Category: Links

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 120

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Divine To Divid­ed: How Occu­py Cen­tral Split Hong Kong’s Chris­t­ian Lead­ers (Jayson Albano, Mar­ta Colom­bo And Maria Cristhin Kuiper, South Chi­na Morn­ing Post): “Once on the street, he could see clear­ly. He could see the crowds form­ing, and he could see the mount­ing ranks of riot police. And when he saw those same police­men fir­ing tear gas into the assem­bled mass­es one thing became clear in his mind: that his faith in God demand­ed he act.”
  2. The old­est human lived to 122. Why no per­son will like­ly break her record. (Bri­an Resnick, Vox): “The authors pro­pose this is a built-in ‘nat­ur­al lim­it’ to our longevi­ty, an ‘inad­ver­tent byprod­uct’ of our biol­o­gy. And to increase the nat­ur­al lim­it we’d need to fun­da­men­tal­ly alter our genet­ics.”
    • This is based on a very read­able piece in Nature Evi­dence for a lim­it to human lifes­pan (Xiao Dong, Bran­don Mil­hol­land & Jan Vijg, Nature).
    • This find­ing reminds me of Gen­e­sis 6:3, “Then the Lord said, ‘My Spir­it will not con­tend with humans for­ev­er, for they are mor­tal; their days will be a hun­dred and twen­ty years.’”
  3. I used to sup­port legal­iz­ing all drugs. Then the opi­oid epi­dem­ic hap­pened. (Ger­man Lopez, Vox): “By the time I began as a drug pol­i­cy reporter in 2010, I was all in on legal­iz­ing every drug, from mar­i­jua­na to hero­in and cocaine. It all seemed so obvi­ous to me. Pro­hi­bi­tion had failed…. Then I began report­ing on the opi­oid epi­dem­ic.” FYI: this arti­cle is long: only read the first two sec­tions unless you’re real­ly into the sub­ject.
  4. Authors’ note: Deep neur­al net­works are more accu­rate than humans at detect­ing sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion from facial images (Michal Kosin­s­ki and Yilun Wang, self-pub­lished on Google Docs): this note by two Stan­ford researchers to explain their recent paper is extreme­ly inter­est­ing. “We used wide­ly avail­able off-the-shelf tools, pub­licly avail­able data, and stan­dard meth­ods well known to com­put­er vision prac­ti­tion­ers. We did not cre­ate a pri­va­cy-invad­ing tool, but rather showed that basic and wide­ly used meth­ods pose seri­ous pri­va­cy threats.”
  5. I called Hugh Hefn­er a pimp, he threat­ened to sue. But that’s what he was. (Suzanne Moore, The Guardian): “But this man is still being cel­e­brat­ed by peo­ple who should know bet­ter. You can dress it up with talk of glam­our and bun­ny ears and fish­nets, you can talk about his con­tri­bu­tion to gonzo jour­nal­ism, you can con­tex­tu­alise his dri­ve to free up sex as part of the sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion. But strip it all back and he was a man who bought and sold women to oth­er men.”
    • Con­cep­tu­al­ly relat­ed: STD rates hit anoth­er record high, with Cal­i­for­nia near the top (Soumya Kar­la­mangla, LA Times): “More than a quar­ter-mil­lion Cal­i­for­ni­ans were infect­ed with either syphilis, chlamy­dia or gon­or­rhea last year, which con­sti­tutes a 40% jump com­pared with five years ago, state offi­cials said.” I am often struck by the fact that STDs would effec­tive­ly dis­ap­pear in one gen­er­a­tion if peo­ple obeyed the Bible.
    • Dit­to: Pas­tor­ing Sin­gles in a Sex-Crazed, Gen­der-Con­fused World (Juan Sanchez, Life­way): “Celi­bate sin­gle­ness is a gift from God with a pur­pose.” This one isn’t just for pas­tors — rec­om­mend­ed to all sin­gles.
  6. Col­in Kaeper­nick vs. Tim Tebow: A tale of two Chris­tians on their knees (Michael Frost, Wash­ing­ton Post): “They’re both Chris­t­ian foot­ball play­ers, and they’re both known for kneel­ing on the field, although for very dif­fer­ent rea­sons. One grew up the son of Bap­tist mis­sion­ar­ies to the Philip­pines. The oth­er was bap­tized Methodist, con­firmed Luther­an, and attend­ed a Bap­tist church dur­ing col­lege. Both have made a pub­lic dis­play of their faith. Both are prayer­ful and devout.” It’s a clever piece, although you should also read the gen­tle crit­i­cism of it at Kaeper­nick vs. Tebow? Wash­ing­ton Post pass­es along flawed take on a cru­cial heresy (Ter­ry Mat­ting­ly, GetRe­li­gion)
    • Inter­est­ing­ly, Kaeper­nick began kneel­ing after a meet­ing with a vet­er­an who told him that mere­ly sit­ting was dire­spect­ful. Kaeper­nick Meets With Vet­er­an Nate Boy­er, Then Kneels Dur­ing Anthem (Under the Radar) (an arti­cle I found after an alum­nus shared it on twit­ter this week — thanks, Han­nah!)
    • The Abbie Hoff­man of the Right: Don­ald Trump (David Brooks, New York Times): “The mem­bers of the edu­cat­ed class saw this past weekend’s N.F.L. fra­cas as a fight over racism. They felt mobi­lized and uni­fied in that fight and full of right­eous ener­gy. Mem­bers of the work­ing class saw the fra­cas as a fight about Amer­i­can iden­ti­ty. They saw Pitts­burgh Steel­ers coach Mike Tom­lin try to dis­suade Ale­jan­dro Vil­lanue­va, a three-time com­bat vet­er­an, from cel­e­brat­ing the flag he risked his life for. Mem­bers of this class also felt mobi­lized, uni­fied and full of right­eous ener­gy.”
  7. A lot of you seemed to like the graph­ic I used in this week’s ser­mon. Here’s a thumb­nail, you can down­load a high-res ver­sion from the source at Visu­al The­ol­o­gy: The Books of the Bible (Tim Chal­lies).
Books of the Bible — Peri­od­ic Table

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Every Place Has Detrac­tors. Con­sid­er Where They’re Com­ing From.(Megan McCar­dle, Bloomerg View): “There is grave dan­ger in judg­ing a neigh­bor­hood, or a cul­ture, by the accounts of those who chose to leave it. Those peo­ple are least like­ly to appre­ci­ate the good things about where they came from, and the most like­ly to dwell on its less attrac­tive qual­i­ties.” Bear this in mind when lis­ten­ing to con­ver­sion tes­ti­monies (both sec­u­lar and reli­gious). (first shared in vol­ume 62)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 119

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

A note to our new stu­dents: no, you don’t have to read the whole thing. What a lot of Chi Alphans do is skim the list and find one or two that seem inter­est­ing to them and open them in new tabs.

Be sure to read the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Views among col­lege stu­dents regard­ing the First Amend­ment: Results from a new sur­vey (John Vil­lasenor, Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion): “Stu­dents act as de fac­to arbiters of free expres­sion on cam­pus. The Supreme Court jus­tices are not stand­ing by at the entrances to pub­lic uni­ver­si­ty lec­ture halls ready to step in if First Amend­ment rights are cur­tailed. If a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of stu­dents believe that views they find offen­sive should be silenced, those views will in fact be silenced.” The author is an  absurd­ly accom­plished Stan­ford grad: he is a simul­ta­ne­ous­ly a pro­fes­sor of elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing and pub­lic pol­i­cy while also serv­ing as a vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor of law (all at at UCLA) as well as a senior fel­low at the Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion.
  2. I Went To North Korea: What You’ve Heard vs What I Saw (Mark Hill, Cracked): “Sev­en care­ful­ly con­trolled days isn’t enough time to become an expert in any coun­try, let alone one this com­pli­cat­ed, and the best peo­ple to tell the sto­ry are Kore­ans them­selves. But they’re not real­ly avail­able right now…” The arti­cle is inter­est­ing and most­ly con­firms my impres­sions of North Korea.
  3. Is Inter­net Porn Mak­ing Young Men Impo­tent? (EJ Dick­son, Rolling Stone): “A num­ber of fac­tors have been spec­u­lat­ed as being behind this trend, from eat­ing processed foods to tak­ing psy­chotrop­ic drugs. Yet it’s porn that is most fre­quent­ly cit­ed as the like­ly cul­prit, prompt­ing the cre­ation of the term ‘porn-induced erec­tile dys­func­tion,’ which was coined by Dr. Abra­ham Mor­gen­taler, an asso­ciate clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor of urol­o­gy at Har­vard Med­ical School.”
  4. Protes­tants: The Most ‘Catholic’ of Chris­tians (Caleb Lind­gren, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The ‘Reform­ing Catholic Con­fes­sion,’ released today, aims to demon­strate that—despite “denominationalism”—Protestants are remark­ably uni­fied.” See A Reform­ing Catholic Con­fes­sion for the text of the state­ment.
  5. Big Data Sur­veil­lance: The Case of Polic­ing (Sarah Brayne, Amer­i­can Soci­o­log­i­cal Review): “In some instances, it is sim­ply eas­i­er for law enforce­ment to pur­chase pri­vate­ly col­lect­ed data than to rely on in-house data because there are few­er con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions, report­ing require­ments, and appel­late checks on pri­vate sec­tor sur­veil­lance and data col­lec­tion.… More­over, respon­dents explained, pri­vate­ly col­lect­ed data is some­times more up-to-date.” (hat tip: Big Data Sur­veil­lance by Alex Tabar­rok at Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion). The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at UT Austin.
  6. The Aca­d­e­m­ic Rea­son Why There Are So Few Con­ser­v­a­tives In Acad­e­mia (George Yancey, Patheos): “…over the last sev­er­al years, I have been doing empir­i­cal work in anti-Chris­t­ian bias in soci­ety and acad­e­mia. The way my work has been treat­ed has changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly although I became bet­ter, not worse, in doing research. Review­ers are clear­ly more hos­tile to my work on anti-Chris­t­ian bias than my work in race and eth­nic­i­ty, and some of their cri­tiques are almost laugh­able. Those who want to state that we can trust sci­ence because it enables an open search for the truth have nev­er tried to pub­lish work that vio­lates the polit­i­cal and moral sen­si­bil­i­ties of aca­d­e­mics.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of soci­ol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Texas.
  7. A Third of Veg­e­tar­i­ans Eat Meat When They’re Drunk (Phoebe Hurst, Vice):  this research does not appear to be of the high­est qual­i­ty, but I found it intrigu­ing nonethe­less.

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have A His­to­ry of the Sec­ond Amend­ment in Two Paint­ings (Ezra Klein, Wonkblog): this brief arti­cle from a few years ago is still one of the most insight­ful things I’ve read about firearms in Amer­i­ca. The Yale pro­fes­sor inter­viewed, Dr. Amar, also wrote a length­i­er arti­cle about this for Slate. (first shared in vol­ume 54)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 118

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Eat, pray, live: the Lagos megachurch­es build­ing their very own cities (Ruth Mclean, The Guardian): “Redemp­tion Camp has 5,000 hous­es, roads, rub­bish col­lec­tion, police, super­mar­kets, banks, a fun fair, a post office – even a 25 megawatt pow­er plant. In Nige­ria, the line between church and city is rapid­ly van­ish­ing.”
  2. An Open Let­ter to Ta-Nehisi Coates (Jason D. Hill, Com­men­tary Mag­a­zine): a gay black man strong­ly believes in the Amer­i­can dream and takes issue with Coates’ dis­par­age­ment of it. “I expect­ed no spe­cial treat­ment because, as an Amer­i­can, I was already part of an excep­tion­al process. My ideas, I had decid­ed on the flight over, would one day be taught in col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties. I will tell you present­ly the extent to which that willed deci­sion became real­i­ty, and why it was pos­si­ble only in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.” (inci­den­tal­ly, I fea­tured an essay by Coates back in issue 80)
  3. The Ques­tion of Race in Cam­pus Sex­u­al-Assault Cas­es (Emi­ly Yoffe, The Atlantic): “Kagle believes that men of color—and espe­cial­ly for­eign men of col­or, stu­dents from Africa and Asia—were unique­ly defense­less when charged with sex­u­al assault, typ­i­cal­ly lack­ing finan­cial resources, a net­work of sup­port, and an under­stand­ing of their rights.” I linked Yof­fe’s two pre­vi­ous arti­cles in last week’s edi­tion. They should be read in con­junc­tion with Cam­pus Rape, A Sur­vivor’s Sto­ry (Bret Stephens, NY Times).
  4. They Serve Gay Clients All The Time. So Why Won’t They Cater A Same-Sex Wed­ding? (Josh Shep­herd, The Fed­er­al­ist): “Phillips choked up with emo­tion as he con­tin­ued: ‘You can’t serve God and mon­ey. I didn’t open this so I could make a lot of mon­ey. I opened it up so it would be a way that I could cre­ate my art, do the bak­ing that I love and serve the God that I love in ways that would hope­ful­ly hon­or Him.’” See also Icing on the Cake: Jus­tice Dept. Backs Chris­t­ian Bak­er Bound for Supreme Court (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today). The lat­ter is tremen­dous news, and pre­sum­ably due to the influ­ence of Mike Pence.
  5. How Many Church­es Does Amer­i­ca Have? More Than Expect­ed (Rebec­ca Ran­dall, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Accord­ing to a recent paper pub­lished by soci­ol­o­gist Simon Brauer in the Jour­nal for the Sci­en­tif­ic Study of Reli­gion, the num­ber of reli­gious con­gre­ga­tions in the Unit­ed States has increased by almost 50,000 since 1998.” You can see the orig­i­nal research here — the researcher is a soci­ol­o­gist at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty. Inter­est­ing news. It’s almost like the gates of hell can­not pre­vail against the church. 
  6. Faith groups pro­vide the bulk of dis­as­ter recov­ery, in coor­di­na­tion with FEMA (Paul Singer, USA Today):  “ ‘About 80% of all recov­ery hap­pens because of non-prof­its, and the major­i­ty of them are faith-based,’ said Greg For­rester, CEO of the nation­al VOAD. The mon­ey is ‘all raised by the indi­vid­u­als who go and serve, raised through cor­po­rate con­nec­tions, raised through church con­nec­tions,’ and amounts to bil­lions of dol­lars worth of dis­as­ter recov­ery assis­tance, he said.”
  7. The Human Fetus Pref­er­en­tial­ly Engages with Face-like Visu­al Stim­uli (Cur­rent Biol­o­gy, Reid et al): appar­ent­ly about a month and a half before birth babies can per­ceive faces through the uter­ine wall. You can read a pop­u­lar sum­ma­ry of the research at Seek­er: Human Fetus­es Can See and React to Faces From Inside the Womb. I found this research both amaz­ing and depress­ing. I won­der how many babies were excit­ed to be mak­ing a new friend up until they were abort­ed.
  8. Har­vard Calls Chelsea Man­ning Invite A ‘Mis­take,’ Rescinds Fel­low­ship Offer — Here’s What’s Going On (Ben­jamin Gog­gin, Digg). For a good expla­na­tion of rea­sons so many were opposed to this appoint­ment, read When Trans­gen­der Trumps Treach­ery (James Kirchick, NY Times). Kirchick is gay, which makes his piece all the more inter­est­ing to read.

Things Glen Found Amusing

  • Mag­ic 8 Ball (red­dit)
  • Too Dumb To Under­stand (Dil­bert)
  • A Frog Prince — Penn and Teller (Youtube)
  • Study: Col­lege Stu­dents Spend Far More Time Play­ing Than Study­ing (Megan Oprea, The Fed­er­al­ist): “The sad truth is that uni­ver­si­ties have begun to exist for the sake of their own exis­tence, rather than the edu­ca­tion of their under­grads. Mean­while, stu­dents are tak­ing their stud­ies less and less seri­ous­ly as they real­ize that they need only go through the motions to grad­u­ate and get on the job mar­ket, which is their ulti­mate goal. No won­der they’re spend­ing their time on every­thing except their stud­ies.” Dis­claimer: yes, I know the num­bers are dif­fer­ent at Stan­ford. I also know you spend more time on non-aca­d­e­m­ic activ­i­ties than you think. #just­sayin

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 117

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. America’s Chang­ing Reli­gious Iden­ti­ty (Daniel Cox and Robert Jones, PRRI): There’s a lot of data here. One bit that stood out to me: “Athe­ists and agnos­tics account for a minor­i­ty of all reli­gious­ly unaf­fil­i­at­ed. Most are sec­u­lar. Athe­ists and agnos­tics account for only about one-quar­ter (27%) of all reli­gious­ly unaf­fil­i­at­ed Amer­i­cans. Near­ly six in ten (58%) reli­gious­ly unaf­fil­i­at­ed Amer­i­cans iden­ti­fy as sec­u­lar, some­one who is not reli­gious; 16% of reli­gious­ly unaf­fil­i­at­ed Amer­i­cans nonethe­less report that they iden­ti­fy as a ‘reli­gious per­son.’”
  2. Risky road: Chi­na’s mis­sion­ar­ies fol­low Bei­jing west (BBC): “As a self-declared athe­ist gov­ern­ment, news of Chi­nese Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies get­ting into trou­ble abroad is embar­rass­ing. But at the same time, Bei­jing needs to show it can pro­tect its cit­i­zens as it goes glob­al. As Feng­gang Yang, an expert on reli­gion in Chi­na at Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty, puts it: ‘They thought Chris­tian­i­ty was a west­ern reli­gion import­ed into Chi­na, so how can you export Chris­tian­i­ty from Chi­na?’” Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
  3. There was a lot writ­ten about cam­pus sex­u­al assault recent­ly. Here are some stand­outs:
    • The Cam­pus Sex-Crime Tri­bunals Are Los­ing (KC John­son, Com­men­tary Mag­a­zine): “Barrett’s deci­sion marked the 59th judi­cial set­back for a col­lege or uni­ver­si­ty since 2013 in a due-process law­suit brought by a stu­dent accused of sex­u­al assault. (In four addi­tion­al cas­es, the school set­tled a law­suit before any judi­cial deci­sion occurred.) This body of law serves as a tow­er­ing rebuke to the Oba­ma administration’s rein­ter­pre­ta­tion of Title IX, the 1972 law bar­ring sex dis­crim­i­na­tion in schools that receive fed­er­al fund­ing.”
    • The Uncom­fort­able Truth About Cam­pus Rape Pol­i­cy (Emi­ly Yoffe, The Atlantic): “A trou­bling para­dox with­in the activist com­mu­ni­ty, and increas­ing­ly among admin­is­tra­tors, is the belief that while women who make a com­plaint should be giv­en the strong ben­e­fit of the doubt, women who deny they were assault­ed should not nec­es­sar­i­ly be believed. ”
    • The Bad Sci­ence Behind Cam­pus Response to Sex­u­al Assault (Emi­ly Yoffe, The Atlantic): “The spread of an inac­cu­rate sci­ence of trau­ma is an object les­son in how good inten­tions can over­take crit­i­cal think­ing, to poten­tial­ly harm­ful effect.”
    • Here Is Every Crazy Title IX Rape Case Bet­sy DeVos Ref­er­enced, Plus a Bunch More (Rob­by Soave, Rea­son): “Crit­ics of DeVos will say that her plan to reform Title IX is some kind of give­away to rapists. But it’s not. Today, DeVos rec­og­nized a basic and obvi­ous truth that every objec­tive chron­i­cler of the col­lege rape cri­sis already knows: The Oba­ma-era mod­i­fi­ca­tions to Title IX utter­ly failed to bring jus­tice to cam­pus­es.”
  4. To Under­stand Ris­ing Inequal­i­ty, Con­sid­er the Jan­i­tors at Two Top Com­pa­nies, Then and Now (Neil Irwin, New York Times): “The right prod­uct engi­neer or mar­ket­ing exec­u­tive can mean the dif­fer­ence between suc­cess or fail­ure, and com­pa­nies tend to hire such peo­ple as full-time employ­ees and as part of a long-term rela­tion­ship — some­thing like the trans­mis­sion sup­pli­er. What has changed in the last gen­er­a­tion is that com­pa­nies today view more and more of the labor it takes to pro­duce their goods and ser­vices as akin to sta­plers: some­thing to be pro­cured at the time and place need­ed for the low­est price pos­si­ble.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  5. I also read a lot about DACA this week:
    • Trump’s deci­sion to end DACA, explained (Daniel Bush, PBS New­shour): “In June, 11 attor­neys gen­er­al — from con­ser­v­a­tive states like Texas, Arkansas, West Vir­ginia and Kansas — threat­ened to sue the Trump admin­is­tra­tion unless it took steps by Sept. 5 to end the pro­gram. For months, senior Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials have expressed con­cern that DACA would not stand up in court.”
    • Trump Ends DACA, Despite Pleas from Evan­gel­i­cal Advis­ers  (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “In addi­tion to the 57 per­cent of US evan­gel­i­cals that favor cit­i­zen­ship and the 19 per­cent that favor depor­ta­tion, 15 per­cent say DACA recip­i­ents should be allowed to become legal res­i­dents but not cit­i­zens, while 9 per­cent don’t know.”
    • Can these Demo­c­ra­t­ic attor­neys gen­er­al save DACA? I asked 9 legal experts. (Sean Illing, Vox): The experts seem pes­simistic.
    • Don­ald Trump is right: Con­gress should pass DACA (Econ­o­mist): “If you could design peo­ple in a lab­o­ra­to­ry to be an adorn­ment to Amer­i­ca they would look like the recip­i­ents of DACA…. They are a high-achiev­ing lot. More than 90% of those now aged over 25 are employed; they cre­ate busi­ness­es at twice the rate of the pub­lic as a whole; many have spous­es and chil­dren who are cit­i­zens. They are Amer­i­can in every sense bar the bureau­crat­ic one.”
    • Rescind­ing DACA Is The Right Thing To Do (David Harsyani, The Fed­er­al­ist): “There are a vast num­ber of sol­id eco­nom­ic and moral argu­ments for legal­iz­ing the chil­dren of ille­gal immi­grants. In sub­stance, I agree with DACA. Yet… the Con­sti­tu­tion makes no allowance for the pres­i­dent to write law ‘if Con­gress doesn’t act.’”
  6. Should a Judge’s Nom­i­na­tion Be Derailed by Her Faith? (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “She and oth­er Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors on the com­mit­tee seemed trou­bled by Barrett’s Catholic con­vic­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the issues of abor­tion and same-sex mar­riage, which came up lat­er dur­ing ques­tion­ing. But when Bar­rett repeat­ed­ly stat­ed that she would uphold the law, regard­less of her per­son­al beliefs, they didn’t seem to believe her.” For a less restrained per­spec­tive, read Demo­c­ra­t­ic McCarthyites (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive).  And it’s not just con­ser­v­a­tives dis­pleased. Check out [Prince­ton] Pres­i­dent Eis­gru­ber asks Sen­ate com­mit­tee to avoid ‘reli­gious test’ in judi­cial appoint­ments (Prince­ton Office of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions).

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have a debate I fea­tured way back in vol­ume 48 between two pas­tors on guns – both are very thought­ful and are skill­ful debaters.  All the posts are pret­ty short.

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 115

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Most Short­sight­ed Attack on Free Speech in Mod­ern U.S. His­to­ry (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “Under a legal regime where hate speech was not con­sid­ered free speech, Trump and Ses­sions could like­ly pun­ish words used by mem­bers of Antifa and Black Lives Mat­ter. Do you think he’d police their speech more or less vig­or­ous­ly than white suprema­cists?”
  2. Everyone’s Sus­pi­cious of Athe­ists — Even Oth­er Athe­ists (Thomas MacMil­lan, NY Mag): “Accord­ing to a new study pub­lished last week in Nature, peo­ple all over the world con­nect immoral­i­ty with athe­ism. In fact, the moral prej­u­dice against athe­ists is so strong that it holds even in coun­tries like the Nether­lands, where most peo­ple aren’t reli­gious. Even athe­ists them­selves, accord­ing to the study, are inclined to see non­be­liev­ers as more wicked than the faith­ful.” The Nature paper is Glob­al evi­dence of extreme intu­itive moral prej­u­dice against athe­ists.
  3. I Won’t Make Jesus Bow Down to Xi Jin­ping (Derek Lam, New York Times): “Of Hong Kong’s six major reli­gions, five are already firm­ly under the con­trol of the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty. Judg­ing by recent events, the par­ty is very close to com­plet­ing its mis­sion of bring­ing Chris­tian­i­ty under its thumb.”
  4. The Dri­ve For Per­fect Chil­dren Gets A Lit­tle Scary (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg View): “If you could direct­ly alter your kids’ genet­ic pro­file, what would you want? It’s hard to know how the social debate would turn out after years of back and forth, but I was dis­mayed to read one recent research paper by psy­chol­o­gists Rachel M. Lath­am and Sophie von Stumm. The descrip­tive title of that work, based on sur­vey evi­dence, is ‘Moth­ers want extra­ver­sion over con­sci­en­tious­ness or intel­li­gence for their chil­dren.’ Upon reflec­tion, maybe that isn’t so sur­pris­ing, because par­ents pre­sum­ably want chil­dren who are fun to spend time with.”
  5. Math­e­mat­i­cal mys­tery of ancient Baby­lon­ian clay tablet solved (Phys.org): “Plimp­ton 322 pre­dates Hip­parchus by more than 1000 years,” says Dr Wild­berg­er. “It opens up new pos­si­bil­i­ties not just for mod­ern math­e­mat­ics research, but also for math­e­mat­ics edu­ca­tion. With Plimp­ton 322 we see a sim­pler, more accu­rate trigonom­e­try that has clear advan­tages over our own.” The aca­d­e­m­ic paper is Plimp­ton 322 is Baby­lon­ian exact sex­a­ges­i­mal trigonom­e­try (His­to­ria Math­e­mat­i­ca). Anoth­er reminder that our ances­tors were pret­ty clever.
  6. Robert E. Lee opposed Con­fed­er­ate mon­u­ments (Lisa Des­jardins, PBS New­sHour):  “But while he was alive, Lee stressed his belief that the coun­try should move past the war. He swore alle­giance to the Union and pub­licly decried south­ern sep­a­ratism, whether mil­i­tant or sym­bol­ic.”
  7. This Is How Sex­ism Works in Sil­i­con Val­ley  My law­suit failed. Oth­ers won’t. (Ellan Pao, The Cut): “Before suing, I’d con­sult­ed oth­er women who had sued big, pow­er­ful com­pa­nies over harass­ment and dis­crim­i­na­tion, and they all gave me pret­ty much the same advice: ‘Don’t do it.’ One woman told me, ‘It’s a com­plete mis­match of resources. They don’t fight fair. Even if you win, it will destroy your rep­u­ta­tion.’”
  8. James Kennedy Min­istries Sues SPLC over Hate Map (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): see also Politico’s June arti­cle Has a Civ­il Rights Stal­wart Lost Its Way? (short answer: yes, yes it has)

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have No Food Is Healthy. Not Even Kale. (Michael Ruhlman, Wash­ing­ton Post). Peo­ple can be healthy. Food can be nutri­tious. This is a won­der­ful essay about how we mis­use lan­guage to our detri­ment. If you’re sur­prised I includ­ed this, I believe that our cul­ture has a qua­si-reli­gious rela­tion­ship to health and to food, and I also believe that the use of lan­guage is pro­found­ly moral and that our cul­ture is a lin­guis­tic mess (to which I know of no fin­er guide than The Under­ground Gram­mar­i­an). (first shared in vol­ume 33)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 114

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

First, let me say this has been a heart­break­ing week. The racism on dis­play in Char­lottesville was wicked, and if unre­pent­ed of will lead its prac­ti­tion­ers to hell. Most of this week’s links are relat­ed:

  1. Char­lottesville: Race and Ter­ror (VICE News, Youtube link). This video is worth watch­ing, but be warned that this is dis­turb­ing footage. The first two min­utes are com­pelling.
  2. White suprema­cy angers Jesus, but does it anger his church? (Rus­sell Moore, Wash­ing­ton Post): “One of the many remark­able things about the pic­ture we get of Jesus in the Gospels is how rel­a­tive­ly calm he is. When his dis­ci­ples are pan­ick­ing in a life-threat­en­ing storm, Jesus is asleep. When vil­lages reject the mes­sage, the apos­tles are angered but Jesus is not. Threat­ened with arrest and even exe­cu­tion, Jesus meets his accusers with tran­quil­i­ty. The Scrip­tures show us two things that make Jesus vis­i­bly angry: reli­gious hypocrisy and racial suprema­cist ide­ol­o­gy.”
  3. After Char­lottesville, black pas­tors are con­fronting how polit­i­cal to get (Jeff Stein, Vox): “The blood­shed has rein­vig­o­rat­ed those pas­tors’ calls for their fel­low cler­gy to preach about polit­i­cal issues, rather than just sal­va­tion.”
  4. ‘Jews will not replace us’: Why white suprema­cists go after Jews (Yair Rosen­berg, Wash­ing­ton Post): “When white suprema­cists are vicious­ly attack­ing Jews as non­white impos­tors, then any anti-racists wor­thy of the name must be there to defend them. They can­not impose their own def­i­n­i­tions of white­ness on Jews and side­step their plight.”
  5. Is Amer­i­ca Head­ed for a New Kind of Civ­il War? (Robin Wright, New York­er): “Mines con­clud­ed that the Unit­ed States faces a six­ty-per cent chance of civ­il war over the next ten to fif­teen years. Oth­er experts’ pre­dic­tions ranged from five per cent to nine­ty-five per cent. The sober­ing con­sen­sus was thir­ty-five per cent. And that was five months before Char­lottesville.” In response, read Our House Divid­ed (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “…our divi­sions induce a par­tic­u­lar anx­i­ety because each of our two main fac­tions reigns supreme in one par­tic­u­lar are­na. Con­ser­vatism is (some­how) polit­i­cal­ly dom­i­nant, with con­trol of the leg­isla­tive and exec­u­tive branch­es and a remark­able pow­er in the states. Mean­while lib­er­al­ism dom­i­nates the cul­tur­al com­mand­ing heights as nev­er before, with not only acad­e­mia and the media but also late-night tele­vi­sion and sports­writ­ing and even young-adult fic­tion more mono­lith­i­cal­ly and — to con­ser­v­a­tives — oppres­sive­ly pro­gres­sive. So both sides have rea­sons to feel threat­ened, dis­em­pow­ered and sur­round­ed; both can feel as though they exist under a kind of ene­my rule.”
  6. Polit­i­cal Par­a­sites (Pete Spili­akos, First Things): “[Trump] is obdu­rate. He saw that his polit­i­cal ene­mies were call­ing for a con­dem­na­tion and, in his defi­ance and arro­gance, had to show them that they weren’t going to write his scripts.”
  7. The Rise of the Vio­lent Left (Peter Beinart, The Atlantic): “If you believe the pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States is lead­ing a racist, fas­cist move­ment that threat­ens the rights, if not the lives, of vul­ner­a­ble minori­ties, how far are you will­ing to go to stop it?”
  8. Unmask­ing the left­ist Antifa move­ment: Activists seek peace through vio­lence (Sara Gan­im and Chris Welch, CNN): “Antifa mem­bers also some­times launch attacks against peo­ple who aren’t phys­i­cal­ly attack­ing them. The move­ment, Crow said, sees alt-right hate speech as vio­lent, and for that, its activists have opt­ed to meet vio­lence with vio­lence.”
  9. Extreme Protest Tac­tics Reduce Pop­u­lar Sup­port for Social Move­ments (Fein­berg, Willer, and Kovach­eff, SSRN work­ing paper): One of the authors, Robb Willer, is a pro­fes­sor of soci­ol­o­gy at Stan­ford. “The activist’s dilem­ma – where­in tac­tics that raise aware­ness also tend to reduce pop­u­lar sup­port – high­lights a key chal­lenge faced by social move­ments strug­gling to affect pro­gres­sive change.”
  10. Trump Is More In Touch Than You Think (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “The news media have been seri­ous­ly dis­tort­ing pub­lic reac­tion to Trump’s han­dling of Char­lottesville. Whether this is a mat­ter of only see­ing what they want to see, or a mat­ter of the talk­ing heads being con­cen­trat­ed among coastal elites of both par­ties, is a mat­ter of con­jec­ture.”
  11. Fac­ing Our Lega­cy of Lynch­ing (D. L. May­field, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “More than 4,000 African Amer­i­cans were lynched between 1877 and the rise of the civ­il rights move­ment in the ear­ly 1950s. Lynch­ing was a bru­tal pub­lic tac­tic for main­tain­ing white suprema­cy, fre­quent­ly used with the tac­it bless­ing of gov­ern­ment author­i­ties. It was a part of my her­itage I had nev­er been taught…” Note that this piece is inde­pen­dent of the events in Char­lottesville.

Things Glen Found Entertaining

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have This Is What Makes Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats So Dif­fer­ent (Vox, Ezra Klein): I was skep­ti­cal of this piece based on the title, but it’s insight­ful. (first shared in vol­ume 32)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 113

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. I Don’t Under­stand Chris­tians Watch­ing Game of Thrones (Kevin DeY­oung, Gospel Coali­tion): “Does any­one real­ly think that when Jesus warned against look­ing at a woman lust­ful­ly (Matt. 5:27), or when Paul told us to avoid every hint of sex­u­al immoral­i­ty and not even to speak of the things the world does in secret (Eph. 4:3–12), that some­how this meant, go ahead and watch naked men and women have (or pre­tend to have) sex?” I don’t always agree with every­thing I share here, but for the record I am 100% in agree­ment with the author. Soft­core porn doesn’t cease to be soft­core porn just because it has grip­ping dia­log and cool spe­cial effects. For anoth­er (unper­sua­sive to me) per­spec­tive, read Seri­ous­ly, ‘Game of Thrones’ made me a bet­ter Bible read­er (Caryn Rivadeneira, Wash­ing­ton Post).
  2. News­wor­thy Deaths (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): just a reminder that the view we have of  what’s hap­pen­ing in the world is always a dis­tort­ed one.
  3. You’ve no doubt heard about the Google memo sug­gest­ing new ways to pur­sue gen­der diver­si­ty in tech which got the author fired. There has been a TON of fas­ci­nat­ing com­men­tary. Here are a few pieces that stood out to me.
    • Here’s the memo itself: Google’s Ide­o­log­i­cal Echo Cham­ber (James Damore). It’s short and easy to read. Def­i­nite­ly skim it if you’ve only heard oth­er peo­ple describe it.
    • Google’s War Over The Sex­es (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “I strong­ly sus­pect that more than a few Sil­i­con Val­ley high­er-ups agreed with the broad themes of Damore’s memo. But just as tech titans accept some cen­sor­ship and oppres­sion as the price of doing busi­ness in Chi­na, they accept per­for­ma­tive pro­gres­sivism as the price of hav­ing nice cam­pus­es in the most lib­er­al state in the union and recruit­ing their employ­ees from its most elite and lib­er­al schools.” If you only read one thing this week, read this one. The last six or so para­graphs in par­tic­u­lar are quite good.
    • I’m a woman in com­put­er sci­ence. Let me ladys­plain the Google memo to you. (Cyn­thia Lee, Vox): “At the out­set, it must be con­ced­ed that, despite what some of the com­men­tary has implied, the man­i­festo is not an unhinged rant. Its qua­si-pro­fes­sion­al tone is a big part of what makes it so beguil­ing (to some) and also so dan­ger­ous.” The author is a CS lec­tur­er at Stan­ford.
    • As a Woman in Tech, I Real­ized: These Are Not My Peo­ple (Megan McAr­dle, Bloomberg View): “James Damore, an engi­neer at Google, wrote a memo sug­gest­ing that maybe there weren’t so many women at Google because women are less inter­est­ed in sit­ting around and star­ing at code all day. The inter­net erupt­ed. James Damore is no longer work­ing at Google. As a woman work­ing in the bro­tas­tic atmos­phere of IT, I ulti­mate­ly came to a con­clu­sion sim­i­lar to his.”
    • What the Google Engineer’s Man­i­festo Missed About Dis­crim­i­na­tion at Work (Paula Eng­land, Insti­tute For Fam­i­ly Stud­ies blog): “Damore’s memo missed one huge thing: Abun­dant and rig­or­ous sci­en­tif­ic studies—by soci­ol­o­gists, psy­chol­o­gists, and economists—have demon­strat­ed that gen­der and race bias­es adverse­ly affect women and peo­ple of col­or in the work­place.” The author is a soci­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sor at NYU.
    • The Google Memo: Four Sci­en­tists Respond (Quil­lette Mag­a­zine): four schol­ars with rel­e­vant exper­tise large­ly back up the memo author’s claims about gen­der dif­fer­ences.
      1. Lee Jus­sim, pro­fes­sor of social psy­chol­o­gy at Rut­gers: “The author of the Google essay on issues relat­ed to diver­si­ty gets near­ly all of the sci­ence and its impli­ca­tions exact­ly right.”
      2. David Schmitt, who has a Ph.D. in per­son­al­i­ty psy­chol­o­gy: “In the case of per­son­al­i­ty traits, evi­dence that men and women may have dif­fer­ent aver­age lev­els of cer­tain traits is rather strong.… But it is not clear to me how such sex dif­fer­ences are rel­e­vant to the Google work­place.”
      3. Geof­frey Miller, pro­fes­sor of evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of New Mex­i­co: “Grad­ed fair­ly, his memo would get at least an A- in any mas­ters’ lev­el psy­chol­o­gy course.”
      4. Debra W Soh, who has a Ph.D. in sex­u­al neu­ro­science: “With­in the field of neu­ro­science, sex dif­fer­ences between women and men—when it comes to brain struc­ture and func­tion and asso­ci­at­ed dif­fer­ences in per­son­al­i­ty and occu­pa­tion­al preferences—are under­stood to be true, because the evi­dence for them (thou­sands of stud­ies) is strong.”
    • The Google Memo: What Does the Research Say About Gen­der Dif­fer­ences? (Sean Stevens and Jonathan Haidt, Het­ero­dox Acad­e­my): A sum­ma­ry of meta-analy­ses on the sub­ject of gen­der dif­fer­ences. “Gen­der dif­fer­ences in math/science abil­i­ty, achieve­ment, and per­for­mance are small or nil.… Gen­der dif­fer­ences in inter­est and enjoy­ment of math, cod­ing, and high­ly ‘sys­tem­iz­ing’ activ­i­ties are large.”
    • Googling Moral Puri­ty (R.R. Reno, First Things):  “Our rul­ing class relies on ‘diver­si­ty’ and ‘inclu­sion’ to legit­i­mate its super­em­i­nence. This makes the atten­dant ide­ol­o­gy sacro­sanct. Any pub­lic dis­sent becomes explo­sive, because it threat­ens the legit­i­ma­cy of our cur­rent social sys­tem, which is char­ac­ter­ized by an increas­ing con­cen­tra­tion of wealth and pow­er among just a few at the tip­py-top.”
    • Quote of the week goes to Rod Dreher: “Gen­der non-essen­tial­ists are the young earth cre­ation­ists of the Left.” (source)
  4. Relat­ed in a weird way: The Tox­ic Dra­ma on YA Twit­ter (Kat Rosen­field, Vul­ture): “One author and for­mer diver­si­ty advo­cate described why she no longer takes part: ‘I have nev­er seen social inter­ac­tion this [messed] up,’ she wrote in an email. ‘And I’ve been in prison.’”
  5. Why Are There No New Major Reli­gions? (Joe Emont, The Atlantic): “State per­se­cu­tion, aid­ed by reli­gious author­i­ties, is in fact a major rea­son why new faiths fail in parts of the world where gov­ern­ment polices reli­gious doc­trine.” The author fails to acknowl­edge the potent new reli­gion in North Amer­i­ca that is a brew of envi­ron­men­tal­ism and sex­u­al auton­o­my with New Age super­sti­tion thrown in. Also, he doesn’t real­ly con­sid­er that maybe some reli­gions are legit­imized by miracles/divine sanc­tion. Inter­est­ing stuff nonethe­less.
  6. Hype­priests: The Grail-Wear­ing Pas­tors Who Dress Like Justin Bieber (Sam Schube, GQ): “I wish Justin Bieber the best. ‘Love Your­self’ is among the finest pop songs of this short cen­tu­ry, and I find his Insta­gram account deeply charm­ing in its utter lack of guile. But even if he weren’t Justin Bieber, he’d deserve the guid­ance, spir­i­tu­al or oth­er­wise, he’s seek­ing. We all deserve that. All I mean to say is this: It is rather remark­able that the men Justin Bieber has entrust­ed to deliv­er that guid­ance have decid­ed to dress like Justin Bieber.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Inside Grad­u­ate Admis­sions (Inside High­er Ed, Scott Jaschick): if you plan to apply to grad school, read this. There is one reveal­ing anec­dote about how an admis­sions com­mit­tee treat­ed an appli­ca­tion from a Chris­t­ian col­lege stu­dent. My take­away: the pro­fes­sors tried to be fair but found it hard to do, and their stat­ed con­cerns were most­ly about the qual­i­ty of the insti­tu­tion rather than the faith of the appli­cant. Trou­bling nonethe­less. (first shared in vol­ume 32)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 112

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. ‘God’s ACLU’ Seeks Free­dom For The Faith­ful (Tunku Varadara­jan, Wall Street Jour­nal): “The pro­gres­sive or lib­er­al approach is to equate free exer­cise of reli­gion with the free­dom to wor­ship and to deny that it has any­thing to do with how a per­son orga­nizes his life. The Beck­et Fund and oth­ers assert that most reli­gions have com­plete codes gov­ern­ing not only wor­ship but oth­er aspects of con­duct. This com­pre­hen­sive Way of Life—which leads a devout­ly Chris­t­ian bak­er to decline to dec­o­rate a cake for a same-sex wed­ding, for instance—commands much more from believ­ers than pro­gres­sives will allow.” Beck­et is Chi Alpha’s pro bono legal team. The author is a fel­low at Stan­ford’s Hoover Insti­tu­tion.
  2. For Cul­tur­al­ly Illit­er­ate Sci­ence Reporters, Canaan­ite DNA Yields Occa­sion to Slap Bible Around (David Kling­hof­fer, Evo­lu­tion News): Did you see all those head­lines sug­gest­ing that a DNA study proved the Bib­li­cal accounts wrong? Yeah… don’t lose any sleep over that. When some­one tells you that the Bible is wrong, don’t assume they actu­al­ly know what the Bible says. See also a longer and more reflec­tive post from an OT schol­ar Break­ing News: Sci­ence Dis­proves The Bible (but I real­ly like the short and punchy one that’s the main link).
  3. The ‘Prophets’ and ‘Apos­tles’ Lead­ing the Qui­et Rev­o­lu­tion in Amer­i­can Reli­gion (Bob Smi­etana, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “It’s very spon­ta­neous. We went to a con­fer­ence where a num­ber of apos­tles were speak­ing and Bill John­son was doing a Bible teach­ing. He had prob­a­bly talked 20 or 30 min­utes, and you could feel the rest­less­ness in the room. He said, ‘I know you are just wait­ing for me to stop preach­ing because you want the pow­er. But just hang with me here.’ Peo­ple weren’t there to lis­ten to him. What they want­ed was for him to lay hands on them.” Inter­est­ing read that is not entire­ly fair but also fair­ly insight­ful. 
  4. Venezue­la’s Unprece­dent­ed Col­lapse (Ricar­do Haus­mann, Project Syn­di­cate). “Mea­sured in the cheap­est avail­able calo­rie, the min­i­mum wage declined from 52,854 calo­ries per day to just 7,005 dur­ing the same peri­od, a decline of 86.7% and insuf­fi­cient to feed a fam­i­ly of five, assum­ing that all the income is spent to buy the cheap­est calo­rie.” The author is a Har­vard pro­fes­sor and for­mer Venezue­lan offi­cial.
  5. Why The Scari­est Nuclear Threat May Be Com­ing From Inside The White House (Michael Lewis, Van­i­ty Fair): “The Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment might be the most com­pli­cat­ed orga­ni­za­tion on the face of the earth. Two mil­lion fed­er­al employ­ees take orders from 4,000 polit­i­cal appointees. Dys­func­tion is baked into the struc­ture of the thing: the sub­or­di­nates know that their boss­es will be replaced every four or eight years, and that the direc­tion of their enter­pris­es might change overnight—with an elec­tion or a war or some oth­er polit­i­cal event.” Fas­ci­nat­ing and fright­en­ing, even once you fac­tor in the author’s hos­til­i­ty to the Trump admin­is­tra­tion.
  6. Mar­riage Mat­ters (W. Brad­ford Will­cox, City Jour­nal): “…young adults who fol­low three steps—getting at least a high school degree, then work­ing full-time, and then mar­ry­ing before hav­ing any chil­dren, in that order—are very unlike­ly to become poor.” The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at UVA.
  7. From the Enlight­en­ment to the Dark Ages: How “new athe­ism” slid into the alt-right (Phil Tor­res, Salon): “As a philoso­pher — some­one who cares deeply about intel­lec­tu­al hon­esty, ver­i­fi­able evi­dence, crit­i­cal think­ing and moral thought­ful­ness — I now find myself in direct oppo­si­tion with many new athe­ist lead­ers. That is, I see my own advo­ca­cy for sci­ence, crit­i­cal thought and basic moral­i­ty as stand­ing in direct oppo­si­tion to their posi­tions.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Read­ing The Whole Bible in 2016: A FAQ (Gospel Coali­tion, Justin Tay­lor). How much time each day would it take you to read the entire Bible in a year? “There are about 775,000 words in the Bible. Divid­ed by 365, that’s 2,123 words a day. The aver­age per­son reads 200 to 250 words per minute. So 2,123 words/day divid­ed by 225 words/minute equals 9.4 min­utes a day.” This arti­cle is full of good advice for what could be the best com­mit­ment you make all year. Do it! (first shared in vol­ume 31 and use­ful for any year)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 111

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Meet the Megadonor Behind the LGBTQ Rights Move­ment (Andy Kroll, Rolling Stone): “More broad­ly, for Gill and his allies, nondis­crim­i­na­tion is the new front of the move­ment: a cam­paign that pits LGBTQ advo­cates against a reli­gious right that respond­ed to mar­riage equal­i­ty by redou­bling its efforts…. Gill refus­es to go on the defense. ‘We’re going into the hard­est states in the coun­try,’ he says. ‘We’re going to pun­ish the wicked.’.… ‘We have been fight­ing for [nondis­crim­i­na­tion] since the Six­ties,’ he says. ‘It’s the reli­gious right that decid­ed to make mar­riage an issue. They worked tire­less­ly on it for decades and they lost.’”
  2. Fusion GPS Illu­mi­nates the Brave New World of Man­u­fac­tured News For Hire (Lee Smith, Tablet Mag­a­zine) “There is no accu­rate account­ing of how many of the sto­ries you read in the news are the fruit of oppo­si­tion research, because no jour­nal­ist wants to admit how many of their top ‘sources’ are just infor­ma­tion packagers—which is why the blind­ing suc­cess of Fusion GPS is the least-cov­ered media sto­ry in Amer­i­ca right now.”
  3. The Death Of Read­ing Is Threat­en­ing The Soul (Philip Yancey, Wash­ing­ton Post): “I am read­ing many few­er books these days, and even few­er of the kinds of books that require hard work. The Inter­net and social media have trained my brain to read a para­graph or two, and then start look­ing around.”
  4. Ask Andrew W.K.: My Dad Is a Right-Wing Ass­hole (Andrew W.K., The Vil­lage Voice): apolo­gies for the title, this is a sur­pris­ing­ly good piece (pub­lished back in 2014).
  5. Char­lie Gard and the Experts (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “The rights of par­ents are essen­tial to a free society’s archi­tec­ture, and fathers and moth­ers are far more like­ly than any oth­er par­ty to have their child’s best inter­ests close to heart. To inter­vene on behalf of experts against the fam­i­ly is some­times nec­es­sary but always dan­ger­ous, fraught with total­i­tar­i­an temp­ta­tions to which the mod­ern West is not immune.” Char­lie Gard died after this col­umn was writ­ten, which makes the piece even more impor­tant.
  6. How Cool Works In Amer­i­ca Today (David Brooks, New York Times): argues that being woke is a cul­tur­al replace­ment for being cool. “The woke men­tal­i­ty became promi­nent in 2012 and 2013 with the Trayvon Mar­tin case and the rise of Black Lives Mat­ter. Embrace it or not, B.L.M. is the most com­plete social move­ment in Amer­i­ca today, as a com­mu­nal, intel­lec­tu­al, moral and polit­i­cal force.”
  7. Free Mar­kets and Uni­corns (Andrew Strain, First Things): “In the age of cor­po­ra­tions, a tru­ly free mar­ket is as myth­i­cal as a uni­corn.” This essay called forth the response piece Why is social­ism being pro­mot­ed by con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian out­lets? (Joe Carter, Acton Insti­tute): “by ana­lyz­ing his essay we can see a com­mon pat­tern that is emerg­ing, even in once con­ser­v­a­tive pub­li­ca­tions: writ­ers who don’t know the first thing about free mar­kets explain­ing why they are infe­ri­or to social­ist poli­cies.” Read­ing them togeth­er is illu­mi­nat­ing.

Things Glen Found Amusing/Entertaining

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Chris­t­ian Mis­sions and the Spread of Democ­ra­cy (Greg Scan­dlen, The Fed­er­al­ist): This is a sum­ma­ry of some rather won­der­ful research Robert Wood­ber­ry pub­lished in The Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Review back in 2012: The Mis­sion­ary Roots of Lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy. If it looks famil­iar it’s because I allude to it from time to time in my ser­mons and con­ver­sa­tions. (first shared in vol­ume 14)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 110

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The First Church of Inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty (Eliz­a­beth C. Corey, First Things): “Inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty is, then, a qua­si-reli­gious gnos­tic move­ment, which appeals to peo­ple for pre­cise­ly the rea­sons that all reli­gions do: It gives an account of our bro­ken­ness, an expla­na­tion of the rea­sons for pain, a sav­ing sto­ry accom­pa­nied by strong eth­i­cal imper­a­tives, and hope for the future. In short, it gives life mean­ing.”
  2. Nondi­crim­i­na­tion For All (Jonathan Rauch, Nation­al Affairs): “The land­mark civ­il-rights bills that broke the back of racial seg­re­ga­tion in the 1960s were not abso­lutist. They pro­vid­ed exemp­tions for reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions. They exempt­ed ‘Mrs. Mur­phy,’ the land­la­dy rent­ing a room in her own house. At the time, civ­il-rights advo­cates in Con­gress made the prag­mat­ic argu­ment that exemp­tions were need­ed to pass the bill, but they also made the polit­i­cal­ly prin­ci­pled argu­ment that excep­tions would increase social com­fort with the leg­is­la­tion while still cov­er­ing the vast major­i­ty of cas­es — a trade they deemed worth mak­ing…. In fact, the pop-cul­ture ide­al of zero-tol­er­ance nondis­crim­i­na­tion is pos­si­ble only because of the under­ly­ing real­i­ty of ubiq­ui­tous accom­mo­da­tion.”
  3. The Wast­ed Mind of Ben Sasse (Ben Math­is-Lil­ley, Slate): “What is most mad­den­ing about Sasse is not his par­ty feal­ty per se—I’m not expect­ing a Repub­li­can sen­a­tor to sup­port left-wing poli­cies; that’s not the stan­dard we should hold him to—but the way he has out­lined the basis for a path he has yet to take him­self.” This is more par­ti­san than most things I share, but since I high­light­ed Sasse as one of my two favorite Sen­a­tors back in issue 107 it seems appro­pri­ate. I still like both Sasse and Book­er, by the way.
  4. Some ques­tions I’m ask­ing while off to my white evan­gel­i­cal church (Lisa Robin­son, per­son­al blog): “Has all this atten­tion on white suprema­cy maybe pushed down cen­tral issues to being part of the king­dom of God togeth­er, with its dis­ci­ple­ship man­dates and being salt and light in the world? Because it seems to me, based on what I read in Scrip­ture any­way, that only through him can true rec­on­cil­i­a­tion hap­pen.”
  5. Meet Five Men Who All Think They’re The Mes­si­ah (Jonas Bendik­sen, Nation­al Geo­graph­ic)  “If Christ were to come back to com­plete his work today, I’ve thought, what would he think of the world we’ve cre­at­ed? And what would we think of him? With these thoughts tum­bling around in my head, I decid­ed to start look­ing for mes­si­ahs. I found them the way you find every­thing these days: through Google.”
  6. “Main­line” Church­es Are Emp­ty­ing. The Polit­i­cal Effects Could Be Huge (Lyman Stone, Vox): “While pro­gres­sives are keen to see in the decline of labor unions an impor­tant com­po­nent in the rise of con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal pow­er, they rarely con­sid­er the impact of los­ing their movement’s soul. Despite main­line denom­i­na­tions com­mand­ing as much or more pop­u­lar sup­port and mem­ber­ship as labor unions, their decline seems to be unmourned with­in the pro­gres­sive move­ment they birthed; the con­se­quences of that decline like­wise go uncon­sid­ered.”
  7. Get­ting the Rich and Pow­er­ful to Give (SSRN, Kessler, Milk­man & Zhang): “Con­sis­tent with past psy­chol­o­gy research, we find that the rich and pow­er­ful respond dra­mat­i­cal­ly, and dif­fer­ent­ly than oth­ers, to being giv­en a sense of agency over the use of donat­ed funds. Gifts from rich and pow­er­ful alum­ni increase by 200–300 per­cent when they are giv­en a sense of agency.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Alco­hol, Black­outs, and Cam­pus Sex­u­al Assault (Texas Month­ly, Sarah Hep­o­la), the most thought­ful sec­u­lar piece I’ve read on the issue. “Con­sent and alco­hol make tricky bed­fel­lows. The rea­son I liked get­ting drunk was because it altered my con­sent: it changed what I would say yes to. Not just in the bed­room but in every room and cor­ri­dor that led into the squint­ing light. Say yes to adven­ture, say yes to risk, say yes to karaoke and pool par­ties and argu­ments with men, say yes to a life with­out fear, even though such a life is nev­er pos­si­ble… We drink because it feels good. We drink because it makes us feel hap­py, safe, pow­er­ful. That it often makes us the oppo­site is one of alcohol’s das­tard­ly tricks.” (first shared in vol­ume 25)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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