Tag: Stanford

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 334

a whole lot­ta mag­ic tricks at the end of this one

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. A Nation of Chris­tians Is Not Nec­es­sar­i­ly a Chris­t­ian Nation (David French, The Dis­patch): “There are influ­en­tial peo­ple and insti­tu­tions in this coun­try who’ve tak­en the posi­tion that ortho­dox expres­sions of Chris­t­ian sex­u­al moral­i­ty rep­re­sent noth­ing more than big­otry and hatred.  But as much hos­til­i­ty as I’ve seen and expe­ri­enced from some sec­u­lar left­ists in response to the pub­lic expres­sion of my Chris­t­ian val­ues, noth­ing com­pares to hos­til­i­ty I’ve seen and expe­ri­enced from self-iden­ti­fied Chris­tians when I root­ed my oppo­si­tion to Don­ald Trump in the same Chris­t­ian val­ues that some­times earned me scorn in the Ivy League.”
    • Con­tra French on Chris­tian­i­ty’s Decline (Ross Douthat, Sub­stack): “In oth­er words, in the his­to­ry of the Unit­ed States from the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion to Mar­tin Luther King Jr. you see two things hap­pen­ing togeth­er: the pri­vate prac­tice of faith becomes pret­ty steadi­ly more robust, and the gov­ern­ment becomes more com­mit­ted to what most of us, reli­gious and not, now con­sid­er basic ele­ments of jus­tice and mer­cy. Over this mul­ti-gen­er­a­tional process, you could rea­son­ably say that Amer­i­ca remained man­i­fest­ly imper­fect but came clos­er, how­ev­er lurch­ing­ly, to the com­bi­na­tion of wide­spread per­son­al faith and greater polit­i­cal jus­tice that French argues char­ac­ter­izes the Chris­t­ian soci­ety. That this hap­pened, quite often, through con­flict between Protes­tants (both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God, etc.) is unde­ni­able but not, it seems to me, a par­tic­u­lar­ly telling cri­tique: In a heav­i­ly Protes­tant soci­ety how else would change come?” A very impres­sive response.
    • America’s Chris­t­ian His­to­ry Is Broad­er Than Its White Protes­tant Past (David French, The Dis­patch): “Because Amer­i­ca is a major­i­ty Chris­t­ian nation, Amer­i­can progress has depend­ed on Chris­t­ian action. But also because Amer­i­ca is a major­i­ty Chris­t­ian nation, Amer­i­can oppres­sion has depend­ed on Chris­t­ian action as well. And a move­ment that’s dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly white and Chris­t­ian needs to remem­ber that sober­ing fact.” A sol­id sur­re­join­der, but I think I award the match point to Douthat even though I usu­al­ly agree with French more.
  2. Pan­dem­ic stuff:
    • One More Time: What Do You Want Us to Do About Covid that We Aren’t Doing Already? (Fred­die deBoer, Sub­stack): “I will not live in fear. And I sus­pect that this is at the heart of all of it — for com­plex soci­o­log­i­cal rea­sons, [our] elites are made up of peo­ple who suf­fer from anx­i­ety and inse­cu­ri­ty at vast­ly dis­pro­por­tion­ate rates, and they go through life need­ing their own feel­ings to be val­i­dat­ed by every­one else. This is very scary for them, and if it’s not scary for some of the rest of us, they expe­ri­ence that as implied judg­ment.” This is very, very good once you get past the Syr­ia stuff up top (which is help­ful as a fram­ing device, but goes on a lit­tle too long).
    • Why UCSF COVID expert Bob Wachter will soon be ‘over’ the pan­dem­ic (Eric Ting, SF Gate): “I believe it’s like­li­est that it peaks soon and comes down in Feb­ru­ary, and we’ll find our­selves in a world where the risk to ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed indi­vid­u­als is quite low, and it gets low for a few rea­sons. For one, every­one should have some immu­ni­ty because with the unvac­ci­nat­ed, most if not all will have been infect­ed by the time this wave ends. This vari­ant of the virus, which is now dom­i­nant, is more mild on aver­age. And the risk is low­er for immuno­com­pro­mised and high-risk indi­vid­u­als because of the increas­ing avail­abil­i­ty of med­ica­tions that decrease the chance they’ll get super sick.” The inter­vie­wee is chair of the Depart­ment of Med­i­cine at UCSF.
    • Dear Stan­ford: don’t force boost­ers on stu­dents (Monte Fis­ch­er, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “When Paul Offit — direc­tor of the Vac­cine Edu­ca­tion Cen­ter at the Children’s Hos­pi­tal of Philadel­phia, mem­ber of the FDA’s vac­cine advi­so­ry com­mit­tee, decades-long ene­my of the anti-vax move­ment and co-inven­tor of a rotavirus vac­cine — tells his own twen­ty-some­thing son not to get boost­ed, you might start to ask some ques­tions about the wis­dom of Stanford’s lat­est man­date.” The author is a PhD can­di­date in MS&E.
  3. Is the West Becom­ing Pagan Again? (Christo­pher Cald­well, New York Times): “Ms. Delsol’s inge­nious approach is to exam­ine the civ­i­liza­tion­al change under­way in light of that last one 1,600 years ago. Chris­tians brought what she calls a ‘nor­ma­tive inver­sion’ to pagan Rome. That is, they prized much that the Romans held in con­tempt and con­demned much that the Romans prized, par­tic­u­lar­ly in mat­ters relat­ed to sex and fam­i­ly. Today the Chris­t­ian over­lay on West­ern cul­tur­al life is being removed, reveal­ing a lot of pagan urges that it cov­ered up. To state Ms. Delsol’s argu­ment crude­ly, what is hap­pen­ing today is an undo­ing, but it is also a redo­ing. We are invert­ing the nor­ma­tive inver­sion. We are repa­ganiz­ing.”
  4. New Math Research Group Reflects a Schism in the Field (Rachel Crow­ell, Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can): “A new orga­ni­za­tion called the Asso­ci­a­tion for Math­e­mat­i­cal Research (AMR) has ignit­ed fierce debates in the math research and edu­ca­tion com­mu­ni­ties since it was launched last Octo­ber.… The AMR claims to have no posi­tion on social jus­tice issues, and crit­ics see its silence on those top­ics as part of a back­lash against inclu­siv­i­ty efforts.… The con­tro­ver­sy reflects a grow­ing divi­sion between researchers who want to keep sci­en­tif­ic and math­e­mat­i­cal pur­suits sep­a­rate from social issues that they see as irrel­e­vant to research and those who say even pure math­e­mat­ics can­not be con­sid­ered sep­a­rate­ly from the racism and sex­ism in its cul­ture.”
  5. We need to be able to talk about trans ath­letes and women’s sports (Megan McAr­dle, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Male puber­ty makes you taller, con­fers greater mus­cle and bone mass, larg­er heart and lung capac­i­ty rel­a­tive to your size, and more hemo­glo­bin. For cis­gen­der men, this trans­lates to rough­ly a 6 to 10 per­cent advan­tage over bio­log­i­cal women in sports such as run­ning and swim­ming, though the gap can be larg­er in oth­er domains, and in a few sports female biol­o­gy actu­al­ly con­veys some advan­tage. That 6 to 10 per­cent might sound mod­est, but at the elite lev­el, where 1 per­cent to 2 per­cent dif­fer­ences can eas­i­ly make the mar­gin of vic­to­ry, it’s over­whelm­ing. Jamaica’s Elaine Thomp­son-Her­ah, the fastest woman in the world, would lose to America’s best high school boys, and the fastest pitch ever record­ed by a woman would be unim­pres­sive for many high school base­ball teams.”
  6. The Bad Guys Are Win­ning (Anne Apple­baum, The Atlantic): “As Vladimir Putin fig­ured out a long time ago, mass arrests are unnec­es­sary if you can jail, tor­ture, or pos­si­bly mur­der just a few key peo­ple. The rest will be fright­ened into stay­ing home. Even­tu­al­ly they will become apa­thet­ic, because they believe noth­ing can change.” Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­na.
  7. Why the Catholic Church is Los­ing Latin Amer­i­ca (Fran­cis X. Roc­ca, Luciana Mag­a­l­haes & Saman­tha Pear­son, The Wall Street Jour­nal): “The rise of lib­er­a­tion the­ol­o­gy in the 1960s and  ’70s, a time when the Catholic Church in Latin Amer­i­ca increas­ing­ly stressed its mis­sion as one of social jus­tice, in some cas­es draw­ing on Marx­ist ideas, failed to counter the appeal of Protes­tant faiths. Or, in the words of a now-leg­endary quip, var­i­ous­ly attrib­uted to Catholic and Protes­tant sources: ‘The Catholic Church opt­ed for the poor and the poor opt­ed for the Pen­te­costals.’ ” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 328

Every­thing from bap­tisms to abor­tion to per­ceived noos­es. Also self-repli­cat­ing robots which is noth­ing to wor­ry about at all.

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 328, which is the year that one of my favorite church lead­ers became a bish­op: Athana­sius.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Supreme Court recon­sid­ers abor­tion:
    • The Supreme Court seems poised to uphold Mississippi’s abor­tion law. (Adam Lip­tak, New York Times): “The Supreme Court seemed poised on Wednes­day to uphold a Mis­sis­sip­pi law that bans abor­tions after 15 weeks of preg­nan­cy, based on some­times tense and heat­ed ques­tion­ing at a momen­tous argu­ment in the most impor­tant abor­tion case in decades. Such a rul­ing would be flat­ly at odds with what the court has said was the cen­tral hold­ing of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 deci­sion that estab­lished a con­sti­tu­tion­al right to abor­tion and pro­hib­it­ed states from ban­ning the pro­ce­dure before fetal via­bil­i­ty, or around 23 weeks. But the court’s six-mem­ber con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty seemed divid­ed about whether to stop at 15 weeks, for now at least, or whether to over­rule Roe entire­ly, allow­ing states to ban abor­tions at any time or entire­ly.”
    • For a free, non­pay­walled analy­sis check out Major­i­ty of court appears poised to roll back abor­tion rights (Amy Howe, SCO­TUS­blog)
    • Why Roe Will Fall And Oberge­fell Won’t (Andrew Sul­li­van, Sub­stack): “In Roe, the Court tried to jump­start a con­sen­sus and failed to secure it, with pub­lic opin­ion very sim­i­lar now to where it was half a cen­tu­ry ago. In Oberge­fell, the Court wait­ed until there was major­i­ty sup­port, which arrived, accord­ing to Gallup, in 2011, and the Court then val­i­dat­ed a still-grow­ing soci­etal con­sen­sus four years lat­er.”
  2. Low­er­ing the Vot­ing Age (J. Budziszews­ki, per­son­al blog): “Peo­ple who dis­cuss low­er­ing the vot­ing age – not only those for it but also those against – assume that it would mean a trans­fer of polit­i­cal influ­ence to the young. That is absurd. It would mean no such thing. Although the very young are often very sure of their opin­ions and con­vinced that they have made up their own minds, they lack the matu­ri­ty to form their minds inde­pen­dent­ly. So to low­er the vot­ing age would not mean increas­ing the polit­i­cal influ­ence of the young. It would only mean increas­ing the polit­i­cal clout of those who have influ­ence through the young.”
    • That’s a real­ly good point I had­n’t con­sid­ered. The author is a pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy and of gov­ern­ment at UT Austin.
  3. Horse Troughs, Hot Tubs and Hash­tags: Bap­tism Is Get­ting Wild (Ruth Gra­ham, New York Times): “Con­tem­po­rary evan­gel­i­cal bap­tisms are often rau­cous affairs. Instead of sub­dued hymns and mur­murs, think roar­ing mod­ern wor­ship music, fist pumps, tears and bois­ter­ous cheer­ing. There are pho­tog­ra­phers, self­ie sta­tions and hash­tags for social media. One church in Texas calls its reg­u­lar mass bap­tism event a ‘plunge par­ty.’ ”
    • This is an inter­est­ing arti­cle most­ly for how inter­est­ing utter­ly nor­mal things can seem to NY Times read­ers.
  4. She set out to save her daugh­ter from fen­tanyl. She had no idea what she would face on the streets of San Fran­cis­co (Heather Knight, San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle): “I asked Jes­si­ca if she thought she would ever leave San Fran­cis­co. ‘It’s like a vor­tex,’ she said. ‘I want to get out of here. But why the f— would I leave here if I have every­thing I need giv­en to me? It might be enabling or it might be keep­ing you in a cycle, but at least you can sur­vive,’ she con­tin­ued. ‘That’s bet­ter than a lot of places.’ ”
    • The wages of sin is death. What a gut-punch of a sto­ry.
  5. Race Pan­ic! Stan­ford inves­ti­gates “cords with loops that may rep­re­sent noos­es” (Maxwell Mey­er, Stan­ford Review): “Call­ing out and address­ing racism? No, these Stan­ford admin­is­tra­tors are com­mit­ted to invent­ing racism. Though, I must hand it to them: Dean Hicks and her ‘insti­tu­tion­al equi­ty’ side­kick Mr. Dunk­ley might not real­ize it, but there is a beau­ti­ful, almost poet­ic irony to the tim­ing of their email. They rushed to inform Stan­ford stu­dents of an alleged race inci­dent on the very day that the crim­i­nal tri­al of Jussie Smol­lett, the great­est of all race hoax­ers, began in Chica­go. That lit­tle coin­ci­dence is the cher­ry on top of this giant farce.”
    • Mey­er’s take is, as far as I can tell, entire­ly cor­rect. If those loops looked at all like noos­es we’d have pho­tos.
  6. Team builds first liv­ing robots—that can repro­duce (Joshua Brown, Uni­ver­si­ty of Ver­mont press release): “Some peo­ple may find this exhil­a­rat­ing. Oth­ers may react with con­cern, or even ter­ror, to the notion of a self-repli­cat­ing biotech­nol­o­gy. For the team of sci­en­tists, the goal is deep­er under­stand­ing.”
  7. The Busi­ness of Extract­ing Knowl­edge from Aca­d­e­m­ic Pub­li­ca­tions (Markus Strass­er, per­son­al blog): “I had to wrap my head around the fact that close to noth­ing of what makes sci­ence actu­al­ly work is pub­lished as text on the web. Research ques­tions that can be answered log­i­cal­ly through just read­ing papers and con­nect­ing the dots don’t require a biotech corp to be formed around them. There’s much less log­ic and deduc­tion hap­pen­ing than you’d expect in a sci­en­tif­ic dis­ci­pline.”
    • Long and poor­ly for­mat­ted, but with an inter­est­ing core idea. Empha­sis in orig­i­nal.

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 Elisha and the She‐bears (Peter J Williams, Twit­ter): an insight­ful Twit­ter thread about a dis­turb­ing OT sto­ry. The author is the War­den of Tyn­dale House at Cam­bridge. First shared in vol­ume 179.

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 320

deli­cious news nuggets of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to thought­ful Chris­tians and peo­ple con­nect­ed to 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.

This is vol­ume 320, which is 28 + 26.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Mis­takes We Can­not Make Again (David French, The Dis­patch): “…if peo­ple of faith are to be con­cerned about jus­tice (and they are!), then jus­tice is rarely more imme­di­ate and impor­tant than when con­fronting both the scourge of crime and the tragedy of excess enforce­ment and mass incar­cer­a­tion.”
  2. A Cog in the Col­lege Admis­sions Scan­dal Speaks Out (Bil­ly Witz, New York Times): “Van­de­mo­er, unlike the oth­ers accused in the plot, did not per­son­al­ly gain in the trans­ac­tions. He hand­ed checks total­ing $770,000 from Singer to Stan­ford devel­op­ment offi­cers, who planned to use the mon­ey for new boats.… So as he told his sto­ry to Stanford’s inves­ti­ga­tors, he won­dered why no one had ever come to him when the indict­ments came down, not­ing that even fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors had acknowl­edged he did not enrich him­self from the scheme. It rein­forced the notion that he was sim­ply an asset — a name­less, expend­able cog in a cor­po­ra­tion with a $29 bil­lion endow­ment.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. Stan­ford does not come off look­ing good at all.
  3. Stan­ford stu­dents are more like­ly to wear masks on bicy­cles than hel­mets (Maxwell Mey­er, Stan­ford Review): “In April of this year, I wit­nessed some­thing on the Stan­ford cam­pus that will be seared into my mem­o­ry for­ev­er: a stu­dent on a bicy­cle, wear­ing flip-flops, Air­Pods in ear, going the wrong way through a round­about in an active con­struc­tion zone, with no hel­met. But like any good fol­low­er of sci­ence, the stu­dent was wear­ing a dis­pos­able blue face mask — for safe­ty, I guess.” Should he desire to, Mey­er will become a well-known nation­al com­men­ta­tor some­day. He’s quite good.
  4. Why I Am a Con­spir­a­cy The­o­rist (Hans Boers­ma, First Things): “When rulers man­date vac­cine pass­ports and estab­lish elab­o­rate elec­tron­ic sys­tems to police com­pli­ance, it doesn’t take a great deal of imag­i­na­tion to see how the same sys­tem might be used—and in the eyes of many should be used—to reg­u­late car­bon emis­sions, expen­di­tures, and even opin­ions. After all, it’s not just the coro­n­avirus that is dan­ger­ous. So are cli­mate change, social inequal­i­ty, and cer­tain moral and reli­gious con­vic­tions. Tech­no­log­i­cal­ly, trav­el­ing from vac­cine pass­ports to a social cred­it system—the kind that Chi­na already has in place—takes no time at all.… This is not an argu­ment against vac­ci­na­tion per se. It is an argu­ment to take con­spir­a­cy theorists—David fore­most among them—seriously.” The author is an Angli­can the­olo­gian.
  5. The Pub­lic Con­tin­ues to Under­es­ti­mate COVID’s Age Dis­crim­i­na­tion (David Wal­lace-Wells, NY Mag­a­zine): “After 18 months of pub­lic-health guid­ance pro­mot­ing uni­ver­sal vig­i­lance, I think hard­ly any Amer­i­can has a clear view of just how dra­mat­ic these dif­fer­en­tials are. All else being equal, an unvac­ci­nat­ed 66-year old is about 30 times more like­ly to die, giv­en a con­firmed case, than an unvac­ci­nat­ed 36-year-old, and some­one over 85 is over 10,000 times more at risk of dying than a child under 10.… a vac­ci­nat­ed 80-year-old has about the same mor­tal­i­ty risk as an unvac­ci­nat­ed 50-year-old, and an unvac­ci­nat­ed 30-year-old has a low­er risk than a vac­ci­nat­ed 45-year-old.”
  6. Inside the Church That Preach­es ‘Wives Need to Be Led with a Firm Hand’ (Sarah Stanko­rb, Vice): “Moth­er Kirk can be a joy­ous, faith­ful com­mu­ni­ty. But the con­ser­v­a­tive con­gre­ga­tion also is at odds with Moscow’s more lib­er­al pop­u­la­tion (sur­round­ing Latah coun­ty vot­ed for Pres­i­dent Biden in 2020). Depend­ing upon whom you ask, the town either hosts a Calvin­ist utopia or a patri­ar­chal cult in which women must sub­mit or face dis­ci­pline at home and at church. At the cen­ter of it all is noto­ri­ous­ly con­tro­ver­sial Dou­glas Wil­son, the fire­brand pas­tor who has been pre­sid­ing over his Moth­er Kirk fief­dom for more than 40 years.” Many of the details in this sto­ry are very bad.
    • A Taste of Novem­ber in the Air (Doug Wil­son, per­son­al blog): “Inci­den­tal­ly, in case you are curi­ous, I haven’t read the Vice piece because I did read the ques­tions that the writer sent to Nan­cy and to me while ‘research­ing,’ and the said ques­tions were all more loaded than the entrees at Tater’s, Home of the Grand Stuffed Pota­to Buf­fet. Way too many bacon bits.… If you read any­thing that unset­tles you, and you would like par­tic­u­lar answers to spe­cif­ic ques­tions, we have made them read­i­ly avail­able. On the top of this page, over to the right, we have a box called Crit­i­cal Ques­tions.” Wilson’s response to the Vice piece. 
  7. Unpop­ulism (David Leon­hardt and Ian Prasad Philbrick, New York Times): “In elite cir­cles, includ­ing Capi­tol Hill, peo­ple often mis­un­der­stand Amer­i­can pub­lic opin­ion in a spe­cif­ic way. They imag­ine that the medi­an vot­er resem­bles a type of polit­i­cal mod­er­ate who is quite com­mon in those elite cir­cles — some­body who is social­ly lib­er­al and fis­cal­ly con­ser­v­a­tive.… In the rest of the coun­try, how­ev­er, this ide­o­log­i­cal com­bi­na­tion is not so com­mon, polls show. If any­thing, more Amer­i­cans can accu­rate­ly be described as the oppo­site — social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive and eco­nom­i­cal­ly lib­er­al. That’s true across racial groups, includ­ing among Black and His­pan­ic vot­ers.” Not pay­walled.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have a com­pelling series of arti­cles on Chi­na by a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at Johns Hop­kins (who also hap­pens to be a Stan­ford grad): China’s Mas­ter Plan: A Glob­al Mil­i­tary Threat, China’s Mas­ter Plan: Export­ing an Ide­ol­o­gy, China’s Mas­ter Plan: A World­wide Web of Insti­tu­tions and China’s Mas­ter Plan: How The West Can Fight Back (Hal Brand, Bloomberg). The mon­ey quote from the sec­ond arti­cle: “If the U.S. has long sought to make the world safe for democ­ra­cy, China’s lead­ers crave a world that is safe for author­i­tar­i­an­ism.” First shared in vol­ume 156.

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 306

some real­ly out­stand­ing arti­cles this week

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

This is vol­ume 306, which is an inter­est­ing num­ber because 306 = 71 + 73 + 79 + 83 and is there­fore the sum of con­sec­u­tive primes.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Amer­i­can Passover (Jon­ah Gold­berg, The Dis­patch): “June­teenth is a good thing for all Amer­i­cans, not just black Amer­i­cans, to cel­e­brate.… I’m at a loss to under­stand why cel­e­brat­ing the end of slav­ery is any­thing but good. In par­tic­u­lar, I’m at a loss to under­stand why see­ing white Amer­i­cans cel­e­brate the end of slav­ery is any­thing but good.”
  2. What We Learned Doing Fast Grants (Patrick Col­li­son, Tyler Cowen, and Patrick Hsu, Future): “In our sur­vey of the sci­en­tists who received Fast Grants, 78% said that they would change their research pro­gram ‘a lot’ if their exist­ing fund­ing could be spent in an uncon­strained fash­ion. We find this num­ber to be far too high: the cur­rent grant fund­ing appa­ra­tus does not allow some of the best sci­en­tists in the world to pur­sue the research agen­das that they them­selves think are best. Sci­en­tists are in the para­dox­i­cal posi­tion of being deemed the very best peo­ple to fund in order to make impor­tant dis­cov­er­ies but not so trust­wor­thy that they should be able to decide what work would actu­al­ly make the most sense!” EXTREMELY worth read­ing.
  3. Why Has “Iver­mectin” Become a Dirty Word? (Matt Taib­bi, Sub­stack): “A Catch-22 seemed to be ensnar­ing sci­ence. With the world des­per­ate for news about an unprece­dent­ed dis­as­ter, Sil­i­con Val­ley had essen­tial­ly decid­ed to dis­al­low dis­cus­sion of a poten­tial solu­tion — dis­al­low calls for more research and more study — because not enough research and study had been done.”
    • This is ridicu­lous. Dig into it your­self — it’s crazy­town. The pre­scient Lewis nailed it years ago: “Of all tyran­nies, a tyran­ny sin­cere­ly exer­cised for the good of its vic­tims may be the most oppres­sive. It would be bet­ter to live under rob­ber barons than under omnipo­tent moral busy­bod­ies. The rob­ber baron’s cru­el­ty may some­times sleep, his cupid­i­ty may at some point be sati­at­ed; but those who tor­ment us for our own good will tor­ment us with­out end for they do so with the approval of their own con­science.” (from the under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed God in the Dock: Essays on The­ol­o­gy and Ethics)
  4. Chris­tians, Beware the Blame Game (Carl True­man, First Things): “By all means, call out the moral fail­ings of Chris­tians, con­gre­ga­tions and denom­i­na­tions, left and right; but be spe­cif­ic, do so with­out slan­der and vit­ri­ol, and make a clear dis­tinc­tion between the church and the spe­cif­ic fail­ings to which you allude in order to pro­mote clear think­ing. And remember—if your cri­tique of Chris­tians is not bal­anced by a Pauline empha­sis on the church, the body of Christ, as the answer to the world’s prob­lems, you ulti­mate­ly offer no true Chris­t­ian com­men­tary on the con­tem­po­rary scene. For as soon as you see the church her­self as part of the prob­lem, you have lost the gospel and deprived your­self and your audi­ence of hope.”
  5. Some reli­gious free­dom news and com­men­tary:
    • Four Things You Need to Know After a Huge Day at SCOTUS (David French, The Dis­patch): “Very few com­ments about the Ful­ton case have empha­sized a crit­i­cal part of its ruling—that Philadel­phia has very lim­it­ed abil­i­ty to force city con­trac­tors to con­tract away their First Amend­ment rights.… When the gov­ern­ment expands—and gov­ern­ment con­tracts and gov­ern­ment funds touch more Amer­i­can lives and institutions—opposing par­ti­sans fre­quent­ly demand that those funds come with ide­o­log­i­cal strings attached.” Sad­ly pay­walled, but the best com­men­tary on the rul­ing I’ve read. If you’re an avid news con­sumer, The Dis­patch is well worth a sub­scrip­tion.
    • From the court, a vin­di­ca­tion of faith-based ser­vice. From Ali­to, a blue­print for the future. (Andrea Pic­ciot­ti-Bay­er, SCO­TUS­blog): “At the end of the day, Ful­ton is an impor­tant rebuke to overzeal­ous gov­ern­ment offi­cials who weaponize anti-dis­crim­i­na­tion laws against tra­di­tion­al reli­gious belief. Brace your­self for the response of dis­grun­tled pro­gres­sives.”
    • Supreme Court Backs Catholic Agency in Case on Gay Rights and Fos­ter Care (Adam Lip­tak, New York Times): “The deci­sion, in the lat­est clash between antidis­crim­i­na­tion prin­ci­ples and claims of con­science, was a set­back for gay rights and fur­ther evi­dence that reli­gious groups almost always pre­vail in the cur­rent court.”
    • Jus­tice Depart­ment says it can defend reli­gious schools’ exemp­tion from anti-LGBTQ dis­crim­i­na­tion laws (Michelle Boorstein, Wash­ing­ton Post): “To oth­ers, includ­ing sup­port­ers of Pres­i­dent Biden, the admin­is­tra­tion had no oth­er option, since fed­er­al civ­il rights law regard­ing edu­ca­tion — called Title IX — exempts reli­gion. They not­ed the pur­pose of the department’s fil­ing, which was to block con­ser­v­a­tive reli­gious groups from becom­ing par­ties to the law­suit, argu­ing the agency can defend the exemp­tion on its own.”
    • A frank analy­sis of the dynam­ics: No, the Biden Admin­is­tra­tion Isn’t Betray­ing Its Sup­port for LGBTQ Rights (Mark Joseph Stern, Slate): “The best way to pre­vent the fed­er­al judi­cia­ry from adopt­ing CCCU’s extreme stance is to stop the orga­ni­za­tion from mak­ing it before a court in the first place. That is pre­sum­ably one rea­son why the Jus­tice Depart­ment strong­ly opposed the group’s request to inter­vene, insist­ing on Tues­day that the admin­is­tra­tion can defend the Title IX exemp­tion just fine by itself. The DOJ’s lat­est fil­ing does not imply that the agency is exceed­ing­ly enthu­si­as­tic about the exemp­tion, but rather that the Biden admin­is­tra­tion can be trust­ed to sup­port the law’s legal­i­ty in court.”
  6. The Per­il of Politi­ciz­ing Sci­ence (Anna I. Krylov, The Jour­nal of Phys­i­cal Chem­istry Let­ters): “The Cold War is a dis­tant mem­o­ry and the coun­try shown on my birth cer­tifi­cate and school and uni­ver­si­ty diplo­mas, the USSR, is no longer on the map. But I find myself expe­ri­enc­ing its lega­cy some thou­sands of miles to the west, as if I am liv­ing in an Orwellian twi­light zone. I wit­ness ever-increas­ing attempts to sub­ject sci­ence and edu­ca­tion to ide­o­log­i­cal con­trol and cen­sor­ship. Just as in Sovi­et times, the cen­sor­ship is being jus­ti­fied by the greater good.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of chem­istry at USC.
  7. Some Stan­ford news:
    • Stan­ford ther­a­pists allege ‘hos­tile cli­mate’ for Jews in the work­place (Gabe Stut­man, Jew­ish News of North­ern Cal­i­for­nia): “Two Jew­ish men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als at Stanford’s on-cam­pus coun­sel­ing clin­ic have filed work­place dis­crim­i­na­tion com­plaints after what they call ‘severe and per­sis­tent’ anti-Jew­ish harass­ment from col­leagues. Dr. Ronald Albuch­er, a psy­chi­a­trist and asso­ciate pro­fes­sor in the med­ical school, and Sheila Levin, a ther­a­pist spe­cial­iz­ing in eat­ing dis­or­ders, describe being pressed into join­ing a ‘white­ness’ affin­i­ty group by staffers with the Diver­si­ty, Equi­ty and Inclu­sion pro­gram, being told they were ‘priv­i­leged,’ and see­ing anti­se­mit­ic inci­dents down­played.”
    • When the medal­ists aren’t the mon­ey-mak­ers (Jas­mine Ker­ber, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “If ath­let­ic direc­tors were reward­ed for Olympic sports every bit as much as for foot­ball and men’s bas­ket­ball, you would see dif­fer­ent behav­ior,” Hogshead-Makar said.

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 some thoughts about slav­ery and the Bible – Does The Bible Sup­port Slav­ery? (a lec­ture giv­en by the war­den of Tyn­dale House at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, the link is to the video with notes) and Does God Con­done Slav­ery In The Bible? (Part One – Old Tes­ta­ment) and also Part Two – New Tes­ta­ment (longer pieces from Glenn Miller at Chris­t­ian Think­tank). All three are quite help­ful. (first shared in vol­ume 76)

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 301

per­spec­tives on Israel, Bit­coin, and intel­lec­tu­al hon­esty

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 301, which is what is known as a Hap­py Num­ber. So there.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Cross and the Machine (Paul Kingsnorth, First Things): “It kept hap­pen­ing, for months. Christ to the left of me, Christ to the right. It was unnerv­ing. I turned away again and again, but every time I looked back, he was still there. I began to feel I was being … hunt­ed? I want­ed it to stop; at least, I thought I did. I had no inter­est in Chris­tian­i­ty. I was a witch! A Zen witch, in fact, which I thought sound­ed pret­ty damned edgy. But I knew who was after me, and I knew it wasn’t over.” A won­der­ful­ly-told con­ver­sion sto­ry.
  2. Why We Should Read What We Cite (Because It Mat­ters) (Joseph Lath­am & Gilly Koritzky, Het­ero­dox Acad­e­my): “Con­sid­er an aca­d­e­m­ic arti­cle that came out at the height of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and argues that doc­tors’ racist bias­es are a main rea­son for the high­er COVID-19-relat­ed hos­pi­tal­iza­tion and mor­tal­i­ty rates among African Amer­i­cans. It says that ‘there is evi­dence of med­ical bias in the test­ing and treat­ment of African-Amer­i­cans with COVID-19’ and cites this report as the source. The prob­lem? The report con­tains no such evi­dence.” The excerpt does not do it jus­tice. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. The authors are psy­chol­o­gists.
  3. How We Got to the Equal­i­ty Act (Matthew Lee Ander­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The sto­ry that evan­gel­i­cals are (mere­ly) vic­tims of pro­gres­sive aggres­sors not only fails to account for the ways in which the LGBT move­ment was shaped by pop­ulist evan­gel­i­cal rhetoric and tac­tics. It also for­gets that the gay lib­er­a­tion move­ment was a direct response to the sys­temic and per­va­sive exclu­sion of les­bian and gay indi­vid­u­als from the struc­tures of our pub­lic life—including from Amer­i­ca itself. Per­fec­tion­ism in pol­i­tics breeds rad­i­cal­ism in response.”
  4. When a Famous Lit­er­ary Crit­ic Unrav­eled Sil­i­con Valley’s Most Sen­sa­tion­al Mur­der Case (Ted Gioia, Sub­stack): “Imag­ine a vio­lent mur­der at the epi­cen­ter of ear­ly San­ta Clara Valley—soon to be renamed Sil­i­con Val­ley in the pop­u­lar imagination—and an inno­cent man sent to Death Row at San Quentin. But a famous lit­er­ary crit­ic emerges as the super sleuth who gets him freed, amid dark evo­ca­tions of scan­dal involv­ing cor­rupt politi­cians and murky under­world fig­ures. You don’t need to imag­ine it, because it real­ly hap­pened.” A engross­ing Stan­ford sto­ry.
  5. About the cur­rent con­flict in Israel:
    • This was writ­ten before the cur­rent vio­lence: Eight Tips for Read­ing About Israel (Mat­ti Fried­man, Sapir): “If you’re crit­i­cal of open-fire orders on the Gaza fence, you should know how that works on the India-Pak­istan bor­der, or the Turkey-Syr­ia bor­der, or on the perime­ters of U.S. mil­i­tary bases in Afghanistan. Same goes for refugee absorp­tion, press free­dom, minor­i­ty rights, or any­thing. Israel doesn’t always come out look­ing great. But you’ll find that most crit­i­cism of Israel doesn’t com­pare it with any­thing. That’s a sign the dis­cus­sion isn’t about a real coun­try.”
    • Against Israel: A bad part­ner is worse than rain (Fred­die de Boer, Sub­stack): “If every word that they have said about the per­fidy and self-destruc­tion of the Pales­tini­ans was cor­rect, it would make no dif­fer­ence. The moral oblig­a­tion falls on the dom­i­nant par­ty, and Israel is beyond dom­i­nant. The myth­mak­ing about all of the oppor­tu­ni­ties they squan­dered does not make a lick of moral dif­fer­ence.”
    • For Israel: For the Sake of Peace, Israel Must Rout Hamas (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “Israel made plen­ty of mis­takes in the run-up to the cur­rent fight­ing, includ­ing heavy-hand­ed polic­ing in Jerusalem at Ramadan and inad­e­quate polic­ing in Arab-Israeli towns that have been hit by mob vio­lence. But there is a vast dif­fer­ence in moral weight between Israel’s mis­cal­cu­la­tions and Hamas’s cal­cu­la­tions, between blun­ders and crimes. That’s some­thing to bear in mind when Pales­tin­ian rock­ets hit Israeli civil­ians by design and Israeli mis­siles hit Pales­tin­ian civil­ians inad­ver­tent­ly.”
    • Against Israel: A Night­mare of Ter­ror Across the Land­scape of Pales­tine (Yousef Munayy­er, The Nation): “In towns through­out Israel, Pales­tini­ans have been beat­en and ter­ror­ized by ram­pag­ing mobs; one man was dragged from his car and bru­tal­ized in what many are describ­ing as a lynch­ing. In the West Bank, Pales­tini­ans have been shot and killed in raids by the Israeli mil­i­tary. In Jerusalem, Pales­tin­ian fam­i­lies, fac­ing the ongo­ing threat of expul­sion, have been harassed by set­tlers and mil­i­tary alike. And across Gaza, Israeli war planes have dropped bomb after bomb, destroy­ing entire apart­ment build­ings. Many have died, many more have been injured. If they man­age to sur­vive, they will wit­ness their soci­ety shat­tered when the smoke clears.”
    • For Israel: The Two Wrongs of the Gaza Nar­ra­tive (David French, The Dis­patch): “Any dis­cus­sion of the law of war often sounds cold and clin­i­cal, even though we’re dis­cussing mat­ters of life and death, includ­ing the inevitable and trag­ic deaths of civil­ians who always suf­fer when wars rage in city centers—especially when jihadists wear civil­ian clothes and embed them­selves in civil­ian struc­tures. When Hamas does so, it vio­lates the law of war by inhibit­ing the dis­tinc­tion between civil­ian and mil­i­tary tar­gets. The legal and moral respon­si­bil­i­ty for result­ing civil­ian deaths rests with Hamas, not Israel.”
    • Against Israel: The U.S. Must Stop Being an Apol­o­gist for the Netanyahu Gov­ern­ment (Bernie Sanders, New York Times): “No one is argu­ing that Israel, or any gov­ern­ment, does not have the right to self-defense or to pro­tect its peo­ple. So why are these words repeat­ed year after year, war after war? And why is the ques­tion almost nev­er asked: ‘What are the rights of the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple?’ And why do we seem to take notice of the vio­lence in Israel and Pales­tine only when rock­ets are falling on Israel?”
    • For Israel: The Bad Optics of Fight­ing for Your Life (Bari Weiss, Sub­stack): “The goal here is the erad­i­ca­tion of the Jew­ish peo­ple. That is the bone-chill­ing truth. That is the core obsta­cle to peace. Any­one who insists that the ongo­ing rock­et bar­rage is about a par­tic­u­lar Israeli gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy must be made to answer for this.”
  6. Reli­gious Lib­er­ty and Eco­nom­ic Free­dom (Chris­tos Makridis, City Jour­nal): “Using data on more than 146 coun­tries since 1996, my research finds that increas­es in reli­gious free­dom pre­cede, and help explain, increas­es in eco­nom­ic free­dom. The log­ic is sim­ple: since reli­gious free­dom fun­da­men­tal­ly involves grant­i­ng indi­vid­u­als the auton­o­my to think and wor­ship in what­ev­er form they wish, it is arguably the most basic of all free­doms. Prop­er­ty rights are of lit­tle use if those who retain them do not have the free­dom to think what they wish and prac­tice what they believe.” Chris­tos, an econ­o­mist at Ari­zona State, is an alum­nus of our min­istry.
  7. Rival thoughts on Bit­coin:
    • Bit­coin Is Civ­i­liza­tion (Bal­a­ji S. Srini­vasan, Bari Weiss’ Sub­stack): “Bit­coin might seem like a curios­i­ty in a democ­ra­cy with a sta­ble cur­ren­cy. But in coun­tries with deeply unsta­ble economies and author­i­tar­i­an pol­i­tics, it is a life­line. As Alex Glad­stein recent­ly explained in Rea­son Mag­a­zine, Bit­coin has been used by dis­si­dents and activists in places like Cuba, Nige­ria, and Belarus. In Rus­sia, the country’s most promi­nent oppo­si­tion politi­cian and Putin crit­ic, Alex­ei Navaly, has raised mil­lions in Bit­coin. As Glad­stein wrote: ‘Putin can do a lot of things, but he can’t freeze a bit­coin account.’ If you want to under­stand what cryp­to is real­ly about, ask Venezue­lans if they’d rather own bolí­var or Bit­coin.”
    • The Case Against Bit­coin (Michael W. Green, Bari Weis­s’s Sub­stack): “In the last week of April, min­ing pools based in Chi­na account­ed for rough­ly 90% of the pro­cess­ing pow­er (‘hash rate’) in the Bit­coin net­work. Rough­ly three weeks ago, a pow­er out­age in the Xin­jiang region of Chi­na result­ed in a plunge in glob­al Bit­coin pro­cess­ing. Bit­coin min­ing — the process of record keep­ing for the ‘immutable’ chain of record on which the Bit­coin net­work depends — is dom­i­nat­ed by enti­ties in coun­tries with the stat­ed objec­tive to harm the inter­ests of the Unit­ed States. Bit­coin pro­po­nents con­tin­u­ous­ly assure us that this is ‘just about to change,’ but the data has not shift­ed in a mean­ing­ful man­ner in the last five years. This is not a decen­tral­ized sys­tem. It is cen­tral­ized in the coun­tries that seek our destruc­tion.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have the time­ly What The Media Gets Wrong About Israel (Mat­ti Fried­man, The Atlantic): “…one of the most impor­tant aspects of the media-sat­u­rat­ed con­flict between Jews and Arabs is also the least cov­ered: the press itself. The West­ern press has become less an observ­er of this con­flict than an actor in it, a role with con­se­quences for the mil­lions of peo­ple try­ing to com­pre­hend cur­rent events, includ­ing pol­i­cy­mak­ers who depend on jour­nal­is­tic accounts to under­stand a region where they con­sis­tent­ly seek, and fail, to pro­duc­tive­ly inter­vene.” (first shared back in vol­ume 5, note that the first Israel arti­cle in today’s roundup is by the same author).

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 297

slight­ly weird­er arti­cles than the usu­al (and more fun videos)

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 297, which is known as a Kaprekar Num­ber. It’s such a weird thing I can bare­ly believe it has a name. To sim­pli­fy a bit, if you square the num­ber and split the dig­its in half and they add back up to the orig­i­nal num­ber, it’s a Kaprekar num­ber. Since 2972 = 88,209 and 297 = 88 + 209, that means 297 is one of these odd numer­i­cal enti­ties.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. About police shoot­ings: I’m real­ly sad and I also don’t have any arti­cles because I haven’t read any­thing inter­est­ing about them in rela­tion to the most recent episodes. If you find some­thing — espe­cial­ly some­thing writ­ten from a thought­ful Chris­t­ian per­spec­tive — please do let me know.
  2. Can the Mer­i­toc­ra­cy Find God? (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “To be dropped into [a world like this] and not be per­sis­tent­ly open to reli­gious pos­si­bil­i­ties seems much more like prej­u­dice than ratio­nal­i­ty.”
    • Relat­ed: Anoth­er Obsta­cle to Elite Reli­gion (Audrey Poll­now, Sub­stack): “One friend—a very admirable per­son who has devot­ed their life to learn­ing and ser­vice rather than to acquir­ing mon­ey or prestige—told me that they could nev­er become a Chris­t­ian because the inabil­i­ty to be ‘good enough’ in the achieve­ment depart­ment would make them depressed.”
    • Relat­ed: Why the Church Is Los­ing the Next Gen­er­a­tion (Rus­sell Moore, newslet­ter): “If peo­ple reject the church because they reject Jesus and the gospel, we should be sad­dened but not sur­prised.  But what hap­pens when peo­ple reject the church because they think we reject Jesus and the gospel?”
    • Relat­ed: Can Amer­i­ca’s ‘Civ­il Reli­gion’ Still Unite The Coun­try? (Tom Gjel­ten, NPR): “Amer­i­cans are expect­ed to hold their hands over their hearts when they recite the Pledge of Alle­giance or stand for the nation­al anthem. Young peo­ple are taught to regard the coun­try’s founders almost as saints. The ‘self-evi­dent’ truths list­ed in the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence and the key pro­vi­sions of the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion and the Bill of Rights have acquired the sta­tus of scrip­ture in the U.S. con­scious­ness.” The scare quotes around ‘self-evi­dent’ are weird.
  3. On Lov­ing Mor­tals (Cur­tis Yarvin, Athwart): “Here’s a catch-22, or a Meno’s Para­dox of sorts: why should these young men live well with­out a fam­i­ly for whom to do it, and why should young women tol­er­ate (much less love) men who don’t live well? Lov­ing a mor­tal saved me, and count­less oth­er men I know, from the Achil­lean fate, but in most cas­es it seems some­thing like a mir­a­cle.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent, who called it enthralling.
  4. Stan­ford activists ‘Dis­turbed the War’ in the 1960s and 1970s (Lenny Siegel, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “After watch­ing the play, ‘Alice in ROTC-Land,’ thou­sands of demon­stra­tors poured out of Frost Amphithe­ater to con­front police. Inci­den­tal­ly, that per­for­mance launched the act­ing career of Sigour­ney Weaver, who played the title role.” Inter­est­ing and also very weird. The author seems to want Stan­ford to be a democ­ra­cy as though it were a gov­ern­ment. Full of fas­ci­nat­ing anec­dotes.
  5. The Splin­ter­ing of the Evan­gel­i­cal Soul (Tim­o­thy Dal­rym­ple, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “This [col­lapse of media integri­ty] presents an extra­or­di­nary chal­lenge for Chris­t­ian dis­ci­ple­ship. Media con­sump­tion has been climb­ing for years, and it soared amid the pan­dem­ic. Mem­bers of our con­gre­ga­tions may spend a few hours a week in the Word of God (which should always be the Christian’s most impor­tant source of infor­ma­tion and author­i­ty) but 40 hours or more main­lin­ing the ani­mosi­ties of the day.” The author is a Stan­ford grad.
  6. A The­ol­o­gy of Free Speech (Brad Lit­tle­john, Gospel Coali­tion): “Thus, as Chris­tians, we must clear­ly affirm that free­dom of speech can be a great good. But it is an instru­men­tal good, a means to the end of pro­claim­ing truth and encour­ag­ing right­eous­ness. It is not an end in itself, as if the mere free­dom to open our mouths were sacro­sanct. We have a moral right to speak truth in due sea­son. We have no moral right to slan­der, deceive, curse, or insult. In order to secure our moral right to speak truth, how­ev­er, we gen­er­al­ly need to defend a legal right that includes a right to speak false­hood.” This is quite good.
  7. Whith­er the Reli­gious Left? (Matthew Sit­man, The New Repub­lic): “Unlike the bland con­for­mi­ty of civic reli­gion, the prophet­ic calls of par­tic­u­lar­is­tic faiths rarely line up with the needs of polit­i­cal par­ties. This cuts both ways: The reli­gious left, in all its diver­si­ty, will nev­er be a reli­able ally of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, nor will the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty always be a com­fort­able home for the reli­gious left.… That means the reli­gious left faces sim­i­lar dilem­mas as the social­ist left: dis­cern­ing how far and how fast to push, how to relate high ideals to the real­i­ties of main­stream par­ties.”

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 Inside Grad­u­ate Admis­sions (Inside High­er Ed, Scott Jaschick): if you plan to apply to grad school, read this. There is one reveal­ing anec­dote about how an admis­sions com­mit­tee treat­ed an appli­ca­tion from a Chris­t­ian col­lege stu­dent. My take­away: the pro­fes­sors tried to be fair but found it hard to do, and their stat­ed con­cerns were most­ly about the qual­i­ty of the insti­tu­tion rather than the faith of the appli­cant. Trou­bling nonethe­less. (first shared in vol­ume 32)

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 294

more on Atlanta, puri­ty cul­ture, and oth­er inter­est­ing links

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 294, which is neat because 111152 — 2942 = 123,456,789. Num­bers are fun!

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. On anti-Asian vio­lence:
    • The Racism Virus: Anti-Asian Attacks Surge (NBC News, YouTube): fifty-two min­utes, high­ly rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. From before the Atlanta shoot­ings.
    • Race and False Hate Crime Nar­ra­tives (Heather Mac Don­ald, Quil­lette): “Per­haps a rev­e­la­tion of anti-Asian ani­mus will emerge, but for now, Long appears to have tar­get­ed pre­sumed sex work­ers who hap­pened, giv­en the demo­graph­ics of the mas­sage trade in Atlanta, to be Asian. Long intend­ed to tar­get a busi­ness in Flori­da next that made pornog­ra­phy, he told police. The employ­ees there were unlike­ly to be Asian.” The author is a Stan­ford Law School grad.
    • I am sur­prised at how divi­sive the ques­tion of motive has been. Regard­less of motive in this spe­cif­ic case, I think it is clear that the Atlanta attacks were wicked and also that many Asian-Amer­i­cans encounter prej­u­dice that too often esca­lates into vio­lence.
  2. On Chris­t­ian sex­u­al teach­ings:
    • Atlanta Suspect’s Fix­a­tion on Sex Is Famil­iar Thorn for Evan­gel­i­cals (Ruth Gra­ham, New York Times): “The evan­gel­i­cal cul­ture he was raised in, he said, ‘teach­es women to hate their bod­ies, as the source of temp­ta­tion, and it teach­es men to hate their minds, which lead them into lust and sex­u­al immoral­i­ty.’ ”
    • Why the Atlanta Mas­sacre Trig­gered a Con­ver­sa­tion About Puri­ty Cul­ture (David French, The Dis­patch): “Plac­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for male puri­ty on women harms women. It cre­ates an impos­si­ble bur­den. You can­not oppress women enough to pro­tect men from them­selves. You can ban porn, ban explic­it TV and movies of all types, put women in long dress­es, pro­hib­it make­up, and require courtship con­tracts, and you still will not solve the prob­lem of sin.”
    • Nev­er The Demons (Samuel D. James, Let­ter & Litur­gy): “I’m all for inter­ro­gat­ing the harm­ful effects of some church cul­tures, but I’m not sure why we don’t even linger over the news of a young man’s mur­der­ing eight peo­ple to ‘elim­i­nate temp­ta­tion’ long enough to see the demon­ic forces that Jesus clear­ly saw every­where he went. And when that sto­ry is quick­ly fol­lowed by anoth­er mass mur­der in Col­orado? The news cycle just resets, and the blood is on the hands of the GOP, or all Mus­lims, or puri­ty cul­ture, or can­cel culture…name your ide­o­log­i­cal ene­my, and you can find some­one promi­nent lay­ing hor­ror at their feet. Nev­er the demons.”
    • On puri­ty cul­ture and vio­lence, briefly (Samuel D. James, Let­ter & Litur­gy): “I think sto­ries [like the NYT arti­cle] are frus­trat­ing because they offer gen­uine insight mixed with a jour­nal­is­tic fram­ing that is deeply untrust­wor­thy. Brad Onishi, Jeff Chu, and Samuel Perry—the three voic­es brought in to crit­i­cize evan­gel­i­cal puri­ty culture—are all exam­ples of LGBT-affirm­ing post-evan­gel­i­cal­ism. Because of this fram­ing, the sub­text of the arti­cle is that there are real­ly only two choic­es for evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians: dou­ble down on hat­ing women and empow­er­ing shoot­ers like Robert Long, or aban­don core evan­gel­i­cal doc­trines. This is exact­ly the pos­ture that defines near­ly all anti-puri­ty cul­ture writ­ing I see, which is why I get so frus­trat­ed by it, even when it makes gen­uine­ly help­ful points…”
    • Ques­tions for David French on the Con­nec­tions between the Atlanta Killer and Puri­ty Cul­ture (Justin Tay­lor, The Gospel Coali­tion): “What is the con­nec­tion between the killer and tox­ic puri­ty the­ol­o­gy and cul­ture? The piece assumes a con­nec­tion but nev­er gets around to demon­strat­ing one. And that leads to the weird expe­ri­ence of read­ing some­thing where I agree with vir­tu­al­ly every sin­gle word and yet find that the actu­al argu­ment doesn’t hold togeth­er.”
    • How church­es talk about sex­u­al­i­ty can mean life or death. We saw that in Robert Long. (Rachel Den­hol­lan­der, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Sex­u­al­i­ty divorced from per­son­hood is the foun­da­tion of objec­ti­fi­ca­tion and vio­lence. The evan­gel­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty has yet to grap­ple with its own ver­sion of this same mind-set and the deep dam­age it has, and will con­tin­ue, to do.”
  3. Chris­t­ian Bak­er Sued Again for Refus­ing to Bake a Cake (Colleen Slevin, Asso­ci­at­ed Press @ Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Autumn Scar­di­na attempt­ed to order the birth­day cake on the same day in 2017 that the high court announced it would hear bak­er Jack Phillips’s appeal in the wed­ding cake case. Scar­di­na, an attor­ney, request­ed a cake that was blue on the out­side and pink on the inside in hon­or of her gen­der tran­si­tion.”
    • The Nev­er-End­ing Per­se­cu­tion of Jack Phillips (David Harsyani, Nation­al Review): “You may not be sur­prised to learn that Scar­di­na hadn’t asked the most famous Chris­t­ian bak­er in the nation to cre­ate a ‘tran­si­tion’ cake by hap­pen­stance. Phillips’s lawyers sus­pect Scar­di­na called — the name appeared on the caller ID — to request ‘an image of Satan smok­ing mar­i­jua­na.’ Lat­er, an email was sent to the shop request­ing ‘a three-tiered white cake’ with a ‘large fig­ure of Satan, lick­ing a nine inch black Dil­do … that can be turned on before we unveil the cake.’ ”
    • Col­orado Bak­er Faces Long Line Of Peo­ple Out­side Wait­ing To Be Oppressed By Him (Baby­lon Bee): “Phillips had anoth­er busy day, but in the end, all his cus­tomers were sat­is­fied, those who want­ed cakes receiv­ing beau­ti­ful cakes and those who want­ed to get dis­crim­i­nat­ed against get­ting dis­crim­i­nat­ed against. Philips is now con­sid­er­ing open­ing anoth­er branch just to not make peo­ple cakes, as he is appar­ent­ly the only cakeshop in the coun­try that does that, and it’s in high demand.” Nor­mal­ly I’d put a Baby­lon Bee arti­cle in the amus­ing sec­tion, but this one belongs here.
  4. Stan­ford’s silence does­n’t sur­prise wrestling champ: ‘Prob­a­bly more mad at me’ (Ann Kil­lion, SF Chron­i­cle): “Stan­ford ath­let­ics did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to a request for com­ment on Griffith’s nation­al title. On Sat­ur­day the ath­let­ic depart­ment Twit­ter account @GoStanford tweet­ed, ‘Shane Grif­fith is a nation­al cham­pi­on. The red­shirt sopho­more com­plet­ed his run at the NCAA cham­pi­onships atop the podi­um, Sat­ur­day, at the Enter­prise Cen­ter.’ The dry mes­sage was notably miss­ing the excla­ma­tion points and emo­jis that accom­pa­ny almost every oth­er post.”
  5. What It Takes To Go From Slav­ery To Free­dom (Bari Weiss, Sub­stack): “ ‘When you are a slave, you don’t have to think,’ Yeon­mi told me. ‘In North Korea you can’t say I. You can just say we. We love the col­or red. Or we love kim­chi. You know every answer. In North Korea, every­thing is deter­mined for you before you are born, based on your family’s stand­ing in the par­ty. You don’t think: What do I study? Where do I live? Who do I mar­ry? They decide.  I remem­ber after I pub­lished my book one of my first inter­views was with NPR and they asked me about free­dom. I said free­dom was painful and con­fus­ing. I think they were expect­ing me to say free­dom was awe­some.’ But the truth was more com­pli­cat­ed. ‘It was so painful to be free. I some­times thought in the begin­ning if there was a guar­an­tee to go back to North Korea and not get exe­cut­ed and just live on frozen pota­toes I might go back.’ ” WOW. What an inter­view. Com­ing some­day to a ser­mon near you.
  6. The Bur­den of Proof (Jim­my Akin, per­son­al blog): “When­ev­er two peo­ple dis­agree and one wants the oth­er to change his view, then the per­son advo­cat­ing the change always has to shoul­der the bur­den of proof.” The cen­tral nugget is in the excerpt, but there’s more there (includ­ing an inter­est­ing Catholic per­spec­tive on Sola Scrip­tura).
  7. Why Are Few­er Young Adults Hav­ing Casu­al Sex? (Scott J. South & Lei Lei, Socius): “Among young women, the decline in the fre­quen­cy of drink­ing alco­hol explains about one quar­ter of the drop in the propen­si­ty to have casu­al sex. Among young men, declines in drink­ing fre­quen­cy, an increase in com­put­er gam­ing, and the grow­ing per­cent­age who core­side with their par­ents all con­tribute sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the decline in casu­al sex.” See also the “a while ago” link below.

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 Alco­hol, Black­outs, and Cam­pus Sex­u­al Assault (Texas Month­ly, Sarah Hep­o­la): I think this is the most thought­ful sec­u­lar piece I’ve read on the issue. “Con­sent and alco­hol make tricky bed­fel­lows. The rea­son I liked get­ting drunk was because it altered my con­sent: it changed what I would say yes to. Not just in the bed­room but in every room and cor­ri­dor that led into the squint­ing light. Say yes to adven­ture, say yes to risk, say yes to karaoke and pool par­ties and argu­ments with men, say yes to a life with­out fear, even though such a life is nev­er pos­si­ble… We drink because it feels good. We drink because it makes us feel hap­py, safe, pow­er­ful. That it often makes us the oppo­site is one of alcohol’s das­tard­ly tricks.” (first shared in vol­ume 25) 

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 286

some very strong arti­cles in this roundup

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

This is the 286th of these roundups. 286 is a tetra­he­dral num­ber, which basi­cal­ly means you could stack 286 mar­bles into a three-sided pyra­mid (four sides if you count the base).

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Cal­i­for­nia Is Cleans­ing Jews From His­to­ry (Emi­ly Benedek, Tablet Mag­a­zine): “Kaplan, 53, a Bay Area moth­er of two grown chil­dren who describes her­self as a life­long Demo­c­rat, was fur­ther sur­prised to dis­cov­er that a list of 154 influ­en­tial peo­ple of col­or did not include Dr. Mar­tin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, or Supreme Court Jus­tice Thur­good Mar­shall, though it includ­ed many vio­lent rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies. There was even a flat­ter­ing descrip­tion of Pol Pot, the com­mu­nist leader of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, who was respon­si­ble for the mur­der of a quar­ter of the Cam­bo­di­an pop­u­la­tion dur­ing the 1970s.” THIS IS WILD.
  2. The New Nation­al Amer­i­can Elite (Michael Lind, Tablet Mag­a­zine): “…from the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion until the late 20th cen­tu­ry, the Amer­i­can elite was divid­ed among region­al oli­garchies. It is only in the last gen­er­a­tion that these region­al patri­ci­ates have been absorbed into a sin­gle, increas­ing­ly homo­ge­neous nation­al oli­garchy, with the same accent, man­ners, val­ues, and edu­ca­tion­al back­grounds from Boston to Austin and San Fran­cis­co to New York and Atlanta. This is a tru­ly epochal devel­op­ment.” Lind is a pro­fes­sor at UT Austin in the school of pub­lic affairs, and I fea­tured anoth­er arti­cle by him recent­ly.
  3. In Which I Final­ly Lose My Mind (Poli­Math, Sub­stack): “After a rea­son­able amount of time for the vac­ci­na­tion to pro­duce an immune response (aim for 2 weeks), you are not in dan­ger and you are not a dan­ger to oth­ers. Yes, wear a mask for social cohe­sion or to fol­low the rules or just gen­er­al­ly to be polite. Wash your hands, use your com­mon sense, and ignore the news writ­ten by peo­ple who seem to want this cri­sis to last for­ev­er. Make it a pri­or­i­ty to get your sec­ond dose on sched­ule. Once you are vac­ci­nat­ed with the sec­ond dose, this cri­sis is over for you.” The author is
  4. The Reli­gious Roots of Our Free Enter­prise Sys­tem (Alan Wolfe, New York Times): “What does an eso­teric con­cept like Calvin­ist sote­ri­ol­o­gy have to do with the rise of mod­ern eco­nom­ics? Does lais­sez-faire have its roots in the arcane Quin­quar­tic­u­lar Con­tro­ver­sy? Can one find the ori­gins of the wel­fare state in post­mil­len­ni­al­ist escha­tol­ogy? Ques­tions like these, accord­ing to the Har­vard econ­o­mist Ben­jamin M. Fried­man, are essen­tial to under­stand­ing his dis­ci­pline today.”
  5. How Red­di­tors Beat Hedge Funds at Their Own Game(Stop) (Eric Levitz, New York Mag­a­zine): “Anoth­er less-than-pop­ulist aspect of this dra­ma is that the hedge fund that’s been hard­est hit — Melvin Cap­i­tal — did not become the favored tar­get of Wall­Street­Bets on account of its unique avarice or unscrupu­lous­ness, but rather, its excep­tion­al trans­paren­cy.… Thus, for Wall Street, the upshot of all this is going to be: Nev­er let reg­u­la­tors or the pub­lic know what your short posi­tions are. Which doesn’t seem like a huge win for ‘the 99 per­cent.’”
    • A youth pas­tor inter­viewed about the stock mar­ket on MSNBC (Twit­ter): I’ve men­tioned before that some Chris­tians are too ten­ta­tive when speak­ing about the gospel in high-pro­file media envi­ron­ments. Not this guy. He just throws down some Bible. He’s the youth pas­tor at Beach­point Church in Orange Coun­ty.
    • The GameStop Fias­co Proves We’re in a ‘Meme Stock’ Bub­ble (James Surowiec­ki, Medi­um): “The point, then, is that even though GameStop’s cur­rent stock price is utter­ly irra­tional — it will nev­er make enough mon­ey to jus­ti­fy a $6 bil­lion mar­ket cap — the way Red­di­tors and oth­ers have dri­ven its price up has been quite smart.”
    • The GameStop Reck­on­ing Was a Long Time Com­ing (Kevin Roose, New York Times): “If you can get past the all-caps luna­cy and strange inside jar­gon, the Red­di­tors make some good points. Big banks and hedge funds real­ly do play by dif­fer­ent rules than retail investors. Wall Street banks real­ly did get bailed out after the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis while Main Street home­own­ers suf­fered. M.B.A.s in fan­cy suits are prob­a­bly no more like­ly to give you good invest­ing advice than guys on YouTube with names like ‘Roar­ingKit­ty.’ ” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  6. What Thomas Jef­fer­son Could Nev­er Under­stand About Jesus (Vin­son Cun­ning­ham, New York­er): “In the years before eman­ci­pa­tion, the best argu­ments against slav­ery were also argu­ments about God.… Jefferson’s Jesus is an admirable sage, fit bed­time read­ing for seek­ers of wis­dom. But those who were weak, or suf­fer­ing, or in urgent trou­ble, would have to look else­where.” This is quite an arti­cle. Rec­om­mend­ed.
  7. Two Stan­ford-rel­e­vant arti­cles:
    • Edi­tor’s Note: The Twi­light of Stan­ford (Anni­ka Nordquist, Stan­ford Review): “Stanford’s rep­u­ta­tion, which attract­ed me and count­less oth­ers to the Uni­ver­si­ty, offers stu­dents a stake in the birth­place of Sil­i­con Val­ley, the world’s epi­cen­ter of cre­ativ­i­ty and risk. Stan­ford stu­dents are less elit­ist than our East Coast peers, and more well-round­ed: Stan­ford offers ameni­ties, like Greek life and com­pet­i­tive ath­let­ic teams, absent in ear­li­er iter­a­tions of the pres­ti­gious Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ty. The university’s unstruc­tured cur­ricu­lum expects its stu­dents to either suc­ceed at the high­est lev­el in their own are­nas, or cre­ate entire­ly new spheres for suc­cess. Stan­ford rev­els in non­con­for­mi­ty and exper­i­men­ta­tion. It was through these char­ac­ter­is­tics that Stan­ford gained its pres­tige. I do believe that this Stan­ford once exist­ed. But it is close to destruc­tion, has­tened by a caste of admin­is­tra­tors, par­a­sites who jump from one top uni­ver­si­ty to anoth­er, who care only for rais­ing Stan­ford’s rank­ings, and lack an inti­mate under­stand­ing of what makes Stan­ford spe­cial.” Anni­ka is a stu­dent in Chi Alpha.
    • The Edu­ca­tion of Josh Haw­ley (Ruairi Arri­eta-Ken­na and and Emi­ly Cadei, Politi­co): “Oth­er class­mates, how­ev­er, say that while Haw­ley was ardent­ly against abor­tion, his faith dur­ing col­lege seemed less an obvi­ous moti­va­tion for his polit­i­cal aspi­ra­tions and more a guide for his social inter­ac­tions. Friends of Hawley’s told POLITICO they didn’t ever see Haw­ley drink, smoke or ‘bring a girl back’ to his dorm room. By many accounts, he pre­ferred to stay in and study on week­end nights than to go out and par­ty.” I found this arti­cle fas­ci­nat­ing. His evan­gel­i­cal ethics were so incom­pre­hen­si­ble to some of the peo­ple quot­ed in this arti­cle (the bit about the danc­ing girl was par­tic­u­lar­ly strik­ing). Also, I won­der why it focus­es on his time at Stan­ford and not Yale.

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 Con­ser­v­a­tives Clash on the Goal of Gov­ern­ment (Jonathan Lee­man, Prov­i­dence): “There is no neu­tral­i­ty. The pub­lic square is a bat­tle­ground of gods. Our cul­ture wars are wars of reli­gion. For the time being, lib­er­al­ism keeps us from pick­ing up sixteenth-century swords for those wars, which is no small achieve­ment. But don’t assume it won’t con­trol us with the sub­tler tools of a twenty-first cen­tu­ry legal total­i­tar­i­an­ism.” Insight­ful reflec­tions on how Chris­tians should form their polit­i­cal posi­tions. First shared in vol­ume 218.

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 279

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. Blows to vol­ley­ball star Hay­ley Hod­son’s head changed her life (Patrick Hru­by, LA Times): “The fam­i­ly did not trust Stan­ford. School doc­tors, Hod­son says, had diag­nosed her foot pain as inflam­ma­tion and told her that she wasn’t risk­ing fur­ther injury by play­ing. Med­ical records show that an inde­pen­dent doc­tor sub­se­quent­ly reviewed MRI scans tak­en by Stan­ford and deter­mined she had a stress frac­ture.” Hay­ley was a stu­dent in Chi Alpha.
  2. My White Priv­i­lege Did­n’t Save Me. But God Did (Edie Wyatt, Quil­lette): “Not long after, I walked into a sub­ur­ban Bap­tist church, full of strange, unfash­ion­ably dressed, con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians. I was a Marx­ist, a fem­i­nist, foul-mouthed, a chain-smok­er, and des­per­ate. The love I received in that place is the rea­son that I will defend the rights of fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­tians to my dying breath.” This is amaz­ing. If you only read one thing this week, make it this one. Reminder: titles are rarely cho­sen by the author and often do not reflect the essence of an arti­cle.
  3. A pastor’s life depends on a coro­n­avirus vac­cine. Now he faces skep­tics in his church. (Sarah Pul­liam Bai­ley, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Before the pan­dem­ic, the 45-year-old min­is­ter, who nor­mal­ly leads near­ly 2,000 peo­ple, would stand by the entrance to shake hands and offer hugs. Now, before ser­vices, he stays seclud­ed in a room off­stage until it is time to preach while an armed church mem­ber who works for Home­land Secu­ri­ty watch­es the door.”
  4. Amer­i­cans’ Men­tal Health Rat­ings Sink to New Low (Megan Bre­nan, Gallup): “Although the major­i­ty of U.S. adults con­tin­ue to rate their men­tal health as excel­lent (34%) or good (42%), and far few­er say it is only fair (18%) or poor (5%), the lat­est excel­lent rat­ings are eight points low­er than Gallup has mea­sured in any pri­or year.” 
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent because of one very inter­est­ing sta­tis­tic: the only group that showed an increase in men­tal health was week­ly church­go­ers (the week­ly part mat­ters — month­ly church­go­ers expe­ri­enced a decline). I looked at the more detailed PDF and it was unclear to me how they asked about church atten­dance, and of course it is impos­si­ble to iden­ti­fy cau­sa­tion from a sur­vey like this.
    • I found this com­ment by an econ­o­mist on Twit­ter fun­ny: “This is absolute­ly the least sur­pris­ing thing ever. Church folks are like, “The pan­dem­ic sucks, but my church did these 57 things and I’m over­whelmed with peo­ple try­ing to find ways to sup­port dur­ing these times.” Every­body else is like, ‘I’M SO ALONE’” 
  5. The Rise and Fall of Carl Lentz, the Celebri­ty Pas­tor of Hill­song Church (Ruth Gra­ham, New York Times): “Soon the church’s cul­tur­al cachet grew out­side Chris­t­ian cir­cles. ‘I knew peo­ple who came to church not because they were Chris­tians but because they thought Carl was hot,’ said Heather McClana­han, who worked for the church in 2014 and 2015.”
    • The Cri­sis of Chris­t­ian Celebri­ty (David French, The Dis­patch): “The way I’ve put it in speech­es to young Chris­tians is sim­ply this, ‘Make the easy choice so you don’t have to make the hard choice.’ Say­ing no to the extra drink is much eas­i­er than halt­ing a drunk­en flir­ta­tion.”
  6. Promi­nent evan­gel­i­cals are direct­ing Trump’s sink­ing ship. That feeds doubts about reli­gion. (Michael Ger­son, Wash­ing­ton Post): “When promi­nent Chris­tians affirm absurd polit­i­cal lies with reli­gious fer­vor, non­be­liev­ers have every rea­son to think: ‘Maybe Chris­tians are prone to swal­low­ing absurd reli­gious lies as well. Maybe they are sim­ply cred­u­lous about every­thing.’ If we should encounter some­one who believes — hon­est­ly and adamant­ly believes — in both the exis­tence of the East­er Bun­ny and in the res­ur­rec­tion of Christ, it would nat­u­ral­ly raise ques­tions about the qual­i­ty of his or her believ­ing fac­ul­ties.”
  7. The com­ing war on the hid­den algo­rithms that trap peo­ple in pover­ty (Karen Hao, MIT Tech­nol­o­gy Review): Not until they were stand­ing in the court­room in the mid­dle of a hear­ing did the wit­ness rep­re­sent­ing the state reveal that the gov­ern­ment had just adopt­ed a new algo­rithm. The wit­ness, a nurse, couldn’t explain any­thing about it. “Of course not—they bought it off the shelf,” Gilman says. “She’s a nurse, not a com­put­er sci­en­tist. She couldn’t answer what fac­tors go into it. How is it weight­ed? What are the out­comes that you’re look­ing for? So there I am with my stu­dent attor­ney, who’s in my clin­ic with me, and it’s like, ‘Oh, am I going to cross-exam­ine an algo­rithm?’”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

QI’s Gift-Wrap­ping Life Hack! (QI, YouTube): mind blown in less than three min­utes

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Tourist Jour­nal­ism Ver­sus the Work­ing Class (Kevin Mims, Quil­lette): “To university-educated media pro­fes­sion­als like Car­ole Cad­wal­ladr, James Blood­worth, and John Oliv­er, an Ama­zon ware­house must seem like the Black Hole of Cal­cut­ta. But I’ve done low-paying man­u­al labor for most of my work­ing life, and rarely have I appre­ci­at­ed a job as much as my role as an Ama­zon asso­ciate.” I learned many things from this arti­cle. First shared in vol­ume 212, with a fol­low-up shared the next week: How (and Why) to KISSASS (Kevin Mims, Quil­lette): “…if you’re not a mem­ber of the pro­fes­sion­al class, the key to get­ting your per­son­al essays pub­lished in promi­nent pub­li­ca­tions is KISSASS—Keep It Short, Sad, And Sim­ple, Stu­pid.”

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 278

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. Why Oba­ma Fears for Our Democ­ra­cy (Jef­frey Gold­berg inter­view­ing Barack Oba­ma, The Atlantic) “You men­tioned ear­li­er that I’m in some ways a nev­er-Trump con­ser­v­a­tive. That’s not quite right, but what is true is that tem­pera­men­tal­ly I am sym­pa­thet­ic to a cer­tain strain of con­ser­vatism in the sense that I’m not just a mate­ri­al­ist. I’m not an eco­nom­ic deter­min­ist. I think it’s impor­tant, but I think there are things oth­er than stuff and mon­ey and income—the reli­gious cri­tique of mod­ern soci­ety, that we’ve lost that sense of com­mu­ni­ty.” There is an absurd­ly lengthy intro­duc­tion. Skip down to “Our con­ver­sa­tion has been edit­ed for clar­i­ty and con­ci­sion” about a fifth of the way down the page.
  2. The Chil­dren of Porn­hub (Nicholas Kristof, New York Times): “The world has often been obliv­i­ous to child sex­u­al abuse, from the Catholic Church to the Boy Scouts. Too late, we pros­e­cute indi­vid­u­als like Jef­frey Epstein or R. Kel­ly. But we should also stand up to cor­po­ra­tions that sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly exploit chil­dren. With Porn­hub, we have Jef­frey Epstein times 1,000.” Kristof goes out of his way to make it clear that he is not con­demn­ing pornog­ra­phy itself, just abuse. I’ll go far­ther: pornog­ra­phy is vile and I think it is a nation­al shame. If you watch porn, know that for­give­ness and free­dom are avail­able in Christ and I a hap­py to talk with you about it.
  3. The Mass Mur­der of Niger­ian Chris­tians (Rab­bi Abra­ham Coop­er and Rev. John­nie Moore, Tablet Mag­a­zine): “Offi­cials’ ini­tial refusal to attribute the attack in Kaduna to Islamists—in any form—reflects a black hole of denial that is pro­nounced in Niger­ian pol­i­tics. This endem­ic self-cen­sor­ship has now been absorbed by many pro­fes­sion­als in the for­eign pol­i­cy estab­lish­ment who have adopt­ed a pol­i­cy of not men­tion­ing the reli­gious com­po­nents of these out­rages at any cost, in order to pre­vent being accused of politi­ciz­ing reli­gion. This denial serves as an accel­er­ant of reli­gion-fueled conflict—until the facts and blood on the ground can no longer be denied.”
  4. Big Gov­ern­men­t’s Over­looked Amer­i­cans (Nicholas Eber­stadt, Nation­al Review): “How could Amer­i­can health author­i­ties com­plete­ly miss a domes­tic epi­dem­ic of such sever­i­ty and dura­tion? Even dur­ing the Cold War, remem­ber, U.S. researchers were quick­er to spot the advent of the health cri­sis for the work­ing-age pop­u­la­tion of the Sovi­et Union: and this dur­ing the hey­day of Sovi­et dis­in­for­ma­tion and strate­gic decep­tion, long before glas­nost. What­ev­er else may be said about this sig­nal U.S. fail­ure in dis­ease pre­ven­tion and con­trol, it occa­sioned remark­ably lit­tle reflec­tion, self-crit­i­cism, and course cor­rec­tion on the part of America’s pub­lic-health appa­ra­tus.” 
  5. The Supreme Court Was Right to Block Cuomo’s Reli­gious Restric­tions (Michael W. McConnell and Max Raskin, New York Times): “In the begin­ning of the pan­dem­ic, no one knew what worked and what didn’t. Courts were under­stand­ably reluc­tant to sec­ond-guess. But we are now 10 months into the pan­dem­ic. Why are gov­ern­ments still pick­ing and choos­ing among con­sti­tu­tion­al rights with­out explain­ing their rea­son­ing?” McConnell is a Stan­ford law prof, Raskin a law prof at New York Uni­ver­si­ty.
  6. Den­i­grat­ing Hoover (Vic­tor Davis Han­son, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “[Some Stan­ford stu­dents and fac­ul­ty com­plain about Hoover, yet] Hoover schol­ars as a gen­er­al rule do not fix­ate on Stan­ford, whether the Uni­ver­si­ty, its stu­dents or its pro­fes­sors, for their per­ceived laps­es in judge­ment or con­tro­ver­sies that often can arise at large cam­pus­es — such as the recent sen­sa­tion­al alle­ga­tions con­cern­ing admis­sions fraud; a recent Stan­ford affil­i­at­ed vis­it­ing researcher arrest­ed for alleged­ly hid­ing ties with the Chi­nese mil­i­tary; Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion alle­ga­tions that Stan­ford had not prop­er­ly and ful­ly dis­closed, as required, siz­able gifts from Chi­nese gov­ern­ment-relat­ed sources; sex scan­dal alle­ga­tions at the busi­ness school; efforts to dis­rupt a cam­pus speak­er while spread­ing a grotesque anti-Semit­ic fly­er; and gen­er­al con­cern on the cam­pus con­cern­ing a wave of anti-Semit­ic inci­dents.”
  7. Mis­aligned incen­tives and the scale of incar­cer­a­tion in the Unit­ed States (Aurélie Ouss, Jour­nal of Pub­lic Eco­nom­ics): “Typ­i­cal­ly, prison is paid for at the state lev­el, but coun­ty employ­ees (such as judges, pros­e­cu­tors or pro­ba­tion offi­cers) deter­mine time spent in cus­tody. I exploit a nat­ur­al exper­i­ment that shift­ed the cost bur­den of juve­nile incar­cer­a­tion from state to coun­ties, keep­ing over­all costs and respon­si­bil­i­ties unchanged. This result­ed in a stark drop in incar­cer­a­tion, and no increase in arrests, sug­gest­ing an over-use of prison when costs are not inter­nal­ized. The large mag­ni­tude of the change sug­gests that mis­aligned incen­tives in crim­i­nal jus­tice may be a sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tor to the cur­rent lev­els of incar­cer­a­tion in the Unit­ed States.” The author is a crim­i­nol­o­gist at U Penn. Found via Tyler Cowen.

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 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. First shared in vol­ume 211.

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.