Category: Links

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 349

much about Dobbs, Roe, and the impli­ca­tions there­of

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.

I wish this issue was less rushed (and there­fore bet­ter edit­ed and more com­pact), but I’ve been deal­ing with a fam­i­ly emer­gency and have had less time to read and write than nor­mal.

This is vol­ume 349, a prime num­ber.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The big news this week is the leak of the Supreme Court draft opin­ion por­tend­ing a rever­sal of Roe v Wade.
    • It’s not often that I inter­ject my own views into one of these week­ly roundups, but giv­en the con­tentious­ness of this issue I think it is only fair you know where I am com­ing from. I am pro-life. In sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Christ­mas sto­ry (where­in God became incar­nate in the womb) and with Chris­tians through­out the ages, I believe abor­tion is a bad thing and the rare cas­es where it is med­ical­ly nec­es­sary to save the life of the moth­er are trag­ic. I am grate­ful that the Supreme Court appears to be on the verge of right­ing a great injus­tice for which they are respon­si­ble in the first place. Fur­ther­more, I do not view this as a par­ti­san issue even though it is com­mon­ly per­ceived that way: there are pro-life Democ­rats as well as pro-life Repub­li­cans. In fact, there would be many more pro-life Democ­rats in office were it not for a con­cert­ed effort to mar­gin­al­ize them with­in the par­ty.
    • If you have not read this clas­sic arti­cle in the Atlantic I sug­gest you read it before any­thing else: The Dis­hon­esty of the Abor­tion Debate (Caitlin Flana­gan, The Atlantic): “The truth is that the best argu­ment on each side is a damn good one, and until you acknowl­edge that fact, you aren’t speak­ing or even think­ing hon­est­ly about the issue. You cer­tain­ly aren’t going to con­vince any­body. Only the truth has the pow­er to move.”
    • If Roe Is Dead (Col­in Hansen, Gospel Coali­tion): “If Roe is dead, more chil­dren will live.… this is the day so many of us have labored and prayed to see. We can rejoice that God has heard our pleas that he would rec­ti­fy this injus­tice. And we can move for­ward in every way pos­si­ble to pro­tect as many chil­dren as we can: by ban­ning abor­tion where pos­si­ble, by bol­ster­ing cri­sis preg­nan­cy cen­ters, by build­ing stronger fos­ter care sys­tems, and much more.”
    • Receiv­ing Jus­tice with Grat­i­tude (Samuel D. James, Sub­stack): “It has com­mon­ly been sug­gest­ed that oppos­ing Roe v Wade is moral­ly ille­git­i­mate unless it is accom­pa­nied with a kind of max­i­mal­ist sup­port for a social safe­ty net. In oth­er words, it has been sug­gest­ed that you’re not real­ly pro-life if you oppose abor­tion but sup­port cap­i­tal­ism; you’re not real­ly pro-life if you hate Roe v. Wade but don’t vote for can­di­dates who vow to redis­trib­ute wealth; you’re not real­ly pro-life if all you want is to stop abor­tion rather than pro­vid­ing exten­sive care and sup­port for baby and moth­er.… Receive jus­tice with grat­i­tude.” This gets to close to some­thing I’ve been try­ing to artic­u­late to myself, but it’s not quite what I want to say. But it’s close.
    • State­ment on the leaked Ali­to draft opin­ion in Dobbs (Robert George, Mir­ror of Jus­tice): “If, as the leaked draft opin­ion seems to sug­gest, the Supreme Court has decid­ed to reverse Roe and return the ques­tion of abor­tion entire­ly to the leg­isla­tive domain, then the pro-life move­ment faces a new set of challenges—challenges even more daunt­ing than over­turn­ing Roe. In the face of pro­found oppo­si­tion from the wealth­i­est, most pow­er­ful, and most influ­en­tial forces and insti­tu­tions in the coun­try, the move­ment needs to extend the pro­tec­tions of law on terms of fair­ness and equal­i­ty to moth­ers and chil­dren alike. Going still fur­ther, it needs to work in both the pub­lic and pri­vate spheres to pro­vide nec­es­sary sup­port for moth­ers and chil­dren, nev­er allow­ing their inter­ests or well-being to be pit­ted against each oth­er. To its great cred­it, the pro-life move­ment has been doing this since before Roe v. Wade—again, in the face of hos­til­i­ty from the most pow­er­ful forces. We will need now to do more and bet­ter. We can and we will.” Robert George is a law pro­fes­sor at Prince­ton.
    • If Roe v. Wade Is Over­turned, What’s Next? (Jean­nie Suk Gersen, New York­er): “It may also be only a mat­ter of time, if Mis­sis­sip­pi pre­vails, before pro-life legal efforts turn toward get­ting the Supreme Court to rec­og­nize the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of the fetus. These efforts would focus on the same part of the Con­sti­tu­tion that was pre­vi­ous­ly held to pro­vide the right to abor­tion, the Four­teenth Amend­ment, which pro­hibits states from depriv­ing ‘any per­son of life, lib­er­ty, or prop­er­ty with­out due process of law.‘” The author is a Har­vard Law prof.
    • About post-Roe pol­i­tics and Biden’s evolv­ing doc­trines on choos­ing to ‘abort a child’ (Ter­ry Mat­ting­ly, GetRe­li­gion): “Once upon a time, Sen. Joe Biden was almost a pro-life Catholic Demo­c­rat. This may be the rea­son — as jour­nal­ists fre­quent­ly note — that he seems uncom­fort­able say­ing ‘abor­tion’ in pub­lic remarks.”
    • An arti­cle by some­one out­raged: Of Course the Con­sti­tu­tion Has Noth­ing to Say About Abor­tion (Jill Lep­ore, The New York­er): “This will be, in large part, because Supreme Court Jus­tice Samuel Ali­to is sur­prised that there is so lit­tle writ­ten about abor­tion in a four-thou­sand-word doc­u­ment craft­ed by fifty-five men in 1787. As it hap­pens, there is also noth­ing at all in that doc­u­ment, which sets out fun­da­men­tal law, about preg­nan­cy, uterus­es, vagi­nas, fetus­es, pla­cen­tas, men­stru­al blood, breasts, or breast milk. There is noth­ing in that doc­u­ment about women at all.”
      • Over­all a good arti­cle (although I think it demon­strates the oppo­site of what it intends to demon­strate). Also, although the rhetoric in the excerpt is pow­er­ful, it’s unfair — there’s also noth­ing in the Con­sti­tu­tion about testes, sperm or penis­es. I find this is often the case in the abor­tion debate: pow­er­ful rhetoric that cov­ers over weak­ness­es in the the sub­stance of the argu­ment.
    • Anoth­er not-thrilled per­spec­tive: God Damn Amer­i­ca (Jack Mirkin­son, Sub­stack): “The final opin­ion could dif­fer, but what we have in front of us is an extrem­ist, ille­git­i­mate opin­ion from an extrem­ist, ille­git­i­mate court, one that sees women as serfs and breed­ers, that sees queer peo­ple as sub­hu­man, that sees minori­ties of every kind as dirt under its col­lec­tive shoe. It is hap­pi­ly drag­ging us into the dark ages. Ali­to and every­one who joins him are evil peo­ple. No hell is too hot for them.”
    • A pret­ty extreme out­raged per­spec­tive: As the US supreme court moves to end abor­tion, is Amer­i­ca still a free coun­try? (Moira Done­gan, The Guardian): “Some have raised doubts about whether Amer­i­ca can call itself a democ­ra­cy, now that pol­i­cy­mak­ing pow­er has been large­ly tak­en over by the unelect­ed courts – whose deci­sions, like this one, are so rad­i­cal­ly out of step with, and indif­fer­ent to, pub­lic opin­ion. But it is also worth won­der­ing whether any coun­try can call itself a democ­ra­cy that does not pro­tect abor­tion rights.”
      • It is odd to claim now as the point when courts have tak­en over elec­toral pow­er when it was the Supreme Court itself that imposed abor­tion upon every state out­side of their demo­c­ra­t­ic process­es. If this draft is ille­git­i­mate because it’s not a byprod­uct of an elec­toral process, then that’s one more rea­son that Roe v Wade was itself ille­git­i­mate.
    • You can see oth­er abor­tion-relat­ed con­tent from pre­vi­ous week­ly roundups at https://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/archives/tag/abortion
  2. Not relat­ed but relat­ed: Is Sup­port for Sin­gle Moth­er­hood and Cohab­i­ta­tion Falling in the U.S.? (Alysse ElHage, Insti­tute for Fam­i­ly Stud­ies): “…as more Amer­i­cans have expe­ri­enced cohab­i­ta­tion, either per­son­al­ly or through watch­ing friends or fam­i­ly cohab­it, more peo­ple are real­iz­ing that liv­ing togeth­er just does not com­pare to mar­riage in terms of rela­tion­ship qual­i­ty or sta­bil­i­ty. That could explain why Pew found a dif­fer­ence based on age. A Pew spokes­woman told me via email, ‘adults ages 30 to 49, 50 to 64, and ages 65+ were more like­ly than in 2018 to say [cohab­i­ta­tion] is a bad thing for soci­ety.’ How­ev­er, there was no sim­i­lar shift among 18 to 29-year-olds.”
  3. About the leak itself:
    • Why the Dobbs Leak Is Dan­ger­ous (Mark Movs­esian, First Things): “In dis­clos­ing the draft opin­ion now, rather than in Feb­ru­ary when it cir­cu­lat­ed, the leak­er pre­sum­ably means to do one of two things. First, the leak­er might hope that pub­lic pres­sure will intim­i­date one or more of the jus­tices and affect the out­come of the case. Pos­si­bly, the leak­er is a con­ser­v­a­tive clerk try­ing to keep Alito’s major­i­ty intact, on the the­o­ry that it would be too embar­rass­ing for a jus­tice to change his or her mind in these cir­cum­stances. More like­ly, though, the leak­er is a pro­gres­sive who hopes an angry pub­lic reac­tion will make a mem­ber of Alito’s major­i­ty reconsider.  Alter­na­tive­ly, the leak­er might know that Jus­tice Ali­to’s major­i­ty is sol­id and that try­ing to change any­one’s mind is use­less. In that case, the leaker’s goal like­ly would be, quite sim­ply, to wreck the Court as an institution—because that is what a leak like this accom­plish­es.” The author is a for­mer Supreme Court clerk and cur­rent­ly a law pro­fes­sor at St. John’s Uni­ver­si­ty.
    • How rare is a Supreme Court breach? Very rare (Josh Ger­stein, Politi­co): “[Law prof and Supreme Court biog­ra­ph­er] Wer­miel said the jus­tices typ­i­cal­ly argue that con­fi­den­tial­i­ty is crit­i­cal to the high court’s oper­a­tion and col­le­gial­i­ty. ‘They think it will chill their delib­er­a­tion with one anoth­er and their can­dor and will­ing­ness to be open in exchange of views,’ Wer­miel said. Some also con­tend that such reports dis­tract from the court’s most endur­ing work: its opin­ions.”
    • Who­dun­nit? (Josh Black­man, The Volokh Con­spir­a­cy): “And a Jus­tice must know that autho­riz­ing this leak would prob­a­bly lead to impeach­ment pro­ceed­ings. I do not think this leak came from a chambers.There is [anoth­er] option: the leak did not come from a cham­bers.… Rather, the leak may have come from some­one with access to the Supreme Court’s draft opin­ions. And his­to­ry sug­gest that this sort of leak is pos­si­ble.” The author is a law prof at South Texas Col­lege of Law.
    • What If The SCOTUS Leak Came From A For­eign Hack? (Josh Black­man, The Volokh Con­spir­a­cy): “But there is anoth­er enti­ty that may want to burn down the Supreme Court, and tear apart the Amer­i­can peo­ple: a for­eign gov­ern­ment. If that was the intent, the plan was suc­cess­ful. Look no fur­ther than the groups pub­lish­ing the address­es of Supreme Court jus­tices. Plus, as a ben­e­fit to for­eign states, the tor­rent of news has tak­en Ukraine out of the head­lines. Through this lens, the hack becomes much more plau­si­ble.”
  4. 103 Bits of Advice I Wish I Had Known (Kevin Kel­ly, per­son­al blog): this is some­thing he does every year. My two favorites were: “There is no such thing as being ‘on time.’ You are either late or you are ear­ly. Your choice.” and “Aim to die broke. Give to your ben­e­fi­cia­ries before you die; it’s more fun and use­ful. Spend it all. Your last check should go to the funer­al home and it should bounce.
  5. What if You Didn’t Have to File a Tax Return? (Jere­my Hor­pedahl, blog): “In ‘Auto­mat­ic Tax Fil­ing: Sim­u­lat­ing a Pre-Pop­u­lat­ed Form 1040,’ the authors use a large sam­ple of tax returns to esti­mate how many tax­pay­ers a pre-filled return would work for. The results are almost split down the mid­dle: it would work well for maybe half of US tax­pay­ers (41–48% of tax­pay­ers, depend­ing on how we are defin­ing suc­cess­ful). For the oth­er half, it wouldn’t give you an accu­rate esti­mate of how much tax you owed. And the errors can be large.“The author is an econ prof at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cen­tral Arkansas (home of a great Chi Alpha, inci­den­tal­ly). I had assumed this was sim­ply a byprod­uct of lob­by­ing, not that there were actu­al tech­ni­cal rea­sons not to do it.
  6. The UFO brief­in­gs on Capi­tol Hill have begun. Law­mak­ers aren’t impressed. (Bryan Ben­der, Politi­co): “Law­mak­ers receiv­ing the lat­est secret brief­in­gs on UFOs say nation­al secu­ri­ty agen­cies still aren’t tak­ing seri­ous­ly the reports of high­ly advanced air­craft of unknown ori­gin vio­lat­ing pro­tect­ed air­space.”
  7. Amer­i­ca flex­es its mar­itime mus­cles! U.S. Air Force suc­cess­ful­ly tests 2,000-pound air-launched ‘quicksink’ bomb and blasts car­go ship out of the sea in one strike (Tom Brown, Dai­ly Mail): “Quicksink risks rel­a­tive­ly low-cost air­craft when com­pared with the dan­ger of los­ing a sub­ma­rine to ene­my retal­i­a­tion after a tor­pe­do strike.… A sin­gle F‑15EX costs $87.7 mil­lion per air­craft, where­as a US sub­ma­rine can cost up to $2.8 bil­lion per unit, accord­ing to Aero Cor­ner.” The accom­pa­ny­ing video is impres­sive.

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 How Pornog­ra­phy Makes Us Less Human and Less Humane (Matthew Lee Ander­son, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Beneath pornog­ra­phy is the sup­po­si­tion that the mere fact of our desire for a woman makes us wor­thy of her. And so, not being bound by any kind of norm, desire must pro­ceed end­less­ly. It is no sur­prise that the indus­tri­al­ized, cheap‐and‐easy sex of pornog­ra­phy has answered and evoked an almost unre­strained sex­u­al greed, which allows us to be gods and god­dess­es with­in the safe­ty of our own fan­tasies. It is for deep and impor­tant rea­sons that the Ten Com­mand­ments use the eco­nom­ic lan­guage of ‘coveting’ to describe the bad­ness of errant sex­u­al desires.” First shared in vol­ume 216.

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 348

A reminder not to be cool plus oth­er provo­ca­tions.

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.

348 is the sum of four con­sec­u­tive primes: 79 + 83 + 89 + 97 = 348.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. “Extraordinary claims require extra­or­di­nary evidence”… And oth­er stu­pid state­ments (C. Michael Pat­ton, Cre­do House): “ ‘Extra­or­di­nary claims require extra­or­di­nary evi­dence.’ While this may seem like sound rea­son­ing at first glance, it fails in sig­nif­i­cant ways. Try using this phrase and switch out the mod­i­fi­er. What if I said, ‘phys­i­cal claims require phys­i­cal evi­dence.’ Or what about this: ‘mirac­u­lous claims require mirac­u­lous evi­dence’? How about ‘canine claims require canine evi­dence’? Of course, you would see the fal­la­cy right away. The equiv­o­ca­tion cre­ates an appar­ent pro­fun­di­ty that mis­di­rects our sens­es. In every case claims just need evi­dence.”
  2. In Praise of the Bor­ing, Uncool Church (Brett McCrack­en, Gospel Coali­tion): “It seems almost every ‘leader of Chris­t­ian cool’—whether a tat­tooed celebri­ty pas­tor or a buzzy night­club church—flames out and los­es its foot­ing fair­ly quick­ly. Which is not at all sur­pris­ing. By their very nature, things that are cool are ephemer­al. What’s fash­ion­able is, by the neces­si­ty of the rules of fash­ion, quick­ly obso­lete. This is one of many rea­sons why chas­ing cool is a fool’s errand for church­es and pas­tors…”
  3. Unex­pect­ed neg­a­tive impacts of COVID:
    • Report: 26 Mil­lion Amer­i­cans Stopped Read­ing the Bible Reg­u­lar­ly Dur­ing COVID-19 (Adam MacIn­nis, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Plake thinks the dra­mat­ic change shows how close­ly Bible reading—even inde­pen­dent Bible reading—is con­nect­ed to church atten­dance. When reg­u­lar ser­vices were inter­rupt­ed by the pan­dem­ic and relat­ed health man­dates, it impact­ed not just the cor­po­rate bod­ies of believ­ers but also indi­vid­u­als at home.”
    • Researchers: COVID-19, Israel-Gaza war fueled anti­semitism (Lau­rie Kell­man, AP News): “The study com­piled data from 22 coun­tries. French author­i­ties, for instance, report­ed a 36% jump in anti­se­mit­ic inci­dents involv­ing phys­i­cal vio­lence, from 44 to 60. The Unit­ed King­dom saw a 78% jump in inci­dents of assault, from 97 to 173. The num­ber of anti­se­mit­ic inci­dents in Cana­da rose 54%, from 173 to 266, the report said.… [In Amer­i­ca] The Anti-Defama­tion League count­ed 2,717 anti­se­mit­ic inci­dents of assault, harass­ment and van­dal­ism in 2021, a 34% increase over the pre­vi­ous year. It was the high­est num­ber since the New York City-based group began track­ing such inci­dents in 1979.”
  4. Red Flags for Faith-Based Lib­er­ty in Hong Kong (Susan Crab­tree, Real Clear Pol­i­tics): “Under Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping, all reli­gions have faced per­se­cu­tion.… For sev­er­al years, the Chris­t­ian church in Hong Kong was large­ly spared. But recent actions tak­en against Hong Kong’s Chris­t­ian church­es are chip­ping away at the reli­gious free­dom the city has enjoyed since the British estab­lished it as a colony in the ear­ly 1840s.”
  5. Tips From the Top: Do the Best Per­form­ers Real­ly Give the Best Advice? (David E. Levari, Daniel T. Gilbert & Tim­o­thy D. Wil­son, Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence): “Although advice from the best-per­form­ing advi­sors was no more ben­e­fi­cial than advice from oth­er advi­sors, par­tic­i­pants believed that it had been—and they believed this despite the fact that they were told noth­ing about their advi­sors’ per­for­mance. Why? The best per­form­ers did not give bet­ter advice, but they did give more of it, and par­tic­i­pants appar­ent­ly mis­took quan­ti­ty for qual­i­ty.” The researchers are at Har­vard and UVA. I did not read the arti­cle itself because I found the abstract instant­ly plau­si­ble.
  6. John Adams’ Fear Has Come to Pass (David French, The Dis­patch): “…the most polar­ized Amer­i­cans are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly white and col­lege-edu­cat­ed on the left and dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly white and retired on the right. The peo­ple dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly dri­ving polar­iza­tion in the Unit­ed States are not oppressed minori­ties, but rather some of the most pow­er­ful, most priv­i­leged, wealth­i­est peo­ple who’ve ever lived. They enjoy more free­dom and oppor­tu­ni­ty than vir­tu­al­ly any pri­or gen­er­a­tion of humans, all while liv­ing under the pro­tec­tive umbrel­la of the most pow­er­ful mil­i­tary in the his­to­ry of the plan­et.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  7. A Polit­i­cal Sci­en­tist on Ukraine (Mike Mazarr, Twit­ter): “Very struck by recent analy­sis + report­ing that high­lights a risk–highly uncer­tain but not so far wide­ly discussed–of a sig­nif­i­cant esca­la­tion of the Ukraine war in com­ing weeks. What it means, and what it implies for US pol­i­cy, are not at all clear.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Real Prob­lem at Yale Is Not Free Speech (Natalia Dashan, Pal­la­di­um): “The cam­pus ‘free speech’ debate is just a side‐effect. So are debates about ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion.’ The real prob­lems run much deep­er. The real prob­lems start with Mar­cus and me, and the masks we wear for each oth­er…. In a world of masks and façades, it is hard to con­vey the truth. And this is how I end­ed up offer­ing a sand­wich to a man with hun­dreds of mil­lions in a for­eign bank account.” I liked this one a lot. First shared in vol­ume 215.

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 347

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 347, a Fried­man num­ber. That means it can be writ­ten as an equa­tion com­prised of its own dig­its (3+4=7).

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. What John Updike and Ger­ard Man­ley Hop­kins knew about the pow­er of East­er (Tish Har­ri­son War­ren, New York Times): “If Jesus wasn’t actu­al­ly res­ur­rect­ed, then East­er is less real than the bud­ding buzz of spring, less real than a dying breath, less real than my own hands, feet and skin. I have no inter­est in a Chris­tian­i­ty that isn’t deeply, pro­found­ly, irre­ducibly mate­r­i­al.”
  2. Frag­men­ta­tion Is Not What’s Killing Us (Rus­sell Moore, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “[The break­down at Babel] does indeed sound like now. But the lessons we learn will be wrong if we don’t see the pri­ma­ry point of the Babel sto­ry: The prob­lem wasn’t the frag­men­ta­tion. The prob­lem was the uni­ty.”
  3. Chi­na Covid #2 (Zvi Mow­showitz, Sub­stack): “I want to empha­size that it is very dif­fi­cult to know what is going on inside Chi­na and my sources for this are not the best. I find the Ukraine war a rel­a­tive epis­temic cake­walk com­pared to this. So please under­stand that the alarmist claims from var­i­ous threads are to be tak­en with large heap­ings of salt.”
  4. Solve for the wartime pre­sen­ta­tion equi­lib­ri­um (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “The country’s IT Army, a vol­un­teer force of hack­ers and activists that takes its direc­tion from the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment, says it has used [facial recog­ni­tion search­es] to inform the fam­i­lies of the deaths of 582 Rus­sians, includ­ing by send­ing them pho­tos of the aban­doned corpses. The Ukraini­ans cham­pi­on the use of face-scan­ning soft­ware from the U.S. tech firm Clearview AI as a bru­tal but effec­tive way to stir up dis­sent inside Rus­sia, dis­cour­age oth­er fight­ers and has­ten an end to a dev­as­tat­ing war.” Tech­nolo­gies always have unex­pect­ed appli­ca­tions.
  5. Help­ing the Poor: The Great Dis­trac­tion (Bryan Caplan, Sub­stack): “Gov­ern­ments around the world impose numer­ous poli­cies that active­ly hurt the poor. The whole debate about ‘help­ing the poor’ cre­ates the illu­sion that the sole rea­son for their suf­fer­ing is mere neglect, even though out­right abuse is ram­pant.… They don’t need us to help them; they need us to stop hurt­ing them.”
  6. There is No Pink Tax (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Pref­er­ences dif­fer sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly across gen­ders lead­ing to sub­tly dif­fer­ent prod­ucts even in cat­e­gories which appear sim­i­lar on the sur­face.… Women and men could save mon­ey by buy­ing prod­ucts pri­mar­i­ly mar­ket­ed to the oppo­site gender–like 2‑in‑1 shampoo+conditioner–but only by buy­ing prod­ucts that they pre­fer less than the prod­ucts they choose to buy.”
  7. Study explores aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess among Jew­ish girls (Tulane Uni­ver­si­ty, Phys.org): “Girls raised by Jew­ish par­ents are 23 per­cent­age points more like­ly to grad­u­ate col­lege than girls with a non-Jew­ish upbring­ing, even after account­ing for their par­ents’ socioe­co­nom­ic sta­tus. Girls raised by Jew­ish par­ents also grad­u­ate from more selec­tive col­leges, accord­ing to a new­ly pub­lished study by Tulane Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Ilana Hor­witz.” Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus. One of our PhD can­di­dates is coau­thor on the paper — con­grat­u­la­tions!

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Revolt of the Fem­i­nist Law Profs (Wes­ley Yang, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “The sex bureau­cra­cy, in oth­er words, piv­ot­ed from pun­ish­ing sex­u­al vio­lence to impos­ing a nor­ma­tive vision of ide­al sex, to which stu­dents are held admin­is­tra­tive­ly accountable.” First shared in vol­ume 214.

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 346

strong arti­cles this week — more rec­om­mend­ed than nor­mal

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, vol­ume 346, is the 5th Franel num­ber.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Spir­i­tu­al­ly uplift­ing:
    • Fire Upon The Earth (Charles Cha­put, First Things): “Too many peo­ple who claim to be Chris­t­ian sim­ply don’t know Jesus Christ. They don’t real­ly believe in the gospel. They feel embar­rassed by their reli­gion and out of step with the times. They may keep their reli­gion for its com­fort val­ue, or adjust it to fit their doubts. It doesn’t reshape their lives, because it isn’t real. And because it isn’t real, it has no trans­form­ing effect on their behav­ior, no social force, and few pub­lic con­se­quences. Their faith, what­ev­er it once was, is now dead.” THIS IS STRAIGHT FIRE. The excerpt does not do it jus­tice.
    • The Man On The Mid­dle Cross (Alis­tair Begg, YouTube): one and a half min­utes.
    • It’s Fri­day… But Sun­day’s a Com­ing! (YouTube): three and a half min­utes
  2. Recalled Expe­ri­ences Sur­round­ing Death: More Than Hal­lu­ci­na­tions? (Neu­ro­science News): “The recalled expe­ri­ences sur­round­ing death are not con­sis­tent with hal­lu­ci­na­tions, illu­sions or psy­che­del­ic drug induced expe­ri­ences, accord­ing to sev­er­al pre­vi­ous­ly pub­lished stud­ies. Instead, they fol­low a spe­cif­ic nar­ra­tive arc involv­ing a per­cep­tion of: (a) sep­a­ra­tion from the body with a height­ened, vast sense of con­scious­ness and recog­ni­tion of death; (b) trav­el to a des­ti­na­tion; © a mean­ing­ful and pur­pose­ful review of life, involv­ing a crit­i­cal analy­sis of all actions, inten­tions and thoughts towards oth­ers; a per­cep­tion of (d) being in a place that feels like “home”, and (e) a return back to life.” The orig­i­nal research: https://nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nyas.14740
  3. Why the Past 10 Years of Amer­i­can Life Have Been Unique­ly Stu­pid (Jonathan Haidt, The Atlantic): “The sto­ry of Babel is the best metaphor I have found for what hap­pened to Amer­i­ca in the 2010s, and for the frac­tured coun­try we now inhab­it. Some­thing went ter­ri­bly wrong, very sud­den­ly. We are dis­ori­ent­ed, unable to speak the same lan­guage or rec­og­nize the same truth. We are cut off from one anoth­er and from the past.” This is quite good. Haidt is a social psy­chol­o­gist at NYU and is some­one who seems to be faith-adja­cent: he’s near Chris­tian­i­ty but not there yet.
  4. LGBTQ relat­ed
    • What I wish I’d known when I was 19 and had sex reas­sign­ment surgery (Corin­na Cohn, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Surgery unshack­led me from my body’s urges, but the destruc­tion of my gonads intro­duced a dif­fer­ent type of bondage. From the day of my surgery, I became a med­ical patient and will remain one for the rest of my life.” I am impressed that the Wash­ing­ton Post pub­lished this op-ed.
    • How to Make Sense of the New L.G.B.T.Q. Cul­ture War (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “If con­ser­v­a­tives had pre­dict­ed just before Oberge­fell v. Hodges that soon a fifth of young adults would iden­ti­fy as L.G.B.T.Q., promi­nent voic­es would deploy terms like ‘preg­nant per­son’ and ‘men­stru­a­tor’ in place of ‘woman,’ and natal males would be win­ning women’s track and swim­ming com­pe­ti­tions, they would have been treat­ed as hys­ter­ics.” This is a strong essay. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed and worth using up one of your pay­wall access­es.
    • Vic­to­ry: Shawnee State agrees pro­fes­sors can’t be forced to speak con­trary to their beliefs (Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom): “As part of the set­tle­ment, the uni­ver­si­ty has agreed that Meri­wether has the right to choose when to use, or avoid using, titles or pro­nouns when refer­ring to or address­ing stu­dents. Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, the uni­ver­si­ty agreed Meri­wether will nev­er be man­dat­ed to use pro­nouns, includ­ing if a stu­dent requests pro­nouns that con­flict with his or her bio­log­i­cal sex.” In addi­tion, “the uni­ver­si­ty agreed to pay $400,000 in dam­ages and Meriwether’s attor­neys’ fees.”
  5. Pan­dem­ic relat­ed
    • The Accu­ra­cy of Author­i­ties (Robin Han­son, blog): “The best esti­mates of a max­i­mal­ly accu­rate source would be very fre­quent­ly updat­ed and fol­low a ran­dom walk, which implies a large amount of back­track­ing. And author­i­ta­tive sources like WHO are often said to be our most accu­rate sources. Even so, such sources do not tend to act this way. They instead update their esti­mates rarely, and are espe­cial­ly reluc­tant to issue esti­mates that seem to back­track. Why?” There is sol­id wis­dom in this post.
    • Faith, Sci­ence, and Fran­cis Collins (Dhruv Khullar, New York­er): “In May, 2021, after help­ing to lead the fed­er­al pan­dem­ic response for more than a year, dur­ing which he woke up most morn­ings at four-thir­ty, Collins escaped for a week­end to a rent­ed barn in Loudoun Coun­ty, Vir­ginia. He brought his gui­tar and a Bible that he has had for decades; hors­es and goats kept him com­pa­ny. Collins gazed out at the blue sky and rolling hills. He wrote, prayed, and ulti­mate­ly decid­ed to leave his post as the direc­tor of the N.I.H. Collins told me that he prays not to ask God to change his cir­cum­stances, but to ask God what he him­self should do.”
    • A Warn­ing From Shang­hai (Jay Bat­tacharya, Bari Weis­s’s Sub­stack): “Yet the soul search­ing [of the attack on me and oth­er researchers] should have caused among pub­lic health offi­cials has large­ly failed to occur. Instead, the les­son seems to be: Dis­sent at your own risk. I do not prac­tice medicine—I am a pro­fes­sor spe­cial­iz­ing in epi­demi­ol­o­gy and health pol­i­cy at Stan­ford Med­ical School. But many friends who do prac­tice have told me how they have cen­sored their thoughts about Covid lock­downs, vac­cines, and rec­om­mend­ed treat­ment to avoid the mob.”
  6. The Law that Banned Every­thing (Richard Hana­nia, Sub­stack): “If every­thing is poten­tial­ly ille­gal, and gov­ern­ment does not have the resources to go after every­thing, then the gov­ern­ment basi­cal­ly has arbi­trary pow­er to do what­ev­er it wants under civ­il rights law.” This was an absolute­ly fas­ci­nat­ing inter­view. The inter­vie­wee is a law pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of San Diego.
  7. A primer on the Stan­ford bud­get (Tim Macken­zie, Stan­ford Dai­ly) “… this year’s oper­at­ing bud­get says ‘the buffers serve as a finan­cial reserve in the event of an earth­quake or oth­er dis­as­ter.’ In oth­er words, Stan­ford has near­ly $4 bil­lion in a rainy-day fund. In the 2019–2020 bud­get, the last pre-COVID bud­get, Tier I and Tier II Buffers stood at $1.4 bil­lion and $1.0 bil­lion, respec­tive­ly. The buffers actu­al­ly grew by more than a bil­lion dol­lars dur­ing the ongo­ing pan­dem­ic. Mean­while, hun­dreds of work­ers were laid off and sub­con­tract­ed work­ers went months with­out promised pay. Appar­ent­ly, a glob­al pan­dem­ic does not reach the thresh­old of ‘earth­quake or oth­er dis­as­ter’ required to uti­lize finan­cial reserves to resist changes in uni­ver­si­ty oper­a­tions when chal­lenged with mar­ket uncer­tain­ty.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have For the clas­sic selec­tion next week: Against Against Bil­lion­aire Phil­an­thropy (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “I wor­ry the move­ment against bil­lion­aire char­i­ty is on track to dam­age char­i­ty a whole lot more than it dam­ages billionaires.” This is a very inter­est­ing essay, and he has a follow‐up, High­lights From The Com­ments on Bil­lion­aire Phil­an­thropy, which thought­ful­ly responds to crit­i­cisms. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. First shared in vol­ume 213.

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 345

spicy links this week

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

This is vol­ume 345, which I am told is the aver­age num­ber of squirts from a cow’s udder need­ed to pro­duce a gal­lon of milk. I have not ver­i­fied this claim.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Grow­ing Reli­gious Fer­vor in the Amer­i­can Right: ‘This Is a Jesus Move­men­t’ (Eliz­a­beth Dias and Ruth Gra­ham, New York Times): “…ele­ments of Chris­t­ian cul­ture have long been present at polit­i­cal ral­lies. But wor­ship, a sacred act show­ing devo­tion to God expressed through move­ment, song or prayer, was large­ly reserved for church. Now, many believ­ers are import­ing their wor­ship of God, with all its inten­si­ty, emo­tion and ambi­tions, to their polit­i­cal life.”
    • At the same time: “The sheer dom­i­nance of wor­ship music with­in 21st-cen­tu­ry evan­gel­i­cal cul­ture means that the genre has been used out­side church set­tings by the con­tem­po­rary left as well. ‘Way Mak­er,’ for exam­ple, was sung at some demon­stra­tions for racial jus­tice in the sum­mer of 2020.”
    • I have com­pli­cat­ed feel­ings. I like see­ing wor­ship as part of all of life. I don’t like see­ing wor­ship get hijacked in pur­suit of oth­er agen­das. Pol­i­tics can be idol­a­trous enough with­out ACTUAL WORSHIP SONGS being in the mix.
  2. “Russia can­not afford to lose, so we need a kind of a vic­to­ry”: Sergey Karaganov on what Putin wants (Bruno Maçães, The New States­man): “…Rus­sia can­not afford to ‘lose’, so we need a kind of a vic­to­ry. And if there is a sense that we are los­ing the war, then I think there is a def­i­nite pos­si­bil­i­ty of esca­la­tion. This war is a kind of proxy war between the West and the rest – Rus­sia being, as it has been in his­to­ry, the pin­na­cle of ‘the rest’ – for a future world order. The stakes of the Russ­ian elite are very high – for them it is an exis­ten­tial war.”
    • I haven’t seen many per­spec­tives from the Russ­ian side. Quite inter­est­ing.
  3. Arti­cles eval­u­at­ing the con­tem­po­rary sex­u­al eth­ic:
    • Why ‘Consent’ Isn’t Enough for a Sex­u­al Eth­ic (Tre­vix Wax, The Gospel Coali­tion): “The sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion isn’t work­ing. The utopia promised by blow­ing up old moral stric­tures hasn’t arrived. What’s more, in some cas­es the sit­u­a­tion seems worse.”
    • Straight Peo­ple Need Bet­ter Rules for Sex (Chris­tine Emba, New York Times): “Get­ting rid of the old rules and replac­ing them with the norm of con­sent was sup­posed to make us hap­py. Instead, many peo­ple today feel a bit … lost.”
      • Lost. A good word, that. Bet­ter than the author knows.
  4. LGBTQ-relat­ed
    • Explain­ing the LGBT Explo­sion (Bryan Caplan, Sub­stack): “While almost all stud­ies find that genet­ics mat­ters, vir­tu­al­ly none asserts that the her­i­tabil­i­ty of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion is even close to 100%. Ergo, homo­sex­u­al­i­ty must, to some extent, be ‘acquired.’ While that hard­ly implies that any spe­cif­ic mech­a­nism — such ‘recruit­ment’ or ‘media depic­tions’ — works, the idea that homo­sex­u­al­i­ty can be spread is the unher­ald­ed sci­en­tif­ic con­sen­sus.”
      • This seems triv­ial­ly true to me, but I am sure it is a sur­prise (even an offen­sive sur­prise) to some peo­ple.
    • Cal­i­for­nia city to give uni­ver­sal income to trans­gen­der, non­bi­na­ry res­i­dents regard­less of earn­ings. (Hous­ton Keene, Yahoo News): “Trans­gen­der res­i­dents in Palm Springs, Cal­i­for­nia are eli­gi­ble to receive a UBI of up to $900 per month sole­ly for iden­ti­fy­ing as trans­gen­der or non­bi­na­ry — no strings attached.”
    • Who Is Look­ing Out For Gay Kids? (Andrew Sul­li­van, Sub­stack): “This unavoid­able ten­sion between mes­sages that are good for trans kids and those that are good for gay kids is absent from the debate — in part because the woke con­flate both expe­ri­ences into the entire­ly ide­o­log­i­cal con­struct of being LGBTQIA++. But no one is LGBTQIA++. It’s lit­er­al­ly impos­si­ble. And the dif­fer­ence between the gay and trans expe­ri­ence is vast, espe­cial­ly when it comes to bio­log­i­cal sex.”
    • Researchers Found Puber­ty Block­ers And Hor­mones Didn’t Improve Trans Kid­s’ Men­tal Health At Their Clin­ic. Then They Pub­lished A Study Claim­ing The Oppo­site (Jesse Sin­gal, Sub­stack): “I want­ed to dou­ble-check this to be sure, so I reached out to one of the study authors. They want­ed to stay on back­ground, but they con­firmed to me that there was no improve­ment over time among the kids who went on hor­mones or block­ers.”
      • It’s like there is a con­cert­ed effort to make me a cranky mid­dle-aged man who does­n’t trust the media. This arti­cle is long and prob­a­bly only worth read­ing in detail if you knew you want­ed to read it all as soon as you saw the head­line.

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 344

344 is the 8th octa­he­dral num­ber

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 344, and 344 is the 8th octa­he­dral num­ber.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. No, Chris­tian­i­ty Is Not as Bad as You Think (Josh How­er­ton, The Gospel Coali­tion): “In addi­tion to hav­ing flaws and sins, church­es also have an Ene­my whose pri­ma­ry weapon is lies.… Satan tries to decon­struct the church Jesus is con­struct­ing (Matt. 16:18) by lever­ag­ing her faults to slan­der her with plau­si­ble false nar­ra­tives. And that is exact­ly what we find: a wide and grow­ing gap between cul­tur­al nar­ra­tives about Chris­tian­i­ty and the real­i­ty of Chris­tian­i­ty.”
  2. The truth about nuclear deter­rence (Hebert Lin, Insti­tute of Art and Ideas): “… it pre­sumes all nuclear pow­ers rec­og­nize their ulti­mate self-inter­est in avoid­ing nuclear war, since nuclear war would lead to dev­as­ta­tion for both sides. But this neat pic­ture becomes very messy very quick­ly when one real­izes that nations have oth­er goals in addi­tion to that of avoid­ing nuclear war.” The author is a pro­fes­sor at Stan­ford. Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
  3. Gov­ern­ment Is Flail­ing, in Part Because Lib­er­als Hob­bled It (Ezra Klein, New York Times): “..one generation’s solu­tions have become the next generation’s prob­lems. Process­es meant to pro­mote cit­i­zen involve­ment have them­selves been cap­tured by cor­po­rate inter­ests and rich NIM­BYs. Laws meant to ensure that gov­ern­ment con­sid­ers the con­se­quences of its actions have made it too dif­fi­cult for gov­ern­ment to act con­se­quen­tial­ly.” This is quite good. This is not an angry par­ti­san piece — Klein is him­self a lib­er­al engag­ing in pub­lic reflec­tion.
  4. Some arti­cles about trans­gen­derism:
  5. What Oper­a­tion Warp Speed Did, Didn’t and Can’t Do (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “First, it’s impor­tant to under­stand that OWS did not cre­ate any sci­en­tif­ic inno­va­tions or dis­cov­er­ies. The inno­v­a­tive mRNA vac­cines are right­ly laud­ed but all of the key sci­en­tif­ic ideas behind mRNA as a deliv­ery mech­a­nism long pre­date Oper­a­tion Warp Speed. The sci­en­tif­ic advances were the result of many decades of work, some of it sup­port­ed by uni­ver­si­ty and gov­ern­ment fund­ing and also a sig­nif­i­cant frac­tion by large pri­vate invest­ments in firms such as Mod­er­na and BioN­Tech. It was BioN­Tech recall that hired Katal­in Karikó (and many oth­er mRNA researchers) when she couldn’t get uni­ver­si­ty or gov­ern­ment fund­ing. Since OWS cre­at­ed no new sci­en­tif­ic break­throughs there isn’t much to learn from OWS about the effi­ca­cy of large scale pro­grams for that pur­pose.” Inter­est­ing through­out.
  6. Thread about can­cel cul­ture (Greg Lukianoff, Twit­ter): “We tracked 563 attempts to get schol­ars can­celed since 2015 — includ­ing 283 just since 2020. Near­ly 2/3 were suc­cess­ful, result­ing in sanc­tion, & 1‑in‑5 result­ed in ter­mi­na­tion (that includes 30 tenured pro­fes­sors!).”
  7. We are rein­stat­ing our SAT/ACT require­ment for future admis­sions cycles (Stu Schmill, MIT Admis­sions): “…stan­dard­ized tests also help us iden­ti­fy aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly pre­pared, socioe­co­nom­i­cal­ly dis­ad­van­taged stu­dents who could not oth­er­wise demon­strate readi­ness⁠ because they do not attend schools that offer advanced course­work, can­not afford expen­sive enrich­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties, can­not expect lengthy let­ters of rec­om­men­da­tion from their over­bur­dened teach­ers, or are oth­er­wise ham­pered by edu­ca­tion­al inequalities.⁠” Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have An Epi­dem­ic of Dis­be­lief (Bar­bara Bradley Hager­ty, The Atlantic): “Historically, inves­ti­ga­tors had assumed that some­one who assaults a stranger by the rail­road tracks is noth­ing like the man who assaults his co‐worker or his girl­friend. But it turns out that the space between acquain­tance rape and stranger rape is not a wall, but a plaza. When Cleve­land inves­ti­ga­tors uploaded the DNA from the acquaintance‐rape kits, they were sur­prised by how often the results also matched DNA from unsolved stranger rapes. The task force iden­ti­fied dozens of mys­tery rapists this way.” Infu­ri­at­ing and high­ly rec­om­mend­ed. First shared in vol­ume 211.

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 343

a briefer col­lec­tion than nor­mal

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 343, which has an unusu­al rela­tion­ship with the num­ber 18. Name­ly 343 = 180 + 181 + 182.

I don’t have much access to my com­put­er this week, so this is a briefer col­lec­tion than the norm. And there may not be an update next week at all — we’ll see.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. How Read­ers Around the World Are Pray­ing for Ukraine (Tish Har­ri­son War­ren, New York Times): “…prayer is indeed pow­er­ful, often in ways we can’t account for. War, what­ev­er else it is, is spir­i­tu­al­ly dark, even demon­ic. From the first days of the Russ­ian inva­sion, reli­gious peo­ple and insti­tu­tions around the world have respond­ed by pray­ing. Writ­ten prayers and Psalms can be a life­line, help­ing us pray when our own words — and even our own faith — fail.”
    • The last prayer is amaz­ing con­tent for the New York Times and I post it here in full since some of you don’t have access through the NYT pay­wall:
    • “Father-God, may the attack­er­s’ fin­gers freeze; may they drop things; may they not see clear­ly; may their equip­ment mal­func­tion; may they expe­ri­ence
    • over­whelm­ing hope­less­ness, enor­mous fatigue and a com­plete loss of any desire to fight; may their com­mu­ni­ca­tion be bro­ken; may there be con­fu­sion. Lead them to sur­ren­der. Stretch the kilo­me­ters before them into end­less kilo­me­ters of non­ad­vance­ment. Remove their lead­er­ship and replace them with peo­ple who make deci­sions that reflect a fear of you.
      Oh, God, infuse defend­ers with incred­i­ble surges of renewed alert­ness, strength, hope, courage. Inspire those who want to help. Show them spe­cif­ic, effec­tive ideas. Move them swift­ly and safe­ly.
      The worst is yet to come, Lord, if you do not stop it. But please, no peace where there is no peace. We ask for peace unit­ed with right­eous­ness and truth.God of all com­fort, be phys­i­cal­ly present with all the moth­ers, fathers, grand­par­ents and chil­dren who are hid­ing, hear­ing, smelling, endur­ing. Warm them; fill them with food; give them water, toi­lets, com­mu­ni­ca­tion with their loved ones, the Gospel, hope in you.
      We repent of mak­ing idols of polit­i­cal lead­ers and news out­lets. For­give us for want­i­ng them to be our gods and sav­iors. For­give us for being unrea­son­able, for not want­i­ng to admit both the good and bad in all of our lead­ers. It is this spir­it that leads us to dic­ta­tors because we aban­don respon­si­bil­i­ty and rea­son. We con­fess the seeds of war that live in our own hearts.
      We hum­ble our hearts, our bod­ies. We ask you for mer­cy. Thank you that you love mer­cy and have all pow­er.”
  2. How Reli­gious Faith Can Shape Suc­cess in School (Ilana M. Hor­witz, New York Times): “I found that what reli­gion offers teenagers varies by social class. Those raised by pro­fes­sion­al-class par­ents, for exam­ple, do not expe­ri­ence much in the way of an edu­ca­tion­al advan­tage from being reli­gious. In some ways, reli­gion even con­strains teenager­s’ edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties (espe­cial­ly girl­s’) by shap­ing their aca­d­e­m­ic ambi­tions after grad­u­a­tion; they are less like­ly to con­sid­er a selec­tive col­lege as they pri­or­i­tize life goals such as par­ent­hood, altru­ism and ser­vice to God rather than a pres­ti­gious career. How­ev­er, teenage boys from work­ing-class fam­i­lies, regard­less of race, who were reg­u­lar­ly involved in their church and strong­ly believed in God were twice as like­ly to earn bachelor’s degrees as mod­er­ate­ly reli­gious or non­re­li­gious boys.”
    • I find the ten­sion between faith and wealth inter­est­ing. They emerge as rivals in all sorts of sit­u­a­tions. The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at Tulane.
  3. This 47-year-old left a $800,000 salary to coach bas­ket­ball – now his small school is head­ed to NCAA March Mad­ness (Tom Hud­dle­ston, Jr): “In 2016, Aldrich was in the midst of a lucra­tive career. After being a part­ner at one of the world’s top law firms, he’d become the chief finan­cial offi­cer of a pri­vate equi­ty firm, with a salary of $800,000 per year, he told The Wash­ing­ton Post last week. But then, his best friend and for­mer col­lege bas­ket­ball team­mate Ryan Odom land­ed the job as head bas­ket­ball coach at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land, Bal­ti­more Coun­ty. Odom offered Aldrich a posi­tion as direc­tor of recruit­ing, a job that paid only $32,000 per year. But it got Aldrich clos­er to ful­fill­ing a life­long dream: a career coach­ing col­lege bas­ket­ball. He accepted.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. I did some dig­ging and turns out the coach is a devout Chris­t­ian.
  4. The Semi­con­duc­tor Ecosys­tem – Explained (Steve Blank, blog): “Con­trol­ling advanced chip man­u­fac­tur­ing in the 21st cen­tu­ry may well prove to be like con­trol­lin g the oil sup­ply in the 20th. The coun­try that con­trols this man­u­fac­tur­ing can throt­tle the mil­i­tary and eco­nom­ic pow­er of oth­ers.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  5. SF is now boy­cotting most of the Unit­ed States (Joe Eskenazi,Mission Local):  “It will come as lit­tle sur­prise to any­one famil­iar with the M.O. of San Fran­cis­co gov­ern­ment that we have no tests nor audits nor analy­sis nor method­ol­o­gy to deter­mine if our trav­el bans or boy­cotts are mak­ing any dif­fer­ence for the good.… You could argue that, in 2016, San Fran­cis­co put itself in the van­guard of a move­ment. But, in the ensu­ing six years, nobody else has joined up. ‘No city has reached out to say they want to mir­ror our rules,’ con­firms Chu.“ 
  6. The Real Rea­son That Pornog­ra­phy Can Lead to Male Sex­u­al Dis­sat­is­fac­tion (Ross Pomeroy, Real Clear Sci­ence): “…the unre­al­is­tic depic­tions of sex, female part­ners, and rela­tion­ships com­mon­ly seen in pornog­ra­phy can warp men’s expec­ta­tions of real-life sex. When het­ero­sex­u­al men expect sex with their part­ners to be just like the staged fan­tasies they see on the Inter­net, this can lead to dis­sat­is­fac­tion and even low­er their well-being.”
    • Sci­ence, catch­ing up to youth pas­tors since 2022.
    • Catch­ing up to bad youth pas­tors, actu­al­ly. The advice at the end is pret­ty ter­ri­ble by almost any­one’s stan­dards.
  7. The Chris­tians Who Think the Ukraine Inva­sion Means Jesus Is Return­ing to Earth (Alex Mor­ris, Rolling Stone): “For mil­len­nia, end times Chris­tians have tried to shoe­horn cur­rent events into proof of Jesus’ immi­nent return, tak­ing cryp­tic lan­guage from the books of Ezekiel, Daniel, Matthew, and Rev­e­la­tion to come up with var­i­ous the­o­ries as to how the world will end. In most of these the­o­ries — embraced by con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cal or fun­da­men­tal­ist branch­es of the faith — an enti­ty referred to as Gog and Magog descends from the ‘far north’ upon a peace­ful, recon­sti­tut­ed Israel, whose peo­ple had been ‘brought out from the nations, and all now dwell secure­ly,’ as it is described in Ezekiel. The result­ing war that fol­lows allows a Mes­si­ah to swoop in and come to Israel’s res­cue. It also ush­ers in the end of the world as we know it and the estab­lish­ment of a new and bet­ter king­dom of God on earth.”
    • The author most­ly did his home­work, but did mis­spell “pen­ta­costal” lat­er in the essay and def­i­nite­ly gets some of the men­tal­i­ty wrong.

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 one I have fond­ness in my heart for: Man­ly wed­ding rings for tough guys who are dudes (Dan Brooks, The Out­line): “I don’t hunt, but I briefly con­sid­ered buy­ing a cam­ou­flage ring, part­ly to sig­nal my deep com­mit­ment to irony and part­ly to get bet­ter ser­vice at the auto parts store.” I real­ly enjoyed this essay, and I hope that many of you have need of wed­ding bands in the not‐too‐distant future. First shared in vol­ume 210.

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 342

the long col­lec­tions of links are at the end — punchy stuff up top

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 342, which is 666 in base 7. Do with that infor­ma­tion as you see fit.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. I Came to Col­lege Eager to Debate. I Found Self-Cen­sor­ship Instead. (Emma Camp, New York Times): “…my col­lege expe­ri­ence has been defined by strict ide­o­log­i­cal con­for­mi­ty. Stu­dents of all polit­i­cal per­sua­sions hold back — in class dis­cus­sions, in friend­ly con­ver­sa­tions, on social media — from say­ing what we real­ly think. Even as a lib­er­al who has attend­ed abor­tion rights protests and writ­ten about stand­ing up to racism, I some­times feel afraid to ful­ly speak my mind.”
    • This is a strong col­umn. And the anec­dote about her first amend­ment sign is amus­ing.
  2. We’re All Sin­ners, and Accept­ing That Is Actu­al­ly a Good Thing (Tish Har­ri­son War­ren, New York Times): “My favorite def­i­n­i­tion of sin comes from the Eng­lish author Fran­cis Spufford. He says that most of us in the West think of sin as a word that ‘basi­cal­ly means “indul­gence” or “enjoy­able naugh­ti­ness.“ ‘ Instead, he calls sin ‘the human propen­si­ty to mess things up’ — only he doesn’t use the word ‘mess,’ and his word is prob­a­bly clos­er to the truth of things.”
    • This sen­tence from lat­er on was quite good: “The Luther­an the­olo­gian Mar­tin Mar­ty wrote that we live in a cul­ture where ‘every­thing is per­mit­ted and noth­ing is for­giv­en.’ ”
  3. Women who self-objec­ti­fy are less aware of the cold dur­ing nights out, study finds (Beth Elwood, Psy­Post): “Self-objec­ti­fi­ca­tion is when a per­son is over­ly con­cerned with how oth­ers per­ceive their appear­ance. When peo­ple self-objec­ti­fy, they view them­selves as objects of attrac­tion. Inter­est­ing­ly, a greater ten­den­cy to self-objec­ti­fy has been asso­ci­at­ed with reduced atten­tion to one’s bod­i­ly process­es, for exam­ple, dif­fi­cul­ty iden­ti­fy­ing feel­ings of hunger.”
    • “Self-objec­ti­fy.” I love when we come up with new words that we don’t need. Vain will do fine, thank you. And I doubt this is as gen­dered as the head­line sug­gests — I see frat bros in their mus­cle shirts even when it is chilly out. Vain peo­ple are appar­ent­ly not lying when they say they don’t feel the cold.
  4. A feud between mail car­ri­ers, wild turkeys comes to a dead­ly cli­max near Sacra­men­to (Chris­t­ian Mar­tinez, LA Times): “For months, mail car­ri­ers in the Sacra­men­to Coun­ty enclave of Arden-Arcade have been ter­ror­ized by wild turkeys, at times dis­rupt­ing deliv­er­ies. This week, ten­sions between the fowl and one U.S. Postal Ser­vice work­er reached a vio­lent cli­max when the car­ri­er killed a turkey while on duty, offi­cials said, prompt­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion by the Cal­i­for­nia Depart­ment of Fish and Wildlife.”
    • If a crime was com­mit­ted then Cal­i­for­nia laws need reform. If self-defense is a legit­i­mate excuse in human death how much more when an ani­mal is killed? I stan the let­ter car­ri­er.
  5. On Ukraine:
    • Why Fore­cast­ing War Is Hard (Richard Hana­nia, Sub­stack): “If North Korea can main­tain a for­mi­da­ble army, I sus­pect that Rus­sia can too no mat­ter how bad sanc­tions get.… I keep try­ing to play the sce­nario out in my head as to what a Russ­ian loss looks like and it’s hard to see it.”
    • Ukraine is around the same size as Texas. (My Life Else­where)
    • The U.S. Is Not at War, But Its Civ­il Soci­ety Is Mobi­liz­ing Against Rus­sia (Ben­jamin Park­er, The Bul­wark): “While no state of war exists between the gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States and the gov­ern­ment of Rus­sia, a sort of opt-in, cul­tur­al-eco­nom­ic qua­si-war exists between Amer­i­can civ­il soci­ety and the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment. The same goes for many if not all of the oth­er coun­tries arrayed against Rus­sia. This rais­es lots of inter­est­ing and dif­fi­cult ques­tions…”
    • Relat­ed: Putin Dons Pres­i­dent Xi Mask So Com­pa­nies Will Stop Boy­cotting Them (Baby­lon Bee): ouch
    • Go Ahead. Pray for Putin’s Demise. (Tish Har­ri­son War­ren, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Very often in the impre­ca­to­ry psalms, we are ask­ing that people’s evil actions would ric­o­chet back on them­selves. We are not pray­ing that vio­lence begets more vio­lence or that evil starts a cycle of vengeance or retal­i­a­tion. But we are pray­ing that peo­ple would be destroyed by their own schemes and, as my pro­fes­sor prayed, that bombs would explode in bomber­s’ faces.”
    • They Pre­dict­ed the Ukraine War. But Did They Still Get It Wrong? (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “It’s a curi­ous fea­ture of West­ern debate since Russia’s inva­sion of Ukraine that a school of thought that pre­dict­ed some ver­sion of this con­flict has been depict­ed as dis­cred­it­ed by the par­tial ful­fill­ment of its prophe­cies.”
    • Ukraine’s Believ­ers and the ‘Christian’ Putin (Mindy Belz, Wall Street Jour­nal): “Pro-Russ­ian fight­ers in Don­bas seized church­es and Chris­t­ian uni­ver­si­ties, some vio­lent­ly. Mili­ti­a­men abduct­ed, tor­tured and killed four Pen­te­costal dea­cons. Their bod­ies were found in a mass grave along with two dozen oth­ers. One watch­dog group, the Euro­pean Evan­gel­i­cal Alliance, called Don­bas ‘the area of Europe where the church suf­fers the most.’ ” Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
    • Face­book allows war posts urg­ing vio­lence against Russ­ian invaders (Mun­sif Ven­gat­til & Eliz­a­beth Cul­li­ford, Reuters): “The calls for the lead­ers’ deaths will be allowed unless they con­tain oth­er tar­gets or have two indi­ca­tors of cred­i­bil­i­ty, such as the loca­tion or method, one email said, in a recent change to the com­pa­ny’s rules on vio­lence and incite­ment.”
      • It’s like a mod­ern-day ver­sion of the reli­gious gym­nas­tics Jesus con­demned in Mark 7:9–13. Face­book is opposed to calls for vio­lence except when they are not.
    • Why white evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians are Putin’s biggest Amer­i­can fan base (Anthea But­ler, MSNBC): “…more pro-Putin Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cals are com­ing into sharp focus. Tel­e­van­ge­list Pat Robert­son pro­claimed that Putin is ‘being com­pelled by God’ to invade Ukraine — his take on Putin’s moti­va­tions is ques­tion­able at best, but his sup­port for Putin as part of a divine plan is notable.”
      • Ummm… not a Pat Robert­son fan­boy here, but I feel the need to point out to the author that Judas was part of a divine plan. Being part of a divine plan is not auto­mat­i­cal­ly com­mend­able. The arti­cle is inter­est­ing regard­less.
    • The Real Rus­sia ‘Reset’: Reassess­ing US Sanc­tions Pol­i­cy Against Rus­sia (Daniel P. Ahn, Rus­sia Matters):  “…the pecu­niary cost of sanc­tions to Rus­sia has been larg­er than pre­vi­ous­ly esti­mat­ed, but these sanc­tions have had an effect on domes­tic pol­i­tics that is not nec­es­sar­i­ly favor­able to U.S. inter­ests. Name­ly, the Russ­ian government’s attempts to pro­tect eco­nom­ic sec­tors it con­sid­ers strate­gic have made the country’s pow­er­ful elites even more depen­dent on the Krem­lin, while the bot­tom-line costs are borne by ordi­nary peo­ple.”
      • This is recent yet from before the cur­rent sanc­tions in response to the inva­sion of Ukraine (and thus less caught up in the moment). Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  6. On the pan­dem­ic:
    • Tol­er­at­ing COVID Mis­in­for­ma­tion Is Bet­ter Than the Alter­na­tive (Conor Frieder­s­dor, The Atlantic): “On Decem­ber 30, 2019, Li Wen­liang, an oph­thal­mol­o­gist at Wuhan Cen­tral Hos­pi­tal in Hubei, Chi­na, began to warn friends and col­leagues about the out­break of a nov­el res­pi­ra­to­ry ill­ness. Four days lat­er, he was sum­moned to appear before local author­i­ties, who rep­ri­mand­ed him for ‘mak­ing false com­ments’ that ‘severe­ly dis­turbed the social order.’ In hind­sight, Li was the first per­son accused of dis­sem­i­nat­ing med­ical mis­in­for­ma­tion dur­ing the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, despite the fact that he was telling the truth.”
    • Sec­ondary Attack Rates for Omi­cron and Delta Vari­ants of SARS-CoV­‑2 in Nor­we­gian House­holds (Jørgensen, NygÃ¥rd & Kacel­nik, JAMA): “Sec­ondary attack rate [chance of trans­mit­ting to some­one else in your house­hold] was 25.1% (95% CI, 24.4%-25.9%) when the vari­ant of the index case was Omi­cron, 19.4% (95% CI, 19.0%-19.8%) when it was Delta, and 17.9% (95% CI, 17.5%-18.4%) when it was non­clas­si­fied.”
      • This is straight-up sur­pris­ing to me. If you got COVID there was only a 1/5 to 1/4 chance of spread­ing it to the peo­ple who live with you. This is based on nation­al-lev­el Nor­we­gian data and I don’t know enough about Nor­way’s archi­tec­ture, cul­ture, or COVID restric­tions com­pared to the USA to know how well this maps to us, but it’s real­ly inter­est­ing. For con­text, when I got COVID so did most (but not all) of my fam­i­ly.
    • An Anti-Vax Judge Is Pre­vent­ing the Navy From Deploy­ing a War­ship (Mark Joseph Stern, Slate): “The Navy and the fed­er­al judi­cia­ry are there­fore in a stand­off. The Navy will not deploy Doe’s war­ship until he is stripped of com­mand [because of his response to COVID]. Mer­ry­day will not allow it to do so. As a result, Mer­ry­day has effec­tive­ly tak­en a 10,000 ton, $1.8 bil­lion guid­ed-mis­sile destroy­er out of com­mis­sion.”
      • This is more of an op-ed than an arti­cle and is very hos­tile to the offi­cer and the judge. Nonethe­less inter­est­ing.
    • Destroy­er can’t deploy because CO won’t get COVID vac­cine, Navy says (Geoff Ziezulewicz, Navy Times): “But accord­ing to Mat Staver of the Lib­er­ty Coun­sel, a reli­gious free­dom non-prof­it rep­re­sent­ing the plain­tiffs, the gov­ern­ment is ‘putting in these histri­on­ic kinds of state­ments into the record that are com­plete­ly con­trary to the evi­dence.’ While Navy lead­ers have pro­fessed lost con­fi­dence in the CO, they still sent him and his ship out to sea for two weeks of train­ing, Staver told Navy Times on Mon­day. ‘When this was filed in court say­ing the ship is not deploy­able because they lost con­fi­dence in the Com­man­der, the Com­man­der was on board the ship out to sea for two weeks of test­ing and train­ing for mil­i­tary readi­ness,’ Staver said.”
      • A more com­pre­hen­sive account­ing. The legal con­text about the require­ments of RFRA at the end are clar­i­fy­ing.
  7. Flori­da’s edu­ca­tion bill:
    • For the bill: Why are they real­ly want­i­ng to talk to 1st graders about sex­u­al­i­ty? (Peter Heck, Sub­stack): “What am I miss­ing? Why are there peo­ple so invest­ed in talk­ing to kinder­gart­ners about sex that they are rail­ing against this law and ral­ly­ing Hol­ly­wood, media, and their entire pro­gres­sive pop cul­ture appa­ra­tus into mis­rep­re­sent­ing and revers­ing it?”
    • For the bill: “Don’t Say Gay” is a lie (Allie Beth Stuck­ey, World): “..what is the well-mean­ing, rea­son­able oppo­si­tion to this bill? I am hard-pressed to think of one valid rea­son, even as I have attempt­ed a good faith effort of putting myself in a progressive’s shoes. The most char­i­ta­ble expla­na­tion I can give is that most peo­ple angri­ly protest­ing and report­ing on the bill have not read it.”
    • Against the bill: Bills like ‘Don’t Say Gay’ hurt LGBTQ youth already at high risk of sui­cide (Amit Paley, USA Today): “LGBTQ youth are already placed at sig­nif­i­cant­ly increased risk for sui­cide because of how they are mis­treat­ed and stig­ma­tized. The Trevor Project’s  2021 Nation­al Sur­vey on LGBTQ Youth Men­tal Health, cap­tur­ing the expe­ri­ences of near­ly 35,000 LGBTQ youth across the Unit­ed States, found that 42% of respon­dents seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered attempt­ing sui­cide in the past year, includ­ing more than half of trans and non­bi­na­ry youth.”
    • The above claim in aca­d­e­m­ic con­text: Sui­cide by Clin­ic-Referred Trans­gen­der Ado­les­cents in the Unit­ed King­dom (Michael Big­gs, Archives of Sex­u­al Behav­ior): “From 2010 to 2020, four patients were known or sus­pect­ed to have died by sui­cide, out of about 15,000 patients (includ­ing those on the wait­ing list). To cal­cu­late the annu­al sui­cide rate, the total num­ber of years spent by patients under the clinic’s care is esti­mat­ed at about 30,000. This yields an annu­al sui­cide rate of 13 per 100,000 (95% con­fi­dence inter­val: 4–34). Com­pared to the Unit­ed King­dom pop­u­la­tion of sim­i­lar age and sex­u­al com­po­si­tion, the sui­cide rate for patients at the GIDS was 5.5 times high­er.”
      • Sum­ma­ry: this study sug­gests that UK youth who con­sid­er them­selves trans are more like­ly to attempt sui­cide than their peers but at a much low­er rate than the fifty per­cent which is often thrown around. The sui­cide rate among this pop­u­la­tion is actu­al­ly thou­sands of times small­er than that, slight­ly above one hun­dredth of one per­cent. Each of those deaths is a tragedy, and hav­ing an accu­rate under­stand­ing of the prob­lem is essen­tial to plan­ning effec­tive soci­etal respons­es.
      • Inci­den­tal­ly, this far low­er num­ber is actu­al­ly com­pat­i­ble with the 50% claim in the pre­ced­ing arti­cle when the phrase “seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered attempt­ing sui­cide” is right­ly under­stood. The aca­d­e­m­ic paper delves into some rel­e­vant con­sid­er­a­tions and I com­mend it to you.

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 Asym­met­ric Weapons Gone Bad (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “Every day we do things that we can’t eas­i­ly jus­ti­fy. If some­one were to argue that we shouldn’t do the thing, they would win eas­i­ly. We would respond by cut­ting that per­son out of our life, and con­tin­u­ing to do the thing.” This entire series of arti­cles (this is the fourth, the oth­ers are linked at the top of it) is 100% worth read­ing. It’s a very inter­est­ing way to think about the lim­its of rea­son and the wis­dom hid­den in tra­di­tion. First shared in vol­ume 206.

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 341

a lot about Rus­si­a’s inva­sion of Ukraine, but don’t sleep on the rest — there’s good stuff!

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 341, which when ren­dered in base 2 (34110=1010101012) is appar­ent­ly the small­est pseudo­prime in that base.

Also, there’s a lot hap­pen­ing this week and I feel under­in­formed. These are the things that stood out to me from the less-than-I-would-have-liked that I did read.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Rus­si­a’s Inva­sion of Ukraine:
    • Just war the­o­ry and the Rus­so-Ukrain­ian war (Ed Fes­er, blog): “One of the strik­ing fea­tures of the cat­a­stro­phe in Ukraine is how unam­bigu­ous­ly the prin­ci­ples of just war doc­trine seem to apply. On the one hand, Russia’s inva­sion can­not be jus­ti­fied giv­en the cri­te­ria of just war the­o­ry. On the oth­er hand, NATO mil­i­tary action against Rus­sia can­not be jus­ti­fied either.” The author, a Chris­t­ian, is a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor at Pasade­na City Col­lege.
    • We Are All Real­ists Now (Ryan Feda­siuk, George­town Secu­ri­ty Stud­ies Review): “After a sleep­less night spent read­ing takes about every mod­ern geopo­lit­i­cal issue under the sun I found, hon­est­ly, that I could not care less about any of them. Can peo­ple get to safe­ty? Where are the med­ical facil­i­ties? How many refugees can the Unit­ed States admit? — These are the ques­tions that mat­ter. War may be an object of aca­d­e­m­ic study, but it is first and fore­most a human cat­a­stro­phe.” The author is pur­su­ing his mas­ter’s at George­town. This is brief and quite good. Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
    • Paus­ing at the Precipice (Tan­ner Greer, Schol­ar’s Stage): “This is a pow­er­ful frame­work for under­stand­ing for­eign pol­i­cy crises. Cat­a­stroph­ic mis­judg­ment rests on the con­ver­gence of two ele­ments: an emer­gent sense that there is a moral imper­a­tive to act paired with a break­down in the for­mal deci­sion-mak­ing process­es designed to force pol­i­cy mak­ers to care­ful­ly weigh the poten­tial con­se­quences of their deci­sions.”
    • The Absence Of A Trag­ic Sense (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “…we have just entered into an extreme­ly dan­ger­ous peri­od of life on this plan­et. Peo­ple who are thrilled over the moral clar­i­ty of the moment must have for­got­ten that the Cold War, with the ter­ror of nuclear war hang­ing over our heads con­stant­ly, was a time of moral clar­i­ty too.”
    • We Have Nev­er Been Here Before (Thomas L. Fried­man, New York Times): “…today’s world is rest­ing on two simul­ta­ne­ous extremes: Nev­er have the lead­ers of two of the three most pow­er­ful nuclear nations — Putin and Xi — had more unchecked pow­er and nev­er have more peo­ple from one end of the world to the oth­er been wired togeth­er with few­er and few­er buffers. So, what those two lead­ers decide to do with their unchecked pow­er will touch vir­tu­al­ly all of us direct­ly or indi­rect­ly. Putin’s inva­sion of Ukraine is our first real taste of how crazy and unsta­ble this kind of wired world can get. It will not be our last.”
    • Ukraine war: ‘My city’s being shelled, but mum won’t believe me’ (Maria Korenyuk and Jack Good­man, BBC): “My par­ents under­stand that some mil­i­tary action is hap­pen­ing here. But they say: ‘Rus­sians came to lib­er­ate you. They won’t ruin any­thing, they won’t touch you. They’re only tar­get­ing mil­i­tary bases’.”
    • Russ­ian Degra­da­tion and Ukrain­ian Hope: The Exam­ple of Chris­t­ian High­er Edu­ca­tion (Per­ry Glanz­er, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Russ­ian polit­i­cal lead­ers con­tin­u­al­ly exalt cor­rup­tion, dys­func­tion, and the pur­suit of pow­er. This leads them to under­mine bur­geon­ing efforts to rebuild civ­il soci­ety, improve reli­gious lib­er­ty, or expand reli­gious edu­ca­tion. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the dom­i­nant Russ­ian Ortho­dox Church makes things worse. For­mer com­mu­nists large­ly con­trol the Russ­ian Ortho­dox Church, and they use this pow­er to sup­port a Russ­ian ver­sion of Chris­t­ian nationalism—making the church an instru­ment of the state. In Ukraine I have found hope and courage among edu­ca­tors and Chris­tians try­ing to build civ­il soci­ety in the con­text of reli­gious free­dom in ways that some polit­i­cal lead­ers sup­port­ed.” This was unex­pect­ed­ly inter­est­ing. The author is an edu­ca­tion prof at Bay­lor.
    • How Putin Wants Rus­sians to See the War in Ukraine (Masha Gessen, The New York­er): “While news chan­nels around the world broad­cast spe­cial reports from Ukrain­ian cities that are being bom­bard­ed by the Russ­ian mil­i­tary, Russ­ian news­casts on state-con­trolled chan­nels, which have a monop­oly on broad­cast tele­vi­sion, are short and unevent­ful.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
    • The West’s Green Delu­sions Empow­ered Putin (Michael Shel­len­berg­er, Bari Weiss’ Sub­stack): “Green cam­paigns have suc­ceed­ed in destroy­ing Ger­man ener­gy independence—they call it Energiewende, or ‘ener­gy turnaround’—by suc­cess­ful­ly sell­ing pol­i­cy­mak­ers on a pecu­liar ver­sion of envi­ron­men­tal­ism. It calls cli­mate change a near-term apoc­a­lyp­tic threat to human sur­vival while turn­ing up its nose at the tech­nolo­gies that can help address cli­mate change most and soon­est: nuclear and nat­ur­al gas.… Ger­many has trapped itself. It could burn more coal and under­mine its com­mit­ment to reduc­ing car­bon emis­sions. Or it could use more nat­ur­al gas, which gen­er­ates half the car­bon emis­sions of coal, but at the cost of depen­dence on import­ed Russ­ian gas. Berlin was faced with a choice between unleash­ing the wrath of Putin on neigh­bor­ing coun­tries or invit­ing the wrath of Gre­ta Thun­berg. They chose Putin.” Those last two sen­tences…
    • When the Man Meets the Moment (David French, The Dis­patch): “The future is opaque. The fog of war has descend­ed over the bat­tle­field. Much is unknown, but this much is clear: An ordi­nary man has answered the call of an extra­or­di­nary time, and he has sparked hope in his own peo­ple and in a cyn­i­cal and weary west.”
    • A Tale of Two Mas­culin­i­ties (Andrew T. Walk­er, World): “…com­pare the rival mas­culin­i­ties of Zelen­skyy and Vladimir Putin. Zelenskyy’s com­mon grace demon­stra­tion of healthy mas­culin­i­ty exudes lead­er­ship, courage, resolve, and sac­ri­fice. He does not tell you of his courage; he sim­ply shows it. And then there is the so-called ‘man­li­ness’ of Putin, who boasts of a mas­culin­i­ty with ridicu­lous pho­tos of him­self rid­ing hors­es while shirt­less.”
    • ‘Yes, He Would’: Fiona Hill on Putin and Nukes (Mau­ra Reynolds, Politi­co): “Putin is increas­ing­ly oper­at­ing emo­tion­al­ly and like­ly to use all the weapons at his dis­pos­al, includ­ing nuclear ones. It’s impor­tant not to have any illu­sions — but equal­ly impor­tant not to lose hope.” Not the main point of the piece, but my favorite part is when she says sanc­tions won’t be enough and then sug­gests stronger sanc­tions. Over­all a mixed arti­cle but worth read­ing if you’re inter­est­ed in the sub­ject.
    • Ukrain­ian sailor in Major­ca tried to sink yacht of Russ­ian boss (BBC): “He told a judge that he regret­ted noth­ing and would do it again.” Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
    • For­mer Miss Grand Ukraine joins fight against Russ­ian inva­sion (Patrick Reil­ly, New York Post): “[Anas­ta­sia Lenna] had pre­vi­ous­ly worked as a mod­el and a pub­lic rela­tions man­ag­er in Turkey, accord­ing to her Miss Grand Inter­na­tion­al pro­file, a whole world away from the vio­lence of the bat­tle­field. She also speaks five lan­guages and has worked as a trans­la­tor.”
  2. Supreme Court:
    • Ketan­ji Brown Jack­son Thanks God for Supreme Court Nom­i­na­tion (Jack Jenk­ins, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Jack­son did not men­tion a spe­cif­ic faith tra­di­tion in her remarks, so it was not imme­di­ate­ly clear whether she would alter the reli­gious make­up of the Supreme Court, which cur­rent­ly con­sists pri­mar­i­ly of Catholic and Jew­ish jus­tices (Jus­tice Neil Gor­such was raised Catholic but attend­ed an Epis­co­pal Church in Col­orado).… Mis­souri Repub­li­can Sen. Josh Haw­ley not­ed Jack­son had served on the board of Mon­trose Chris­t­ian School. The Mary­land school, which has since been closed, oper­at­ed under a state­ment of faith that declared ‘we should speak on behalf of the unborn and con­tend for the sanc­ti­ty of all human life from con­cep­tion to nat­ur­al death’ and out­lined a belief that mar­riage exists only between a man and a woman. In respond­ing to Haw­ley, who said he agreed with the state­ments, Jack­son dis­tanced her­self from the school’s beliefs. She said she did not ‘nec­es­sar­i­ly agree with all of the state­ments,’ and was not pre­vi­ous­ly aware of their exis­tence.”
    • The Long Cru­sade of Clarence and Gin­ni Thomas (Dan­ny Hakim and Jo Beck­er, New York Times): “Gin­ni Lamp, as she was known then, was on a cheer squad for taller girls known as the Squires, bran­dish­ing a sword and a shield before foot­ball games. ‘She would march in front with that; she loved doing that,’ said Sue Nor­by, a class­mate. ‘My oth­er friends were on the pom­pom squad because they were so short, but Gin­ni was on a dif­fer­ent squad because she was tall, with oth­er tall girls. She was the war­rior woman.‘”
      • I have men­tioned this before, but I am a suck­er for sto­ries about the Jus­tices. They are all such fas­ci­nat­ing peo­ple. Even ide­o­log­i­cal pieces like this reveal their idio­syn­crat­ic won­der­ful­ness. Warn­ing: this is very long.
  3. Covid Arith­metic for Anx­ious Par­ents (Bryan Caplan, blog): “The most ‘adult’ thing for par­ents and teach­ers to do on this March 1 [when Vir­ginia lifts its school mask man­date] is walk kids through the Covid math. Even third-graders should be able to fol­low it. And if you real­ly want to show your matu­ri­ty, you should con­fess that for the last two years, most adults have been act­ing like chil­dren. Life gave us a math project, yet we act­ed like it was a poet­ry assign­ment.”
  4. Walk­ing in the Pur­pose of God (Chris­tos Makridis, XA Alum­ni): “Put sim­ply, I nev­er would have guessed what I’m doing now three years ago. While my engage­ment in the cryp­tocur­ren­cy and NFT sphere ‘might’ have been pos­si­ble on paper, it wouldn’t have been near­ly this rich and diver­si­fied absent my say­ing ‘yes’ to the Lord one step at a time and sim­ply walk­ing in obe­di­ence.” Chris­tos is an alum­nus of XA at Stan­ford.
  5. Study Exam­ines Link Between Account­abil­i­ty to God and Psy­cho­log­i­cal Well-Being (Neu­ro­science News): “Reli­gious believ­ers who embrace account­abil­i­ty to God (or anoth­er tran­scen­dent guide for life) expe­ri­ence high­er lev­els of three of the four vari­ables of psy­cho­log­i­cal well-being – mat­ter­ing to oth­ers, dig­ni­ty and mean­ing in their lives, though not hap­pi­ness – accord­ing to a study from researchers with Bay­lor Uni­ver­si­ty, West­mont Col­lege and Hope Col­lege.”
  6. Against alco­hol, #6437 (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “…a sud­den and unex­pect­ed nation-wide alco­hol sales ban in South Africa… causal­ly reduced injury-induced mor­tal­i­ty in the coun­try by at least 14% dur­ing the five weeks of the ban.” Links to a brief sum­ma­ry of some research with links to the orig­i­nal arti­cle.
  7. There’s No Cri­sis of Faith on Cam­pus (Ryan Burge, Wall Street Jour­nal): “Looked at in its entire­ty, the col­lege expe­ri­ence may actu­al­ly make stu­dents more sure of their reli­gious beliefs after they grad­u­ate. This is the idea known to psy­chol­o­gists as the ‘inoc­u­la­tion effect’: When some­one is con­front­ed with weak attacks on their beliefs, they become more pre­pared to defend those beliefs when they come under seri­ous attacks. This is essen­tial­ly how a vac­cine works: It gives an indi­vid­ual a weak­ened ver­sion of the virus, so that when the immune sys­tem encoun­ters the real thing, it can eas­i­ly fight off the vil­lain. Sim­i­lar­ly, chal­leng­ing a young per­son to defend their beliefs in a sup­port­ive, open envi­ron­ment like col­lege may leave them bet­ter pre­pared to hold firm to their con­vic­tions lat­er in life.“The author, whom I have cit­ed before, is a pas­tor and pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at East­ern Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The APA Meet­ing: A Photo‐Essay (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “Were there real­ly more than twice as many ses­sions on glob­al warm­ing as on obses­sive com­pul­sive dis­or­der? Three times as many on immi­gra­tion as on ADHD? As best I can count, yes. I don’t want to exag­ger­ate this. There was still a lot of real­ly meaty sci­en­tif­ic dis­cus­sion if you sought it out. But over­all the bal­ance was pret­ty strik­ing…. If you want to mod­el the APA, you could do worse than a giant fire­hose that takes in phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny mon­ey at one end, and shoots lec­tures about social jus­tice out the other.” This is fun­ny, ram­bling, insight­ful com­men­tary on the Amer­i­can Psy­chi­atric Association’s annu­al meet­ing. First shared in vol­ume 204

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 340

Lots of Ukraine/Russia links, plus more enter­tain­ing links than nor­mal as a com­pen­sa­tion.

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 340, which is cool because it’s a mul­ti­ple of 17 and I real­ly like the num­ber 17.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. On Ukraine and Rus­sia: a lot of links here, just open the inter­est­ing titles in new tabs.
    • To Stay and Serve: Why We Didn’t Flee Ukraine (Vasyl Ostryi, Gospel Coali­tion): “How should the church respond when there is a grow­ing threat of war? When there is con­stant fear in soci­ety? I’m con­vinced that if the church is not rel­e­vant at a time of cri­sis, then it is not rel­e­vant in a time of peace.… while the church may not fight like the nation, we still believe we have a role to play in this strug­gle. We will shel­ter the weak, serve the suf­fer­ing, and mend the bro­ken. And as we do, we offer the unshak­able hope of Christ and his gospel.” Respect.
    • We lack the abil­i­ty to ideate and inno­vate on for­eign pol­i­cy (Melis­sa Wear, Sub­stack): “Why is it that the media and experts mar­veled so much at the unprece­dent­ed shar­ing of intel­li­gence on Pres­i­dent Putin’s next moves? Because it was some­thing new. And it’s no sur­prise it comes from the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty. They and those in the mil­i­tary and defense are not as often cul­ti­vat­ed under the ban­ner of progress and peace and the End of His­to­ry in typ­i­cal IR and polit­i­cal sci­ences cours­es, nar­ra­tives, and hall­ways of pow­er.”
    • We’re All Ukraini­ans Now (David French, The Dis­patch): “No one claims that Ukraine is a per­fect coun­try. Like many for­mer Sovi­et republics, it has strug­gled to find its foot­ing. It’s endured author­i­tar­i­an­ism, and it bat­tles cor­rup­tion. But, in Lewis’s words, it is ‘not in the least aggres­sive.’ It ‘asks only to be let alone.’ As a nation that has endured its own aggres­sive attacks, how can we not empathize? How can we not do what we rea­son­ably can to deter Russ­ian aggres­sion and help Ukraini­ans defend themselves?“ 
    • Thoughts On Shit­post Diplo­ma­cy (Tan­ner Greer, per­son­al blog): “The Amer­i­can diplo­mat who post­ed this meme should have known this. He or she was almost cer­tain­ly a For­eign Ser­vice Offi­cer in the Pub­lic Diplo­ma­cy cone; a pub­lic diplomat’s first charge is learn­ing how to com­mu­ni­cate per­sua­sive­ly to the peo­ple of the region sta­tioned in. It is not that this offi­cer lacked the raw intel­li­gence to ful­fill this role: four out of every five appli­cants fail the For­eign Service’s selec­tive entrance tests. It is what this diplo­mat did after receiv­ing his or her post that mat­tered. This diplo­mat did not study. Memes like these are the prod­uct of a cul­ture that retweets more than it reads.”
    • On Ukraine (George Weigel, First Things): “For months now, the world press has described Russ­ian troop deploy­ments along Ukraine’s bor­ders as spear­heads of a pos­si­ble inva­sion. The truth, how­ev­er, is that Rus­sia invad­ed Ukraine sev­en years ago, when it annexed Crimea and Russ­ian ‘lit­tle green men’ ignit­ed a war in east­ern Ukraine that has tak­en over 14,000 lives and dis­placed over a mil­lion peo­ple. What­ev­er the cur­rent mil­i­tary devel­op­ments, a Russ­ian inva­sion of Ukraine has not been ‘immi­nent’; the inva­sion is ongo­ing.”
    • Amid War and Rumors of War, Ukraine Pas­tors Preach and Pre­pare (Jayson Casper, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Preach­ing on the Ser­mon on the Mount’s injunc­tion toward peace­mak­ing, Kulakevych con­tin­ued his laser-sharp focus on the pos­si­ble Russ­ian inva­sion. Five weeks ago, as the sep­a­ratist con­flict in the east­ern Don­bas region began to esca­late, he sur­veyed the Bible for its teach­ing on ‘wars and rumors of war.’ He fol­lowed that with an appli­ca­tion of ‘Do not let your hearts be trou­bled’ and, on the next Sun­day, a trea­tise on wor­ry.”
    • Rus­sia Keeps Pun­ish­ing Evan­gel­i­cals in Crimea (Kate Shell­nutt and Forum 18, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Since Rus­sia annexed the Crimean Penin­su­la from Ukraine in 2014—one of the cen­tral points of con­flict in the cur­rent clash between the two countries—Protestant Chris­tians in the ter­ri­to­ry have faced greater gov­ern­ment penal­ties for prac­tic­ing their faith.”
    • Rus­si­a’s space agency warns US sanc­tions could ‘destroy’ coop­er­a­tion on the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion (Kristin Fish­er, CNN): “If you block coop­er­a­tion with us, who will save the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion (ISS) from an uncon­trolled deor­bit and fall into the Unit­ed States or…Europe?” Rogozin said. “There is also the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a 500-ton struc­ture falling on India and Chi­na. Do you want to threat­en them with such a prospect? The ISS does not fly over Rus­sia, there­fore all the risks are yours. Are you ready for them?” Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
    • Putin as a man of ideas (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “If you write books, whether good or bad ones, and won­der whether your work mat­ters, I sug­gest the answer lies before you on your TV screen each evening. Rus­sia is a nation of ideas, led by peo­ple who are obsessed with ideas. The rest of the world, most of all Europe, will need bet­ter ideas in turn.”
    • Putin’s spir­i­tu­al des­tiny (Giles Fraser,  UnHerd): “Last year, on the anniver­sary of the bap­tism of the Rus, [Patri­arch] Kir­ill preached to his peo­ple, urg­ing them to stay true to Vladimir’s con­ver­sion and the blood of the ortho­dox mar­tyrs. He told them to love ‘our home­land, our peo­ple, our rulers and our army’. The West­ern sec­u­lar imag­i­na­tion doesn’t get this. It looks at Putin’s speech the oth­er evening, and it describes him as mad — which is anoth­er way of say­ing we do not under­stand what is going on. And we show how lit­tle we under­stand by think­ing that a bunch of sanc­tions is going to make a blind bit of dif­fer­ence. They won’t.”
    • Putin’s Attack on Ukraine Is a Reli­gious War (John Schindler, Sub­stack): “Every sec­u­lar geostrate­gic chal­lenge cit­ed as a rea­son for Putin’s aggres­sion – NATO expan­sion, West­ern mil­i­tary moves, oil and gas pol­i­tics – exist­ed in 2014, yet Putin then chose to lim­it his attacks on Ukraine to Crimea and the South­east. What’s changed since then that makes his effort to sub­due all Ukraine seem like a good idea in the Krem­lin? The cre­ation of an auto­cephalous Ortho­dox Church of Ukraine in 2019, with offi­cial Amer­i­can back­ing, is the dif­fer­ence, and Moscow believes this was all a nefar­i­ous U.S. plot to divide world Ortho­doxy at Russia’s expense. Clear­ly Putin has decid­ed that reclaim­ing Ukraine and its cap­i­tal, ‘the moth­er of Russ­ian cities,’ for Russ­ian Ortho­doxy is worth a major war. Make no mis­take, this is a reli­gious war, even if almost nobody in the West real­izes it.“This is in the mix. I don’t know what per­cent­age of the mix it is, but it’s def­i­nite­ly in the mix.
    • War and dat­ing apps (swipe left) (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Ukraini­an women in sec­ond city Kharkiv — just 20 miles from tyran­ni­cal Vladimir Putin’s vast inva­sion force — have been stunned by a sal­vo of admir­ers in uni­form. Hunky Rus­sian troops called Andrei, Alexan­der, Gre­go­ry, Michail and a beard­ed Chechen fight­er nick­named ‘Black’ were among dozens whose pro­files popped up.” This is a link to a sum­ma­ry of an arti­cle from the Sun. The sum­ma­ry is enough, but if you click through you’ll see actu­al Tin­der pho­tos.
  2. I spent six months in a cult. They’re still here on cam­pus. (Camille Williams, The Dai­ly North­west­ern): “So, you are prob­a­bly won­der­ing: how did I get out? …Some may call it a gut instinct; I call it the Holy Spir­it with­in me squirm­ing in revolt. After that con­ver­sa­tion, I ran out of my bed­room and yelled to my moth­er, ‘I acci­den­tal­ly joined a cult.’ After she went from con­fused laugh­ter to vow­ing to throw hands with these peo­ple, I final­ly start­ed to feel this bur­den release.”
    • This is an arti­cle by a stu­dent in Chi Alpha at North­west­ern. She was in Chi Alpha, got sucked into a cult, and then got out and returned to Chi Alpha.
  3. Gang­sters want to be good peo­ple too (Chris Blattman, blog): “I remem­ber meet­ing one gang leader on the streets of Chica­go. We were stand­ing in line at a nacho and ice cream truck (yes that exists) chat­ting. I was try­ing to under­stand how one of the vio­lence reduc­tion pro­grams I was work­ing on affect­ed his oper­a­tions. After all, we were try­ing to recruit away his best young men—his star deal­ers and shoot­ers. We want­ed to get them into oth­er kinds of jobs. Sure­ly he was frus­trat­ed. On the con­trary. He was delight­ed. ‘I only do this for the boys,’ he said. ‘They need some­thing to do. Your pro­gram is even bet­ter. I’m hap­py they’re going.’ In his mind, the vio­lent drug-deal­ing was a pub­lic employ­ment pro­gram, and he the admin­is­tra­tor.”
  4. Some Cana­di­an Con­voy After­math:
    • Con­voy Crack­down (Zvi Mow­showitz, Sub­stack): “Fam­i­ly mem­bers hav­ing trou­ble liv­ing their lives is being treat­ed not as a bug but as a fea­ture. The sins of the father are to be laid upon the chil­dren, it seems. This extends as not­ed above to those who pro­vide finan­cial assis­tance to those engag­ing in dis­ap­proved activ­i­ties, and that such retal­i­a­tion will con­tin­ue to hap­pen after the activ­i­ties in ques­tion cease, so not only is one with­out one’s mon­ey and oth­er assets, and with­out the abil­i­ty to spend what one does have, oth­ers may rea­son­ably fear that help­ing you not end up on the street might land them in the same sit­u­a­tion.” Empha­sis in orig­i­nal.
    • Trudeau ends use of Emer­gen­cies Act, says ‘sit­u­a­tion is no longer an emer­gency’ (Nick Boisvert, CBC): “The Sen­ate was in the midst of debat­ing the act on Wednes­day but with­drew the motion short­ly after Trudeau made his announce­ment.” I am glad the emer­gency mea­sures have been lift­ed, but what should con­cern us all is that this is now on the table as an option for oth­er­wise rights-based gov­ern­ments.
    • What Led to Canada’s Cri­sis (Nathan Pinkoski,First Things): “The cri­sis had its ori­gins in mate­r­i­al con­di­tions unique to Cana­da. A com­bi­na­tion of elite over­pro­duc­tion and Canada’s posi­tion in the shad­ow of the Unit­ed States has pro­duced an ide­o­log­i­cal­ly super­charged man­age­r­i­al class that has accel­er­at­ed the adop­tion of a new kind of emer­gency politics.“The author is at the near­by Zephyr Insti­tute.
  5. By Any Oth­er Name (Hele­na, Sub­stack): “UK NHS refer­ral data shows a 4000% increase in pedi­atric gen­der ser­vice refer­rals (not a typo). So-called ‘gen­der dys­pho­ria’, which was once a very rare diag­no­sis that described most­ly pre­pu­bes­cent boys and adult men, is now most com­mon­ly diag­nosed in teenage girls. Activists will argue that these explo­sive num­bers are a result of increased soci­etal accep­tance, and that at long last trans peo­ple are com­ing out of hid­ing and liv­ing as their authen­tic selves. If this were true, one might expect to see com­pa­ra­ble rates of trans­gen­der iden­ti­ty across all age groups and between both sex­es, but its dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly ado­les­cent females feel­ing that warm and fuzzy inclu­sive accep­tance.” A very per­son­al nar­ra­tive. Long, rec­om­mend­ed.
  6. The C.D.C. Isn’t Pub­lish­ing Large Por­tions of the Covid Data It Col­lects (Apoor­va Man­davil­li, New York Times): “…the C.D.C. has been rou­tine­ly col­lect­ing infor­ma­tion since the Covid vac­cines were first rolled out last year, accord­ing to a fed­er­al offi­cial famil­iar with the effort. The agency has been reluc­tant to make those fig­ures pub­lic, the offi­cial said, because they might be mis­in­ter­pret­ed as the vac­cines being inef­fec­tive.” My lev­el of con­fi­dence in our pub­lic health agen­cies can­not go much low­er. And sad­ly, in an attempt to pre­vent peo­ple believ­ing dis­ap­proved thoughts the CDC has inflamed con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists. Out­ra­geous.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

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

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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.