Tag: tolkien

TGFI, Volume 535: marrying young and the depths of Tolkien

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Interesting

On Fridays I share articles/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues likely to be of interest to Christians in college. Be sure to see the explanation and disclaimers at the bottom. I welcome your suggestions, so if you read something fascinating please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Brother I Lost (Megan McArdle, The Dispatch): “For as long as I can remember, I have believed that a woman should be able to decide whether to become a mother, and also believed that the life growing inside her should get the same shot as the rest of us at life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Since these two beliefs are fundamentally incompatible, I usually managed the contradiction by avoiding the subject.”
  2. Tough Love: I Don’t Want My 22-Year-Old to Get Married (Abigail Shrier, The Free Press): “In case you don’t know how most young women your daughter’s age are spending their twenties, allow me to fill you in: surfing dating apps, growing more cynical and jaded by the year, maintaining ‘situationships’ with hot guys who sleep with them whenever it suits them and vanish when it doesn’t. An entire generation of young women are letting their most formative, eligible decade slip through their fingers like olive oil. A hundred first dates. Dozens of booty calls. Learning little—because you cannot learn much from a non-relationship—calling it ‘self-knowledge’ while gaining nothing but UTIs and a drawerful of Plan B.… the truth is: No one’s ever mature enough for marriage. No one’s ever entirely ready. Nor for the labors and joys of motherhood. We splash through these stages a little batty and half-blind. If we meet the demands, they change us. That much is inevitable. But until we start to swim, we never really know we can.” 
    • Magnificent, recommended to me by an alumnus.
  3. The Lost Generation (Jacob Savage, Compact Magazine): “Over the course of the 2010s, nearly every mechanism liberal America used to confer prestige was reweighted along identitarian lines.… Most of the men I interviewed started out as liberals. Some still are. But to feel the weight of society’s disfavor can be disorienting. We millennials were true believers in race and gender-blind meritocracy, which for all its faults—its naïveté about human nature, its optimism in the American Dream—was far superior to what replaced it. And to see that vision so spectacularly betrayed has engendered a skepticism toward the entire liberal project that won’t soon disappear.” 
    • The virality of this article (and the host of responses it has engendered) suggests that it has hit a nerve.
  4. AI romance blooms as Japanese woman weds virtual partner of her dreams (Kim Kyung-Hoon & Satoshi Sugiyama, Reuters): “A year ago, Noguchi took ChatGPT’s advice about what she said was a fraught relationship with her human fiance and resolved to break off their engagement.… Yasuyuki Sakurai, a wedding planner for more than 20 years, said he now almost exclusively handles marriages of clients with virtual characters, averaging about one a month.” 
    • Shared with me by a horrified student.
  5. What Courage Does for Us (David French, New York Times): “An emphasis on accomplishment can actually breed cowardice. Courage can cost you your career. Courage can cost you your life. And so the careerist learns to adapt, to hide when the bullets (real or figurative) start to fly. Sure, the hero can rise to the top, but he or she can also end up dead, and you can’t be a president or a chief executive or a member of Congress from the grave.” 
    • Unlocked.
    • Related, also unlocked: The Secret Trial of the General Who Refused to Attack Tiananmen Square (Chris Buckley, New York Times): “ ‘I said to them that my superiors can appoint me, and they can also dismiss me,’ he recounted in court, seeming to indicate that he was willing to lose his job over his decision. One of the generals at the meeting, Dai Jingsheng, told investigators that he and his colleagues went silent for about a minute while they absorbed General Xu’s defiance. ‘Nobody expected words like this from Xu,”‘said General Dai, according to the testimony. Under questioning, General Xu acknowledged that the military answered to China’s Communist Party leaders. But he suggested that it should also be subject to a broader authority.”
    • Also related: Man who filmed Uyghur concentration camps now fights for his own freedom in the United States (Atlas Luk, Substack): “His asylum application, which had an interview pending, his valid work permit, his New York State driver’s license… in the eyes of ICE, all of these were worthless because he had ‘entered without inspection’ by customs. With the Trump administration cracking down on illegal immigration, Broome County Jail was overcrowded. Months passed, and Guan Heng waited anxiously and dejectedly for the outcome of his case. No one knew what this young man from China had gone through in the past few years; nor did anyone know that the images he had filmed of the Xinjiang detention camps, at great personal risk, provided crucial evidence of the Chinese authorities’ actions against the Uyghur people in Xinjiang. Or that if he were to be deported, he would be facing immense danger.”
  6. Why I Keep Returning to Middle-Earth (Michael D.C. Drout, New York Times): “Subtle variations in Tolkien’s writing style across its 62 chapters generate the impression that ‘The Lord of the Rings’ is a compilation of other texts. This pattern is largely invisible even to careful readers, but new methods of computer-assisted analysis throw it into sharp relief. An algorithm can compare the vocabularies of the chapters and cluster those that are similar.… Its chapters group in a complex hierarchy with three large groupings and several outliers, a pattern of clustering not typical for a modern novel. It is closer in form to multiauthor composite texts from the Middle Ages. Not only do the clusters not match the point-of-view characters; they don’t seem to be related to volume, book, setting, type of action or pacing.… This stylistic variation was, at least initially, completely unintentional, a byproduct of Tolkien’s laborious and agonizing 17-year effort to complete the book. Tolkien had aimed to make ‘The Lord of the Rings’ feel as if it had been discovered and assembled; the frame narrative of the book is that it’s a translation of a diary that was expanded into a history and augmented by later scholars. His struggles, providentially, helped him achieve that effect.” 
    • Fascinating stuff. The whole essay is deeply personal and quite moving. The author is an English professor at Wheaton. Unlocked.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 497: Christianity in Space, Redeeming Turkish Delight, and How To Sneeze

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. Stranded Astronaut Held Onto Faith in Darkest Moments: ‘God Was There’ (Sylvia St. Cyr, The Roys Report): “After being stranded for nine months in space, veteran NASA astronaut Barry ‘Butch’ Wilmore is sharing how his faith in God kept him going.… Wilmore, a member and elder of Providence Baptist Church in Pasadena, Texas, stayed connected with his church throughout his time in space. He even made a few calls to some elderly church members throughout his time stranded on the station, to encourage them.”
  2. What Follows from Lab Leak? (Alex Tabarrok, Marginal Revolution): “First, and most importantly, the higher the probability that SARS-CoV‑2 leaked from a lab the higher the probability we should expect another pandemic. Research at Wuhan was not especially unusual or high-tech. Modifying viruses such as coronaviruses (e.g., inserting spike proteins, adapting receptor-binding domains) is common practice in virology research and gain-of-function experiments with viruses have been widely conducted. Thus, manufacturing a virus capable of killing ~20 million human beings or more is well within the capability of say ~500‑1000 labs worldwide. The number of such labs is growing in number and such research is becoming less costly and easier to conduct. Thus, lab-leak means the risks are larger than we thought and increasing.” 
    • Some very practical suggestions in this short piece.
  3. The Hidden Hands: Amanuenses and the Letters Behind the Letters (C. Michael Patton, Credo House): “Yes, the secretaries could write competent Greek. But often, due to the personal additions at the end of these letters, I was able to compare the handwriting and style of the author himself. And get this: in many cases, the author’s own Greek was better than the scribe’s. More refined. More fluid. More legible. This shattered my assumptions. It meant that we can’t assume that people used secretaries only because they were illiterate, uneducated, or of low status. On the contrary, people who were clearly capable writers—sometimes better writers—still made use of amanuenses.” 
    • This is a fascinating look at the way ancient letters were written with the help of assistants — including letters in the New Testament.
    • Vaguely related (in the sense that it’s about the historical background for Bible stuff): Did Jesus teach in Greek? (Ian Paul, blog): “The argument about Jesus and Greek has several layers, starting with the most general. Were the regions Jesus taught in multilingual (polyglot), and how do we know? Is it likely that Jesus himself was multilingual? And is there specific evidence of this in the New Testament, in examples of his teaching?”
  4. Why Christian Men Need Friendship, Not Just “Accountability” (Samuel D. James, Substack): “Accountability is a fruit from a much larger tree. In an age in which millions of American men are so lonely it’s literally killing them, the urgent issue is not finding someone to receive a report of your web activity. It’s finding someone who’ll talk to you at all. Why? Because friendship has a sanctifying power. Not only is it easier to be honest and transparent with someone whom you’re convinced is a true friend, but the friendship itself is a means of grace in the fight against lust.”
  5. The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans (Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic): “I had very strong doubts that this text group was real, because I could not believe that the national-security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans. I also could not believe that the national security adviser to the president would be so reckless as to include the editor in chief of The Atlantic in such discussions with senior U.S. officials, up to and including the vice president.” 
    • A wild story. Lots of follow-up in the news. Just google for it.
    • Seven Ways of Looking at a Group Chat (Nick Cattogio, The Dispatch): “There are three distinct scandals here and different culprits in each one. The first is using Signal instead of secure government channels to discuss something as sensitive as military strikes. Everyone involved, save Jeffrey Goldberg, bears responsibility for that. The second is mistakenly including Goldberg in the discussion, for which Waltz would seem to be at fault. And the third is going so far as to share ‘operational details’ in the chat, potentially placing people in the field at risk, which sure sounds like reckless mishandling of classified information—a subject on which Republicans have had a lot to say in recent years. The blame for that would appear to land on Hegseth.”
    • Investigation Reveals DOGE Had Just Laid Off The Guy Whose Job It Was To Make Sure Jeffrey Goldberg Wasn’t In The War Group Chat (Babylon Bee)
  6. The Inklings:
    • Why JRR Tolkien Made March 25 the Day the Ring Was Destroyed (Joseph Pearce, National Catholic Register): “Frodo Baggins, as the one chosen to be the Ring bearer, is the Cross bearer. He is, therefore, a Christ figure. This is why Tolkien has him leaving Rivendell on Dec. 25 and arriving at Mount Doom (Golgotha) on March 25 (Good Friday). Frodo’s journey, or pilgrimage, begins on Christ’s birthday and ends on the date of Christ’s death.”
    • In Search of Turkish Delight (Valerie Stivers, First Things): “Işin quotes American Naval physician James McKay, writing in 1830: Turkish delight was ‘a delicious pasty-mass which melts away in the mouth, and leaves a fragrant flavor behind.’ The French artist and writer Pretextat Lecomte described it as ‘beautiful’ in color and ‘warm and transparent.’ To make it, Turkish confectioners used hand-sifted wheat starch (produced by a domestic process with a long local tradition), and employed a laborious technique that called for several hours of continuous stirring. They used musk and rose water as flavorings, and also sprinkled musk on the powdered sugar coating. They rubbed the trays used to mold it and the scissors used to cut it with fragrant almond oil. By the 1880s, Işin says, the flavors had multiplied to include clotted cream, mastic, almond, and pistachio. In the 1900s came pine nut and hazelnut, and flavors from essences or syrups such as violet, lemon, and bitter orange. This starts to sound like a dessert a child could dream of, or that an open-minded and pleasure-loving adult like C. S. Lewis would find tempting. It seems likely that very few modern eaters have ever tasted true Turkish delight, at least outside the Grand Bazaar. All contemporary recipes use corn starch. Musk oil is illegal.” 
      • I am both personally disappointed that I can’t taste it and thrilled that Lewis wasn’t crazy.
  7. How worried should legal immigrants be about Trump’s deportations? (Nicole Narea, Vox): “These are uncertain times for many immigrants in the US. There have been reports of individual visa and green card holders and tourists who have been detained and deported. However, the Trump administration does not seem to be indiscriminately targeting legal immigrants who have authorization to be in the US on a large scale. Some have reportedly been targeted based on their political activism.…  And it’s not just immigrants who have been affected. A US citizen said he was walking down the streets of Chicago when he was arrested by immigration agents, who confiscated his ID and held him for 10 hours before releasing him. Even though limited in number, these cases have been going viral — and are understandably causing fear in immigrant communities.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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