Tag: Silicon Valley

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 310

short and sweet this week

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 310 — which in base 6 is ren­dered as the much cool­er vol­ume 1234.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Can Sil­i­con Val­ley Find God? (Lin­da Kin­stler, New York Times): “Over the course of my report­ing, I often thought back to the expe­ri­ence of Rob Bar­rett, who worked as a researcher at IBM in the ’90s. One day, he was out­lin­ing the default pri­va­cy set­tings for an ear­ly web brows­er fea­ture. His boss, he said, gave him only one instruc­tion: ‘Do the right thing.’ It was up to Mr. Bar­rett to decide what the “right thing” was. That was when it dawned on him: ‘I don’t know enough the­ol­o­gy to be a good engi­neer,’ he told his boss. He request­ed a leave of absence so he could study the Old Tes­ta­ment, and even­tu­al­ly he left the indus­try.” One of the inter­vie­wees, Sherol Chen, used to serve on our wor­ship team. Inter­est­ing arti­cle!
  2. A horn-wear­ing ‘shaman.’ A cow­boy evan­ge­list. For some, the Capi­tol attack was a kind of Chris­t­ian revolt. (Michelle Boorstein, Wash­ing­ton Post): “For many, their reli­gious beliefs were not tied to any spe­cif­ic church or denom­i­na­tion — lead­ers of major denom­i­na­tions and megachurch­es, and even Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s faith advis­ers, were absent that day. For such peo­ple, their faith is indi­vid­u­al­is­tic, large­ly free of struc­tures, rules or the approval of cler­gy.… part of the mix, say experts on Amer­i­can reli­gion, is the fact that the coun­try is in a peri­od when insti­tu­tion­al reli­gion is break­ing apart, becom­ing more indi­vid­u­al­ized and more dis­con­nect­ed from denom­i­na­tions, the­o­log­i­cal cre­den­tials and over­sight.”
    • You may have heard me say it before: “If you think orga­nized reli­gion is bad, wait until you catch a glimpse of dis­or­ga­nized reli­gion.”
  3. I tried to report sci­en­tif­ic mis­con­duct. How did it go? (Joe Hil­gard, per­son­al blog): “I was curi­ous to see how the self-cor­rect­ing mech­a­nisms of sci­ence would respond to what seemed to me a rather obvi­ous case of unre­li­able data and pos­si­ble research mis­con­duct. It turns out Brandolini’s Law still holds: ‘The amount of ener­gy need­ed to refute bull­shit is an order of mag­ni­tude larg­er than to pro­duce it.’ How­ev­er, I was not pre­pared to be resist­ed and hin­dered by the self-cor­rect­ing insti­tu­tions of sci­ence itself.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. The author is a psych prof at Illi­nois State.
  4. Anti-Racism is an Inter-White Strug­gle (Fred­die deBoer, Sub­Stack): “Anti-racism has become a kind of high-stakes pok­er game for edu­cat­ed white peo­ple: you risk los­ing your shirt at any time, but those who have the savvy and the guts to bluff their way to the top reap social and pro­fes­sion­al rewards.”
  5. Book Review: Crazy Like Us (Scott Alexan­der, Astral Codex Ten): “…does nam­ing and point­ing to a men­tal health prob­lem make it worse? This was clear­est in Hong Kong, where a seem­ing­ly very low base rate of anorex­ia explod­ed as soon as peo­ple start­ed launch­ing men­tal health aware­ness cam­paigns say­ing that it was a com­mon and impor­tant dis­ease (as had appar­ent­ly hap­pened before in Vic­to­ri­an Europe and 70s/80s Amer­i­ca). But it also showed up in the sec­tion on how increas­ing aware­ness of PTSD seems to be asso­ci­at­ed with more PTSD, and how debrief­ing trau­ma vic­tims about how they might get PTSD makes them more like­ly to get it.”
  6. Can the Black Rifle Cof­fee Com­pa­ny Become the Star­bucks of the Right? (Jason Zenger­le, New York Times): “Some­times it seems as if Hafer and his part­ners invent jobs at Black Rifle for vet­er­ans to do. A for­mer Green Beret medic helps Black Rifle with events and out­reach and was recent­ly made the direc­tor of its new­ly formed char­i­ty orga­ni­za­tion. Four years ago, Black Rifle received a Face­book mes­sage from an Afghan Army vet­er­an with whom Hafer once served; he wrote that he was now work­ing at a gas sta­tion and liv­ing with his fam­i­ly in pub­lic hous­ing in Char­lottesville. ‘We hon­est­ly assumed he was dead,’ Hafer says. Black Rifle found a home for the man and his fam­i­ly in Utah, and he now does build­ing and grounds main­te­nance at the company’s Salt Lake City offices. At those offices, I met a qui­et, haunt­ed-seem­ing man who had been a C.I.A.-contractor col­league of Hafer’s and who, for a time, lived in a trail­er he parked on the office grounds. Lat­er, I asked Hafer what, exact­ly, the man did for Black Rifle. ‘He just gets bet­ter,’ Hafer replied. ‘He gets bet­ter.’ ”
    • This was WAY more inter­est­ing than I expect­ed.
  7. The His­to­ry of Canada’s Res­i­den­tial Schools (Dou­glas Far­row, First Things): “How could this be? Who is respon­si­ble? Are the reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions who oper­at­ed the res­i­den­tial schools the real cul­prits, as many sup­pose? A care­ful exam­i­na­tion shows that sup­po­si­tion to be flawed. The tragedy, and the crimes it involved—crimes some are false­ly char­ac­ter­iz­ing as genocide—began with gov­ern­ment-man­dat­ed vio­la­tion of parental rights, an error gain­ing cur­ren­cy again today.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of the­ol­o­gy and ethics at McGill Uni­ver­si­ty in Mon­tre­al.

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 Book Review: See­ing Like A State (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “Peas­ants didn’t like per­ma­nent sur­names. Their own sys­tem was quite rea­son­able for them: John the bak­er was John Bak­er, John the black­smith was John Smith, John who lived under the hill was John Under­hill, John who was real­ly short was John Short. The same per­son might be John Smith and John Under­hill in dif­fer­ent con­texts, where his sta­tus as a black­smith or place of ori­gin was more impor­tant. But the gov­ern­ment insist­ed on giv­ing every­one a sin­gle per­ma­nent name, unique for the vil­lage, and track­ing who was in the same fam­i­ly as whom. Resis­tance was intense.” This is long and amaz­ing. (first shared in vol­ume 95)

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 276

I real­ly like the sto­ries of the shame­less­ly sketchy judge near the end

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Azerbaijan’s drones owned the bat­tle­field in Nagorno-Karabakh — and showed future of war­fare (Robyn Dixon, Wash­ing­ton Post): “In a mat­ter of months, how­ev­er, Nagorno-Karabakh has become per­haps the most pow­er­ful exam­ple of how small and rel­a­tive­ly inex­pen­sive attack drones can change the dimen­sions of con­flicts once dom­i­nat­ed by ground bat­tles and tra­di­tion­al air pow­er.”
  2. The U.S. Divorce Rate Has Hit a 50-Year Low (Wendy Wang, Insti­tute for Fam­i­ly Stud­ies): “Divorce in Amer­i­ca has been falling fast in recent years, and it just hit a record low in 2019. For every 1,000 mar­riages in the last year, only 14.9 end­ed in divorce, accord­ing to the new­ly released Amer­i­can Com­mu­ni­ty Sur­vey data from the Cen­sus Bureau. This is the low­est rate we have seen in 50 years. It is even slight­ly low­er than 1970, when 15 mar­riages end­ed in divorce per 1,000 mar­riages.”
  3. Gen­der Activists Are Try­ing to Can­cel My Book. Why is Sil­i­con Val­ley Help­ing Them? (Abi­gail Shri­er, Quil­lette): “This is what cen­sor­ship looks like in 21st-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca. It isn’t the gov­ern­ment send­ing police to your home. It’s Sil­i­con Val­ley oli­gop­o­lists imple­ment­ing black­outs and appeas­ing social-jus­tice mobs, while send­ing dis­fa­vored ideas down mem­o­ry holes. And the forces of cen­sor­ship are win­ning. Not only because their efforts to cen­sor leave almost no trace. They are win­ning because, thus far, most Amer­i­cans have been con­tent to sur­ren­der vir­tu­al­ly every lib­er­ty in exchange for the lux­u­ry of hav­ing prod­ucts deliv­ered to their door.”
    • Relat­ed: How cor­po­ra­tions can delete your exis­tence (Gavin Haynes, Unherd): “In the bank­ing system’s capac­i­ty to dis­able the indi­vid­ual with­out pro-active­ly doing them harm, there’s an echo of the ele­gance of the Chi­nese government’s social cred­it.”
  4. On the valid­i­ty of the elec­tion:
    • Who’s cov­er­ing this? Are charis­mat­ics and Pen­te­costals behind Trump’s refusal to con­cede? (Julia Duin, GetRe­li­gion): “…these folks are a sub­set — a move­ment among charismatics/pentecostals — of a Chris­t­ian sub­set and not well known to the gen­er­al pub­lic. How­ev­er, when you have flocks of Repub­li­cans call­ing foul on the elec­tion and the president’s most high-pro­file pas­tor is hav­ing night­ly prayer meet­ings because she is cer­tain that prophets have decreed four more years for Trump, it’s time more reporters give a lis­ten.”
    • How we can be con­fi­dent that Trump’s vot­er fraud claims are baloney (Hen­ry Olsen, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Mass vot­er fraud should be rel­a­tive­ly easy to detect, even if it might be dif­fi­cult to prove. Since we elect pres­i­dents through the elec­toral col­lege, polit­i­cal oper­a­tives try­ing to nefar­i­ous­ly pro­duce a vic­to­ry would focus on states crit­i­cal to an elec­toral col­lege major­i­ty…. None of these ear­ly warn­ing signs of fraud appear in the results.”
    • The Pres­i­den­tial Elec­tion Was Legit­i­mate. Con­spir­a­cies Are Not. (David French, The Dis­patch): “The count­ing must con­tin­ue and all legal chal­lenges must be heard, but as of this moment there is nothing—absolutely nothing—that should cause Amer­i­cans to believe that this elec­tion was ille­git­i­mate, and it is shame­ful and dan­ger­ous for any­one to sug­gest or allege oth­er­wise.”
    • A Primer in Basic Elec­toral Skep­ti­cism (Dou­glas Wil­son, blog): “We have reports that every­thing is fine and nor­mal. We have reports of vot­er fraud. We do not know which reports are true. But we do know which reports are cen­sored. And if that doesn’t tell you some­thing, then you are not pay­ing atten­tion.”
    • Means, motive, and oppor­tu­ni­ty (Ed Fes­er, blog): “…some main­stream his­to­ri­ans and jour­nal­ists, includ­ing lib­er­al ones, think that these states were indeed stolen from Nixon [in 1960]. For exam­ple, Kennedy biog­ra­ph­er Sey­mour Hersh judges that the elec­tion was stolen. His­to­ri­an Robert Dallek thinks that at least Illi­nois was stolen, via Daley’s polit­i­cal machine. His­to­ri­an William Rorabaugh thinks that Nixon may have been cheat­ed out of as many as 100,000 to 200,000 votes in Johnson’s cor­rupt Texas.” Wild stuff that I did not know. The author is a pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy at Pasade­na City Col­lege. 
    • My own view: the elec­tion was valid and of course there was cheat­ing. Peo­ple cheat at cards, peo­ple cheat on their tax­es. Why in the world would­n’t peo­ple try to cheat in an elec­tion? But it seems unlike­ly to me that despite all the eyes on the process any cheat­ing was sig­nif­i­cant enough to change the out­come of the elec­tion. Hav­ing said that, it is inevitable that peo­ple are skep­ti­cal. The media and the tech firms have made them­selves so par­ti­san that they have for­feit­ed the trust which would be very handy for them to have right now.
  5. Lessons from the elec­tion
    • When Polit­i­cal Prophe­cies Don’t Come to Pass (Craig Keen­er, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “This year, many Chris­tians have lis­tened to lead­ers proph­esy that Trump would again win the elec­tion. Some, such as Jere­mi­ah John­son, have con­tin­ued to affirm that their prophe­cy will turn out to be true in the end. Oth­ers, such as Kris Val­lot­ton, have pub­licly apol­o­gized. For now, many will decide that the prophe­cy was con­tin­gent, mist­imed or, more like­ly, mis­tak­en.” This is out­stand­ing.
    • Why Cal­i­for­nia Reject­ed Racial Pref­er­ences Again (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “As I under­stand the state’s his­to­ry, the country’s his­to­ry, and the world’s his­to­ry, gov­ern­ment offi­cials can­not be trust­ed to fac­tor race into deci­sion mak­ing with­out treat­ing peo­ple unjust­ly, and inter­group stig­mas and resent­ments tend to increase when any group is giv­en pref­er­en­tial treat­ment.”
    • May God Bless Pres­i­dent Biden (David French, The Dis­patch): “So here’s my sim­ple prayer for Pres­i­dent Biden: May God bless him and grant him the wis­dom to know what’s just, the courage to do what’s just, and the sta­mi­na to with­stand the rig­ors of the most dif­fi­cult job in the world. May his vir­tu­ous plans pre­vail and may his unright­eous efforts fail. And may God pro­tect him from all harm.” Amen.
    • A Moment Of Per­il (Matt Ygle­sias, Sub­stack): “But the broad real­i­ty remains that in order to obtain and wield polit­i­cal pow­er, Democ­rats need to embrace can­di­dates who are less reflec­tive of the pro­gres­sive world­view of young col­lege grad­u­ates, and they need to run them in states that are less right-wing than Alaba­ma or Mon­tana.”
    • How 2020 Killed Off Democ­rats’ Demo­graph­ic Hopes (Zack Stan­ton, Politi­co): “For years, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty has oper­at­ed under one immutable assump­tion: Long-term demo­graph­ic trends would give the par­ty some­thing like a per­ma­nent major­i­ty as the coun­try as a whole grows less white and more urban. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s reliance on the pol­i­tics of racial resent­ment would only quick­en the process, solid­i­fy­ing sup­port for Democ­rats among peo­ple of col­or. Then came Novem­ber 3, 2020. And all those assump­tions now seem like total non­sense.” An inter­view with David Shor. 
    • Lat­inX-plain­ing the elec­tion (Anto­nio Gar­cia-Mar­tinez, The Pull Request): “The prob­lem with bas­ing a polit­i­cal plat­form on white guilt is that, at some point, you run out of either whites or guilt. Which is what hap­pens in a tru­ly major­i­ty-minor­i­ty nation when non-whites (at least as cur­rent­ly defined) assume their equal place in the eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal fir­ma­ment.” The author nor­mal­ly writes about tech­nol­o­gy issues (hence the title of the newslet­ter).
  6. Sec­u­lar­iza­tion and the Tribu­la­tions of the Amer­i­can Work­ing-Class (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “I praise the schol­ar­ship and courage of Bri­an N. Wheaton.”
    • Relat­ed: Get­ting Past the Gate­keep­ers (J. Budziszews­ki, per­son­al blog): “Your gate­keep­ers want you to write a book more like the one they would have writ­ten. If you do make revi­sions, make them in such a way that the book becomes not less your own, but even more your own. That’s not pride. If God con­de­scends to allow cer­tain insights to the his­to­ri­ans on your board, how won­der­ful! Let them write about them! Read and learn from them! But if He con­de­scends to allow cer­tain oth­er insights to you, you should write about yours, not theirs.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of pol­i­tics and phi­los­o­phy at UT Austin. 
  7. COVID-relat­ed
    • Super-spread­er wed­ding par­ty shows COVID hol­i­day dan­gers (Karen Kaplan, LA Times): “Only 55 peo­ple attend­ed the Aug. 7 recep­tion at the Big Moose Inn in Millinock­et. But one of those guests arrived with a coro­n­avirus infec­tion. Over the next 38 days, the virus spread to 176 oth­er peo­ple. Sev­en of them died. None of the vic­tims who lost their lives had attend­ed the par­ty.”
    • COVID-19 Mobil­i­ty Net­work Mod­el­ing (Stan­ford): “Our mod­el pre­dicts that a small minor­i­ty of ‘super­spread­er’ POIs [points of inter­est] account for a large major­i­ty of infec­tions and that restrict­ing max­i­mum occu­pan­cy at each POI is more effec­tive than uni­form­ly reduc­ing mobil­i­ty.” Click on “Sim­u­la­tion” and play around with the Reli­gious Orga­ni­za­tions tog­gle. Rec­om­mend­ed by a friend of the min­istry, who drew my atten­tion espe­cial­ly to fig­ures 2d and 3c in the appen­dix of the paper.

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 Asym­met­ric Weapons Gone Bad (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “Every day we do things that we can’t eas­i­ly jus­ti­fy. If some­one were to argue that we shouldn’t do the thing, they would win eas­i­ly. We would respond by cut­ting that per­son out of our life, and con­tin­u­ing to do the thing.” This entire series of arti­cles (this is the fourth, the oth­ers are linked at the top of it) is 100% worth read­ing. It’s a very inter­est­ing way to think about the lim­its of rea­son and the wis­dom hid­den in tra­di­tion. First shared in vol­ume 206.

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 273

Hon­est­ly, there are too many polit­i­cal arti­cles in this one.

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. How does Google’s monop­oly hurt you? Try these search­es. (Geof­frey Fowler, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Googling didn’t used to require so much … scrolling. On some search­es, it’s like Where’s Wal­do but for infor­ma­tion. With­out us even real­iz­ing it, the Internet’s most-used web­site has been get­ting worse. On too many queries, Google is more inter­est­ed in mak­ing search lucra­tive than a bet­ter prod­uct for us.”
  2. A shad­owy AI ser­vice has trans­formed thou­sands of women’s pho­tos into fake nudes: ‘Make fan­ta­sy a real­i­ty’ (Drew Har­well, Wash­ing­ton Post): “An arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence ser­vice freely avail­able on the Web has been used to trans­form more than 100,000 women’s images into nude pho­tos with­out the women’s knowl­edge or con­sent, trig­ger­ing fears of a new wave of dam­ag­ing ‘deep­fakes’ that could be used for harass­ment or black­mail. Users of the auto­mat­ed ser­vice can anony­mous­ly sub­mit a pho­to of a clothed woman and receive an altered ver­sion with the cloth­ing removed.” Well, that’s not ter­ri­fy­ing at all. 
  3. Of Course We’re Not a Democ­ra­cy (Mike Lee, First Things): “Our sys­tem of gov­ern­ment is best described as a con­sti­tu­tion­al repub­lic. Pow­er is not found in mere majori­ties, but in care­ful­ly bal­anced pow­er.” The author is a US Sen­a­tor (R — Utah).
  4. Should the Pro­fes­sion­al Be Polit­i­cal? (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “The Coin­base deci­sion cap­tured the atten­tion of CEOs, tech work­ers, and mem­bers of the media who are ask­ing them­selves a time­ly ques­tion: What role, if any, should polit­i­cal activism play in the work­place? If Coinbase’s approach doesn’t lead to a staff exo­dus or legal set­backs or some oth­er unfore­seen harm, it is like­ly to be adopt­ed at oth­er companies––probably for the better––because it is well suit­ed to help­ing work­places stay diverse and inclu­sive in a polar­ized moment.”
  5. Elec­tion-relat­ed arti­cles
    • My favorite polit­i­cal ad of 2020 (Twit­ter): 30 sec­onds, and I am quite seri­ous. 
    • The Spir­i­tu­al Bless­ing of Polit­i­cal Home­less­ness (David French, The Dis­patch): “More and more, thought­ful (main­ly young) Chris­tians say to me, ‘I’m pro-life, I believe in reli­gious free­dom and free speech, I think we should wel­come immi­grants and refugees, and I des­per­ate­ly want racial rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. Where do I fit in?’ The answer is clear. Nowhere. And that truth is a bless­ing, if you embrace it.”
    • Poli­cies, Per­sons, and Paths to Ruin (John Piper, Desir­ing God): “Actu­al­ly, this is a long-over­due arti­cle attempt­ing to explain why I remain baf­fled that so many Chris­tians con­sid­er the sins of unre­pen­tant sex­u­al immoral­i­ty (porneia), unre­pen­tant boast­ful­ness (ala­zoneia), unre­pen­tant vul­gar­i­ty (ais­chrolo­gia), unre­pen­tant fac­tious­ness (dichostasi­ai), and the like, to be only tox­ic for our nation, while poli­cies that endorse baby-killing, sex-switch­ing, free­dom-lim­it­ing, and social­is­tic over­reach are viewed as dead­ly.” 
    • Could Trump Be A Christ-Fig­ure: A Response to John Piper About Trump (C. Michael Pat­ton, Cre­do House): “I don’t know if Trump is who the media says he is, I can only go off what I hear him say and see him do. Take away the accu­sa­tions of xeno­pho­bia, racism, and misog­y­ny and what do you have? An alleged sor­did past with women (me too) and a present of enact­ing the poli­cies I agree with.” The title is so provoca­tive and I almost didn’t read it, but I found it gen­uine­ly inter­est­ing. The title is over-the-top, though.
    • Why Most Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians are Polit­i­cal Con­ser­v­a­tives (JP More­land, per­son­al blog): “Suf­fice it to say that, when care­ful­ly exam­ined, the texts show that the state is not to be in the busi­ness of show­ing com­pas­sion or pro­vid­ing pos­i­tive rights for its cit­i­zens through its use of coer­cive pow­er (e.g. tax­a­tion). These are mat­ters of indi­vid­ual moral respon­si­bil­i­ty and oblig­a­tion for the peo­ple of God (and var­i­ous char­i­ties). Rather, the state is the pro­tec­tor of neg­a­tive rights.” The link is to a short blog entry that con­tains a link to a 20 page PDF. The excerpt is from the PDF. The author is a philoso­pher at Bio­la Uni­ver­si­ty and brought up some points about the Old Tes­ta­ment I had nev­er con­sid­ered before. 
    • 2020 Polls: Vot­ers Have Nev­er Been More Divid­ed by Gen­der (Eric Levitz, NY Mag­a­zine): “And today, young women in the U.S. aren’t just unprece­dent­ed­ly sin­gle; they also appear to be unprece­dent­ed­ly unin­ter­est­ed in het­ero­sex­u­al­i­ty: Accord­ing to pri­vate polling shared with Intel­li­gencer by Demo­c­ra­t­ic data sci­en­tist David Shor, rough­ly 30 per­cent of Amer­i­can women under 25 iden­ti­fy as LGBT; for women over 60, that fig­ure is less than 5 per­cent.” 👀👀👀
    • A response: No Fam­i­lies, No Chil­dren, No Future (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “There is noth­ing remote­ly nor­mal about that num­ber. It is a sign of a deeply deca­dent cul­ture — that is, a cul­ture that lacks the where­with­al to sur­vive. The most impor­tant thing that a gen­er­a­tion can do is pro­duce the next gen­er­a­tion. No fam­i­lies, no chil­dren, no future.”
    • How fas­cist is Pres­i­dent Trump? There’s still a for­mu­la for that. (John McNeill, Wash­ing­ton Post): “In a fed­er­al, decen­tral­ized state with con­sti­tu­tion­al checks and bal­ances, it’s hard­er to gov­ern as a fas­cist than to run as one. Trump’s polit­i­cal out­look and behav­ior bear many sim­i­lar­i­ties to those of fas­cist lead­ers, but he has not ruled like an authen­tic fas­cist.” Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus. The author is a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at George­town. 
    • ICE Detainees in Geor­gia Say They Had Unneed­ed Surg­eries (Caitlin Dick­er­son, Seth Freed Wessler and Miri­am Jor­dan, New York Times): “Immi­grants detained at an ICE-con­tract­ed cen­ter in Geor­gia said they had inva­sive gyne­col­o­gy pro­ce­dures that they lat­er learned might have been unnec­es­sary.” About a month old, rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
    • In a year of polit­i­cal anger, unde­cid­ed vot­ers inspire a spe­cial kind of scorn (Mau­ra Jud­kis, Wash­ing­ton Post): “With so much on the line, the Unde­cid­eds have become more mys­ti­fy­ing — and frus­trat­ing — than ever. Nobody believes they are real. Oh, and every­one hates them.”
  6. The Real Caus­es of Human Sex Dif­fer­ences (David C. Geary>, Quil­lette): “Peo­ple have many stereo­types about boys and men and girls and women and most of them are accu­rate and, if any­thing, under­es­ti­mate the mag­ni­tude of actu­al sex differences.The key ques­tion is whether these stereo­typed beliefs cre­ate a self-ful­fill­ing prophe­cy or are large­ly a descrip­tion of sex dif­fer­ences that chil­dren and adults have observed in their day-to-day life.” The author is an evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mis­souri 
  7. Glob­al things to remem­ber in prayer:
    • Niger­ian forces killed 12 peace­ful pro­test­ers, Amnesty says (Sam Olukoya And Lekan Oyekan­mi, Asso­ci­at­ed Press): “At least 56 peo­ple have died dur­ing two weeks of wide­spread demon­stra­tions against police vio­lence, includ­ing 38 on Tues­day, the group said…. cit­ing eye­wit­ness­es, video footage and hos­pi­tal reports.”
    • Nige­ria Is Mur­der­ing Its Cit­i­zens (Chi­ma­man­da Ngozi Adichie, New York Times): “The Niger­ian state has turned on its peo­ple. The only rea­son to shoot into a crowd of peace­ful cit­i­zens is to ter­ror­ize: to kill some and make the oth­ers back down. It is a colos­sal and unfor­giv­able crime.”
    • Turks and Arme­ni­ans Rec­on­cile in Christ. Can Azeris Join Them? (Jayson Casper, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Bey­tel became a Chris­t­ian in 2000. But it was not until 2009 when he met Jacob Purs­ley, an Amer­i­can min­is­ter to Turkey, that he began to wres­tle with his share in the nation­al respon­si­bil­i­ty. The spir­i­tu­al growth of the church is hin­dered by the uncon­fessed sin of geno­cide, Purs­ley implored the believ­ers. He urged Turk­ish Chris­tians to seek rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with Arme­ni­ans, on behalf of the nation.”
    • Azer­bai­jan Evan­gel­i­cals: Con­flict with Arme­ni­ans Is Not a Reli­gious War (Jayson Casper, Chris­tian­i­ty Today):“Originally a ‘Mus­lim athe­ist’ from a well-edu­cat­ed fam­i­ly, he was saved in 1991 after fol­low­ing a beau­ti­ful girl and her mys­te­ri­ous leather-bound book to a Bible study. With­in a year, he was assis­tant pas­tor, and in 1997 he was ordained a min­is­ter in the Greater Grace Chris­t­ian move­ment.” Includ­ing entire­ly for that lumi­nous excerpt. 
    • Biden and Big Tech have Poland and Hun­gary in their crosshairs (Glad­den Pap­pin, Newsweek): “The real rea­son that Poland and Hun­gary have been demo­nized in the Unit­ed States is that they rep­re­sent a suc­cess­ful alter­na­tive to the failed Amer­i­can com­bi­na­tion of indus­tri­al and fam­i­ly col­lapse.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of pol­i­tics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Dal­las. I don’t have strong opin­ions about Euro­pean pol­i­tics, but I am struck by how pas­sion­ate some Amer­i­cans are about them.

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 Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence and Mag­i­cal Think­ing (Ed Fes­er, per­son­al blog): “Build­ing a com­put­er is pre­cise­ly anal­o­gous to putting togeth­er a bit of mag­i­cal sleight of hand. It is a clever exer­cise in sim­u­la­tion, noth­ing more. And the con­vinc­ing­ness of the sim­u­la­tion is as com­plete­ly irrel­e­vant in the one case as it is in the oth­er. Say­ing ‘Gee, AI pro­grams can do such amaz­ing things. Maybe it real­ly is intel­li­gence!’ is like say­ing ‘Gee, Penn and Teller do such amaz­ing things. Maybe it real­ly is mag­ic!’” Fes­er is one of my favorite philoso­phers. First shared in vol­ume 197, and I recall a CS major telling me how much he dis­agreed with it.

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 201

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The alleged syn­a­gogue shoot­er was a church­go­er who artic­u­lat­ed Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy, prompt­ing tough ques­tions for evan­gel­i­cal pas­tors (Julie Zauzmer, The Wash­ing­ton Post va SF Gate): “Before he alleged­ly walked into a syn­a­gogue in Poway, Cal­i­for­nia and opened fire, John Earnest appears to have writ­ten a sev­en-page let­ter spelling out his core beliefs: That Jew­ish peo­ple, guilty in his view of faults rang­ing from killing Jesus to con­trol­ling the media, deserved to die. That his inten­tion to kill Jews would glo­ri­fy God…. Earnest, 19, was a mem­ber of an OPC con­gre­ga­tion. His father was an elder. He attend­ed reg­u­lar­ly. And in the man­i­festo, the writer spewed not only invec­tive against Jews and racial minori­ties, but also cogent Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy he heard in the pews.”
    • Kin­ism, Cul­tur­al Marx­ism, and the Syn­a­gogue Shoot­er (Joe Carter, Gospel Coali­tion): “Sev­er­al years ago a friend of mine, a Pres­by­ter­ian min­is­ter, asked me to speak to his con­gre­ga­tion about cul­tur­al issues. Dur­ing the dis­cus­sion, an old­er cou­ple asked me a ques­tion about sep­a­ra­tion of eth­nic groups, specif­i­cal­ly white Amer­i­cans from blacks and Jews. I told them I must have mis­un­der­stood their ques­tion, because what they were talk­ing about could be mis­tak­en for pro­mot­ing a view called kin­ism. The wife replied, ‘And what’s wrong with kin­ism?’”
    • Why white nation­al­ism tempts white Chris­tians (Jemar Tis­by, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): “I absolute­ly do not believe that pas­tors in the OPC or any sim­i­lar denom­i­na­tion are reg­u­lar­ly spew­ing anti-Semi­tism and racism from the pul­pit or on any oth­er occa­sion. But the rigid exclu­sion of dis­cus­sions of racial injus­tice from the reg­u­lar preach­ing and teach­ing in these church­es means that white nation­al­ists are sel­dom chal­lenged in their beliefs.”
    • a Twit­ter thread in which Duke Kwon talks about this
  2. https://scite.ai/ — this is a cool con­cept. Enter a research paper and it will algo­rith­mi­cal­ly assess whether sub­se­quent research sup­ports or under­mines the con­clu­sions. For exam­ple: https://scite.ai/reports/10.1001/jamainternmed.2016.1615
  3. As church­es are demol­ished at home, Chi­nese Chris­tians find reli­gious free­dom in Kenya (Jen­ni Marsh, CNN): “Kenya is not a place you’d expect to find an under­ground church. Chris­tian­i­ty is the lifeblood of the nation’s pol­i­tics and soci­etal fab­ric, and is cel­e­brat­ed in huge, ram­bunc­tious ser­vices attend­ed by thou­sands of danc­ing and singing wor­shipers. But, in the north­ern stretch­es of the sprawl­ing, traf­fic-choked cap­i­tal of 4 mil­lion peo­ple, an under­ground Chi­nese house church is exact­ly what May Li, wife of a Malaysian-Chi­nese pas­tor, helps to lead — illus­trat­ing just how far the Com­mu­nist Par­ty’s reli­gious crack­down has trav­eled. Li and oth­er Chi­nese Chris­tians in this sto­ry did not want to use their real names for fear of being pun­ished by the gov­ern­ment when they return to Chi­na. The Chi­nese embassy in Nairo­bi has already reached out to the lead­ers of some Chi­nese Chris­t­ian groups in the city and asked them to desist, says Li. Her ser­vice tries to stay below the radar.”
  4. The Belt and Road is about domes­tic inter­est groups, not devel­op­ment (Andrew Bat­son, per­son­al blog): “The broad­er point here is that look­ing at the Belt and Road through the lens of ‘grand strat­e­gy’ or ‘geopol­i­tics,’ as so many com­men­ta­tors do, or even por­tray­ing it as some kind of new phi­los­o­phy of eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment, is quite mis­lead­ing. All of these grand con­cepts are jus­ti­fi­ca­tions invent­ed after the fact for a pat­tern of actions that was already well under­way before Xi Jin­ping made his 2013 speech about the Belt and Road. The Belt and Road is real­ly the expan­sion of a spe­cif­ic part of China’s domes­tic polit­i­cal econ­o­my to the rest of the world.”
  5. Ro Khan­na and the ten­sions of Sil­i­con Val­ley lib­er­al­ism (Ezra Klein, Vox): “Pelosi invit­ed me to her house,” Khan­na recalls. “And when I asked her not to make an endorse­ment, she said, ‘Absolute­ly not. I stand for my incum­bents.’ So I get very dis­cour­aged, and Pelosi could see that. As I’m leav­ing the room, she said, ‘Ro, let me tell you some­thing. If I had wait­ed around, I’d have nev­er been speak­er of the House. Pow­er is nev­er giv­en. It’s always tak­en.’”
  6. Is Times Colum­nist David Brooks a Chris­t­ian or a Jew? (Sarah Pul­liam Bai­ley, Wash­ing­ton Post via the Salt Lake Tri­bune): “In the world of nation­al colum­nists, David Brooks is a star. But in the past few years, The New York Times writer and author has whipped up fas­ci­na­tion among a cer­tain sub­set of read­ers for a spe­cif­ic, gos­sipy rea­son: They won­der if the Jew­ish writer has become a Chris­t­ian.”
    • Relat­ed: David Brooks’s Con­ver­sion Sto­ry (Ben­jamin Wal­lace-Wells, The New York­er): “For Brooks, this car­ried the clar­i­ty of rev­e­la­tion, and soon he let it be known, among his acquain­tances, that he was expe­ri­enc­ing reli­gious curios­i­ty. An infor­mal com­pe­ti­tion opened for David Brooks’s soul. He received, by his own esti­ma­tion, three hun­dred gifts of spir­i­tu­al books, ‘only one hun­dred of which were dif­fer­ent copies of C. S. Lewis’s Mere Chris­tian­i­ty.’ ”
  7. Ter­ror­ists in Burk­i­na Faso Exe­cute Six at Pen­te­costal Church (Kate Shell­nutt, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “A dozen gun­men on motor­cy­cles stormed the court­yard of the Sir­gad­ji church after wor­ship, fatal­ly shoot­ing its long­time pas­tor as well as five oth­er con­gre­gants after demand­ing they con­vert to Islam, accord­ing to a state­ment sent to CT by the gen­er­al super­in­ten­dent of the Assem­blies of God in Burk­i­na Faso, Michel Oué­drao­go.”

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 Sis­ter… Show Mer­cy! (Dan Phillips, Team Pyro): “Sis­ter, if there’s one thing you and I can cer­tain­ly agree on, it’s this: I don’t know what it’s like to be a woman, and you don’t know what it’s like to be a man. We’re both prob­a­bly wrong where we’re sure we’re right, try as we might. So let me try to dart a telegram from my camp over to the distaff side.” (first shared in vol­ume 148)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 175

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Few­er Sex Part­ners Means a Hap­pi­er Mar­riage (Olga Khaz­an, The Atlantic): “Nicholas Wolfin­ger, a soci­ol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Utah, has found that Amer­i­cans who have only ever slept with their spous­es are most like­ly to report being in a ‘very hap­py’ mar­riage. Mean­while, the low­est odds of mar­i­tal happiness—about 13 per­cent­age points low­er than the one-part­ner women—belong to women who have had six to 10 sex­u­al part­ners in their lives.”
    • This arti­cle was inspired by the longer and even more fas­ci­nat­ing Does Sex­u­al His­to­ry Affect Mar­i­tal Hap­pi­ness? (Nicholas Wolfin­ger, Insti­tute for Fam­i­ly Stud­ies): “For a com­bined sam­ple of men and women, spous­es report­ing only one life­time sex­u­al part­ner are 7% more like­ly to be hap­py than are those with oth­er part­ners in their past. This is larg­er than the five-per­cent­age-point dif­fer­ence asso­ci­at­ed with a four-year col­lege degree, larg­er than the six-point dif­fer­ence that comes with attend­ing reli­gious ser­vices sev­er­al times a month or more, and larg­er than the boost that comes with hav­ing an income above the nation­al medi­an.”
  2. Eat, Pray, Code: Rule of St. Bene­dict Becomes Tech Developer’s Com­mu­ni­ty Guide­lines (Kate Shell­nutt, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “SQLite—a data­base man­age­ment engine used in most major browsers, smart phones, Adobe prod­ucts, and Skype—adopted a code of ethics pulled direct­ly from the bib­li­cal pre­cepts set by the ven­er­at­ed sixth-cen­tu­ry monk.” This arti­cle blew my mind.
  3. Find­ing ‘Com­mon Good’ Among Evan­gel­i­cals In The Polit­i­cal Sea­son (Sarah McCam­mon, NPR): “On a recent evening in Hous­ton, under the heavy branch­es of live oak trees, Doug Pagitt stood before a cou­ple dozen peo­ple gath­ered on blue fold­ing chairs on the Rice Uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus. ‘You’ve heard it said that to be a true Chris­t­ian, you must vote like a Repub­li­can,’ he said. ‘But we are here to be remind­ed that just ain’t so.’”
    • Relat­ed: Cory Book­er could be a can­di­date for the ‘reli­gious left’ (Jack Jenk­ins, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): “Ques­tions about reli­gion can par­a­lyze some politi­cians, but not [Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor] Cory Book­er. If any­thing, the top­ic seems to relax him. Sit­ting in his spa­cious but spar­tan office on Capi­tol Hill in ear­ly Octo­ber, the sen­a­tor propped his sneak­ered feet up on his desk and waxed poet­ic about spir­i­tu­al mat­ters, bounc­ing between dis­cus­sions of Jesus’ dis­ci­ples, hous­ing pol­i­cy and his own reli­gious prac­tices.”
  4. The White House Says Social­ism Is a Threat. It’s Right. (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg Opin­ion): “Who would have thought that an attack on social­ism would be so con­tro­ver­sial? But these days it is. The White House’s Coun­cil of Eco­nom­ic Advis­ers issued a report called ‘The Oppor­tu­ni­ty Costs of Social­ism’ to a scathing recep­tion on social media: ‘dreck,’ said the econ­o­mist Justin Wolfers, while Paul Krug­man referred to it as ‘amaz­ing­ly dis­hon­est.’ I’m here to tell you that I have read the entire report, and many of the sources it cites, and most of it is cor­rect.” FYI: one of our alum­ni helped to write the report in ques­tion.
  5. The Car­a­van Is a Chal­lenge to the Integri­ty of U.S. Bor­ders (David Frum, The Atlantic): “If lib­er­als insist that only fas­cists will defend bor­ders, then vot­ers will hire fas­cists to do the job lib­er­als will not do.” That sen­tence is one of the most hon­est things I’ve heard in the recent immi­gra­tion debate. When decid­ing what immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy you deem best, rec­og­nize that you have to fac­tor in how pas­sion­ate­ly oth­er­wise apo­lit­i­cal peo­ple feel about this.
  6. A Chris­t­ian Man Receives Jus­tice (David French, Nation­al Review): “gov­ern­ment offi­cials demon­strat­ed sub­stan­tial intol­er­ance in the name of ‘inclu­sion’ and rather than seek­ing solu­tions that allowed each mem­ber of the com­mu­ni­ty to exer­cise their lib­er­ty (to enjoy rights to cakes and con­science, for exam­ple), they took sides against Chris­tians, using their pow­er to send a clear mes­sage: Tra­di­tion­al Chris­tian­i­ty is incom­pat­i­ble with the pro­gres­sive state. That is not a deci­sion the Con­sti­tu­tion empow­ers them to make.”
  7. The midterms are already hacked. You just don’t know it yet. (Ben­jamin Wof­ford, Vox): “The secu­ri­ty expert at a big tech cor­po­ra­tion, who spoke on back­ground in order to speak frankly about elec­tion vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, put it this way: ‘On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the Pentagon’s [secu­ri­ty mea­sures], elec­tions have prob­a­bly moved from a 2 to a 3.’” Very alarm­ing.

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 Let­ter To My Younger Self (Ryan Leaf, The Player’s Tri­bune): “Con­grat­u­la­tions. You offi­cial­ly have it all — mon­ey, pow­er and pres­tige. All the things that are impor­tant, right?… That’s you, young Ryan Leaf, at his absolute finest: arro­gant, boor­ish and nar­cis­sis­tic. You think you’re on top of the world and that you’ve got all the answers. Well I’m sor­ry to have to tell you this, but the truth is….” Such a grip­ping let­ter. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. (first shared in vol­ume 99)

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 155

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Prob­lem with Dull Knives: What’s the Defense Depart­ment got to do with Code for Amer­i­ca? (Jen­nifer Pahlka, Medi­um): “I have a dis­tinct mem­o­ry of being a kid in the kitchen with my mom, awk­ward­ly and prob­a­bly dan­ger­ous­ly wield­ing a knife, try­ing to cut some tough veg­etable, and defend­ing my actions by say­ing the knife was dull any­way. My mom stopped me and said firm­ly, ‘Jen­ny, a dull knife is much more dan­ger­ous than a sharp knife. You’re strug­gling and using much more force than you should, and that knife is going to end up God Knows Where.’ She was right, of course…. But hav­ing poor tools [for the mil­i­tary] doesn’t make us fight less; it makes us fight bad­ly.” (some empha­sis in the orig­i­nal removed). High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
  2. Num­ber One in Pover­ty, Cal­i­for­nia Isn’t Our Most Pro­gres­sive State — It’s Our Most Racist One (Michael Shel­len­berg­er, Forbes): “If racism is more than just say­ing nasty things — if it is, as schol­ars like James Bald­win, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Michelle Alexan­der and count­less oth­ers have described, embed­ded into socioe­co­nom­ic struc­tures — then Cal­i­for­nia isn’t just the least pro­gres­sive state. It’s also the most racist.” Annoy­ing­ly split into sev­en sec­tions, but worth­while. The author was a guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date, but he did not make the gen­er­al elec­tion.
  3. This week the Supreme Court, in a 7–2 deci­sion, vin­di­cat­ed the Col­orado bak­er who refused to bake a cake for a gay wed­ding. A lot of ink was spilled in response:
    • Col­orado Made the Mas­ter­piece Case Easy for the Court (Robert P. George, New York Times): “This much, how­ev­er, is clear: Busi­ness own­ers and oth­ers have no oblig­a­tion under the Con­sti­tu­tion, nor can one be imposed by statute, to con­fine their reli­gion to the pri­vate domain. On the con­trary, they have the con­sti­tu­tion­al right to pro­claim and act on their reli­gious beliefs in the pub­lic domain, includ­ing in the domain of com­merce.” The author is a law pro­fes­sor at Prince­ton.
    • Sym­po­sium: Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop — not as nar­row as may first appear (Dou­glas Lay­cock and Thomas Berg, SCO­TUS­blog): “The Supreme Court has announced a pow­er­ful ide­al. Even when a law has no explic­it excep­tions, hos­tile enforce­ment is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Sin­gle-issue agen­cies that enforce state civ­il-rights laws must approach claims to reli­gious exemp­tions with tol­er­ance and respect. And this is appar­ent­ly an absolute rule; the court does not con­sid­er whether hos­til­i­ty might be jus­ti­fied by some state inter­est, com­pelling or oth­er­wise.”
    • Social Con­ser­vatism After Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop (Sohrab Ahmari, Com­men­tary Mag­a­zine): “Reduc­ing tra­di­tion­al beliefs to a mat­ter of reli­gious free­dom car­ries oth­er risks. It allows pro­gres­sives to frame tra­di­tion­al posi­tions, which are root­ed in rea­son and nat­ur­al law, as a kind of idio­syn­crasy or super­sti­tion…. Defend­ing tra­di­tion­al moral­i­ty on the basis of reli­gious lib­er­ty alone, in oth­er words, risks cor­ner­ing reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives in the long-term. The alter­na­tive, of course, isn’t to give up on reli­gious free­dom. That defen­sive bat­tle must con­tin­ue to be fought. But reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives should also go on the offen­sive and once more for­mu­late a sub­stan­tive pol­i­tics of the com­mon good.”
    • In Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop, Jus­tice Kennedy Strikes a Blow for the Dig­ni­ty of the Faith­ful (David French, Nation­al Review): “the Court did not issue the sweep­ing free-speech rul­ing that many advo­cates hoped for and oth­ers feared. Instead it issued a rul­ing that remind­ed state author­i­ties that peo­ple of faith have the exact same rights — and are enti­tled to the exact same treat­ment — as peo­ple of dif­fer­ent faith or no faith at all. And it did so in an opin­ion that deci­sive­ly reject­ed the exact talk­ing points so favored by the anti-reli­gious left.”
    • No Vic­to­ry For Reli­gious Lib­er­ty (Darel E. Paul, First Things): “Only pro­found naïveté can spin the major­i­ty deci­sion as a vic­to­ry for reli­gious lib­er­ty.”
    • Against The Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop Killjoys (David French, Nation­al Review): a strong response to the above piece and a few oth­ers.
    • Why The Mas­ter­piece Rul­ing Is Tru­ly A Major Win For Reli­gious Lib­er­ty (John East­man, The Fed­er­al­ist): “In short, Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop is the first post-Smith Free Exer­cise deci­sion where the Supreme Court applied strict scruti­ny to a neu­tral, gen­er­al­ly applic­a­ble law that was not designed to tar­get reli­gion. Rather, strict scruti­ny was trig­gered because of how the law was applied against reli­gious objec­tors.” The author is a law pro­fes­sor at Chap­man Col­lege and a senior fel­low at the Clare­mont Insti­tute.
    • This has not set­tled the issue, though. Reli­gious Lib­er­ty: Not A Piece of Cake (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “we have our first court rul­ing on reli­gious lib­er­ty since Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop. An Ari­zona appeals court even cit­ed the rul­ing in its own rul­ing against two Phoenix cal­lig­ra­phers who said that doing same-sex wed­ding invi­ta­tions was a vio­la­tion of their con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­tect­ed reli­gious beliefs.” This will no doubt be appealed, but is inter­est­ing nonethe­less. There is mas­sive hos­til­i­ty in some cir­cles against reli­gious free­dom in gen­er­al and specif­i­cal­ly against the free­dom of evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians and tra­di­tion­al Catholics to pub­licly live as though their faith is true.
  4. In relat­ed news: Cross­Fit Just Fired Its Spokesper­son Who Said LGBT Pride Is A “Sin” (Stephanie M. Lee, Buz­zfeed): “Berg­er had also said, ‘The tac­tics of some in the LGBTQ move­ment toward dis­sent is an exis­ten­tial threat to free­dom of expres­sion.’ In response to a Twit­ter user who pushed back, he wrote, ‘Thank­ful­ly I work for a com­pa­ny that tol­er­ates dis­agree­ment. I have homo­sex­u­al cowork­ers who I love and respect, and as far as I am aware, they aren’t demand­ing I be pun­ished for my views.’”
    • In response, The Green­gro­cers Of Cross­Fit Gyms (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Gay activists and their sup­port­ers among the gym’s employ­ees destroyed this Christian’s busi­ness, not because he wouldn’t allow gays to work out at the gym, but because he would not per­mit them to cel­e­brate gay Pride there. They shat­tered his busi­ness overnight with­out fil­ing a charge or a law­suit, but sole­ly by using the pow­er of stig­ma and col­lec­tive action.”
  5. Read­ing Dan­ger­ous­ly (Ian Mar­cus Corbin, Week­ly Stan­dard): “I cur­rent­ly split my pro­fes­sion­al life between acad­e­mia and the Boston art world, the most lib­er­al cor­ners of the most lib­er­al state of the union. I can’t speak strong­ly enough about the beau­ty and kind­ness of the black, Jew­ish, His­pan­ic, gay, trans­gen­der, fem­i­nist, social­ist peo­ple whom I count as col­leagues and friends here. They are deep, sen­si­tive, search­ing souls. As a straight, white, able-bod­ied male, though—one who has even occa­sion­al­ly vot­ed for Republicans—I am, on paper, a per­fect storm of priv­i­lege and prej­u­dice. Per­haps shock­ing­ly, my col­leagues and I have man­aged to treat each oth­er with respect and at times even deep friend­ship and care.”
  6. Iden­ti­ty Ques­tions (Ron Bel­gau, Spir­i­tu­al Friend­ship): “ ‘Iden­ti­ty’ is bor­rowed from the sur­round­ing sec­u­lar cul­ture. It has dis­placed terms, like ‘nature’ and ‘call­ing,’ which have deep roots in the Bible and in the his­to­ry of Chris­t­ian thought. This dis­place­ment has made it more dif­fi­cult for Chris­tians to think clear­ly about what it means to be trans­formed in Christ.” This is from sev­er­al years ago and was brought to my atten­tion via a Twit­ter thread. Bel­gau is a fas­ci­nat­ing guy — a for­mer soft­ware engi­neer turned philoso­pher who is attract­ed to oth­er men and is con­vinced those temp­ta­tions are sin­ful.
  7. When The Pun­ish­ment Feels Like A Crime (Julia Ioffe, Huff­in­g­ton Post): “Dauber may be a hero to many Stan­ford stu­dents, but when I vis­it­ed the cam­pus in April, I dis­cov­ered that much of the fac­ul­ty does not feel the same way. Twen­ty-nine Stan­ford Law pro­fes­sors have signed a let­ter against the recall.” This is a long and amaz­ing arti­cle about the Per­sky recall cam­paign writ­ten before the vote.
    • Relat­ed: The recall of the judge who sen­tenced Brock Turn­er will end up hurt­ing poor, minor­i­ty defen­dants (Rachel Mar­shall, Vox): “…in this coun­try, we have an epi­dem­ic of wrong­ful con­vic­tions, yet nev­er have I heard of a pub­lic out­cry to recall or vote against a judge who presided over a case in which an inno­cent client was con­vict­ed or sen­tenced. In con­trast, as we have just seen, a sen­tence per­ceived as too light not only will make head­lines but could cost a judge his job.” The author is a Stan­ford Law School grad.
    • In case you missed it, Per­sky was recalled in the elec­tions this week.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • This guy is a chef in the White House (twit­ter). This is real. Google for “jacked White House chef.” Wow. Every out­landish action-adven­ture movie premise just became more plau­si­ble.
  • Great Chuck Nor­ris Facts (imgur): I know these jokes have been around for years… but some here are new to me. My favorite: “Chuck Nor­ris and Super­man once fought each oth­er on a bet. The los­er had to start wear­ing their under­wear on the out­side of their pants.”
  • Moron or Genius? (Pearls Before Swine)

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Land of We All (Richard Mitchell, The Gift of Fire), an essay  built on this insight: “Think­ing can not be done cor­po­rate­ly. Nations and com­mit­tees can’t think. That is not only because they have no brains, but because they have no selves, no cen­ters, no souls, if you like. Mil­lions and mil­lions of per­sons may hold the same thought, or con­vic­tion or sus­pi­cion, but each and every per­son of those mil­lions must hold it all alone.” (first shared in vol­ume 2) This is one of the more impor­tant things I’ve shared. 

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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 133

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Frac­tured West (Michael Tot­ten, City Jour­nal): “…I inter­viewed a gay Native Amer­i­can who sports an ‘I Stand with Stand­ing Rock’ T‑shirt on his Face­book page. You might think that a gay Native Amer­i­can must have vot­ed for Hillary Clin­ton, but you would be wrong.” This is a tremen­dous­ly fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle about Ore­gon pol­i­tics.
    • Speak­ing of Ore­gon: Col­lec­tive Action Kills Inno­va­tion (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Most of the rest of the America–where peo­ple pump their own gas every­day with­out a sec­ond thought–is hav­ing a good laugh at Oregon’s expense. But I am not here to laugh because in every state but one where you can pump your own gas you can’t open a bar­ber­shop with­out a license.”
  2. The Hard­est Work­ers Don’t Do the Best Work (Jer­ry Useem, Bloomberg View): “It turned out that some peo­ple who did less just accom­plished less. But the top per­form­ers also did less, and seemed to have a knack for fig­ur­ing out how to side­step inessen­tial tasks to obsess on a few impor­tant things.”
  3. Real­i­ty Has A Sur­pris­ing Amount of Detail (John Sal­vati­er, per­son­al blog): “The impor­tant details you haven’t noticed are invis­i­ble to you, and the details you have noticed seem com­plete­ly obvi­ous and you see right through them. This all makes makes it dif­fi­cult to imag­ine how you could be miss­ing some­thing impor­tant.”
  4. Why you can’t blame mass incar­cer­a­tion on the war on drugs (Ger­man Lopez, Vox): “It’s not drug offens­es that are dri­ving mass incar­cer­a­tion, but vio­lent ones. It’s not the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment that’s behind mass incar­cer­a­tion, but a whole host of prison sys­tems down to the local and state lev­el. It’s not sole­ly police and law­mak­ers lead­ing to more incar­cer­a­tion and lengthy prison sen­tences, but pros­e­cu­tors who are by and large out of the polit­i­cal spot­light.”
  5. “Oh My God, This Is So F—ed Up”: Inside Sil­i­con Valley’s Secre­tive, Orgias­tic Dark Side (Emi­ly Chang, Van­i­ty Fair): “Rich men expect­ing casu­al sex­u­al access to women is any­thing but a new par­a­digm. But many of the A‑listers in Sil­i­con Val­ley have some­thing unique in com­mon: a lone­ly ado­les­cence devoid of con­tact with the oppo­site sex.”
  6. Two Tax­pay­ers, Two Def­i­n­i­tions of ‘Pro­gres­sive’ (Ramesh Pon­nu­ru, Bloomberg View): “…lib­er­al analy­ses of the tax cut empha­size that it gen­er­al­ly rais­es after-tax income more for high earn­ers than for low earn­ers. Con­ser­v­a­tive analy­ses tend to point out that low­er earn­ers will gen­er­al­ly see their tax bills decline by the same per­cent­age that high­er earn­ers will (and some­times will see them drop more). Nei­ther side is dis­tort­ing the truth. They’re look­ing at the same thing from dif­fer­ent angles.”
  7. When Democ­ra­cy Hinges On a Sin­gle Vote (Stephen Carter, Bloomberg View): “…it turns out that we don’t count votes ter­ri­bly well. A 2012 study found that although some meth­ods of tab­u­lat­ing bal­lots are bet­ter than oth­ers, we can gen­er­al­ly expect an error rate of 1 to 2 per­cent. Although we can’t pre­dict which way the errors will fall, it’s unlike­ly that they will sum pre­cise­ly to zero – in oth­er words, there will always be mis­takes. So each time we count, we can expect a dif­fer­ent result.” The author is a law pro­fes­sor at Yale.
  8. Mak­ing Chi­na Great Again (Evan Osnos, The New York­er): “For years, China’s star­tups lagged behind those in Sil­i­con Val­ley. But there is more par­i­ty now. Of the forty-one pri­vate com­pa­nies world­wide that reached “uni­corn” sta­tus in 2017—meaning they had val­u­a­tions of a bil­lion dol­lars or more—fifteen are Chi­nese and sev­en­teen are Amer­i­can.” Also, I found this bit very amus­ing: “In the city of Shen­zhen, the local gov­ern­ment uses facial recog­ni­tion to deter jay­walk­ers. (At busy inter­sec­tions, it posts their names and I.D. pic­tures on a screen at the road­side.) In Bei­jing, the gov­ern­ment uses facial-recog­ni­tion machines in pub­lic rest rooms to stop peo­ple from steal­ing toi­let paper; it lim­its users to six­ty cen­time­tres with­in a nine-minute peri­od.”

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 Land of We All (Richard Mitchell, The Gift of Fire), an essay built on this insight: “Think­ing can not be done cor­po­rate­ly. Nations and com­mit­tees can’t think. That is not only because they have no brains, but because they have no selves, no cen­ters, no souls, if you like. Mil­lions and mil­lions of per­sons may hold the same thought, or con­vic­tion or sus­pi­cion, but each and every per­son of those mil­lions must hold it all alone.” (first shared in vol­ume 2)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 132

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.

There will prob­a­bly be no email next Fri­day — I’m going to be vis­it­ing fam­i­ly and won’t do much read­ing on the inter­net.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Not-So-White Evan­gel­i­cal­ism: How Con­ser­v­a­tive Denom­i­na­tions Actu­al­ly Fare Bet­ter on Diver­si­ty (Rebec­ca Ran­dall, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “In the Unit­ed States today, 1 in 3 self-iden­ti­fied evan­gel­i­cals is non­white, accord­ing to a Sep­tem­ber study from PRRI. This ris­es to 4 in 10 evan­gel­i­cals when mea­sured by the­o­log­i­cal belief, accord­ing to a Decem­ber study from Life­Way Research. Of those that are white, 1 in 3 attends a mul­tira­cial church, report­ed anoth­er study, pub­lished in June in the Review of Reli­gious Research. Researchers Joseph Yi and Christo­pher Graz­i­ul dug into the more than 3,000 respons­es to the 2006 Faith Mat­ters Sur­vey, and found that more than a quar­ter of white evan­gel­i­cals report­ed hav­ing a close His­pan­ic friend. Even more—about 2 out of 5—said they have a close friend that is African Amer­i­can… In oth­er words, evan­gel­i­cals are now more like­ly than main­line Protes­tants to attend mul­tira­cial con­gre­ga­tions and to report African Amer­i­can and His­pan­ic friends.”
  2. The Zeal­ous Faith Of Sec­u­lar­ism (Mary Eber­stadt, First Things): “Pagani­za­tion as we now know it is dri­ven by a new his­tor­i­cal phe­nom­e­non: the devel­op­ment of a rival faith—a rival, sec­u­lar­ist faith which sees Chris­tian­i­ty as a com­peti­tor to be van­quished, rather than as an alter­na­tive set of beliefs to be tol­er­at­ed in an open soci­ety. How do we know this? We know it in part because today’s sec­u­lar­ist faith behaves in ways that only a faith can.”
  3. Is Trump a Bless­ing or Curse for Reli­gious Con­ser­v­a­tives? (Ross Douthat, David French, John Zmi­rak): “A year in, Trump has deliv­ered on many of his spe­cif­ic promis­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly where judi­cial appoint­ments are con­cerned. At the same time, there’s a great deal of angst with­in reli­gious cir­cles about what his per­son­al moral defects and his administration’s deep unpop­u­lar­i­ty mean for Chris­t­ian cul­tur­al wit­ness, and (among evan­gel­i­cals, espe­cial­ly) whether the Trump era is set­ting up a kind of gen­er­a­tional schism that will con­tribute to insti­tu­tion­al Christianity’s cri­sis going for­ward.”
    • Inci­den­tal­ly, I find many peo­ple are unaware of (or unwill­ing to admit) how much Trump has accom­plished. See The Show So Far by Tyler Cowen (Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion), Pres­i­dent Trump’s 2017 Report Card (A First Draft) by Scott Adams, and  A War Trump Won (Ross Douthat, New York Times). Love him or loathe him (appar­ent­ly the only two options), admit that he’s been busy.
    • Relat­ed: Can Evan­gel­i­cal­ism Sur­vive Don­ald Trump and Roy Moore? (Tim Keller, The New York­er): “Some time ago, the word ‘lib­er­al’ was large­ly aban­doned by Democ­rats in favor of the word ‘pro­gres­sive.’ In some ways, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty is more lib­er­al now than when the old­er label was set aside, evi­dence that it is quite pos­si­ble to change the name but keep the sub­stance. The same thing may be hap­pen­ing to evan­gel­i­cal­ism. The move­ment may aban­don, or at least demote, the promi­nence of the name, yet be more com­mit­ted to its the­ol­o­gy and his­toric impuls­es than ever.” Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
  4. Sil­i­con Val­ley Is Turn­ing Into Its Own Worst Fear (Ted Chi­ang, Buz­zfeed): “Bil­lion­aires like Bill Gates and Elon Musk assume that a super­in­tel­li­gent AI will stop at noth­ing to achieve its goals because that’s the atti­tude they adopt­ed.” This essay is built on a clever insight that it press­es too far.
  5. What Putin Real­ly Wants (Julia Ioffe, The Atlantic): “[Inter­fer­ing with the US elec­tion] is a stun­ning esca­la­tion of hos­til­i­ties for a trou­bled coun­try whose elites still have only a ten­u­ous grasp of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. And it is clas­si­cal­ly Putin, and clas­si­cal­ly Russ­ian: using dar­ing aggres­sion to mask weak­ness, to avenge deep resent­ments, and, at all costs, to sur­vive.” This is a long arti­cle.
  6. Why We Shouldn’t Let the #MeToo Move­ment Change His­to­ry (David Green­berg, Politi­co): “Today we remem­ber lit­tle more from that era than the taunt that greet­ed pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Grover Cleve­land in 1884—‘Ma, Ma, Where’s my Pa?’—when he copped to father­ing a child with an unwed woman. (He weath­ered the sto­ry, prompt­ing the riposte from his sup­port­ers, ‘Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha.’ Two years lat­er, at age 49, he mar­ried a 21-year-old, Frances Fol­som, in the White House.)” The author is a pro­fes­sor at Rut­gers. This one comes rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent and has a dif­fer­ent focus than you prob­a­bly assume from the title and the excerpt.
  7. Glow­ing Auras and ‘Black Mon­ey’: The Pentagon’s Mys­te­ri­ous U.F.O. Pro­gram (Helene Coop­er, Ralph Blu­men­thal and Leslie Kean, New York Times):  “The pro­gram col­lect­ed video and audio record­ings of report­ed U.F.O. inci­dents, includ­ing footage from a Navy F/A‑18 Super Hor­net show­ing an air­craft sur­round­ed by some kind of glow­ing aura trav­el­ing at high speed and rotat­ing as it moves. The Navy pilots can be heard try­ing to under­stand what they are see­ing. ‘There’s a whole fleet of them,’ one exclaims. Defense offi­cials declined to release the loca­tion and date of the inci­dent.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Spir­i­tu­al Shape of Polit­i­cal Ideas (Joseph Bot­tum, The Week­ly Stan­dard): many mod­ern polit­i­cal ideas are derived from Chris­t­ian the­o­log­i­cal con­cepts. (first shared in vol­ume 1)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 100

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Chris­tians, in an Epochal Shift, Are Leav­ing the Mid­dle East (Maria Abi-Habib, Wall Street Jour­nal): “Like the Jews before them, Chris­tians are flee­ing the Mid­dle East, emp­ty­ing what was once one of the world’s most-diverse regions of its ancient reli­gions. They’re being dri­ven away not only by Islam­ic State, but by gov­ern­ments the U.S. counts as allies in the fight against extrem­ism.” You might need to search for an ungat­ed copy.
  2. The Col­or of Law (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Call­ing itself the Penin­su­la Hous­ing Asso­ci­a­tion of Palo Alto, the co-op pur­chased a 260-ranch [sic] adja­cent to the Stan­ford cam­pus and planned to build 400 hous­es as well as shared recre­ation­al facil­i­ties, a shop­ping area, a gas sta­tion, and a restau­rant on com­mon­ly owned land.  But the bank would not finance con­struc­tion costs nor issue mort­gages to the co-op or its mem­bers with­out gov­ern­ment approval, and the FHA would not insure loans to a coop­er­a­tive that includ­ed African Amer­i­can mem­bers.”
  3. Sil­i­con Val­ley: A Real­i­ty Check (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “…peo­ple should lay off the crit­i­cism a lit­tle. When Capi­tol Hill screws up, tens of thou­sands of inno­cent Iraqis get killed. When Wall Street screws up, the coun­try is plunged into reces­sion and poor fam­i­lies lose their homes. When Sil­i­con Val­ley screws up, peo­ple who want a point­less Wi-Fi enabled juicer get a point­less Wi-Fi enabled juicer. Which by all accounts makes pret­ty good juice.”
  4. The Case for Idol­a­try: Why Chris­tians Can Wor­ship Idols (Andrew Wil­son, Gospel Coali­tion): this is a reprint of a satir­i­cal piece from a few years back. I thought I had linked to it when it first came out, but can’t find it in the archives. 
  5. The Rise of Café Church­es in South Korea (Jason Strother, The Atlantic): “‘Church­es and cafés have the hard­est time sur­viv­ing in Korea,’ said Ahn Min-ho, a 42-year-old ordained min­is­ter and cer­ti­fied barista. ‘Com­bin­ing the two is mutu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial.’”

Things Glen Found Amusing

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.