Category: Links

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 67

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Ice­break­ers Are Ter­ri­ble. They Also, Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Work Real­ly Well (Cari Romm, NY Mag­a­zine): “Is there any val­ue to mak­ing a room­ful of peo­ple mis­er­able with false cheer? Psy­chol­o­gist Anton Vil­la­do is adamant that the answer is yes, and that ice­break­ers don’t have to be pleas­ant to be effec­tive.” Rel­e­vant for the start of the school year.
  2. Reli­gion in US ‘worth more than Google and Apple com­bined’ (Har­ri­et Sher­wood, The Guardian): “the sums spent by reli­gious organ­i­sa­tions on social pro­grammes have tripled in the past 15 years, to $9bn. Twen­ty of the top 50 char­i­ties in the US are faith-based, with a com­bined oper­at­ing rev­enue of $45.3bn.” There’s some excel­lent com­men­tary on this at Crux.
  3. The First Coun­try to Offi­cial­ly Defend Chris­tians Per­se­cut­ed by ISIS (World Watch Mon­i­tor at Chris­tian­i­ty Today): It’s Hun­gary. Hun­gary’s Min­is­ter for Human Resources said, “Today, Chris­tian­i­ty has become the most per­se­cut­ed reli­gion, where out of five peo­ple killed [for] reli­gious rea­sons, four of them are Chris­tians.… In 81 coun­tries around the world, Chris­tians are per­se­cut­ed, and 200 mil­lion Chris­tians live in areas where they are dis­crim­i­nat­ed against.”
  4. Why Not a Col­lege Degree in Sports? (Roger Pielke Jr., NY Times): “Beyond our cul­tur­al bias­es, what real­ly is the dif­fer­ence between a Shake­speare play, an orches­tra con­cert and a bas­ket­ball game? Each per­for­mance requires some high-lev­el com­bi­na­tion of phys­i­cal abil­i­ty and men­tal acu­ity, devel­oped through years of train­ing and study, and for which only a select few reach elite lev­els.” There is a sim­i­lar arti­cle back in issue 44.
  5. Time For A Realign­ment (NY Times, David Brooks): “There’s a good chance many of you will be switch­ing polit­i­cal par­ties over the next 15 years.” This is true both for the rea­sons Brooks men­tions and also because some of you will change your minds.
  6. The world will only get weird­er (Steven Coast, per­son­al blog): “We fixed all the main rea­sons air­craft crash a long time ago. Some­times a long, long time ago. So, we are left with the less and less prob­a­ble events.” The piece is a few years old so the exam­ples are dat­ed, but it remains very intrigu­ing.

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 66

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. “Me too” social sci­ence is not fight­ing inequal­i­ty (Kevin T. Leicht, Work in Progress): an arti­cle about how aca­d­e­mics can improve soci­ety. The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois Urbana-Cham­paign.
  2. U.S. inves­ti­gat­ing poten­tial covert Russ­ian plan to dis­rupt Novem­ber elec­tions (Dana Priest, Ellen Nakashima and Tom Ham­burg­er, Wash­ing­ton Post): “U.S. intel­li­gence and law enforce­ment agen­cies are inves­ti­gat­ing what they see as a broad covert Russ­ian oper­a­tion in the Unit­ed States to sow pub­lic dis­trust in the upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and in U.S. polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions, intel­li­gence and con­gres­sion­al offi­cials said.” The 2016 elec­tions will make an amaz­ing tele­vi­sion series a gen­er­a­tion from now. 
  3. The Idle Army: America’s Unwork­ing Men (Nico­las Eber­stadt, Wall Street Jour­nal): the author doesn’t say it here, but video games and pornog­ra­phy are huge enablers of this phe­nom­e­non. This is one of those trends that every­one will be talk­ing about in 10–15 years.
  4. You are not your brain: Why a head trans­plant is not what you think it is (Charles Camosy, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): this was mind-blow­ing. Pun intend­ed. With me, the pun is always intend­ed.
  5. How A Cake­mak­er Became An Ene­my Of The State (David Harsyani, The Fed­er­al­ist): “Chris­tians are reg­u­lar­ly com­pared to South­ern seg­re­ga­tion­ists and racists, when in real­i­ty the com­par­i­son is best reversed. Yes, the pow­er of Jim Crow reflect­ed pop­u­lar will, but it was sanc­tioned by the state. The Col­orado Civ­il Rights Com­mis­sion is sim­i­lar­ly empow­ered by the state to use its arbi­trary pow­er to destroy the rep­u­ta­tions, busi­ness­es, and lives of those who hap­pen to offend their sen­si­bil­i­ties.” See also the alarm­ing com­ments of the US Com­mis­sion on Civ­il Rights Chair­man.
  6. Reverse Voxs­plain­ing: Drugs vs. Chairs (Slat­eStar­Codex, the author is a doc­tor who writes under pseu­do­nym). This was a stim­u­lat­ing piece about the EpiPen con­tro­ver­sy to which Vox had a rejoin­der to which the author offered a sur­re­join­der.  Infor­ma­tive and full of provoca­tive state­ments such as “pre­scrip­tion drug price reg­u­la­tion would cost one bil­lion life-years, which would very slight­ly edge out Com­mu­nist Chi­na for the title of Worst Thing Ever.” For an inter­est­ing unre­lat­ed-yet-relat­ed com­pan­ion piece, see the brief Two “The Rest of the Sto­ry” Sto­ries (Alex Tab­barok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion).
  7. What Does The Bible Say About Trans­gen­derism? (Kevin DeY­oung., Gospel Coali­tion): “We under­stand that fol­low­ing Christ means dying to our­selves (Matt. 16:24), being renewed in our minds (Rom. 12:2), and no longer walk­ing as we once did (Eph. 4:17–18). Being ‘true to our­selves’ is always a false choice when it means going against God’s Word.”
  8. Porn Is Bad (Pas­cal-Emmanuel Gob­ry, The Week): “It took decades to rec­og­nize smok­ing for the pub­lic health dis­as­ter that it is, and to final­ly get a grip on it soci­etal­ly. Although porn does­n’t cause can­cer, there’s good evi­dence that it does destroy lives and fam­i­lies.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

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 65

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The health effects of reli­gious ser­vice atten­dance (red­dit AMA): the researcher, Tyler Van­der­Weele, is a Har­vard pro­fes­sor and a believ­er. You can see his Ver­i­tas talks here.
  2. If you’re not a sports per­son, you may not know that the San Fran­ci­c­so 49’s quar­ter­back recent­ly refused to stand for the nation­al anthem because Amer­i­ca is unjust. Con­tro­ver­sy ensued. Two alum­ni shared rel­e­vant arti­cles: Col­in Kaeper­nick Is Righter Than You Know: The Nation­al Anthem Is a Cel­e­bra­tion of Slav­ery and the salti­er Why I’ll Nev­er Stand Again For ‘The Star-Span­gled Ban­ner’. Doug Wil­son offered good insights at The Seat­ed Col­in Kaeper­nick. See also Be Use­ful (A Post About Col­in Kaepernik) by Scott Adams and Insult­ing Col­in Kaeper­nick Says More About Our Patri­o­tism Than His by Kareem Abdul-Jab­bar. For a con­trary view, see Col­in Kaeper­nick, Meet Hen­ry John­son (David French, Nation­al Review).
  3. Framed. (Christo­pher Gof­fard, LA Times): this is one of the cra­zi­est things I have read all year. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. Heads up: there is a Stan­ford con­nec­tion in the sto­ry and it is not a pos­i­tive one.
  4. What sci­ence real­ly has to say about sex­u­al­i­ty and gen­der (Joe Carter, ERLC): this is a read­able sum­ma­ry of a 144 page PDF writ­ten by Paul McHugh (a psy­chi­a­trist at Johns Hop­kins) and Lawrence May­er (an bio­sta­tis­ti­cian at Ari­zona State). From the orig­i­nal arti­cle: “Sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and gen­der iden­ti­ty resist expla­na­tion by sim­ple the­o­ries. There is a large gap between the cer­tain­ty with which beliefs are held about these mat­ters and what a sober assess­ment of the sci­ence reveals.”
  5. How The Catholic Church Doc­u­ment­ed Moth­er Tere­sa’s 2 Mir­a­cles (Tom Gjel­ten, NPR): “The group rea­soned that if Duf­fin, as an athe­ist, found there was no sci­en­tif­ic rea­son the woman should have recov­ered, who could doubt it was a mir­a­cle? In fact, after her inves­ti­ga­tion of the wom­an’s recov­ery, Duf­fin agreed that the wom­an’s heal­ing was — for lack of a bet­ter word — mirac­u­lous.” The Pope and I dis­agree about a lot of things (includ­ing saints), but I have long been impressed with the way the Catholic Church crit­i­cal­ly eval­u­ates mir­a­cles.
  6. FBI Says For­eign Hack­ers Pen­e­trat­ed State Elec­tion Sys­tems (Michael Isikoff, Yahoo News): I am con­vinced we are way more vul­ner­a­ble on this front than most peo­ple know.
  7. The Sneaky Pro­gram To Spy On Bal­ti­more From Above (Conor Frieder­dorf, The Atlantic): “In real­i­ty, unlike in 1984, Big Broth­er may watch for awhile with­out reveal­ing that there is a Big Broth­er.”
  8. Wait­ing To Die (Michael Pat­ton): well worth your time.

Things Glen Found Amusing

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 64

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Stu­dents seem upset about Stanford’s new alco­hol pol­i­cy. Check out this Har­vard prof’s NY Times op-ed from 1989 argu­ing Actu­al­ly, Pro­hi­bi­tion Was a Suc­cess. For the record, I think the new pol­i­cy is a step in the right direc­tion. I stand by my ear­li­er com­ments and am also amused at how sim­i­lar the argu­ments I hear today are to those I heard back in 2003.
  2. Kay­la Mueller in Cap­tiv­i­ty: Courage, Self­less­ness as She Defend­ed Chris­t­ian Faith to ISIS Exe­cu­tion­er ‘Jiha­di John’ (James Gor­don Meek, Megan Christie, Bri­an Epstein, Bri­an Ross, ABC News): a pow­er­ful and dis­turb­ing sto­ry. Doc­tors With­out Bor­ders comes off bad­ly.
  3. How USA Today unrav­eled Ryan Lochte’s Rio dra­ma (Kris­ten Hare, Poyn­ter): An insight­ful win­dow into jour­nal­ism and why we should trust news cov­er­age a lit­tle less than we think. Lochte still does­n’t come out look­ing awe­some, but nei­ther does he look like the out­ra­geous vil­lain many assumed (and seemed delight­ed to see him as). Proverbs 18:17 wins again.
  4. Sex on cam­pus isn’t what you think: what 101 stu­dent jour­nals taught me (Lisa Wade, The Guardian): “Hookup cul­ture pre­vails, even though it serves only a minor­i­ty of stu­dents, because cul­tures don’t reflect what is, but a spe­cif­ic group’s vision of what should be….  [it] isn’t what the major­i­ty of stu­dents want, it’s the priv­i­leg­ing of the sex­u­al lifestyle most strong­ly endorsed by those with the most pow­er on cam­pus, the same peo­ple we see priv­i­leged in every oth­er part of Amer­i­can life.”
  5. On David Gushee’s Dis­hon­esty (Jake Meador, Mere Ortho­doxy): this is a fas­ci­nat­ing essay with sur­pris­ing insights about the role of gram­mar in polit­i­cal argu­men­ta­tion. Real­ly.
  6. Evan­gel­i­cals For Trump: In Pow­er or Per­se­cut­ed (S.D. Kel­ly, Christ and Pop Cul­ture): “Not only do most evan­gel­i­cals not believe they are the cen­ter of pow­er, they con­sid­er them­selves to be one wed­ding cake away from jail time.” 
  7. Giv­en the per­pet­u­al Bay Area hous­ing cri­sis, I found these arti­cles stim­u­lat­ing: Lais­sez-Faire in Tokyo Land Use and the fol­low-up The Japan­ese Zon­ing Sys­tem (both by George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty econ pro­fes­sor Alex Tabar­rok): “Japan’s zon­ing laws are more ratio­nal, more effi­cient and fair­er than those used in the Unit­ed States.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

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 63

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. How Can I Learn To Receive — And Give — Crit­i­cism In Light Of The Cross? (Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coali­tion): “A believ­er is one who iden­ti­fies with all that God affirms and con­demns in Christ’s cru­ci­fix­ion. In oth­er words, in Christ’s cross I agree with God’s judg­ment of me; and in Christ’s cross I agree with God’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of me. Both have a rad­i­cal impact on how we take and give crit­i­cism.” This is based on a longer arti­cle (4 page PDF).
  2. The Watch­men (Alan Jacobs, Harpers): this essay takes a while to get going, but once it does it is quite good. And this response piece by Jake Meador is even bet­ter: Fran­cis Scha­ef­fer and Chris­t­ian Intel­lec­tu­al­ism.
  3. Report: Aver­age Christian’s Strat­e­gy To Fight Sin Com­prised Of Binge-Watch­ing Net­flix Shows (Baby­lon Bee): Baby­lon Bee is, of course, humor. This one was so real I decid­ed to put it under the news sec­tion. On a relat­ed note, see America’s Lost Boys.
  4. The End of the Lib­er­al Tra­di­tion? (Mark L. Movs­esian, First Things) and Trump’s Good Polit­i­cal Tim­ing: Younger Amer­i­cans Are Shun­ning Democ­ra­cy (Cather­ine Ramp­bell, Wash­ing­ton Post): this is, frankly, ter­ri­fy­ing. Prob­a­bly also an inevitable con­se­quence of our cul­ture aban­don­ing the Chris­t­ian belief in deprav­i­ty.
  5. What The Hell Is Wrong With The Nation­al Media? (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): I was in Louisiana when the rains came. It was shock­ing how much water fell in a short time. The scope of the dis­as­ter is stag­ger­ing, and it is sur­pris­ing that it took media orga­ni­za­tions so long to notice it. Sean Illing at Salon has a sim­i­lar arti­cle up: Louisiana’s Qui­et Cri­sis: Cable News and the Fol­ly of Dis­as­ter Porn Cov­er­age. Arti­cles like this are begin­ning to mul­ti­ply, but atten­tion is still scant (although it seems to be slow­ly turn­ing around). For an even salti­er read, con­sid­er Dreher’s more recent col­umn. I include these links in part because they are a use­ful reminder that what appears in the media is not what is hap­pen­ing, but rather what media per­son­nel are (a) aware is hap­pen­ing and (b) deem impor­tant.
  6. Pros­ti­tu­tion Is Not Sex Work (Kat Ban­yard, Aeon): “Men who pay for sex are not help­less­ly react­ing to uncon­tain­able sex­u­al urges. Nor does the pros­ti­tu­tion trade rep­re­sent ‘a place of last resort’ for them. A study of 6,000 UK men by Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don in 2014 revealed that those most like­ly to have paid for sex were young pro­fes­sion­als with high num­bers of sex­u­al part­ners.”
  7. In defense of Rud­yard Kipling and ‘The Jun­gle Books’ (Michael Dir­da, Wash­ing­ton Post): this is a good piece.

Things Glen Found Amusing

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.

If you have a non-Stan­ford friend who might be inter­est­ed in these emails, they can sign up at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/subscribe, and if you want to view the archives they are at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 62

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues, with a pref­er­ence for con­tent from aca­d­e­mics and influ­en­tial voic­es. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

A Quote That Grabbed Glen’s Attention

“I real­ly only love God as much as I love the per­son I love the least” — Dorothy Day

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Cal­i­for­nia Law­mak­er Drops Con­tro­ver­sial Pro­pos­al to Reg­u­late Reli­gious Col­leges (Sarah Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): this was a goofy bill and I’m hap­pi­ly sur­prised it has been sub­stan­tial­ly amend­ed. For one influ­en­tial take on it, see www.sb1146discriminates.org
  2. 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).
  3. In Defense Of The Gun Emo­ji (John Brown­lee, Fast Co Design): “They’re send­ing a sym­bol­ic mes­sage about gun con­trol through emo­ji. The prob­lem, though, is that mess­ing with the way that peo­ple com­mu­ni­cate with one anoth­er isn’t sym­bol­ic. It’s deeply lit­er­al.”
  4. What’s Miss­ing From The Con­ver­sa­tion About Trans­gen­der Kids (Jesse Sin­gal, New York Mag­a­zine): this one is an impor­tant read — the pro-LGBT author is con­cerned with the way sci­ence is being ignored when try­ing to help kids who think they were born the wrong gen­der. I shared a relat­ed arti­cle by the same author back in vol­ume 50.
  5. It’s O.K., Lib­er­al Par­ents, You Can Freak Out About Porn (Judith Shule­vitz, NY Times): “Left-lean­ing par­ents shy away from a cause they iden­ti­fy with right-wing cul­ture war­riors, but I chal­lenge any par­ent to affirm that it’s O.K. for her kids to become dig­i­tal porn con­sumers at 11, the aver­age age of a child’s first encounter.”

Something Glen Found Amusing

  • What I Love About The Olympics (Ultra Spir­i­tu­al Life): this is a video. 3.5 min­utes of bru­tal com­men­tary. “Race walk­ing. Now this is a sport that makes sense. Who can go the fastest at not going their fastest? It’s like who can be the best at medi­oc­rity. So para­dox­i­cal. I love it.”

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.

If you have a non-Stan­ford friend who might be inter­est­ed in these emails, they can sign up at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/subscribe, and if you want to view the archives they are at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 61

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues, with a pref­er­ence for con­tent from aca­d­e­mics and influ­en­tial voic­es. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Church Wor­ship Music You Need To Know About (Greg Atkin­son, personal blog): “I… prob­a­bly expe­ri­ence music and wor­ship in more church­es year­ly, than just about any­one else…”
  2. Divorce Con­tin­ues To Take A Psy­cho­log­i­cal Toll on Kids (no byline, Guardian): pon­der anew Malachi 2:13–16 and Matthew 19:1–8.
  3. ‘There isn’t real­ly any­thing mag­i­cal about it’: Why more mil­len­ni­als are avoid­ing sex (Tara Bahram­pour, Wash­ing­ton Post):  Your peers are less sex­u­al­ly active than you assume. They “are more than twice as like­ly to be sex­u­al­ly inac­tive in their ear­ly 20s as the pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion was.” 
  4. Are Soar­ing Lev­els of Income Inequal­i­ty Mak­ing Us A More Polar­ized Nation? (Chris­tos Makridis, The Con­ver­sa­tion): “We all real­ize that greater inequal­i­ty has tan­gi­ble impli­ca­tions for who wins and los­es in soci­ety. How­ev­er, all these pieces of evi­dence sug­gest it may also induce more extreme polit­i­cal atti­tudes and ide­olo­gies.” Note the author — one of our own Chi Alpha stu­dents! It’s also on AP’s the Big Sto­ry, so it might get syn­di­cat­ed. Get your self­ies with Chris­tos now before he becomes famous.
  5. Col­lege Stu­dents Protest, Alumni’s Fond­ness Fades, and Checks Shrink (Anemona Hor­to­col­lis, NY Times): we should not be sur­prised when things that polar­ize stu­dents also polar­ize alum­ni.

Things Glen Found Diverting

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.

If you have a non-Stan­ford friend who might be inter­est­ed in these emails, they can sign up at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/subscribe, and if you want to view the archives they are at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 60

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues, with a pref­er­ence for con­tent from aca­d­e­mics and influ­en­tial voic­es. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. To quote from the begin­ning of both posts: “over the past 30 years law­mak­ers in Con­gress tend to vote in line with their party’s plat­form: 89 per­cent of the time for Repub­li­cans and 79 per­cent of the time for Democ­rats.” If you want to read the full par­ty plat­form state­ments they are linked in the arti­cles and weigh in at a tad over 50 pages each — these are much short­er sum­maries. They are pre­sent­ed in the order of their con­ven­tions. 
  2. Is Seg­re­ga­tion Scrip­tur­al? A Radio Address From Bob Jones On East­er Of 1960 (Justin Tay­lor, Evan­gel­i­cal His­to­ry): this is fas­ci­nat­ing to me as a preach­er. Notice that where Jones went off the rails was when he relied upon his inter­pre­ta­tion of a sin­gle verse as the foun­da­tion of his the­ol­o­gy. Beware of sin­gle-verse the­ol­o­gy! Also, who does­n’t talk about the res­ur­rec­tion on East­er? What was his Christ­mas ser­mon about?
  3. The False Promise Of A ‘Con­ver­sa­tion’ About Race (John McWhort­er, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “The Mar­t­ian anthro­pol­o­gist — or even a sharp 10-year-old — would be baf­fled by so many bril­liant people’s end­less­ly claim­ing in the very wake of the lat­est racial inci­dent, dis­cussed in the news cycle for weeks, that Amer­i­ca ‘doesn’t want to talk about race.’” The author is a pro­fes­sor at Colum­bia who earned his Ph.D. in lin­guis­tics at Stan­ford.
  4. In The Cul­ture War Between Stu­dents and Pro­fes­sors, The Uni­ver­si­ty Is The Real Ene­my (Don­na Zucker­berg, Jezebel): “Heller is cor­rect on one cru­cial point that I don’t think read­ers have been tak­ing seri­ous­ly enough. Col­leges like Ober­lin do encour­age indi­vid­ual expres­sion while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly groom­ing all of their stu­dents to belong to a sin­gle socioe­co­nom­ic class—the intel­lec­tu­al and pro­fes­sion­al elite. In oth­er words, study­ing Antigone doesn’t just teach you about Greek dra­ma and female polit­i­cal resis­tance. It also turns you into the kind of per­son who has read Antigone.”
  5. As A Poor Kid From The Rust Belt, Yale Law Brought Me Face-To-Face With Rad­i­cal Inequal­i­ty (J.D. Vance, Huff­in­g­ton Post): “Very few peo­ple at Yale Law School are like me. They may look like me, but for all of the Ivy League’s obses­sion with diver­si­ty, vir­tu­al­ly everyone—black, white, Jew­ish, Mus­lim, what­ev­er— comes from intact fam­i­lies who nev­er wor­ry about mon­ey.” I shared a link to an inter­view with J.D. Vance last week.

Amusing

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.

If you have a non-Stan­ford friend who might be inter­est­ed in these emails, they can sign up at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/subscribe, and if you want to view the archives they are at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 59

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues, with a pref­er­ence for con­tent from aca­d­e­mics and influ­en­tial voic­es. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

A Pastoral Exhortation

Anoth­er sense­less shoot­ing. In Matthew 24:12, Jesus warns that “because of the increase of wicked­ness, the love of most will grow cold.” Wicked­ness caus­es love to grow cold by two means: allure and despair. The church tends to focus on those forms of wicked­ness which entice us as a temp­ta­tion, but there is also a wicked­ness that demor­al­izes. It leaves Chris­tians feel­ing drained and help­less. This wicked­ness, with which we are all too famil­iar, can make a Chris­tian’s love grow cold. Do not be deceived. Rec­og­nize this for the demon­ic work that it is and do not let it lead you astray. Cling to Christ. Let Him be your com­fort, your peace, and your wis­dom. “Do not be over­come by evil, but over­come evil with good” (Rom 12:21).

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Bat­tle For Reli­gious Lib­er­ty (George Wood, PE News): Dr. Wood is the leader of the Assem­blies of God, which spon­sors Chi Alpha. See also this GetRe­li­gion piece on reli­gious lib­er­ty — high­ly rec­om­mend­ed
  2. Of inter­est to aca­d­e­mics
  3. Trump: Tri­bune of Poor White Peo­ple (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “And I’m always left think­ing: if this is the qual­i­ty of thought of a Har­vard Law grad­u­ate, then our soci­ety is tru­ly doomed.” This is an inter­view with the author of Hill­bil­ly Ele­gy and is much more wide-rang­ing and insight­ful than the title leads you to believe . Both the jour­nal­ist and the inter­vie­wee are Chris­tians.
  4. In Defense of Third-Par­ty Vot­ing (Zac Crip­pen, per­son­al blog): rec­om­mend­ed, dif­fi­cult to excerpt
  5. Amus­ing: This Is How We Work (Owl­turd Comix): apolo­gies for the pub­lish­er’s title.

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.

If you have a non-Stan­ford friend who might be inter­est­ed in these emails, they can sign up at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/subscribe, and if you want to view the archives they are at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 58

Issachar
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues, with a pref­er­ence for con­tent from aca­d­e­mics and influ­en­tial voic­es. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Articles I Found Interesting

  1. Chi­na’s Chris­t­ian Future (Yu Jie, First Things):  Wow. This is very much worth your time.
  2. The ISIS Cor­re­spon­dent (Isaac Chotin­er, Slate): this is time­ly in light of the ter­ror­ist attack in Nice, France. “I think there is an enor­mous amount of mis­un­der­stand­ing about this ques­tion that we get asked over and over again: Does ISIS direct this attack or does ISIS inspire this attack? ISIS-inspired attacks are part of their strat­e­gy; are part of their design; are part of what they’re try­ing to do. That’s what peo­ple miss.”
  3. Ten Thoughts On Speak­ing (And Not) In A Dig­i­tal World (Kevin DeY­oung, Gospel Coali­tion): “A pas­tor does not have time to be a pro­fes­sion­al pun­dit. And even if he did, it’s fair to won­der whether he should be.” DeYoung’s thoughts par­al­lel many of my own. If you won­der why I am often silent on social media, read this.
  4. How High­ly Reli­gious Amer­i­cans’ Lives Are Dif­fer­ent From Oth­ers (Michael Lip­ka, Pew Research): inter­est­ing — both the dif­fer­ences and sim­i­lar­i­ties.
  5. Two Kinds Of Vot­ing, Two Kinds Of Dis­rup­tion, and Two Kinds of Right­eous­ness (Sen­a­tor Ben Sasse, Medi­um): “To us, vot­ing is not mere­ly about 1/130-mil­lionth of decid­ing who should pre­side over 1/3 of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment from 2017 to 2021. To us, the act of vot­ing is also a civic duty that tells peo­ple what we think Amer­i­ca means, what we want to teach our kids about moral lead­er­ship, what face we want Amer­i­ca to present to the world, and what sort of can­di­dates we want more of in com­ing years.” I know noth­ing about Sen­a­tor Sasse’s vot­ing record — I just know this is an out­stand­ing essay.
  6. When Cor­re­la­tion Does Imply Cau­sa­tion (Joshua Krisch, Voca­tiv): “Addi­tive noise mod­el test­ing is based on the sim­ple assump­tion that there is always some sta­tis­ti­cal noise cling­ing to the key vari­ables in any experiment—areas where the data becomes fuzzy and unre­li­able due to mea­sure­ment errors. Regard­less of any link, each vari­able will have its own unique noise sig­na­ture, with one caveat: If X caus­es Y, then the noise in X will be able to con­t­a­m­i­nate Y, but the noise in Y will not able to do the same to X. Because a cause can affect an effect, but an effect can­not affect a cause (read that last line a few times). … The key, then, is to fol­low the noise con­t­a­m­i­na­tion.” See the under­ly­ing paper.
  7. These essays by an Eng­lish pro­fes­sor at Emory are full of prac­ti­cal advice for those of you con­sid­er­ing acad­e­mia. Read them regard­less of your pol­i­tics or your dis­ci­pline.

Amusing

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.

If you have a non-Stan­ford friend who might be inter­est­ed in these emails, they can sign up at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/subscribe, and if you want to view the archives they are at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.