Tag: russia

TGFI, Volume 559: a WWI parallel and age-gap discourse

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Inter­est­ing

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues like­ly to be of inter­est to Chris­tians in col­lege. 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.

It’s grad­u­a­tion week at Stan­ford and I’ve been busier than nor­mal — few­er links this week as a result. Are you grad­u­at­ing? Want to keep receiv­ing these emails? They’re mir­rored on Sub­stack — sub­scribe at https://theglendavis.substack.com/

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The War in Ukraine Has Now Gone On Longer Than World War I (Con­stant Méheut, New York Times): “The war in Ukraine has often been com­pared to World War I for its bru­tal infantry assaults and heavy casu­al­ties. Yet the idea that it could, by any mea­sure, sur­pass a con­flict so long and bloody that French sol­diers hoped it would be ‘the last of the last’ once seemed unthink­able. That is just what hap­pened on Thurs­day. The war in Ukraine — which reached 1,569 days, or more than four years and three months — has now out­last­ed World War I.… Rough­ly nine mil­lion to 11 mil­lion sol­diers died in World War I, com­pared with about half a mil­lion in Ukraine so far.”
  2. More Than Evo­lu­tion Requires (David Brooks, Com­ment): “As [Beha] began to appre­ci­ate the flaws in the athe­ist world­views, he suf­fered a cri­sis of faith in athe­ism. But there is a big dif­fer­ence between los­ing faith in athe­ism and dis­cov­er­ing faith in God. He seems to have expe­ri­enced the pause between those two states that many have expe­ri­enced. Kierkegaard famous­ly likened it to being sus­pend­ed above water and doing the motions of swim­ming with­out actu­al­ly being in the water and swim­ming. In some ways the hero of this book is Lud­wig Wittgen­stein. Wittgen­stein was no Chris­t­ian, but he under­stood that ‘if all pos­si­ble sci­en­tif­ic ques­tions be answered, the prob­lems of life have still not been touched at all.’ ”
  3. Will I Get Can­celed for Dat­ing a Fresh­man? (Abi­gail Shri­er, The Free Press): “Is it worth the risk of pub­lic expo­sure to talk to this girl you like? Tom, few things in life are _more_ worth the risk. Few oppor­tu­ni­ties will ever be as valu­able as the chance to con­nect with a girl you might come to love. You’re a junior and she’s a fresh­man which, in the per­verse cal­cu­la­tion of delib­er­ate over­re­ac­tion, means some of your cen­so­ri­ous peers may deem you ‘preda­to­ry.’ Anony­mous cam­pus spaces reward social­ly pro­gres­sive moral per­for­mance. Ordi­nary inter­per­son­al sit­u­a­tions morph into show tri­als, ruled by the jeal­ous who delight in sham­ing men out of nor­mal feel­ings and behav­ior. Don’t let them fool you.”
  4. Deep Blue Fam­i­lies: A Sur­pris­ing Mix of Trad and Egal­i­tar­i­an Val­ues (Joshua Sohn, Insti­tute for Fam­i­ly Stud­ies): “…my fam­i­ly lives in the Dis­trict of Colum­bia, where Kamala Har­ris beat Don­ald Trump 90% to 6% in the last elec­tion. Essen­tial­ly all the fam­i­lies in my kids’ ele­men­tary school are Democ­rats, and most are lib­er­al Democ­rats. These fam­i­lies also have some remark­able fea­tures: mar­riage is vir­tu­al­ly uni­ver­sal, while divorce is vir­tu­al­ly nonex­is­tent. Almost every kid is grow­ing up in a two-par­ent mar­ried fam­i­ly. And if we’re going to high­light the gen­er­al retreat from mar­riage and par­ent­hood in Blue Amer­i­ca, we should also look at the cir­cum­stances where Blue Amer­i­cans buck the trend. As it turns out, there are three fea­tures that might account for these strong Blue fam­i­lies in my own family’s social cir­cle: (1) These fam­i­lies have a sur­pris­ing mix of egal­i­tar­i­an and “trad” — lifestyle mark­ers. (2) They have reject­ed the mon­ey-first Midas mind­set in favor of a fam­i­ly-first one. (3) They have found ways to cre­ate a sense of com­mu­ni­ty.”
  5. A Med­ical Stu­dent Took His Own Life. His Par­ents Blame the School. (Fran­nie Block, The Free Press): “I’ve report­ed on more than a dozen instances of insti­tu­tion­al over­reach dur­ing dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ceed­ings at universities—ranging from seri­ous alle­ga­tions of mis­con­duct or cheat­ing to inves­ti­ga­tions over whether or not a stu­dent under the age of 21 drank a beer. In all of these sto­ries, the stu­dents’ fam­i­lies told me two things. First, that the uni­ver­si­ties failed to grant them due process. Sec­ond, that they failed to take the stu­dents’ men­tal health into con­sid­er­a­tion. In each case, the par­ents con­sis­tent­ly felt that the schools failed their chil­dren and were more con­cerned with image con­trol than nur­tur­ing their stu­dents. The stu­dents felt like the schools always had the upper hand, and didn’t give them the oppor­tu­ni­ty to prop­er­ly defend them­selves when their entire futures were on the line. The stu­dents, res­i­dents, and staff at Texas Tech Health who I inter­viewed told me their insti­tu­tion is no excep­tion.”

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.

TGFI, Volume 523: religion makes you happy and war is terrifying

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Inter­est­ing

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues like­ly to be of inter­est to Chris­tians in col­lege. 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. Reli­gious Peo­ple Are Hap­pi­er Than Non-Reli­gious Peo­ple (Ryan Burge, Sub­stack): “To go back to where I start­ed — let me just say the one true thing again. High­ly active reli­gious peo­ple are hap­pi­er than non-reli­gious peo­ple. There’s no oth­er way to spin this data than this sim­ple con­clu­sion.”
    • Empha­sis in orig­i­nal. The author is a polit­i­cal sci­en­tist at Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty in St. Louis.
  2. I’ve Seen the Future of War. Europe Isn’t Ready for It. (Niall Fer­gu­son, The Free Press): : “Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine is now in its fourth year—or its 12th, if you date it from the annex­a­tion of Crimea in 2014. Since Feb­ru­ary 2022, the coun­try has cycled through three wars. First it was a tank war, in which columns of Russ­ian tanks fought a bun­gled blitzkrieg. Then it became an artillery war, in which the two sides trad­ed fire from entrenched posi­tions. Now, how­ev­er, it’s almost entire­ly a drone war, with a sup­port­ing role for small and high­ly vul­ner­a­ble infantry units. The ques­tion is how well Euro­peans under­stand this. The peo­ple of Poland, Roma­nia, Esto­nia, and (per­haps) Den­mark all now know that Russ­ian drones are capa­ble of enter­ing their air­space. But have they tru­ly grasped what that implies?”
    • The author is a senior fel­low at Stan­ford’s Hoover Insti­tu­tion. I am told he is a fair­ly recent con­vert to Chris­tian­i­ty, although I have nev­er met him per­son­al­ly and only know of his faith through pub­lic sources.
  3. What Women Wish They’d Known Before Try­ing to Get Preg­nant (Olga Khaz­an, The Atlantic): “When Anna De Souza was in her ear­ly 30s, she asked her ob-gyn when she should start think­ing about hav­ing kids. ‘When you were 26,’ she remem­bers the doc­tor say­ing. She was sur­prised. She’d had some sense that fer­til­i­ty decreas­es with age but didn’t know how sig­nif­i­cant the drop-off was. No doc­tor had ever told her, and she cer­tain­ly didn’t learn about it in school.”
    • Unlocked. This is a drum I will keep beat­ing — most of you should plan to have kids ear­li­er than your peers!
  4. Some thoughts on free speech:
    • The Cen­sor­ship You Prac­tice Today Will Be Used Against You Tomor­row (Greg Lukianoff, New York Times): “I don’t like hav­ing to make a case for human rights such as free­dom of speech by appeal­ing to self-inter­est; these are sup­posed to be rights whose impor­tance tran­scends one’s per­son­al needs. But for polit­i­cal par­ti­sans, it’s often the only argu­ment that cuts through. So here’s my prac­ti­cal warn­ing: The weapon that you reach for today will be used against you tomor­row. Using your oppo­nents’ nas­ti­est tools doesn’t per­suade them to dis­arm; it inspires retal­i­a­tion. Tit for tat, for­ev­er and ever.”
    • How not to lim­it free speech (Ed Fes­er, per­son­al blog): “There is a pre­sump­tion, then, in favor of free expres­sion, pre­cise­ly because it facil­i­tates the nat­ur­al end of our ratio­nal pow­ers. How­ev­er, not all forms of expres­sion are pro­tect­ed by this pre­sump­tion, because not all forms of expres­sion have any­thing to do with our ratio­nal pow­ers. For exam­ple, pornog­ra­phy does not appeal to our ratio­nal­i­ty and in no way con­tributes to dis­cov­er­ing truth or to debate by which we might root out error.… pornog­ra­phy is in no way pro­tect­ed by the nat­ur­al right to free speech.”
      • The author is a devout Catholic who is also a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor. This is a help­ful essay that cov­ers a lot of ground.
  5. How My Dad Helped Me Mas­ter My Autism (Leland Vit­tert, The Free Press): “Today, most par­ents would prob­a­bly send a kid like me to ther­a­py. Even back then, a diag­no­sis might have got­ten me sig­nif­i­cant spe­cial treat­ment. But my dad knew that there wasn’t a teacher or ther­a­pist who could step in and sud­den­ly make me fit in. The world wasn’t going to adapt to me, and he wasn’t going to try to make it. There would be no ther­a­pists or accom­mo­da­tions. If I was going to suc­ceed, he would have to adapt me to the world.”
  6. I vis­it­ed Gaza. The food aid sur­prised me. (Ken Isaacs, Wash­ing­ton Post): “The main provider of food assis­tance in the Gaza Strip today arguably is the Gaza Human­i­tar­i­an Foun­da­tion, an orga­ni­za­tion backed by the Unit­ed States and Israel. GHF has faced harsh crit­i­cism for its work in Gaza, with Unit­ed Nations agen­cies and non­govern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions pub­lish­ing a let­ter in July urg­ing donors and coun­tries not to fund the foundation’s work and to instead revert to a sole­ly U.N.-led response. I arrived in Gaza a skep­tic of GHF but left an advo­cate. Sim­ply put, the com­mon por­tray­al of this orga­ni­za­tion rad­i­cal­ly dis­torts real­i­ty.”
    • The author works for Samar­i­tan’s Purse, a Chris­t­ian relief agency.
  7. Two viral clips from the same event (Char­lie Kirk’s memo­r­i­al ser­vice).
    • Eri­ka Kirk on Hus­band’s Assas­sin: “I for­give him.” (C‑SPAN, YouTube): two min­utes
    • “I hate my oppo­nent and I don’t want the best for them.” (C‑SPAN, YouTube): five min­utes (the famous bit is at about the one minute mark)
    • Watch them both before you read the arti­cles that com­ment on them. Hav­ing watched them, I think some com­men­ta­tors are sub­tly dis­tort­ing them. Watch for your­self, and then mull the respons­es.
    • Why MAGA Evan­gel­i­cals Can Cheer Love and Hate at the Same Time (David French, New York Times): “Many peo­ple who saw or read about the ral­ly were puz­zled by what they per­ceived as a con­tra­dic­tion. How can you cheer love and hate at the same time? How can you wor­ship Jesus and cheer such a base and gross descrip­tion of oth­er human beings, peo­ple who are cre­at­ed in the image of God? My reac­tion was dif­fer­ent. Final­ly, I thought, curi­ous Amer­i­cans who tuned in got to see MAGA the­ol­o­gy more com­plete­ly — and what they wit­nessed was the best and worst of MAGA Chris­tian­i­ty.”
    • The Biggest Tent (The Dis­patch): “The funer­al was what I thought it would be. Until Eri­ka Kirk spoke, and then it was some­thing else.… The last place you would look for grace in Amer­i­can pub­lic life in 2025 is at a Repub­li­can polit­i­cal ral­ly, espe­cial­ly one where the usu­al lust for ruth­less­ness has been juiced by wrath and grief. For Mrs. Kirk to muster it in this set­ting, at this moment, despite the sin­gu­lar anguish with which she’s been bur­dened, felt almost mirac­u­lous even to a non-believ­er like me.… I’ve heard of polit­i­cal ‘big tents,’ but I’ve nev­er heard of one big enough to accom­mo­date two moral sys­tems that aren’t just con­tra­dic­to­ry but irrec­on­cil­able. ‘Christ’s mes­sage, fol­lowed by its very antithe­sis,’ phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor Edward Fes­er wrote of the con­trast between Kirk’s and Trump’s remarks. ‘It’s almost as if the audi­ence is being put to a test.’ ”
    • Eri­ka Kirk and America’s Reli­gious Revival (Maya Sulkin, The Free Press): “By dawn, the lines to get into State Farm Sta­di­um stretched for blocks. Peo­ple camped out overnight to secure a place.… By mid-morn­ing, the 73,000-seat sta­di­um was full. Orga­niz­ers opened the are­na next door for over­flow, but even that quick­ly reached capac­i­ty. In total, an esti­mat­ed 200,000 peo­ple turned out—more than Mar­tin Luther King Jr.’s funer­al in 1968.”
    • Is Eri­ka Kirk the Future of MAGA? (Matthew Con­tinet­ti, The Free Press): “Nev­er had I seen some­one upstage Pres­i­dent Trump. It hap­pened Sun­day. Trump spoke for longer than Eri­ka. But she had already brought down the house. Her for­give­ness and hope moved the nation. Clear­ly Trump was mulling over her eulo­gy. When he sly­ly con­trast­ed his style with Charlie’s, Trump kid­ding­ly apol­o­gized. ‘I hate my oppo­nent and don’t want the best for them,’ he said. ‘Sor­ry, Eri­ka.’ When was the last time Trump apol­o­gized? Then he added, ‘Eri­ka, you can talk to me and the whole group, but maybe they can con­vince me that that’s not right, but I can’t stand my oppo­nent.’ Even the pres­i­dent can learn from Eri­ka Kirk.”
    • ‘I Hate My Oppo­nent’: Trump’s Remarks at Kirk Memo­r­i­al Dis­till His Pol­i­tics (Nick Catog­gio, New York Times): “When asked about the diver­gent mes­sages from the pres­i­dent and Mrs. Kirk, Karo­line Leav­itt, the White House press sec­re­tary, said on Mon­day that the pres­i­dent was ‘authen­ti­cal­ly him­self.’” 

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • Meet the 2025 Ig Nobel Prize win­ners (Jen­nifer Ouel­lette, Ars Tech­ni­ca): “Diet sodas and oth­er zero-calo­rie drinks are a main­stay of the mod­ern diet, thanks to the devel­op­ment of arti­fi­cial sweet­en­ers whose mol­e­cules can’t be metab­o­lized by the human body. The authors of this paper are intrigued by the notion of zero-calo­rie foods, which they believe could be achieved by increas­ing the sat­is­fy­ing vol­ume and mass of food with­out increas­ing the calo­ries. And they have just the addi­tive for that pur­pose: poly­te­tra­flu­o­roeth­yl­ene (PTFE), more com­mon­ly known as Teflon. Yes, the stuff they use on non­stick cook­ware. They insist that Teflon is inert, heat-resis­tant, imper­vi­ous to stom­ach acid, taste­less, cost-effec­tive, and avail­able in handy pow­der form for easy mix­ing into food. They rec­om­mend a ratio of three parts food to one part Teflon pow­der.”
    • I lowkey wan­na eat a teflon-stuffed meal now.
  • Sheep (SMBC)
  • ‘Very mean squir­rel’ seek­ing food has sent at least 2 peo­ple to the ER in a Cal­i­for­nia city (AP News)
  • Sin­ful, Rebel­lious Home­school­er Stays Up Past 9:30 To Read Chron­i­cles Of Nar­nia (Baby­lon Bee)

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 422

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

This is vol­ume 422, a num­ber which feels like it should have a lot of prime fac­tors but which only has two: 422 = 2·211.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Why reli­gious belief pro­vides a real buffer against sui­cide risk (David H Ros­marin, Psy­che): “The sci­en­tif­ic world in gen­er­al, and the dis­ci­plines of behav­iour­al health in par­tic­u­lar, tend to be biased against mat­ters of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and reli­gion. The exist­ing lit­er­a­ture is enough to show that these fac­tors have large pro­tec­tive effects against sui­cide. If anoth­er vari­able had even half the val­ue for any major pub­lic health con­cern, I sus­pect it would receive sub­stan­tial­ly more atten­tion.”
    • The author is a pro­fes­sor at Har­vard Med­ical School.
  2. Being There (David French, New York Times): “I’ve nev­er met a per­son who wants to lose friends. But I’ve met many, many peo­ple who suf­fer from lone­li­ness and say that they just ‘lost touch.’ What hap­pened? I ask. ‘Life hap­pened,’ they say. At each new stage of life it was eas­i­er to say no to a friend than to say no to work, to a spouse, to one’s kids. And while each indi­vid­ual no can be under­stand­able and even jus­ti­fi­able, the accu­mu­la­tion of noes suf­fo­cates friend­ships, even with­out an argu­ment, a breach or a betray­al.”
  3. Unable to Find Ulti­mate Truth in Zen Bud­dhism, I Turned to Jesus (Sita Slavov, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “In Zen, I often felt alone in the trench­es with my dark­est thoughts and feel­ings. And even the most beau­ti­ful moments I expe­ri­enced dur­ing meditation—those moments of delight in God’s creation—were use­less with­out a com­pelling frame­work to process and inte­grate them into my life. In con­trast, when I med­i­tate on God’s Word and pres­ence, the Holy Spir­it sus­tains me in the trench­es, and Scrip­ture pro­vides the frame­work to under­stand my expe­ri­ence.”
    • Unlocked.
  4. Win­ners don’t do irony (Janan Ganesh, Finan­cial Times): “Peo­ple who deal in high­er stakes have to insu­late them­selves from the arch­ness and cyn­i­cism of the wider cul­ture. Irony gets noth­ing done. It is the creed of the pas­sive observ­er. Not every­one who is inca­pable of irony is a win­ner, no. But lots of win­ners are inca­pable of irony.”
  5. New athe­ism has col­lapsed. The tide is turn­ing on belief in God (Justin Brier­ly, Pre­miere Chris­tian­i­ty): “Sci­ence and rea­son alone won’t buy you mean­ing, pur­pose and val­ue. Apart from its inter­nal squab­bles, the real rea­son that New Athe­ism stalled as a cul­tur­al move­ment was that it failed to give peo­ple a sto­ry to live their life by, so peo­ple went look­ing for a sto­ry else­where.”
  6. A green card pro­cess­ing change means US could lose thou­sands of faith lead­ers from abroad (Gio­van­na Dell’Orto, AP News): “A sud­den pro­ce­dur­al change in how the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment process­es green cards for for­eign-born reli­gious work­ers, togeth­er with his­toric highs in num­bers of ille­gal bor­der crossers, means that thou­sands of cler­gy like him are los­ing the abil­i­ty to remain in this coun­try.”
    • This obser­va­tion was inter­est­ing to me: “Those from reli­gious orders with vows of pover­ty, like Catholic nuns and Bud­dhist monks, are espe­cial­ly hard hit, because most oth­er employ­ment visa cat­e­gories require employ­ers to show they’re pay­ing for­eign work­ers pre­vail­ing wages. Since they’re get­ting no wages, they don’t qual­i­fy.”
    • Sen­tences like that are pre­cise­ly why reli­gious exemp­tions are need­ed for some laws — the law on its face seems rea­son­able and is designed to pro­tect work­ers, but it has the effect of harm­ing reli­gious work­ers of mul­ti­ple faiths because the total­ly fine way they do things does­n’t map onto the way most of soci­ety works.
  7. Drones Every­where: How the Tech­no­log­i­cal Rev­o­lu­tion on Ukraine Bat­tle­fields Is Reshap­ing Mod­ern War­fare (Yaroslav Trofi­mov, Wall Street Jour­nal): “ ‘It’s a ques­tion of cost,’ said Phillips O’Brien, a pro­fes­sor of strate­gic stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of St. Andrews in Scot­land. ‘If you can destroy an expen­sive, heavy sys­tem for some­thing that costs much much less, then actu­al­ly the pow­er dif­fer­en­tial between the two coun­tries doesn’t mat­ter as much.’… When it comes to tanks, in par­tic­u­lar, the les­son of the Ukrain­ian war is that tank-on-tank bat­tles have become a rarity—which means that the rel­a­tive sophis­ti­ca­tion of a tank is no longer as impor­tant. Few­er than 5% of tanks destroyed since the war began had been hit by oth­er tanks, accord­ing to Ukrain­ian offi­cials, with the rest suc­cumb­ing to mines, artillery, anti­tank mis­siles and drones.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 402

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

This is vol­ume 402, which is the unusu­al HTTP sta­tus code for “pay­ment required.” I don’t believe I’ve ever encoun­tered that sta­tus code in the wild.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Mar­tin Luther King, Chris­t­ian Rad­i­cal (Jonathan Eig, Wall Street Jour­nal): “King’s Chris­tian­i­ty presents a chal­lenge to lib­er­als, who are often uncom­fort­able with reli­gion in the pub­lic square, as well as to con­ser­v­a­tives, who are more like­ly to embrace reli­gion in pol­i­tics but don’t align them­selves with the impli­ca­tions of many of King’s core beliefs.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  2. Why Amer­i­cans Feel More Pain (Nicholas Kristof, New York Times): “Anoth­er big fac­tor in pain dif­fer­ences is class. One study found that poor Amer­i­cans are more than three times as like­ly to report pain as wealthy Amer­i­cans. Anoth­er found that just 2 per­cent of those with grad­u­ate degrees report severe pain, while almost 10 per­cent of high school dropouts do. ‘Basi­cal­ly, if you’ve got a B.A., you’re vac­ci­nat­ed against all of this crap,’ said Deaton, the econ­o­mist. Deaton, Case and Stone found that each suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tion among less-edu­cat­ed Amer­i­cans has report­ed more pain at any giv­en age.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. It’s longer than you might expect, but quite inter­est­ing.
  3. The Dead­ly Things We Do Not See (Anony­mous, World Beyond War): “This was war, in any case. In war peo­ple die. But, as my friends empha­size to me, the peo­ple of Mar­i­upol would have liked not to die. They would have liked to avoid the ordeal alto­geth­er.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. Very sober­ing.
  4. Reg­is­tered Sex Offend­er Con­tin­ued to Min­is­ter to Chi Alpha Stu­dents (Kate Shell­nutt, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Over the past 30 years, well over a hun­dred men involved in Texas chap­ters of the cam­pus min­istry Chi Alpha have seen Daniel Savala naked. At Savala’s house in Hous­ton, he invit­ed them to strip down and talk about spir­i­tu­al issues in his sauna. He offered his bed to overnight guests while sleep­ing in the buff. And at least 13 men report­ed that Savala molest­ed or raped them while they sought his spir­i­tu­al advice as col­lege stu­dents, accord­ing to a new online forum col­lect­ing vic­tims’ sto­ries.”
  5. The Rise of Right-Wing Wokeism (Kevin deY­oung, The Gospel Coali­tion): “The appeal of some­thing like Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism is that it presents a mus­cu­lar alter­na­tive to sur­ren­der and defeat. Few con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians have any­thing like a sophis­ti­cat­ed polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy. But they know gay so-called mar­riage is wrong and drag queen sto­ry hour is bad. So if the two choic­es in polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy are (1) sup­port­ing gay ‘mar­riage’ because that’s what plu­ral­ism demands and defend­ing drag queen sto­ry hour as a bless­ing of lib­er­ty or (2) Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism, mil­lions of Chris­tians in this coun­try are going to choose the lat­ter. I imag­ine the same basic equa­tion explains the new­found inter­est in Catholic inte­gral­ism as well.”
  6. It’s my respon­si­bil­i­ty as a crone (Abby Far­son Pratt, Sub­stack): “Near­ly 13 years mar­ried, I feel like it’s my respon­si­bil­i­ty, as a crone, to tutor the youth and encour­age them to stop wait­ing around and get mar­ried already. Please, just do it. What are you wait­ing for? To move in togeth­er? To get your ‘career estab­lished,’ what­ev­er the hell that means? To see if you’re real­ly a ‘good fit’? To get ‘more finan­cial­ly sta­ble’? That’s all blus­ter. We had about $300 to our names when we got mar­ried. We most­ly ate rice and beans for years, sub­sist­ing on my tiny salary, while Guion wrote poems all day, and we were incan­des­cent­ly hap­py. I’m so thank­ful we didn’t wait 10 years, till we were in our ear­ly 30s, set in our ways and com­fort­able with our wealth. Mar­riage would have been a lot hard­er then.”
  7. Why Jour­nal­ists Have More Free­dom Than Pro­fes­sors (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “First, the media is, by def­i­n­i­tion, an out­ward-fac­ing, audi­ence-dri­ven enter­prise, depen­dent on some kind of mass mar­ket for its via­bil­i­ty.… it still cre­ates mar­ket-based checks on cer­tain inter­nal mech­a­nisms of ide­o­log­i­cal enforce­ment. To take a tele­vi­sion exam­ple, it’s not just up to inter­nal opin­ion at Net­flix or HBO whether to air a Dave Chap­pelle spe­cial or keep run­ning Bill Maher’s show; the mass audi­ence gets a pret­ty impor­tant vote as well.”
    • I find his argu­ment com­pelling. Unlocked.
    • This seems to me to be some­what relat­ed (describ­ing how insti­tu­tion­al cul­tures shape behav­ior): Assim­i­lat­ing Women into Male Insti­tu­tions (Arnold Kling, Sub­stack): “When women became accept­ed into lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties, in the pro­fes­sions, and into man­age­r­i­al and exec­u­tive posi­tions in the work place, both men and women held some harm­ful cul­tur­al atti­tudes. Many of us have come to under­stand how men need to change. The need for women to change is less well appre­ci­at­ed.”

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 Did So Many Doc­tors Become Nazis? (Ash­ley K. Fer­nades, Tablet Mag­a­zine): “It is wor­thy of empha­sis that although many pro­fes­sions (includ­ing law) were ‘tak­en in’ by Nazi phi­los­o­phy, doc­tors and nurs­es had a pecu­liar­ly strong attrac­tion to it. Robert N. Proc­tor (1988) notes that physi­cians joined the Nazi par­ty in droves (near­ly 50% by 1945), much high­er than any oth­er pro­fes­sion. Physi­cians were sev­en times more like­ly to join the SS than oth­er employed Ger­man males.” The author is a physi­cian and a bioethi­cist at The Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty. From vol­ume 281.

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 371

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

This is vol­ume 371, which like its imme­di­ate pre­de­ces­sor is one of four three-dig­it nar­cis­sis­tic num­bers, mean­ing that it has three dig­its and when you raise each dig­it to the num­ber of dig­its (in this case, to the third pow­er) they sum to the orig­i­nal num­ber:  33 + 73 + 13 = 371.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. What Har­vard Is Real­ly Like (Olivia Glunz, The Pub­lic Dis­course): “Pres­tige and influ­ence require class dis­tinc­tions; in a tru­ly equi­table world, Har­vard does not exist. Thus, Har­vard will con­tin­ue to cham­pi­on progressivism—but nev­er enough to endan­ger its own future. Har­vard stu­dents of all polit­i­cal stripes per­ceive this hypocrisy; if any­thing, they grad­u­ate not more lib­er­al but more cyn­i­cal. So much for the for­mi­da­ble brain­wash­ing machine.… Despite the preva­lence of sec­u­lar­ism and cre­den­tial­ism at Har­vard, faith and friend­ship were cen­tral to my joy­ful first year. In fact, Chris­tian­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly Catholi­cism, is alive at Har­vard.”
    • Short but inter­est­ing, and rel­e­vant to life at Stan­ford.
  2. Why the music of Rich Mullins endures, 25 years after his death (Tish Har­ri­son War­ren, New York Times): “Mullins had all his roy­al­ties and wages go direct­ly to his accoun­tant, whom he asked to issue him an allowance equal to the aver­age work­ing-class salary at the time. The rest of his earn­ings were giv­en away, most­ly to char­i­ty. Smith tells me that Mullins ‘was scared for his own soul.’ It wasn’t that he wasn’t tempt­ed by mon­ey and fame. It’s that he knew he was tempt­ed, so he ran from it.”
  3. Rev­o­lu­tions Occur When a Sig­nif­i­cant Por­tion of Elites Defect From the Exist­ing Regime (Rob Hen­der­son, Sub­stack): “Social move­ments are typ­i­cal­ly led not by some­one from the under­class or the poor, but by sec­ond-tier elites. Lenin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Che Gue­vara, America’s founders, etc. were rel­a­tive­ly edu­cat­ed and at least mid­dle-class. They were not near­ly the poor­est of their soci­eties. Far from it.  Which is why their crit­i­cisms of the elite with­in their soci­eties were so astute. They were, fig­u­ra­tive­ly speak­ing, close cousins—they saw their flaws up close.”
    • This one is real­ly good. Relat­ed but long: Diverse and Divid­ed: A Polit­i­cal Demog­ra­phy of Amer­i­can Elite Stu­dents (Eric Kauf­mann, Sub­stack): “A quar­ter of stu­dents are LGBT, and there are rough­ly equal shares of Chris­t­ian and non­re­li­gious stu­dents. LGBT, Non­re­li­gious, and Chris­tians are set to become more impor­tant polit­i­cal groups among America’s future lead­ers.”
    • The data in this lat­ter one is inter­est­ing, but it is so long you should def­i­nite­ly skim and not read.
  4. Relat­ed to jus­tice:
    • A Jury Acquit­ted Them of Var­i­ous Charges. They Served Prison Time for Them Any­way. (Bil­ly Bin­ion, Rea­son): “Can you do prison time for a crim­i­nal charge of which you were nev­er con­vict­ed? I’d ven­ture that most would assume the answer is ‘no.’ They would be wrong. Known as acquit­ted con­duct sen­tenc­ing, the prac­tice allows judges to bloat a prison term when sen­tenc­ing a defen­dant by pun­ish­ing them for a sep­a­rate charge or charges on which a jury deemed them not guilty.” Out­ra­geous. I hope the Supreme Court squash­es this 9–0.
    • Thou­sands were released from prison dur­ing covid. The results are shock­ing. (Mol­ly Gill, The Wash­ing­ton Post): “To pro­tect those most vul­ner­a­ble to covid-19 dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, the Cares Act allowed the Jus­tice Depart­ment to order the release of peo­ple in fed­er­al pris­ons and place them on home con­fine­ment. More than 11,000 peo­ple were even­tu­al­ly released. Of those, the Bureau of Pris­ons (BOP) report­ed that only 17 of them com­mit­ted new crimes. That’s not a typo. Sev­en­teen. That’s a 0.15 per­cent recidi­vism rate in a coun­try where it’s nor­mal for 30 to 65 per­cent of peo­ple com­ing home from prison to reof­fend with­in three years of release.… These 11,000 releas­es were not ran­dom. Peo­ple in low- and min­i­mum-secu­ri­ty pris­ons or at high risk of com­pli­ca­tions from covid were pri­or­i­tized for con­sid­er­a­tion for release.”
    • Stock Trades Report­ed by Near­ly a Fifth of Con­gress Show Pos­si­ble Con­flicts (Kate Kel­ly, Adam Play­ford and Ali­cia Par­lapi­ano, New York Times): “The poten­tial for con­flicts in stock trad­ing by mem­bers of Con­gress — and their choice so far not to impose stricter lim­its on them­selves — has long drawn crit­i­cism, espe­cial­ly when par­tic­u­lar­ly bla­tant cas­es emerge. But the Times analy­sis demon­strates the scale of the issue: Over the three-year peri­od, more than 3,700 trades report­ed by law­mak­ers from both par­ties posed poten­tial con­flicts between their pub­lic respon­si­bil­i­ties and pri­vate finances.… The 97 mem­bers who were flagged by the Times analy­sis amount­ed to more than half of the peo­ple who report­ed trades, and near­ly a fifth of Con­gress. The group was split almost equal­ly between Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans.”
  5. The amaz­ing pow­er of “machine eyes” (Eric Topol, Sub­stack): “While there are far sim­pler ways to deter­mine gen­der [than study­ing reti­nas], it’s a 50–50 toss up for oph­thal­mol­o­gists, which means there are no vis­i­ble cues to human eyes. But now two mod­els have shown 97% accu­ra­cy of gen­der deter­mi­na­tion from neur­al net­work train­ing. That was just the begin­ning.… That work has now extend­ed to detec­tion of kid­ney dis­ease, con­trol of blood glu­cose and blood pres­sure, hepa­to­bil­iary dis­ease, a pre­vi­ous study on pre­dict­ing heart attack, close cor­re­la­tion of the reti­nal ves­sels with the heart (coro­nary) artery cal­ci­um score, and, pri­or to the new report above, the ongo­ing prospec­tive assess­ment and track­ing of Alzheimer’s dis­ease.” Wild stuff.
  6. A Nuclear Zugzwang? (Anusar Farooqui, Sub­stack): “Pre­cise­ly because Rus­sia is so weak rel­a­tive to Nato, any Rus­sia-Nato war will even­tu­al­ly esca­late into strate­gic nuclear war, the only lev­el on which the Rus­sia enjoys par­i­ty with the Unit­ed States. So, any counter-esca­la­tion by the Unit­ed States would be fraught with esca­la­tion risk and nuclear dan­ger.”
    • The author has a PhD in math­e­mat­ics but writes exten­sive­ly about for­eign pol­i­cy. I have had mul­ti­ple smart peo­ple rec­om­mend this arti­cle and final­ly gave it a read.

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 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.” From vol­ume 242.

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 368

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

This is vol­ume 368, which is appar­ent­ly how many ways there are to tile a 4×15 rec­tan­gle with the pen­tomi­noes.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Grad­u­al­ly, then Sud­den­ly (Lawrence Freed­man, Sub­stack): “It would of course be pre­ma­ture to pro­nounce a com­plete Ukrain­ian vic­to­ry in the war because of one suc­cess­ful and unex­pect­ed break­through. But what has hap­pened over the past few days is of his­toric impor­tance. This offen­sive has over­turned much of what was con­fi­dent­ly assumed about the course of the war.… Rus­sia is los­ing but it has not yet lost. It still occu­pies a large chunk of Ukrain­ian ter­ri­to­ry and still has sub­stan­tial mil­i­tary assets in the coun­try.”
    • Good news from Ukraine. The author is pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus of war stud­ies at King’s Col­lege in Lon­don. He’s not some ran­do pop­ping off.
  2. An Icon, Not An Idol (Andrew Sul­li­van, Sub­stack): “The Crown rep­re­sents some­thing from the ancient past, a log­i­cal­ly inde­fen­si­ble but emo­tion­al­ly salient sym­bol of some­thing called a nation, some­thing that gives its mem­bers mean­ing and hap­pi­ness. How­ev­er shit­ty the econ­o­my, or awful the prime min­is­ter, or ugly the dis­course, the monarch is able to rep­re­sent the nation all the time. In a liv­ing, breath­ing, mor­tal per­son. The impor­tance of this in a deeply polar­ized and ide­o­log­i­cal world, where fel­low cit­i­zens have come to despise their oppo­nents as ene­mies, is hard to mea­sure. But it mat­ters that divi­sive fig­ures such as Boris John­son or Mar­garet Thatch­er were nev­er required or expect­ed to rep­re­sent the entire nation. It mat­ters that in times of pro­found acri­mo­ny, some­thing unites.”
  3. No Longer Strug­gling To Believe (John W. Kennedy, AG News): “The first week on cam­pus in Con­way, Schiefer went to a Chi Alpha gath­er­ing — on acci­dent. She saw a fly­er adver­tis­ing an event with a band. She appre­ci­at­ed the music, but no so much the lyrics. Jesus kept pop­ping up in the words of the cho­rus­es. ‘It’s not that I hat­ed Chris­tians,’ says the straight­for­ward Schiefer. ‘I just thought they were stu­pid.’ Still, Schiefer left the ini­tial meet­ing with a nag­ging sen­sa­tion that she had a void in her life. That first semes­ter, sev­er­al of her dor­m­mates who treat­ed her with respect reg­u­lar­ly went to Chi Alpha gath­er­ings and they invit­ed her along. Soon she began attend­ing every Mon­day night. ‘I found friend­ship before faith,’ Schiefer says. ‘My class­mates weren’t intim­i­dat­ed by my lack of faith or my ask­ing ques­tions.’ ”
  4. Ex-Alien Judge Speaks Out in Favor of Using the Statu­to­ry Term “Alien” Rather Than “Nonci­t­i­zen” (Eugene Volokh, Rea­son): “Defend­ers of ‘nonci­t­i­zen’ some­times claim that this word is inter­change­able with alien because every­one is a cit­i­zen of some­where, sans the unusu­al case of the indi­vid­ual who has some­how been ren­dered state­less. This con­tention is not an accu­rate excuse. For one, monar­chies exist. A Span­ish born per­son is a ‘sub­ject’ of the King­dom of Spain, albeit he may have demo­c­ra­t­ic rights. One born in Sau­di Ara­bia is sim­i­lar­ly a ‘sub­ject’ of the House of Saud. Even more, a per­son born in Amer­i­can Samoa or Swains Island is a U.S. nation­al, but not a cit­i­zen; he or she can­not vote in fed­er­al elec­tions nor hold fed­er­al office. These dis­tinc­tions mat­ter. Words mat­ter. Our fed­er­al immi­gra­tion statutes con­cern them­selves with aliens. This word is not a pejo­ra­tive nor an insult. I cer­tain­ly did not con­sid­er it an insult to be referred to as an alien in my depor­ta­tion pro­ceed­ings.” Fas­ci­nat­ing.
  5. The Debate Over Mus­lim Col­lege Stu­dents Get­ting Secret Mar­riages (Emma Green, The New York­er): “Moha­jir tries to be direct in her book. She writes that ‘there appears to be a pro­found rise in the preva­lence of secret mar­riages among Mus­lim Amer­i­cans, espe­cial­ly polyg­y­nous secret mar­riages,’ in which men take more than one wife. ‘I per­son­al­ly have a major, vis­cer­al reac­tion to polygamy,’ Quraishi-Lan­des, the Wis­con­sin schol­ar, who also edit­ed the book, said. ‘I was, like, ‘I don’t want to nor­mal­ize secret polygamy. I don’t like that.’ Moha­jir replied, ‘Look, the whole book is about real-life rela­tion­ships. And if peo­ple are real­ly in a real-life polyg­a­mous rela­tion­ship, here’s how we can help them make it healthy and not abu­sive.’ ”
    • I had heard of secret mar­riages, but I had­n’t con­sid­ered that secret mar­riages among young Mus­lim men would almost cer­tain­ly be polyg­a­mous.
  6. How the Media Fell for A Racism Sham (Jesse Sin­gal, Bari Weis­s’s Sub­stack): “For mil­lions of peo­ple watch­ing this sto­ry unfold, this was yet anoth­er exam­ple of the inerad­i­ca­ble stain of Amer­i­can racism, of just how lit­tle progress we’ve real­ly made. Except it didn’t hap­pen.… All the jour­nal­ists who cred­u­lous­ly report­ed on this event were wrong—and it was an embar­rass­ing kind of wrong, because the red flags were large, numer­ous, and flap­ping loud­ly. Richard­son and her fam­i­ly mem­bers report­ed that racial slurs had been hurled with aban­don, loud­ly and repeat­ed­ly, in a crowd­ed gym filled with more than 5,000 peo­ple. But the jour­nal­ists cov­er­ing this inci­dent nev­er stopped to notice how odd it was that none of these vile slurs were cap­tured by any of the thou­sands of lit­tle hand­held cam­eras in the gym at the time, nor on the big­ger cam­eras record­ing the match. Nor did they find it strange that in the days fol­low­ing the inci­dent, not a sin­gle oth­er eye­wit­ness came forward—none of Richardson’s black team­mates, and none of the play­ers for either team.”
    • I’ve been fol­low­ing this sto­ry, wait­ing for a thor­ough well-put togeth­er piece. This is it. It illu­mi­nates some­thing very sad about con­tem­po­rary media.
  7. Blunt Viet­nam Marine Tells You Exact­ly What Hap­pened To Him (Bill Ehrhart, YouTube): six­teen min­utes. Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent — extreme­ly inter­est­ing. In the com­ments the film­mak­er rec­om­mends watch­ing Mag­nif­i­cent Viet­nam Green Beret Tells What Hap­pened To Him (David Chris­t­ian, YouTube, one hour long!) to hear an equal­ly artic­u­late but dif­fer­ing per­spec­tive. I have watched excerpts from it and can con­firm he’s a good sto­ry­teller and dis­agrees with the first gent quite strong­ly. Both rec­om­mend­ed if you have the time and are inter­est­ed in war/foreign pol­i­cy.

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 Weath­er­ing the Storm: How Faith Affects Well-Being (Byron John­son & Chris­tos Makridis, Pub­lic Dis­course): “First, and con­sis­tent with pri­or stud­ies, active Chris­tians exhib­it 6 per­cent greater cur­rent life sat­is­fac­tion and are 6 per­cent­age points more like­ly to report that they are thriving—a mea­sure from Gallup that com­bines respon­dent infor­ma­tion on both cur­rent life sat­is­fac­tion and expect­ed future life sat­is­fac­tion over the next five years. Sec­ond, and at least as impor­tant, we found that SWB is either acycli­cal or slight­ly coun­ter­cycli­cal for active Chris­tians, where­as it is strong­ly pro­cycli­cal for (inac­tive) Chris­tians and the­ists.” Chris­tos is an alum­nus of our min­istry. The study which this arti­cle sum­ma­rizes is on SSRN: Does Reli­gious Affil­i­a­tion Pro­tect People’s Well-being? Evi­dence from the Great Reces­sion After Cor­rect­ing for Selec­tion Effects.  From vol­ume 235.

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 366

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

This is the 366th of these mis­sives, which is not only the num­ber of days in a leap year but also  82 + 92 + 102+ 112.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. No Promis­es (Eve Tush­net, Plough): “In con­fes­sion you do not seek pri­mar­i­ly moral improve­ment but rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with God. The con­fes­sion­al is less a class­room and more a tryst­ing place. In my own life, my best cur­rent under­stand­ing of what I’m doing is not that I’ve turned away from drunk­en­ness and to absti­nence; absti­nence is an absence. It’s slight­ly more true to say that I am turn­ing from drunk­en­ness to sobri­ety: a path of peace. But it is most true to say that I hope to turn from drunk­en­ness to Christ. And this in all things: not from vice to virtue but from vice to God.”
  2. Humans Are All More Close­ly Relat­ed Than We Com­mon­ly Think (Scott Her­sh­berg­er, Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can): “…our most recent com­mon ances­tor prob­a­bly lived no ear­li­er than 1400 B.C.and pos­si­bly as recent­ly as A.D. 55. In the time of Egypt’s Queen Nefer­ti­ti, some­one from whom we are all descend­ed was like­ly alive some­where in the world. Go back a bit fur­ther, and you reach a date when our fam­i­ly trees share not just one ances­tor in com­mon but every ances­tor in com­mon.… some­where between 5300 and 2200 B.C.,according to Rohde’s cal­cu­la­tions.”
    • If only there was an ancient and holy book which attest­ed some­thing sim­i­lar…
  3. Why Are We in Ukraine? (Christo­pher Cald­well, Clare­mont Review of Books): “The attempt to iso­late Rus­sia from the Amer­i­can world sys­tem has had a strik­ing unin­tend­ed consequence—the pos­si­ble found­ing of an alter­na­tive world sys­tem that would draw pow­er away from the exist­ing one. Twen­ty years ago, under George W. Bush, the Unit­ed States removed the Iraqi deter­rent from Iran’s neigh­bor­hood, trans­form­ing Iran overnight into a region­al pow­er. This year, under Joe Biden, the Unit­ed States has made Chi­na a gift of Russia’s exportable food and min­er­al resources. We are dis­play­ing an out­right genius for iden­ti­fy­ing our most dan­ger­ous mil­i­tary adver­sary and solv­ing its most press­ing strate­gic chal­lenge.”
    • In relat­ed news, these two arti­cles by Rod Dreher are the clear­est things I’ve seen high­light­ing the prob­lems Europe is fac­ing as a result of the Ukrain­ian war. Scary times.
    • Neron­ian Rul­ing Class Fid­dles While West Burns (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “As rich as the West is, it can’t keep its peo­ple warm in the win­ter by burn­ing cash. And so, Euro­pean house­holds are now being forced to ask if freez­ing in the dark for Ukraine is some­thing they real­ly want to do. This is not going to hap­pen to Amer­i­cans — but you should think about how you would react if this were you, and your elder­ly par­ents, and your kids. Yes, Putin is an SOB, but this is the real world.”
    • Can You Heat Europe With Von Der Leyen’s Hot Air? (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “To be clear: Putin was wicked to invade Ukraine, and I wish Rus­sia would lose that war. But Rus­sia is not los­ing that war; the West is. It is unspeak­ably arro­gant for Ursu­la von der Leyen to say Putin is not being crick­et to use eco­nom­ics as a weapon of war, when she and the group of nations she leads have spent the last six months doing exact­ly the same thing to Rus­sia, only with­out much effect. Rus­sia, obvi­ous­ly, has the bet­ter hand — and it’s play­ing it. Again: we are ruled by fools who pre­fer sun­ny ide­o­log­i­cal dreams to cold real­i­ty … of the sort that’s going to hit Euro­pean homes and busi­ness­es very hard by Jan­u­ary.”
  4. Sub­ma­rine Cables and Con­tain­er Ship­ments: Two Imme­di­ate Risks to the US Econ­o­my if Chi­na Invades Tai­wan (Chris­tine McDaniel and Weifeng Zhong, Mer­ca­tus): “The poten­tial effects of a Chi­nese inva­sion of Tai­wan on the US econ­o­my are far greater than those of the Russ­ian inva­sion of Ukraine. Con­tain­er ship­ments to and from major ports in the region, as well as dig­i­tal flows, would be at direct risk. Chi­na and Tai­wan are also major sup­pli­ers and con­sumers for US major trad­ing part­ners around the globe from Japan and Ger­many to Sau­di Ara­bia. The effects of a cri­sis or block­ade would be felt by every major econ­o­my, which, in turn, would pro­duce addi­tion­al neg­a­tive effects for the US econ­o­my.”
  5. Octo­pus­es Don’t Have Back­bones — or Rights (New York Times): “…male blue-ringed octo­pus­es could use touch to rec­og­nize females they’d already mat­ed with. After bump­ing into a for­mer mate, the males fled, per­haps to avoid being eat­en. Such research sug­gests that octo­pus­es and oth­er cephalopods are smart and sen­si­tive.”
    • That’s a fun­ny excerpt. More seri­ous­ly, I thought this point was quite inter­est­ing: “Dr. Nie­mi said crit­ics have point­ed out that ani­mal care com­mit­tees have rarely denied approval to researchers. But in his expe­ri­ence, this is because com­mit­tees go back and forth with a sci­en­tist to revise the plan until it is accept­able.”
  6. Death in Navy SEAL Train­ing Expos­es a Cul­ture of Bru­tal­i­ty, Cheat­ing and Drugs (Dave Philipps, New York Times): “Sailors who enter the pro­gram bol­stered by steroids and hor­mones can push hard­er, recov­er faster and prob­a­bly beat out the sailors who are try­ing to become SEALs while clean, said one senior SEAL leader with mul­ti­ple com­bat deploy­ments to Iraq and Afghanistan. The inevitable effect, he said, is that a course designed to select the very best will end up select­ing only the very best cheaters, and steadi­ly fill the SEAL teams with war fight­ers who view rules as option­al. ‘What am I going to do with guys like that in a place like Afghanistan?’ said the leader. ‘A guy who can do 100 pull-ups but can’t make an eth­i­cal deci­sion?’ ” 
    • This sto­ry has INSANE details.
  7. New sto­ries on New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion, Sean Feucht keep assum­ing a right-wing takeover (Julia Duin, GetRe­li­gion): “…he doesn’t claim to be a pas­tor who’s expect­ed to take a qua­si-vow of prop­er­ty; he’s a rock musi­cian who does what oth­er enter­tain­ers do: Haul in the cash. He just hap­pens to have put a Chris­t­ian veneer on it all, and he’s doing for con­ser­v­a­tives what lib­er­al Hol­ly­wood elites have done for the Left for years.  If you look at Feucht in that light — as an astute enter­tain­er who wise­ly grasped peo­ples’ anger at church shut-downs in 2020 and exploit­ed it in a series of con­certs — his wealth doesn’t seem as unusu­al.”
    • I found this piece very inter­est­ing. At its best, GetRe­li­gion high­lights how news sto­ries in major pub­li­ca­tions get basic facts wrong about reli­gion (espe­cial­ly tra­di­tion­al reli­gions) and miss impor­tant insights as a result. This is one of their bet­ter pieces in a while.

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  Film Experts: Why Chris­t­ian Movies Are a Joke (Dou­glas Wil­son): “Ste­fan Malar­ney (Hot Tub Time Machine) made the obser­va­tion that Chris­t­ian film mak­ers sim­ply refuse to pick mate­r­i­al that is true to life. Andre Caproni (Pride and Prej­u­dice and Zom­bies) agreed, adding that unless we address the human con­di­tion with integri­ty, we are deny­ing some­thing essen­tial­ly spir­i­tu­al about our­selves.” For the record, this is satire. From vol­ume 233.

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 355

Two pieces crit­i­cal of Stan­ford plus lots more.

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

This is vol­ume 355, which is 5 times 71. It’s also appar­ent­ly the num­ber of labeled topolo­gies with 4 ele­ments, but I think know­ing that it is 5 · 71 is cool­er.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Two fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cles about Stan­ford:
    • Stanford’s War on Social Life (Ginevra Davis, Pal­la­di­um Mag­a­zine): “The Uni­ver­si­ty sent a clear mes­sage with its treat­ment of the Band. Spon­ta­neous orga­ni­za­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly when they could become chaot­ic, con­tro­ver­sial, or oth­er­wise a space for break­ing rules, were now some­thing to be con­trolled. Rather than treat­ing free­dom and spon­tane­ity as strengths, the dynam­ic became one where stu­dents had to jus­ti­fy their projects and ideas while under sus­pi­cion from admin­is­tra­tors. Stu­dent life was becom­ing dom­i­nat­ed by restric­tive bureau­cra­cy.” I believe this is sub­stan­tial­ly cor­rect.
    • How I Almost Did­n’t Grad­u­ate From Stan­ford (Maxwell Mey­er, Sub­stack): “Appar­ent­ly, in order to grad­u­ate from Stan­ford while not offi­cial­ly enrolled, I need­ed to be placed in a spe­cial 0‑unit ‘course’ that exists only on paper. And because Stan­ford requires boost­er vac­cines in order to enroll in cours­es, the degree progress office was lit­er­al­ly unable to place me in the fake course.”
  2. The Google engi­neer who thinks the company’s AI has come to life (Nitasha Tiku, Wash­ing­ton Post): “As he talked to LaM­DA about reli­gion, Lemoine, who stud­ied cog­ni­tive and com­put­er sci­ence in col­lege, noticed the chat­bot talk­ing about its rights and per­son­hood, and decid­ed to press fur­ther. In anoth­er exchange, the AI was able to change Lemoine’s mind about Isaac Asimov’s third law of robot­ics.” Spec­u­la­tive and dis­put­ed.
  3. This traf­fic stop between a Black man and a White state troop­er began with fear. It end­ed with a sur­pris­ing act of kind­ness (John Blake, CNN): “Doty closed his tick­et book and opened his car door. He walked back over to Wilk­er­son­’s car and turned to Ged­dis. ‘Sir, do you mind if I ask what kind of can­cer you have?’ ‘No, I don’t mind. I have colon can­cer.’ Doty took a deep breath and looked at Ged­dis. ‘Can I pray for you?’ Doty said.” Heart­warm­ing.
  4. In the world of med­i­cine:
    • A turn­ing point in can­cer (Eric Topol, Sub­stack): “The con­ver­gence of genomics of the cancer—be it from the person’s DNA or tumor direct­ly or the blood (known as liq­uid biopsy)—matched with the appro­pri­ate ther­a­py is lead­ing to out­comes that are being described as ‘unheard-of’ by expert oncol­o­gists.”
    • The Bat­tle Over Gen­der Ther­a­py (Emi­ly Bazelon, New York Times): “ ‘Being trans comes with goals — this is what to do,’ Butzen says. ‘It comes with a sup­port net­work and a cause to fight for.’ Online, where the stakes start rel­a­tive­ly low, teenagers in pro­gres­sive com­mu­ni­ties can trade in a cis­gen­der, het­ero­sex­u­al, white iden­ti­ty — the epit­o­me of priv­i­lege and oppres­sion — to join a com­mu­ni­ty with a clear claim to being mar­gin­al­ized and deserv­ing of pro­tec­tion.”
      • It is sig­nif­i­cant that this report­ing is in New York Times. This is a long arti­cle and it was dif­fi­cult to find a pas­sage to excerpt. I am con­fi­dent the jour­nal­ist would not con­sid­er this a rep­re­sen­ta­tive excerpt nor the one she con­sid­ers most impor­tant.
  5. Pro­fes­sors Need the Pow­er to Fire Diver­si­ty Bureau­crats (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “At present, sanc­tions in high­er edu­ca­tion flow in one direc­tion: Diver­si­ty bureau­crats exert con­trol over fac­ul­ty mem­bers whose speech alleged­ly under­mines inclu­sion. I pro­pose giv­ing fac­ul­ty the pow­er to inves­ti­gate, sanc­tion, and fire diver­si­ty offi­cials if they under­mine free speech. Admin­is­tra­tive abus­es will con­tin­ue as long as bureau­crats can pun­ish speech, even in fla­grant vio­la­tion of uni­ver­si­ty pol­i­cy, with­out any con­se­quences.” I like this. I don’t think it’s struc­tural­ly pos­si­ble at most uni­ver­si­ties, but I like this.
  6. Inter­na­tion­al per­spec­tive:
    • Five Blunt Truths About the War in Ukraine (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “The Rus­sians are run­ning out of pre­ci­sion-guid­ed weapons. The Ukraini­ans are run­ning out of Sovi­et-era muni­tions. The world is run­ning out of patience for the war. The Biden admin­is­tra­tion is run­ning out of ideas for how to wage it. And the Chi­nese are watch­ing.… an army that can­not wage a high-tech war, rel­a­tive­ly low on col­lat­er­al dam­age, will wage a low-tech war, appalling­ly high on such dam­age. Ukraine, by its own esti­mates, is suf­fer­ing 20,000 casu­al­ties a month. By con­trast, the U.S. suf­fered about 36,000 casu­al­ties in Iraq over sev­en years of war. For all its brav­ery and resolve, Kyiv can hold off — but not defeat — a neigh­bor more than three times its size in a war of attri­tion.”
    • China’s mil­i­tary expan­sion is reach­ing a dan­ger­ous tip­ping point (Josh Rogin, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Chi­na is build­ing the capa­bil­i­ty to use nuclear black­mail to deter a U.S. inter­ven­tion if it invades Tai­wan, fol­low­ing Russia’s mod­el. China’s region­al mil­i­tary pres­ence is expand­ing, includ­ing a secret naval base in Cam­bo­dia and a secret mil­i­tary coop­er­a­tion agree­ment with the Solomon Islands. Chi­na has devel­oped new tech­nolo­gies, includ­ing hyper­son­ic mis­siles and anti­satel­lite lasers, to keep the U.S. mil­i­tary at bay in a Tai­wan sce­nario. And now, Chi­na no longer rec­og­nizes the Tai­wan Strait as inter­na­tion­al waters.”
  7. Ele­phant in the Zoom (Ryan Grim, The Inter­cept): “…Planned Par­ent­hood, NARAL Pro-Choice Amer­i­ca, and oth­er repro­duc­tive health orga­ni­za­tions had sim­i­lar­ly been locked in knock-down, drag-out fights between com­pet­ing fac­tions of their orga­ni­za­tions, most often break­ing down along staff-ver­sus-man­age­ment lines. It’s also true of the pro­gres­sive advo­ca­cy space across the board, which has, more or less, effec­tive­ly ceased to func­tion. The Sier­ra Club, Demos, the Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union, Col­or of Change, the Move­ment for Black Lives, Human Rights Cam­paign, Time’s Up, the Sun­rise Move­ment, and many oth­er orga­ni­za­tions have seen wrench­ing and debil­i­tat­ing tur­moil in the past cou­ple years.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The 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. First shared in vol­ume 221.

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 354

there’s a real­ly fun opti­cal illu­sion at the end as a reward for per­se­ver­ing

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

This is vol­ume 354, which is the sum of the first four 4th pow­ers: 14+24+34+44 = 1+16+81+256=354.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. When to Dis­trust Your Pas­tor (Gar­rett Kell, Gospel Coali­tion): “Shep­herds should be known by their sheep. Appear­ing in the pul­pit is only a small part of a pastor’s respon­si­bil­i­ty. If church mem­bers lack any vis­i­bil­i­ty into their pas­tors’ lives, they are unable to ‘con­sid­er the out­come of their way of life, and imi­tate their faith’ (Heb. 13:7).”
  2. Con­cern­ing mar­riage:
    • The ben­e­fits of mar­riage shouldn’t only be for elites (Brad Wilcox, Deseret News): “We’re think­ing here of the way in which the U.S. mil­i­tary has increased the rate of mar­riage among its ranks, many of whom are from work­ing-class back­grounds. What’s also inter­est­ing is the research sug­gests there is vir­tu­al­ly no racial gap in mar­riage in the mil­i­tary. Whites and Blacks mar­ry at about the same rate. What’s the military’s secret? It pro­vides great ben­e­fits and doesn’t give them to cohab­it­ing cou­ples. In oth­er words, it priv­i­leges mar­riage. The rest of the gov­ern­ment should do like­wise.” Inter­est­ing through­out.
    • I Mar­ried the Wrong Per­son, and I’m So Glad I Did (Tish Har­ri­son War­ren, New York Times): “I want to nor­mal­ize sig­nif­i­cant peri­ods of con­fu­sion, exhaus­tion, grief and unful­fill­ment in mar­riage. There’s an old­er cou­ple I know who are in their fifth decade of mar­riage. They are fun­ny and kind and, by almost any stan­dard, the pic­ture of #rela­tion­ship­goals. Ear­ly on in our mar­riage they told us, ‘There are times in mar­riage when the Bible’s call to love your ene­mies and the call to love your spouse are the same call.’ ”
  3. Con­cern­ing Ukraine:
    • West­ern Lead­ers Ought to Take Esca­la­tion Over Ukraine Seri­ous­ly (Michael Lopate and Bear Brau­moeller, War On The Rocks): “Most wars will either be far less lethal or far more lethal than the medi­an. The bot­tom 50 per­cent of wars have an aver­age of about 2,900 bat­tle deaths, while the top 50 per­cent have an aver­age of 653,000, and it is effec­tive­ly a coin-flip which half any giv­en war will end up in. In Ukraine, after three months and with no end in sight, West­ern ana­lysts esti­mate at least 20,000 fatal­i­ties, putting this war well into the top half of con­flicts.”
      • The authors are polit­i­cal sci­en­tists at The Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty (if you did not know, hav­ing “The” in the uni­ver­si­ty’s name is very impor­tant to Ohions).
    • Of Sanc­tions and Strate­gic Bombers (Tan­ner Greer, per­son­al blog): “This is most clear in our recent sanc­tions cam­paign against the Rus­sians. As with strate­gic bomb­ing, the entire enter­prise is premised on exploit­ing a psy­cho­log­i­cal and social divide between ruler and ruled that might not exist. Like our grand­fa­thers before us, we have a dif­fi­cult time accept­ing that the every­day cit­i­zen of an author­i­tar­i­an regime might be moti­vat­ed to sac­ri­fice their lives and liv­ing stan­dards for abstract, nation­al­ist ideals. As in World War II, we deny these civil­ians cul­pa­bil­i­ty for the war while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly devis­ing tac­tics that make them the first tar­get of our fury.”
      • This is an inter­est­ing cri­tique of eco­nom­ic sanc­tions as a tool in inter­na­tion­al rela­tions.
  4. What Amer­i­ca Needs Is a Lib­er­al­ism That Builds (Ezra Klein, New York Times): “…the Empire State Build­ing was con­struct­ed in just over a year. We are rich­er than we were then, and our tech­nol­o­gy far out­paces what was avail­able in 1930. And yet does any­one seri­ous­ly believe such a project would take a year today?”
  5. What Comes After the Reli­gious Right? (Nate Hochman, New York Times): “Rather than invo­ca­tions of Scrip­ture, the right’s appeal is a defense of a broad­er, belea­guered Amer­i­can way of life. For exam­ple, the lan­guage of parental rights is rarely, if ever, reli­gious, but it speaks to the per­va­sive sense that Amer­i­can fam­i­lies are fight­ing back against pro­gres­sive ide­o­logues over con­trol of the class­room.”
  6. Your Kids Are Not Doomed (Ezra Klein, New York Times): “Over the past few years, I’ve been asked one ques­tion more than any oth­er. It comes up at speech­es, at din­ners, in con­ver­sa­tion. It’s the most pop­u­lar query when I open my pod­cast to sug­ges­tions, time and again. It comes in two forms. The first: Should I have kids, giv­en the cli­mate cri­sis they will face? The sec­ond: Should I have kids, know­ing they will con­tribute to the cli­mate cri­sis the world faces?”
  7. The African Roots of the Day of Pen­te­cost (Daniel Isgrigg, per­son­al blog): “If Oden is right, the first Pen­te­costal church was in the home of an African dis­ci­ple. Is it any won­der, then, that the mod­ern Pen­te­costal Move­ment was launched by a prayer meet­ing at an African Amer­i­can home that was led by the a son of an African slave? Or that an African Amer­i­can mis­sion on Azusa Street became the nexus for a glob­al revival that changed Chris­tian­i­ty? Or is it any won­der that African spir­i­tu­al­i­ty has shaped Pen­te­costal wor­ship aes­thet­ics such as shout­ing, danc­ing, and tar­ry­ing?  Final­ly, if Pen­te­cost began in an African woman’s home, is it any won­der that Pen­te­costal­ism has includ­ed women as co-labor­ers and pro­claimers of the gospel around the world?”

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 Too Much Dark Mon­ey in Almonds (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “Every­one always talks about how much mon­ey there is in pol­i­tics. This is the wrong fram­ing. The right fram­ing is Ansolabehere et al’s: why is there so lit­tle mon­ey in pol­i­tics? But Ansolabehere focus­es on elec­tions, and the mys­tery is wider than that. Sure, dur­ing the 2018 elec­tion, can­di­dates, par­ties, PACs, and out­siders com­bined spent about $5 bil­lion – $2.5 bil­lion on Democ­rats, $2 bil­lion on Repub­li­cans, and $0.5 bil­lion on third par­ties. And although that sounds like a lot of mon­ey to you or me, on the nation­al scale, it’s puny. The US almond indus­try earns $12 bil­lion per year. Amer­i­cans spent about 2.5x as much on almonds as on can­di­dates last year.” It builds to a sur­pris­ing twist. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. First shared in vol­ume 219.

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 353

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

This is vol­ume 353, the 71st prime num­ber.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. I saw this gem on Twit­ter: “I don’t wish to sound apoc­a­lyp­tic about this, but one has the sense that at present our soci­ety is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly char­ac­ter­ized by wild­ly dis­pro­por­tion­ate account­abil­i­ty for triv­ial trans­gres­sions and zero account­abil­i­ty for pro­found insti­tu­tion­al fail­ure.” (David Polan­sky, co-founder of LinkedIn)
  2. The Rob­ber Baroness of North­ern Cal­i­for­nia (Maia Sil­ber, New York­er): “The university’s most vital pur­pose, Stan­ford explained in an address to its Board of Trustees a few years after her husband’s death, was the devel­op­ment of the student’s ‘soul germ.’ She urged the trustees to eschew class­rooms in favor of shops and work­shops that would ‘dig­ni­fy labor’ by teach­ing future work­ers to ‘use their hands deft­ly and use­ful­ly.’ Stan­ford believed that, in addi­tion to pro­vid­ing voca­tion­al train­ing, the uni­ver­si­ty should incul­cate the val­ues of faith, thrift, and absti­nence of var­i­ous kinds. She and her hus­band banned alco­hol from the dor­mi­to­ries and capped the num­ber of women under­grad­u­ates at five hun­dred.”
  3. 78 Min­utes (Eliz­a­beth Bru­enig, The Atlantic): “I know it’s a sta­tis­ti­cal anom­aly. I know it almost nev­er hap­pens. I know there are a mil­lion things I wor­ry less about that hap­pen with greater reg­u­lar­i­ty and worse effects; but those things are unfor­tu­nate, and this is evil. Mis­for­tune is awful, but this was some­thing worse. This was tor­ture. This was cru­el. This was inten­tion­al. The dis­tinc­tion mat­ters.”
  4. How did the IR com­mu­ni­ty get Russia/Ukraine so wrong? (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “The IR com­mu­ni­ty is risk-averse, and pre­serv­ing of its aca­d­e­m­ic rep­u­ta­tions, and thus its mem­bers are less will­ing to make bold pre­dic­tions than say pun­dits are. You might even think that is good, all things con­sid­ered, but it will help explain the missed pre­dic­tions here.” Many inter­est­ing con­sid­er­a­tions, fol­low-up at Data on IR schol­ars and their views on Russia/Ukraine.
  5. Born This Way? The Rise of LGBT as a Social and Polit­i­cal Iden­ti­ty (Eric Kauf­mann, CSPI): “The youth­ful surge is main­ly about LGBT iden­ti­ty, with con­sid­er­ably less change in sex­u­al behav­ior. The rise is great­est for bisex­u­al­i­ty, espe­cial­ly among females, with less change for gays and les­bians. The growth in LGBT iden­ti­fi­ca­tion shows no signs of slow­ing down among the young, but there is com­pelling evi­dence that gen­der non­con­for­mi­ty peaked around 2020 and declined in 2021. It appears less preva­lent among teenagers than those in their ear­ly twen­ties.” Plus a fas­ci­nat­ing Twit­ter thread by the author high­light­ing key details — so much data in this piece to con­tem­plate. Spicy through­out.
  6. The Pope’s Secret Back Chan­nel to Hitler (David Kertzer, The Atlantic): “As the head of a large inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tion, his over­rid­ing aim in nego­ti­a­tions with Hitler’s emis­sary was pro­tect­ing the insti­tu­tion­al resources and pre­rog­a­tives of the Roman Catholic Church in the Third Reich. If the only goal was to pro­tect the wel­fare of the insti­tu­tion­al Church, his efforts could well be judged a suc­cess. But for those who see the papa­cy as a posi­tion of great moral lead­er­ship, the rev­e­la­tions of Pius XII’s secret nego­ti­a­tions with Hitler must come as a sharp dis­ap­point­ment.” Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
  7. We Need to Com­pli­cate the Neg­a­tive World (Trevin Wax, Gospel Coali­tion): “…tak­ing a stand for true Chris­tian­i­ty has always been cost­ly. Chris­t­ian min­is­ters lost their jobs in the 1960s for doing noth­ing more than allow­ing African Amer­i­cans to attend wor­ship! In some way or anoth­er, we’ve been in the neg­a­tive world since the time of the New Tes­ta­ment, but the form of that hos­til­i­ty toward the faith changes depend­ing on the place and the era. And the opportunities—where soci­ety smiles on aspects of Christianity—change too. We live in pos­i­tive, neu­tral, and neg­a­tive worlds simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, depend­ing on the issue.“This is quite good.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The New Nation­al Amer­i­can Elite (Michael Lind, Tablet Mag­a­zine): “from the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion until the late 20th cen­tu­ry, the Amer­i­can elite was divid­ed among region­al oli­garchies. It is only in the last gen­er­a­tion that these region­al patri­ci­ates have been absorbed into a sin­gle, increas­ing­ly homo­ge­neous nation­al oli­garchy, with the same accent, man­ners, val­ues, and edu­ca­tion­al back­grounds from Boston to Austin and San Fran­cis­co to New York and Atlanta. This is a tru­ly epochal devel­op­ment.” Lind is a pro­fes­sor at UT Austin in the school of pub­lic affairs, and I fea­tured anoth­er arti­cle by him short­ly before this one. First shared back in vol­ume 286.

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.