Tag: Stanford

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 513: elite colleges, pathologizing personality, and the fastest woman in the world

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. Elite Col­leges Have Found a New Virtue for Appli­cants to Fake (Alex Bronzi­ni-Vender, New York Times): “[There is] a new ques­tion: ‘Tell us about a moment when you engaged in a dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tion or encoun­tered some­one with an opin­ion or per­spec­tive that was dif­fer­ent from your own. How did you find com­mon ground?’ It’s known as the dis­agree­ment ques­tion, and since the stu­dent encamp­ments of spring 2024 and the Amer­i­can right’s attacks on uni­ver­si­ties, a grow­ing num­ber of elite col­leges have added it to their appli­ca­tions. Car­o­line Kop­pel­man, a pri­vate admis­sions con­sul­tant, has called it the ‘hot new it girl’ of col­lege essays. There’s no evi­dence that civil­i­ty mania will improve cam­pus dis­course, but it seems poised to widen the inequal­i­ties that already plague hyper­s­e­lec­tive col­lege admis­sions. The trou­ble is that the dis­agree­ment ques­tion — like much of the appli­ca­tion process — isn’t built for hon­esty.”
  2. Nobody Has a Per­son­al­i­ty Any­more (Freya India, The Free Press): “Today, every per­son­al­i­ty trait is seen as a prob­lem to be solved. Any­thing too human—every habit, every eccen­tric­i­ty, every feel­ing that’s too strong—has to be labeled and explained. Ther­a­py-speak has tak­en over our lan­guage. It is ruin­ing how we talk about romance and rela­tion­ships, nar­row­ing how we think about hurt and suf­fer­ing, and now, we are los­ing the words for who we are. Nobody has a per­son­al­i­ty any­more.… This is part of a deep­er instinct in mod­ern life to explain everything—psychologically, sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly, evo­lu­tion­ar­i­ly. Every­thing about us is caused, cat­e­go­rized, and can be cor­rect­ed. We talk in the­o­ries, frame­works, sys­tems, struc­tures, dri­ves, moti­va­tions, and mech­a­nisms. But in exchange for expla­na­tion, we lost mys­tery, romance, and late­ly, our­selves.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  3. Huck­abee threat­ens to declare Israel does not wel­come Chris­tians, as visa row blows open (Lazar Berman, Times of Israel): “Giv­en Huckabee’s long­stand­ing sup­port for Israel and close ties with the cur­rent gov­ern­ment in par­tic­u­lar, the rhetoric in his let­ter rep­re­sent­ed a shock­ing­ly quick dete­ri­o­ra­tion. But the issue at hand — the abil­i­ty of Chris­t­ian groups to tour Israel — is close to Huckabee’s heart, giv­en that he has led count­less such trips as an evan­gel­i­cal pas­tor over the past half a cen­tu­ry.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed to me by a stu­dent. Quite inter­est­ing.
  4. My health and my pol­i­tics walk into a doctor’s office… (Kim Fell­ner, New York Times): “The vision of a diverse, equi­table and inclu­sive democ­ra­cy that seems the best of Amer­i­ca to me and my com­mu­ni­ty is locked in an exis­ten­tial bat­tle with a MAGA counter-vision that ele­vates White­ness and Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism, and that seems to be col­o­niz­ing insti­tu­tions and cul­ture at warp speed. I did not antic­i­pate, how­ev­er, that the per­son­al and the polit­i­cal would col­lide in my doctor’s office.… Over a series of writ­ten and in-per­son con­ver­sa­tions, we have been shar­ing some of the tenets of our respec­tive faiths and the impli­ca­tions for how we nav­i­gate the world. She and I have sharply diver­gent views about when life begins and what hap­pens after we die. She believes that the only true sal­va­tion lies in accept­ing Jesus as one’s sav­ior.”
  5. A Stark Reminder That Sex Dif­fer­ences Mat­ter in Elite Sport (James Smoli­ga, Per­sua­sion): “The goal was for Kipye­gon to become the first woman ever to run a sub‑4 minute mile. Nike set her up with the very best con­di­tions that any ath­lete could ever expect. Kipye­gon ran a mile in 4:06—a remark­able per­for­mance by any mea­sure, and a per­son­al best, but well short of the sub‑4 minute goal. While Kipye­gon wasn’t direct­ly rac­ing her pac­ers, they were there to pull her to a time that hun­dreds of male ath­letes have already achieved. Rather than charg­ing down the final straight­away alone, leav­ing the best women in her wake, as she so often does, we saw Kipye­gon strain­ing to hang on behind a group of male run­ners who weren’t even near their lim­it, as they turned around to cheer her on. This race mat­ters because it offered some­thing exceed­ing­ly rare: an hon­est, direct com­par­i­son of male and female per­for­mance at the high­est lev­el.”
  6. Israeli Researcher Says Stan­ford Shunned and Sab­o­taged Him After Hamas Attack (Maya Sulkin, The Free Press): “[For­mer IDF offi­cer] Laps alleges that the research assis­tant in the Dan­ny Chou Lab told Laps dur­ing their first inter­ac­tion on his first day nev­er to speak to her. She alleged­ly delayed his orders for lab equip­ment, made him sit else­where at lunch, and reas­signed her cus­to­di­al duties to him. Col­leagues fol­lowed her lead, ostra­ciz­ing him from the lab com­mu­ni­ty, the suit claims. The most explo­sive alle­ga­tion is that the same research assis­tant, Ter­ra Lin, tam­pered with Laps’s research.”
  7. What YouTube Can’t Teach Stu­dents About Jesus (Dylan Muss­er, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “‘Who (or what) has shaped your faith the most?’ As a cam­pus min­is­ter, I have asked this ques­tion to many col­lege stu­dents over the years. Late­ly, I have noticed a shift in their answers.  This past fall, I sat across from Luke—a fresh­man at Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty. We were chat­ting over tacos when I posed the ques­tion. I watched the gears spin in his head. Would it be a church from back home? A great book? An old­er men­tor who dis­ci­pled him? Maybe his par­ents? He leaned back. ‘Youtube.’ I stared blankly, try­ing my best not to show my sur­prise.”
    • The author leads the Nav­i­ga­tors at Van­der­bilt.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • The Joy of Cook­ing Your Sprite (Jenée Desmond-Har­ris, Slate): “After a day walk­ing around the dusty grounds, rid­ing a giant swing, and dress­ing up for old-timey pho­tos, we made it back to the car exhaust­ed and thirsty. And in the back seat (I don’t know if it had been pur­chased as part of post-out­ing lunch or was just rolling around back there) was a six-pack of Sprite that had been, well, cook­ing all day. We each cracked one open, and that’s when I real­ized some­thing impor­tant was hap­pen­ing. It was so good! The soda was hot but some­how still refresh­ing. The sweet­ness was soft­ened and the bub­bles felt big­ger and more luxurious—not like the sharp, sneeze-trig­ger­ing ones you get when it’s cold. We locked eyes and smiled mis­chie­vous­ly. It felt rebel­lious (look, we were very shel­tered kids) and wild­ly inno­v­a­tive. ‘Cooked Sprite’ was born.” 
  • What Is ‘Aura Farm­ing’? This Tween Will Show You. (Ben­jamin Hoff­man, New York Times): “On Tues­day, the gov­ern­ment in Riau, cit­ing the impact of the video and the fact that he had been ‘inspir­ing local kids to embrace and pre­serve their tra­di­tions,’ named Dika as a tourism ambas­sador for the province, and its gov­er­nor, Abdul Wahid, award­ed him a schol­ar­ship for 20 mil­lion rupi­ah (around $1,200) for his edu­ca­tion. Dika also per­formed a ren­di­tion of his dance along with Gov­er­nor Wahid and oth­er offi­cials.”

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 495: Math Points to God, Slavery Persists, and the Gospel Draws Crowds at Stanford

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 mir­a­cle of math (Sarah Sal­vian­der, Sub­stack): “In 1960, the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Eugene Wign­er iden­ti­fied a meta­phys­i­cal mys­tery for the ages: why are the laws of nature so apt­ly described by math­e­mat­ics? It is a decep­tive­ly sim­ple ques­tion. We think we grasp the answer easily—until we actu­al­ly try to explain it. Wigner’s essay, titled ‘The Unrea­son­able Effec­tive­ness of Math­e­mat­ics in the Nat­ur­al Sci­ences,’ high­lights this enig­ma. The term ‘unrea­son­able’ cap­tures the bewil­der­ing real­i­ty that there is no appar­ent rea­son why math should so flaw­less­ly mir­ror the universe’s behav­iors. This sug­gests, whether intend­ed by Wign­er or not, that the answer to this mys­tery lies beyond the uni­verse.”
    • The author is an astro­physi­cist who now does apolo­get­ics.
    • For those who have nev­er seen it, here is the well-known paper: The Unrea­son­able Effec­tive­ness of Math­e­mat­ics in the Nat­ur­al Sci­ences (Eugene Wign­er, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions in Pure and Applied Math­e­mat­ics): “The mir­a­cle of the appro­pri­ate­ness of the lan­guage of math­e­mat­ics for the for­mu­la­tion of the laws of physics is a won­der­ful gift which we nei­ther under­stand nor deserve. We should be grate­ful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research and that it will extend, for bet­ter or for worse, to our plea­sure, even though per­haps also to our baf­fle­ment, to wide branch­es of learn­ing.”
  2. The Secret Cam­paign in Chi­na to Save a Woman Chained by the Neck (Vivan Wang, New York Times): “The out­cry rip­pled nation­wide for weeks. Many observers called it the biggest moment for women’s rights in recent Chi­nese his­to­ry. The Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty sees pop­u­lar dis­con­tent as a chal­lenge to its author­i­ty, but this was so intense that it seemed even the par­ty would strug­gle to quash it. And yet, it did. To find out how, I tried to track what hap­pened to the chained woman and those who spoke out for her. I found an expan­sive web of intim­i­da­tion at home and abroad, involv­ing mass sur­veil­lance, cen­sor­ship and deten­tions — a cam­paign that con­tin­ues to this day.”
    • Pray for Chi­na reg­u­lar­ly.
    • Relat­ed: slav­ery is not a rel­ic of the past and crops up in unex­pect­ed places. UN judge guilty of forc­ing woman to work as slave (BBC): “Gasps were heard from the pub­lic gallery as the ver­dicts were giv­en, and the court was cleared as the defen­dant appeared unwell.… Mugambe, who was study­ing for a law PhD at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford, had con­spired with Ugan­dan deputy high com­mis­sion­er John Leonard Muger­wa to arrange for the young woman to come to the UK.”
  3. Jesus Is A Jew (David Brooks, Com­ment): “Jesus is inher­ent­ly mysterious—a lion who is also a lamb. But he is also intel­li­gi­ble. And that’s because he lived an actu­al life in an actu­al his­tor­i­cal con­text.… Jesus is amid the muck and armed with the Word, and yet emerges as a fig­ure ulti­mate­ly alone—a vor­tex of spir­i­tu­al forces con­verg­ing in one per­son, no one else quite like him.”
  4. We Live Like Roy­al­ty and Don’t Know It (Charles Mann, The New Atlantis): “My wife and I were at a table­ful of smart, well-edu­cat­ed twen­ty-some­things — friends of the bride and groom. The wed­ding, with all its hope and aspi­ra­tion, had put them in mind of the future. As young peo­ple should, they want­ed to help make that future bright. There was so much to do! They want­ed the hun­gry to be fed, the thirsty to have water, the poor to have light, the sick to be well. But when I men­tioned how remark­able it was that a hun­dred-plus peo­ple could para­chute into a remote, unfa­mil­iar place and eat a gourmet meal untrou­bled by fears for their health and com­fort, they were sur­prised. The hero­ic sys­tems required to bring all the ele­ments of their din­ner to these tables by the sea were invis­i­ble to them. Despite their fine edu­ca­tion, they knew lit­tle about the mech­a­nisms of today’s food, water, ener­gy, and pub­lic-health sys­tems. They want­ed a bet­ter world, but they didn’t know how this one worked.”
    • Relat­ed: Break­fast for Eight Bil­lion (Charles Mann, The New Atlantis): “Some­time in the 1980s, an unprece­dent­ed change in the human con­di­tion occurred. For the first time in known his­to­ry, the aver­age per­son on Earth had enough to eat all the time.”
  5. The Work­ism Trap (Bob­by Jamieson, Plough): “And a 2018 research arti­cle found that, com­pared to women who grad­u­at­ed from low­er-ranked schools, women who attend­ed elite, selec­tive uni­ver­si­ties do not, on aver­age, earn more per hour, but they do work more. For women, it seems, the ben­e­fits of an elite diplo­ma are more time at work and low­er chances of mar­ry­ing and hav­ing chil­dren.”
    • Vague­ly relat­ed (at least to the excerpt): Are Men OK? (Eamon Whalen, The Nation): “The biggest risk fac­tor for drop­ping out of col­lege, con­trol­ling for every­thing else, is being a man. Those strug­gles have extend­ed to the labor mar­ket. When adjust­ed for infla­tion, most Amer­i­can men today earn around $3,000 less than men did in 1979, which leads to a grim real­iza­tion: Much of the nar­row­ing of the per­sis­tent wage gap between men and women can be explained by the stag­nat­ing wages for men.”
    • Com­ment­ing on the above arti­cle: Cre­at­ing a Per­mis­sion Space for Men’s Issues (Aaron Renn, Sub­stack): “The fem­i­nist movement’s suc­cess depend­ed on telling men they had to change, that there were cer­tain choic­es and behav­iors they could no longer engage in. It also explic­it­ly real­lo­cat­ed resources and posi­tions from men to women.  While I don’t think the sit­u­a­tion with men is sym­met­ri­cal, it strikes me as dubi­ous that noth­ing needs to change with regards to women. For exam­ple, as econ­o­mist Melis­sa Kear­ney, also a Brook­ings affil­i­at­ed schol­ar, doc­u­ment­ed in her superb book The Two-Par­ent Priv­i­lege — I sum­ma­rized some key find­ings — the ben­e­fits of grow­ing up in an intact fam­i­ly vs. a sin­gle par­ent home are over­whelm­ing. The Unit­ed States has the high­est share of its chil­dren liv­ing in sin­gle par­ent homes of any coun­try in the entire world. That’s Amer­i­can excep­tion­al­ism we could live with­out.” (empha­sis removed for read­abil­i­ty)
  6. Is Reli­gion Taboo at Stan­ford? (Sloane Wehman, Stan­ford Review): “On the after­noon of Mon­day March 3, hun­dreds of stu­dents con­gre­gat­ed in White Plaza to lis­ten to Cliffe Knech­tle and his son Stu­art Knech­tle debate Chris­tian­i­ty as a part of their ‘Give Me An Answer’ min­istry, a pro­gram that strives to answer tough ques­tions about faith. Cliffe and Stu­art are both pas­tors at Grace Com­mu­ni­ty Church in New Canaan, Con­necti­cut, and Cliffe has been debat­ing stu­dents on Chris­tian­i­ty since devel­op­ing the Give Me An Answer min­istry in 1991.”
  7. How Do You Solve a Prob­lem Like Mar­tinez? (Ben­jamin Flesh­man, SSRN): “All told, there are reports of 175 reli­gious stu­dent groups that were ful­ly denied offi­cial recog­ni­tion since 1990. One hun­dred and nine­teen of those groups were kicked off their cam­pus­es after Mar­tinez was decid­ed. That means that more than twice as many groups have been dere­c­og­nized in the fif­teen years since Mar­tinez than in the twen­ty years before­hand. Part of this is due to the more aggres­sive mass dere­cog­ni­tions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa, Cal­i­for­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty, and Van­der­bilt. There real­ly weren’t any mas­sive dere­cog­ni­tion cam­paigns pre-Mar­tinez, with the largest being Cal State’s dere­cog­ni­tion of a hand­ful of groups that led to the lit­i­ga­tion in Alpha Delta Chi. When you include the num­ber of recog­ni­tion issues that stopped just short of a full dere­cog­ni­tion, but which still required the inter­ven­tion of legal coun­sel or nation­al orga­ni­za­tions to resolve, the num­bers shoot to 257 total report­ed inci­dents since 1990, with 195 occur­ring post-Mar­tinez. That means rough­ly three times as many total report­ed inci­dents post-Mar­tinez as pre-Mar­tinez.”
    • Men­tions Chi Alpha (not at Stan­ford, just gen­er­al­ly) in a few places. The Beck­et Fund, with whom the author is affil­i­at­ed, are Chi Alpha’s legal rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

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 489

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. To Hate the Vul­ner­a­ble: Roe at 52 (Nadya Williams, Mere Ortho­doxy): “Do we as a soci­ety real­ize that we tell some peo­ple out­right: Your life is not worth liv­ing.  You do not deserve to live. Your child does not deserve to live. What kind of mon­sters does this make us?”
  2. Win­ning The Lot­tery (Kasen Stephensen, Sub­stack): “Ulti­mate­ly, what I learned at Stan­ford was how to think for myself. Con­front­ed with a cul­ture for­eign to my own upbring­ing and des­per­ate to belong, I looked to my fel­low stu­dents for guid­ance and at times lost sight of the lessons I learned from my fam­i­ly and on my mis­sion. While I appre­ci­ate my new ana­lyt­i­cal skills and blos­som­ing ambi­tion, I reject the premise implic­it at Stan­ford: that your worth is mea­sured by your income, the pres­tige of your job, and your family’s con­nec­tions. I redis­cov­ered the key lessons from my mis­sion: hap­pi­ness, for me, is found in intel­lec­tu­al curios­i­ty, acts of ser­vice, and gen­uine rela­tion­ships with oth­ers, whether with friends, team-mates, fam­i­ly mem­bers, or the woman I would mar­ry.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
  3. The Best Argu­ment for Protes­tantism Is Its Catholic­i­ty (N. Gray Sutan­to, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “…Ortlund high­lights how the Reform­ers defend­ed their over­ar­ch­ing the­ol­o­gy in a sur­pris­ing way. Not only, they argued, were Protes­tant posi­tions more bib­li­cal than their non-Protes­tant coun­ter­parts; they were also more catholic—in the sense of fur­ther­ing the goal of a uni­fied church. In their view, Catholic the­olo­gians were the ones depart­ing from apos­tolic and patris­tic, or ear­ly-church, teach­ing. As Ortlund notes,’“the ear­ly Protes­tants argued on catholic and his­tor­i­cal grounds,’ not mere­ly the­o­log­i­cal grounds, against a host of Roman Catholic doc­trines.”
    • A sol­id review of an excel­lent book (What It Means To Be Protes­tant by Gavin Ortlund).
  4. Can reli­gion make you hap­py? Sci­en­tists may soon find out. (Julia Fly­nn Siler, Nation­al Geo­graph­ic): “A team of schol­ars, in part­ner­ship with polling firm Gallup, has begun a five-year study of over 200,000 par­tic­i­pants from 22 coun­tries, to fig­ure out what leads to what researchers call flour­ish­ing. To flour­ish is to be more than mere­ly hap­py; it’s a met­ric meant to show if peo­ple are ‘liv­ing in a state in which all aspects of a per­son­’s life are good.’… That data isn’t in yet. But the results obtained so far back up what Pew and oth­er researchers have found. The aver­age flour­ish­ing score was 0.23 points high­er for some­one who says that reli­gion is an impor­tant part of their dai­ly life than for some­one who does not – and 0.41 points high­er for some­one who attends a reli­gious ser­vice at least week­ly.”
  5. NBA greats think this D‑II coach is a bas­ket­ball genius. So why don’t you know who he is? (CJ Moore, The New York Times): “Crutch­field, a for­mer math teacher who nev­er played col­lege bas­ket­ball and coached ten­nis before get­ting his big D‑II break at West Lib­er­ty Uni­ver­si­ty, sees the game like a math prob­lem and has cre­at­ed his own cal­cu­la­tions.… When he grad­u­at­ed from West Vir­ginia in 1978, Crutch­field want­ed to be a high school bas­ket­ball coach. A year lat­er, he had giv­en up, return­ing to his alma mater to go to law school. ‘Too big a dream,’ he thought. He passed the LSAT and rent­ed an apart­ment in Mor­gan­town. Then he got a call out of nowhere, offer­ing him the boys bas­ket­ball coach­ing posi­tion at a small school in the state’s north­ern pan­han­dle. He’s not even sure who rec­om­mend­ed him. Crutch­field sold his law books, lost the deposit on his apart­ment and moved to Cameron, W.V.”
  6. The Case Against Drink­ing (Sam Kahn, Per­sua­sion): “From as far back as I can remem­ber, my plan had been to be a kind of low-inten­si­ty alco­holic. I hoped that it wouldn’t make me beat my fam­i­ly or wet myself at work, and that it wouldn’t lead to organ fail­ure in the end—always the ques­tion, isn’t it?—but it seemed a gam­ble worth tak­ing. The social life of the West is built almost entire­ly around the copi­ous con­sump­tion of alco­hol, with its pro­fes­sion­al life close­ly adja­cent to that.”
    • A sol­id essay that (cor­rect­ly) defends Pro­hi­bi­tion and makes many good points. I do not think drink­ing is always a sin, but I do not drink myself and am hap­py to encour­age you not to, either.
  7. I used to think my peers were anti­se­mit­ic. Now, I’ve changed my mind. (Julia Segal, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “‘How many of you have heard about this before?’ I ask the wide-eyed clus­ter of Stan­ford stu­dents in our hotel con­fer­ence room. A few sec­onds of silence go by as eyes dart around the room. Final­ly, scat­tered hands go up — approx­i­mate­ly half the room. The thing I was ask­ing if they’d head about? Oct. 7. The mas­sacre of rough­ly 1,300 peo­ple in Israel, in the small farm­ing vil­lages and at a music fes­ti­val. The dead­liest day for Jews since the Holo­caust. Ear­li­er this year, I would have been sur­prised that half the Stan­ford stu­dents in the room had nev­er heard about Oct. 7. But I was com­ing off the tail-end of dozens of inter­views for a trip to vis­it the Nova Exhi­bi­tion in L.A., where the typ­i­cal answer to ‘What have you heard about Oct. 7?’ was ‘to be hon­est, not much,’ and some­times even, ‘I hadn’t heard about it until I saw your email and googled it.’”
    • I’m gen­uine­ly shocked and it puts some of last year’s cam­pus activism into per­spec­tive.

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 470



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 470, a rel­a­tive­ly unin­ter­est­ing num­ber. There are few­er links than usu­al this week owing to some trav­el. I did­n’t have much time to read and I’m exhaust­ed today.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Can AI Help a Stu­dent Get Into Stan­ford or Yale? (Lau­ren Cof­fey, Inside High­er Ed): “Lee is among hun­dreds of stu­dents try­ing out Esslo—whose name is a mashup of the words ‘essay’ and ‘Elo,’ a rank­ing sys­tem used in chess and esports. The pro­gram is the brain­child of two Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents look­ing to tack­le what they believe is one of the most stress­ful parts of col­lege appli­ca­tions: the admis­sions essay.”
    • The two Stan­ford stu­dents in ques­tion are part of Chi Alpha. Way to go, guys! The web­site: https://www.esslo.org/ — if you know any high school seniors, pass the link their way.
  2. Evan­ge­lize Like You’re a Sin­ner (Claude Atcho, Gospel Coali­tion): “The Samar­i­tan woman’s bold wit­ness teach­es us a truth some­times deemed too sim­plis­tic: the key to apolo­get­ics isn’t pithy answers or irrefutable argu­ments but a sense of awe in Jesus that can’t be silenced.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  3. As a Sin­gle Man, I Felt Lit­tle Pres­sure to Get Mar­ried. I Wish I Had. (Brett McCrack­en, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Sin­gle­ness and mar­riage can both be good when they’re done for God’s glo­ry and take a cru­ci­form shape. And when cho­sen for self­ish rea­sons or lived out in unhealthy ways, both sin­gle­ness and mar­riage can also be bad. I’m not mak­ing an argu­ment for one being uni­ver­sal­ly bet­ter than the oth­er. I’m sim­ply observ­ing that in our cul­tur­al moment, and per­haps in cer­tain cul­tur­al con­texts (like mine in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia), argu­ments for the good of mar­riage need to be sound­ed more urgent­ly.”
  4. How Stan­ford and Its West Coast Brethren Planned for Long Road Trips in Con­fer­ence Realign­ment (Pat Forde, Sports Illus­trat­ed): “The Car­di­nal are mak­ing their Atlantic Coast Con­fer­ence debut on Sept. 20, at Syra­cuse. The fol­low­ing week, Stan­ford will vis­it Clem­son. Of all the hands realign­ing schools have been dealt, this is the sin­gle worst one in foot­ball. None of the oth­er Pac-12 diaspora—in the ACC, Big Ten or Big 12—will play league road games on con­sec­u­tive weeks. And these are three-time-zone sojourns of 5,000 miles or more round trip.”

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 469



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 469, which is appar­ent­ly the largest known n for which n!-1 is prime.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Chat­G­PT Goes to Church (Arlie Coles, Plough): “Acci­den­tal­ly gen­er­at­ed heresy is a tech­ni­cal fail­ure; a pas­tor refus­ing to speak from the heart and pre­fer­ring to gen­er­ate the most prob­a­ble word sequences for a ser­mon to the con­gre­ga­tion in his care is a moral fail­ure.… There is no world where defer­ring preach­ing and pas­toral care to a text gen­er­a­tor does not end with dete­ri­o­ra­tion – first of for­ma­tion, then of the cler­gy, and final­ly of the peo­ple in their care.”
    • The author is a research sci­en­tist who focus­es on deep learn­ing.
  2. Sci­en­tists use food dye found in Dori­tos to make see-through mice (Car­olyn Y. John­son, Wash­ing­ton Post): “In a series of exper­i­ments that could have been plucked from the pages of sci­ence fic­tion, researchers at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty mas­saged a solu­tion con­tain­ing tar­trazine, the chem­i­cal found in the food dye known as ‘yel­low No. 5,’ onto the stom­achs, scalps and hind legs of mice. About five min­utes lat­er, the opaque skin of the mice trans­formed tem­porar­i­ly into a liv­ing win­dow, reveal­ing branch­ing blood ves­sels, mus­cle fibers and con­trac­tions of the gut, they report­ed Thurs­day in the jour­nal Sci­ence.”
    • One of the study’s lead­ers, Dr. Guosong Hong, was part of Chi Alpha at Stan­ford. See the actu­al jour­nal arti­cle for more details and some wild images.
  3. Amer­i­ca Must Free Itself from the Tyran­ny of the Pen­ny (Caity Weaver, New York Times): “Most pen­nies pro­duced by the U.S. Mint are giv­en out as change but nev­er spent; this cre­ates an inces­sant demand for new pen­nies to replace them, so that cash trans­ac­tions that neces­si­tate pen­nies (i.e., any con­clud­ing with a sum whose final dig­it is 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 or 9) can be set­tled. Because these replace­ment pen­nies will them­selves not be spent, they will need to be replaced with new pen­nies that will also not be spent, and so will have to be replaced with new pen­nies that will not be spent, which will have to be replaced by new pen­nies (that will not be spent, and so will have to be replaced). In oth­er words, we keep mint­ing pen­nies because no one uses the pen­nies we mint.”
  4. D.E.I. Is Not Work­ing on Col­lege Cam­pus­es. We Need a New Approach. (Paul Brest and Emi­ly Levine, New York Times): “Rather than cor­rect­ing stereo­types, diver­si­ty train­ing too often rein­forces them and breeds resent­ment, imped­ing stu­dents’ social devel­op­ment. An exces­sive focus on iden­ti­ty can be just as harm­ful as the pre­tense that iden­ti­ty doesn’t mat­ter. Over­all, these pro­grams may under­mine the very groups they seek to aid by instill­ing a vic­tim mind-set and by pit­ting stu­dents against one anoth­er.”
    • The two authors are Stan­ford affil­i­ates. Paul Brest is a for­mer dean of Stan­ford Law School, and Emi­ly Levine is asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of edu­ca­tion and his­to­ry at Stan­ford.
  5. Why I changed my mind about vol­un­teer­ing (Rachel M. Cohen, Vox): “Phil­an­thropy cer­tain­ly has some great vic­to­ries in fund­ing ‘root’ solu­tions, but Buchanan urges against the men­tal­i­ty that only per­ma­nent­ly erad­i­cat­ing a prob­lem is worth doing. ‘You shouldn’t assume that a focus on roots is nec­es­sar­i­ly supe­ri­or,’ he writes. ‘Trim­ming branch­es is also impor­tant.’ In a way, it can feel safe to dis­trust the val­ue of indi­vid­ual action. Being wary of phil­an­thropy and char­i­ta­ble groups that promise to bet­ter the world res­onates with the skep­ti­cism I’ve been trained to have, pro­fes­sion­al­ly and cul­tur­al­ly. It also allows me to avoid mak­ing sac­ri­fices; there’s no real vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty or bets required.”
  6. I did­n’t know that Tolkien had explained Tom Bom­badil (Alan Jacobs, a Bay­lor prof).

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 468



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 468, which is writ­ten as 3333 in base 5. I find that pret­ty cool.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Near­ly Half of the World’s Migrants Are Chris­t­ian (Chloë-Ari­zona Fodor, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “While Chris­tians make up about 30 per­cent of the world’s pop­u­la­tion, the world’s migrants are 47 per­cent Chris­t­ian, accord­ing to the lat­est data col­lect­ed in 2020.… US migrants are much more like­ly to have a reli­gious iden­ti­ty than the Amer­i­can-born pop­u­la­tion in gen­er­al. The influx of reli­gious migrants can have a sig­nif­i­cant impact on the reli­gious com­po­si­tion of their des­ti­na­tion coun­tries. In the case of the US, ‘immi­grants are kind of putting the brakes on sec­u­lar­iza­tion,’ Kramer said.”
  2. Meet new­ly crowned Miss USA Alma Coop­er M.S. ’25 (Semi­ra Aro­ra, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “Before Stan­ford, Coop­er grad­u­at­ed in the top five per­cent of her class at West Point. Cur­rent­ly, she is a part of the high­ly selec­tive Knight-Hen­nessy schol­ar­ship pro­gram, which aims to cul­ti­vate mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary lead­ers and offers schol­ars up to three years of fund­ing for grad­u­ate stud­ies.”
  3. A Scary Date Can Help You Find a Good Mate (Coltan Scrivn­er, Sub­stack): “Female par­tic­i­pants enjoyed the hor­ror clip the most when watch­ing with a male who dis­played mas­tery, while male par­tic­i­pants enjoyed it most in the pres­ence of a dis­tressed female. For males con­fed­er­ates whose pho­tographs were rat­ed less attrac­tive, dis­play­ing mas­tery increased how attrac­tive they were per­ceived by the female par­tic­i­pant that watched the clip with them. In oth­er words, women enjoyed a scary sit­u­a­tion more when they expe­ri­enced it with a man who dis­played mas­tery of their fear, and those men were, in some cas­es, seen as more attrac­tive than men who dis­played indif­fer­ence or dis­tress.”
    • The author is a Behav­ioral Sci­en­tist at the Recre­ation­al Fear Lab at Aarhus Uni­ver­si­ty in Den­mark and also has an appoint­ment in the Psy­chol­o­gy Depart­ment at Ari­zona State Uni­ver­si­ty. The “Recre­ation­al Fear Lab” — what an amaz­ing name!
  4. New Train­ing and Tougher Rules: How Col­leges Are Try­ing to Tame Gaza Protests (Alan Blind­er, New York Times): “The strate­gies that are com­ing into pub­lic view sug­gest that some admin­is­tra­tors at schools large and small have con­clud­ed that per­mis­sive­ness is per­ilous, and that a hard­er line may be the best option — or per­haps just the one least like­ly to invite blow­back from elect­ed offi­cials and donors who have demand­ed that uni­ver­si­ties take stronger action against pro­test­ers.”
    • Relat­ed: At Michi­gan, Activists Take Over and Shut Down Stu­dent Gov­ern­ment (Hali­na Ben­net, New York Times): “But last spring, pro-Pales­tin­ian activists, run­ning under the Shut It Down par­ty, won con­trol over the stu­dent gov­ern­ment. They imme­di­ate­ly moved to with­hold fund­ing for all activ­i­ties, until the uni­ver­si­ty com­mit­ted to divest from com­pa­nies that prof­it from Israel’s war in Gaza.… When cam­paign­ing for stu­dent gov­ern­ment, the Shut It Down par­ty did not keep its inten­tions a secret. Its plat­form ‘ran with one sin­gle point: to halt the oper­a­tions of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan Cen­tral Stu­dent Gov­ern­ment,’ Ali­fa Chowd­hury, the pres­i­dent of the par­ty, wrote in a state­ment to The Times.”
  5. Gos­sip­ing Is Fun. It’s Nat­ur­al. And These Peo­ple Won’t Do It. (Michal Lei­bowitz, New York Times): “I found the lives and rela­tion­ships described by the abstain­ers com­pelling. I was intrigued by their opti­mism, by their grace, by their com­mit­ment to judg­ing oth­ers by their best fea­tures. Which is not to say I’ve sworn off gos­sip entire­ly. But I’ve def­i­nite­ly cut back. And what do you know? The less I judge peo­ple, the less I want to judge peo­ple. The less I com­plain, the less I want to com­plain. The less, maybe, that I even see things to com­plain about.”
  6. How your mind­set could affect your response to vac­cines (Tay­lor Kub­o­ta, Stan­ford News): “It’s impor­tant to remem­ber that our body’s respons­es to any­thing – the med­ica­tions we take, the foods we eat, and the stress we expe­ri­ence – are influ­enced by our mind­sets as well as the objec­tive prop­er­ties of those things. And this is also true of the COVID-19 vac­cine. Our mind­sets about the vac­cine can affect not just how we feel after­ward but also our expe­ri­ence with side effects. And in some instances, your mind­set about the vac­cine’s side effects can poten­tial­ly influ­ence your immune response.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed to me by a med­ical doc­tor.
  7. Can We Be a Lit­tle Less Selec­tive With Our Moral Out­rage? (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “Of all the world’s injus­tices, per­haps the sad­dest is that so many of them are sim­ply ignored.”
    • A depress­ing list of a bunch of hor­ri­ble gov­ern­ments around the world.

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 464



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 464, which only has two prime fac­tors: 2 and 29.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Stan­ford in Paris 2024 (Stan­ford News): “A school-record 60 Stan­ford-affil­i­at­ed ath­letes have qual­i­fied to com­pete at the Olympic Games Paris 2024.… Nations rep­re­sent­ed include the Unit­ed States (38), Cana­da (5), Aus­tralia (3), Israel (2), Switzer­land (2), Egypt (1), France (1), Ger­many (1), Greece (1), Hong Kong (1), Nige­ria (1), Philip­pines (1), Sin­ga­pore (1), Spain (1) and Venezuela (1).”
  2. Teach­ers and the Trans­mis­sion of Excel­lence (Matt Clan­cy, New Things Under The Sun): “Here’s a strik­ing fact: through 2022, one in two Nobel prize win­ners in physics, chem­istry, and med­i­cine also had a Nobel prize win­ner as their aca­d­e­m­ic advi­sor.”
    • Men­tor­ship mat­ters, and not just in acad­e­mia. I have a friend who once told me, “You always need to learn up. Look above you and find peo­ple who have already achieved what you hope to achieve and spend as much time around them as you can.”
  3. There Is Almost No ‘Lib­er­al­iz­ing Reli­gion’ in the Unit­ed States (Ryan Burge, Sub­stack): “The more peo­ple go to church, the less lib­er­al they are. That’s true across racial lines. That’s also true in a lot of major Protes­tant tra­di­tions includ­ing a few main­line stal­warts like the Unit­ed Methodist Church and the PCUSA.”
    • Empha­sis removed for read­abil­i­ty.
  4. The Most Reveal­ing Moment of a Trump Ral­ly (McK­ay Cop­pins, The Atlantic): “To under­stand the evolv­ing psy­chol­o­gy and beliefs of Trump’s reli­gious sup­port­ers, I attempt­ed to review every prayer offered at his cam­paign events since he announced in Novem­ber 2022 that he would run again. Work­ing with a researcher, I com­piled 58 in total, the most recent from June 2024. The result­ing document—at just over 17,000 words—makes for a strange, reveal­ing reli­gious text: benign in some places, blas­phe­mous in oth­ers; con­tra­dic­to­ry and poignant and fright­en­ing and sad and, per­haps most of all, beg­ging for exe­ge­sis.”
    • Inter­est­ing con­cept for an arti­cle. Note that the author is Mor­mon, so fac­tor that in when eval­u­at­ing his reli­gious com­men­tary.
  5. Peo­ple Say Queer Peo­ple Are Born That Way. It’s More Com­pli­cat­ed. (Charles M. Blow, New York Times): “ ‘Born this way’ may, unfor­tu­nate­ly, have been an over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion. It’s prob­a­bly clos­er to the truth to say that peo­ple are ‘formed this way.’ As the com­plex­i­ty of human sex­u­al­i­ty has become clear­er, sci­en­tists and writ­ers have attempt­ed to add nec­es­sary nuance to the sub­ject. But the slo­gan remains entrenched in the cul­ture.… It is not only unsup­port­able by sci­ence but also does not cap­ture the full real­i­ty of queer expe­ri­ence and is unjust to some mem­bers of the queer com­mu­ni­ty itself.”
    • I am old enough to remem­ber when the “born this way” argu­ment was the dom­i­nant rea­son homo­sex­u­al­i­ty gained widestream accep­tance in Amer­i­ca. Unlocked.
  6. Should Pornog­ra­phy Be Com­plete­ly Banned? (Ryan Burge, Sub­stack): “The share of Amer­i­cans who want no restric­tions on porn has nev­er been that high. It was 10% of the sam­ple back in the ear­ly 1970s and today it’s dropped to a very small frac­tion — just 4% of those who took the sur­vey in 2022. So, there’s lit­tle appetite for a lais­sez-faire approach to pornog­ra­phy.”
  7. Cou­ples, Stop Writ­ing Your Own Wed­ding Vows (Cheryl Mendel­son, The Atlantic): “Tra­di­tion­al vows cre­ate an intense moment of qui­et speech that height­ens the exu­ber­ance of the toasts, drink­ing, and danc­ing that fol­low. Replac­ing them with sen­ti­men­tal or jokey words turns the vow-tak­ing into an iron­ic per­for­mance of some­thing the cou­ple is implic­it­ly dis­avow­ing. One of my friends regards tak­ing vows oth­er than the tra­di­tion­al ones as ‘like being on the wit­ness stand and answer­ing the ques­tions you wish you had been asked.’ He and his wife want­ed ‘no irony’ or attempts at wit in their vows, and ‘redact­ed’ theirs from a church rite.”

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 463



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 463, a prime num­ber.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Why your smart­phone might be stop­ping you from fol­low­ing Jesus (Mar­tin Saun­ders, Pre­miere Chris­tian­i­ty): “[Haidt] argues that smart­phones actu­al­ly dri­ve spir­i­tu­al degra­da­tion: ‘[social media] trains peo­ple to think in ways that are exact­ly con­trary to the world’s wis­dom tra­di­tions: Think about your­selves first; be mate­ri­al­is­tic, judge­men­tal, boast­ful, and pet­ty; seek glo­ry as quan­ti­fied by likes and fol­low­ers.’… our dig­i­tal cul­ture isn’t neu­tral; it’s offer­ing a kind of anti-dis­ci­ple­ship.”
  2. Move Over, Math­e­mati­cians, Here Comes AlphaProof (Siob­han Roberts, New York Times): “A pair of Google Deep­Mind mod­els tried their luck with the prob­lem set in the 2024 Inter­na­tion­al Math­e­mat­i­cal Olympiad, or I.M.O., held from July 11 to July 22 about 100 miles west of Lon­don at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bath. The event is said to be the pre­mier math com­pe­ti­tion for the world’s ‘bright­est math­letes,’ accord­ing to a pro­mo­tion­al post on social media. The human prob­lem-solvers — 609 high school stu­dents from 108 coun­tries — won 58 gold medals, 123 sil­ver and 145 bronze. The A.I. per­formed at the lev­el of a sil­ver medal­ist, solv­ing four out of six prob­lems for a total of 28 points. It was the first time that A.I. has achieved a medal-wor­thy per­for­mance on an Olympiad’s prob­lems.”
  3. Stand­ing Out, Craft­ing Hooks, and Acci­den­tal­ly Reveal­ing Every­thing That’s Wrong With You (Max Nussen­baum, Sub­stack): “You wouldn’t think that people’s nat­ur­al instinct would be to reveal their full litany of psy­cho­log­i­cal issues in their pro­files, but it actu­al­ly is. They just don’t real­ize that’s what they’re doing.” About a year old.
  4. Online opt-in polls can pro­duce mis­lead­ing results, espe­cial­ly for young peo­ple and His­pan­ic adults (Andrew Mer­cer, Court­ney Kennedy & Scott Keeter, Pew Research): “…sev­er­al recent stud­ies have doc­u­ment­ed large errors in online opt-in sur­veys due to the pres­ence of so-called ‘bogus respon­dents.’ These respon­dents do not answer ques­tions sin­cere­ly; instead, they attempt to com­plete sur­veys with as lit­tle effort as pos­si­ble to earn mon­ey or oth­er rewards. Stud­ies have shown that bogus respon­dents can cause opt-in sur­veys to over­es­ti­mate rare atti­tudes and behav­iors, such as ingest­ing bleach to pro­tect against COVID-19, belief in con­spir­a­cies like Piz­za­gate or sup­port for polit­i­cal vio­lence.”
  5. Patron­age vs. Con­stituent Par­ties (Or Why Repub­li­can Par­ty Lead­ers Mat­ter More Than Demo­c­ra­t­ic Ones) (Tan­ner Greer, per­son­al blog): “…many dis­cus­sions of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics assume that that the struc­tures and oper­a­tional norms of the two par­ties are the same. If these par­ty dif­fer­ences were more wide­ly rec­og­nized, I sus­pect we would see few­er evan­gel­i­cals frus­trat­ed with their lim­it­ed influ­ence over the GOP par­ty plat­form, few­er jour­nal­ists shocked with J.D. Vance’s jour­ney from nev­er-Trump land to MAGA-max­i­mal­ism, and greater alarm among cen­trist Democ­rats about the longer-term influ­ence that the Pales­tine protests will have on the con­tours of their coali­tion.”
  6. Evan­gel­i­cals Must Stop Their Pref­er­en­tial Treat­ment of the Left (James R. Wood, First Things): “Today, cen­trists and those on the right are more fer­tile soil, I believe, because they are more open to real­i­ty. They rec­og­nize that the cul­tur­al rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies’ projects to rewrite real­i­ty are destroy­ing civ­i­liza­tion. These refugees crave clar­i­ty about basic moral real­i­ties because of how much con­fu­sion the neg­a­tive world has pro­duced. They are look­ing for voic­es who stand up to the civ­i­liza­tion­al destroyers—maybe even voic­es who bold­ly pro­claim super­nat­ur­al truths.Like the ‘god-fear­ers’ that ear­ly church mis­sion­ar­ies often tar­get­ed, we today need to con­sid­er the ‘real­i­ty-respecters’ in our mis­sion.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  7. Stan­ford’s biggest star lured to Texas Tech with $1 mil­lion deal (Alex Simon, SF Gate): “Canady announced her trans­fer to Texas Tech on Wednes­day, with mul­ti­ple reports quick­ly com­ing out that the Red Raiders’ name, image and like­ness (NIL) col­lec­tive Mata­dor Club, the group of boost­ers sup­port­ing Texas Tech by sign­ing the school’s ath­letes to endorse­ment deals, signed the pitch­er to a one-year deal for over $1 mil­lion.”

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 457



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 457, the sum of three con­sec­u­tive primes (149 + 151 + 157) and also appar­ent­ly the index of a prime Euclid num­ber, but I would be lying if I said I knew what that is.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The case for show­ing up to church—even if you don’t believe in God (Emma Camp, Amer­i­ca): “But despite my reg­u­lar church atten­dance for almost two years now, I still haven’t devel­oped a rock-sol­id faith. I’ve joked—and said as much on Twitter—that I only believe in God about 30 per­cent of the time on a good day. My ambiva­lence does set me apart from most of my friends from church, a group that includes a few sem­i­nar­i­ans. But it doesn’t keep me from com­ing back.”
  2. The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs (Ruxan­dra Tes­lo, Sub­stack): “To for­mal­ize this: ‘Any sys­tem that is not explic­it­ly pro-Weird Nerd will turn anti-Weird Nerd pret­ty quick­ly.’ That is because most peo­ple, while lik­ing non-con­formism in the abstract and post-fac­to, are not very will­ing to actu­al­ly put up with the per­son­al­i­ty trade-offs of Weird Nerds in prac­tice. There is an increas­ing num­ber of peo­ple right now who are think­ing about how to build bet­ter intel­lec­tu­al insti­tu­tions… it’s worth think­ing about what kind of peo­ple one wants to attract in these insti­tu­tions and how to keep them there. And I believe the con­ver­sa­tion here starts with accept­ing a sim­ple truth, which is that Weird Nerds will have cer­tain traits that might be less than ide­al, that these traits come ‘in a pack­age’ with oth­er, very good traits, and if one makes fil­ter­ing or pro­mo­tion based on the absence of those traits a pri­or­i­ty, they will miss out on the pos­i­tives.”
  3. An Object Les­son From Covid on How to Destroy Pub­lic Trust (Zeynep Tufek­ci, New York Times): “If the gov­ern­ment mis­led peo­ple about how Covid is trans­mit­ted, why would Amer­i­cans believe what it says about vac­cines or bird flu or H.I.V.? How should peo­ple dis­tin­guish between wild con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and actu­al con­spir­a­cies?… As the expres­sion goes, trust is built in drops and lost in buck­ets, and this buck­et is going to take a very long time to refill.”
    • Unlocked.
  4. ‘Sham’ Surgery Can Actu­al­ly Fix Our Bod­ies. So Why Are Some Against It? (Jere­my How­ick, Sci­ence Alert): “More broad­ly, a review of 53 place­bo-con­trolled surgery tri­als found that sham surgery was as good as the real thing in over half of the stud­ies. Sham knee and back surgery works as well as real surgery for pain. Pre­tend­ing to put brain implants works as well as real implants for reduc­ing migraine attacks. Fake laser surgery works as well as real laser surgery to stop gas­troin­testi­nal bleed­ing. And fake surgery works as well as real surgery for mak­ing sphinc­ters func­tion more effi­cient­ly.”
  5. The Day My Old Church Can­celed Me Was a Very Sad Day (David French, New York Times): “When I left the Repub­li­can Par­ty, I thought a shared faith would pre­serve my denom­i­na­tion­al home. But I was wrong. Race and pol­i­tics trumped truth and grace, and now I’m no longer wel­come in the church I loved.”
    • Unlocked.
  6. Alito’s ‘God­li­ness’ Com­ment Echoes a Broad­er Chris­t­ian Move­ment (Eliz­a­beth Dias and Lisa Lerer, New York Times): “It’s a phrase not com­mon­ly asso­ci­at­ed with legal doc­trine: return­ing Amer­i­ca to ‘a place of god­li­ness.’ And yet when asked by a woman pos­ing as a Catholic con­ser­v­a­tive at a din­ner last week, Jus­tice Samuel A. Ali­to Jr. appeared to endorse the idea.… Now, Supreme Court jus­tices have become caught up in the debate over whether Amer­i­ca is a Chris­t­ian nation. While Jus­tice Ali­to is hard­ly open­ly cham­pi­oning these views, he is embrac­ing lan­guage and sym­bol­ism that line up with a much broad­er move­ment push­ing back against the declin­ing pow­er of Chris­tian­i­ty as a major­i­ty reli­gion in Amer­i­ca.”
    • This caveat is sig­nif­i­cant and should per­haps be high­er placed in the sto­ry: “The Times has not heard the full unedit­ed record­ing and has reviewed only the edit­ed record­ing post­ed online, after the woman who record­ed them, a lib­er­al activist, declined to send the Times the full record­ing.” 
    • Relat­ed: What Exact­ly Did Jus­tice Ali­to Say That Was Wrong? (Marc O. DeGiro­la­mi, New York Times): “Where was the justice’s error? He did not men­tion any pend­ing case or lit­i­ga­tion. He did not name any per­son or par­ty. He did not dis­cuss any spe­cif­ic polit­i­cal or moral mat­ter. Most of the exchange con­sists of the filmmaker’s own goad­ing remarks, fol­lowed by the justice’s vague and ano­dyne affir­ma­tions and replies. About what you might expect when cor­nered at a bor­ing cock­tail par­ty.”
    • Relat­ed: Wild Dis­tor­tions of ‘Secret Record­ing’ of Ali­to (Ed Whe­lan, Nation­al Review): “You are wel­come of course to dis­agree with Ali­to.… But it’s beyond bizarre to find it news­wor­thy that Ali­to made a pri­vate com­ment that mir­rors pub­lic speech­es he has been giv­ing.”
  7. Against Ambi­tion (Grace Car­roll, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “Wineb­urg walked into his class­room intend­ing to make a brief open­ing com­ment about the scene out­side. What fol­lowed — a tirade against a cul­ture of careerism so bla­tant­ly prof­it-moti­vat­ed that stu­dents were being lured, lit­er­al­ly, to flash­ing salaries like moths to flame — ‘sort of took on a life of its own,’ he recalled recent­ly. It’s known col­lo­qui­al­ly among some stu­dents as ‘the rant.’ I was one of the frosh sit­ting in Wineburg’s class that fall. I remem­ber the rant.… most­ly I remem­ber feel­ing like some­one was lift­ing some­thing very heavy off of me, a weight I hadn’t real­ized I was car­ry­ing until it was gone.”

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 453

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. Rec­on­cil­ing Chris­tian­i­ty with intel­lec­tu­al curios­i­ty (Nadia Jo, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “One of the val­ues Jesus empha­sized most is humil­i­ty, and I strive to imple­ment that val­ue in my intel­lec­tu­al life in addi­tion to my per­son­al life. My ethos of intel­lec­tu­al curios­i­ty involves curios­i­ty, chal­leng­ing and wrestling with claims and lines of rea­son­ing, flex­i­ble think­ing and respect for peo­ple who put in the same effort. I hope that my non­re­li­gious peers can come to under­stand and appre­ci­ate Christianity’s deep intel­lec­tu­al tra­di­tion, even if they don’t agree with its con­clu­sions. And, I encour­age more Chris­tians to live up to that tra­di­tion and exam­ine their own belief. You’ll prob­a­bly find it more reward­ing than you expect.”
    • Nadia is a stu­dent in Chi Alpha.
  2. Home­less man is brought to church and starts CURSING right in the mid­dle of the ser­mon while the pas­tor is preach­ing on the para­ble of the lost sheep. (Twit­ter): the link title is click­baity, but the video is real­ly good. 17 min­utes but 100% worth your time.
  3. The Sin­gle Chris­t­ian (Alexan­dra DeSanc­tis Marr, Reli­gion & Lib­er­ty Online): “Rather than offer­ing sym­pa­thy to those who are sin­gle for rea­sons out­side their con­trol, Broad­way argues, Chris­tians often send the mes­sage that sin­gle­ness is an afflic­tion endured by those who sim­ply aren’t try­ing hard enough to find a spouse. But, as she explains, there isn’t an easy answer to what is ulti­mate­ly a prob­lem of num­bers: ‘When women out­num­ber men in the church, that leaves three options: polygamy, mar­ry­ing a non-Chris­t­ian or stay­ing sin­gle. Which would you like us to choose?’”
    • That’s a great line by Broad­way.
  4. The Schol­ar of Com­e­dy (David Rem­nick inter­view­ing Jer­ry Sein­feld, The New York­er): “Every artist is only show­ing you his best. When you watch a movie, every scene—they only show you the one take that worked. Sev­en­teen times, they missed it. You’re only see­ing the peak of it. But in standup you got­ta make it hap­pen every night. That’s the dif­fer­ence. That’s why actors, I think, like to do the the­atre. They want to be hon­est. They want to be held to account. And only a live audi­ence holds you to account.”
  5. Chiefs kick­er Har­ri­son Butk­er says Pride Month is exam­ple of ‘dead­ly sin’ dur­ing com­mence­ment speech (Lukas Weese, New York Times): “Kansas City Chiefs kick­er Har­ri­son Butk­er, speak­ing dur­ing a com­mence­ment speech at Bene­dic­tine Col­lege, referred to Pride Month, the events in June demon­strat­ing inclu­siv­i­ty and sup­port for the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty, as an exam­ple of the ‘dead­ly sins’ as he advo­cat­ed for a more con­ser­v­a­tive brand of Catholi­cism.”
    • I am always sur­prised when peo­ple seem sur­prised when reli­gious peo­ple say reli­gious things.
    • Relat­ed: Har­ri­son Butk­er jer­sey sales increase in after­math of Bene­dic­tine Col­lege address (Greg Dai­ley and Ryan Hen­nessy, KCTV 5): “Amid reac­tion to Har­ri­son Butker’s now-viral com­mence­ment speech at Bene­dic­tine Col­lege on Sat­ur­day, the place­kick­er seems to have gained sev­er­al new fans in the process. Accord­ing to NFL.com, Butker’s jer­sey sales are among the most pop­u­lar online. Only Travis Kelce rat­ed high­er than Butk­er, with Mahomes com­ing in right behind the star from Geor­gia Tech.”
    • This is com­mon enough that there is prob­a­bly a term for it: high-sta­tus peo­ple denounce some­thing and or pre­tend it does­n’t exist, where­as many low­er-sta­tus peo­ple real­ly like it. This is a good exam­ple of this, as is the New York Times best­seller list com­pared to actu­al sales num­bers.
  6. Cam­pus protest-relat­ed:
    • See­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty More Clear­ly (David Pozen, blog): “To sim­pli­fy some­what, we might say that pro­fes­sors are grant­ed a num­ber of basic rights with­in the uni­ver­si­ty, includ­ing rights to free speech and due process and qua­si-prop­er­ty rights in the job itself. Stu­dents and staff are grant­ed a par­tial­ly over­lap­ping, though weak­er, bun­dle of rights. What none of us have are gov­er­nance rights against the trustees who real­ly run the place. We enjoy var­i­ous indi­vid­ual priv­i­leges and pro­tec­tions, but not the fran­chise. Legal schol­ars and polit­i­cal sci­en­tists have a term for this sort of arrange­ment, too: lib­er­al autoc­ra­cy.”
      • The author is a law prof at Colum­bia and has some insight­ful thoughts about how shifts in uni­ver­si­ty gov­er­nance in recent years have pro­vid­ed the con­text for how cam­pus­es are respond­ing to protests.
    • Mod­ern Protest Cul­ture is Crip­pled by Inter­net-Brain (Samuel D. James, Sub­stack): “A trans­for­ma­tion­al protest is one that bears the brunt of real­i­ty and, in so doing, con­vinces oth­ers to join in chang­ing it. The inabil­i­ty to bear this real­i­ty is not just fragili­ty, it is pre­cise­ly the way com­put­er sys­tems work; when the autonomous sys­tem fails to yield a pleas­ant or smooth solu­tion, it must be fixed, not endured. Con­tem­po­rary stu­dent activism reflects the assump­tions and habits of the dig­i­tal era.”
      • Empha­sis in orig­i­nal.
  7. Bel­gian Gov­ern­ment Will Inter­vene In Cas­es Where Pros­ti­tutes Refuse Sex­u­al Acts Too Often (Amy Hamm, ProP­ub­li­ca): “Pros­ti­tutes are to be grant­ed ‘rights’ to refuse sex­u­al acts, stop sex­u­al acts, per­form sex­u­al acts in the man­ner they pre­fer, and refuse to sit behind Ams­ter­dam-style win­dows (pub­lic fac­ing win­dows where pros­ti­tutes are on dis­play). How­ev­er, should a pros­ti­tute use these ‘rights’ 10 times with­in six months, their pimp can then call on a gov­ern­ment medi­a­tor to inter­vene.”
    • Pimps used to have to beat their pros­ti­tutes. Now they can have the gov­ern­ment use force on their behalf. #progress
    • This is the log­ic of “bake the cake, big­ot” tak­en to its ulti­mate con­clu­sion — con­science is noth­ing and the mar­ket is every­thing and per­son­al con­vic­tions are incon­ve­niences to be tram­pled upon.
    • If, as some fem­i­nists tell us, sex work is real work then you can’t be shocked at stuff like this. If, on the oth­er hand, pros­ti­tu­tion is both a tragedy and a vice you can get out­raged.

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.