Tag: sports

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 416

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 416, which is mild­ly inter­est­ing in the fol­low­ing equa­tion: ‑4162+7682 = 416,768 (note the neg­a­tive in front of 4162)

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. To Be Hap­py, Mar­riage Mat­ters More Than Career (David Brooks, New York Times): “My strong advice is to obsess less about your career and to think a lot more about mar­riage. Please respect the tru­ism that if you have a great career and a crap­py mar­riage you will be unhap­py, but if you have a great mar­riage and a crap­py career you will be hap­py. Please use your youth­ful years as a chance to have roman­tic rela­tion­ships, so you’ll have some prac­tice when it comes time to wed. Even if you’re years away, please read books on how to decide whom to mar­ry. Read George Eliot and Jane Austen. Start with the mas­ters.”
    • Unlocked. I am sure the com­ments sec­tion on this arti­cle will explode with out­raged New York Times read­ers, but Brooks is cor­rect and obvi­ous­ly so.
    • Relat­ed: He’s The One (Bryan Caplan, Sub­stack): “The woman who dis­cards the tra­di­tion­al ‘Men have to ask me’ social norm has a super­pow­er. Just pro­file guys who meet your stan­dards and take the ini­tia­tive, and you gen­er­ate a menu of prime options. Yes, con­ven­tion­al wis­dom says that a woman can sub­tly let a guy know that she likes him. But this over­looks men’s abject clue­ness­ness and timid­i­ty. Instead, be forth­right. Crazy as it seems, earnest­ly telling your first choice, ‘I should be your girl­friend’ will almost nev­er be mis­tak­en for ‘throw­ing your­self’ at a guy.”
      • Caplan’s fol­low-up to his ear­li­er post help­ing guys screen gals. This one helps gals screen guys. Most of his insights ring true to me.
    • Relat­ed: You Don’t Have Plen­ty of Time (Abby Far­son Pratt, Sub­stack): “There’s an odd pre­oc­cu­pa­tion in our cul­ture with ‘readi­ness,’ as if it were a uni­ver­sal truth. But ‘readi­ness’ is nev­er defined. We’re giv­en the vague, unhelp­ful advice to ‘wait until we’re ready’ to get mar­ried or have kids. What would that even mean? How do you know when you’re ‘ready’ for that kind of respon­si­bil­i­ty? You won’t. You’ll nev­er be ready. Aside from choos­ing a good part­ner, there’s no amount of prepa­ra­tion that will make child-rear­ing eas­i­er or smoother or sim­pler. You become ready through the very act of being mar­ried and rais­ing chil­dren. Lord will­ing, this is the time in your life to rise to the occa­sion and put fears of ‘readi­ness’ to rest.”
  2. Does God Con­trol His­to­ry? (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “Indeed, while allow­ing for the com­plex­i­ty of debates about what God wills as opposed to what God mere­ly per­mits, prov­i­den­tial­ism is basi­cal­ly inescapable once you posit a divin­i­ty who made the world and acts in his­to­ry. Which is why prov­i­den­tial­ist inter­pre­ta­tions endure among the most lib­er­al Chris­tians as well as the most tra­di­tion­al, with both pro­gres­sive and con­ser­v­a­tive the­olo­gies jus­ti­fy­ing them­selves through read­ings of the ‘signs of the times,’ the sea­sons of his­to­ry, the action of the Holy Spir­it and the like.”
    • Unlocked. I real­ly liked this one.
  3. What Rise of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism? (Jesse Smith, Cur­rent): “What has surged in recent years isn’t Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism so much as the rejec­tion of reli­gion in the pub­lic square. The per­cent­age of Amer­i­cans report­ing no reli­gious affil­i­a­tion has sky­rock­et­ed in the 21st cen­tu­ry, from lit­tle over 5% in 1990 to near­ly 30% in 2021. Most of these peo­ple belonged to a reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty at some point. Many did not part on the best of terms and would be hap­py to see the sta­tus of Amer­i­can reli­gion tak­en down a peg.”
    • The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at Bene­dic­tine Col­lege.
  4. The Man Who Knows What the World’s Rich­est Peo­ple Want (and How To Get It) (Maxwell Stra­chan, Vice): “To Flem­ings, the con­cept that the world’s rich­est peo­ple are con­spir­ing togeth­er to rig the game in their favor seems fool­ish. He believes the clos­est the rich have come to assem­bling as an illu­mi­nati-like clan is in St. Barts between Christ­mas and New Year’s Eve, because he’s been there. ‘I got­ta tell you, some of the rich­est peo­ple in the world are strug­gling to talk to a girl,’ he said. ‘There is no way these peo­ple are lead­ing some fuck­ing glob­al con­spir­a­cy.’ ”
    • Over­all quite inter­est­ing. From back in June.
  5. Lega­cy admis­sions are cru­cial to America’s high­er edu­ca­tion dom­i­nance (Jamie Beat­on, The Hill): “Oxford was found­ed in 1096. Despite its sto­ried his­to­ry, it has a far small­er dona­tion cul­ture and less engaged alum­ni. Its biggest donors — among them Bill Gates and Steven Schwarz­man — didn’t even attend the uni­ver­si­ty. It has no lega­cy admis­sions, and at points in its his­to­ry, it has strug­gled finan­cial­ly. In con­trast, Har­vard cul­ti­vates an amaz­ing­ly engaged alum­ni com­mu­ni­ty with fre­quent, well-attend­ed reunions, advi­so­ry boards fea­tur­ing all of their promi­nent alum­ni and an aspi­ra­tional mes­sage that once you are a part of this com­mu­ni­ty, it will become your com­mu­ni­ty for life. Lega­cy admis­sions — the prac­tice of pref­er­en­tial­ly admit­ting the chil­dren of alum­ni — is one of the pow­er­ful, tan­gi­ble char­ac­ter­is­tics that helps fos­ter that sense of com­mu­ni­ty.”
    • I have nev­er seen some­one con­trast the elite US schools with their inter­na­tion­al coun­ter­parts this way. I am sure there is a coun­ter­ar­gu­ment to be made, but this made for fas­ci­nat­ing read­ing and I find his argu­ment plau­si­ble.
  6. Stan­ford WBB Star Cameron Brink Opens Up On How NIL Wealth Allowed Her Stay In School Over WNBA (Grayson Weir, Out­kick): “NIL has made it so that Brink can earn just as much mon­ey as an ‘ama­teur’ as she can in the WNBA. It is prob­a­bly more lucra­tive to stay in school than to go pro.… Brink said that her NIL wealth has set her up for the rest of her life. If bas­ket­ball didn’t work out, she could be self-suf­fi­cient. She would ‘con­tin­ue to live com­fort­ably.’ ”
  7. The real rea­son the high­est-paid doc­tors are in the Dako­tas (Andrew Van Dam, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Over­all, the aver­age U.S. lawyer can expect about $7.1 mil­lion in life­time income, a bit high­er than a pri­ma­ry-care doc­tor ($6.5 mil­lion) but well behind the broad­er physi­cian aver­age of $10 mil­lion, accord­ing to a sophis­ti­cat­ed analy­sis of about 2 mil­lion tax records from lawyers and more than 10 mil­lion tax records from doc­tors.”

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 244

The­o­log­i­cal per­spec­tives on the pan­dem­ic, some inter­est­ing news tid­bits, the state of Stan­ford ath­let­ic fan­dom, and a good reminder that Mor­monism is not a Chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tion.

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. Chris­t­ian Coro­n­avirus Per­spec­tives
    • Chris­tian­i­ty Offers No Answers About the Coro­n­avirus (N.T. Wright, Time): “Sup­pos­ing real human wis­dom doesn’t mean being able to string togeth­er some dodgy spec­u­la­tions and say, ‘So that’s all right then?’ What if, after all, there are moments such as T. S. Eliot rec­og­nized in the ear­ly 1940s, when the only advice is to wait with­out hope, because we’d be hop­ing for the wrong thing? Ratio­nal­ists (includ­ing Chris­t­ian ratio­nal­ists) want expla­na­tions; Roman­tics (includ­ing Chris­t­ian roman­tics) want to be giv­en a sigh of relief. But per­haps what we need more than either is to recov­er the bib­li­cal tra­di­tion of lament.”
      • Please remem­ber that authors do not usu­al­ly pick the head­lines for their arti­cles. In this case espe­cial­ly the lev­el of mis­match between the title and the arti­cle is strik­ing.
    • Sur­prised by Hope­less­ness: A Response to NT Wright (Andy Davis, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Despite what T. S. Eliot says, Chris­tians know exact­ly what to hope for. We’ve been clear­ly instruct­ed by God’s prophet­ic Word, and there­fore, we should be radi­ant with hope—an unshak­able con­vic­tion that the future is inde­scrib­ably bright. The world is ‘with­out hope and with­out God’ (Eph. 2:14); so when Chris­tians radi­ate hope, the world notices and is moved to ask us to give a rea­son for the hope with­in us (1 Pet. 3:15).”
    • Like the Mer­chants of Baby­lon (Dou­glas Wil­son, per­son­al blog): “The Bible tells us that God’s deal­ings with mankind are often mys­te­ri­ous, and so we should nev­er rush to glib expla­na­tions. But His works are not absolute­ly inscrutable. When Jesus rebuked the peo­ple for mis­read­ing the col­lapse of the tow­er of Siloam, and for the inci­dent where Pilate killed the men of Galilee (Luke 13:1–5), He rebuked them, not for read­ing mean­ing into the sto­ry, but for hav­ing read the wrong mean­ing into the sto­ry.”
    • How An Evil Virus Points to the Crush­ing Weight of the Fall (David French, The Dis­patch): “Last night, my wife and I were walk­ing through our neigh­bor­hood and saw a pas­tor friend in his back­yard. We stopped him and had a love­ly con­ver­sa­tion while main­tain­ing prop­er social dis­tanc­ing from the side­walk. As we shared our own bur­dens and stress­es, he made an impor­tant obser­va­tion – this moment demon­strates so clear­ly our need for a sav­ior. By that, he meant far, far more than the idea that we need some of that ‘old-time reli­gion’ before we meet our mak­er. No, he meant that a bro­ken world eager­ly awaits the redemp­tion declared in Rev­e­la­tions 21, when the Lord declares, ‘Behold, I make all things new.’”
    • The Book of Com­mon Prayer: Prayers for Plagues and Times of Great Sick­ness (Richard Beck, per­son­al blog): “Have pity upon us mis­er­able sin­ners, who now are vis­it­ed with great sick­ness and mor­tal­i­ty; that like as thou didst then accept of an atone­ment, and didst com­mand the destroy­ing Angel to cease from pun­ish­ing, so it may now please thee to with­draw from us this plague and griev­ous sick­ness; through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
    • The Apoc­a­lypse as an ‘Unveil­ing’: What Reli­gion Teach­es Us About the End Times (Eliz­a­beth Dias, New York Times): “For peo­ple of many faiths, and even none at all, it can feel late­ly like the end of the world is near. Not only is there a plague, but hun­dreds of bil­lions of locusts are swarm­ing East Africa. Wild­fires have rav­aged Aus­tralia, killing an untold num­ber of ani­mals. A recent earth­quake in Utah even shook the Salt Lake Tem­ple to the top of its icon­ic spire, caus­ing the gold­en trum­pet to fall from the angel Moroni’s right hand.”
  2. Gen­er­al Coro­n­avirus Com­men­tary
    • Tips from some­one with 50 years of social dis­tanc­ing expe­ri­ence (Rae Ellen Bichell, Min­neso­ta Pub­lic Radio): “Keep track of some­thing…. In the era of COVID-19, he sug­gests track­ing what you can — or can’t — find at the gro­cery store. Or, bet­ter yet, par­tic­i­pat­ing in some cit­i­zen sci­ence, like a project called CoCo­RaHS that tracks rain­fall across the coun­try.”
    • It’s Time to Face Facts, Amer­i­ca: Masks Work (Fer­ris Jabr, Wired): “The col­lec­tive evi­dence makes a strong case for uni­ver­sal mask wear­ing dur­ing a pan­dem­ic. Masks are not a sub­sti­tute for oth­er inter­ven­tions; they must always be used in com­bi­na­tion with social dis­tanc­ing and hand hygiene.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. 
    • The Coro­n­avirus and the Con­ser­v­a­tive Mind (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “…the sup­posed con­ser­v­a­tive mind is more attuned to exter­nal threat and inter­nal con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, more inclined to sup­port author­i­ty and hier­ar­chy, and fear sub­ver­sion and dis­sent. And so the polit­i­cal respons­es to the pan­dem­ic have put these psy­cho­log­i­cal the­o­ries to a very inter­est­ing test.” This is an angle that nev­er would have occurred to me but which is obvi­ous­ly worth explor­ing. 
    • Coro­n­avirus maps and charts show COVID-19 symp­toms, spread, death rate (Busi­ness Insid­er): “These 22 charts and graph­ics lay out what you need to know as the out­break con­tin­ues to progress.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  3. This is only mar­gin­al­ly about the coro­n­avirus: An inside look at the hos­pi­tal going up in Cen­tral Park (Tony Carnes, A Jour­ney Through NYC Reli­gions): “The heart of Cen­tral Park is Bethes­da Foun­tain, which was built to com­mem­o­rate the heal­ing pow­er of Jesus at the Pool of Bethes­da in Israel. Fred­er­ic Law Olm­st­ed, the park’s design­er, hoped that the park would pro­vide spir­i­tu­al refresh­ment to urban mass­es from their tra­vails. Now, a Chris­t­ian min­istry is real­iz­ing the sym­bol­ism in the 21st Cen­tu­ry by erect­ing a crit­i­cal care hos­pi­tal at the park’s 97th Street Trans­verse and Fifth Avenue…. Samaritan’s Purse med­ical per­son­nel use the twen­ty sec­onds while they wash their hands to pray for each of their patients by name. It is fit­ting that they do that at their present loca­tion.”
    • What a heart­warm­ing sto­ry. Who could be opposed?
    • Oh, wait. De Bla­sio “Very Con­cerned” About Anti-Gay Evan­gel­i­cal Group Run­ning Cen­tral Park Coro­n­avirus Hos­pi­tal (Jake Offen­hartz, The Gothamist): “May­or Bill de Bla­sio said the city will keep a close eye on the Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ist group oper­at­ing a field hos­pi­tal in Cen­tral Park, amid grow­ing fears that some New York­ers could face dis­crim­i­na­tion and sub­stan­dard care from the reli­gious orga­ni­za­tion.”
    • And New York­ers Are Right to Be Skep­ti­cal of Evan­gel­i­cal-Run Coro­n­avirus Ward in Cen­tral Park (Jonathan Mer­rit, The Dai­ly Beast): “The vast major­i­ty of New York­ers are not Chris­t­ian, and if they find them­selves wheez­ing for air due to COVID-19, they don’t want to be pros­e­ly­tized while receiv­ing treat­ment. They too have rea­son to be skep­ti­cal of the organization’s makeshift hos­pi­tal.” 
    • Some amus­ing com­ments I saw in response, “I think they’re actu­al­ly afraid that the vol­un­teers will give away Chick-Fil‑A sand­wich­es” and “If the may­or had been as con­cerned about the coro­n­avirus as he is about the Chris­tians then New York would look very dif­fer­ent today.” Ouch.
  4. Dona­tions: From Bribery to Benev­o­lence (Jas­mine Ker­ber, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “A spec­trum exists between bribery and benev­o­lence, and dona­tions fall in var­i­ous places along that con­tin­u­um. Oper­a­tion Var­si­ty Blues high­light­ed the most cor­rupt ‘dona­tions’; for­mer Stan­ford sail­ing coach John Van­de­mo­er plead­ed guilty to accept­ing a bribe, not an altru­is­tic con­tri­bu­tion to ath­let­ics.” Jas­mine is a stu­dent in Chi Alpha.
    • I shared an arti­cle that dis­cussed phil­an­thropy from a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive back in vol­ume 213.
  5. At least the seats are red: Why is Stan­ford Sta­di­um often emp­ty? (Stan­ford Dai­ly): “As nation­al Heis­man vot­ers did not vote for Chris­t­ian McCaf­frey ’18 because they could not both­er to watch his games, Stan­ford stu­dents would not bike over to Stan­ford Sta­di­um for [his] games. ‘I will nev­er for­get this,’ McCaf­frey told The Ath­let­ic. ‘My sopho­more year against UCLA, I had a heck of a game. I biked back to my dorm, I’m kind of on a high horse. I walk in, and six or sev­en peo­ple asked where I was! I think I had some­thing like 243 yards rush­ing, four touch­downs. And they didn’t know where I was!’”
  6. 3 Types of Skep­tics (C. Michael Pat­ton, Cre­do House): “1. Those who need answers…. 2. Those who don’t like the answers…. 3. Those who need heal­ing.”
  7. Are Mor­mons Chris­tians?: A Review of “The Saints of Zion: An Intro­duc­tion to Mor­mon The­ol­o­gy” (Tim Miller, Detroit Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary): “He makes clear that Mor­mons are not Chris­tians, but does so by point­ing out that this has been the claim of the Mor­mon church itself through­out his­to­ry (despite recent attempts to argue dif­fer­ent­ly).”

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 211

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

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

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 161

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. Trevor Responds To Crit­i­cism From The French Ambas­sador (Trevor Noah, YouTube): this is a wit­ty and insight­ful 8 minute reflec­tion on the inter­play between eth­nic her­itage and nation­al iden­ti­ty and the ways that Amer­i­cans process things dif­fer­ent­ly than the French.
  2. The New York Yan­kees Are A Moral Abom­i­na­tion (David Bent­ley Hart, New York Times): “Real­ly, how does a Yan­kees fan’s pride in all those pur­chased cham­pi­onships dif­fer from the self-delu­sion of a man stag­ger­ing out of a bawdy house at dawn, com­pli­ment­ing him­self on his mag­nif­i­cent pow­ers of seduc­tion?” A fun­ny piece of cul­tur­al com­men­tary in the New York Times writ­ten by a the­olo­gian? Yes, please. This col­umn is about way more than base­ball.
  3. Uncom­fort­able Ques­tions in the Wake of Rus­sia Indict­ment 2.0 and Trump’s Press Con­fer­ence With Putin (Jack Gold­smith, Law­fare): “It is no response to say that the Unit­ed States doesn’t med­dle in for­eign elec­tions, because it has in the past—at least as recent­ly as Bill Clinton’s inter­ven­tion in the Russ­ian pres­i­den­tial elec­tion of 1996 and pos­si­bly as recent­ly as the Hillary Clin­ton State Department’s alleged inter­ven­tion in Russia’s 2011 leg­isla­tive elec­tions. And dur­ing the Cold War the Unit­ed States inter­vened in numer­ous for­eign elec­tions, more than twice as often as the Sovi­et Union.” The author is a pro­fes­sor at Har­vard Law School. The whole thing is fas­ci­nat­ing.
  4. Free Speech, Cen­sor­ship, Hate Speech, Twit­ter (Steven Brust, per­son­al blog): “Here’s the thing: every defense, every anal­o­gy I’ve seen to jus­ti­fy ask­ing twit­ter to shut down hate speech, has come down, in the last analy­sis, to a defense of prop­er­ty rights. And yet, the most casu­al obser­va­tion ought to tell you that we are now locked in a bat­tle between prop­er­ty rights and human rights. If you must resort to a defense of prop­er­ty rights to bol­ster your argu­ment, I beg to sub­mit that you should either take anoth­er look at what you’re defend­ing, or stop call­ing your­self a pro­gres­sive.” A social­ist defense of free speech.
    • Relat­ed: I Was the Mob Until the Mob Came for Me (Bar­rett Wil­son, Quil­lette): “In my pre­vi­ous life, I was a self-right­eous social jus­tice cru­sad­er. I would use my mid-sized Twit­ter and Face­book plat­forms to sig­nal my wok­e­ness on top­ics such as LGBT rights, rape cul­ture, and racial injus­tice…. Then one day, sud­den­ly, I was accused of some of the very trans­gres­sions I’d called out in oth­ers. I was guilty, of course: There’s no such thing as due process in this world.”
    • Also relat­ed: Plan­et of Cops (Fred­die de Boer, per­son­al blog): “The woke world is a world of snitch­es, infor­mants, rats. Go to any space con­cerned with social jus­tice and what will you find? End­less sur­veil­lance. Every­body is to be judged. Every­one is under sus­pi­cion. Every­thing you say is to be scoured, picked over, ana­lyzed for any pos­si­ble offense. Everyone’s a detec­tive in the Divi­sion of Prob­lem­at­ics, and they walk the beat 24/7…. I don’t know how peo­ple can simul­ta­ne­ous­ly talk about prison abo­li­tion and restor­ing the idea of for­give­ness to lit­er­al crim­i­nal jus­tice and at the same time turn the entire social world into a kan­ga­roo court sys­tem.” This is an old­er piece but I saw it for the first time recent­ly.
  5. For Some Gang Mem­bers In El Sal­vador, The Evan­gel­i­cal Church Offers A Way Out (Emi­ly Green, NPR): “Becom­ing a devot­ed mem­ber of an evan­gel­i­cal church at a young age is the only way many ado­les­cent boys are able to avoid being roped into a gang, Cruz says. And it’s also the only way for them to get out of a gang if they’re in it, short of leav­ing the coun­try.”
  6. Sanc­tu­ary amid hous­ing cri­sis (Wendy Lee, San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle): “With no end in sight to soar­ing hous­ing costs, sev­er­al Bay Area faith orga­ni­za­tions have become a sanc­tu­ary of sorts — not just chan­nel­ing dona­tions and dis­trib­ut­ing food, but also offer­ing a safe place for peo­ple liv­ing in cars or RVs. The arrange­ment has some­times grat­ed on neigh­bors, but for pas­tors, it’s sim­ply an exten­sion of their mis­sion to serve human­i­ty.”
  7. Bald­ing Out (Christo­pher Bald­ing, per­son­al blog): “In Chi­na, there are very few peo­ple who I wit­ness live a tes­ta­ment of their belief. Who knows if the Par­ty mem­ber is a mem­ber because he believes in Marx­ism, Com­mu­nism, Xi-ism, or sim­ply wants a bet­ter apart­ment? Who knows if the per­son who claims to be a believ­er in democ­ra­cy but com­plies with the Par­ty actu­al­ly believes that or just tells the for­eign­er? For­eign­ers in Chi­na in posi­tions of influ­ence who claim to believe in human rights but col­lab­o­rate with the Par­ty to deny Chi­nese cit­i­zens rights need to answer for their actions. I have lit­tle idea what peo­ple in Chi­na believe but I know that if the Par­ty ever falls, there will be more than a bil­lion more peo­ple claim­ing they were clos­et democ­ra­cy advo­cates.” An Amer­i­can pro­fes­sor reflects on Chi­na as he pre­pares to leave. Very inter­est­ing, a bit ram­bly.

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 This Is What Makes Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats So Dif­fer­ent (Vox, Ezra Klein): the title made me skep­ti­cal, but there are some good insights in this arti­cle (first shared in vol­ume 32 back in 2016).

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 120

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. Divine To Divid­ed: How Occu­py Cen­tral Split Hong Kong’s Chris­t­ian Lead­ers (Jayson Albano, Mar­ta Colom­bo And Maria Cristhin Kuiper, South Chi­na Morn­ing Post): “Once on the street, he could see clear­ly. He could see the crowds form­ing, and he could see the mount­ing ranks of riot police. And when he saw those same police­men fir­ing tear gas into the assem­bled mass­es one thing became clear in his mind: that his faith in God demand­ed he act.”
  2. The old­est human lived to 122. Why no per­son will like­ly break her record. (Bri­an Resnick, Vox): “The authors pro­pose this is a built-in ‘nat­ur­al lim­it’ to our longevi­ty, an ‘inad­ver­tent byprod­uct’ of our biol­o­gy. And to increase the nat­ur­al lim­it we’d need to fun­da­men­tal­ly alter our genet­ics.”
    • This is based on a very read­able piece in Nature Evi­dence for a lim­it to human lifes­pan (Xiao Dong, Bran­don Mil­hol­land & Jan Vijg, Nature).
    • This find­ing reminds me of Gen­e­sis 6:3, “Then the Lord said, ‘My Spir­it will not con­tend with humans for­ev­er, for they are mor­tal; their days will be a hun­dred and twen­ty years.’”
  3. I used to sup­port legal­iz­ing all drugs. Then the opi­oid epi­dem­ic hap­pened. (Ger­man Lopez, Vox): “By the time I began as a drug pol­i­cy reporter in 2010, I was all in on legal­iz­ing every drug, from mar­i­jua­na to hero­in and cocaine. It all seemed so obvi­ous to me. Pro­hi­bi­tion had failed…. Then I began report­ing on the opi­oid epi­dem­ic.” FYI: this arti­cle is long: only read the first two sec­tions unless you’re real­ly into the sub­ject.
  4. Authors’ note: Deep neur­al net­works are more accu­rate than humans at detect­ing sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion from facial images (Michal Kosin­s­ki and Yilun Wang, self-pub­lished on Google Docs): this note by two Stan­ford researchers to explain their recent paper is extreme­ly inter­est­ing. “We used wide­ly avail­able off-the-shelf tools, pub­licly avail­able data, and stan­dard meth­ods well known to com­put­er vision prac­ti­tion­ers. We did not cre­ate a pri­va­cy-invad­ing tool, but rather showed that basic and wide­ly used meth­ods pose seri­ous pri­va­cy threats.”
  5. I called Hugh Hefn­er a pimp, he threat­ened to sue. But that’s what he was. (Suzanne Moore, The Guardian): “But this man is still being cel­e­brat­ed by peo­ple who should know bet­ter. You can dress it up with talk of glam­our and bun­ny ears and fish­nets, you can talk about his con­tri­bu­tion to gonzo jour­nal­ism, you can con­tex­tu­alise his dri­ve to free up sex as part of the sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion. But strip it all back and he was a man who bought and sold women to oth­er men.”
    • Con­cep­tu­al­ly relat­ed: STD rates hit anoth­er record high, with Cal­i­for­nia near the top (Soumya Kar­la­mangla, LA Times): “More than a quar­ter-mil­lion Cal­i­for­ni­ans were infect­ed with either syphilis, chlamy­dia or gon­or­rhea last year, which con­sti­tutes a 40% jump com­pared with five years ago, state offi­cials said.” I am often struck by the fact that STDs would effec­tive­ly dis­ap­pear in one gen­er­a­tion if peo­ple obeyed the Bible.
    • Dit­to: Pas­tor­ing Sin­gles in a Sex-Crazed, Gen­der-Con­fused World (Juan Sanchez, Life­way): “Celi­bate sin­gle­ness is a gift from God with a pur­pose.” This one isn’t just for pas­tors — rec­om­mend­ed to all sin­gles.
  6. Col­in Kaeper­nick vs. Tim Tebow: A tale of two Chris­tians on their knees (Michael Frost, Wash­ing­ton Post): “They’re both Chris­t­ian foot­ball play­ers, and they’re both known for kneel­ing on the field, although for very dif­fer­ent rea­sons. One grew up the son of Bap­tist mis­sion­ar­ies to the Philip­pines. The oth­er was bap­tized Methodist, con­firmed Luther­an, and attend­ed a Bap­tist church dur­ing col­lege. Both have made a pub­lic dis­play of their faith. Both are prayer­ful and devout.” It’s a clever piece, although you should also read the gen­tle crit­i­cism of it at Kaeper­nick vs. Tebow? Wash­ing­ton Post pass­es along flawed take on a cru­cial heresy (Ter­ry Mat­ting­ly, GetRe­li­gion)
    • Inter­est­ing­ly, Kaeper­nick began kneel­ing after a meet­ing with a vet­er­an who told him that mere­ly sit­ting was dire­spect­ful. Kaeper­nick Meets With Vet­er­an Nate Boy­er, Then Kneels Dur­ing Anthem (Under the Radar) (an arti­cle I found after an alum­nus shared it on twit­ter this week — thanks, Han­nah!)
    • The Abbie Hoff­man of the Right: Don­ald Trump (David Brooks, New York Times): “The mem­bers of the edu­cat­ed class saw this past weekend’s N.F.L. fra­cas as a fight over racism. They felt mobi­lized and uni­fied in that fight and full of right­eous ener­gy. Mem­bers of the work­ing class saw the fra­cas as a fight about Amer­i­can iden­ti­ty. They saw Pitts­burgh Steel­ers coach Mike Tom­lin try to dis­suade Ale­jan­dro Vil­lanue­va, a three-time com­bat vet­er­an, from cel­e­brat­ing the flag he risked his life for. Mem­bers of this class also felt mobi­lized, uni­fied and full of right­eous ener­gy.”
  7. A lot of you seemed to like the graph­ic I used in this week’s ser­mon. Here’s a thumb­nail, you can down­load a high-res ver­sion from the source at Visu­al The­ol­o­gy: The Books of the Bible (Tim Chal­lies).

Books of the Bible — Peri­od­ic Table

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 Every Place Has Detrac­tors. Con­sid­er Where They’re Com­ing From.(Megan McCar­dle, Bloomerg View): “There is grave dan­ger in judg­ing a neigh­bor­hood, or a cul­ture, by the accounts of those who chose to leave it. Those peo­ple are least like­ly to appre­ci­ate the good things about where they came from, and the most like­ly to dwell on its less attrac­tive qual­i­ties.” Bear this in mind when lis­ten­ing to con­ver­sion tes­ti­monies (both sec­u­lar and reli­gious). (first shared in vol­ume 62)

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 99

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. Porn Star James Deen’s Cri­sis of Con­science (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “In any case, he now feels there is an eth­i­cal dilem­ma in porn. On one hand, the industry’s suc­cess depends on its being acces­si­ble to mass audi­ences online. On the oth­er hand, Deen is con­vinced that the acces­si­bil­i­ty of porn is harm­ing young peo­ple.” This arti­cle is graph­ic.
  2. This Black Pas­tor Led A White Church — In 1788 (Thabiti Anyab­wale, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “He was licensed to preach on Novem­ber 29, 1780 and five years lat­er became the first African-Amer­i­can ordained by any reli­gious body in Amer­i­ca. In 1804 Mid­dle­bury Col­lege award­ed Haynes an hon­orary Master’s degree—another first for an African-Amer­i­can.”
  3. Trump’s Exec­u­tive Order On Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Is Worse Than Use­less (David French, Nation­al Review): “the order has three main com­po­nents: 1) a promise to ‘pro­tect and vig­or­ous­ly pro­mote reli­gious lib­er­ty,’ 2) a direc­tive to ‘ease restric­tions on polit­i­cal activ­i­ty by church­es and char­i­ties,’ and 3) an order to ‘fed­er­al agen­cies to exempt some reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions from Afford­able Care Act require­ments that pro­vide employ­ees with health cov­er­age for con­tra­cep­tion.’ Those direc­tives are respec­tive­ly 1) mean­ing­less, 2) dan­ger­ous, and 3) mean­ing­less.” The ACLU agrees, say­ing in their press release that the order was “an elab­o­rate pho­to-op with no dis­cernible pol­i­cy out­come.”
  4. It’s Basi­cal­ly Just Immoral To Be Rich (A.Q. Smith, Cur­rent Affairs): “We can define some­thing like a ‘max­i­mum moral income’ beyond which it’s obvi­ous­ly inex­cus­able not to give away all of your mon­ey. It might be 50 thou­sand. Call it 100, though. Per per­son. With an addi­tion­al 50 allowed per child. This means two par­ents with a child can still earn $250,000! That’s so much mon­ey. And you can keep it. But every­one who earns any­thing beyond it is oblig­at­ed to give the excess away in its entire­ty.” Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus. Com­pare and con­trast with 1 Tim­o­thy 6:17–19.
  5. How Two Mis­sis­sip­pi Col­lege Stu­dents Fell in Love and Decid­ed to Join a Ter­ror­ist Group (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “The­o­ret­i­cal­ly, when the Bureau comes across two kids like Jae­lyn and Moe—lost, in love, and grasp­ing toward a dark future—agents could try to set them on anoth­er path, reach­ing out to their fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties. In real­i­ty, though, that’s not what the coun­try has asked them to do.”
  6. The Reac­tionary Temp­ta­tion (Andrew Sul­li­van, NY Mag): “With­in the space of 50 years, Amer­i­ca has gone from seg­re­ga­tion to dizzy­ing mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism; from tra­di­tion­al fam­i­ly struc­tures to wide­spread divorce, cohab­i­ta­tion, and sex­u­al lib­er­ty; from a few respect­ed sources of infor­ma­tion to an end­less stream of peer-to-peer media; from careers in one com­pa­ny for life to an ever-accel­er­at­ing need to retrain and regroup; from a patri­archy to (incom­plete) gen­der equal­i­ty; from homo­sex­u­al­i­ty as a sin to homo­pho­bia as a taboo; from Chris­tian­i­ty being the com­mon cul­ture to a sec­u­lar­ism no soci­ety has ever sus­tained before ours.”
  7. 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.

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.