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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 109

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. How We Are Ruin­ing Amer­i­ca (David Brooks, NYT): “To feel at home in oppor­tu­ni­ty-rich areas, you’ve got to under­stand the right barre tech­niques, sport the right baby car­ri­er, have the right pod­cast, food truck, tea, wine and Pilates tastes, not to men­tion pos­sess the right atti­tudes about David Fos­ter Wal­lace, child-rear­ing, gen­der norms and inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty.” This col­umn spawned much deri­sion on social media, but I strong­ly agree with Brooks — and so do many com­men­ta­tors. Here are sym­pa­thet­ic reac­tions from Fred­die deBoer on the left and from Rod Dreher on the right. Dan Drezn­er takes it in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion, and the Mon­key Cage says “duh” while Alan Jacobs calls peo­ple unwill­ing to acknowl­edge Brooks’ obser­va­tion “will­ful­ly blind”.
  2. Luther’s Rev­o­lu­tion (The Nation, Eliz­a­beth Bru­enig): “The­ol­o­gy is moral­i­ty is pol­i­tics is law—and whether or not it’s imme­di­ate­ly obvi­ous, the world is steeped in the­ol­o­gy. In con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­ca, and espe­cial­ly in the more sec­u­lar precincts of West­ern Europe, it seems unlike­ly that one could look at a prop­er­ty deed or a gov­ern­ment bud­get and find, just beneath its explic­it rea­son­ing, traces of old the­o­log­i­cal dis­putes and their res­o­lu­tions. But they’re there…”
  3. I’ve Worked with Refugees for Decades. Europe’s Afghan Crime Wave Is Mind-Bog­gling. (Cheryl Benard, The Nation­al Inter­est): “Euro­peans were pre­dis­posed to be pos­i­tive towards Afghan refugees. But it quick­ly became obvi­ous that some­thing was wrong, very wrong, with these young Afghan men: they were com­mit­ting sex crimes to a much greater extent than oth­er refugees… It took a while for the pat­tern to be rec­og­nized because, until recent­ly, west­ern Euro­pean media delib­er­ate­ly refrained from iden­ti­fy­ing an assailant’s refugee or asy­lum sta­tus, or his coun­try of ori­gin.”
  4. Per­son­al­i­ty, Gen­der, and Age in the Lan­guage of Social Media: The Open-Vocab­u­lary Approach (Schwartz HA, Eich­staedt JC, Kern ML, Dzi­urzyn­s­ki L, Ramones SM, Agraw­al M, et al., PLOS One) — This one is from 2013. Pay par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to Fig­ure 6 and notice the clus­ter of words asso­ci­at­ed with emo­tion­al sta­bil­i­ty. #blessed #on_my_way to #church
  5. No Retreat: Lecrae’s Approach to “Cul­ture-Mak­ing” (Jemar Tis­by, Christ and Pop Cul­ture): “But Lecrae couldn’t ful­fill his mis­sion if his beats only banged in Chris­t­ian ears, though not because Chris­tians aren’t impor­tant to him. It was Chris­t­ian fans who pro­pelled him to pop­u­lar­i­ty and still con­tin­ue to sup­port him. Nev­er­the­less, hav­ing tes­ti­fied in Jerusalem, so to speak, Lecrae felt com­pelled to tes­ti­fy also in Rome (Acts 23:11).” This is relat­ed to what we’re cov­er­ing in our sum­mer read­ing project, and you’re wel­come to join us. 
  6. In Praise of Extreme Med­i­cine (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “It’s odd that we allow some crazy things and ban others—even more that the crazy things we allow are some­times social­ly use­less while the crazy things that we ban are some­times social­ly valu­able. The case for ban­ning extreme sports, for exam­ple, is much stronger than the case for ban­ning extreme med­i­cine.”
  7. ‘Born this way’? It’s way more com­pli­cat­ed than that (Alia E. Dasta­gir, USA Today): “Get­ting Amer­i­ca to believe that peo­ple are born gay — that it’s not some­thing that can be cho­sen or ever changed — has been cen­tral to the fight for gay rights. If some­one can’t help being gay any more than they can help the col­or of their skin, the log­ic goes, deny­ing them rights is wrong. But many mem­bers of the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty reject this nar­ra­tive…”
  8. Why Roman con­crete still stands strong while mod­ern ver­sion decays (Nico­la Davis, The Guardian): rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus. I some­times hear peo­ple state it like a self-evi­dent truth that we are smarter than the ancients. I see no evi­dence we are any more intel­li­gent than them. We just have more accu­mu­lat­ed knowl­edge in cer­tain domains.

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 On Obsti­na­cy In Belief (C.S. Lewis, The Sewa­nee Review). Lewis explains why Chris­tians are jus­ti­fied in con­tin­u­ing to believe even when they encounter an argu­ment they can’t imme­di­ate­ly answer (first shared in vol­ume 6).

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 108

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. Should Tyler Cowen Believe In God? (Ross Douthat, NYT): this is delight­ful. “There: I’ve prob­a­bly blas­phemed, weak­ened my Catholic cre­den­tials, endan­gered my soul, insult­ed my reli­gious brethren, picked point­less fights with Mus­lims and Calvin­ists, and betrayed a juve­nile under­stand­ing of sta­tis­tics.”
  2. Des­per­a­tion and Ser­vice in the Bail Indus­try (Joshua Page, Con­texts): “…indus­try advo­cates con­fi­dent­ly assert that bail com­pa­nies and agents are ser­vice providers help­ing needy peo­ple. As my research shows, this claim is based in real­i­ty. But it is a con­struct­ed real­i­ty. Polit­i­cal and legal deci­sions make the ser­vices nec­es­sary in the first place.”
  3. “High” Achiev­ers? Cannabis Access and Aca­d­e­m­ic Per­for­mance (Olivi­er Marie & Ulf Zölitz, The Review of Eco­nom­ic Stud­ies): The authors stud­ied “an excep­tion­al pol­i­cy intro­duced in the city of Maas­tricht in the Nether­lands that dis­crim­i­nat­ed access via licensed cannabis shops based on an individual’s nation­al­i­ty…. We find that the aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance of stu­dents who are no longer legal­ly per­mit­ted to buy cannabis sub­stan­tial­ly increas­es.” In oth­er news, water is wet. You can find a PDF of the full paper at SSRN)
  4. The Case Against Car­di­nal Pell (Julia Yost, First Things): this is fas­ci­nat­ing and dis­tress­ing and full of all sorts of indi­rect­ly-relat­ed asides, such as “the McMartin Preschool case gen­er­at­ed 321 charges from forty-one chil­dren. We now know that every charge was a lie and every child was a liar. Yet today, with the chil­dren now well into their thir­ties, many of them still insist that their charges were true.”
  5. Stranger In A Strange Land (Fran­cis J. Beck­with, Inside High­er Ed): “A lit­tle over four years ago, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado at Boul­der began a three-year pilot pro­gram that I believe has no prece­dent in Amer­i­can high­er edu­ca­tion. With the help of pri­vate donors and the sup­port of the university’s board, pres­i­dent and chan­cel­lor, the school cre­at­ed the posi­tion of Vis­it­ing Schol­ar of Con­ser­v­a­tive Thought and Pol­i­cy.”
  6. I Am Not a ‘Paki,’ Not a Ter­ror­ist. I Am Nobody but Myself. (Omar Aziz, NY Times): rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. “Here is the basic conun­drum the child of immi­grants faces as he goes through school. Until now, he has safe­ly assumed the iden­ti­ty pro­vid­ed to him by his fam­i­ly, but as he encoun­ters inno­cent white faces, he is con­front­ed with an inter­ro­ga­tion about who he real­ly is.”
  7. Would Your Dog Eat You if You Died? Get the Facts. (Eri­ka Engel­haupt, Nation­al Geo­graph­ic): “There’s no way to guar­an­tee that your pet won’t eat you if you die, apart from not hav­ing any pets. Even ham­sters and birds have been known to scav­enge on occa­sion.” Ham­sters? Real­ly? Who has ham­sters roam­ing freely through their house?

Things Glen Found Amusing

Something Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light a link I shared before which is still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have  The Land of We All (Richard Mitchell, The Gift of Fire): this essay teas­es out the impli­ca­tions of this insight: “Think­ing can not be done cor­po­rate­ly. Nations and com­mit­tees can’t think. That is not only because they have no brains, but because they have no selves, no cen­ters, no souls, if you like. Mil­lions and mil­lions of per­sons may hold the same thought, or con­vic­tion or sus­pi­cion, but each and every per­son of those mil­lions must hold it all alone.” Warn­ing: the for­mat­ting is hor­rid. It is worth read­ing any­way. Either use the Read­abil­i­ty book­marklet, an app like Pock­et, or just cut and paste it into a text doc­u­ment on your com­put­er. (first shared in vol­ume 2)

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 107

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 Sim­ple Ques­tions to Ask Every Time You Open Your Bible (Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coali­tion): “1. What does God want me to under­stand? 2. What does God want me to believe? 3. What does God want me to desire? 4. What does God want me to do?”
  2. Ben Sasse on the Space between Nebras­ka and Nev­er­land (Tyler Cowen, Con­ver­sa­tions With Tyler): Sasse is my favorite Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor and he does not dis­ap­point in this inter­view. While you could just read the tran­script, the audio is great and high­ly rec­om­mend­ed. The Con­ver­sa­tions With Tyler pod­cast gen­er­al­ly is a worth­while sub­scrip­tion (iTunes, RSS). My favorite Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor, by the way, is Cory Book­er. You can read the tran­script of Booker’s 2012 com­mence­ment speech at Stan­ford. Sasse and Book­er being my favorites does not imply that I agree with them on any spe­cif­ic pol­i­cy issue — I just think they’d be great to have as neigh­bors.
  3. Reli­gious Free­dom and Dis­crim­i­na­tion: Why the Debate Con­tin­ues (Albert Mohler, Gospel Coali­tion): “Great moral debates ride on argu­ments, but they’re decid­ed on emo­tion and moral intu­ition. That doesn’t mean argu­ments don’t matter—they assured­ly do. What it does mean is the win­ning side in a great moral cri­sis will nev­er win on argu­ment alone. Moral sen­ti­ment is more basic than moral argu­ment.” Rel­e­vant: In Sex Dis­putes, Most Amer­i­cans Still Favor Reli­gious Rights.
  4. The Supreme Court made a very encour­ag­ing rul­ing in defense of reli­gious lib­er­ty. Here are a few takes on it:
    • SCOTUS ruled that church­es qual­i­fy for state mon­ey. Church­es, beware. (Lyman Stone, Vox): “Church­es should cel­e­brate the Court’s deci­sion, yet think hard about how they’ll act on it…. Reli­gious peo­ple and groups do deserve and are one step clos­er to receiv­ing equal access to pub­lic pro­grams, but if they are wise, they should avoid actu­al­ly avail­ing them­selves of these pro­grams in most cas­es. The expe­ri­ence of cen­turies has shown that far from sacral­iz­ing the state, pub­lic sup­port of reli­gious bod­ies sec­u­lar­izes the church.”
    • The Supreme Court Strikes Down a Major Church-State Bar­ri­er (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “Sev­en jus­tices affirmed the judg­ment in Trin­i­ty Luther­an v. Com­er, albeit with some dis­agree­ment about the rea­son­ing behind it. The major church-state case could poten­tial­ly expand the legal under­stand­ing of the free-exer­cise clause of the First Amend­ment of the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion. It is also the first time the Supreme Court has ruled that gov­ern­ments must pro­vide mon­ey direct­ly to a house of wor­ship, which could have impli­ca­tions for future pol­i­cy fights—including fund­ing for pri­vate, reli­gious char­ter schools.”
    • Paving a Play­ground, and Weed­ing the Unruly Gar­den of Reli­gious Lib­er­ty (Matthew J. Franck, Pub­lic Dis­course): “Some­thing of this gen­er­al­ized ani­mos­i­ty to the place of reli­gion in Amer­i­can soci­ety can be seen in the star­tling­ly reac­tionary dis­sent of Jus­tice Sonia Sotomay­or, who was joined by Jus­tice Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg. Con­sid­er­ably longer than Roberts’s opin­ion of the Court, Sotomayor’s dis­sent stakes out the amaz­ing posi­tion that Mis­souri is not only per­mit­ted by the free exer­cise clause of the First Amend­ment to exclude church­es from equal access to fund­ing avail­able to oth­ers; it is required to exclude them by the estab­lish­ment clause.”
  5. I think health care is a right. I asked an expert to tell me why I’m wrong. (Sean Illing, Vox): “Fun­da­men­tal­ly, you have to under­stand that get­ting access to health­care ser­vices, get­ting peo­ple to be will­ing to pro­vide high-qual­i­ty ser­vices and inno­v­a­tive treat­ments, is the result of a mar­ket deci­sion for those providers as well, and so if you don’t treat it like a mar­ket­place to some degree, you’ll get less inno­va­tion and few­er new treat­ments than you will if you do.” The jour­nal­ist inter­views an econ pro­fes­sor at North­west­ern and they dis­agree help­ful­ly.
  6. The Seat­tle Min­i­mum Wage Study (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “The authors are able to repli­cate the results of oth­er papers that find no impact on the restau­rant indus­try with their own data by impos­ing the same lim­i­ta­tions that oth­er researchers have faced. This shows that those papers’ find­ings were like­ly dri­ven by their data lim­i­ta­tions. This is an impor­tant thing to remem­ber as you see knee-jerk respons­es com­ing from the usu­al cor­ners.” See also The Min­i­mum Wage: Evi­dence from a Dan­ish Dis­con­ti­nu­ity.

Things Glen Found Amus­ing

From The Archives

I’m exper­i­ment­ing with a new fea­ture — every week high­light­ing an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. First up we have the very first link I ever shared way back in vol­ume 1: The Spir­i­tu­al Shape of Polit­i­cal Ideas (Joseph Bot­tum, The Week­ly Stan­dard). It argues that some of our mod­ern and sup­pos­ed­ly sec­u­lar polit­i­cal ideas are mutant vari­ants of Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy.

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 106

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. One Amer­i­can fam­i­ly’s mis­sion to res­cue civil­ians in Mosul (Mar­co Wer­man, PRI’s The World): I heard this sto­ry on NPR this week and was floored. Lis­ten to the thir­teen-minute inter­view (don’t just read the sur­round­ing text ‑the siz­zle is in the audio ver­sion). Amaz­ing. For more about David Eubank’s min­istry, read Jun­gle Cow­boys (Sophia Lee, World Mag­a­zine).
  2. The Legal Mean­ing of the Cos­by Mis­tri­al (Jean­nie Suk Gersen, New York­er): “The extra­or­di­nar­i­ly high pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al bur­den of proof in any crim­i­nal tri­al is inten­tion­al­ly designed to heav­i­ly favor defen­dants, because we long ago embraced as a soci­ety Blackstone’s prin­ci­ple. For­mu­lat­ed in the sev­en­teen-six­ties by the Eng­lish jurist William Black­stone, the pre­sump­tion is that it is bet­ter to have ten guilty peo­ple go free than that one inno­cent per­son suf­fer. Hard as it is to stom­ach today, embrac­ing that cal­cu­lus means that we should even want ten rapists (not to men­tion ter­ror­ists and mur­der­ers) to go free in order to pro­tect the one false­ly accused.” Gersen, a Har­vard Law prof, also has anoth­er sol­id arti­cle this week: Why Racial­ly Offen­sive Trade­marks Are Now Legal­ly Pro­tect­ed.
  3. Phi­lan­do Castile After­math (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Still, I can’t grasp why Castile’s killer got away scot-free, and why there hasn’t been much of an out­cry. If a police offi­cer can shoot to death a motorist who was obey­ing all his com­mands, and walk away a free man from that shoot­ing, how safe are any of us?” On Slate, Leon Ney­fakh writes Phi­lan­do Castile Should Be the NRA’s Per­fect Cause Célèbre. There’s Just One Prob­lem. See also David French’s The Unwrit­ten Law That Helps Bad Cops Go Free.
  4. Camille Paglia: On Trump, Democ­rats, Trans­gen­derism, and Islamist Ter­ror (Jonathan V. Last, The Week­ly Stan­dard): “Although I describe myself as trans­gen­der (I was don­ning flam­boy­ant male cos­tumes from ear­ly child­hood on), I am high­ly skep­ti­cal about the cur­rent trans­gen­der wave, which I think has been pro­duced by far more com­pli­cat­ed psy­cho­log­i­cal and soci­o­log­i­cal fac­tors than cur­rent gen­der dis­course allows. Fur­ther­more, I con­demn the esca­lat­ing pre­scrip­tion of puber­ty block­ers (whose long-term effects are unknown) for chil­dren. I regard this prac­tice as a crim­i­nal vio­la­tion of human rights.”
  5. Mis-Edu­cat­ing The Young (David Brooks, NY Times): “Child­hood is more struc­tured than it has ever been. But then the great engine of the mer­i­toc­ra­cy spits peo­ple out into a young adult­hood that is less struc­tured than it has ever been.”
  6. The most impor­tant truth about hard work, and also read­ing, that you can find (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Giv­en two peo­ple of approx­i­mate­ly the same abil­i­ty and one per­son who works ten per­cent more than the oth­er, the lat­ter will more than twice out­pro­duce the for­mer. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the oppor­tu­ni­ty – it is very much like com­pound inter­est.”
  7. Two minds: The cog­ni­tive dif­fer­ences between men and women (Bruce Gold­man, Stan­ford Med­i­cine): “In a study of 34 rhe­sus mon­keys, for exam­ple, males strong­ly pre­ferred toys with wheels over plush toys, where­as females found plush toys lik­able. It would be tough to argue that the mon­keys’ par­ents bought them sex-typed toys or that simi­an soci­ety encour­ages its male off­spring to play more with trucks.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.

Things Glen Found Entertaining

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.