Tag: privacy

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 336

I was quar­an­tined this week, so I had an extra-large pile of stuff to sift through. Enjoy these gems!

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.

I’m a sim­ple man, and I appre­ci­ate that vol­ume 336 is com­prised of dig­its eas­i­ly put into an equa­tion: 3 + 3 = 6.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. This Inno­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian Home­less Shel­ter Is Ris­ing To Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Hous­ing Chal­lenge (Liza Van­den­boom Ash­ley, Reli­gion Unplugged): “…Orange Coun­ty Res­cue Mis­sion [is] an inno­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian home­less shel­ter based in Tustin with sev­er­al oth­er loca­tions. The Tustin cam­pus, known as the Vil­lage of Hope, runs with­out gov­ern­ment fund­ing or pri­vate debt and employs an orga­ni­za­tion­al and aes­thet­ic ethos that more close­ly resem­bles a col­lege cam­pus than a home­less shel­ter.” This is an uplift­ing read. Rec­om­mend­ed.
  2. Christ and cocaine: Rio’s gangs of God blend faith and vio­lence (Tom Phillips, The Guardian): “Drug lords, some reg­u­lar church­go­ers, have incor­po­rat­ed Chris­t­ian sym­bols into their ultra-vio­lent trade. Pack­ets of cocaine, hand­guns and uni­forms are embla­zoned with the Star of David – a ref­er­ence to the Pen­te­costal belief that the return of Jews to Israel rep­re­sents progress towards the sec­ond com­ing. Gang-com­mis­sioned graf­fi­ti offers spir­i­tu­al guid­ance and heav­en­ly praise.” Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus. What a wild sto­ry! See­ing their blind spots, my main take­away is to won­der what my blind spots are.
  3. Noth­ing Sacred: These Apps Reserve The Right To Sell Your Prayers (Emi­ly Bak­er-White, Buz­zFeed): “It is com­mon for free apps to prof­it from shar­ing their user­s’ data and to be vague about exact­ly how and with whom they share it, but users feel like Pray.com’s data prac­tices are at odds with the deeply per­son­al nature of prayer itself. Jen­ny, a recent col­lege grad­u­ate who prayed about the infi­deli­ty of a roman­tic part­ner in the app, said ‘there is an expec­ta­tion of pri­va­cy’ among Chris­tians shar­ing prayers.”
    • From lat­er in the arti­cle: “At least one gov­ern­ment has tak­en an inter­est in prayer app data, too — the US mil­i­tary bought exten­sive loca­tion data mined from Mus­lim prayer apps back in 2020 for use in spe­cial forces oper­a­tions.”
  4. PDF: So Long, And No Thanks for the Exter­nal­i­ties: The Ratio­nal Rejec­tion of Secu­ri­ty Advice by Users (Cor­mac Her­ley, Microsoft): “For exam­ple, much of the advice con­cern­ing pass­words is out­dat­ed and does lit­tle to address actu­al treats, and ful­ly 100% of cer­tifi­cate error warn­ings appear to be false pos­i­tives. Fur­ther, if users spent even a minute a day read­ing URLs to avoid phish­ing, the cost (in terms of user time) would be two orders of mag­ni­tude greater than all phish­ing loss­es. Thus we find that most secu­ri­ty advice sim­ply offers a poor cost-ben­e­fit trade­off to users and is reject­ed.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  5. Super­hero Secret Iden­ti­ties Aren’t Pos­si­ble with Today’s Com­put­ing Tech­nolo­gies (Jason Hong, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions of the ACM): “Super­heroes have to wor­ry about hav­ing their iden­ti­ty being revealed, but the rest of us in the real world have to wor­ry about just how much infor­ma­tion about us is out there, how wide­ly avail­able many of these tech­nolo­gies are, and how both of these can be eas­i­ly abused—sometimes acci­den­tal­ly, some­times intentionally—by adver­tis­ers, gov­ern­ments, employ­ers, stalk­ers, crim­i­nals, and more.” I enjoyed this.
  6. On Russia/Ukraine:
    • US Blun­ders, Ukraine’s War (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Putin or no Putin, no Russ­ian leader could allow Ukraine to join NATO, any more than any Amer­i­can leader could allow Mex­i­co to join a defen­sive alliance formed out of oppo­si­tion to Amer­i­can pow­er. Every Amer­i­can pres­i­dent since James Mon­roe has upheld the so-called Mon­roe Doc­trine, which claims the entire West­ern hemi­sphere as a zone of Amer­i­can influ­ence. By what crack­pot log­ic can we advance and defend that claim, but expect Rus­sia, anoth­er great pow­er, to acqui­esce to Ukraine, a bor­der state to Rus­sia, join­ing NATO?”
    • Rus­sia as the “Great Satan” in the Lib­er­al Imag­i­na­tion (Richard Hana­nia, Sub­stack): “…the US for­eign pol­i­cy estab­lish­ment believes that every coun­try in Europe should even­tu­al­ly be part of the EU and NATO, and none should be allowed to get close to Rus­sia or adopt a ‘non­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic’ form of gov­ern­ment, with “democracy” again being defined as mak­ing inter­nal deci­sions that reflect the pol­i­cy out­comes that State Depart­ment offi­cials wish a Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­dent would imple­ment at home.”
    • Defend Cher­nobyl Dur­ing an Inva­sion? Why Both­er, Some Ukraini­ans Ask. (Andrew Kramer & Tyler Hicks, New York Times): “Mr. Prishepa said he would pre­fer that Ukraine set up the defen­sive lines fur­ther south, giv­ing the irra­di­at­ed zone over to whomev­er might want it. ‘It’s a waste­land,’ he said. ‘No crop will ever grow here.’ ” Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
  7. Pan­dem­ic per­spec­tives:
    • I Had COVID. Am I Done Now? (Emi­ly Oster, Sub­stack): “I think part of what has made this tran­si­tion dif­fi­cult, even if we say we have accept­ed it, is the resid­ual fear of the unknown that has been hard to shake. It’s not unknown to as many of us as before. I spent the past two years tak­ing a mil­lion PCR and rapid tests, which were all neg­a­tive. When I final­ly got a pos­i­tive result last week, I felt a bit of loss and defeat but also a bit of release. Maybe it’s the same for others.“The author is an econ­o­mist at Brown Uni­ver­si­ty.
    • Why Are We Boost­ing Kids? (David Zweig, Bari Weis­s’s Sub­stack): “Mon­i­ca Gand­hi, a doc­tor and an infec­tious-dis­ease spe­cial­ist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San Fran­cis­co, was blunt in her assess­ment. ‘I am not giv­ing my 12 and 14-year-old boys boost­ers,’ she told me. Dr. Gand­hi is not the only expert to pub­licly state an inten­tion to not com­ply with the CDC’s rec­om­men­da­tion. Dr. Paul Offit is the direc­tor of the Vac­cine Edu­ca­tion Cen­ter at Children’s Hos­pi­tal of Philadel­phia, a mem­ber of the FDA’s vac­cine advi­so­ry com­mit­tee, and is con­sid­ered one the country’s top author­i­ties on pedi­atric vac­cine pol­i­cy. He recent­ly said that get­ting boost­ed would not be worth the risk for the aver­age healthy 17-year-old boy, and he advised his son, who is in his 20s, not to get a third dose.”
    • Soci­ety has a trust prob­lem. More cen­sor­ship will only make it worse. (Hamish McKen­zie, Chris Best & Jairaj, Sub­stack): “…as we face grow­ing pres­sure to cen­sor con­tent pub­lished on Sub­stack that to some seems dubi­ous or objec­tion­able, our answer remains the same: we make deci­sions based on prin­ci­ples not PR, we will defend free expres­sion, and we will stick to our hands-off approach to con­tent mod­er­a­tion. While we have con­tent guide­lines that allow us to pro­tect the plat­form at the extremes, we will always view cen­sor­ship as a last resort, because we believe open dis­course is bet­ter for writ­ers and bet­ter for soci­ety.” Bra­vo to Sub­stack.
    • The Fol­ly of Pan­dem­ic Cen­sor­ship (Matt Taib­bi, Sub­stack): “Cen­sors have a fan­ta­sy that if they get rid of all the Beren­sons and Mer­co­las and Mal­ones, and rein in peo­ple like Joe Rogan, that all the hold­outs will sud­den­ly rush to get vac­ci­nat­ed. The oppo­site is true. If you wipe out crit­ics, peo­ple will imme­di­ate­ly default to high­er lev­els of sus­pi­cion. They will now be sure there’s some­thing wrong with the vac­cine. If you want to con­vince audi­ences, you have to allow every­one to talk, even the ones you dis­agree with. You have to make a bet­ter case.” Parts of this are straight fire.
    • How an Anony­mous Report­ing Sys­tem Made Yale a COVID ‘Surveillance State’ (Aaron Sibar­i­um, Wash­ing­ton Free Bea­con): “At Yale, those lost social con­nec­tions have killed more peo­ple than COVID-19. In Sep­tem­ber 2020, a Yale fresh­man told the Yale Dai­ly News that the iso­la­tion of the pan­dem­ic had made her wor­ried about her men­tal health. In March 2021, she com­mit­ted sui­cide in her dorm. Since the begin­ning of the pan­dem­ic, there have been no report­ed COVID deaths among Yale’s stu­dents, fac­ul­ty, or staff.” The arti­cle describes a few absolute­ly bonkers encoun­ters.
    • The NYT’s polar­iz­ing pan­dem­ic pun­dit (Joanne Kenen, Politi­co): “Oth­er pub­lic health experts Night­ly­in­ter­viewed — some of whom are sources for New York Times health jour­nal­ists or have media gigs of their own — didn’t want to be quot­ed, or said they were too busy tak­ing care of patients, ciao. One well-known research sci­en­tist, who is part of this crit­i­cal con­ver­sa­tion but who admires Leon­hardt over­all, wouldn’t even praise him on the record.”

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 Lib­er­als Won’t Enforce Bor­ders, Fas­cists Will (David Frum, The Atlantic): “Demagogues don’t rise by talk­ing about irrel­e­vant issues. Dem­a­gogues rise by talk­ing about issues that mat­ter to peo­ple, and that more con­ven­tion­al lead­ers appear unwill­ing or unable to address: unem­ploy­ment in the 1930s, crime in the 1960s, mass immi­gra­tion now. Vot­ers get to decide what the country’s prob­lems are. Polit­i­cal elites have to devise solu­tions to those prob­lems. If dif­fi­cult issues go unad­dressed by respon­si­ble lead­ers, they will be exploit­ed by irre­spon­si­ble ones.” I high­light­ed a piece by Frum with a sim­i­lar theme back in issue 175. This is a very thought­ful arti­cle. First shared in vol­ume 194.

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 295

A lot about Jesus and a lit­tle bit about the news cycle.

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

This vol­ume 295, which is not a ter­ri­bly inter­est­ing num­ber. Accord­ing to one web­site it is a “struc­tured del­toidal hexa­con­ta­he­dral num­ber” but that sounds sil­ly and is even less inter­est­ing to me than the sim­ple fact that 295 = 59 â‹… 5.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Ten­nant on Aquinas’s Sec­ond Way (Ed Fes­er, per­son­al blog): “…I don’t mean to be too hard on Ten­nant, specifically. There is noth­ing unique about his objections. On the con­trary, vari­a­tions on them are con­stant­ly raised against Aquinas by main­stream aca­d­e­m­ic philoso­phers and by main­stream aca­d­e­mics and intel­lec­tu­als from oth­er fields (not to men­tion count­less amateurs). And yet they are all demon­stra­bly based on egre­gious errors and misunderstandings. Which, while it tells you noth­ing about Aquinas, says much about what you should think of main­stream aca­d­e­m­ic and intel­lec­tu­al opinion.“ 
  2. From the Emp­ty Tomb to Today’s Abuse: Believe Women (Amy Orr-Ewing, Gospel Coali­tion): “If we don’t believe women, then we have to dis­miss the eye­wit­ness­es to the Incar­na­tion, Atone­ment, and Res­ur­rec­tion. If we won’t lis­ten, we don’t have access to the evi­dence for the cen­tral truths of the Chris­t­ian faith.”
  3. Is Chris­tian­i­ty a White Man’s Reli­gion? (Claude Atcho, Gospel Coali­tion): “[This] exam­ple and exhor­ta­tion show how to dis­en­tan­gle rather than decon­struct. Through care­ful dis­en­tan­gling and patient recov­ery, we find that Chris­tian­i­ty unique­ly speaks to the con­cerns of Black peo­ple with expe­ri­en­tial and his­tor­i­cal foun­da­tions that have empow­ered our peo­ple for cen­turies.”
  4. He’s a Famous Evan­gel­i­cal Preach­er, but His Kids Wish He’d Pipe Down (Nicholas Kristof, New York Times): “I told Rick Joyn­er that I thought his strug­gles with his chil­dren reflect­ed a larg­er gen­er­a­tion gap and dwin­dling of influ­ence of the reli­gious right. To my sur­prise, he agreed. ‘The church in Amer­i­ca has been tremen­dous­ly weak­ened,’ he acknowl­edged. If the Joyn­ers are a micro­cosm of a nation divid­ed, per­haps they also offer a ray of hope in their abil­i­ty to bridge dif­fer­ences. They remain close and get togeth­er for hol­i­days, even if gath­er­ings are tense.” Real­ly inter­est­ing.
  5. How America’s sur­veil­lance net­works helped the FBI catch the Capi­tol mob (Drew Har­well & Craig Tim­berg, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Whenever you see this tech­nol­o­gy used on some­one you don’t like, remem­ber it’s also being used on a social move­ment you support,” said Evan Greer, direc­tor of the dig­i­tal rights advo­ca­cy group Fight for the Future. “Once in a while, this tech­nol­o­gy gets used on real­ly bad peo­ple doing real­ly bad stuff. But the rest of the time it’s being used on all of us, in ways that are pro­found­ly chill­ing for free­dom of expression.”
  6. Wel­come to the Decade of Con­cern (Tan­ner Greer, Schol­ar’s Stage): “The 2020s will see both the growth of Chi­nese mil­i­tary pow­er to new heights and a tem­po­rary nadir in Amer­i­can capac­i­ty to inter­vene in any con­flict in China’s near abroad. The ‘tem­po­rary’ part of that equa­tion is impor­tant. His­to­ri­ans of the First World War and the Pacif­ic War trace the ori­gins of those con­flicts to pes­simistic assess­ments of the chang­ing bal­ance of pow­er. The bel­ligeren­cy of impe­r­i­al Japan and Wil­helmine Ger­many rest­ed on a belief that their posi­tion vis a vis their ene­mies could only decline with time. Any states­man who believes that a tem­po­rary mil­i­tary advan­tage over an ene­my will soon erode will have a strong incen­tive to fight it out before ero­sion has begun.”
    • Chi­na-relat­ed: The cost of speak­ing up against Chi­na (Joel Gunter, BBC): “Some of those who spoke to the BBC — from the US, UK, Aus­tralia, Nor­way, the Nether­lands, Fin­land, Ger­many, and Turkey — pro­vid­ed screen­shots of threat­en­ing What­sApp, WeChat and Face­book mes­sages; oth­ers described in detail what had been said in phone and video calls. Every­one described some form of deten­tion or harass­ment of their fam­i­ly mem­bers in Xin­jiang by local police or state secu­ri­ty offi­cials.”
  7. On the Geor­gia vot­ing law:
    • Pos­i­tive: Why State Elec­tion Reform Bills Don’t Sig­nal a New Jim Crow Era (Wal­ter Olson, The Dis­patch): “The law, wide­ly por­trayed as a hor­ren­dous ven­ture into so-called vot­er sup­pres­sion, actu­al­ly con­tains many pro­vi­sions that lib­er­al­ize access to bal­lot meth­ods that came in handy dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, such as ear­ly vot­ing, as well as address­ing the gen­uine prob­lem of long lines at polling places.”
    • Neg­a­tive: What Georgia’s Vot­ing Law Real­ly Does (Nick Corasan­i­ti and Reid J. Epstein, New York Times): “Go page by page through Georgia’s new vot­ing law, and one take­away stands above all oth­ers: The Repub­li­can leg­is­la­ture and gov­er­nor have made a breath­tak­ing asser­tion of par­ti­san pow­er in elec­tions, mak­ing absen­tee vot­ing hard­er and cre­at­ing restric­tions and com­pli­ca­tions in the wake of nar­row loss­es to Democ­rats.”
    • Pos­i­tive: No, Georgia’s new vot­ing law is not a return to Jim Crow (Hen­ry Olsen, Wash­ing­ton Post): “No bill is per­fect, and rea­son­able peo­ple can dis­agree about the bal­ance between vot­er access and elec­tion integri­ty. But Demo­c­ra­t­ic claims that this law amounts to racist vot­er sup­pres­sion should be seen for what they are: over­wrought par­ti­san rhetoric that unnec­es­sar­i­ly increas­es racial and polit­i­cal ten­sions.” The author is a senior fel­low at the Ethics and Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Cen­ter
    • Out­raged: Vot­er Sup­pres­sion Is Vio­lence (Jamil Smith, Rolling Stone): “This neo-Jim Crow mea­sure builds upon the may­hem that has already cost lives, not just at the Capi­tol, but also thanks to the malev­o­lent gov­er­nance of Repub­li­cans nation­wide. After decades of work­ing to erode the promise of the Amer­i­can exper­i­ment, or per­haps to sim­ply reserve it for them­selves, it appears that Repub­li­cans want to fin­ish the job this year. This is why S.B. 202, and the laws sure­ly to be mod­eled after it, are designed to ensure that white men with regres­sive pol­i­tics will con­tin­ue to hold pow­er.”
    • Neg­a­tive-ish: Fact check: What the new Geor­gia elec­tions law actu­al­ly does (Daniel Dale and Dianne Gal­lagher, CNN): “As crit­ics have cor­rect­ly said, the law impos­es sig­nif­i­cant new obsta­cles to vot­ing. It also gives the Repub­li­can-con­trolled state gov­ern­ment new pow­er to assert con­trol over the con­duct of elec­tions in Demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­ties. The law does, how­ev­er, con­tain some pro­vi­sions that can be rea­son­ably be described as pro-vot­ing, and crit­ics have not always described all of the text accu­rate­ly.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • Life­guard Earn­ings Here May Have You Prac­tic­ing Your Strokes (Arden Dier, News­er): “Accord­ing to Forbes, sev­en life­guards made more than $300,000 in 2019, which was the most recent year for which data was avail­able, while 82 life­guards made more than $200,000. Thir­ty-one life­guards made more than $50,000 in over­time pay, while three col­lect­ed more than $100,000, per Forbes.”
  • John Mor­ton (Penn & Teller Fool Us, YouTube): the trick is about nine min­utes, although the video is longer due to ads at the end.
  • Chick-Fil‑A Drug Deal­er (John Crist, YouTube): five min­utes

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). 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 268

This install­ment can be titled “Amer­i­ca In Decline, but the Bible Look­ing Pret­ty Sol­id. Also Aus­tralia.”

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.

After large­ly fin­ish­ing this email I learned that Supreme Court Jus­tice Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg died. I expect a TON of ink to be spilled on this and on what­ev­er devel­ops polit­i­cal­ly next week. Keep an eye out for thought­ful com­men­tary and send it my way. Please do pray for her fam­i­ly and for our nation — an already tense elec­tion sea­son just became even more fraught.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Does the Bible Pass the Bechdel Test? A Data-Dri­ven Look at Women in the Sto­ry of Scrip­ture (John Dyer, per­son­al blog): “So does the Bible pass the Bechdel test? This short answer is: yes, there are scenes where two named women have a con­ver­sa­tion not about a man. The longer answer is more com­plex, but also, I think, richer.” This is REALLY well done.
  2. Sev­en Dead­ly Sins, One Pres­i­den­tial Elec­tion (Bon­nie Kris­t­ian, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The sev­en dead­ly sins—wrath, sloth, pride, envy, greed, glut­tony, and lust—as we now list them came to us in the West­ern church through Thomas Aquinas in the 13th cen­tu­ry, Pope Gre­go­ry the Great sev­en cen­turies pri­or, and a mys­tic named Eva­grius two cen­turies before that…. The 2020 elec­tion gives occa­sion to deal with them all.”
  3. Eco­log­i­cal insights ignored:
    • They Know How to Pre­vent Megafires. Why Won’t Any­body Lis­ten? (Eliz­a­beth Weil, ProP­ub­li­ca): “Academics believe that between 4.4 mil­lion and 11.8 mil­lion acres burned each year in pre­his­toric Cal­i­for­ni­a…. We live with a death­ly back­log. In Feb­ru­ary 2020, Nature Sus­tain­abil­i­ty pub­lished this ter­ri­fy­ing con­clu­sion: Cal­i­for­nia would need to burn 20 mil­lion acres — an area about the size of Maine — to resta­bi­lize in terms of fire.”
    • Is Plas­tic Recy­cling A Lie? Oil Com­pa­nies Tout­ed Recy­cling To Sell More Plas­tic (Lau­ra Sul­li­van, NPR): “All of these prob­lems [with recy­cling] have exist­ed for decades, no mat­ter what new recy­cling tech­nol­o­gy or expen­sive machin­ery has been devel­oped. In all that time, less than 10 per­cent of plas­tic has ever been recy­cled. But the pub­lic has known lit­tle about these difficulties.”
    • Nei­ther arti­cle is giv­ing us much new infor­ma­tion — I have heard knowl­edge­able peo­ple say sim­i­lar things for quite some time now. The fact that we have not changed is dis­ap­point­ing but not sur­pris­ing: politi­cians (like most peo­ple) “lis­ten to sci­ence” when the find­ings of sci­en­tists align with their self-inter­est. The con­tin­ued exis­tence of these and oth­er glar­ing prob­lems in Amer­i­can life make me sad.
  4. EXCLUSIVE: Edu­ca­tion Depart­ment opens inves­ti­ga­tion into Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty after pres­i­dent deems racism ’embed­ded’ in the school (Tiana Lowe, Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er): “The Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion has informed Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty that it is under inves­ti­ga­tion fol­low­ing the school pres­i­den­t’s dec­la­ra­tion that racism was ‘embedded’ in the institution.”
  5. Sta­tis­tics, lies and the virus: five lessons from a pan­dem­ic (Tim Har­ford, per­son­al blog): “You can appre­ci­ate, I hope, my obses­sion with these two con­trast­ing accounts of sta­tis­tics: one as a trick, one as a tool.… Scep­ti­cism has its place, but eas­i­ly cur­dles into cyn­i­cism and can be weaponised into some­thing even more poi­so­nous than that. “ Very good insights from a British econ­o­mist.
  6. Racism Is Real. But Is “Systemic Racis­m”? That Time I Was Pub­lished by Newsweek—For Two Hours (Matthew Franck, Pub­lic Dis­course): “If every­one in gen­er­al but no one in par­tic­u­lar is to blame, the few remain­ing actu­al racists among us are let off the hook. They’re no worse than the rest of us. Of course, unlike all of us who are invit­ed to affirm our col­lec­tive guilt for the ‘system,’ the tru­ly guilty won’t feel guilty.”
    • The author is the Asso­ciate Direc­tor of the James Madi­son Pro­gram at Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty. This one is includ­ed most­ly for the dra­ma of it being pub­lished and then unpub­lished by Newsweek. There is an unhealthy intel­lec­tu­al cli­mate at many of our major pub­li­ca­tions.
  7. When you browse Insta­gram and find for­mer Aus­tralian Prime Min­is­ter Tony Abbot­t’s pass­port num­ber (Alex Hope, per­son­al web­site): “The point of this sto­ry isn’t to say ‘wow Tony Abbott got hacked, what a dum­my’. The point is that if some­one famous can unknow­ing­ly post their board­ing pass, any­one can.” Sur­pris­ing­ly enter­tain­ing and infor­ma­tive.

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 A (Not So) Sec­u­lar Saint (James K.A. Smith, Los Ange­les Review of Books): “Mill’s lega­cy was effec­tive­ly ‘edited’ by his philo­soph­i­cal and polit­i­cal dis­ci­ples, excis­ing any hint of reli­gious life. One would nev­er know from the canon in our phi­los­o­phy depart­ments, for exam­ple, that Mill wrote an appre­cia­tive essay on ‘Theism.’” First shared in vol­ume 190.

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.