­ster which allow them to dodge lia­bil­i­ty for the theft their busi­ness mod­el is based on. It also allows them to dodge lia­bil­i­ty for much worse sins.”
    • Learn­ing From His­to­ry: How Con­gress Can Pro­tect Both Rights and Beliefs (Don Bonker, Real­Clear­Reli­gion): “Back in 1984, I received an unex­pect­ed call from Sen­a­tor Mark Hat­field (R‑OR), a high­ly regard­ed Repub­li­can who chaired the pow­er­ful Sen­ate Appro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee. I won­dered, why would he call a young Demo­c­rat who had no sig­nif­i­cant posi­tion and lit­tle influ­ence in the halls of Con­gress?”

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). 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 231

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

A Christ­mas reminder: Chi Alpha is a donor-fund­ed min­istry. This week­ly roundup of links is one small part of what we do to equip stu­dents to live for Christ in a con­fused cul­ture. If you’d like to make a spe­cial year-end gift to help us reach future lead­ers, vis­it https://glenandpaula.com/giving. Every pen­ny counts — thanks!

On to the things Glen found inter­est­ing:

  1. Trump Should Be Removed from Office (Mark Gal­li, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Whether Mr. Trump should be removed from office by the Sen­ate or by pop­u­lar vote next election—that is a mat­ter of pru­den­tial judg­ment. That he should be removed, we believe, is not a mat­ter of par­ti­san loy­al­ties but loy­al­ty to the Cre­ator of the Ten Com­mand­ments.”
    • Emma Green nabbed an inter­view with Gal­li about the edi­to­r­i­al: How Trump Lost an Evan­gel­i­cal Stal­wart (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “So I am a great believ­er in the prov­i­dence of God, and that he will, in his grace, mer­cy, and mys­te­ri­ous judg­ment, help us through this peri­od. It’s not my respon­si­bil­i­ty to heal the breach among evan­gel­i­cals. It’s not my respon­si­bil­i­ty to bring peace to the world. My respon­si­bil­i­ty, giv­en the posi­tion I have, what­ev­er it might be, is to speak the truth. If it makes a dif­fer­ence, I am thank­ful to God. And if it doesn’t make a dif­fer­ence, that’s kind of up to him.”
    • When the CT Edi­tor’s Feel­ings Trump Facts (Jim Gar­low, Charis­ma News): “Numer­ous high-vis­i­bil­i­ty evan­gel­i­cals have had oppor­tu­ni­ty to be with the pres­i­dent, to coun­sel him and to pray with him. Some have spo­ken truth to lead­er­ship. Wise­ly, they do not dis­cuss the con­tent of those meet­ings pub­licly. Nor should they. They are con­sid­er­ably more aware of the ‘heart’ of the pres­i­dent than is Mr. Gal­li. If he knew what they know about Mr. Trump, Gal­li would not have writ­ten such an arti­cle.”
    • I sus­pect Charisma’s op-ed is clos­er to the per­spec­tive of most evan­gel­i­cal Trump sup­port­ers than Chris­tian­i­ty Today’s is. For con­text, Chris­tian­i­ty Today post­ed sim­i­lar op-eds dur­ing each of the two pre­vi­ous impeach­ments.
    • Speak­ing of the pre­vi­ous impeach­ments, did you real­ize that from Nixon until now â…“ of U.S. pres­i­dents have been impeached? Props to Ross Douthat for notic­ing that. 
  2. A Sci­ence-Based Case for End­ing the Porn Epi­dem­ic (Pas­cal-Emmanuel Gob­ry, Amer­i­can Great­ness): “Since it seems some­how rel­e­vant, let me state at the out­set that I am French. Every fiber of my Latin, Catholic body recoils at puri­tanism of any sort, espe­cial­ly the bizarre, Anglo-Puri­tan kind so preva­lent in Amer­i­ca. I believe eroti­cism is one of God’s great­est gifts to humankind, prud­ish­ness a bizarre aber­ra­tion, and not so long ago, hyper­bol­ic warn­ings about the per­ils of pornog­ra­phy, whether from my Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian or pro­gres­sive fem­i­nist friends, had me rolling my eyes…. The evi­dence is in: porn is as addic­tive as smok­ing, or more, except that what smok­ing does to your lungs, porn does to your brain.”
    • Relat­ed: Let’s Fix the Pornog­ra­phy Prob­lem (Jim Banks, First Things): “The preva­lence of pornog­ra­phy in our soci­ety has con­se­quences, espe­cial­ly for our chil­dren. It’s time to start talk­ing about it, and it’s time for the gov­ern­ment to get involved.” The author is a Repub­li­can mem­ber of con­gress.
  3. The New Tes­ta­ment Doesn’t Say What Most Peo­ple Think It Does About Heav­en (N.T. Wright, Time): “The book of Rev­e­la­tion ends, not with souls going up to heav­en, but with the New Jerusalem com­ing down to earth, so that ‘the dwelling of God is with humans.’ The whole cre­ation, declares St. Paul, will be set free from its slav­ery to cor­rup­tion, to enjoy God’s intend­ed free­dom.”
  4. Los­ing Faith in the Human­i­ties (Simon Dur­ing, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “Faith has been lost across two dif­fer­ent zones: first, reli­gion; then, high cul­ture…. Cul­tur­al sec­u­lar­iza­tion resem­bles ear­li­er reli­gious sec­u­lar­iza­tion. What hap­pened to Chris­t­ian rev­e­la­tion and the Bible is now hap­pen­ing to the idea of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion and ‘the best that has been thought and said,’ in Arnold’s famous phrase.”
  5. This Cul­tur­al Moment (pod­cast): I’ve been lis­ten­ing to this pod­cast about fol­low­ing Jesus in the post-Chris­t­ian world upon the rec­om­men­da­tion of some alum­ni and a stu­dent. It’s quite good. Def­i­nite­ly start with episode 1.
  6. What Would Jesus Do About Inequal­i­ty? (Mol­ly Worthen, New York Times): “In today’s evan­gel­i­cal­ism, this is where the the­o­log­i­cal action is: the faith and work move­ment, the inter­sec­tion of Chris­tian­i­ty with the demands of the work­place and the broad­er econ­o­my — in a soci­ety that is one of the world’s wealth­i­est, yet per­sis­tent­ly inhu­mane.”
  7. The Dig­i­tal Pul­pit: A Nation­wide Analy­sis of Online Ser­mons (Pew Research): “For instance, ser­mons from evan­gel­i­cal church­es were three times more like­ly than those from oth­er tra­di­tions to include the phrase ‘eter­nal hell’ (or vari­a­tions such as ‘eter­ni­ty in hell’). How­ev­er, a con­gre­gant who attend­ed every ser­vice at a giv­en evan­gel­i­cal church in the dataset had a rough­ly one-in-ten chance of hear­ing one of those terms at least once dur­ing the study peri­od. By com­par­i­son, that same con­gre­gant had a 99% chance of hear­ing the word ‘love.’”
    • Relat­ed with some good inter­views: How long is the ser­mon? Study ranks Chris­t­ian church­es (David Crary, AP News): “Accord­ing to Pew, the medi­an length of the ser­mons was 37 min­utes. Catholic ser­mons were the short­est, at a medi­an of just 14 min­utes, com­pared with 25 min­utes for ser­mons in main­line Protes­tant con­gre­ga­tions and 39 min­utes in evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tant con­gre­ga­tions. His­tor­i­cal­ly black Protes­tant church­es had by far the longest ser­mons, at a medi­an of 54 min­utes. Pew said ser­mons at the black church­es last­ed longer than main­line Protes­tant ser­mons even though, on aver­age, they had rough­ly the same num­ber of words.”

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 Inside Grad­u­ate Admis­sions (Inside High­er Ed, Scott Jaschick): if you plan to apply to grad school, read this. There is one reveal­ing anec­dote about how an admis­sions com­mit­tee treat­ed an appli­ca­tion from a Chris­t­ian col­lege stu­dent. My take­away: the pro­fes­sors tried to be fair but found it hard to do, and their stat­ed con­cerns were most­ly about the qual­i­ty of the insti­tu­tion rather than the faith of the appli­cant. Trou­bling nonethe­less. (first shared in vol­ume 32).

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 221

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, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Black Church After Chris­ten­dom (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “I don’t know about you, but I can­not recall the last time I wit­nessed more pow­er­ful pub­lic expres­sions of what it means to be a Chris­t­ian than what Brandt Jean and Judge Tam­my Kemp did in that court­room. Guyger — again, a white woman — is going to prison to do time for her crime — but both Mr. Jean and Judge Kemp want­ed her to know that there is hope for her, and redemp­tion.”
    • There are lots of news sources that fea­ture the video clip of Brandt Jean. I chose Dreher’s piece because he also focus­es on the judge. Both of their actions inspire me.
    • I first saw video clips of Brandt Jean’s mov­ing words surg­ing on social media, and I almost imme­di­ate­ly after­wards saw a back­lash which I found per­plex­ing. Some com­menters even sug­gest­ed that there is some­thing racist about lik­ing this video. I think the truth is much more whole­some — Chris­tians love see­ing cost­ly acts of obe­di­ence to Christ. Wit­ness the sim­i­lar reac­tions Chris­tians had to the gospel-fueled tes­ti­mo­ny of Rachael Den­hol­lan­der against Lar­ry Nas­sar and to the Amish community’s for­give­ness of a school shoot­er years ago. There were dif­fer­ent racial dynam­ics but sim­i­lar respons­es from Chris­tians.
  2. The Inter­net Is Over­run With Images of Child Sex­u­al Abuse. What Went Wrong? (Michael Keller and Gabriel Dance, The New York Times): “Pic­tures of child sex­u­al abuse have long been pro­duced and shared to sat­is­fy twist­ed adult obses­sions. But it has nev­er been like this: Tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies report­ed a record 45 mil­lion online pho­tos and videos of the abuse last year…. the prob­lem of child sex­u­al abuse imagery faces a par­tic­u­lar hur­dle: It gets scant atten­tion because few peo­ple want to con­front the enor­mi­ty and hor­ror of the con­tent, or they wrong­ly dis­miss it as pri­mar­i­ly teenagers send­ing inap­pro­pri­ate self­ies.” WARNING — this is very dis­turb­ing. The reporters non-gra­tu­itous­ly describe some of the con­tent. If you sus­pect that the scene pre­ced­ing “The pre­dom­i­nant sound is the child scream­ing and cry­ing” will both­er you, it will.
    • I know some of our alum­ni who work in tech and in pol­i­cy still receive my Fri­day emails. If that is you, you need to read the pre­ced­ing arti­cle.
    • Relat­ed: Porn Cul­ture and Polit­i­cal Courage (Ter­ry Schelling, First Things): “The uncom­fort­able truth is that the rapid growth in child pornog­ra­phy is con­nect­ed to the cul­tur­al nor­mal­iza­tion of online pornog­ra­phy as a whole.”
  3. I Spent Years Search­ing for Magic—I Found God Instead (Tara Isabel­la Bur­ton, Cat­a­pult): “I want­ed mag­ic. I didn’t think too much about mean­ing. Or at least, as long as every­thing meant some­thing, the specifics didn’t seem to mat­ter. Basil could mean love. Thurs­days could mean pow­er. The full moon puri­ty. Why not? The alter­na­tive was that noth­ing meant any­thing at all.” This is won­der­ful­ly writ­ten. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
  4. How Do Chris­tians Fit Into the Two-Par­ty Sys­tem? They Don’t (Tim Keller, New York Times): “I know of a man from Mis­sis­sip­pi who was a con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­can and a tra­di­tion­al Pres­by­ter­ian. He vis­it­ed the Scot­tish High­lands and found the church­es there as strict and as ortho­dox as he had hoped. No one so much as turned on a tele­vi­sion on a Sun­day. Every­one mem­o­rized cat­e­chisms and Scrip­ture. But one day he dis­cov­ered that the Scot­tish Chris­t­ian friends he admired were (in his view) social­ists. Their under­stand­ing of gov­ern­ment eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy and the state’s respon­si­bil­i­ties was by his lights very left-wing, yet also ground­ed in their Chris­t­ian con­vic­tions. He returned to the Unit­ed States not more polit­i­cal­ly lib­er­al but, in his words, ‘hum­bled and chas­tened.’ He real­ized that thought­ful Chris­tians, all try­ing to obey God’s call, could rea­son­ably appear at dif­fer­ent places on the polit­i­cal spec­trum, with loy­al­ties to dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal strate­gies.”
    • Relat­ed: A Basic Primer on Rights and Oblig­a­tions (Justin Tay­lor, The Gospel Coali­tion): “…the Bible doesn’t say much about rights. It does, how­ev­er, fre­quent­ly address oblig­a­tions, so the key to for­mu­lat­ing a bib­li­cal doc­trine of rights is to flip the doc­trine of oblig­a­tion.”
  5. How Stan­ford Hides Con­flicts of Inter­est (Daniel “Bob” Fer­reira, Stan­ford Sphere): “We start­ed by going through all 127 full-time, non-cour­tesy pro­fes­sors in Biol­o­gy, Chem­istry, Bio­engi­neer­ing, and Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing, and we checked what Bloomberg, Crunch­base, and the SEC had on them. Then, we went on to ver­i­fy whether this infor­ma­tion was current—through com­pa­ny web­sites, men­tions on their own pub­lic CVs, or media cov­er­age. Final­ly, we removed fac­ul­ty whose links to busi­ness­es had noth­ing to do with biotech.”
  6. Hong Kong: First Line of Defence against a Ris­ing Fas­cist Pow­er (Aaron Sarin, Quil­lette): “China’s gov­ern­ment has only retained the name ‘Com­mu­nist Par­ty’ because to do oth­er­wise would be a first step towards admit­ting the atroc­i­ties of the past. The sev­er­ing of the link between Xi and Mao would make it pos­si­ble to acknowl­edge that Mao was one of history’s worst vil­lains. This would set a prece­dent for crit­i­cis­ing author­i­ty that would inevitably lead to Xi’s own down­fall. So the name stays, but in truth there is noth­ing ‘com­mu­nist’ about this Com­mu­nist Par­ty (save its author­i­tar­i­an­ism). In fact, Marx­ist stu­dents, activists, and social work­ers have been arrest­ed and tor­tured since Xi took pow­er, and uni­ver­si­ties have shut down Marx­ist soci­eties.”
    • The Prophet­ic Voice of Hong Kong’s Pro­test­ers (Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Many Hong Kong Chris­tians, while com­pris­ing less than 12 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion, have played a promi­nent role in the protests—marching, singing hymns, hold­ing prayer cir­cles, and pro­vid­ing food and shel­ter to oth­er demon­stra­tors. (The Jesus Peo­ple song ‘Sing Hal­lelu­jah to the Lord’ became an unex­pect­ed anthem of the protests, as par­tic­i­pants sang the tune to calm con­fronta­tions with police.) For Chris­tians there, the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty may be the great­est exis­ten­tial threat to the Hong Kong church.”
  7. The Impor­tance of Stu­pid­i­ty in Sci­en­tif­ic Research (Mar­tin A. Schwartz, Jour­nal of Cell Sci­ence): “At some point, the con­ver­sa­tion turned to why she had left grad­u­ate school. To my utter aston­ish­ment, she said it was because it made her feel stu­pid. After a cou­ple of years of feel­ing stu­pid every day, she was ready to do some­thing else. I had thought of her as one of the bright­est peo­ple I knew and her sub­se­quent career sup­ports that view. What she said both­ered me. I kept think­ing about it; some­time the next day, it hit me. Sci­ence makes me feel stu­pid too. It’s just that I’ve got­ten used to it. So used to it, in fact, that I active­ly seek out new oppor­tu­ni­ties to feel stu­pid.” The author is a pro­fes­sor at Yale. This essay is about a decade old but I only recent­ly stum­bled upon it.

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 Amer­i­ca in one tweet:“We are liv­ing in an era of woke cap­i­tal­ism in which com­pa­nies pre­tend to care about social jus­tice to sell prod­ucts to peo­ple who pre­tend to hate cap­i­tal­ism.” (Clay Rout­ledge, Twit­ter) First shared in vol­ume 186.

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 216

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. No, real­ly. I mean them and they mat­ter. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Cops Who Abused Pho­to­shop (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): this is out­ra­geous. Dif­fi­cult to excerpt, but well worth read­ing. Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  2. How Pornog­ra­phy Makes Us Less Human and Less Humane (Matthew Lee Ander­son, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Beneath pornog­ra­phy is the sup­po­si­tion that the mere fact of our desire for a woman makes us wor­thy of her. And so, not being bound by any kind of norm, desire must pro­ceed end­less­ly. It is no sur­prise that the indus­tri­al­ized, cheap-and-easy sex of pornog­ra­phy has answered and evoked an almost unre­strained sex­u­al greed, which allows us to be gods and god­dess­es with­in the safe­ty of our own fan­tasies. It is for deep and impor­tant rea­sons that the Ten Com­mand­ments use the eco­nom­ic lan­guage of ‘cov­et­ing’ to describe the bad­ness of errant sex­u­al desires.” Many insights in this essay.
    1. Relat­ed: In the Face of Sex­u­al Temp­ta­tion, Repres­sion Is a Sure-Fire Fail­ure (Rachel Gilson, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Repres­sion and avoid­ance are ulti­mate­ly human-cen­tered respons­es. They stuff desire, suf­fo­cate it, ban­ish it, and yet rarely suc­ceed at engen­der­ing true puri­ty. By con­trast, Chris­t­ian asceti­cism reminds us that we are not stronger than desire and then invites us to cast our gaze toward the One who is. It asks the Chris­t­ian to fol­low the sight line of desire—like look­ing down the bar­rel of a gun—and train it on what all desire is ulti­mate­ly sat­is­fied by: the glo­ry of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 4:6).”
    2. Relat­ed What Genet­ics Is Teach­ing Us About Sex­u­al­i­ty (Steven M. Phelps and Robbee Wedow, New York Times): “…genet­ic dif­fer­ences account for rough­ly one-third of the vari­a­tion in same-sex behav­ior.” The authors are pro­fes­sors (one of biol­o­gy at UT Austin and the oth­er of soci­ol­o­gy at Har­vard). They are also both gay men. They are reflect­ing on research pub­lished in the jour­nal Sci­ence: Large-scale GWAS reveals insights into the genet­ic archi­tec­ture of same-sex sex­u­al behav­ior (which Wedow coau­thored).
  3. What Major­i­ty-World Mis­sions Real­ly Looks Like (Dor­cas Cheng-Tozun, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “In 2015, 9 of the top 20 send­ing countries—including Brazil, the Philip­pines, Chi­na, India, Nige­ria, and South Africa—were in the major­i­ty world (also referred to as the devel­op­ing world), with a total of 101,000 inter­na­tion­al mis­sion­ar­ies.” For con­text, the com­bined total is close to the num­ber sent from the USA.
  4. Why do Chi­nese peo­ple like their gov­ern­ment? (Kaiser Kuo, SupChi­na): “It’s the rare per­son who can tru­ly sep­a­rate, at both an intel­lec­tu­al and an emo­tion­al lev­el, crit­i­cism of his or her coun­try from crit­i­cism of his or her country’s gov­ern­ment — espe­cial­ly if that gov­ern­ment is not, at present, ter­ri­bly embat­tled and is deliv­er­ing basic pub­lic goods in a rea­son­ably com­pe­tent man­ner.”
    1. Relat­ed: 9 ques­tions about the Hong Kong protests you were too embar­rassed to ask (Jen Kir­by, Vox): “”What began as a tar­get­ed protest against a con­tro­ver­sial extra­di­tion bill in June has trans­formed into what feels like a bat­tle for the future of Hong Kong. Pro­test­ers are not just fight­ing their local gov­ern­ment. They’re chal­leng­ing one of the most pow­er­ful coun­tries on earth: Chi­na.
    2. Relat­ed: Hong Kong Democ­ra­cy Activists Arrest­ed Ahead Of Planned March (Emi­ly Feng & Scott Neu­man, NPR): “Joshua Wong, Hong Kong’s most famous pro-democ­ra­cy leader, was arrest­ed on Fri­day along with fel­low activists and politi­cians in what appeared to be a coor­di­nat­ed sweep by the city’s police ahead of a mass anti-gov­ern­ment march that had been planned for the week­end.”
    3. Relat­ed: The One Unit­ed Strug­gle For Free­dom (David Brooks, New York Times): “Many sus­pect Amer­i­ca will nev­er step in to help. The Amer­i­can right no longer believes in spread­ing democ­ra­cy to for­eign­ers. The Amer­i­can left embraces a nation­al nar­ra­tive that empha­sizes slav­ery and oppres­sion, not that Amer­i­ca is a bea­con or an exam­ple. Nei­ther par­ty any longer sees Amer­i­ca as a van­guard nation whose very mis­sion is to advance uni­ver­sal democ­ra­cy and human dig­ni­ty.”
    4. Relat­ed: China’s Spies Are On The Offen­sive (Mike Giglio, The Atlantic): “Espi­onage and coun­teres­pi­onage have been essen­tial tools of state­craft for cen­turies, of course, and U.S. and Chi­nese intel­li­gence agen­cies have been bat­tling one anoth­er for decades. But what these recent cas­es sug­gest is that the intel­li­gence war is escalating—that Chi­na has increased both the scope and the sophis­ti­ca­tion of its efforts to steal secrets from the U.S.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  5. Why Every­thing They Say About The Ama­zon, Includ­ing That It’s The ‘Lungs Of The World,’ Is Wrong (Michael Shel­len­berg­er, Forbes): “‘What is hap­pen­ing in the Ama­zon is not excep­tion­al,’ said Coutin­ho. ‘Take a look at Google web search­es search for ‘Ama­zon’ and ‘Ama­zon For­est’ over time. Glob­al pub­lic opin­ion was not as inter­est­ed in the ‘Ama­zon tragedy’ when the sit­u­a­tion was unde­ni­ably worse. The present moment does not jus­ti­fy glob­al hys­te­ria.’ And while fires in Brazil have increased, there is no evi­dence that Ama­zon for­est fires have.” I found this arti­cle quite infor­ma­tive.
  6. The Trump Admin­is­tra­tion Sides With Nurs­es Who Object to Abor­tion (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “Beyond its out­come, this case is a sig­nal of the Trump administration’s pri­or­i­ties: It sees reli­gious free­dom and con­science pro­tec­tions as cen­tral parts of Amer­i­can civ­il rights, and offi­cials plan to enforce those laws.”
    1. Relat­ed: By their tweets you will know them: The Democ­rats’ con­tin­u­ing God gap (Ryan Burge, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): “While the Nones have grown dra­mat­i­cal­ly over the last 20 years, it’s still impor­tant to real­ize that more than six in ten Amer­i­cans iden­ti­fy as a Chris­t­ian, accord­ing to the 2018 Coop­er­a­tive Con­gres­sion­al Elec­tion Study. If Democ­rats want to win back the White House, it would behoove them to reach out to those Chris­t­ian vot­ers. How­ev­er, at least on social media, Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates fail to do so.”
    2. Relat­ed: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty embraces non­re­li­gious vot­ers, crit­i­cizes ‘reli­gious lib­er­ty’ in new res­o­lu­tion (Caleb Parke, Fox News): “The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee (DNC) passed a res­o­lu­tion Sat­ur­day prais­ing the val­ues of ‘reli­gious­ly unaf­fil­i­at­ed’ Amer­i­cans as the ‘largest reli­gious group with­in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty.’ The res­o­lu­tion, which was unan­i­mous­ly passed at the DNC’s sum­mer meet­ing on Aug. 24 in San Fran­cis­co, Calif., was cham­pi­oned by the Sec­u­lar Coali­tion of Amer­i­ca, an orga­ni­za­tion that lob­bies on behalf of athe­ists, agnos­tics, and human­ists on pub­lic pol­i­cy.”
    3. Relat­ed: Michael Wear’s com­men­tary on Twit­ter: “I just want to be clear. This is both polit­i­cal­ly stu­pid, but also, just stu­pid on a fun­da­men­tal lev­el that tran­scends elec­toral pol­i­tics.” (Wear was an Oba­ma staffer)
  7. Let’s have open bor­ders for peo­ple and closed bor­ders for cap­i­tal (Jeff Spross, The Week): “…human beings aren’t the only things that cross bor­ders: goods, ser­vices, and finan­cial cap­i­tal do it all the time as well. A bet­ter response to Trump might not be to debate whether bor­ders should be enforced, but rather enforced against what? Specif­i­cal­ly, the left-pro­gres­sive posi­tion on bor­ders should be some­thing like: max­i­mum enforce­ment against the move­ment of finan­cial cap­i­tal, mod­er­ate enforce­ment against goods and ser­vices, and min­i­mal enforce­ment against peo­ple.”
    1. Relat­ed: Chris­tian­i­ty and Cap­i­tal­ism Recon­sid­ered (Alan Jacobs, per­son­al blog): “[the claim] that cap­i­tal­ism makes us wealth­i­er, lets us live longer, and improves our ethics — could be right and even so Chris­tian­i­ty and cap­i­tal­ism might not be com­pat­i­ble. Maybe God doesn’t want us to be rich­er and longer-lived, and maybe there are cer­tain mat­ters of faith­ful­ness that tran­scend what most peo­ple call ‘ethics.’”

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 Eat, Pray, Code: Rule of St. Bene­dict Becomes Tech Developer’s Com­mu­ni­ty Guide­lines (Kate Shell­nutt, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “SQLite—a data­base man­age­ment engine used in most major browsers, smart phones, Adobe prod­ucts, and Skype—adopted a code of ethics pulled direct­ly from the bib­li­cal pre­cepts set by the ven­er­at­ed sixth-century monk.” This arti­cle blew my mind. First shared in vol­ume 175.

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 213

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. Sev­er­al arti­cles relat­ed to the mass shoot­ings:
  2. Con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians have a porn prob­lem, stud­ies show, but not the one you think (Jana Riess, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): “Draw­ing on numer­ous stud­ies, Per­ry finds that, despite the sta­tis­ti­cal find­ing that con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians are less like­ly to use porn, the per­cep­tion with­in evan­gel­i­cal church­es is that this has become an enor­mous prob­lem for the faith­ful.”
  3. What Ails the Right Isn’t (Just) Racism (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “Put anoth­er way, the right is cor­rect that cry­ing wolf mat­ters. And the left is cor­rect that The Boy Who Cried Wolf ends with a wolf feast­ing on folks who con­clud­ed that they shouldn’t wor­ry about wolves because one kid fibbed.” I found this far more inter­est­ing than the title led me to antic­i­pate.
  4. Against Against Bil­lion­aire Phil­an­thropy (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “I wor­ry the move­ment against bil­lion­aire char­i­ty is on track to dam­age char­i­ty a whole lot more than it dam­ages bil­lion­aires.” This is a very inter­est­ing essay, and he has a fol­low-up, High­lights From The Com­ments on Bil­lion­aire Phil­an­thropy, which thought­ful­ly responds to crit­i­cisms. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
  5. How (and Why) to KISSASS (Kevin Mims, Quil­lette): “…if you’re not a mem­ber of the pro­fes­sion­al class, the key to get­ting your per­son­al essays pub­lished in promi­nent pub­li­ca­tions is KISSASS—Keep It Short, Sad, And Sim­ple, Stu­pid.” This is a fol­low-up to an arti­cle I shared pre­vi­ous­ly and I found it fas­ci­nat­ing.
  6. Car­ol Swain Worked to Hold Politi­cians Account­able. Then She Felt God Call Her to Run. (David Roach, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “For Swain, change has been a recur­ring theme in her life. She went from low-income sin­gle moth­er to Ivy League aca­d­e­m­ic, from Demo­c­rat to Repub­li­can media com­men­ta­tor, and from Jehovah’s Wit­ness turned non-church­go­er to com­mit­ted fol­low­er of Christ.” What a fas­ci­nat­ing lady.
  7. Why I’m Not A Lib­er­al (Michael Bren­dan Dougher­ty, Nation­al Review): “Because lib­er­al­ism is based on indi­vid­ual rights, it nat­u­ral­ly favors the indi­vid­ual assert­ing his rights against tra­di­tion­al social sub­jects, whether they be the com­mu­ni­ty, the fam­i­ly, or even his own mar­riage. If a clas­si­cal­ly lib­er­al sys­tem has no effect on the val­ues of soci­ety, it is an aston­ish­ing coin­ci­dence that wher­ev­er lib­er­al polit­i­cal arrange­ments emerge, a new lib­er­al under­stand­ing of mar­riage even­tu­al­ly replaces the pre­vi­ous Chris­t­ian under­stand­ings as the legal and social real­i­ty.” This essay cov­ers a lot of ground.

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 Dis­solv­ing the Fer­mi Para­dox (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “Imag­ine we knew God flipped a coin. If it came up heads, He made 10 bil­lion alien civ­i­liza­tion. If it came up tails, He made none besides Earth. Using our one para­me­ter Drake Equa­tion, we deter­mine that on aver­age there should be 5 bil­lion alien civ­i­liza­tions. Since we see zero, that’s quite the para­dox, isn’t it? No. In this case the mean is mean­ing­less. It’s not at all sur­pris­ing that we see zero alien civ­i­liza­tions, it just means the coin must have land­ed tails. SDO say that rely­ing on the Drake Equa­tion is the same kind of error.”  First shared in vol­ume 159.

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 211

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. Amer­i­can jour­nal­ists have duty to report on tragedies in coun­tries like Sudan. (Isa­ha Sesay, USA Today): “If the suf­fer­ing of these girls and their par­ents is not enough to make us pay atten­tion to what has hap­pened in Chi­bok, there is some­thing else to con­sid­er: the threat to glob­al secu­ri­ty. The fate of these girls is in many ways a reflec­tion of the Niger­ian fed­er­al government’s long­stand­ing inabil­i­ty to main­tain peace and sta­bil­i­ty in the north­east of the coun­try. Amer­i­cans should see the dis­ap­pear­ance of the Chi­bok girls as a flare, illu­mi­nat­ing the exis­tence of an ‘ungoverned space’ that is fer­tile ground for a pow­er­ful ter­ror­ist group.”
  2. Face­book and Google track what porn you’re watch­ing, even when you’re in incog­ni­to (Iso­bel Ash­er Hamil­ton, Busi­ness Insid­er): “Researchers from Microsoft, Carnegie Mel­lon, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia ana­lyzed 22,484 pornog­ra­phy sites using a site called webXray to iden­ti­fy track­ing tools feed­ing data back to third par­ties. ‘Our results indi­cate track­ing is endem­ic on pornog­ra­phy web­sites: 93% of pages leak user data to a third-par­ty,’ the study con­cludes.”
    • Num­bers 32:23 comes to mind: “be sure that your sin will find you out.”
    • An unex­pect­ed con­se­quence of porn: Stream­ing online pornog­ra­phy pro­duces as much CO2 as Bel­gium (Michael Le Page, New­Sci­en­tist): “The trans­mis­sion and view­ing of online videos gen­er­ates 300 mil­lion tonnes of car­bon diox­ide a year, or near­ly 1 per cent of glob­al emis­sions. On-demand video ser­vices such as Net­flix account for a third of this, with online porno­graph­ic videos gen­er­at­ing anoth­er third.”
  3. An Epi­dem­ic of Dis­be­lief (Bar­bara Bradley Hager­ty, The Atlantic): “His­tor­i­cal­ly, inves­ti­ga­tors had assumed that some­one who assaults a stranger by the rail­road tracks is noth­ing like the man who assaults his co-work­er or his girl­friend. But it turns out that the space between acquain­tance rape and stranger rape is not a wall, but a plaza. When Cleve­land inves­ti­ga­tors uploaded the DNA from the acquain­tance-rape kits, they were sur­prised by how often the results also matched DNA from unsolved stranger rapes. The task force iden­ti­fied dozens of mys­tery rapists this way.” Infu­ri­at­ing and high­ly rec­om­mend­ed. 
  4. Oil-patch evan­gel­i­cals: How Chris­tian­i­ty and crude fueled the rise of the Amer­i­can right (Dar­ren Dochuk, Wash­ing­ton Post): “In the face of the Rock­e­fellers’ pro­gres­sive way, Tex­an oil­ers cham­pi­oned a the­ol­o­gy of per­son­al encounter with scrip­ture and an active High­er Being. They her­ald­ed church auton­o­my and gospel teach­ings about pros­per­i­ty and end times, a mes­sage that antic­i­pat­ed the vio­lent dis­rup­tions of the oil age and the need to save souls and reap God’s — and the earth’s — rich­es before the world’s end.” The author is a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at Notre Dame and describes an aspect of mod­ern evan­gel­i­cal his­to­ry I had not heard before.
    • An inter­view with the above author: Anoint­ed with Oil: Evan­gel­i­cals and the Petro­le­um Indus­try (Thomas Kidd, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Oil his­to­ri­ans may be sur­prised to hear it, but in some instances oil’s cor­po­rate struc­tures evolved direct­ly out of the the­o­log­i­cal com­mit­ments of its lead­ers.” The first piece felt a lit­tle hos­tile to me, where­as this one did not at all. 
  5. Stan­ford oppos­es bill that would let col­lege ath­letes in Cal­i­for­nia prof­it from endorse­ments (Ian Park, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “The NCAA earns more than $1 bil­lion in annu­al rev­enue from broad­cast­ing rights and cham­pi­onships. In return, stu­dent-ath­letes receive lit­tle to no com­pen­sa­tion, oth­er than schol­ar­ships. Accord­ing to a study by Drex­el Uni­ver­si­ty and the Nation­al Col­lege Play­ers Asso­ci­a­tion, schol­ar­ships aren’t enough for many stu­dent-ath­letes, as sur­veyed ath­letes had to pay col­leges schol­ar­ship short­falls of as much as $17,000.”
    • In oth­er and com­plete­ly unre­lat­ed local news: SF does not have the high­est rents in the Bay Area (Adam Brin­klow, Curbed): “Men­lo Park, home of Face­book, has the high­est rents in the region, aver­ag­ing $4,638 per month. Palo Alto also beat out SF with a star­tling $3,857 per month price tag.” 
    • Else­where in the arti­cle we learn that Red­wood City rents aver­age $1,956. I love Men­lo Park, but there’s no way it is twice as nice as Red­wood City. Sheesh!
  6. Trump vs. Dems: ‘Racist,’ ‘social­ist’ lines drawn for 2020 (Lisa Mas­caro, AP News): “With tweets and a vote, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and House Democ­rats estab­lished the sharp and emo­tion­al­ly raw con­tours of the 2020 elec­tion cam­paigns. In the process, they have cre­at­ed a fraught polit­i­cal frame: ‘racists’ vs. ‘social­ists.’”
    • What Pelosi Ver­sus the Squad Real­ly Means (David Brooks, New York Times): “Lib­er­al­ism arose out of the fact that polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tions, while excit­ing at the out­set, usu­al­ly end up in bru­tal­i­ty, dic­ta­tor­ship and blood. Work­ing with­in the sys­tem is best. Peo­ple who came of age in the past few decades did not grow up in an atmos­phere of assumed lib­er­al­ism. They often grew up in an atmos­phere that cri­tiques it.”
    • ‘It Makes Us Want to Sup­port Him More’ (Peter Nicholas, The Atlantic): “A few con­ced­ed that Trump occa­sion­al­ly fires off an inap­pro­pri­ate tweet, but said his accom­plish­ments in office over­shad­ow any offense. If any­thing, they said, his lan­guage springs from an authen­tic­i­ty they find refresh­ing. None of the peo­ple I spoke with con­sid­ered his com­ments about the con­gress­women racist.”
    • Peo­ple Who Have Screamed ‘Racism’ For Decades Won­der Why No One Is Lis­ten­ing To Them About Trump (Baby­lon Bee): this would nor­mal­ly go down in the amus­ing sec­tion because the head­line is from a satire site, but this is one of those times where the Bee’s insight is rel­e­vant: “‘I mean, we com­pared John McCain to George Wal­lace,’ stat­ed Demo­c­rat Mag­gie Wilkins, ‘and I’m not sure who to com­pare Trump to in order to show he’s an even more wors­er racist.’ Activists are con­sid­er­ing com­ing up with oth­er words to express that Trump is a worse kind of racist. They con­sid­ered ‘white suprema­cist,’ but they’ve been using that a lot late­ly, so it would only mean to most peo­ple that Trump is as bad as the Bet­sy Ross flag. So they tried to invent a new term — dou­ble plus racist — to express how extra racist Trump is, but then remem­bered they already used that on Mitt Rom­ney.”
  7. 5 Rea­sons to Dis­en­tan­gle Sex­u­al­i­ty and Race (Rebec­ca McLaugh­lin, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Chris­t­ian sex­u­al ethics were as shock­ing to their orig­i­nal first-cen­tu­ry Gre­co-Roman con­text as they are today. If Chris­tians are to learn from his­to­ry, the les­son must be this: hold fast to Scripture’s rad­i­cal demands, whether the cul­tur­al tide is com­ing in or out. You won’t know which side of his­to­ry you’re on until the last day.” Dis­claimer: I know the author and have col­lab­o­rat­ed with her on events at Stan­ford.

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 When Chil­dren Say They’re Trans (Jesse Sin­gal, The Atlantic): “ …to deny the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a con­nec­tion between social influ­ences and gender-identity explo­ration among ado­les­cents would require ignor­ing a lot of what we know about the devel­op­ing teenage brain—which is more sus­cep­ti­ble to peer influ­ence, more impul­sive, and less adept at weigh­ing long-term out­comes and con­se­quences than ful­ly devel­oped adult brains—as well as indi­vid­ual sto­ries like Delta’s.” This is a long and bal­anced piece which has gar­nered out­rage in some online cir­cles. First shared in vol­ume 157.

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 207

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. Eleven arrests, dou­ble the tear gas fired dur­ing Occu­py move­ment and 81 injured: police chief paints dis­turb­ing pic­ture of Hong Kong extra­di­tion bill protests (Ng Kang-chung & Christy Leung, South Chi­na Morn­ing Post): “In a post­mortem on Thurs­day of the clash­es between offi­cers and pro­test­ers who had sur­round­ed the Leg­isla­tive Coun­cil build­ing and admin­is­tra­tive head­quar­ters the day before, Com­mis­sion­er of Police Stephen Lo Wai-chung said more than 150 rounds of tear gas had been fired – almost dou­ble that on the first day of the Occu­py demon­stra­tions – and about 20 bean­bag rounds, as well as ‘sev­er­al’ rounds of rub­ber bul­lets.” See also these relat­ed pho­tos from AP.
    • What Hong Kong’s Free­dom Means to the World (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg Opin­ion): “Cir­ca 2019, Hong Kong is a study in the creep­ing pow­er and increas­ing sophis­ti­ca­tion of autoc­ra­cy. While it is pos­si­ble there could be a Tianan­men-like mas­sacre in the streets of Hong Kong, it is more like­ly that its main­land over­lords will opt for more sub­tle ways of chok­ing off Hong Kong’s remain­ing auton­o­my and free­doms.”
    • Hong Kong and the Future of Free­dom (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “When Ronald Rea­gan called the Sovi­et Union ‘the focus of evil in the mod­ern world,’ one promi­nent lib­er­al writer denounced him as ‘prim­i­tive.’ But it was such rhetoric that gave courage to dis­si­dents and dream­ers on the oth­er side of the wall. What’s real­ly prim­i­tive is to look upon the oppres­sion of oth­ers and, whether out of defi­cient sym­pa­thy or exces­sive sophis­ti­ca­tion, remain silent.”
  2. The Pol­i­tics of Dystopia (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “Lib­er­al­ism has nev­er done as well as it thinks at resolv­ing its own crises. America’s gravest moral evil, chat­tel slav­ery, was defeat­ed by an author­i­tar­i­an pres­i­dent in a reli­gious civ­il war, not by pro­ce­du­ral­ism or con­sti­tu­tion­al debate. The cri­sis of the 1930s end­ed hap­pi­ly for lib­er­al­ism because a reac­tionary impe­ri­al­ist with­stood Adolf Hitler and a rev­o­lu­tion­ary Bol­she­vik crushed him. The lib­er­al peace that fol­lowed may depend on fear of the atom­ic bomb.”
    • Relat­ed: A High-School Porn Star’s Cry for Help (Cait­lyn Flana­gan, The Atlantic): “The prob­lem is that there are some very old human impuls­es that must now con­tend with porn. One of them is the ten­den­cy of deeply trou­bled teenage girls to act out sex­u­al­ly as a kind of dis­tress sig­nal, an attempt to get the atten­tion of adults who may not be get­ting the mes­sage that they’re in a cri­sis.”
    • Relat­ed? JON STEWART Goes OFF On Con­gress (YouTube): a remark­able nine-minute clip. The next day the bill was passed in com­mit­tee and now awaits a full vote.
  3. The restau­rant own­er who asked for 1‑star Yelp reviews (Zachary Crock­ett, The Hus­tle): “In 2014, chef Davide Cer­re­ti­ni adver­tised a spe­cial that would for­ev­er change his fate: Any­one who left his restau­rant a 1‑star review on Yelp would get 25% off a piz­za.” This is fas­ci­nat­ing.
  4. Her Evan­gel­i­cal Megachurch Was Her World. Then Her Daugh­ter Said She Was Molest­ed by a Min­is­ter. (Eliz­a­beth Dias, New York Times): “Ms. Bragg said that all she want­ed was a church home that would care for her fam­i­ly. Evan­gel­i­cals in Dal­las are enam­ored with the Vil­lage, with Mr. Chan­dler and with all the church rep­re­sents, she said recent­ly. She start­ed to cry.”
  5. A Soci­ol­o­gist of Reli­gion on Protes­tants, Porn, and the “Puri­ty Indus­tri­al Com­plex” (Isaac Chotin­er, The New York­er): “What I found is that, what­ev­er we think pornog­ra­phy is doing, those effects tend to be ampli­fied when we’re talk­ing about con­ser­v­a­tive Protes­tants. It seems to be unique­ly harm­ful to con­ser­v­a­tive Protes­tants’ men­tal health, their sense of self, their own identities—certainly their inti­mate relationships—in ways that don’t tend to be as harm­ful for peo­ple who don’t have that kind of moral prob­lem with it.” Chotin­er is inter­view­ing Samuel Per­ry, a soci­ol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Okla­homa.
  6. The Rise Of Pro­gres­sive Occultism (Tara Isabel­la Bur­ton, The Amer­i­can Inter­est): “For an increas­ing num­ber of left-lean­ing millennials—more and more of whom do not belong to any orga­nized religion—occult spir­i­tu­al­i­ty isn’t just a form of per­son­al prac­tice, self-care with more sage. Rather, it’s a meta­phys­i­cal can­vas for the Amer­i­can cul­ture wars in the post-Trump era: pit­ting the self-iden­ti­fied Davids of seem­ing­ly sec­u­lar pro­gres­sivism against the Goliath of nation­al­ist evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tian­i­ty.”
    • The arti­cle ends with an amaz­ing quote: “Back in 1992, Chris­t­ian broad­cast­er Pat Robert­son warned of the dan­gers of fem­i­nism, pre­dict­ing that it would induce ‘women to leave their husbands.…practice witch­craft, destroy cap­i­tal­ism and become les­bians.’ Many of today’s witch­es would hap­pi­ly agree.” 👀
  7. Is Chris­tian­i­ty los­ing to Islam? (Paul Seabright, Asia Times): “On a world scale – what­ev­er pop­ulists may say – Chris­tian­i­ty is not strug­gling; it is in more vig­or­ous shape than it has ever been. And the mar­ket­place is where most of the reli­gious action is going to take place in this cen­tu­ry. As in many oth­er mar­ket­places, there are large returns to economies of scale for those who can work out how to exploit them. That is why cor­po­rate reli­gion is here to stay – and why we should expect it to con­sol­i­date its dom­i­nance.” The author is an eco­nom­ics pro­fes­sor in France.

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 Why Being a Fos­ter Child Made Me a Con­ser­v­a­tive (Rob Hen­der­son, New York Times): “Indi­vid­u­als have rights. But they also have respon­si­bil­i­ties. For instance, when I say par­ents should pri­or­i­tize their chil­dren over their careers, there is a sense of unease among my peers. They think I want to blame indi­vid­u­als rather than a neb­u­lous foe like pover­ty. They are most­ly right.” The author just grad­u­at­ed from Yale. Worth read­ing regard­less of your polit­i­cal alle­giances. First shared in vol­ume 153.

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 178

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. No — real­ly. I mean them. Also, I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Cul­tur­al win­some­ness will not be enough for Chris­tians (Andrew T Walk­er, Ethics and Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Com­mis­sion): “Chow is the very def­i­n­i­tion of class, dig­ni­ty and civil­i­ty. She’s a mod­el for what faith­ful Chris­t­ian dis­ci­ple­ship looks like in the pub­lic square. There is no foam­ing-at-the-mouth hatred for any­one. She loves every­one; she just did not want to vio­late her con­science. What’s the les­son here? There are many. But to focus on just one, this sto­ry is a reminder that no amount of cul­tur­al sophis­ti­ca­tion or intel­li­gence will absolve the Chris­t­ian from being seen as a back­ward-think­ing big­ot.” This is cor­rect.
    • Relat­ed: An inter­view with Isabel­la Chow (Allie Stuck­ey, Twit­ter) — this is a 4 minute video.
    • Kind of relat­ed: The State of Hate (David Mont­gomery, Wash­ing­ton Post): “In think­ing about my inter­view, I was struck by just how lit­tle he had dis­put­ed the SPLC’s claims about the frankly dis­qui­et­ing posi­tions he has tak­en. To some extent, it was sim­i­lar to my expe­ri­ence at the FRC and ADF. They sim­ply saw those posi­tions as admirable, or at the very least defen­si­ble, expres­sions of truth — where­as, to the SPLC, they were expres­sions of hate.”
    • Vague­ly relat­ed: David French on the price of pub­lic engage­ment (Twit­ter)
  2. What Is It Like to Be a Man? (Phil Christ­man, The Hedge­hog Review): “I live out my mas­culin­i­ty most often as a per­verse avoid­ance of com­fort: the refusal of good clothes, mois­tur­iz­er, painkillers; hard phys­i­cal train­ing, pur­sued for its own sake and not because I enjoy it; a sense that there is a set amount of phys­i­cal pain or self-imposed dis­ci­pline that I owe the uni­verse.” Very well-writ­ten. Every­one will like­ly find parts they res­onate with and parts they reject. The author is a lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan and based on his CV seems to be a fair­ly devot­ed Epis­co­palian.
  3. Ask and You Shall Evan­ge­lize (Sarah Eekhoff Zyl­stra, Gospel Coali­tion): “‘Mod­ern selves are so inter­nal,’ Keller said. ‘In the old days if you were con­vinced of the truth, you changed your­self. Now we adopt the truth as acces­sories that fit in with who we want to be.’” A good arti­cle on the nature of effec­tive wit­ness in con­tem­po­rary West­ern soci­ety.
  4. Why Are Young Peo­ple Hav­ing So Lit­tle Sex? (Kate Julian, The Atlantic): “I men­tioned to sev­er­al of the peo­ple I inter­viewed for this piece that I’d met my hus­band in an ele­va­tor, in 2001. (We worked on dif­fer­ent floors of the same insti­tu­tion, and over the months that fol­lowed struck up many more conversations—in the ele­va­tor, in the break room, on the walk to the sub­way.) I was fas­ci­nat­ed by the extent to which this prompt­ed oth­er women to sigh and say that they’d just love to meet some­one that way. And yet quite a few of them sug­gest­ed that if a ran­dom guy start­ed talk­ing to them in an ele­va­tor, they would be weird­ed out. ‘Creep­er! Get away from me,’ one woman imag­ined think­ing.” The arti­cle is vul­gar in places and premised on flawed assump­tions… and still man­ages to be fas­ci­nat­ing and insight­ful.
    • Relat­ed: How the GOP Gave Up on Porn (Tim Alber­ta, Politi­co): “We know that the ubiq­ui­ty of porn is a prob­lem: Even as experts debate the sci­ence of addic­tion and the link between con­sump­tion and destruc­tive behav­ior, there is sure­fire soci­o­log­i­cal evi­dence of its exac­er­bat­ing influ­ence on those most susceptible—people pre­dis­posed to vio­lence, for instance, or misog­y­ny or child abuse. There is also con­sen­sus that it has, in plen­ty of cas­es, con­tributed to abu­sive rela­tion­ships and the frac­tur­ing of fam­i­lies. And that’s just where adults are con­cerned.”
  5. The Best Way To Save Peo­ple From Sui­cide (Jason Cherkis, Huff­in­g­ton Post High­line): “Mot­to didn’t take long to write the first let­ter a patient would receive. He knew what he want­ed to say, hit­ting upon two sentences—37 words—that felt just right: ‘It has been some time since you were here at the hos­pi­tal, and we hope things are going well for you. If you wish to drop us a note we would be glad to hear from you.’” This is an engross­ing arti­cle. Rec­om­mend­ed.
  6. Over­com­ing Bar­ri­ers to Women’s Advance­ment in Polit­i­cal Sci­ence (Amy Catalinac, PDF host­ed at Har­vard): “Of the polit­i­cal sci­en­tists of my gen­er­a­tion I know well, suc­cess­ful ones do all of these things auto­mat­i­cal­ly, and those who have been less suc­cess­ful do many few­er of them.” Very straight talk on how to get a tenure-track job. From my out­side van­tage point, this seems like excel­lent advice for social sci­en­tists of either gen­der.
  7. The dra­mat­ic implo­sion of ‘I Kissed Dat­ing Good­bye’ is a les­son — and a warn­ing (Chris­tine Emba, Wash­ing­ton Post): “The next time we’re tempt­ed toward too-for­mu­la­ic think­ing, we’ll know to take it with a grain of salt. After all, life is rarely so pure.”

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 an eye-open­ing (and dis­may­ing) read: What The Media Gets Wrong About Israel (Mat­tie Fried­man, The Atlantic). (first shared back in vol­ume 5): “one of the most impor­tant aspects of the media-sat­u­rat­ed con­flict between Jews and Arabs is also the least cov­ered: the press itself. The West­ern press has become less an observ­er of this con­flict than an actor in it, a role with con­se­quences for the mil­lions of peo­ple try­ing to com­pre­hend cur­rent events, includ­ing pol­i­cy­mak­ers who depend on jour­nal­is­tic accounts to under­stand a region where they con­sis­tent­ly seek, and fail, to pro­duc­tive­ly inter­vene.”

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 148

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. This col­lege pro­fes­sor gives her stu­dents extra cred­it for going on dates (Lisa Bonos, Wash­ing­ton Post): “She sees con­ver­sa­tions about dat­ing as part of the big ques­tions her class­es tack­le, such as: How should I live my life? What kinds of rela­tion­ships help me to become the kind of per­son I want to be? If stu­dents don’t learn how to date while they’re in col­lege, while sur­round­ed by thou­sands of peers all in a sim­i­lar stage in life, Cronin says, it only gets hard­er to build those skills after grad­u­a­tion.” The pro­fes­sor in ques­tion, Ker­ry Cronin, is a philoso­pher at Boston Col­lege.
    • She has these rules for a first date: “The stu­dent has to ask in per­son (“tex­ting is the dev­il; stop it,” she says in one of her YouTube videos), and the recip­i­ent has to know it’s a date. And if they say they’re busy and to check back with them lat­er, don’t. Just move on. ‘That’s a great skill to build, so that you can have a thick­er skin,’ Cronin says. She believes that the per­son who asks, pays. And the first date shouldn’t cost more than $10, include drugs or alco­hol, or last longer than 90 min­utes…”
    • Those are good guide­lines. Read them again.
  2. I think the fol­low­ing two arti­cles will prove to be among the most con­tro­ver­sial I’ve ever shared. I also think they both con­tain much prac­ti­cal wis­dom that will prove rel­e­vant as the weath­er warms:
    • For the gents: 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.”
    • For the ladies: Sis­ter… Show Mer­cy! (Dan Phillips, Team Pyro): “Sis­ter, if there’s one thing you and I can cer­tain­ly agree on, it’s this: I don’t know what it’s like to be a woman, and you don’t know what it’s like to be a man. We’re both prob­a­bly wrong where we’re sure we’re right, try as we might. So let me try to dart a telegram from my camp over to the distaff side.”
    • I am aware that these two arti­cles only deal with things from a male per­spec­tive. Sad­ly, I haven’t come across any insight­ful arti­cles that help ladies deal with their own lust or give gen­tle­men advice on how to be help­ful to them. Ladies, if you’ve read some­thing you found tru­ly help­ful, let me know.
  3. Jesus, Take the Con­trol Wheel: South­west Pilot Saw Fly­ing as Min­istry (David Roach, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Tam­mie Jo Shults—the pilot who guid­ed Flight 1380 to the ground April 17 after a mid­flight engine fail­ure shot debris through a win­dow, killing one passenger—is a rec­og­niz­able fig­ure at the Texas Hill Coun­try church, which aver­ages 900 in wor­ship…. Mul­ti­ple media reports have cit­ed a blog post in which Shults stat­ed being a pilot gave her ‘the oppor­tu­ni­ty to wit­ness for Christ on almost every flight.’” You can glo­ri­fy God in almost any pro­fes­sion — make it your ambi­tion.
  4. Five Great Books on African Amer­i­can Evan­gel­i­cal His­to­ry (Thomas Kidd, The Gospel Coali­tion): “If I had to pick one African Amer­i­can church leader I wish more Chris­tians knew about, it would prob­a­bly be [Lemuel] Haynes. A Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War sol­dier, Haynes went on to become a pas­tor of a large­ly white church in New Eng­land, a crit­ic of Amer­i­can slav­ery, and an advo­cate of the New Divin­i­ty the­ol­o­gy of Jonathan Edwards’s suc­ces­sors.”
  5. Don­ald Trump, Trag­ic Hero (Vic­tor Davis Han­son, Nation­al Review): “Trag­ic heroes, as they have been por­trayed from Sopho­cles’ plays (e.g., Ajax, Antigone, Oedi­pus Rex, Philoctetes) to the mod­ern west­ern film, are not intrin­si­cal­ly noble. Much less are they like­able. Cer­tain­ly, they can often be obnox­ious and pet­ty, if not dan­ger­ous, espe­cial­ly to those around them.” Han­son is a fel­low at Stanford’s Hoover Insti­tu­tion.
  6. The Face­book Tri­als: It’s Not “Our” Data (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “…I have hun­dreds of friends on Face­book, most of whom I don’t know well and have nev­er met. But my Face­book friends are friends. We share com­mon inter­ests and, most of the time, I’m hap­py to see what they are think­ing and doing and I’m pleased when they show inter­est in what I’m up to. If, before Face­book exist­ed, I had been asked to list ‘my friends,’ I would have had a hard time nam­ing ten friends, let alone hun­dreds. My Face­book friends didn’t exist before Face­book. My Face­book friend­ships are not sim­ply my data—they are a unique co-cre­ation of myself, my friends, and, yes, Face­book.”
  7. Google Will Now Answer Your The­o­log­i­cal Ques­tions (OpenBible.info): “Google just announced an AI-pow­ered exper­i­ment called Talk to Books, which lets you enter a query and find pas­sages in books that are seman­ti­cal­ly sim­i­lar to your query, not mere­ly pas­sages that hap­pen to match the key­words you chose. For the­ol­o­gy- and Bible-relat­ed ques­tions, it often presents an evan­gel­i­cal per­spec­tive, per­haps because U.S. evan­gel­i­cal pub­lish­ers have been eager for Google to index their books.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • A Divid­ed Coun­try (Pearls Before Swine): this one actu­al­ly made me laugh and not mere­ly chor­tle sen­si­bly.
  • Christ Chel­la (John Crist, Face­book): this is amaz­ing­ly detailed and the more you know the evan­gel­i­cal cul­ture the fun­nier it is

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have On Polit­i­cal Cor­rect­ness (William Dere­siewicz, The Amer­i­can Schol­ar): a long and thought­ful arti­cle. “Selec­tive pri­vate col­leges have become reli­gious schools. The reli­gion in ques­tion is not Method­ism or Catholi­cism but an extreme ver­sion of the belief sys­tem of the lib­er­al elite: the lib­er­al pro­fes­sion­al, man­age­r­i­al, and cre­ative class­es, which pro­vide a large major­i­ty of stu­dents enrolled at such places and an even larg­er major­i­ty of fac­ul­ty and admin­is­tra­tors who work at them. To attend those insti­tu­tions is to be social­ized, and not infre­quent­ly, indoc­tri­nat­ed into that reli­gion…. I say this, by the way, as an athe­ist, a demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist, a native north­east­ern­er, a per­son who believes that col­leges should not have sports teams in the first place—and in case it isn’t obvi­ous by now, a card-car­ry­ing mem­ber of the lib­er­al elite.” (first shared in vol­ume 92)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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