Category: Links

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 422

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 422, a number which feels like it should have a lot of prime factors but which only has two: 422 = 2·211.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Why religious belief provides a real buffer against suicide risk (David H Rosmarin, Psyche): “The scientific world in general, and the disciplines of behavioural health in particular, tend to be biased against matters of spirituality and religion. The existing literature is enough to show that these factors have large protective effects against suicide. If another variable had even half the value for any major public health concern, I suspect it would receive substantially more attention.”
    • The author is a professor at Harvard Medical School.
  2. Being There (David French, New York Times): “I’ve never met a person who wants to lose friends. But I’ve met many, many people who suffer from loneliness and say that they just ‘lost touch.’ What happened? I ask. ‘Life happened,’ they say. At each new stage of life it was easier to say no to a friend than to say no to work, to a spouse, to one’s kids. And while each individual no can be understandable and even justifiable, the accumulation of noes suffocates friendships, even without an argument, a breach or a betrayal.”
  3. Unable to Find Ultimate Truth in Zen Buddhism, I Turned to Jesus (Sita Slavov, Christianity Today): “In Zen, I often felt alone in the trenches with my darkest thoughts and feelings. And even the most beautiful moments I experienced during meditation—those moments of delight in God’s creation—were useless without a compelling framework to process and integrate them into my life. In contrast, when I meditate on God’s Word and presence, the Holy Spirit sustains me in the trenches, and Scripture provides the framework to understand my experience.”
    • Unlocked.
  4. Winners don’t do irony (Janan Ganesh, Financial Times): “People who deal in higher stakes have to insulate themselves from the archness and cynicism of the wider culture. Irony gets nothing done. It is the creed of the passive observer. Not everyone who is incapable of irony is a winner, no. But lots of winners are incapable of irony.”
  5. New atheism has collapsed. The tide is turning on belief in God (Justin Brierly, Premiere Christianity): “Science and reason alone won’t buy you meaning, purpose and value. Apart from its internal squabbles, the real reason that New Atheism stalled as a cultural movement was that it failed to give people a story to live their life by, so people went looking for a story elsewhere.”
  6. A green card processing change means US could lose thousands of faith leaders from abroad (Giovanna Dell’Orto, AP News): “A sudden procedural change in how the federal government processes green cards for foreign-born religious workers, together with historic highs in numbers of illegal border crossers, means that thousands of clergy like him are losing the ability to remain in this country.”
    • This observation was interesting to me: “Those from religious orders with vows of poverty, like Catholic nuns and Buddhist monks, are especially hard hit, because most other employment visa categories require employers to show they’re paying foreign workers prevailing wages. Since they’re getting no wages, they don’t qualify.”
    • Sentences like that are precisely why religious exemptions are needed for some laws — the law on its face seems reasonable and is designed to protect workers, but it has the effect of harming religious workers of multiple faiths because the totally fine way they do things doesn’t map onto the way most of society works.
  7. Drones Everywhere: How the Technological Revolution on Ukraine Battlefields Is Reshaping Modern Warfare (Yaroslav Trofimov, Wall Street Journal): “ ‘It’s a question of cost,’ said Phillips O’Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. ‘If you can destroy an expensive, heavy system for something that costs much much less, then actually the power differential between the two countries doesn’t matter as much.’… When it comes to tanks, in particular, the lesson of the Ukrainian war is that tank-on-tank battles have become a rarity—which means that the relative sophistication of a tank is no longer as important. Fewer than 5% of tanks destroyed since the war began had been hit by other tanks, according to Ukrainian officials, with the rest succumbing to mines, artillery, antitank missiles and drones.”

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 421

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 421, a twin prime number (cf 419) which is also the sum of five consecutive primes: 421 = 73 + 79 + 83 + 89 + 97.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Hundreds of students baptized after Unite Auburn worship service (Brady Talbert, WSFA News): “Auburn University senior Michael Floyd said he will never forget what he witnessed on campus Tuesday night. ‘I’ve seen Auburn basketball beat Kentucky, I’ve seen Auburn football beat Alabama, but I have never seen something like I did on Tuesday night,’ Floyd said. Thousands packedNeville Arena for a night of worship. When it was ending, one student wanted to be baptized. Without a tub, crowds started gathering at the lake at Auburn’s Red Barn, where roughly 200 people ultimately gave their lives to Christ.”
  2. Gender, Sexual Orientation and Religion Among American College Students (Ryan Burge, Substack): “What really kicked this off was a report from Brown University that indicated that 38% of their student body identifies as homosexual, bisexual, queer, asexual, pansexual, questioning, or other. When that same poll was conducted ten years earlier, that share was just 14%. Is Brown an outlier here? Or are huge percentages of college students not straight and/or not cisgender? The survey gave seven total options for gender. The first thing that needs to be pointed out is that the vast, vast majority of young people identify as man or woman. In fact, this was the choice of 98.2% of all respondents in the survey. In other words, about one in fifty college aged students identifies as nonbinary, genderqueer/genderfluid, agender, unsure, or prefer not to say.… 72% of the sample identifies as straight. Another 12% says that they are bisexual and 5% indicates that they are gay/lesbian. These three response options encompass about 90% of all respondents in the sample. About two percent identify as pansexual or queer or unsure.”
    • Full of interesting data, emphasis in original. I believe Brown is accurately reporting its data, and I also believe Brown (and Stanford) are outliers in this regard.
    • Of particular note: “The groups that are the least likely to say that they are straight are atheists at 55% and agnostics at 53%. It’s pretty staggering to consider that nearly half of young atheists/agnostics are not heterosexual. Nothing in particulars are not far behind, either, at 62%. The nones are much less likely to be straight compared to their religious counterparts.” (emphasis removed for readability)
  3. The Huddled Masses At The Border (Andrew Sullivan, Substack): “Lampedusa is a picturesque, rocky Italian island in the Mediterranean between Tunisia and Sicily, with gorgeous beaches and a small population of around 6,000. In just five days last week, its population tripled, as 11,000 migrants showed up in at least 199 boats, overwhelming resources. The center for accommodating migrants was designed for 600.”
    • Amazing statistics. The essay touches on Europe but focuses on America. Overall a worthwhile read whatever your instincts on immigration.
  4. The Woman Who Stood Up to the Porn Industry—and Won (Nancy Rommelmann, The Free Press): “While Schlegel attends a nondenominational Christian church and describes her faith as ‘very important to me,’ she had no desire to impose her morality on others over the age of eighteen. ‘Adults have rights, so I get it,’ she says, explaining that all she wanted was to craft a bill making it harder for kids to access videos like.…”
    • I’ve shared stories about this Louisiana law before, but I particularly liked this one.
  5. Is ‘Peak Woke’ Behind Us or Ahead? (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “…the spread of diversity statements isn’t really a mechanism to flush out and cancel noncomformists. It creates conformity more invisibly, by training would-be academics to advertise themselves as ideological team players and by screening out job candidates who don’t quite understand the rules of progressive discourse — who imagine, for instance, that advertising their desire to ‘treat everyone the same’ is an adequate anti-racist commitment.”
  6. Multiply by 37: A Surprisingly Accurate Rule of Thumb for Converting Effect Sizes from Standard Deviations to Percentile Points (Paul T. von Hippel, preprint PDF):  “Educational researchers often report effect sizes in standard deviation units (SD), but SD effects are hard to interpret. Effects are easier to interpret in percentile points, but conversion from SDs to percentile points involves a calculation that is not intuitive to educational stakeholders. We point out that, if the outcome variable is normally distributed, simply multiplying the SD effect by 37 usually gives an excellent approximation to the percentile-point effect. For students in the [20%-80% range], the approximation is accurate to within 1 percentile point for effect sizes of up to 0.8 SD (or 29 to 30 percentile points).”
    • Don’t have an intuition for stats? This is a useful rule of thumb. The author is a professor of public policy, sociology, statistics and data science at UT Austin.
  7. In a first, scientists light up blue LED with an AA battery (Ameya Paleja, Interesting Engineering): “Conventionally used blue LEDs have a high turn-on voltage of 4V for a luminance of 100 cd per square meter (cd/m2). This might not sound very high, but at the industrial level, it brings about issues since the voltage is beyond what can be supplied by a typical lithium-ion battery.”
    • This legitimately sounds cool and could be very useful long-term: “An RGB LED module can produce any color for the display by using three colors: red, green, and blue. While red and green LEDs work well, the blue LED has been tricky from an energy efficiency perspective.”
    • However, this headline reminded me that we used to go to the moon. Now we celebrate blue lights.

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 420

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 420, a number with cultural significance and also two interesting mathematical properties. 420 = 101 + 103 + 107 + 109 = 20 x 21. In other words, it is both the sum of consecutive primes and also the product of two consecutive numbers.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. We Are Repaganizing (Louise Perry, First Things): “The supremely strange thing about Christianity in anthropological terms is that it takes a topsy-turvy attitude toward weakness and strength. To put it crudely, most cultures look at the powerful and the wealthy and assume that they must be doing something right to have attained such might. The poor are poor because of some failing of their own, whether in this life or the last. The smallness and feebleness of women and children is a sign that they must be commanded by men. The suffering of slaves is not an argument against slavery, but an argument against allowing oneself to be enslaved. Most cultures—perfectly logically—glorify warriors and kings, not those at the bottom of the heap. But Christianity takes a perverse attitude toward status and puts that perversity at the heart of the theology. ‘God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong’ is a baffling and alarming claim to anyone from a society untouched by the strangeness of the Jesus movement.”
    • This is a remarkable essay about Christianity by a non-Christian. 10/10 recommend.
  2. Ross Douthat’s Theories of Persuasion (Isaac Chotiner, The New Yorker): “This is not conspiracy-adjacent, but I think that nice secular people like you and Sam are sort of blind to some obvious supernatural realities about the world. I think lots of people have good reasons to end up in that kind of territory. And the question I don’t know the answer to is: Why is it so natural once you’re in that territory to go all the way to where R.F.K. is?” He continued, “I spend a lot of my own intellectual energy trying not to let my sort of eccentric views blind me to the fact that the establishment still gets a lot of boring, obvious things right.”
    • I found this interview/profile of Douthat charming.
  3. Singleness Is Not a Sin (Lyman Stone, Christianity Today): “Marriage is instituted for mutual service by spouses and joint service to the next generation. Celibacy is instituted for service to the church (not as a requirement for church service but as a possible aid to it). Widows likewise are commanded to be hospitable and helpful to younger people. Unless singleness is clearly defined as a state that has some purpose oriented toward the good of the neighbor (not just incidentally beneficial but purposively so), it is difficult to understand what possible endorsement the status can be given. It is not sinful, but it is not good.”
  4. Let’s Have a Talk About Education and Religious Attendance (Ryan Burge, Substack): “I just don’t know how you look at all this data that I’ve brought to bear and conclude that there’s not a positive relationship between education and religious attendance. You most certainly cannot conclude that it’s a negative relationship. That finds basically no support in this data at all. There’s some evidence that the relationship may not be statistically significant, but for me, the regression clears that up. People who are more educated are more likely to be attending a religious service in the local house of worship this weekend than those with a high school diploma or less. That’s what the preponderance of evidence tells me.”
    • A deeper dive than you often find on this topic. Emphasis in original.
  5. ‘O Slay the Wicked’: How Christians Sing Curses (Greg Morse, Desiring God): “Do we ever say anything uncomfortable in the presence of evil — or worse, do we even care? The psalmists did. We accuse them of cruelty; they accuse us of a twisted sentimentality. We accuse them of not considering man; they accuse us of not considering God.”
    • Recommended by a student.
  6. Before You Share Your Faith! How to Be ‘Evangelism Ready’ (Matt Smethurst, The Gospel Coalition): a 16 minute podcast recommended by a student. I liked the content, the delivery was less gripping than I expected. Worthwhile.
  7. Book Review: Elon Musk (Scott Alexander, Astral Codex Ten): “I think Elon Musk is 1‑in‑1,000 level intelligent — which is great, but means there are still 300,000 people in America smarter than he is. I think he wins by being 1‑in-10,000,000 intense.”
    • This review is full of fascinating stories. 10/10 recommend if you have any interest whatsoever in Elon Musk.

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 419

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 419, a twin prime number (paired with 421).

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. I Left Out the Full Truth to Get My Climate Change Paper Published (Patrick T Brown, The Free Press): “In theory, scientific research should prize curiosity, dispassionate objectivity, and a commitment to uncovering the truth. Surely those are the qualities that editors of scientific journals should value. In reality, though, the biases of the editors (and the reviewers they call upon to evaluate submissions) exert a major influence on the collective output of entire fields. They select what gets published from a large pool of entries, and in doing so, they also shape how research is conducted more broadly. Savvy researchers tailor their studies to maximize the likelihood that their work is accepted. I know this because I am one of them.”
  2. Texting With AI Jesus (Casey Chalk, First Things): “Text With Jesus represents the age-old human vice of pride. Through our creativity and brilliance, we seek to ascend to God’s level, to be like him, and even to dictate terms to the divine. Or rather, the app is a diabolical inversion of this: Instead of being transformed into God’s image, we aim to make him into our own.”
  3. Baptized Bronze Age Pervert (Brian Mattson, Substack): “So-called ‘Christian Nationalism’ is a renaissance of 19th century ‘blood and soil’ nationalism with some ‘Christiany’ language sprinkled on top.… They are baptizing the language, ethos, and ethics of a Nietzschean pagan—a literal antichrist. An awful lot of ‘Christian Nationalism’ sounds to me like Baptized Bronze Age Pervert. Perverse, is right.”
  4. Who Has The Best Food? (Zvi Mowshowitz, Substack): “It is a fun question going around the internet this past week, so here we go. In particular, people focused on the question of France vs. America. As one would expect, those on the French side think those on the American side are crazy, it is insulting to even consider this a question. Those on the American side like food.… What I love most about American food, and eating in America in general, is that it is the opposite of the French mistake of trying to impress you or waste your time. American food wants you to be happy, it wants to give you the experience you want and not hold back, it values your time and it does not much care how it looks doing it.”
  5. Burning Man is a capitalist lie (Mary Harrington, UnHerd): “Sometimes described as an experiment in ‘radical self-sufficiency’, Burning Man is perhaps more accurately an experiment in creating a radical post-scarcity society by having done all your shopping ahead of time.”
  6. How to actually win back trust in news. (Isaac Saul, Tangle): “Now, there are a few things worth noting here. One is that a reporter who is liberal is not definitively a biased liberal reporter. There are fair journalists and there are hacks. I know a lot of journalists with liberal political beliefs who are harder on Democrats precisely because they care about fairness and about how Democrats act. I know a lot of liberal journalists whose politics you’d never spot by reading their reporting.…  This, in some ways, actually creates an unexpected imbalance in the media: Conservative journalists and pundits, sensing that they are the minority in the space, are far more reluctant to criticize ‘their side.’ Liberal journalists and pundits, understanding that they can ‘stick out’ or earn credit by being hard on both sides, are more willing to do so. It’s complicated. Just because The New York Times is overwhelmingly made up of people who probably vote for Democrats doesn’t mean that it’s always going to play nice with Democratic politicians. My favorite example to cite is that it was The New York Times that broke the ‘Hillary emails’ story, which effectively ruined her political career.”
    • Recommended by an alumnus.
  7. The Misogyny Myth (John Tierney, City Journal): “Gender disparities generally matter only if they work against women. In computing its Global Gender Gap, the much-quoted annual report, the World Economic Forum has explicitly ignored male disadvantages: if men fare worse on a particular dimension, a country still gets a perfect score for equality on that measure. Prodded by the federal Title IX law banning sexual discrimination in schools, educators have concentrated on eliminating disparities in athletics but not in other extracurricular programs, which mostly skew female. The fact that there are now three female college students for every two males is of no concern to the White House Gender Policy Council. Its ‘National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality’ doesn’t even mention boys’ struggles in school, instead focusing exclusively on new ways to help female students get further ahead.”
    • Long, worth the read especially if you’re unfamiliar with the arguments that modern society is structured to advantage women over men.
    • Related: How Then Should Men Live? (Mike Cosper, Christianity Today): “The new social script for women is at once purposeful and libertarian. Girls can do anything, as the slogan goes, including—if they want—pursuing a traditional model of marriage and family. Meanwhile, Reeves says, men have yet to find our new social script. The old role of breadwinner, protector, and spiritual head of the household isn’t merely viewed as quaint; it’s often seen as paternalistic or worse.”
    • I also believe this to be related: Secularization Begins at Home (Lyman Stone, The Institute For Family Studies): “By now, it should be clear that childhood, including before age 13, is the key battleground for religious formation, not adulthood. By the time a child goes to college, much of the religious question has already been settled.… For parents to keep their kids in the faith, they must recapture their influence. Shield children from schooling environments that relegate faith to a second-class topic, deny access to unsupervised online communities and pornography, and have daily, parent-led activities centered on family solidarity around shared faith. Families that do these things still have extremely high rates of successful religious transmission, but families who trust that children will ‘pick it up along the way’ fail to transmit their religious beliefs, and suddenly find to their great surprise that their 20-something children categorically reject their faith.”

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 418

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 418, and 418 has the interesting property that the sum of its prime factors is equal to the products of its digits. In other words, 2+11+19=32=4·1·8

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. This 5 minute TikTok on Twitter is very much worth your time: https://twitter.com/deejayfaremi/status/1694972810978799727 — it gets better and better. I’m strongly tempted to show it during a worship service.
  2. Daniel’s 3 Tips for Surviving the University of Babylon (Catie Robertson & Andrew M. Selby, The Gospel Coalition): “Trying to feel vaguely close to God and fraternizing frequently with the lost (in the name of winsome love) may be nice, but it likely won’t be effective as a long-term strategy for evangelism, let alone for the health of our own faith.…If we form pockets of resistance with believers, the university itself will be saved.”
    • Recommended by a student.
  3. Nutrition Science’s Most Preposterous Result (David Merritt Johns, The Atlantic): “Back in 2018, a Harvard doctoral student named Andres Ardisson Korat was presenting his research on the relationship between dairy foods and chronic disease to his thesis committee. One of his studies had led him to an unusual conclusion: Among diabetics, eating half a cup of ice cream a day was associated with a lower risk of heart problems. Needless to say, the idea that a dessert loaded with saturated fat and sugar might actually be good for you raised some eyebrows at the nation’s most influential department of nutrition.”
    • Unlocked. Fun to read, and with implications beyond diet.
  4. Everyone’s tired of politics (Salena Zito, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette): “If you spent your time watching the news or trolling social media every day — which is literally the job description for many national journalists — you might assume that nearly every person in the country is invested in either Trump or Biden. However, when you drive to places where the speed limit is 35 miles an hour, you find a different reality. And that’s the problem with how the country too often is covered these days. Our politics would likely improve — somewhat at least — if more in the media checked their assumptions and listened to the people they purport to cover.”
    • I certainly feel this. I haven’t been sharing articles about the Trump indictment or the Biden family corruption or the age of politicians or the Republican debate because I simply don’t find the articles I read about them interesting.
  5. An anguished ‘nothing in particular’ believer shakes up country music establishment (Terry Mattingly, GetReligion): “As for faith, Anthony added: ‘I spent a long time being an angry little agnostic punk. … I had sort of perverted what my vision of God was, because I looked at the religion of man as God and not God Himself. But there is a Divine Creator who loves you and sometimes it takes falling down on your knees and getting ready to call things quits before it becomes obvious that He’s there. But He’s always there.’ It would appear, said Watson, that this hillbilly songwriter is – to use a popular research term – a ‘nothing in particular’ believer, one without ties to organized religion. This is precisely the kind of American that many church leaders are struggling to understand.”
    • I think many of you have heard me say that the delight of some secular pundits over the rise of the “nones” is misplaced. They aren’t atheists. They’re just not really churchgoers.
    • Related to the “nones”: Fresh off a Supreme Court Win, the Praying Coach Takes the Field (Julia Duin, The Free Press): “He has also left his church—Newlife South Kitsap in Port Orchard—chiefly because then-school superintendent Leavell also attended the congregation. The pastors at the church ‘kind of distanced themselves from the very beginning,’ Kennedy said. They met with Kennedy and Leavell separately ‘and asked if we could get along and work this out. They didn’t want to choose sides.’ Though Kennedy said he wasn’t fully supported by his church, he feels ‘bad’ for Leavell and his kids, because ‘they were asked, ‘Why doesn’t your dad like praying?’ and ‘Why don’t they like Christians?’’ People, Kennedy said, ‘don’t understand this was a big political and Constitutional thing.’ Kennedy said he and his wife have been ‘spiritually homeless’ since 2020.”
      • Fascinating details in here I’ve not seen anywhere else.
      • Note that as a “spiritually homeless” non-church attender this guy would now qualify as one of the “nones” in most surveys, and he was at the heart of a major religious liberty case. The “nones” are not always who people think they are.
  6. No human remains found 2 years after claims of ‘mass graves’ in Canada (Dana Kennedy, NY Post): “Tom Flanagan, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Calgary, told The Post Wednesday that he sees the issue as a ‘moral panic’ similar to the hysteria over repressed memories and alleged Satanic cults in schools in the US in the 1980s and ’90s.”
    • Related: 2021 Canadian church burnings. (Wikipedia): “A series of vandalizations, church arsons, and suspicious fires in June and July 2021 desecrated, damaged, or destroyed 68 Christian churches in Canada. Coincident with fires, vandalism and other destructive events damaged churches in Canada and the United States, primarily in British Columbia. Of these, 25 were the results of fires of all causes. Canadian government officials, church members, and Canadian Indigenous leaders have speculated that the fires and other acts of vandalism have been reactions to the May 2021 reports of alleged discovery of over 1,000 unmarked graves at Canadian Indian residential school sites.”
  7. Driverless cars may already be safer than human drivers (Timothy B. Lee, Substack): “For this story, I read through every crash report Waymo and Cruise filed in California this year, as well as reports each company filed about the performance of their driverless vehicles (with no safety drivers) prior to 2023. In total, the two companies reported 102 crashes involving driverless vehicles. That may sound like a lot, but they happened over roughly 6 million miles of driving. That works out to one crash for every 60,000 miles, which is about five years of driving for a typical human motorist. These were overwhelmingly low-speed collisions that did not pose a serious safety risk. A large majority appeared to be the fault of the other driver.”

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 417

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 417, which is clearly not prime because 4+1+7=12, but the prime factorization is surprising: it’s 3·139.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Advice for Students Entering College (Robert P. George, Mirror of Justice): “As the new academic year begins, I have some advice for conservative and religiously observant students who are entering colleges and universities in which their beliefs will place them in the minority, and perhaps make them feel like ‘outsiders.’ ”
  2. Glorifying God and Glorifying Mountains (Tim Challies, personal blog): “As I drove along the road I couldn’t help but notice how many people put themselves between the camera and the mountain so that the mountain was merely a prop, the backdrop for a photo that featured themselves. Often these influencers would be doing something showy or wearing something skimpy that was meant to draw the eye to themselves rather than to the mountain behind. They made themselves the focus of the photograph rather than the mountain. They stole the glory of the mountain by using it to glorify themselves. And this helps us understand how we can fail to glorify God. We place ourselves in the foreground so that God winds up in the background.”
  3. A single reform that could save 100,000 lives immediately (Ned Brooks and ML Cavanaugh, LA Times): “The head of the National Kidney Foundation testified in March that Medicare spends an estimated $136 billion, nearly 25% of its expenditures, on the care of people with a kidney disease. Of that, $50 billion is spent on people with end-stage kidney disease, on par with the entire U.S. Marine Corps budget.… The National Organ Transplant Act prohibits compensating kidney donors, which is strange in that in American society, it’s common to pay for plasma, bone marrow, hair, sperm, eggs and even surrogate pregnancies. We already pay to create and sustain life. Another way to think about this, as one bioethicist points out: ‘Every person in the chain of living organ donation, except one, profits.’ The hospital gets paid, the doctors and nurses and staff get paid, the pharmaceutical industry gets paid and the recipient is the main beneficiary. Everyone benefits except the donors, who get reimbursed only for their expenses.”
  4. Without Belief in a God, But Never Without Belief In A Devil (Rob K. Henderson, Substack): “Personally, I saw this when I first arrived at Yale. I recall being stunned at how status anxiety pervaded elite college campuses. Internally, I thought, ‘You’ve already made it, what are you so stressed out about?’ Hoffer, though, would say these students believed they had almost made it. That is why they were so aggravated. The closer they got to realizing their ambitions, the more frustrated they became about not already achieving them.”
  5. Why are Charismatics so Weird? (Sam Storms, personal blog): “There are approximately 645 million people in the world today who identify as either Pentecostal or charismatic. Among them there are certain leaders and popular voices who believe ‘weird’ things and have amassed a considerable following among those who are gullible and undiscerning. But for every one misguided teacher or internet personality there are thousands of faithful and biblically rooted, gospel-centered pastors and professors in the charismatic community. And for every one of those who naively falls for the ‘weird’ things said and done there are, again, thousands who do not.”
  6. Should I Offer My Pronouns? (Kara Bettis Carvalho, Christianity Today): “Earlier this year, Atlantic journalist George Packer argued against what he called ‘equity language’ and the often unreasonable pressure it puts on the culture. It is polite and dignifying to ‘address people as they request,’ Packer wrote, but equity language isn’t organic; it’s being ‘handed down in communiqués written by obscure ‘experts’ who purport to speak for vaguely defined ‘communities,’ remaining unanswerable to a public that’s being morally coerced.’ New language makes ideological claims, he wrote. ‘If you accept the change—as, in certain contexts, you’ll surely feel you must—then you also acquiesce in the argument.’ ”
    • Unlocked. Allows people from multiple perspectives to make their arguments.
  7. When few do great harm (Inquisitive Bird, Substack): “Another notable fact: approximately half of violent crime convictions were committed by people who already had 3 or more violent crime convictions. In other words, if after being convicted of 3 violent crimes people were prevented from further offending, half of violent crime convictions would have been avoided.… The fact that a small minority is responsible for a large chunk of crime is true for shoplifting and burglaries as well, perhaps to an even greater extent. Data from New York City finds that a tiny number of shoplifters commit thousands of theft. The police stated that nearly a third of all shoplifting arrests in the city in 2022 involved just 327 people, who collectively were arrested and rearrested more than 6,000 times. Thus 0.00386% of New York City’s population (327 out of 8.468 million, 1 in ~26,000) accounted for nearly a third of all shoplifting arrests in the city.” Emphasis in original.

    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 416

    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 416, which is mildly interesting in the following equation: ‑4162+7682 = 416,768 (note the negative in front of 4162)

    Things Glen Found Interesting

    1. To Be Happy, Marriage Matters More Than Career (David Brooks, New York Times): “My strong advice is to obsess less about your career and to think a lot more about marriage. Please respect the truism that if you have a great career and a crappy marriage you will be unhappy, but if you have a great marriage and a crappy career you will be happy. Please use your youthful years as a chance to have romantic relationships, so you’ll have some practice when it comes time to wed. Even if you’re years away, please read books on how to decide whom to marry. Read George Eliot and Jane Austen. Start with the masters.”
      • Unlocked. I am sure the comments section on this article will explode with outraged New York Times readers, but Brooks is correct and obviously so.
      • Related: He’s The One (Bryan Caplan, Substack): “The woman who discards the traditional ‘Men have to ask me’ social norm has a superpower. Just profile guys who meet your standards and take the initiative, and you generate a menu of prime options. Yes, conventional wisdom says that a woman can subtly let a guy know that she likes him. But this overlooks men’s abject cluenessness and timidity. Instead, be forthright. Crazy as it seems, earnestly telling your first choice, ‘I should be your girlfriend’ will almost never be mistaken for ‘throwing yourself’ at a guy.”
        • Caplan’s follow-up to his earlier post helping guys screen gals. This one helps gals screen guys. Most of his insights ring true to me.
      • Related: You Don’t Have Plenty of Time (Abby Farson Pratt, Substack): “There’s an odd preoccupation in our culture with ‘readiness,’ as if it were a universal truth. But ‘readiness’ is never defined. We’re given the vague, unhelpful advice to ‘wait until we’re ready’ to get married or have kids. What would that even mean? How do you know when you’re ‘ready’ for that kind of responsibility? You won’t. You’ll never be ready. Aside from choosing a good partner, there’s no amount of preparation that will make child-rearing easier or smoother or simpler. You become ready through the very act of being married and raising children. Lord willing, this is the time in your life to rise to the occasion and put fears of ‘readiness’ to rest.”
    2. Does God Control History? (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “Indeed, while allowing for the complexity of debates about what God wills as opposed to what God merely permits, providentialism is basically inescapable once you posit a divinity who made the world and acts in history. Which is why providentialist interpretations endure among the most liberal Christians as well as the most traditional, with both progressive and conservative theologies justifying themselves through readings of the ‘signs of the times,’ the seasons of history, the action of the Holy Spirit and the like.”
      • Unlocked. I really liked this one.
    3. What Rise of Christian Nationalism? (Jesse Smith, Current): “What has surged in recent years isn’t Christian nationalism so much as the rejection of religion in the public square. The percentage of Americans reporting no religious affiliation has skyrocketed in the 21st century, from little over 5% in 1990 to nearly 30% in 2021. Most of these people belonged to a religious community at some point. Many did not part on the best of terms and would be happy to see the status of American religion taken down a peg.”
      • The author is a sociologist at Benedictine College.
    4. The Man Who Knows What the World’s Richest People Want (and How To Get It) (Maxwell Strachan, Vice): “To Flemings, the concept that the world’s richest people are conspiring together to rig the game in their favor seems foolish. He believes the closest the rich have come to assembling as an illuminati-like clan is in St. Barts between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, because he’s been there. ‘I gotta tell you, some of the richest people in the world are struggling to talk to a girl,’ he said. ‘There is no way these people are leading some fucking global conspiracy.’ ”
      • Overall quite interesting. From back in June.
    5. Legacy admissions are crucial to America’s higher education dominance (Jamie Beaton, The Hill): “Oxford was founded in 1096. Despite its storied history, it has a far smaller donation culture and less engaged alumni. Its biggest donors — among them Bill Gates and Steven Schwarzman — didn’t even attend the university. It has no legacy admissions, and at points in its history, it has struggled financially. In contrast, Harvard cultivates an amazingly engaged alumni community with frequent, well-attended reunions, advisory boards featuring all of their prominent alumni and an aspirational message that once you are a part of this community, it will become your community for life. Legacy admissions — the practice of preferentially admitting the children of alumni — is one of the powerful, tangible characteristics that helps foster that sense of community.”
      • I have never seen someone contrast the elite US schools with their international counterparts this way. I am sure there is a counterargument to be made, but this made for fascinating reading and I find his argument plausible.
    6. Stanford WBB Star Cameron Brink Opens Up On How NIL Wealth Allowed Her Stay In School Over WNBA (Grayson Weir, Outkick): “NIL has made it so that Brink can earn just as much money as an ‘amateur’ as she can in the WNBA. It is probably more lucrative to stay in school than to go pro.… Brink said that her NIL wealth has set her up for the rest of her life. If basketball didn’t work out, she could be self-sufficient. She would ‘continue to live comfortably.’ ”
    7. The real reason the highest-paid doctors are in the Dakotas (Andrew Van Dam, Washington Post): “Overall, the average U.S. lawyer can expect about $7.1 million in lifetime income, a bit higher than a primary-care doctor ($6.5 million) but well behind the broader physician average of $10 million, according to a sophisticated analysis of about 2 million tax records from lawyers and more than 10 million tax records from doctors.”

    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 415

    On Fridays (or later when I’m busy) 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 415, which is the sum of successive squares (72 + 82 + 92 + 102 + 112).

    Things Glen Found Interesting

    1. A Simple Law Is Doing the Impossible. It’s Making the Online Porn Industry Retreat. (Marc Novicoff, Politico): “Though the first of its kind, Louisiana’s age-verification bill was not the last. Nearly identical bills have passed in six other states — Arkansas, Montana, Mississippi, Utah, Virginia and Texas — by similarly lopsided margins. In Utah and Arkansas, the bills passed unanimously. The laws were passed by overwhelming margins in legislatures controlled by both parties and signed into law by Democratic and Republican governors alike. In just over a year, age-verification laws have become perhaps the most bipartisan policy in the country, and they are creating havoc in a porn industry that many had considered all but impossible to actually regulate.”
    2. Misreading Scripture with Artificial Eyes (John Boyles, Christianity Today): “First, ChatGPT metaphorizes and individualizes Scripture without a clear method for when and why, without warrant, and often in direct contradiction to the text itself. Second, the bot’s interpretations are ignorant of the interpretive traditions that produce them. Third, because the bot is disembodied, its interpretations are necessarily disembodied—and thus a bot is unable to recognize the realities of Scripture and interpretation. Each of the above tendencies present in AI’s responses is in some way a reflection of historic weaknesses in our own human interpretation.”
      • Unlocked.
    3. China’s Latest Problem: People Don’t Want to Go There (Wenxin Fan, Wall Street Journal): “Nationwide, just 52,000 people arrived to mainland China from overseas on trips organized by travel agencies during the first quarter, the latest period for which national data is available, compared with 3.7 million in the first quarter of 2019. As in past years, nearly half of the visitors came from the self-ruled island of Taiwan and the Chinese territories of Hong Kong and Macau, rather than farther-away places like the U.S. or Europe.”
      • That’s almost a 99% drop in numbers!
    4. What if We’re the Bad Guys Here? (David Brooks, New York Times): “Does this mean that I think the people in my class are vicious and evil? No. Most of us are earnest, kind and public-spirited. But we take for granted and benefit from systems that have become oppressive. Elite institutions have become so politically progressive in part because the people in them want to feel good about themselves as they take part in systems that exclude and reject. It’s easy to understand why people in less-educated classes would conclude that they are under economic, political, cultural and moral assault — and why they’ve rallied around Trump as their best warrior against the educated class. He understood that it’s not the entrepreneurs who seem most threatening to workers; it’s the professional class.”
      • David Brooks Means Well, But… (Dan Drezner, Substack): “At a superficial level this is a quasi-plausible analysis of what happened in 2016, even if some of his evidence does not quite show what he thinks it shows. If this had been published seven years ago, it would have been trenchant. In 2023, there’s so much to pick apart. The most important point is that the general correlations Brooks takes for granted are not necessarily true, as the 2020 election demonstrated.”
    5. The Digital Dictator’s Dilemma (Eddie Yang, PDF hosted on his website): “I suggest that autocrats suffer from a ‘Digital Dictator’s Dilemma,’ a repression-information trade-off in which citizens’ strategic behavior in the face of repression diminishes the amount of useful information in the data for training AI. This trade-off poses a fundamental limitation in AI’s usefulness for serving as a tool of authoritarian control — the more repression there is, the less information there will be in AI’s training data, and the worse AI will perform. I illustrate this argument using an AI experiment and a unique dataset on censorship in China. I show that AI’s accuracy in censorship decreases with more pre-existing censorship and repression. The drop in AI’s performance is larger during times of crisis, when people reveal their true preferences. I further show that this problem cannot be easily fixed with more data. Ironically, however, the existence of the free world can help boost AI’s ability to censor.”
      • From the abstract. I have skimmed but not read the whole article. The author is a PhD candidate at UC San Diego.
    6. The Obama Factor (David Samuels, Tablet Magazine): “So the conclusion I’ve come to in time is that that best way to understand Barack Obama is that he is a literary creation of Barack Obama, the writer, who authored the novel of his own life and then proceeded to live out this fictional character that he created for himself on the page. Which is remarkable.”
      • This is super long but utterly fascinating if you remember Obama’s presidency.
    7. Let the Tragedy in My Homeland Be a Lesson (Tahir Hamut Izgil, The New York Times): “Little attention was paid as, in the early 2010s, surveillance cameras were installed in every nook and cranny of our cities. When the police began random cellphone checks on the street, people were alarmed at first, but gradually grew used to it. Not long after, when highway checkpoints expanded and multiplied, folks privately expressed concern but ground their teeth and bore it. When, in 2016,police posts were constructed every 200 meters along city streets, people ignored them and hurried past. As time passed, we adapted to these changes and to this new, more authoritarian way of life.”

    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 414

    Once a week, usually on Friday, 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 414, which is a multiple of 23.

    A day late because I was traveling. Next week’s may be delayed as well.

    Things Glen Found Interesting

    1. The best predictor of happiness in America? Marriage (W. Bradford Wilcox and David Bass, Unherd): “This truth is borne out yet again in new research from the University of Chicago, which found that marriage is the ‘the most important differentiator’ of who is happy in America, and that falling marriage rates are a chief reason why happiness has declined nationally. The research, surveying thousands of respondents, revealed a startling 30-percentage-point happiness divide between married and unmarried Americans. This happiness boost held true for both men and women.… Other factors do matter — including income, educational achievement, race, and geography — but marital status is most influential when it comes to predicting happiness in the study.”
      • Related: More on Singleness, Marriage, and the Church (Samuel D. James, Substack): “…some readers took me to be saying that single people are in sin or not growing in their faith the way that married people are. Not so. There is a profound (subtle, perhaps, but profound) difference between saying that something has intrinsic value in the normative life of an individual or the church, and saying that this thing is compulsory.”
      • Very helpful followup to the article I shared last week.
    2. The Hard-Drug Decriminalization Disaster (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “…the sticky fact that proponents of decriminalization rarely confront is that addicts are not merely sick people trying to get well, like cancer sufferers in need of chemotherapy. They are people who often will do just about anything to get high, however irrational, self-destructive or, in some cases, criminal their behavior becomes. Addiction may be a disease, but it’s also a lifestyle — one that decriminalization does a lot to facilitate. It’s easier to get high wherever and however you want when the cops are powerless to stop you.”
      • Unlocked.
    3. She’s the One (Bryan Caplan, Substack): “Humans are good at hedonically adapting to most material conditions. You get used to your house, your car, your clothes, your granite countertop, and your money. What humans are bad at hedonically adapting to is… other people. If you spend a lot of time around humans whose company you enjoy, you will probably be happy. If you spend a lot of time around human whose company you detest, you will probably be unhappy. Over your lifetime, you will probably spend more time around your spouse than any other human. So while finding good friends and good co-workers is crucial for happiness, finding a good spouse is even more so.”
      • This is full of mostly-good advice for guys.
    4. What’s going on with the reports of a room-temperature superconductor? (John Timmer, Ars Technica): “The perfect time to write an article on those results would be when they’ve been confirmed by multiple labs. But these are not perfect times. Instead, rumors seem to be flying daily about possible confirmation, confusing and contradictory results, and informed discussions of why this material either should or shouldn’t work.”
      • Related: LK-99 Is the Superconductor of the Summer (Kenneth Chang, New York Times): “I truly don’t get the excitement about her preprint,” said Douglas Natelson, a professor of physics at Rice University in Houston. “That’s not to say that it’s wrong, just that theorists and computational materials folks very often produce preprints based on the latest claimed material of interest. There’s nothing exceptional in that.”
    5. You’re probably recycling plastic wrong. And it’s not your fault. (Robert Gebelhoff, Washington Post):  “Picture this: You finish a drink from a red Solo cup, and before throwing it out, you check the bottom of the cup to see the iconic recycling symbol. That means it can be tossed in the recycling bin, right? Wrong. Solo cups are made of polystyrene, a plastic that is very difficult to recycle.… Nowadays, the only plastic items that are consistently recycled are bottles and jugs made out of polyethylene terephthalate (which is labeled with a ‘1’) and high-density polyethylene (labeled with a ‘2’), as a survey of recycling facilities by Greenpeace shows. Recycling plants typically reject almost everything else, meaning it ends up in landfills.”
    6. He Held Up a Bank to Get His Own Money (Raja Abdulrahim, New York Times): “The central bank has not allowed depositors to withdraw more than a few hundred dollars a month since a financial collapse in 2019. So, like other desperate Lebanese before him — some of them similarly compelled by the need for medical treatment — Mr. al-Hajjar went to his bank in November, threatening to burn it down unless it gave him some of the $250,000 he had in his account. More than 12 hours later, he left with $25,000 in stacks of cash. ‘If you don’t go in and threaten to hurt them, they won’t give you anything,’ he said months later.”
      • Absolutely wild (and sad) story.
    7. California’s free prison calls are repairing estranged relationships and aiding rehabilitation (Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu & Helen Li, Los Angeles Times): “At a time when most consumers enjoy free or low-cost calling, prison phone calls at their peak in California cost more than $6 per 15 minutes via a private telecommunications provider. That allowed only hurried, superficial conversations between the siblings — with one eye always on the clock.”

    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 On The Experience of Being Poor-ish, For People Who Aren’t (Anonymous, Substack): “When someone is telling me they are or have been poor and I’m trying to determine how poor exactly they were, there’s one evergreen question I ask that has never failed to give me a good idea of what kind of situation I’m dealing with. That question is: ‘How many times have they turned off your water?’.” Follow up: Being Poor-ish Revisited: Reader Questions These are both really good. From volume 291.

    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 413

    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 issue 413, which I have been told is a structured hexagonal diamond number. I don’t know what that means, but it sounds very impressive. I also know that 413 = 7 · 59, which I find both cool and understandable.

    Things Glen Found Interesting

    1. I’m a Continuationist with Cancer. I Still Believe in Healings. (Tim Shorey, The Gospel Coalition): “I live my life and face my cancer somewhere between seemingly sincere ‘namers and claimers’ who expect healing every time and seemingly surrendered ‘if-the-Lord-willers’ whose prayers affirm God’s healing power but whose caveats and qualifiers make it sound like he’s not likely to use it. God alone knows the heart. But the tone of the former party can sound like presumption masquerading as faith, while the tone of the latter can sound like doubt masquerading as humility.”
      • Recommended by a student who appropriately asks, “if you read this, please also pray for the author, Tim Shorey.”
    2. Date to marry, not to have fun (Bethany Mandel, The Spectator): “A lot of things are important in a marriage: love, respect, trust, laughter. But perhaps most important is to remember that it’s a partnership for life; and as such, dating should not be considered fun, but instead like a job interview for the most important role you’ll ever have, that of a spouse. If you were interviewing for a job, would you allow the process to drag on, long after you know it’s the right fit (or not)?”
      • Broadly agree, with the provision that this is advice about dating relationship and not just about going on dates. In other words, go on dates to have fun and then carefully discern who is a good match for progressing into a serious dating relationship. Too many Christians want to know they want to marry someone before they go out for coffee with them, and that’s a lot of pressure to put on a latte.
      • Related: Swiping and Dating Preferences (Rob K. Henderson, Substack): “Here’s a sketch of what might be happening: Men high on the Dark Triad (psychopathy, narcissism, Machiavellianism) use dating apps. They might make up 10–20% of users. They go on a rampage, sleeping with lots of women, playing games with them, leading them on, ghosting them, lying to them, etc. Dark Triad men are excellent impostors; they are good at mimicking desirable romantic qualities, and are thus able to procure lots of sex partners. The women they sleep with become disillusioned. These women begin to behave in psychopathic and narcissistic ways to protect themselves from emotional vulnerability and pain, and perhaps as a way to even the score with ‘men’ as a category. They learn to avoid Dark Triad men and exploit normal men. These men become confused and upset, and begin to treat other women the same way to ‘get even.’ In short, Dark Triad men mistreat women, who then mistreat ordinary men, who then mistreat ordinary women. Bad behavior drives out the good. A system tailor-made for psychopathic males (dating apps facilitate anonymity, superficiality, and deception) predictably gives rise to a defect-defect equilibrium.”
      • Full of interesting data.
    3. Study of Elite College Admissions Data Suggests Being Very Rich Is Its Own Qualification (Aatish Bhatia, Claire Cain Miller and Josh Katz, New York Times): “Elite colleges have long been filled with the children of the richest families: At Ivy League schools, one in six students has parents in the top 1 percent.… For applicants with the same SAT or ACT score, children from families in the top 1 percent were 34 percent more likely to be admitted than the average applicant, and those from the top 0.1 percent were more than twice as likely to get in.”
    4. Why won’t Indiana Jones convert to something after all he has seen in his life? (Terry Mattingly, On Religion): “What we want to know is why he is always back to square one at the start of every adventure – a skeptic, or even a scoffer. I mean, think about it: He has seen the Ark of the Covenant opened and the destroying angels pour out God’s vengeance on his enemies. He has seen the sacred Hindu stones come to life. …He has seen the true cup of Christ heal his own father from a fatal gunshot wound – on screen, with no ambiguity.”
      • It’s revealing about modern assumptions that almost no one thinks to ask this question.
    5. Are We Living Through ‘End Times’? (Bari Weiss interviewing Peter Turchin, The Free Press): “Elite overproduction turns out to be the best predictor of a crisis to come. It is essentially ubiquitous in the pre-crisis periods of all societies. I used the game of musical chairs to illustrate it, except in the usual game, you start with 11 players and ten chairs, and one person loses. Here, instead of removing chairs, you keep chairs constant, and we add more players. You can imagine the amount of chaos that is going to happen. Now let’s connect this to the overproduction of wealthy people in the United States. As more and more of them become players in politics, they drive up the price of getting into office. And more importantly, the more people are vying for these positions, the more people are going to be frustrated. They’re going to be losers. But humans don’t have to follow rules. This is the dark side of competition: if it’s too extreme, it creates conditions for people to start to break rules.”
      • Turchin is a social scientist at U Conn. Recommended by a student.
      • The author explains the relationship between what he does and the science fiction we see in the Foundation series: Psychohistory and Cliodynamics (Peter Turchin, personal blog): “Prediction is overrated. What we really should be striving for, with our social science, is ability to bring about desirable outcomes and to avoid unwanted outcomes. What’s the point of predicting future, if it’s very bleak and we are not able to change it? We would be like the person condemned to hang before sunrise – perfect knowledge of the future, zero ability to do anything about it.”
    6. Bad Definitions Of “Democracy” And “Accountability” Shade Into Totalitarianism (Scott Alexander, Astral Codex Ten): “You could, in theory, define ‘democratic’ this way, so that the more areas of life are subjected to the control of a (democratically elected) government, the more democratic your society is. But in that case, the most democratic possible society is totalitarianism — a society where the government controls every facet of life, including what religion you practice, who you marry, and what job you work at. In this society there would be no room for human freedom.”
    7. The Importance Of Saying “Yes” To The “But” (Andrew Sullivan, Substack): “One of the enduring frustrations of living in a politically polarized country is the evaporation of nuance. As the muscles of liberal democracy atrophy, and as cultural tribalism infects everyone’s consciousness, it becomes more and more difficult to say, ‘Yes, but …’ Everyone hates the but. It complicates; it muddles; it can disable a slogan; and puncture a politically useful myth.”

    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 Religious Community and Human Flourishing (Tyler J. VanderWeele, Psychology Today): “In some cases, our results closely replicated past work. For example, we found that, even after controlling for the factors above, individuals who attended religious services weekly or more were 16% less likely to become depressed, and saw a 29% reduction in smoking and 34% reduction in heavy drinking. These results match reasonably closely results from several prior studies, including the prior meta-analyses mentioned above. Somewhat strikingly, but again in line with prior analysis, weekly service attendees were 26% less likely to die during the follow-up period.” VanderWeele, himself a Christian, is an epidemiologist at Harvard and I have shared some of his work before. From volume 290.

    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.