Tag: Stanford

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 158

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.

Before I share this week’s links: yes, I am aware that Antho­ny Kennedy retired from the Supreme Court and think it is like­ly to be one of the most sig­nif­i­cant polit­i­cal devel­op­ments of my life­time. I don’t have any links about it because not much inter­est­ing has been writ­ten about it yet sim­ply because Trump has not nom­i­nat­ed a suc­ces­sor yet. Once he does, please let me know if you find any­thing fas­ci­nat­ing about either his nom­i­nee or the process.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Sus­pect in Stan­ford church mur­der kills self (Palo Alto Dai­ly News): this is a trag­ic and freaky sto­ry. A less hor­rif­ic detail which amused me: “Craw­ford stayed on at Stan­ford until 1976, but he found ways to exact revenge against the uni­ver­si­ty, Her­hold said. ‘He began steal­ing stuff from offices,’ said Her­hold, who added exam­ples, includ­ing a human skull, a walk­ing cane giv­en to uni­ver­si­ty founder Leland Stan­ford and rare books. ‘The kick­er was he went down to a print shop and got a degree from Stan­ford,’ he said, using a blank Stan­ford diplo­ma.”
  2. Ebo­la Deaths Rise As Patients Turn to Mir­a­cles Over Med­i­cine (Grif­fin Paul Jack­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Two Ebo­la patients died last month after flee­ing a hos­pi­tal iso­la­tion ward so they could be tak­en to a prayer meet­ing, where they exposed up to 50 oth­ers.” Wow. Bad the­ol­o­gy leads to tragedy. Some­body nev­er taught them Leviti­cus 13:46. If you’re infec­tious, pay atten­tion to the phrase “call for” in James 5:14–16 and ask the elders to come to you. Quar­an­tine Laws and the Bible (Lar­ry Ball, The Aquila Report) is worth read­ing in this regard.
  3. The Span­ish Inqui­si­tion Was a Mod­er­ate Court by the Stan­dard of Its Time (Ed Con­don, Nation­al Review): “Because it was a seri­ous court, metic­u­lous case files and court records were kept. Libraries in Tole­do, Sala­man­ca, and oth­er cities are home to thou­sands of such case files. In the sec­ond half of the 20th cen­tu­ry, Hen­ry Kamen and oth­er his­to­ri­ans were giv­en access to them. What they dis­cov­ered changed the schol­ar­ly under­stand­ing of the Inqui­si­tion. So, what of those dank dun­geons and hot pok­ers? Well, for a start, the jails of the Inqui­si­tion were uni­ver­sal­ly known to be hygien­ic and well main­tained. They were nei­ther built nor run as places of pun­ish­ment. The stan­dard of care that inmates received was high enough that pris­on­ers held by the Crown would often peti­tion to be moved to Inqui­si­tion jails. There are record­ed cas­es of crim­i­nals com­mit­ting pub­lic heresy with the express pur­pose of being held and tried by the Inqui­si­tion, rather than the sec­u­lar courts.” This is not a fringe view among schol­ars, but is def­i­nite­ly con­trary to the pop­u­lar under­stand­ing of the Span­ish Inqui­si­tion.
  4. Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez on her Catholic faith and the urgency of a crim­i­nal jus­tice reform (Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez, Amer­i­ca): “By nature, a soci­ety that for­gives and reha­bil­i­tates its peo­ple is a soci­ety that for­gives and trans­forms itself. That takes a rad­i­cal kind of love, a secret of which is giv­en in the Lord’s Prayer: For­give us our tres­pass­es, as we for­give those who tres­pass against us. And let us not for­get the guid­ing prin­ci­ple of “the least among us” found in Matthew: that we are com­pelled to care for the hun­gry, thirsty, home­less, naked, sick and, yes—the impris­oned.” This, of course, is the social­ist can­di­date who unseat­ed pow­er­ful incum­bent Joe Crow­ley in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry. She is almost cer­tain to become the youngest woman ever elect­ed to Con­gress.
    • Relat­ed: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ists of Amer­i­ca Mem­ber­ship Surges After Alexan­dria Ocasio-Cortez’s Stun­ning Vic­to­ry (Gideon Resnick, The Dai­ly Beast): “Accord­ing to Lawrence Drey­fuss, a pro­gram asso­ciate for DSA, the orga­ni­za­tion saw a surge of 1,152 new mem­ber­ships on Wednesday—about 35 times more sign-ups than on an aver­age day. The last major mem­ber­ship bump DSA expe­ri­enced was in the month fol­low­ing Pres­i­dent Trump’s elec­tion, dur­ing which time they had about six times more sign-ups than in the pre­vi­ous month.” Note that the orga­ni­za­tion itself is still rel­a­tive­ly small (40,000 mem­bers).
    • Pos­si­bly relat­ed: Democ­rats are los­ing the mil­len­ni­al vote and need to change mes­sage (Cas Mud­de, The Guardian): “a recent Reuters/Ipsos mega poll of 16,000 respon­dents, found that the Democ­rats are los­ing ground with mil­len­ni­als. While mil­len­ni­als still pre­fer the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty over the Repub­li­cans, that sup­port is tank­ing. In just two years, it dropped sharply from 55% to 46%. Mean­while, their sup­port for Repub­li­cans has remained rough­ly sta­ble in the past two years, falling from 28% to 27%.… their dis­like of the Repub­li­cans should not be inter­pret­ed as a like of Democ­rats.” Caveats apply: this is based on the results of one poll.
    • Def­i­nite­ly relat­ed: Dear Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ists Who Think You’re Hav­ing a Moment: It’s Me, a Lib­er­tar­i­an, Who’s Been Through This. (Rob­by Soave, Rea­son): “Demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism, the ide­ol­o­gy with which Oca­sio-Cortez iden­ti­fies, appears to be hav­ing a polit­i­cal moment. To which I say, as a lib­er­tar­i­an who has been through the whole an-idea-whose-time-has-final­ly-come expe­ri­ence: good luck with that, com­rades. The signs are easy to mis­read.”
  5. Right-to-work laws make unions work hard­er for their mem­bers (Chris­tos Makridis, The Hill): “RTW [Right To Work] laws force unions to become more com­pet­i­tive. When unions are guar­an­teed a per­ma­nent income stream, they don’t need to work as hard to win the hearts and minds of their employ­ees; that is, they face weak­er incen­tives to pro­vide valu­able ser­vices. The adop­tion of RTW laws changes that by mak­ing union dues a vol­un­tary con­tri­bu­tion.” Yes, this is our very own recent­ly-grad­u­at­ed Chris­tos.
  6. Are Satanists of the MS-13 gang an under-cov­ered sto­ry on the reli­gion beat? (Julia Duin, GetRe­li­gion): this is a fas­ci­nat­ing bit of news com­men­tary. My favorite bit: “How does one get out of MS-13? An opin­ion piece in the New York Times this past April gives a sur­pris­ing response: Go to a Pen­te­costal church.” High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
  7. How The Democ­rats Lost Their Way On Immi­gra­tion (Peter Bein­ert, The Atlantic): “Lib­er­als must take seri­ous­ly Amer­i­cans’ yearn­ing for social cohe­sion. To pro­mote both mass immi­gra­tion and greater eco­nom­ic redis­tri­b­u­tion, they must con­vince more native-born white Amer­i­cans that immi­grants will not weak­en the bonds of nation­al iden­ti­ty. This means dust­ing off a con­cept many on the left cur­rent­ly hate: assim­i­la­tion.” 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 Chris­t­ian Mis­sions and the Spread of Democ­ra­cy (Greg Scan­dlen, The Fed­er­al­ist): This is a sum­ma­ry of some rather won­der­ful research Robert Wood­ber­ry pub­lished in The Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Review back in 2012: The Mis­sion­ary Roots of Lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy. If it looks famil­iar it’s because I allude to it from time to time in my ser­mons and con­ver­sa­tions. (first shared in vol­ume 14)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 151

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. These Bombs Led Me To Christ (Kim Phuc Phan Thi, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “You have seen my pic­ture a thou­sand times. It’s a pic­ture that made the world gasp—a pic­ture that defined my life. I am nine years old, run­ning along a pud­dled road­way in front of an expres­sion­less sol­dier, arms out­stretched, naked, shriek­ing in pain and fear, the dark con­tour of a napalm cloud bil­low­ing in the dis­tance.” WHOA.
  2. If I Were 22 Again (John Piper, Desir­ing God): “There have been about 18,340 days since I turned 22, and I think I have read my Bible on more of those days than I have eat­en. I have cer­tain­ly read my Bible on more of those days that I have watched tele­vi­sion or videos.… Read your Bible every day of your life. If you have time for break­fast, nev­er say that you don’t have time for God’s word.” This whole thing is real­ly good. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
  3. What Hap­pened To Alan Der­showitz? (Evan Man­dery, Politi­co Mag­a­zine): “Talk­ing to him, it’s not hard to get the impres­sion that expos­ing that truth—the hypocrisy of both sides—may be his ulti­mate project. As he sees it, the best way to achieve his goal—and to get it the atten­tion it deserves—is by defend­ing the most odi­ous clients in the most provoca­tive pos­si­ble way on the very prin­ci­ples lib­er­als claim to love.” I real­ly liked this arti­cle.
  4. A Mus­lim Among Israeli Set­tlers (Waja­hat Ali, The Atlantic): “Ever since the cre­ation of the mod­ern state of Israel—a mir­a­cle for the Jews, the Nak­ba (‘cat­a­stro­phe’) for the Palestinians—Jerusalem’s dai­ly weath­er fore­cast could be described as sun­ny with a slight chance of apoc­a­lypse.”
  5. Give Amnesty for Col­lege Writ­ings (David Lat, Wall Street Jour­nal): “Col­le­giate scrib­blings from decades ago should have no bear­ing on one’s fit­ness for pub­lic office, and mak­ing an issue of them is bad for the coun­try. Col­lege is tra­di­tion­al­ly a time of exper­i­men­ta­tion and explo­ration. We adopt and dis­card ideas and try out dif­fer­ent iden­ti­ties, some­times in rapid suc­ces­sion. These iden­ti­ties often bear lit­tle resem­blance to our mature selves— Hillary Clin­ton was once a ‘Gold­wa­ter girl,’ while Clarence Thomas was a Black Pan­ther sympathizer—but explor­ing them is how we learn about our­selves and acquire wisdom—how we grow up.”
    • Speak­ing of col­lege writ­ings, here are two pieces by Stan­ford stu­dents. They are pre­sent­ed with­out any impli­ca­tion that these are views the authors will lat­er recant; rather, by putting them here as sub-bul­let points I can tell myself I lim­it­ed myself to sev­en top­ics this week.
    • Think the Right Cares About Free Speech? Not Always. (Anni­ka Nordquist, Stan­ford Review): “With­in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, free­dom of speech is a top­ic of great self-right­eous­ness on both fronts. As the Left adopts an increas­ing­ly politi­cized def­i­n­i­tion of ‘hate speech,’ includ­ing even the most mun­dane top­ics like ‘microag­gres­sions,’ the Right pats itself on the back for defend­ing nat­ur­al lib­er­ties. Yet in Poland, where pro­gres­sives have been vot­ed almost entire­ly out of gov­ern­ment, the Right instead restricts the speech of the Left.” That’s our very own Anni­ka.
    • The Orig­i­nal Sin of Stan­ford Din­ing (Andrew Fried­man, Stan­ford Review): “Cur­rent­ly 12 admin­is­tra­tors run R&DE, along with numer­ous assis­tants. If admin­is­tra­tors object to turn­ing the school’s food ser­vice into a land­lord, it is like­ly because they know leas­ing space to third par­ty ven­dors, besides being bet­ter for every­one else, could be done by a sin­gle per­son, with­out the bureau­crat­ic bloat of the cur­rent sys­tem.”
  6. A real-life Lord of the Flies: the trou­bling lega­cy of the Rob­bers Cave exper­i­ment (David Shari­at­madari, The Guardian): “The ‘Rob­bers Cave exper­i­ment’ is con­sid­ered sem­i­nal by social psy­chol­o­gists, still one of the best-known exam­ples of ‘real­is­tic con­flict the­o­ry’. It is often cit­ed in mod­ern research. But was it sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly rig­or­ous? And why were the results of the Mid­dle Grove exper­i­ment – where the researchers couldn’t get the boys to fight – sup­pressed? … [The researcher’s method was] think of the the­o­ry first and then find a way to get the results that match it. If the results say some­thing else? Bury them.”
  7. A Design Lab Is Mak­ing Rit­u­als for Sec­u­lar Peo­ple (Sigal Samuel, The Atlantic): “Rit­u­al Design Lab has its roots in Stanford’s Insti­tute of Design, where Ozenc and Hagan both teach. In 2015, they pro­posed a new course on rit­u­al design. To their sur­prise, more than 100 stu­dents signed up. Most were sec­u­lar.” I large­ly agree with Rod Dreher’s take: New Rit­u­als For Self-Wor­ship

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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 145

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’ve been trav­el­ing a lot this week, so I haven’t done as much online read­ing as nor­mal. A few of these links are actu­al­ly left­overs from pre­vi­ous weeks that did­n’t quite make the orig­i­nal cut. Let me know if I over­looked some­thing you think I’d find inter­est­ing!

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Why I’m Hap­py My Son Mar­ried at 20 (Rebec­ca Brew­ster Steven­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The preva­lent mes­sage in our cul­ture is that young adult­hood is the time to build a foun­da­tion for a healthy life. Those in their ear­ly 20s are encour­aged to pur­sue edu­ca­tion, trav­el, and gain life expe­ri­ence, all unhin­dered by wed­lock. Mar­riage is viewed by many as some­thing that comes only after ade­quate time to devel­op per­son­al iden­ti­ty and estab­lish a strong finan­cial foot­ing. But inher­ent in this delay is a real­i­ty we as par­ents are very cog­nizant of: Young adults, like all of us, are sex­u­al beings. When mar­riage is delayed, so is the oppor­tu­ni­ty to expe­ri­ence sex­u­al inti­ma­cy with­in God’s para­me­ters of a mar­riage covenant.”
  2. Stan­ford’s Pro­posed Renam­ing Prin­ci­ples: when I read the prin­ci­ples, my ini­tial thought was that Serra’s name was secure on cam­pus. But at least one stu­dent strong­ly dis­agrees.  
  3. The Per­ils of Paid Con­tent (Andrew Pot­ter, In Due Course): “When I was a stu­dent jour­nal­ist, it was axiomat­ic that adver­tis­ing was the biggest threat to inde­pen­dent media. Putting your liveli­hood in the hands of cap­i­tal­ists meant, ipso fac­to, doing their bid­ding. Expe­ri­ence is a great teacher though, and when I start­ed work­ing as an edi­tor at a news­pa­per, I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised to dis­cov­er that you didn’t wake up every day to a swarm of calls from out­raged adver­tis­ers threat­en­ing to pull their cam­paigns if we didn’t smarten up….  But you know who does com­plain a lot? Sub­scribers do, end­less­ly.”
  4. Last Fall This Schol­ar Defend­ed Colo­nial­ism. Now He’s Defend­ing Him­self. (Vimal Patel, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “There are two sep­a­rate issues. One is the sub­stan­tive issue of colo­nial­ism. I think the acad­e­my remains high­ly illib­er­al and intol­er­ant of my view­point. It remains the case that most of the peo­ple who sup­port­ed me didn’t sup­port me because they agreed with my argu­ment. I think my sup­port­ers came in two types: those who agreed with my argu­ment, and oth­ers who said that even bad argu­ments that have gone through the process of being pub­lished should be respond­ed to, not silenced.”
  5. Empire State Of Mind (Doug Mack, Slate): “If you can find Iowa on the map and rat­tle off a few facts about the state (corn, cau­cus­es, Field of Dreams, a real­ly big state fair), you should be able to do the same for Puer­to Rico, which has a larg­er pop­u­la­tion. That’s espe­cial­ly impor­tant for lead­ers in Wash­ing­ton, giv­en that the ter­ri­to­ries have no full-fledged con­gres­sion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion of their own, and giv­en that a cer­tain base­line lev­el of knowl­edge is a pre­req­ui­site for sound pol­i­cy­mak­ing.”
  6. The Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca Scan­dal, in 3 Para­graphs (Robin­son Mey­er, The Atlantic): “About 270,000 peo­ple installed Kogan’s app on their Face­book account. But as with any Face­book devel­op­er at the time, Kogan could access data about those users or their friends. And when Kogan’s app asked for that data, it saved that infor­ma­tion into a pri­vate data­base instead of imme­di­ate­ly delet­ing it. Kogan pro­vid­ed that pri­vate data­base, con­tain­ing infor­ma­tion about 50 mil­lion Face­book users, to the vot­er-pro­fil­ing com­pa­ny Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca. Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca used it to make 30 mil­lion ‘psy­cho­graph­ic’ pro­files about vot­ers.
  7. John Bolton Is Right About the U.N. (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “The U.N. is a nev­er-end­ing scan­dal dis­guised as an ever­last­ing hope. The hope is that dia­logue can over­come dis­trust and col­lec­tive secu­ri­ty can be made to work in the inter­ests of human­i­ty. Real­i­ty says oth­er­wise. Trust is estab­lished by deeds, not words. Col­lec­tive secu­ri­ty is a recipe for inter­na­tion­al paral­y­sis or worse. Just ask the peo­ple of Alep­po.”

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The world will only get weird­er (Steven Coast, per­son­al blog): “We fixed all the main rea­sons air­craft crash a long time ago. Some­times a long, long time ago. So, we are left with the less and less prob­a­ble events.” The piece is a few years old so the exam­ples are dat­ed, but it remains very intrigu­ing. (first shared in vol­ume 67)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 142

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 Qui­et Exo­dus: Why Black Wor­shipers Are Leav­ing White Evan­gel­i­cal Church­es (Camp­bell Robert­son, NY Times): “As the head­lines of the out­side world turned to police shoot­ings and protest, lit­tle changed inside major­i­ty-white church­es. Black con­gre­gants said that beyond the occa­sion­al vague prayer for heal­ing a divid­ed coun­try, or a dona­tion dri­ve for law enforce­ment, they heard noth­ing.” The dynam­ic described is real and one I have per­son­al­ly wit­nessed.  All in all a pret­ty good arti­cle although it has a few glar­ing blind spots, most­ly because it focus­es almost exclu­sive­ly on those who chose to leave and does­n’t tell the sto­ry of those who chose to stay.
  2. And while we’re talk­ing about race: “I Hope We Have No Crack­ers Here”: EBF Staff Sanc­tion Racial Slur (Anna Mitchell & Philip Clark, Stan­ford Review): “You would think that res­i­dents of a sup­pos­ed­ly pro­gres­sive and racial­ly con­scious house would jump to remove a racial epi­thet from house prop­er­ty.”
  3. This is also rel­e­vant to the first arti­cle: In Don­ald Trump, Evan­gel­i­cals Have Found Their Pres­i­dent (David Brody, New York Times): “In fact, evan­gel­i­cals take the long view on Mr. Trump; they afford him grace when he doesn’t deserve it. Few dis­pute that Mr. Trump may need a lit­tle more grace than oth­ers. But evan­gel­i­cals tru­ly do believe that all peo­ple are flawed, and yet Christ offers them grace. Shouldn’t they do the same for the pres­i­dent?”
  4. This Is How To Pay Col­lege Ath­letes (Patrick Hru­by, Dead­spin): “Because here’s the thing: nobody asks how’s it going to work when it comes to, say, pay­ing den­tists. Or invest­ment bankers. Or pro­gram­mers. Or pro­fes­sors. Or for that mat­ter col­lege coach­es, ath­let­ic direc­tors, and school pres­i­dents. There are no mas­ter com­pen­sa­tion plans for those and hun­dreds of oth­er lines of work because there’s no need for a plan. The very notion of com­ing up with a com­pli­cat­ed, cen­tral­ized set of rules dic­tat­ing how much plumbers can earn and under what cir­cum­stances they can earn it would be un-Amer­i­can…” 
  5. Was the apos­tle Paul mar­ried? Yes, he was. Here’s how we know. (Den­ny Burk, Per­son­al Blog):  “It may be that Paul’s words have impli­ca­tions for all who are unmar­ried, but I think Paul’s ref­er­ence to the unmar­ried refers to wid­ow­ers specif­i­cal­ly. There are a num­ber of rea­sons for this. Not the least of which is the fact that the Greek word for ‘wid­ow­er’ was rarely used in ancient Greek and was nev­er used in the Koine peri­od…. Paul uses the term ‘unmar­ried’ two oth­er times in this chap­ter to refer to those who were pre­vi­ous­ly mar­ried.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of Bib­li­cal stud­ies.
  6. Leav­ing Blokesworld: Why You Can’t Have Your Porn and #MeToo (Mea­gan Tyler, Aus­tralian Broad­cast­ing Com­pa­ny: Reli­gion and Ethics): “In one of the few attempts to link #MeToo and porn cul­ture, two Dutch filmmakers asked men to try and dif­fer­en­ti­ate between wom­en’s accounts of sex­u­al assault and scripts from porn films. The com­par­i­son high­lights the dif­fi­cult­ly in dis­cern­ing any dif­fer­ence…. So, for all the men who have been ask­ing what they can do in light of #MeToo, here’s a place start: stop link­ing your sex­u­al arousal to wom­en’s sex­u­al sub­or­di­na­tion. Stop watch­ing porn.”
  7. The Cen­ter Left Is On Life Sup­port (Michael Bren­dan Dougher­ty, Nation­al Review): “As lib­er­als backed away from the hard pol­i­tics of mate­r­i­al redis­tri­b­u­tion, they found them­selves try­ing to redis­trib­ute the hon­orif­ic resources of soci­ety. Instead of dra­mat­i­cal­ly expand­ing day care, you could talk about sin­gle moth­ers as heroes.” The author is on the right and is diag­nos­ing a prob­lem he sees across the aisle. His com­ments about redis­trib­ut­ing hon­orifics are insight­ful and remind me of Tyler Cowen’s obser­va­tion that pol­i­tics is often more about rais­ing or low­er­ing some group’s social sta­tus than actu­al­ly solv­ing press­ing prob­lems. 
  8. What’s an Inclu­sion Rid­er? Let the Pro­fes­sor Who Helped Invent the Con­cept Explain (Rebec­ca Kee­gan, Van­i­ty Fair): “Smith said that an inclu­sion rid­er is a pro­vi­sion added to actors’ con­tracts to ensure that cast­ing on pro­duc­tions is more rep­re­sen­ta­tive. ‘It stip­u­lates that in small and sup­port­ing roles, char­ac­ters should reflect the world we live in,’ she said. That includes 50 per­cent gen­der par­i­ty, 40 per­cent inclu­sion for peo­ple of col­or, 5 per­cent L.G.B.T.Q., and 20 per­cent dis­abled.” This is a clever maneu­ver. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, there does not seem to be a pro­vi­sion for high­light­ing evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians accord­ing to our pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion in soci­ety. What if in every sit­com there was a Ned Flan­ders char­ac­ter?

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 Mak­ing Sense of the Num­bers of Gen­e­sis [pdf link] (Car­ol Hill, Per­spec­tives on Sci­ence and the Chris­t­ian Faith): “Joseph and Joshua were each record­ed as dying at age 110—a num­ber con­sid­ered ‘per­fect’ by the Egyp­tians. In ancient Egypt­ian doc­trine, the phrase ‘he died aged 110’ was actu­al­ly an epi­taph com­mem­o­rat­ing a life that had been lived self­less­ly and had result­ed in out­stand­ing social and moral ben­e­fit for oth­ers. And so for both Joseph and Joshua, who came out of the Egypt­ian cul­ture, quot­ing this age was actu­al­ly a trib­ute to their char­ac­ter. But, to be described as ‘dying at age 110’ bore no nec­es­sary rela­tion­ship to the actu­al time of an individual’s life span.” You will not agree with every­thing in this arti­cle, but it is full of fas­ci­nat­ing insights. (first shared in vol­ume 51)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 140

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The gun debate has flared up again in the wake of a school shoot­ing.
  2. Lying to Inves­ti­ga­tors Should­n’t Be a Crime (Stephen Carter, Bloomberg View): “Pros­e­cu­tors want to catch you in a lie because, when they can’t prove an under­ly­ing crime, it’s often easy to prove that you lied to them. That’s where the prob­lem aris­es. I’ve been telling my aston­ished law stu­dents for decades that except in cer­tain well-defined cir­cum­stances, lying to inves­ti­ga­tors shouldn’t be a crime.” Carter is a law pro­fes­sor at Yale. I strong­ly endorse this view.
  3. Let’s Fix Peer Review (Ray Tru­ant, per­son­al blog): “When we apply for a grant or want to pub­lish our sci­ence, we secret­ly get the work reviewed by our peers, some of which are com­pet­ing with us for pre­cious fund­ing, or a bizarre ver­sion of fame. Under the veil of anonymi­ty, a review­er can write any­thing, includ­ed false state­ments, or incor­rect state­ments to jus­ti­fy a deci­sion. The deci­sion is most often, ‘do not fund’ or ‘reject’, even if the review is based off of inac­cu­ra­cies, lack of exper­tise, or even bla­tant slan­der. There are no rules, there are no reper­cus­sions.” Tru­ant is a bio­chemist at McMas­ter Uni­ver­si­ty in Cana­da.
  4. Jane Stanford’s Speech (Jane Stan­ford, stanford.edu): A stu­dent had to read this for a class a while back, and was struck by how selec­tive­ly it is quot­ed by the uni­ver­si­ty. The orig­i­nal doc­u­ment is thor­ough­ly reli­gious. “An impres­sion has gone forth that we were indif­fer­ent to reli­gious influ­ences and instruc­tions being taught here. I am quite sure that if all could be made to under­stand that this project was born from a great sor­row, the great­est that par­ents can endure, that the Cre­ator has led us through the deep waters out into the sun­shine of faith and and belief in a future life; that we have whol­ly and entire­ly as far as pos­si­ble giv­en our lives to Him; and only ask that He will guide us to do His will; that every stone that has been laid into the build­ings of this Uni­ver­si­ty but num­bers the prayers that have been offered up to our Heav­en­ly Father for strength, guid­ance, and help. That we should for­get His love and mer­cy and be indif­fer­ent as to the Chris­t­ian influ­ence to be used among the stu­dents, it would be an impos­si­bil­i­ty.”
  5. [Har­vard] Places HCFA On ‘Pro­ba­tion’ After Group Barred Stu­dent in Same-Sex Rela­tion­ship from Lead­er­ship (Car­o­line Engel­may­er & Michael Xie, Har­vard Crim­son): “The Office of Stu­dent Life has placed reli­gious group Har­vard Col­lege Faith and Action on ‘admin­is­tra­tive pro­ba­tion’ for a year after the orga­ni­za­tion pres­sured a female mem­ber of its stu­dent lead­er­ship to resign in Sep­tem­ber fol­low­ing her deci­sion to date a woman.… Col­lege admin­is­tra­tors told them HCFA is the first-ever cam­pus group to be placed on admin­is­tra­tive pro­ba­tion.”
  6. Mean­while on the Farm, Lone­ly Men and Women of Faith: The Expe­ri­ence of Reli­gious Stu­dents at Stan­ford (Ben Simon, Stan­ford Review): “It may be unrea­son­able to expect a sec­u­lar insti­tu­tion like Stan­ford to ful­ly accom­mo­date each student’s reli­gious needs. With that said, Stan­ford goes far beyond the let­ter of the law when it comes to eth­nic or racial diver­si­ty, but it does lit­tle to go out of its way to help reli­gious stu­dents.”
  7. As more jour­nal­ists report on Ice­land’s cir­cum­ci­sion saga, the coun­try gets a rab­bi (Julia Duin, GetRe­li­gion): “As Robert George of Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty – for­mer chair­man of the U.S. Com­mis­sion on Inter­na­tion­al Reli­gious Free­dom – not­ed in a series of tweets recent­ly, a coun­try ban­ning cir­cum­ci­sion effec­tive­ly bans Jews from liv­ing there. Dit­to for Mus­lims…. [How­ev­er] Gun­nars­dót­tir told the news­pa­per she ‘didn’t think it was nec­es­sary to con­sult’ with the island’s small Jew­ish and Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion before propos­ing the anti-cir­cum­ci­sion bill, adding ‘I didn’t see it as a reli­gious mat­ter.’” That last detail is telling. Reli­gious illit­er­a­cy caus­es real harms.
  8. Read My Lips: No New Admin­is­tra­tors (Berber Jin, Stan­ford Review): “Though admin­is­tra­tive offices are obvi­ous­ly nec­es­sary for the university’s oper­a­tion, their self-serv­ing incen­tives should make us wary of their expan­sion. Unlike fac­ul­ty, who gain pres­tige through qual­i­ty teach­ing and inno­v­a­tive research, admin­is­tra­tors move up the career lad­der by expand­ing bureau­cra­cy.” The Review has been on fire late­ly.

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 debate between two pas­tors on guns I shared back in vol­ume 48 – both are very thought­ful and are skill­ful debaters.  Here is the con­ver­sa­tion so far. All the posts are pret­ty short.

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 131

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The West­ern Elite from a Chi­nese Per­spec­tive (Puzhong Yao, Amer­i­can Affairs): “Cer­tain beliefs are as ubiq­ui­tous among the peo­ple I went to school with as smog was in Shi­ji­azhuang. The doc­trines that shape the world­views and cul­tur­al assump­tions at elite West­ern insti­tu­tions like Cam­bridge, Stan­ford, and Gold­man Sachs have become almost reli­gious. Nev­er­the­less, I hope that the per­spec­tive of a can­did Chi­nese athe­ist can be of some instruc­tion to them.” This is quite fun­ny in places, espe­cial­ly his expe­ri­ences at the Stan­ford GSB.
  2. Uni­ver­si­ty evicts Chris­t­ian club over lead­er­ship faith require­ment (Caleb Parke, Fox News): “‘The [Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa] knows that what it is doing to BLinC is unfair, ille­gal, and uncon­sti­tu­tion­al,’ the com­plaint pre­pared by the firm says, adding that, while BLinC only requires adher­ence to their beliefs for their lead­ers and not their mem­bers, uni­ver­si­ty pol­i­cy is that cam­pus orga­ni­za­tions can require mem­bers to believe a cer­tain way.’” Read the actu­al legal com­plaint — it’s straight fire. I was espe­cial­ly tick­led by para­graph 76.
  3. How Cul­ture Affects Depres­sion (Mar­i­an­na Pogosyan, Psy­chol­o­gy Today): “How­ev­er, teach­ing peo­ple that this very com­plex social, cul­tur­al, and bio­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non is entire­ly bio­log­i­cal can back­fire. It encour­ages peo­ple to ignore envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors, and instead, essen­tial­ize depres­sion as a char­ac­ter­is­tic of them­selves and their biol­o­gy.” An inter­view with a George­town psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor.
  4. The War­lock Hunt (Claire Berlin­s­ki, The Amer­i­can Inter­est): “Giv­en the events of recent weeks, we can be cer­tain of this: From now on, men with any instinct for self-preser­va­tion will cease to speak of any­thing per­son­al, any­thing sex­u­al, in our pres­ence. They will make no bawdy jokes when we are lis­ten­ing. They will adopt in our pres­ence great def­er­ence to our exquis­ite sen­si­tiv­i­ty and frailty. Many women seem pos­i­tive­ly joy­ful at this prospect. The Rev­o­lu­tion has at last been achieved! But how could this be the world we want? Isn’t this the world we escaped?”
  5. Evan­gel­i­cals and Domes­tic Vio­lence: Are Chris­t­ian Men More Abu­sive? (Brad Wilcox, Chris­tian­i­ty Today):  “…church­go­ing evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tant hus­bands were the least like­ly to be engaged in abu­sive behav­ior…. Although the empir­i­cal sto­ry of reli­gion and domes­tic vio­lence looks good for prac­tic­ing believ­ers, it’s much less rosy for oth­ers. My research sug­gests that the most vio­lent hus­bands in Amer­i­ca are nom­i­nal evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tants who attend church infre­quent­ly or not at all.” Brings to mind Rev 3:15–16 — be hot or cold, not luke­warm. The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at UVA.
  6. I read many arti­cles about the Alaba­ma elec­tion — these stood out.
    • Roy Moore and the Invis­i­ble Reli­gious Right  (Ben­jamin Wal­lace-Wells, The New York­er): “…what was most notable about the pas­tors on Moore’s list was their obscu­ri­ty. I found a list of the pas­tors of the thir­ty-six largest church­es in Alaba­ma, assem­bled this sum­mer by the Web site of the Birm­ing­ham News; no pas­tor on that list appeared on Moore’s. I called lead­ers with­in the deeply con­ser­v­a­tive South­ern Bap­tist Church—the largest denom­i­na­tion in Alaba­ma and, for decades, the core of the reli­gious right—and was told that not a sin­gle affil­i­at­ed South­ern Bap­tist pas­tor in the state was open­ly allied with Moore.”
    • Roy Moore Had Low­est White Evan­gel­i­cal Sup­port Of Any Alaba­ma Repub­li­can In The 21st Cen­tu­ry (Lyman Stone, The Fed­er­al­ist): “Exit polls from the Alaba­ma Sen­ate spe­cial elec­tion on Tues­day show that Roy Moore got 80 per­cent of the white evan­gel­i­cal vote, but nonethe­less went down to defeat. This is shock­ing, because white evan­gel­i­cals are a big share of Alabama’s pop­u­la­tion…. So if it’s a big vot­ing bloc and they’re 80 per­cent for a can­di­date, shouldn’t that can­di­date win?”
    • For a crit­i­cal take on the above claim: Is it pos­si­ble that white evan­gel­i­cals swung the Alaba­ma elec­tion against Roy Moore? (Scott Clement, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Moore’s sup­port among white evan­gel­i­cals is his­tor­i­cal­ly low for a Repub­li­can. At the same time, the drop-off in Moore’s sup­port among oth­er white groups from pre­vi­ous elec­tions (par­tic­u­lar­ly non-evan­gel­i­cals, white women and whites with col­lege degrees) is far larg­er, indi­cat­ing that evan­gel­i­cals were far less like­ly than oth­er typ­i­cal Repub­li­can vot­ers to alter their par­ty sup­port with Moore as a can­di­date.”
    • And more gen­er­al­ly: Pro-life Vot­ers and Pro-Choice Politi­cians (Michael Wear, per­son­al blog): “The way some invoke con­science in pol­i­tics reflects an odd moral­i­ty that puts one’s con­science at risk for sup­port­ing a can­di­date who oppos­es Roe v. Wade, but ratio­nal­izes away moral respon­si­bil­i­ty for a can­di­date who inten­tion­al­ly seeks to dis­en­fran­chise African-Amer­i­cans or restrict the right of wor­ship for Mus­lims or wan­ton­ly breaks up fam­i­lies through depor­ta­tion or mass incar­cer­a­tion. Per­haps abor­tion as a polit­i­cal issue car­ries greater moral weight than these oth­er issues—an idea some pro-lif­ers seem a bit too eager to accept, I have to say—but is there no con­flu­ence of evil that can affect the vot­ing cal­cu­la­tion of the pro-life per­son who believes their con­science requires them to vote for who­ev­er the pro-life can­di­date hap­pens to be?” Wear, an evan­gel­i­cal, was an Oba­ma White House staffer.
    • Also more gen­er­al­ly: Why I Can No Longer Call Myself an Evan­gel­i­cal Repub­li­can (Peter Wehn­er, New York Times): “the events of the past few years — and the past few weeks — have shown us that the Repub­li­can Par­ty and the evan­gel­i­cal move­ment (or large parts of them, at least), have become what I once would have thought of as lib­er­al car­i­ca­tures. Assume you were a per­son of the left and an athe­ist, and you decid­ed to cre­ate a cou­ple of peo­ple in a lab­o­ra­to­ry to dis­cred­it the Repub­li­can Par­ty and white evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tian­i­ty. You could hard­ly choose two more per­fect men than Don­ald Trump and Roy Moore.” (this one came rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent)
  7. Is Alp­haZe­ro real­ly a sci­en­tif­ic break­through in AI? (Jose Cama­cho Col­la­dos, Medi­um):  “I am a researcher in the broad field of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (AI), spe­cial­ized in Nat­ur­al Lan­guage Pro­cess­ing. I am also a chess Inter­na­tion­al Mas­ter, cur­rent­ly the top play­er in South Korea although prac­ti­cal­ly inac­tive for the last few years due to my full-time research posi­tion…. How­ev­er, there are rea­son­able doubts about the valid­i­ty of the over­ar­ch­ing claims that arise from a care­ful read­ing of AlphaZero’s paper.”  I was recent­ly hyp­ing this to some­one and clear­ly did not know as much about it as I thought. Inter­est­ing push­back.
  8. And last but not least : Want to raise employ­ee morale? Treat every day as an exper­i­ment (Chris­tos Makridis, Medi­um): our very own Chris­tos con­tin­ues to put his work out into the pub­lic square. Go, Chris­tos!

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have a provoca­tive read: In Defense of Flog­ging (Peter Moskos, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion) — the author is a for­mer police offi­cer and now a crim­i­nol­o­gist at the City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York. This one was shared back before I start­ed send­ing these emails in a blog post called Pun­ish­ment.

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 129

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The home­less who help them­selves get a need­ed lift (Kevin Kel­ly, San Jose Mer­cury News): “LifeMoves, for­mer­ly known as InnVi­sion Shel­ter Net­work, is a 44-year-old [Bay Area] non­prof­it that spe­cial­izes in get­ting indi­vid­u­als into tem­po­rary hous­ing and on a path to per­ma­nent hous­ing. It claims a 93 per­cent suc­cess rate of get­ting home­less fam­i­lies housed and self-suf­fi­cient, and a 72 per­cent suc­cess rate with indi­vid­u­als. There is just one caveat: Peo­ple who receive assis­tance — referred to as clients — must demon­strate a will­ing­ness to bet­ter them­selves.”
    • Relat­ed: 5 Harsh Real­i­ties Of Home­less Camps Nobody Talks About (Evan Symon, Cracked): “If you live in a major Amer­i­can city, you’ve prob­a­bly seen your fair share of home­less camps. They usu­al­ly crop up in emp­ty lots, parks, and Big Rock Can­dy Moun­tains. City gov­ern­ments gen­er­al­ly have them torn down and cleaned up when­ev­er they can. Leav­ing aside whether or not that’s the right way to address home­less­ness, some­body has to do the work of clean­ing those places up. Our source, Car­ol, did just that.”
  2. Peo­ple for sale: Where lives are auc­tioned for $400 (Nima Elba­gir, Raja Razek, Alex Platt and Bry­ony Jones, CNN). There is a text sto­ry at the link, but the embed­ded sev­en minute video is worth watch­ing, espe­cial­ly the first four min­utes. This is a hor­ri­fy­ing devel­op­ment in the migrant cri­sis — slave auc­tions.
  3. How To Think About Vladimir Putin (Christo­pher Cald­well, Imprim­is): “When Putin took pow­er in the win­ter of 1999–2000, his coun­try was defense­less. It was bank­rupt. It was being carved up by its new klep­to­crat­ic elites, in col­lu­sion with its old impe­r­i­al rivals, the Amer­i­cans. Putin changed that…. Russ­ian peo­ple not only tol­er­ate him, they revere him. You can get a bet­ter idea of why he has ruled for 17 years if you remem­ber that, with­in a few years of Communism’s fall, aver­age life expectan­cy in Rus­sia had fall­en below that of Bangladesh. ” This is a slight­ly old­er arti­cle, and so his com­ments about Russia’s role in the U.S. elec­tion aren’t very cur­rent. His broad­er obser­va­tions are worth pon­der­ing.
  4. The Supreme Court hears argu­ments about the Chris­t­ian bak­er who refused to bake a cake for a gay wed­ding on Tues­day. Lots of peo­ple are writ­ing about it.
      • Against the bak­er: The Chris­t­ian Legal Army Behind ‘Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop’ (Sarah Pos­ner, The Nation): “On Decem­ber 5, with the full force of the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment behind it, ADF will be ask­ing the Supreme Court to carve out yawn­ing exemp­tions from civ­il-rights laws for con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians.” (this is less about the case and more about the firm rep­re­sent­ing the bak­er — it’s a hit piece but is full of inter­est­ing info)
      • Against the bak­er: The Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop Case Is Not About Reli­gious Free­dom (Jen­nifer Finney Boy­lan, New York Times): “But Mas­ter­piece has noth­ing to do with reli­gious free­dom. It’s about enshrin­ing a free­dom to dis­crim­i­nate. His­tor­i­cal­ly, reli­gious exemp­tions from the law have occa­sion­al­ly been grant­ed to pro­tect the per­son who holds the belief. But this case is dif­fer­ent, in that it gives an indi­vid­ual the right to harm some­one else. And that’s what the Mas­ter­piece case is about: It would give indi­vid­u­als the right to dis­crim­i­nate.” The author is an Eng­lish pro­fes­sor at Barnard Col­lege.
      • Against the bak­er: The Gay Wed­ding Cake Case Isn’t About Free Speech (Andrew Kop­pel­man, The Amer­i­can Prospect).”It is mere­ly telling him that if he sells any prod­ucts to het­ero­sex­u­al cou­ples, he must sell the same prod­ucts to same-sex cou­ples. He is free to refuse to write ‘Sup­port Gay Mar­riage’ on any cakes that he sells, so long as he refus­es that to both gay and het­ero­sex­u­al cus­tomers. So this is an easy case. Phillips should lose.“ The author is a law pro­fes­sor at North­west­ern. This is the strongest argu­ment I have read against the Chris­t­ian bak­er.
      • For the bak­er: Stop Mis­rep­re­sent­ing Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop (David French, Nation­al Review): “Phillips isn’t dis­crim­i­nat­ing against a pro­tect­ed class. I’ll repeat this until I’m blue in the face. He serves gay cus­tomers.”
      • For the bak­er: The Chris­t­ian Baker’s Unan­swered Legal Argu­ment: Why the Strongest Objec­tions Fail (Sherif Gir­gis, Pub­lic Dis­course): “Should an Islam­o­pho­bic sect get to force Mus­lim car­i­ca­tur­ists to sketch mock­ing images of the Prophet? Clear­ly not.” Dis­claimer: Sherif was a room­mate of one of our alum­ni and is an acquain­tance of mine.
  5. Duel­ing per­spec­tives on the fam­i­ly lives of blue state and red state Amer­i­cans:
    • Blue States Prac­tice the Fam­i­ly Val­ues Red States Preach (Nicholas Kristof, New York Times): “The lib­er­al impulse may be to gloat: Those con­ser­v­a­tives thun­der about ‘fam­i­ly val­ues’ but don’t prac­tice them. But there’s also per­haps a mea­sure of hypocrisy in the blue states. As Cahn and Car­bone put it: ‘Blue fam­i­ly val­ues bris­tle at restric­tions on sex­u­al­i­ty, insis­tence on mar­riage or the stigma­ti­za­tion of sin­gle par­ents. Their secret, how­ev­er, is that they encour­age their chil­dren to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly com­bine pub­lic tol­er­ance with pri­vate dis­ci­pline, and their chil­dren then over­whelm­ing­ly choose to raise their own chil­dren with­in two-par­ent fam­i­lies.’” Kristof is a Pulitzer prize-win­ning jour­nal­ist who was a Rhodes Schol­ar and is on the Board of Over­seers for Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty.
    • No, Repub­li­cans Aren’t Hyp­ocrites on Fam­i­ly Val­ues W. Brad­ford Wilcox and Vijay Menon, Politi­co): “In oth­er words, even though South­ern­ers in gen­er­al are at greater risk of fam­i­ly insta­bil­i­ty than North­ern­ers, Repub­li­cans in the South enjoy marked­ly high­er lev­els of fam­i­ly sta­bil­i­ty than their fel­low citizens—a fam­i­ly sta­bil­i­ty advan­tage that puts them above Democ­rats and inde­pen­dents in the North. Anoth­er way to put this: It’s blue and pur­ple Amer­i­cans in the South who are real­ly pulling down fam­i­ly sta­bil­i­ty in the South, not red Amer­i­cans.” Wilcox is a soci­ol­o­gy prof at UVA, where Minon is also a grad stu­dent.
  6. We Did­n’t Become Chris­tians Because Of The Huck­sters (Michael Wear, Fath­om): “If the world crit­i­cizes the pride of some­one who claims the name of Christ—or who won the votes of those who do—point them to Jesus, who was born into pover­ty, who instruct­ed his fol­low­ers to take the low posi­tion, and hum­bled him­self on the way to the cross…. There is noth­ing so wrong with the poor exam­ple of Chris­tians that can’t be solved by pro­claim­ing the per­fect exam­ple of Christ.”
  7.  Stan­ford can take Junipero Ser­ra’s name off its build­ings, but it can’t purge him from its his­to­ry (Char­lotte Allen, LA Times): “The Main Quad, part of a mas­ter plan designed by land­scape archi­tect Fred­er­ick Law Olm­stead, imi­tates Serra’s mis­sions (with some Romanesque touch­es). Besides the Mall and the boule­vard, oth­er cam­pus streets are named after his fri­ar-dis­ci­ples (Lasuén and Fran­cis­co Palóu), as well as José de Gálvez, the inspec­tor gen­er­al for New Spain who facil­i­tat­ed Serra’s mis­sion­ary work in Alta Cal­i­for­nia. If the Stan­ford activists aim to oblit­er­ate Serra’s pres­ence from their cam­pus, they’ve got their work cut out for them.” I didn’t know Ser­ra’s influ­ence was so per­va­sive at Stan­ford.

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 127

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.

Also, next issue is vol­ume 128, an impor­tant com­put­er sci­ence num­ber. I should do some­thing to make it spe­cial. If you have an idea, let me know.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Endur­ing Appeal of Creepy Chris­tian­i­ty (David French, Nation­al Review): “The Bible doesn’t have a clear, spe­cif­ic pre­scrip­tion for every life chal­lenge. But rather than seek­ing God prayer­ful­ly and with deep humil­i­ty and rev­er­ence, we want answers, now. And thus we grav­i­tate to those peo­ple who pur­port to offer more than the Bible.”
  2. Chi­na Tells Chris­tians to Replace Images of Jesus with Com­mu­nist Pres­i­dent (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “‘Many poor house­holds have plunged into pover­ty because of ill­ness in the fam­i­ly. Some resort­ed to believ­ing in Jesus to cure their ill­ness­es,’ the head of the gov­ern­ment cam­paign told SCMP. ‘But we tried to tell them that get­ting ill is a phys­i­cal thing, and that the peo­ple who can real­ly help them are the Com­mu­nist Par­ty and Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Xi.’”
  3. She led Trump to Christ: The rise of the tel­e­van­ge­list who advis­es the White House (Julia Duin, Wash­ing­ton Post): This is an amaz­ing pro­file. “White insists that lec­tur­ing Trump is not her job. ‘I don’t preach to any­one on behav­ior mod­i­fi­ca­tion,’ she says. ‘There are things I can speak, but that’s not anyone’s busi­ness what I say. Why would I as a pas­tor expose that rela­tion­ship? Every­one needs a safe place in life, and pas­tors can be people’s safe place. That’s why I have this rela­tion­ship, because I don’t talk about it.’”
    • Speak­ing of Trump’s evan­gel­i­cal advi­sors… What Trump’s Evan­gel­i­cal Advis­ers Took Out of Egypt (Jayson Casper, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Rosen­berg thanked [Egypt­ian Pres­i­dent] Sisi for res­cu­ing Egypt and its Chris­tians from the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. He com­mend­ed the pres­i­dent for reach­ing out to Jews and to Roman Catholics. ‘But there is one group I don’t see: evan­gel­i­cals,’ he told Sisi. ‘It’s not your fault; prob­a­bly we haven’t asked. But would you like us to bring a del­e­ga­tion of lead­ers to come and vis­it you?’”
  4. A Har­vest Of Wit­ness­es (William Mum­ma, First Things): “The fight for reli­gious lib­er­ty is not a sub-cat­e­go­ry of the elec­toral con­test between Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats. It is a strug­gle over whether the state has the author­i­ty to ban­ish the great­est rival to tem­po­ral pow­er that exists. It is the age-old con­test between the King and the Church, between Cae­sar and the Truth. It is a con­test over who gets to decide: ‘What is truth?’” The piece is a lit­tle par­ti­san, but makes an impor­tant point.
  5. The Politi­ciza­tion of Moth­er­hood (James Taran­to, Wall Street Jour­nal): “The premise of Ms. Komisar’s book—backed by research in psy­chol­o­gy, neu­ro­science and epigenetics—is that ‘moth­ers are bio­log­i­cal­ly nec­es­sary for babies,’ and not only for the obvi­ous rea­sons of preg­nan­cy and birth. ‘Babies are much more neu­ro­log­i­cal­ly frag­ile than we’ve ever under­stood,’ Ms. Komis­ar says.”
  6. Stan­ford Stu­dents Pre­tend to Sup­port Free Speech, Stum­ble at Final Hur­dle (Stan­ford Review, Sam Wolfe): “…at 8:40 p.m., 20 min­utes after he began his talk, over 150 mem­bers of the crowd osten­si­bly gath­ered to hear him speak prompt­ly stood up and left, while Ara­bic music blared from Blue­tooth speak­ers con­cealed around the hall. The stu­dents, plant­ed by SAI, had arrived at the event ear­ly to clog up the venue. As a result, dozens of stu­dents, many of whom were pre­sum­ably inter­est­ed in start­ing a gen­uine dia­logue with Spencer about his views and rebuff­ing him, were turned away. I myself arrived at about 7:20 for an event sched­uled to begin an hour lat­er, and was one of the last peo­ple admit­ted… imag­ine if they had, instead of occu­py­ing the seats and sub­se­quent­ly vacat­ing them, sim­ply blocked oth­ers from enter­ing, and left the seats unfilled that way. The result would have been the same, the inten­tion large­ly the same, and their actions right­ly con­demned. This was bet­ter than vio­lence, yes, bet­ter than shout­ing Spencer down. But the protest was a delib­er­ate attempt to block stu­dents from engag­ing with Spencer in any capac­i­ty.”
  7. Police: ‘Every 16-year-old girl in Fres­no’ has been tar­get­ed by sex trade recruiters (Rory Apple­ton, Fres­no Bee): the entire sto­ry is hor­ri­fy­ing. This seg­ment caught my eye: “It is rare for boys to be traf­ficked, Chas­tain said, but it does hap­pen. It is even more dif­fi­cult for detec­tives to dis­cov­er these vic­tims because it is almost always done in total secre­cy, as even crim­i­nal gangs believe traf­fick­ing boys goes too far.” The instinct to con­sid­er your­self an okay per­son because at least you don’t do _______ is present even in very wicked peo­ple.
  8. Solar eclipse of 1207 BC helps to date pharaohs (Col­in Humphreys and Graeme Wadding­ton, Astron­o­my and Geo­physics): “How­ev­er, a plau­si­ble alter­na­tive mean­ing [to the sun and moon stand­ing still in Joshua 10] is that the Sun and Moon stopped doing what they nor­mal­ly do: they stopped shin­ing.” File under spec­u­la­tive — I am not con­vinced. If true, how­ev­er, this would be evi­dence for the lat­er date of the Exo­dus (13th cen­tu­ry vs 15th cen­tu­ry). The authors have been using astron­o­my to study the Bible for some time (see, for exam­ple, The Date of the Cru­ci­fix­ion writ­ten back in 1985).

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 80

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Rage and Heart­break: Required Reac­tions to Alep­po (Richard Stearns, ERLC): “Let your heart be bro­ken for the suf­fer­ing in the Mid­dle East and around the world. Pray it stays bro­ken as long as any moth­er any­where pleads for help and any child fears this night will be her last.” For some con­text, read 9 Things You Should Know About Alep­po and the Syr­i­an Cri­sis (Joe Carter, Gospel Coali­tion). And this is an inter­est­ing Mus­lim take on Alep­po (Omed Safi, Wash­ing­ton Post).
  2. The Cri­sis of Chris­tians in Egypt (Gabriel Reynolds, First Things):  “It is telling, for exam­ple, that almost no such attacks have tak­en place in major­i­ty Shi’ite Iran against the Chris­t­ian minor­i­ty there. What, then, dis­tin­guish­es Egypt and Pak­istan from Iran?”
  3. My Pres­i­dent Was Black (Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic): this is a long, beau­ti­ful­ly-writ­ten piece. The Atlantic is pub­lish­ing response pieces. The first one is intense: “My pres­i­dent was black and I still am.”
  4. Why Hillary Clin­ton Bombed With White Evan­gel­i­cal Vot­ers (Ruth Gra­ham, Slate): “It was as if she was try­ing to alien­ate evan­gel­i­cals… and it worked.” This arti­cle nails a big part of the dynam­ic.
  5. With Jesus’ Birth, Why Does The Bible List Two Dif­fer­ent Fam­i­ly Trees? (Richard Ostling, Patheos): “The gen­er­al con­sen­sus on the dif­fer­ences is that Matthew depict­ed Jesus’ legal descent from David, on the assump­tion Joseph adopt­ed him. If Mary had no broth­ers, by com­mon cus­tom Joseph would have been his father-in-law’s legal ‘son’ and heir through the mar­riage. Luke defined Jesus through Mary as a blood descen­dant of David.” (for some oth­er pos­si­ble expla­na­tions, see Mark Strauss at Zon­der­van Aca­d­e­m­ic)
  6. The Defense of Lib­er­ty Can’t Do With­out Iden­ti­ty Pol­i­tics (Jacob Levy, Niska­nen Cen­ter): “Iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics… is about fight­ing for polit­i­cal jus­tice by draw­ing on the com­mit­ment that aris­es out of tar­get­ed injus­tice…. It lets us spot the major­i­ty group’s iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics rather than treat­ing it as the nor­mal back­ground state of affairs, and to rec­og­nize the oppres­sion and injus­tice that it gen­er­ates.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at McGill.
  7. The Right Shuts Down Free Speech, Too (Cather­ine Ramp­bell, Wash­ing­ton Post): it’s almost as though human nature is the same regard­less of what one thinks about the tax code. 
  8. On the academic/research side of things:

Things Glen Found Amusing

  • Indul­gences  (Pearls Before Swine): the­o­log­i­cal warn­ing — this form of recur­sion does not actu­al­ly work 
  • Local Man Relieved After Spir­i­tu­al Gift Test Comes Back Neg­a­tive For Giv­ing (Baby­lon Bee): “Accord­ing to sources, Shep­herd ripped open his results pack­et Thurs­day, and after ner­vous­ly perus­ing the cov­er let­ter, jumped for joy upon dis­cov­er­ing he had no desire or respon­si­bil­i­ty to be gen­er­ous what­so­ev­er.”
  • Band Offers Admin­is­tra­tion $60,000 To Drop Accu­sa­tions (The Flip­side): bru­tal and well-deserved (if you don’t get the joke, check out two recent edi­tions of the Foun­tain Hop­per (dirty lan­guage ahead): about the $60,000 and about the band. In case you’re won­der­ing, I do think the band is being treat­ed unfair­ly (and I have not been a huge fan of the band’s cul­ture his­tor­i­cal­ly). 
  • How To Get Vin­di­ca­tion (Basic Instruc­tions): if you are squea­mish, this one may not be for you. I found it hilar­i­ous. There is a video in the notes below the com­ic and I rec­om­mend it — if you are not squea­mish.

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 64

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Stu­dents seem upset about Stanford’s new alco­hol pol­i­cy. Check out this Har­vard prof’s NY Times op-ed from 1989 argu­ing Actu­al­ly, Pro­hi­bi­tion Was a Suc­cess. For the record, I think the new pol­i­cy is a step in the right direc­tion. I stand by my ear­li­er com­ments and am also amused at how sim­i­lar the argu­ments I hear today are to those I heard back in 2003.
  2. Kay­la Mueller in Cap­tiv­i­ty: Courage, Self­less­ness as She Defend­ed Chris­t­ian Faith to ISIS Exe­cu­tion­er ‘Jiha­di John’ (James Gor­don Meek, Megan Christie, Bri­an Epstein, Bri­an Ross, ABC News): a pow­er­ful and dis­turb­ing sto­ry. Doc­tors With­out Bor­ders comes off bad­ly.
  3. How USA Today unrav­eled Ryan Lochte’s Rio dra­ma (Kris­ten Hare, Poyn­ter): An insight­ful win­dow into jour­nal­ism and why we should trust news cov­er­age a lit­tle less than we think. Lochte still does­n’t come out look­ing awe­some, but nei­ther does he look like the out­ra­geous vil­lain many assumed (and seemed delight­ed to see him as). Proverbs 18:17 wins again.
  4. Sex on cam­pus isn’t what you think: what 101 stu­dent jour­nals taught me (Lisa Wade, The Guardian): “Hookup cul­ture pre­vails, even though it serves only a minor­i­ty of stu­dents, because cul­tures don’t reflect what is, but a spe­cif­ic group’s vision of what should be….  [it] isn’t what the major­i­ty of stu­dents want, it’s the priv­i­leg­ing of the sex­u­al lifestyle most strong­ly endorsed by those with the most pow­er on cam­pus, the same peo­ple we see priv­i­leged in every oth­er part of Amer­i­can life.”
  5. On David Gushee’s Dis­hon­esty (Jake Meador, Mere Ortho­doxy): this is a fas­ci­nat­ing essay with sur­pris­ing insights about the role of gram­mar in polit­i­cal argu­men­ta­tion. Real­ly.
  6. Evan­gel­i­cals For Trump: In Pow­er or Per­se­cut­ed (S.D. Kel­ly, Christ and Pop Cul­ture): “Not only do most evan­gel­i­cals not believe they are the cen­ter of pow­er, they con­sid­er them­selves to be one wed­ding cake away from jail time.” 
  7. Giv­en the per­pet­u­al Bay Area hous­ing cri­sis, I found these arti­cles stim­u­lat­ing: Lais­sez-Faire in Tokyo Land Use and the fol­low-up The Japan­ese Zon­ing Sys­tem (both by George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty econ pro­fes­sor Alex Tabar­rok): “Japan’s zon­ing laws are more ratio­nal, more effi­cient and fair­er than those used in the Unit­ed States.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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