Tag: thinking clearly

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 339

some of these links are quite spicy — consume with care

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 339, which is 3 · 113. I like numbers with only two factors (technically four, but you know what I mean — two interesting factors). They’re the silver medalists of the prime olympics. They almost made it, but no.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Women’s Tears Win in the Marketplace of Ideas (Richard Hanania, Substack): “…the ways in which public debate works when we take steps to make the most emotional and aggressive women comfortable have been overlooked. Things that we talk about as involving ‘young people,’ ‘college students,’ and ‘liberals’ are often gendered issues.” Long, provocative, and worth your time.
  2. The Canadian truckers:
    • Reality Honks Back (NS Lyons, Substack): “For our purposes here, let’s call these two classes the Physicals and the Virtuals, respectively.… That Trudeau’s government would choose to jettison any remaining illusion of Canada still being a liberal democracy just to harm their political class enemies isn’t too surprising. It’s their method of doing so that is particularly striking: control over digital financial assets is pretty much the ultimate leverage now available to the Virtuals. We should expect more use of this tool around the world anywhere the Physicals continue to revolt against their masters. And here the Virtuals have a significant advantage because they are free to use the maximum level of coercive force available in their natural domain, while the Physicals cannot – because, in the physical world, that would mean violence, which is something the protestors have rightly forsworn.”
      • Full of insight. The Virtual vs Physical framing is getting at something I haven’t seen discussed much elsewhere.
    • The plausible dystopia of a social credit system (Damon Linker, The Week): “For a recent and especially vivid example from a neighboring democracy, this week’s declaration of a national emergency in Canada has empowered banks to freeze and suspend the accounts of ‘Freedom Convoy’ protesters without a court order and while enjoying protection from civil liability. That is precisely the kind of thing one would expect to see become normalized with the imposition of a social credit system. Add in facial recognition software that can identify individuals attending ‘dangerous’ protests and other public events and we’re left with a vision of the near-term future that can look pretty dystopian.”
  3. Lots of Studies Are Bad (Emily Oster, Substack): “My point isn’t that this paper is wrong in its conclusions, just that it’s largely uninformative. The authors begin with an interesting graph showing a limited relationship between the stringency of COVID restrictions and mortality. That deserved more study, but this paper isn’t helping us understand it much.”
    • Emily Oster, an economist at Brown, is not impressed with the Johns Hopkins study I shared earlier (and offers a similar critique of a pro-mask study).
  4. No, America is not on the brink of a civil war (Musa al-Gharbi, The Guardian): “Of course, a far more obvious and empirically plausible explanation is that respondents knew perfectly well what the correct answer was. However, they also had a sense of how that answer would be used in the media (‘Even Trump’s supporters don’t believe his nonsense!’), so they simply declined to give pollsters the response they seemed to be looking for. As a matter of fact, respondents regularly troll researchers in polling and surveys – especially when they are asked whether or not they subscribe to absurd or fringe beliefs, such as birtherism (a conspiracy that held that Barack Obama was born outside of the US and was legally ineligible to serve as president of the United States).”
    • The author is a sociologist at Columbia. The article is a few weeks old but quite good and not particularly time-sensitive.
  5. The Seeds of Political Violence Are Being Sown in Church (David French, The Dispatch): “Pentecostal Christianity, despite its immense size, is about as far from elite American culture as Mercury is from Mars. And this means it’s quite distant from elite Evangelical culture as well. Right-wing blue-check theologians and pastors who speak disdainfully of warnings about Christian nationalism because it’s not something they see in their churches never darken the door of a Pentecostal church.” I think French gets it a little wrong here (there is an important distinction between Pentecostal and charismatic churches, and even more significantly between denominational and nondenominational ones). Still, French used to be an Assemblies of God youth pastor(!) and so he is not speaking of something he doesn’t understand. Recommended.
  6. Why America Has So Few Doctors (Derek Thompson, The Atlantic): “Imagine you were planning a conspiracy to limit the number of doctors in America. Certainly, you’d make sure to have a costly, lengthy credentialing system. You would also tell politicians that America has too many doctors already. That way, you could purposefully constrain the number of medical-school students. You might freeze or slash funding for residencies and medical scholarships. You’d fight proposals to allow nurses to do the work of physicians. And because none of this would stop foreign-trained doctors from slipping into the country and committing the crime of helping sick people get better, you’d throw in some rules that made it onerous for immigrant doctors, especially from neighboring countries Mexico and Canada, to do their job.” The original title was better: Why Does the US Make it so Hard to be a Doctor?
  7. What do students’ beliefs about God have to do with grades and going to college? (Ilana Horwitz, The Conversation): “In interviews, religious teens over and over mention life goals of parenthood, altruism and serving God – priorities that I argue make them less intent on attending as highly selective a college as they could. This aligns with previous research showing that conservative Protestant women attend colleges that less selective than other women do because they do not tend to view college’s main purpose as career advancement.”
    • The author is a professor of Jewish studies at Tulane University. Overall interesting, although she doesn’t comment on two factors which I think are quite significant: religious students often view selective colleges as inimical to faith, and students are often torn between prestigious colleges and less selective religious colleges (I have personally spoken to several Stanford students who were torn between Stanford and Wheaton).
    • Related? Marriage Made Me Let Go of My Dreams. Good. (Esau McCaulley, New York Times): “Many believe that the purpose of marriage is self-actualization. We find the partner who will come alongside us and help us become what we have always dreamed we would be. Conversely, we may think that a potential spouse who would get in the way of our dreams is the wrong person for us. What if marriage is meant to be something else?” This is very good. Highly recommended.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll highlight an older link still worth your consideration. This week we have Artificial Intelligence and Magical Thinking (Ed Feser, personal blog): “Building a computer is precisely analogous to putting together a bit of magical sleight of hand. It is a clever exercise in simulation, nothing more. And the convincingness of the simulation is as completely irrelevant in the one case as it is in the other. Saying ‘Gee, AI programs can do such amazing things. Maybe it really is intelligence!’ is like saying ‘Gee, Penn and Teller do such amazing things. Maybe it really is magic!’” Feser is one of my favorite philosophers. First shared in volume 197. I remember one CS grad student strongly disliking this article when I first shared. I share it again regardless

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 332

Final 2021 installment, including some good news about a bad disease.

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. Learning in double time: The effect of lecture video speed on immediate and delayed comprehension (Murphy et al, Applied Cognitive Psychology): “We presented participants with lecture videos at different speeds and tested immediate and delayed (1 week) comprehension. Results revealed minimal costs incurred by increasing video speed from 1x to 1.5x, or 2x speed, but performance declined beyond 2x speed. We also compared learning outcomes after watching videos once at 1x or twice at 2x speed. There was not an advantage to watching twice at 2x speed but if participants watched the video again at 2x speed immediately before the test, compared with watching once at 1x a week before the test, comprehension improved. Thus, increasing the speed of videos (up to 2x) may be an efficient strategy, especially if students use the time saved for additional studying or rewatching the videos, but learners should do this additional studying shortly before an exam.” The authors are researchers at UCLA.
  2. The pandemic:
    • Our playbook to fight covid-19 is outdated. Here are 10 updates for 2022. (Joseph G. Allen, Washington Post): “Public health’s credibility is on the line now. The public and businesses see that public health guidance isn’t keeping up with the times, and they’re right.” The author is a professor of environmental health at Harvard.
    • Pan-coronavirus “super” vaccine (Katelyn Jetelina, Substack): “This clinical trial has taken longer than expected because people can only participate if they have not been previously vaccinated or infected with COVID. As you can imagine, the pool of eligible and willing participants is getting smaller and smaller.” The author is an epidemiologist at the University of Texas Health Center.
    • Covid 12/30: Infinity War (Zvi Mowshowitz, Less Wrong): “For five weeks, we’ve seen Omicron double and double again. That which can’t go on forever, won’t. There aren’t many doublings left. This is it. The CDC’s revised guidelines made it even more clear that we’re going to collectively make the right decision, let it happen, and hope for the best. It’s not like we have any choice in the matter.” Long and full of timely information.
  3. The Missing Data in the Inflation Debate (Austan Goolsbee, New York Times): “…the pain of inflation may not be shared equally.… In November, online prices fell 0.2 percent as the C.P.I. rose 0.8 percent. In other words: The more someone shops online rather than in stores, the less inflation the individual has faced. Notably, shopping online is far more common among high-income people. And during the pandemic the practice has grown more prevalent.” The author is an econ prof at U Chicago.
  4. Evangelicals a Rising Force Inside Argentina’s Prisons (German de los Santos & Rodrigo Abd, Christianity Today): “Many here began peddling drugs as teenagers and got stuck in a spiral of violence that led some to their graves and others to overcrowded prisons divided between two forces: drug lords and preachers. Over the past 20 years, Argentine prison authorities have encouraged, to one extent or another, the creation of units effectively run by evangelical inmates—sometimes granting them a few extra special privileges, such as more time in fresh air.” An Associated Press story.
  5. The secret truth of the student debt crisis (Ryan Cooper, The Week): “The truth is the question of whether student debt should be canceled is largely irrelevant. Most student debt will be canceled sooner or later, because an ever-growing share of borrowers cannot possibly repay their loans. Ever.”
  6. Building Trust Across the Political Divide (April Lawson, Comment): “The Blue-inflected traditional empathy-building forms of bridge-building have a great deal to recommend them. But there is a flaw: the implicit belief underlying this style of bridging is that we can learn to love each other by seeing that we are all deeply the same. While true in some senses, this misses a fundamental insight about relationship that most of us know from experience: We have the capacity to build relationship through conflict.” Honestly describes very real dynamics. Almost a year old but I’m just seeing it now.
  7. Muskogee student honored for saving 2 lives (Cathy Spaulding, Enid News & Eagle): “Davyon, who attends the 6th and 7th Grade Academy, used an abdominal thrust on a school mate who was choking on a bottle cap. Later that day, Davyon rescued a woman from a burning house.”
    • First, this 6th grader deserves huge props. Second, the stories are actually a little comical when you read the details. So much so that “saved” might be generous on the burning house. Still, boss.

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 Godspeed: The Pace Of Being Known (Vimeo): a student brought this 30 minute video to my attention and said it made her think about how she should be living in her dorm. Worth watching as you prepare to return to campus. First shared in volume 181.

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 326

I had to cut this down from 20 candidate links to 7. It was grueling. Only gold remains.

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 326, which makes me a little happy because last week I observed that 3 +2 = 5 and this week we can see a similar coincidence with multiplication: 3 ⋅ 2 = 6.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. U.S. missionaries have long tried to convert the ‘unreached’ in the Amazon. Now Indigenous groups are fighting back. (Terrence McCoy, Washington Post): “But the biblical commission that followers of Jesus ‘make disciples of all nations’ is increasingly colliding with the laws of man in Brazil, where the right to voluntary isolation is enshrined in the constitution and where it’s illegal to contact isolated Indigenous groups without government permission.”
    • The details in the story show that things are more complex than the headline leads you to believe. The indigenous people are divided — some want the missionaries and some do not. The ones who do not are represented by a lawyer and he is the focus of this story. Surely the rights of those who wish to hear new ideas should also be respected? The people who applaud this development are almost certainly glad that they don’t believe what their ancestors believed, but they apparently hope these people are not exposed to multiple religious perspectives.
    • There is probably close to a 100% inverse correlation between those who believe the indigenous people should be able to keep outsiders away and those who believe America should build a wall. It’s an interesting ideological consistency test. And this would be more than a wall with controlled access — this would be a force field.
  2. How I Became Extremely Open-Minded (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “When I set out to write about the entire chronic-illness experience, I hesitated over whether to tell this kind of story. After all, if you’re trying to convince skeptical readers to take chronic sickness seriously, and to make the case for the medical-outsider view of how to treat Lyme disease, reporting that you’ve been dabbling in pseudoscience and that it works is a good way to confirm every stereotype about chronic ailments and their treatment…” Engrossing.
  3. Truth, justice and the torturing of tolerance (Karen Swallow Prior, Religion News Service): “Too many in the church have tolerated too much for too long. To be sure, situations can be complicated. Motives and actions can be mixed. Facts can be disputed. Perspectives can differ. Pictures can be incomplete. Nevertheless, some things are clearly and simply wrong. It takes wisdom to discern what should be tolerated and what should not.” The story starts in one place and winds up somewhere completely different. Recommended.
  4. Some pandemic and pandemic-adjacent news:
    • Vaccines for Children (5–11 years old) (Matt Shapiro, Substack): “There seemed to be a resilient faith among the doctors in this discussion that the only appropriate way to move forward would be to make the vaccine available and then trust parents and caregivers to take into consideration all the risks and make the right decisions given the evidence that is available. Hearing them say this is so strange to me because that is exactly my position.” This is good, sane commentary.
    • How SARS-CoV‑2 in American deer could alter the course of the global pandemic (Michaeleen Doucleff, NPR): “Now veterinarians at Pennsylvania State University have found active SARS-CoV‑2 infections in at least 30% of deer tested across Iowa during 2020. Their study, published online last week, suggests that white-tailed deer could become what’s known as a reservoir for SARS-CoV‑2. That is, the animals could carry the virus indefinitely and spread it back to humans periodically. If that’s the case, it would essentially dash any hopes of eliminating or eradicating the virus in the U.S. — and therefore from the world — says veterinary virologist Suresh Kuchipudi at Penn State, who co-led the study.”
      • Have they tried masking the deer?
    • Good morning. Is it time to start moving back to normalcy? (David Leonhardt, New York Times): “The bottom line is that Covid now presents the sort of risk to most vaccinated people that we unthinkingly accept in other parts of life. And there is not going to be a day when we wake up to headlines proclaiming that Covid is defeated. In many ways, the future of the virus has arrived. All of which raises the question of which precautions should end — now or soon — and which should become permanent.”
      • Gonna tip my hand here: we should accept that COVID is not going away, lament those we have lost, rejoice that we have vaccines and are even starting to see effective treatments emerge, and get on with life. Unvaccinated people have made their choice and I’m happy to respect it, doubly so now that deer seem to be repositories for COVID (widespread animal infections undermine the only strong argument I know for vaccine mandates — namely that the unvaccinated allow the virus to circulate and perhaps mutate).
    • God’s Mercy in a New Malaria Vaccine (Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra interviews Kelly Chibale, The Gospel Coalition): “Science is a gift from God, out of his mercy for us. As a scientist, I am doing God’s work, attempting to alleviate human suffering in partnership with God. And other Christians cannot say that we don’t need the scientific part of the body of Christ. The finger cannot say it doesn’t need the nose (1 Cor. 12:12–27).” The interviewee is a professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Cape Town.
  5. Meta-analysis suggests that emotional intelligence is declining among college students (Beth Ellwood, Psy Post): “Western culture has undergone remarkable change in the past 20 years. For one, a rise in economic liberalism and free-market capitalism has encouraged an environment of competitive individualism. Secondly, social media emerged and has grown rapidly, along with smartphone technology. Studies suggest these changes may have led to generational differences in personality, revealing generational rises in narcissism, self-esteem, self-focus, and materialism.”
    • This feels related: A “proliferation of administrators”: faculty reflect on two decades of rapid expansion (Philip Mousavizadeh, Yale Daily News): “Lauren Noble, the founder and executive director of the William F. Buckley Jr. program at Yale, pointed to the fact that the number of Yale’s administrators today exceeds the number of faculty — 5,066 compared to 4,937 — which ‘raises important questions about the university’s allocation of resources,’ she said. ‘It’s unclear how such a significant increase advances Yale’s mission.’ ”
    • For context, there are only 4,664 undergrads at Yale: more than one administrator per student! Not all administrators deal with students (some work with faculty, for example), but that is still a stunning comparison.
  6. Some thoughts about critical race theory in schools:
    • The Woke Meet Their Match: Parents (Andrew Sullivan, Substack): “And when the Democrats and the mainstream media insist that CRT is not being taught in high schools, they’re being way too cute. Of course K‑12 kids in Virginia’s public schools are not explicitly reading the collected works of Derrick Bell or Richard Delgado — no more than Catholic school kids in third grade are studying critiques of Aquinas. But they are being taught in a school system now thoroughly committed to the ideology and worldview of CRT, by teachers who have been marinated in it, and whose unions have championed it.… To use a term the woke might understand, it is, in fact, structural.”
    • “Critical Race Theory” and actual education policy, part one (Matt Yglesias, Substack): “Standardized testing has become a weird discourse flashpoint, but I think everyone agrees that you can, in principle, assess someone’s competence in a given subject area with a test. And if you want to compare different people, you need to give them the same test. It’s only by making comparisons across classrooms and across time that we are able to persuasively demonstrate that particulates are bad for school performance, healthy meals are good for school performance, and air conditioning improves school performance in the summer.”
    • “Critical Race Theory” and actual education policy, part two (Matt Yglesias, Substack): “That said, my view on [teaching history] as a K‑12 education issue has always had two parts:
      • Public schools are public, and to some extent, they inevitably have to reflect mass opinion. You can try to buck that trend and lose the school board election, handing all control over to right-wingers who don’t even think public schools should exist, or you can acknowledge that in a patriotic country you basically have to come up with a way to craft a patriotic narrative that’s also inclusive.
      • This is not actually very significant. The kids who are good at school will go on to attend selective colleges where they will absolutely be exposed to left-wing intellectuals’ thoughts on patriotism and American exceptionalism. The kids who are not good at school, meanwhile, are not paying close attention to the content of history classes.”
  7. How NFTs Create Value (Steve Kaczynski and Scott Duke Kominers, Harvard Business Review): “But NFTs don’t just provide a kind of digital ‘deed.’ Because blockchains are programmable, it’s possible to endow NFTs with features that enable them to expand their purpose over time, or even to provide direct utility to their holders. In other words, NFTs can do things — or let their owners do things — in both digital spaces and the physical world. In this sense, NFTs can function like membership cards or tickets, providing access to events, exclusive merchandise, and special discounts — as well as serving as digital keys to online spaces where holders can engage with each other. Moreover, because the blockchain is public, it’s even possible to send additional products directly to anyone who owns a given token. All of this gives NFT holders value over and above simple ownership — and provides creators with a vector to build a highly engaged community around their brands.” This is the first explanation of NFTs I’ve read that makes them sound useful.

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 Eat, Pray, Code: Rule of St. Benedict Becomes Tech Developer’s Community Guidelines (Kate Shellnutt, Christianity Today): “SQLite—a database management engine used in most major browsers, smart phones, Adobe products, and Skype—adopted a code of ethics pulled directly from the biblical precepts set by the venerated sixth‐century monk.” This article blew my mind. First shared in volume 175.

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 318

First, a word to new students: welcome! This might be your first email from Chi Alpha and if so you might be a little confused.

For the last several years, I have been sharing articles/resources every Friday about broad cultural, societal and theological issues.

I was inspired by the tribe of Issachar from the time of King David. They 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.

Be sure to see the disclaimers at the bottom. Also, I welcome your suggestions. If you read something fascinating please pass it my way.

All that having been said, here is 318th roundup of things I have found interesting (318, I am told, is the number of unlabeled partially ordered sets of 6 elements).

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The American Crisis of Selective Empathy (David French, The Dispatch): “…America is experiencing an empathy crisis. But it’s not quite the crisis you might think. Our empathy can overflow for the people we love, for the people within our tribe—even when they make grave errors. But what about our empathy for ‘them,’ the people we distrust? Then empathy is in short supply. Indeed, in some cases, the very concept of empathy is under fire.”
    • Related: The Limits of My Empathy for Covid Deniers (Tressie McMillan Cottom, New York Times): “Because I value being a thinking person, I honor emotions like empathy, fear, joy and trust to guide me around the pitfalls of my ego. Ego makes for really sloppy analysis and writing. I am at a point where headlines about ill and dying Covid deniers do not pull at my empathy strings the way I want them to.”
  2. Norm Macdonald’s Spiritual Journey (Nic Rowan, First Things): “Macdonald may have only been dabbling in Christianity, but his criticisms of the post-Christian world were often incisive. He had no tolerance for scientism and laughed at atheists. He frequently lampooned the likes of Neil deGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, and Bill Maher. And he wasn’t afraid to make dark predictions about a future dominated by their successors.”
  3. Fired After Getting Vaccinated—And Encouraging Others to Do So (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “I was trying to use my platform to share the truth. You’re right that Christians should be people of the truth—not just that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, but also the truth about what is real. The question is: How do you get the truth to people? We live in a time where information is coming at us from all over. It’s not necessarily that people don’t want to believe the truth.” This is a solid interview. Darling comes off very well.
  4. Effect size is significantly more important than statistical significance. (Ben Recht, personal blog): “In either case we are talking about a difference of 15 cases between the treatment and control villages in a population of 32,000 individuals.… If the effect size is so small that we need sophisticated statistics, maybe that means the effect isn’t real. Using sophisticated statistical scaffolding clouds our judgement. We end up using statistical methods as a crutch, not to dig signals out of noise, but to convince ourselves of signals when there are none.” The author is a professor of machine learning and data analysis at Berkeley.
  5. Why America needs the Black church for its own survival (Charlie Date, Washington Post): “The difference between the Black church and any other Christian institution in America is that rather than abandoning Scripture as a tool of our oppression, we apply Scripture as God’s rule for our liberty and living. The difference is in how our social ethic is rooted in both righteousness and justice, not either righteousness or justice. The difference is that we’ve come to see Jesus and his power to sustain and flourish us from the margins without the benefit of large donors, political capital or ownership of media outlets.” The author is pastor of a prominent Black church in Chicago as well as a seminary professor.
  6. Roe Will Go (Robert P. George, First Things): “Let me offer a prediction, free of any face-saving hedge: Next year, the Supreme Court will hold that there is no constitutional right to elective abortions. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case pending before the court, it will return the issue to the states for the first time in forty-nine years. It will do so explicitly, calling out by name, and reversing in full, the two major cases that confected and then entrenched a constitutional right to elective abortion: Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992). And the vote will be six to three.” The author is a law professor at Princeton.

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 One Parameter Equation That Can Exactly Fit Any Scatter Plot (Alex Tabarrok, Marginal Revolution): “Overfitting is possible with just one parameter and so models with fewer parameters are not necessarily preferable even if they fit the data as well or better than models with more parameters.” Researchers take note. The underlying mathematics paper is well‐written and interesting: One Parameter Is Always Enough (Steven T. Piantadosi) — among other things, it points out that you can smuggle in arbitrarily large amounts of data into an equation through a single parameter because a number can have infinite digits. Obvious once stated, but I don’t know that it ever would have occurred to me. First shared in volume 154.

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 288

I keep thinking one week there won’t be enough content… this isn’t that 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 288. The number 288 is interesting in that it can also be written 4! ⋅ 3! ⋅ 2! ⋅ 1!

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. How Long Can COVID Cases Keep Plummeting? (David Wallace-Wells, NY Magazine): “It’s insane. It’s totally crazy. And so, you’re absolutely right, we have chosen that the best way forward is to live in a state of uncertainty rather than giving people all the tools and information, even if it isn’t perfect. It turns out that in many cases we’d rather not engage with that knowledge at all than have any sources of error in whatever it is we’re doing.“An interview with a Harvard epidemiologist. Highly recommended, although be warned that it will frustrate you with how reasonable and yet underimplemented his suggestions are. The title is poorly chosen.
    • The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired. (Dan Barry, New York Times): “The Texas doctor had six hours. Now that a vial of Covid-19 vaccine had been opened on this late December night, he had to find 10 eligible people for its remaining doses before the precious medicine expired. In six hours. [He did and for] his actions, Dr. Gokal was fired from his government job and then charged with stealing 10 vaccine doses worth a total of $135 — a shun-worthy misdemeanor that sent his name and mug shot rocketing around the globe.” The doctor comes across as a hero and the prosecutor as a villain. Not even a real villain — cartoon villain. I am actually a little worked up about this.
  2. 10 Lessons of an MIT Education (Gian-Carlo Rota, Texas A&M University): “At certain liberal arts colleges, sports appear to be more important than classroom subjects, and with good reason. A sport may be the only training in ‘knowing how’-in demonstrating certifiable proficiency-that a student undertakes at those colleges. At MIT, sports are a hobby (however passionately pursued) rather than a central focus because we offer a wide range of absorbing ‘knowing how’ activities.” Apparently one of an MIT professor’s advisees archived his faculty website after his death.
    • Related: Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught (Gian-Carlo Rota, Notices Of The AMS): “You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say, ‘How did he do it? He must be a genius!’ ” This link is a PDF.
  3. With a Star Science Reporter’s Purging, Mob Culture at The New York Times Enters a Strange New Phase (Quillette editorial): “So what we’re left with is the spectacle of an acclaimed reporter being purged not for malevolent actions, nor even malevolent intent, but rather for making a certain kind of sound. This is an important departure from ordinary mobbings because, even in their most dogmatic form, theories of social justice generally are at least nominally concerned with the improvement of human morality, which, crucially, is inseparable from the question of intent. McNeil, on the other hand, is being judged according to a theory of wrongdoing that presents certain words or phrases as evil by their mere utterance, as with a Harry Potter spell.” This is very cleverly written. Also, extremely correct.
  4. All In One (John Tasioulas, Aeon): “If, for example, human rights are demands that are generally high-priority in nature, such that it’s seldom if ever justified to override them, then we lose our grip on that important idea if we start including under the heading of ‘human rights’ valuable objectives – for example, access to a high-quality internet connection – that don’t plausibly enjoy that kind of priority.” Recommended by a student. The author is a philosopher at Oxford.
  5. Ravi Zacharias Hid Hundreds of Pictures of Women, Abuse During Massages, and a Rape Allegation (Daniel Silliman and Kate Shellnutt, Christianity Today): “A 12-page report released Thursday by Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM) confirms abuse by Zacharias at day spas he owned in Atlanta and uncovers five additional victims in the US, as well as evidence of sexual abuse in Thailand, India, and Malaysia.” The full report is here (pdf).
  6. We Need Balance When It Comes To Gender Dysphoric Kids. I Would Know (Scott Newgent, Newsweek): “So if we are now waking up to the fact that gender dysphoria is over-simplistically conflated with transgenderism, medical treatments have understudied long-term consequences, some are getting rich off transgender medicine and de-transitioners are speaking up in skyrocketing numbers, why are we only making it easier for children to unquestioningly transition? We now have the obligation to work together to slow trans medicalization of minors until they are adults and have the capacity to truly understand the lifelong consequences of transitioning. As a former lesbian and current trans man, I maintain this is not transphobic.”
  7. How To Be Pro-Life in Joe Biden’s America (David French, The Dispatch): “There remains no barrier for pro-life Americans to love their neighbor and directly support mothers and children who face dire need. There is even an opportunity to enact legislation that can further ease the fears of young mothers and increase their confidence that they can raise and support a child… Politics do matter, certainly, but there’s a deeper truth. Christians don’t need to win Senate races to love their neighbors.”

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 Importance of Stupidity in Scientific Research (Martin A. Schwartz, Journal of Cell Science): “At some point, the conversation turned to why she had left graduate school. To my utter astonishment, she said it was because it made her feel stupid. After a couple of years of feeling stupid every day, she was ready to do something else. I had thought of her as one of the brightest people I knew and her subsequent career supports that view. What she said bothered me. I kept thinking about it; sometime the next day, it hit me. Science makes me feel stupid too. It’s just that I’ve gotten used to it. So used to it, in fact, that I actively seek out new opportunities to feel stupid.” The author is a professor at Yale. First shared in volume 221.

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 274

I’d be happy that this is the last week I’ll share “how to think about voting” articles, except next week I’ll have to share election thinkpieces.

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. White Christian America built a faith-based safety net. What happens when it’s gone? (Bob Smietana, Religion News Service): “‘The average American doesn’t realize all the things that churches do to make society less awful,’ [professor Burge] said. Churches and other religious groups tutor kids, feed hungry people, shelter the homeless and do a great deal of good, often under the radar, he said. As religious groups shrink, those services could be lost. Burge fears younger Americans, in particular, don’t see organized religion as useful. But ‘it’s one of those things where you don’t know what you had till it is gone.’”
  2. The Sins That Cry Out to Heaven (Eduardo Andino, First Things): “The Christian tradition speaks of four peccata clamantia, or sins that cry out to heaven for vengeance: murder, sodomy, oppression of the poor, and defrauding workers of their wages…. This is not an arbitrary collection of sins.”
  3. Voting & Faith
    • Meet the Evangelicals Who Won’t Vote for Trump, Biden, or Anybody at All (Megan Fowler, Christianity Today): “Like many Christian nonvoters before her, she saw the act of casting a ballot as a sign of approval for a political power structure that in many ways opposed the way of Christ. She couldn’t do it. If Jesus brought about his kingdom by laying down his rights and spurning political power, Kennedy wanted to follow his example.”
    • Of Course Evangelicals Should Vote for Trump (Paula White-Cain, Christianity Today): “I’ve seen [Donald Trump] firsthand as a father, a husband, a leader, a businessman and now the President of the United States of America. I also recognize most people have secondhand information that mischaracterizes the man I know.”
    • The Christian Case for Joe Biden (Josh Dickson, Christianity Today): “As the National Faith Engagement Director for the Biden Campaign, I spend my days talking to people of faith about why I believe Joe is the clear moral choice in this election. But I haven’t always been a Democrat. Like many Christians, I grew up Republican.”
    • A Tale of Two Evangelicalisms (Joel Halldorf, Breaking Ground): “In the story of Swedish modernity, the democratic welfare state transformed an unjust and elitist society into a more just one. But the founding myth of United States is not a story about freedom through the state, but freedom from the state.”
  4. On the media:
    • What Do Foreign Correspondents Think of the U.S.? (The New Yorker, YouTube): thirteen minutes. I found the first half more interesting than the last half. It picked back up in the last two minutes.
    • What I Wish My Christian Friends Knew About the News Media (Rob Vaughn, Religion Unplugged): “Are my friends wrong to see the mainstream media as rotten and ridden with ‘fake news’? Yes. At least in significant ways, they have that wrong. Sure, we make mistakes. We have blind spots and faulty assumptions. But many of the criticisms are off the mark: they misunderstand what journalism is about; they feed a growing sense that there is no agreed upon reality and set of facts to which we can all refer; and, as a Christian I fear they reflect poorly on people who say they love the truth.”
    • My Resignation From The Intercept (Glenn Greenwald, Substack): “Today I sent my intention to resign from The Intercept, the news outlet I co-founded in 2013 with Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras, as well as from its parent company First Look Media. The final, precipitating cause is that The Intercept’s editors, in violation of my contractual right of editorial freedom, censored an article I wrote this week, refusing to publish it unless I remove all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, the candidate vehemently supported by all New-York-based Intercept editors involved in this effort at suppression.” This is sad. 
    • How The Intercept Abandoned Its Truth-Seeking Mission—And Lost Its Best Journalist (Zaid Jilani, Quillette): “Greenwald is a controversial figure, but my sense of him is that he’s extremely principled. Although he’s unabashedly a man of the liberal-Left—having spent years advocating for left-wing causes from animal rights to anti-war activism—he has developed an impressive (some would call it inflexible) commitment to what he sees as basic fairness. He doesn’t care about the letter next to a politician’s name: Greenwald believes everyone in power should be held accountable at all times.”
    • Two Religion Reporters Cover Where Faith and Politics Meet (Will Dudding, New York Times): “I think [religion and politics] seem inseparable partly because it’s election season, and as journalists we tend to view things through that lens ourselves. For ordinary believers, the connection is not always so clear. Some people clearly draw a connection between their faith and their views on national politics; others definitely don’t. I try to keep that in mind as a reporter and not force every story into a political frame.”
  5. Lots of Overnight Tragedies, No Overnight Miracles (Morgan Housel, The Collaborative Fund): “An important thing that explains a lot of things is that good news takes time but bad news happens instantly.” Recommended by the parent of an alumnus.
  6. Americans Have Lost Sight of What ‘Fascism’ Means (Shadi Hamid, The Atlantic): “Words matter because they help order our understanding of politics both at home and abroad. If Cotton is a fascist, then we don’t know what fascism is. And if we don’t know what fascism is, then we will struggle to identify it when it threatens millions of lives—which is precisely what is happening today in areas under Beijing’s control.” Recommended by a student.
  7. The man who wants to help you out of debt – at any cost (J Oliver Conroy, The Guardian): “Ramsey has made clear that he regards people like me as over-educated, pencil-necked idiots. From a financial point of view, I am in some ways his worst nightmare. I have more than $80,000 in student debt, most of it from a master’s degree in journalism. I work at a famously liberal newspaper whose columnists like to advocate for all the sorts of bleeding-heart economic policies he hates.” I’m always fascinated by newspaper articles about high-profile Christians. 

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 From Midwest Drug Dealer to The Farm: Jason Spyres Shares His Inspiring Story (Yasmin Samrai, Stanford Review): “To justify his criminal behaviour, he told himself that though selling pot was illegal, it wasn’t immoral. This theory came crashing down when two gangs broke into his house, split his head open, and robbed him. When Spyres discovered that the burglars had nearly mistaken his house for his neighbor’s, he realized that selling drugs put other people’s safety in jeopardy. ‘I was shocked and sickened with myself,’ he recalled. ‘I was part of a black market and my actions had unintended consequences.’” What a wild story. First shared in volume 204.

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 268

This installment can be titled “America In Decline, but the Bible Looking Pretty Solid. Also Australia.”

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.

After largely finishing this email I learned that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. I expect a TON of ink to be spilled on this and on whatever develops politically next week. Keep an eye out for thoughtful commentary and send it my way. Please do pray for her family and for our nation — an already tense election season just became even more fraught.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Does the Bible Pass the Bechdel Test? A Data-Driven Look at Women in the Story of Scripture (John Dyer, personal blog): “So does the Bible pass the Bechdel test? This short answer is: yes, there are scenes where two named women have a conversation not about a man. The longer answer is more complex, but also, I think, richer.” This is REALLY well done.
  2. Seven Deadly Sins, One Presidential Election (Bonnie Kristian, Christianity Today): “The seven deadly sins—wrath, sloth, pride, envy, greed, gluttony, and lust—as we now list them came to us in the Western church through Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century, Pope Gregory the Great seven centuries prior, and a mystic named Evagrius two centuries before that…. The 2020 election gives occasion to deal with them all.”
  3. Ecological insights ignored:
    • They Know How to Prevent Megafires. Why Won’t Anybody Listen? (Elizabeth Weil, ProPublica): “Academics believe that between 4.4 million and 11.8 million acres burned each year in prehistoric California…. We live with a deathly backlog. In February 2020, Nature Sustainability published this terrifying conclusion: California would need to burn 20 million acres — an area about the size of Maine — to restabilize in terms of fire.”
    • Is Plastic Recycling A Lie? Oil Companies Touted Recycling To Sell More Plastic (Laura Sullivan, NPR): “All of these problems [with recycling] have existed for decades, no matter what new recycling technology or expensive machinery has been developed. In all that time, less than 10 percent of plastic has ever been recycled. But the public has known little about these difficulties.”
    • Neither article is giving us much new information — I have heard knowledgeable people say similar things for quite some time now. The fact that we have not changed is disappointing but not surprising: politicians (like most people) “listen to science” when the findings of scientists align with their self-interest. The continued existence of these and other glaring problems in American life make me sad.
  4. EXCLUSIVE: Education Department opens investigation into Princeton University after president deems racism ’embedded’ in the school (Tiana Lowe, Washington Examiner): “The Department of Education has informed Princeton University that it is under investigation following the school president’s declaration that racism was ‘embedded’ in the institution.”
  5. Statistics, lies and the virus: five lessons from a pandemic (Tim Harford, personal blog): “You can appreciate, I hope, my obsession with these two contrasting accounts of statistics: one as a trick, one as a tool.… Scepticism has its place, but easily curdles into cynicism and can be weaponised into something even more poisonous than that. “ Very good insights from a British economist.
  6. Racism Is Real. But Is “Systemic Racism”? That Time I Was Published by Newsweek—For Two Hours (Matthew Franck, Public Discourse): “If everyone in general but no one in particular is to blame, the few remaining actual racists among us are let off the hook. They’re no worse than the rest of us. Of course, unlike all of us who are invited to affirm our collective guilt for the ‘system,’ the truly guilty won’t feel guilty.”
    • The author is the Associate Director of the James Madison Program at Princeton University. This one is included mostly for the drama of it being published and then unpublished by Newsweek. There is an unhealthy intellectual climate at many of our major publications.
  7. When you browse Instagram and find former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s passport number (Alex Hope, personal website): “The point of this story isn’t to say ‘wow Tony Abbott got hacked, what a dummy’. The point is that if someone famous can unknowingly post their boarding pass, anyone can.” Surprisingly entertaining and informative.

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 266

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. Do You ‘Believe in Science’…or Not? (Jacob Hess, Public Square): “…what if we’re witnessing the true nature of science in its full glory? Not as an oracle that speaks in some monolithic voice. But as an argument—between otherwise thoughtful and good-hearted people all seeking truth, but reading the data differently, defining terms differently, emphasizing different indicators in determining what is true and trustworthy, etc. If so, rather than waiting for Science to declare the truth of a matter—maybe we need to start doing something else: Thinking for ourselves.” This was a much better article than I expected.
  2. Academics Are Really, Really Worried About Their Freedom (John McWhorter, The Atlantic): “One professor notes, ‘Even with tenure and authority, I worry that students could file spurious Title IX complaints … or that students could boycott me or remove me as Chair.’ I have no reason to suppose that he is being dramatic, because exactly this, he says, happened to his predecessor.” The author is a linguistics professor at Columbia.
    • Related: The Denial of Cancel Culture (Eric Kaufmann, Quillette): “Academics don’t discriminate more than other educated professionals, and the Right discriminates as much as the Left, but the fact the Left outnumbers the Right 6:1 (9:1 among current [social sciences and humanities] staff) means that conservatives and Leavers experience a far higher discriminatory effect than the left-liberal majority. On a four-person hiring panel, a Leaver faces an 80 percent chance of discrimination.” The author is a professor of politics at Birkbeck College in the UK.
  3. Articles Related To Race, Racism and Related Topics
    • American Christianity’s White-Supremacy Problem (David Luo, New Yorker): “…Christian nationalism is not the same as personal religiosity. In fact, religious commitment—as measured by church attendance, prayer, and Scripture reading—tends to improve attitudes on race, serving as a progressive influence. This suggests the root of the white church’s problem may not be ‘Christianity proper,’ as Douglass put it, so much as the culture around white Christianity, which narrows and diminishes the American project.” This article covers a lot of ground and not all of it with equal insight (or perhaps fairness is the word I’m looking for), but as a whole well-done.
    • Black Christians Play a Crucial Role in Athlete Activism (Paul Putz , Christianity Today): “While some black Christian athletes have abstained from the recent wave of activism in stadiums and arenas—Orlando Magic forward Jonathan Isaac, for example, cited his understanding of the gospel when declining to fully participate in a pre-game racial justice ceremony—far more have played a leading role.”
    • I was the woman surrounded by BLM protesters at a D.C. restaurant. Here’s why I didn’t raise my fist. (Lauren Victor, Washington Post): “Last week, I went out to dinner in D.C. with a friend. As we sat outside at a neighborhood restaurant, a group of protesters surrounded our table and demanded that I raise my fist in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. I had marched repeatedly in the past several months in support of their cause, but I refused their demands. That interaction wound up in a viral video that within 48 hours had been viewed more than 12 million times.” This is fascinating.
    • ‘You’re Not Allowed To Film’: The Fight for Control Over Who Reports From Portland (Nancy Rommelmann, Reason): “I cannot say who came up with these anti-camera battle cries. But it’s easy to understand why protesters use them: to shape the narrative the country sees about the protests. And that narrative, in my estimation after many weeks covering street clashes in a city where I lived for 15 years, is 90 percent [mendacious nonsense].”
    • Don’t take your guns to town, son (Tim Carney, Washington Examiner): “In life, there are horrible situations in which there are no good decisions or where it is extremely easy to make the wrong decision. So when we can avoid these horrible situations, we ought to.”
      • This is an insight with wide-ranging application. It’s why you shouldn’t bring guns to a protest and also why there are some parties on campus you shouldn’t go to.
    • Police reforms inspired by George Floyd face defeat in CA (Editorial Board, Sacramento Bee): “The legislators who authored these crucial reforms deserve support and recognition for walking the walk. But Californians must also remember the names of any legislators who took a knee to honor Black Lives Matter in front of the cameras and then, behind the scenes, bowed down to police groups to kill much-needed reforms.”
  4. The Social Fabric of the US Is Fraying Severely, if Not Unravelling (Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept): “Why is virtually every metric of mental and spiritual disease — suicide, depression, anxiety disorders, addiction, and alcoholism — increasing significantly, rapidly, in the richest country on earth, one filled with advanced technologies and at least the pretense of liberal democracy?”
  5. Boycotts Can’t Be a Test of Moral Purity (Zephyr Teachout, The Atlantic): “We don’t ask people to boycott libraries in order to change library rules; we don’t ask people to boycott highways to ask for them to be safer; we don’t demand that you buy only bottled water while protesting water-utility governance.” The delightfully-named author is a law prof at Fordham. Recommended by a student.
  6. On presidential politics:
    • What You Should Know About the 2020 Democratic Party Platform (Joe Carter, Gospel Coalition): “Why should Christians care about a document that few non-politicians will ever read? Because of the influence the two major party platforms have on public policy. While the platform is not binding on the presidential nominee or any other politicians, political scientists have found that over the past 30 years lawmakers in Congress tend to vote in line with their party’s platform: 89 percent of the time for Republicans, and 79 percent of the time for Democrats.“
    • What You Should Know About the 2020 Republican Party Platform (Joe Carter, Gospel Coalition): “This article will provide, without commentary, an outline of the Republican platform as it relates to several social issues. Every statement is either a direct quote or a summary of the platform’s position.”

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. America in one tweet:“We are living in an era of woke capitalism in which companies pretend to care about social justice to sell products to people who pretend to hate capitalism.” (Clay Routledge, Twitter) First shared in volume 186.

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 264

substantive pieces this week, plus religious arguments for and against both Biden and Trump

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.

As always, just skim and open the links that seem interesting to you in new tabs.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Challenge of Marxism (Yoram Hazony, Quillette): “Not very long ago, most of us living in free societies knew that Marxism was not compatible with democracy…. Indeed, the entire purpose of democratic government, with its plurality of legitimate parties, is to avoid the violent reconstitution of society that Marxist political theory regards as the only reasonable aim of politics.”
  2. The particle collection that fancied itself a physicist (Ed Feser, personal blog): “Democritus’s point is that if the atomist says both that atoms are all that exist and that color, sweetness, etc. and the other qualities of conscious experience are not to be found in the atoms, then we have a paradox.” Feser, as I’ve mentioned before, is one of my favorite philosophers.
  3. Anti-racist Arguments Are Tearing People Apart (Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic): “I made a series of rapid assumptions about what I was watching. I surmised that Broshi was a college-educated, upper-middle-class progressive who sits on some sort of education council in the public-school system and owns copies of White Fragility and How to Be an Antiracist. I surmised that she was calling someone out. And I surmised that her white, male target was offscreen rolling his eyes. All of which turned out to be correct.” This is amazing.
    • Related: Why we cannot ignore Institutional Racism (George Yancey, Patheos): “Pretend that we are going to have a mile race a year from now. I tell a third of the class about the race and hire a trainer for them. For another third of the class I tell them about the race six months later but do not hire them a trainer. But I do advise them that they may want to work on their own to get ready for the race. The last third of the class I call them the morning of the race and tell them that it is time to run. Assuming that the class is randomly divided into thirds, we know what will happen in the race do we not?”
    • Related: Black and White evangelicals once talked about ‘racial reconciliation.’ Then Trump came along. (Sarah Pulliam Bailey, Washington Post): “…despite shared Christian beliefs and commitment to religious observance, White evangelicals are among the most strongly Republican constituencies, while Black Protestants tend to vote Democratic. And that divide appears to have grown harder to bridge since Trump took office.”
    • Colleges aren’t reporting anti-Semitism as a crime (Aiden Pink, Forward): “A Forward analysis comparing news reports of campus antisemitism between 2016 and 2018 to the filings for those years found that fewer than half of the incidents that could have been reported as hate crimes actually were. Out of a total of 158 incidents at 64 schools, 93 — including antisemitic vandalism at brand-name schools known for vibrant Jewish communities like Harvard, Princeton, MIT, UCLA and the University of Maryland — were left out of the federal filings.” Stanford comes off looking pretty good in this article. 
  4. The American Misunderstanding of Natural Rights (Cameron Hilditch, National Review): “Our inheritance of human rights was built to reflect the fact that we are all living images of a particular crucified criminal from Galilee, who proclaimed that we are each and all more than what Caesar would make of us. If we care to enjoy the rights bequeathed to us by this tradition throughout the coming years, decades, and centuries, then we can no longer avoid publicly discussing the inextricable nature of religious and political ideas.” 
    • Related: Is American Christian Jurisprudence a Thing? (Steven D. Smith, Law & Liberty): “Taken together, these assumptions generate an overall attitude toward the project of law that resists opposing extremes: on the one hand, an excessive or deconstructive cynicism—one that would reduce the law to simply a manifestation of power based on class, race, or gender—and on the other hand a dangerous utopianism that would use law to achieve perfect justice but end up destroying human freedom.” The author is a law professor at the University of San Diego. 
    • Related. Ish. The end of secularism is nigh (Tom Holland, UnHerd): “That there existed things called ‘religions’ — ‘Hinduism’, ‘Islam’, ‘Judaism’ ­— and that these functioned in a dimension distinct from entire spheres of human activity — spheres called ‘secular’ in English — was not a conviction native to anywhere except for Western Europe.”
  5. China’s Artificial Intelligence Surveillance State Goes Global (Ross Andersen, The Atlantic): “In the early aughts, the Chinese telecom titan ZTE sold Ethiopia a wireless network with built-in backdoor access for the government. In a later crackdown, dissidents were rounded up for brutal interrogations, during which they were played audio from recent phone calls they’d made. Today, Kenya, Uganda, and Mauritius are outfitting major cities with Chinese-made surveillance networks.” I think horrifying might be the best word for this article. 
  6. On presidential politics and Christianity:
    • From the right: Letter to an Anti-Trump Christian Friend (Wayne Grudem, TownHall): “In every column that I’ve published in support of Trump, I have explicitly registered my disapproval of his character flaws and previous immoral behavior. I support him because of the policies he has enacted and will enact, and in spite of his character flaws (which I don’t think rise to a level that would disqualify him from being president; more on this below).” The author is a professor at Phoenix Seminary.
    •  From the left: The Joe Biden that I know is a man of faith (Chris Coons, Fox News): “For Democrats like Joe and me, taking care of the planet isn’t just about rising sea levels and extreme weather, it’s also about protecting and honoring God’s creation. For Democrats like Joe and me, fighting for civil rights and equality isn’t just about political correctness, it’s about loving our neighbor and recognizing that all of us are created equal in the eyes of God.” The author is a US Senator.
    • A criticism of the right: Why Evangelicals Support Trump—and Why They Shouldn’t (George Yancey, The Bulwark): “Many evangelical Christians see Trump as someone who will save them from Christianophobia. And while I understand and respect the nature of these Christians’ fears—in fact, I share them—I believe that Trump is not only not a solution to these issues but in the long run he will make things worse.” The author is a professor at Baylor.
    • A criticism of the left: Devout Catholics and Secular Progressives (Robert George, First Things): this one is difficult to excerpt. Very well done. The author is a professor at Princeton. 

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 Godspeed: The Pace Of Being Known (Vimeo): a student brought this 30 minute video to my attention and said it made her think about how she should be living in her dorm (sadly irrelevant for that purpose at the moment). First shared in volume 181.

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 260

From naked protestors in Portland to slavery in China to theological reflections on conspiracy theories.

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. China’s Xinjiang Province a Moral Quandary for the West (Michael Brendan Dougherty, National Review): “The attempt to place modern slaves in the supply chain of Western luxury goods is an attempt to implicate and morally geld Western nations who would criticize or punish the Chinese Communist Party for its crimes.”
  2. USS University (Scott Galloway, personal blog): “There is a dangerous conflation of the discussion about K‑12 and university reopenings. The two are starkly different. There are strong reasons to reopen K‑12, and there are stronger reasons to keep universities shuttered.“ The author is a business prof at NYU. Recommended by an alumnus.
    • Related: Colleges Are Getting Ready to Blame Their Students (Julia Marcus and Jessica Gold, The Atlantic): “Students will get infected, and universities will rebuke them for it; campuses will close, and students will be blamed for it. Relying on the self-control of young adults, rather than deploying the public-health infrastructure needed to control a disease that spreads easily among people who live, eat, study, and socialize together, is not a safe reopening strategy—and yelling at students for their dangerous behavior won’t help either.” The authors are professors at Harvard and Washington University, respectively. 
    • Vaguely related: Your State’s COVID Numbers In Context (PoliMath, Substack): “Headlines are allergic to context and the high-population states get all the attention because they show big numbers (because they are big states). When a smaller state gets any reporting, it is entirely outside any context. In Washington, it was reported that we had 754 new cases and 7 new deaths. Is that a lot? How does that compare to other states?” Very detailed and insightful. 
  3. Coronavirus, Conspiracy Theories, and the Ninth Commandment (David French, The Dispatch): “Christian teaching about our lives in our workplaces is not primarily about how to obtain a promotion, how to invest our money, or how to start a business. In other words, it’s not about the objectives of economic engagement, though those objectives are important. Instead, the focus is on ministering to colleagues, cultivating faith in adversity, and generally learning how to be salt and light even in sometimes hostile or intimidating environments. [But we don’t do this with politics.]” Recommended by an alumnus, this one was really good.
  4. 8 facts about religion and government in the United States (Dalia Fahmy, Pew Research Center): “While the U.S. Constitution does not mention God, every state constitution references either God or the divine. God also appears in the Declaration of Independence, the Pledge of Allegiance and on U.S. currency.” Recommended by a student.
  5. Where is the national news coverage of current surge of vandalism at Catholic churches? (Clemente Lisi, GetReligion): “Who’s responsible for this anti-Catholic violence? Is it Muslim terrorists? Neo-Nazis? Left-wing radicals? Are these isolated incidents or part of a coordinated attack? We don’t know because the elite newsrooms with the talent and resources to handle this kind of investigation are missing in action, in this case.… One has to wonder how these incidents would have been covered had they been mosques? What about public schools? Or say Planned Parenthood facilities?”
    • Related: Roman Catholics: The Original Abolitionists (Paul Kengor, Crisis Magazine): “Last weekend, one of Serra’s mission churches in California went up in flames, with the cause of the fire not yet known. In the last few days, a statue of Mary was set on fire in Boston and another was vandalized in Brooklyn (among others). As to what Mary has to do with the modern anti-statue-racism movement is anyone’s guess. Nonetheless, if the issue is (rightly so) a just condemnation of slavery and racism, and if one is genuinely seeking accurate history, then today’s activists ought to look back in admiration at the impressive track record of the Roman Catholic Church.” The author is a professor of political science at Grove City College. The history of the Catholic Church on the issue of slavery is better than the Protestant church.
  6. What You Need To Know About The Battle of Portland (Robert Evans, Bellingcat): “I reported on the fighting in Mosul back in 2017, and what happened that night in the streets of Portland was, of course, not nearly as brutal or dangerous as actual combat. Yet it was about as close as you can get without using live ammunition.“ A significant qualifier at the end of that sentence, interesting nonetheless.
    • Portland’s protests were supposed to be about black lives. Now, they’re white spectacle. (E.D. Mondainé, Washington Post): “We welcome our white brothers and sisters in this struggle. In fact, we need them. But I must ask them to remain humbly attuned to the opportunity of this moment — and to reflect on whether any actions they take will truly help establish justice, or whether they are simply for show.” The author is president of the Portland branch of the NAACP.
    • Out of Portland tear gas, an apparition emerges, capturing the imagination of protesters (Los Angeles Times): “She emerged as an apparition from clouds of tear gas as federal agents fired pepper balls at angry protesters in the early Saturday darkness. A woman wearing nothing but a black face mask and a stocking cap strode toward a dozen heavily armed agents attired in camouflage fatigues, lined up across a downtown Portland street.” Portland gonna port.
    • Tangentially Related: American Crime and the Baltimore Model (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “Idealists may hope these changes will eliminate police brutality as communities find better ways to prevent crime than deterrence and force. But on the hunch that human nature hasn’t changed, that isn’t going to happen. Criminals, fearing less, will continue to prey on others. Police, fearing more, will hold back from doing their jobs. Those with means to leave their neighborhoods, will. Those without the means will suffer.”
  7. A new intelligentsia is pushing back against wokeness (Batya Ungar-Sargon, Forward): “The anti-woke Black intelligentsia is leading a counter-culture to a woke hegemony and the online culture that popularized it. But their views hew more closely to those of most Black Americans than the new antiracism. Polling has long indicated that white liberals express radically more liberal views on racial and social issues than their Black and Latino neighbors.” Very interesting interviews.
    • Related: The Left is Now the Right (Matt Taibbi, Substack): “Things we once despised about the right have been amplified a thousand-fold on the flip. Conservatives once tried to legislate what went on in your bedroom; now it’s the left that obsesses over sexual codicils, not just for the bedroom but everywhere. Right-wingers from time to time made headlines campaigning against everything from The Last Temptation of Christ to ‘Fuck the Police,’ though we laughed at the idea that Ice Cube made cops literally unsafe… today Matt Yglesias signing a group letter with Noam Chomsky is considered threatening.”
    • Related: When Wokes and Racists Actually Agree on Everything (Ryan Long Comedy, YouTube) : two minutes of brilliance

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 Dissolving the Fermi Paradox (Scott Alexander, Slate Star Codex): “Imagine we knew God flipped a coin. If it came up heads, He made 10 billion alien civilization. If it came up tails, He made none besides Earth. Using our one parameter Drake Equation, we determine that on average there should be 5 billion alien civilizations. Since we see zero, that’s quite the paradox, isn’t it? No. In this case the mean is meaningless. It’s not at all surprising that we see zero alien civilizations, it just means the coin must have landed tails. SDO say that relying on the Drake Equation is the same kind of error.”  First shared in volume 159.

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.