Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 477

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. Some post-elec­tion analy­sis, with the reminder that I do not endorse every­thing I share. I share them because they made me think.
    • Amaz­ing quote from the Stan­ford Review: It’s Time For Stan­ford to Accept Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump (Again) (Edi­to­r­i­al, Stan­ford Review): “Stan­ford stu­dents often for­get to con­sid­er that the world around them votes too—and that the world does not have the same con­cerns. As one peer remarked, ‘I found out some of the din­ing hall staff vot­ed for Trump and lowkey for­got they got to vote too.’ ”
    • 10 Rea­sons You Did­n’t See This Com­ing (Kon­stan­tin Kisin, Sub­stack): “Amer­i­cans are extreme­ly prac­ti­cal peo­ple. They care about what works, not what sounds good. In Europe, we pro­duce great writ­ers and intel­lec­tu­als. In Amer­i­ca they pro­duce (and attract) great engi­neers, busi­ness­men and investors. Because of this, they care less about Trump’s rhetoric than you do and more about his poli­cies than you do.”
      • Kisin is a Russ­ian-born immi­grant to Britain. Inter­est­ing to see how at least one for­eign­er per­ceives the results US elec­tion.
    • Don­ald Trump Is the Pres­i­dent for Post-Chris­t­ian Amer­i­ca (Aaron Renn, Sub­stack): “It’s hard to com­plain that he’s crude when we live in a crude soci­ety and peo­ple like that way — except when it comes to him. In fact, com­pared to the rest of the coun­try, Trump is a retro mod­el of rec­ti­tude when it comes to not drink­ing or doing drugs, hav­ing a relent­less work eth­ic, wear­ing suits, etc.”
    • Democ­rats Picked the Wrong Women’s Rights Issue (Madeleine Kearns, The Free Press): “Democ­rats bet big on ‘repro­duc­tive rights’ this elec­tion cycle, even offer­ing free abor­tions at their nation­al con­ven­tion. But the strat­e­gy didn’t pay off. Not only was abor­tion a flop with the elec­torate, it was Republicans—not Democrats—who pushed the win­ning women’s‑rights issue: fight­ing the encroach­ment of bio­log­i­cal men into women’s spaces and sports.”
    • How a Lati­no wave car­ried Trump to vic­to­ry (Daniel McCarthy, The Spec­ta­tor): “The fact is that left-wing cul­tur­al atti­tudes in Amer­i­ca, and in the West as a whole, are them­selves very ‘Euro­pean’ and seem often irrel­e­vant or repug­nant to peo­ple of oth­er cul­tures and racial back­grounds. White pro­gres­sive Amer­i­cans think of their views as being uni­ver­sal, but they are real­ly very spe­cif­ic to their own group. White lib­er­als believe, for exam­ple, that mas­culin­i­ty is ‘tox­ic’ and the world needs more female lead­ers. They also believe that ‘anti-racism’ requires ‘affir­ma­tive action’ or racial quotes to give blacks in par­tic­u­lar more rep­re­sen­ta­tion in posi­tions of pow­er and pres­tige. White lib­er­al­ism is the rea­son Kamala Har­ris was named as Joe Biden’s run­ning mate in 2020. She wasn’t a pop­u­lar politi­cian – and as this elec­tion proved, she still isn’t. But she was the right sex and colour to sat­is­fy the require­ments of white lib­er­als. Lati­nos are not white lib­er­als.”
    • How Dif­fer­ent Groups Vot­ed in the 2024 Elec­tion (Bri­an McGill, Antho­ny DeBar­ros and Caitlin Ostroff, Wall Street Jour­nal): “Here are the results of a sur­vey of over 120,000 reg­is­tered vot­ers, com­piled by the Asso­ci­at­ed Press, which offer a look at vot­ing pat­terns and trends among var­i­ous groups in the elec­torate and what issues were the most impor­tant to vot­ers head­ing into Elec­tion Day. Num­bers will update as respons­es are added and the survey’s weight­ing adjusts.”
      • A LOT of graphs. One detail fas­ci­nat­ing detail: peo­ple who vot­ed for Trump were MORE con­cerned that Kamala Har­ris would lead Amer­i­ca in an author­i­tar­i­an direc­tion than the peo­ple who vot­ed for Har­ris were con­cerned about Trump doing the same. It was tight, but the greater fear was of a Har­ris admin­is­tra­tion.
    • How Could Trump and Abor­tion Rights Both Win? (Jill Fil­ipovic, New York Times): “How could sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of vot­ers cast their bal­lots for legal abor­tion and also for the man who helped make it pos­si­ble to crim­i­nal­ize abor­tion in the first place? Mr. Trump boast­ed about over­turn­ing Roe v. Wade and being the most pro-life pres­i­dent in Amer­i­can his­to­ry, while Kamala Har­ris pledged to use her pres­i­den­tial pow­er to pro­tect and expand a broad range of repro­duc­tive free­doms. Yet, accord­ing to the vote tal­lies released so far, in every state where abor­tion was up for a vote, more vot­ers cast those bal­lots for abor­tion rights than for Ms. Har­ris.”
      • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
    • Pre­dic­tion Mar­kets for the Win (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “The pre­dic­tion mar­kets pre­dict­ed the elec­tion out­come more accu­rate­ly and more quick­ly than polls or oth­er fore­cast­ing meth­ods, just as expect­ed from decades of research.”
    • Con­grats To Poly­mar­ket, But I Still Think They Were Mis­priced (Scott Alexan­der, Astral Codex Ten): “Why [do I think the mar­ket was mis­priced]? In order for an Amer­i­can to use Poly­mar­ket, you have to get a VPN, a Coin­base account, and a Meta­mask wal­let, use the VPN, get cryp­to on the Coin­base account, trans­fer it to the Meta­mask wal­let, con­nect the Meta­mask wal­let to Poly­mar­ket, and buy the shares you want. Abil­i­ty to do this rules out 99% of the US pop­u­la­tion.… I think pre­dic­tion mar­kets are among our sin­gle best sources of truth, but that (as with every source of truth) we need to think crit­i­cal­ly about them and notice the rare times when they fail. If you can’t think crit­i­cal­ly, you’re going to have a hard time, but in that case I would still trust pre­dic­tion mar­kets over any oth­er source (except Metac­u­lus, which is so sim­i­lar to a pre­dic­tion mar­ket that it belongs in the same cat­e­go­ry any­way).”
      • Inter­est­ing con­trar­i­an take on the pre­dic­tion mar­ket’s suc­cess in the elec­tion.
  2. Why Women Use Pornog­ra­phy and How the Church Can Help (Helen Thorne-Allen­son, The Gospel Coali­tion): “The biggest dri­ver of pornog­ra­phy use among the women I’ve met with is anx­i­ety. Life feels over­whelm­ing at times; pornog­ra­phy brings some relief… Maybe unsur­pris­ing­ly, anoth­er big dri­ver among the women I’ve walked along­side (par­tic­u­lar­ly younger women) is a desire to know what sex is like.… The dri­ver we prob­a­bly miss most often in the church is that of man­ag­ing pain.”
  3. Be Per­fect (Ross Byrd, Mere Ortho­doxy): “In the Bible, the word ‘per­fect’ does­n’t mean what we tend to mean by it today. For the writ­ers of Scrip­ture, per­fec­tion has more to do with fin­ished-ness than flaw­less­ness. A thing is called ‘per­fect’ when it is brought to its full matu­ri­ty, when it becomes every­thing it is meant to be. Now, if we apply this def­i­n­i­tion to the Gar­den of Eden, we are forced to con­clude that Eden was not, in fact, per­fect. Eden was good, as Gen­e­sis tells us over and over. He cre­at­ed this and that, and it was good. He cre­at­ed human beings, and it was very good. But it does­n’t say per­fect. In a very impor­tant sense, it was not yet per­fect, because it was not yet com­plete. Eden was the begin­ning. The gar­den was, among oth­er things, a place of poten­tial.”
    • Empha­sis in orig­i­nal. I like the core insight in this essay a lot.
  4. Why We’re Still Athe­ists (Kat­ja Hoy­er, Plough): “I, on the oth­er hand, often won­dered even as a child what the point of life was if all you did is grow up, work, die, and be erased. When I lost rel­a­tives, friends, and pets, I knew I had lost them for­ev­er, while oth­ers held out for some form of reunion in anoth­er life or at least the idea that souls con­tin­ued to exist some­where. On an abstract lev­el, I began to under­stand why most of human­i­ty finds com­fort, sure­ty, and pur­pose in reli­gion. But by the time I worked this out, it was entire­ly an intel­lec­tu­al mind game to me. I had grown up in a world that made sense with­out God and noth­ing could change that now.”
    • A very inter­est­ing essay about why East Ger­many is so athe­ist, writ­ten by an athe­ist reflect­ing on it.
  5. Are Reli­gious Peo­ple More Fear­ful? (Ryan Burge, Sub­stack): “I am real­ly sur­prised at how few of these fac­tors actu­al­ly ‘pop’ in this analy­sis. That was true for things like income, age, mar­i­tal sta­tus, view of the Bible, and reli­gious impor­tance. None of those had a mea­sur­able impact on the fear index. Also, I didn’t find a sin­gle fac­tor that clear­ly led to high­er lev­els of expressed fear. How­ev­er, there were four vari­ables in this analy­sis that pre­dict­ed a low­er score on the fear index. They were: being white, being male, hav­ing a high­er lev­el of edu­ca­tion, and increased church atten­dance.”
    • Empha­sis removed for read­abil­i­ty.
  6. St. Junipero Ser­ra: An Unjust­ly Con­tro­ver­sial Fig­ure (Bri­an Gabriel, The Euro­pean Con­ser­v­a­tive): “In present-day dis­course, the actions of the mis­sion­ar­ies and the Span­ish sol­diers are often con­flat­ed, but the mis­sion­ar­ies’ pater­nal­is­tic atti­tude toward the tribes actu­al­ly often led them to pro­tect the tribes from the more rapa­cious and unsa­vory behav­ior of the sol­diers. It’s true enough that the tribes were some­times forced to labor in the fields, and their free­dom of move­ment was restrict­ed once they con­vert­ed to Catholi­cism. The mis­sions them­selves were often built in part, at least, by the tribes­men, some­times under duress. But the harsh treat­ment, while strik­ing the mod­ern observ­er as cru­el and tor­tu­ous, was seen by the mis­sion­ar­ies as essen­tial to the natives’ spir­i­tu­al sal­va­tion. Today, many of their descen­dants remain Catholic. The val­ue of the mis­sion­ar­ies’ actions can nev­er be rec­og­nized by a mod­ern world that doesn’t allow for spir­i­tu­al effects.”
    • I have long believed, even as a very Protes­tant per­son, that Junipero Ser­ra has got­ten a bum rap in Cal­i­for­nia (and at Stan­ford).
  7. Rod­ney Alcala Didn’t Kill Me. Forty Years Lat­er, I Asked Him Why (Alice Feir­ing, New York Mag­a­zine): “Four-decades-plus lat­er, I learned his real name when it flashed across a tele­vi­sion screen beneath his famil­iar face and orange jump­suit: ‘Rod­ney Alcala, The Dat­ing Game Ser­i­al Killer, Sen­tenced to Death.’ It couldn’t be the same man, I’d thought to myself. But after hours of Googling I had to accept the truth: Jon Burg­er was an alias; he was the win­ning bach­e­lor on The Dat­ing Game nine years after I met him; and he is believed to have been one of the most pro­lif­ic of ser­i­al killers, offi­cial­ly respon­si­ble for at least sev­en mur­ders with author­i­ties esti­mat­ing his real body count at about 130.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent who says, “Very well writ­ten, chill­ing sto­ry. The author is lucky to be alive.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • How to Do Action Com­e­dy (Every Frame a Paint­ing, YouTube): nine min­utes about what makes Jack­ie Chan so great, and why his for­eign films are bet­ter than his Amer­i­can films in impor­tant ways.
  • Har­vey Epstein for New York City Coun­cil (Sat­ur­day Night Live, YouTube): two and a half min­utes I found absolute­ly hilar­i­ous. What’s even fun­nier is that it’s about a real politi­cian.
  • Vote (Texts From Super­heroes)
  • Diet (Pearls Before Swine) — actu­al­ly, though

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 476



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

This is a short­er-than-nor­mal edi­tion because I’ve had a busy week and haven’t read as much as I nor­mal­ly do.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. There’s more herd­ing in swing state polls than at a sheep farm in the Scot­tish High­lands (Nate Sil­ver, Sub­stack): “How many [recent polls] showed the race in either direc­tion with­in 2.5 per­cent­age points, close enough that you could basi­cal­ly call it a tie? Well, 193 of them did, or 78 per­cent. That’s way more than you should get in the­o­ry — even if the can­di­dates are actu­al­ly exact­ly tied in all sev­en states, which they almost cer­tain­ly aren’t.… Based on a bino­mi­al dis­tri­b­u­tion — which assumes that all polls are inde­pen­dent of one anoth­er, which the­o­ret­i­cal­ly they should be — it’s real­l­l­l­l­l­l­l­l­l­l­l­l­ly unlike­ly. Specif­i­cal­ly, the odds are 1 in 9.5 tril­lion against at least this many polls show­ing such a close mar­gin.”
  2. Chris­tian­i­ty Today’s pod­cast The Bul­letin ran inter­views with three Chris­tians vot­ing dif­fer­ent ways. Pre­sent­ed in the order in which they aired:
    • Vot­ing Third Par­ty (Matt Martens): “He’s a tri­al lawyer, a for­mer fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor, a sem­i­nary grad­u­ate, a legal ethics pro­fes­sor, and an award-win­ning author. Martens’s writ­ing has appeared in The Wall Street Jour­nal, The Wash­ing­ton Post, and oth­er out­lets, and he has spo­ken at numer­ous uni­ver­si­ties across the coun­try.”
    • Vot­ing Demo­c­rat (David French): “He’s a colum­nist for The New York Times and a for­mer senior edi­tor of The Dis­patch. He’s the author most recent­ly of Divid­ed We Fall: Amer­i­ca’s Seces­sion Threat and How to Restore Our Nation.”
    • Vot­ing Repub­li­can (Eric Teet­sel): “Teet­sel was vice pres­i­dent of gov­ern­ment rela­tions at The Her­itage Foun­da­tion, was chief of staff to US sen­a­tor Josh Haw­ley of Mis­souri, and served as pres­i­dent of the Fam­i­ly Pol­i­cy Alliance of Kansas.”
  3. What econ­o­mists don’t know (Scott Sum­n­er, Sub­stack): “I am not impressed when some­one tells me that a small homo­ge­neous coun­try has less inequal­i­ty than the US. I am impressed by the fact that almost every sin­gle eth­nic group in Amer­i­ca is more suc­cess­ful than the equiv­a­lent eth­nic group in their home coun­try.… Right now, the US econ­o­my is the envy of the world. Before we replace free mar­kets with an indus­tri­al pol­i­cy, we might wish to com­pare upside and down­side risks from inter­ven­tion­ism. Giv­en that our liv­ing stan­dards are cur­rent­ly the high­est in the world (at least for coun­tries of more than 10 mil­lion), in which direc­tion are the risks the great­est?”
    • The author is an econ pro­fes­sor at Bent­ley.
  4. How Many Con­ti­nents Are There? You May Not Like the Answers. (Matt Kaplan, New York Times): “The dis­pute aris­es in part because there are real­ly two types of con­ti­nents: Those rec­og­nized by cul­tures around the world, and those rec­og­nized by geol­o­gists. Cul­tures can define a con­ti­nent any way they want, while geol­o­gists have to use a def­i­n­i­tion. And geo­log­i­cal research in recent years has made defin­ing con­ti­nen­tal bound­aries less sim­ple than it might have once seemed as researchers find evi­dence of unex­pect­ed con­ti­nen­tal mate­r­i­al.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 475

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. Is the World Ready for a Reli­gious Come­back? (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “It’s one thing to get non­be­liev­ers to offer kind words for ‘cul­tur­al’ Chris­tian­i­ty or endorse the soci­o­log­i­cal util­i­ty of church­go­ing. The chal­lenge is to go fur­ther, to per­suade anx­ious mod­erns that reli­gion is more than mere­ly prag­mat­i­cal­ly use­ful, more than just a wist­ful hope — that a reli­gious frame­work actu­al­ly makes much more sense of real­i­ty than the alleged­ly hard­head­ed mate­ri­al­ist alter­na­tive.”
    • Dis­cuss­es three books Douthat thinks are help­ful.
  2. The Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan Dou­bled Down on D.E.I. What Went Wrong? (Nicholas Con­fes­sore, New York Times): “Striv­ing to touch ‘every indi­vid­ual on cam­pus,’ as the school puts it, Michi­gan has poured rough­ly a quar­ter of a bil­lion dol­lars into D.E.I. since 2016, accord­ing to an inter­nal pre­sen­ta­tion I obtained.… Michigan’s own data sug­gests that in striv­ing to become more diverse and equi­table, the school has also become less inclu­sive: In a sur­vey released in late 2022, stu­dents and fac­ul­ty mem­bers report­ed a less pos­i­tive cam­pus cli­mate than at the program’s start and less of a sense of belong­ing. Stu­dents were less like­ly to inter­act with peo­ple of a dif­fer­ent race or reli­gion or with dif­fer­ent pol­i­tics — the exact kind of engage­ment D.E.I. pro­grams, in the­o­ry, are meant to fos­ter.”
    • Relat­ed: I Don’t Want to Live in a Mono­cul­ture, and Nei­ther Do You (David French, New York Times): “In my expe­ri­ence, the more ide­o­log­i­cal­ly or the­o­log­i­cal­ly ‘pure’ an insti­tu­tion becomes, the more wrong it is like­ly to be, espe­cial­ly if it takes on a dif­fi­cult or com­plex task. Ide­o­log­i­cal mono­cul­tures aren’t just bad for the minor­i­ty that’s silenced, harassed or can­celed when­ev­er its mem­bers raise their voic­es in dis­sent. It’s ter­ri­ble for the con­fi­dent major­i­ty — and for the con­fi­dent majority’s cause.”
  3. U.S. Study on Puber­ty Block­ers Goes Unpub­lished Because of Pol­i­tics, Doc­tor Says (Azeen Gho­rayshi, New York Times): “An influ­en­tial doc­tor and advo­cate of ado­les­cent gen­der treat­ments said she had not pub­lished a long-await­ed study of puber­ty-block­ing drugs because of the charged Amer­i­can polit­i­cal envi­ron­ment.… She said she was con­cerned the study’s results could be used in court to argue that ‘we shouldn’t use block­ers because it doesn’t impact them,’ refer­ring to trans­gen­der ado­les­cents.”
    • JK Rowl­ing sum­ma­rized the sto­ry well: ‘We must not pub­lish a study that says we’re harm­ing chil­dren because peo­ple who say we’re harm­ing chil­dren will use the study as evi­dence that we’re harm­ing chil­dren, which might make it dif­fi­cult for us to con­tin­ue harm­ing chil­dren.’
  4. Our Robot Sto­ries Haven’t Pre­pared Us for A.I. (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “In most of these sto­ries, the defin­ing aspects of human­i­ty are some com­bi­na­tion of free will, strong emo­tion and moral­i­ty. The robot begins as a being fol­low­ing its pro­gram­ming and mys­ti­fied by human emo­tion­al­i­ty, and over time it begins to choose, to act freely, to cut its strings and ulti­mate­ly to love.… We have been trained for a future in which robots think like us but don’t feel like us, and there­fore need to be guid­ed out of mere­ly intel­lec­tu­al self-con­scious­ness into a deep­er aware­ness of emo­tion­al­i­ty, of heart as well as head. We are get­ting a real­i­ty where our bots seem so deeply emo­tion­al — lov­ing, car­ing, heart­felt — that it’s hard to dis­tin­guish them from human beings, and indeed, some of us find their appar­ent warmth a refuge from a dif­fi­cult or cru­el world.”
  5. How I Learned To Stop Crit­i­ciz­ing Every­thing (Eboo Patel, Per­sua­sion): “I’m not sad that I read those crit­i­cal the­o­rists. I think it’s a use­ful per­spec­tive to have. My prob­lem is that I deformed the world to fit a nar­row world­view, and I let it direct my life. The big­ger prob­lem is that this par­a­digm has become a regime in cer­tain quar­ters of high­er edu­ca­tion. You are coerced into hold­ing that world­view and pun­ished if you utter ideas out­side of its scope. Crit­i­cal the­o­ry is like a sharp kitchen knife: very use­ful for some things, like cut­ting meat, but if you eat your cere­al with it, you’ll hurt your­self. And if you point it at some­one else, then it’s a weapon. In some cir­cles, on some cam­pus­es, every oth­er uten­sil has been removed from the intel­lec­tu­al cut­lery draw­er, replaced with sharp kitchen knives.”
  6. Both Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans can pass the Ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing Test (Adam Mas­troian­ni, Sub­stack): “We first chal­lenged each side to pre­tend to be the oth­er side, and then we had both sides try to dis­tin­guish between the truth-tellers and the fak­ers. If par­ti­sans have no idea who the oth­er side is or what they believe, it should be hard for peo­ple to do a con­vinc­ing impres­sion of the oppo­site par­ty. So let’s see!”
    • Inter­est­ing study. In the foot­notes he men­tioned he gath­ered the data in 2019 but nev­er got around to pub­lish­ing it. Just FYI
  7. It’s Ratio­nal And Humane To Lack Strong Polit­i­cal Beliefs (Jesse Sin­gal, Sub­stack): “We don’t need the aver­age per­son to have strong beliefs about what the right anti-pover­ty pol­i­cy is, and I would argue it’s a waste of time to devote too many hours to some­thing like that, because it’s hope­less­ly com­plex and even experts who devote their lives to that sub­ject dis­agree on the basics. Plus, many of the experts — on this and every oth­er sub­ject — are them­selves incom­pe­tent, ide­o­log­i­cal­ly cap­tured, or oth­er­wise unlike­ly to help lead you clos­er to use­ful insights.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. This post is a bit odd in that it’s unlocked but to read the whole thing you have to read it in the Sub­stack app. You can read the first part for free and that’s enough to get the gist and tell whether you want to read the rest of it.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 474

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 to Talk About God and Pol­i­tics in Polar­ized Times (Seth Free­man, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The key is three words: para­phrase, praise, and probe. The method: Pri­vate­ly, over cof­fee or a meal, nudge the con­ver­sa­tion into a Big Top­ic and ask your friend what they think about it. Then: 1) Para­phrase: Repeat the gist of your friend’s thoughts so well they say, ‘Exact­ly!’ 2) Praise: High­light any­thing they said that you can sin­cere­ly hon­or.  3) Probe: Ask about your con­cerns, curiosi­ties, and con­fu­sions as a co-seek­er of truth. Do this two or three times. Then, share your own per­spec­tive and let the con­ver­sa­tion unfold from there, return­ing to para­phrase, praise, probe when­ev­er there’s ten­sion.”
    • Prac­ti­cal and rec­om­mend­ed. The author, a Chris­t­ian, is a pro­fes­sor of con­flict man­age­ment and nego­ti­a­tion at the NYU Stern School of Busi­ness and Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty.
  2. What Lad­ders Are You Climb­ing? (Aaron Renn, Sub­stack): “…admit that hier­ar­chy is ubiq­ui­tous, we are all try­ing to achieve goals in life using some the­o­ry of how to get there, and that it’s a good thing if men of good char­ac­ter and com­pe­tence seek and achieve posi­tions of com­men­su­rate pow­er, respon­si­bil­i­ty, influ­ence, and sta­tus.”
  3. Too Many Laws—and Too Lit­tle Judg­ing (Anas­ta­sia Boden, The Dis­patch): “As of 2018, fed­er­al statutes in the U.S. Code span 60,000 pages. The Fed­er­al Reg­is­ter, which con­tains fed­er­al reg­u­la­tions, makes up anoth­er 188,000 pages. Some esti­mate it would take more than three years to read the Fed­er­al Reg­is­ter, let alone under­stand it. And those fig­ures don’t take into account the thou­sands of infor­mal guid­ance doc­u­ments that can also car­ry the force of law.”
  4. For­get the Lies About Wait­ing: Why mar­riage and kids ear­ly are the ulti­mate flex (Antho­ny Bradley, Sub­stack): “The mod­ern world may tell you to wait—to find your­self first, to achieve finan­cial secu­ri­ty, or to expe­ri­ence the world—but the truth is that mar­riage offers all of these things and more.”
    • The author is a research fel­low at the Acton Insti­tute and a pro­fes­sor of reli­gion at Kuyper Col­lege. This arti­cle is tar­get­ed specif­i­cal­ly at young men (although it is like­ly of inter­est to gals as well).
  5. Neg­a­tive effects of child­hood spank­ing may be over­stat­ed, study claims (Adri­ana Diaz, New York Post): “The top­ic of whether or not spank­ing is an effec­tive or harm­ful form of pun­ish­ment has sparked con­sid­er­able dis­cus­sion for gen­er­a­tions. Pre­vi­ous research has estab­lished a strong cor­re­la­tion between phys­i­cal pun­ish­ment and neg­a­tive out­comes for chil­dren, but much of this work did not account for pre-exist­ing behav­ioral issues in chil­dren. This made it chal­leng­ing to deter­mine whether spank­ing direct­ly caus­es prob­lems or if it is more com­mon­ly employed with chil­dren who already exhib­it behav­ioral dif­fi­cul­ties.”
  6. Rachel Levine Must Resign (Andrew Sul­li­van, Sub­stack): “…the dis­cov­ery from a law­suit against the State of Alaba­ma over its ban on the med­ical sex reas­sign­ment of chil­dren has left me reel­ing. It shows a stag­ger­ing lev­el of bad faith from the tran­squeer lob­by, and, also, from Rachel Levine — the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary for Health at HHS. Read the ami­cus brief here. Every­thing in this piece is based on it. The broad con­tours laid out in the brief were already known. But, with dis­cov­ery, the spe­cif­ic details of pri­vate, inter­nal emails make this med­ical scan­dal even more vivid.”
    • Sul­li­van, I remind you, has been called the father of gay mar­riage. Read­ing what pro-trans lob­by­ists and clin­i­cians say to one anoth­er when off the record has left him deeply rat­tled. In his words, “For­give me for the pas­sion. But this ami­cus brief set my head and heart aflame.”
  7. Nobel eco­nom­ics prize goes to 3 econ­o­mists who found that freer soci­eties are more like­ly to pros­per (Daniel Nie­mann, Mike Corder & Paul Wise­man, AP News): “In their work, the win­ners looked, for instance, at the city of Nogales, which strad­dles the U.S.-Mexico bor­der. Despite shar­ing the same geog­ra­phy, cli­mate and a com­mon cul­ture, life is very dif­fer­ent on either side of the bor­der. In Nogales, Ari­zona, to the north, res­i­dents are rel­a­tive­ly well-off and live long lives; most chil­dren grad­u­ate from high school. To the south, in Mexico’s Nogales, Sono­ra, res­i­dents are much poor­er, and orga­nized crime and cor­rup­tion abound. The dif­fer­ence, the econ­o­mists found, is a U.S. sys­tem that pro­tects prop­er­ty rights and gives cit­i­zens a say in their gov­ern­ment.”
    • There is also an inter­est­ing sum­ma­ry of their con­clu­sions about why some col­o­nized coun­tries are doing real­ly well now and oth­ers are not. Rec­om­mend­ed by a  friend.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 473



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

This is vol­ume 473, the largest known num­ber whose square (223729) uses dif­fer­ent dig­its than when it is raised to the 4th pow­er (50054665441).

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Evan­ge­lis­tic Shift (Jake Meador, Mere Ortho­doxy): “So what accounts for this shift and how should Chris­tians respond? The answer to the first ques­tion might be sur­pris­ing­ly sim­ple: The shift dates back to the grow­ing aware­ness, accep­tance, and pro­mo­tion of trans­gen­der sex­u­al iden­ti­ties in main­stream Amer­i­can cul­ture. This shift, dat­ing to the mid 2010s and prob­a­bly peak­ing in the ear­ly 2020s, did two things that fun­da­men­tal­ly changed the evan­ge­lis­tic land­scape for Chris­tians in Amer­i­ca.”
  2. Will­ful igno­rance of the male sui­cide cri­sis (Richard V. Reeves, Sub­stack): “It’s essen­tial­ly impos­si­ble to come away from this [New York­er] essay with­out a strong sense that the teen sui­cide cri­sis is, in fact, a teen girl sui­cide cri­sis. That is absolute­ly false. In fact, for every five teenagers dying from sui­cide, four are like­ly to be boys.”
  3. Is Evan­gel­i­cal­ism Real­ly Protes­tant? (Aaron Renn, Sub­stack): “Every time I read a book that describes the reli­gious his­to­ry of Amer­i­ca that talks about the nature of Protes­tantism in the coun­try, it strikes me that the Protes­tantism of the Amer­i­can past is alien to today’s evan­gel­i­cal­ism. They are dif­fer­ent enough to raise the ques­tion as to whether or not Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cal­ism is actu­al­ly Protes­tant in impor­tant ways.… All is not well for Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty to say the least. It’s easy to point at trends in the world to explain this, but giv­en the man­i­fest and wide­ly pub­li­cized prob­lems with­in evan­gel­i­cal­ism, I would sub­mit that at least as much time should go into intro­spec­tion and inter­nal reform.”
  4. Yes, Third-Trimester Abor­tions Are Hap­pen­ing in Amer­i­ca (Emma Camp, The Atlantic): “…Col­orado, which is home to clin­ics that per­form third-trimester abor­tions, record­ed 137 third-trimester abor­tions in 2023. That’s only one state—eight oth­er states, plus Wash­ing­ton, D.C., have no restric­tions on third-trimester abor­tions. Just a few min­utes from my office build­ing in D.C., a clin­ic offers abor­tions up to near­ly 32 weeks. In near­by Bethes­da, Mary­land, a clin­ic per­forms abor­tions up to 35 weeks’ ges­ta­tion.… Amer­i­cans are broad­ly uncom­fort­able with third-trimester abor­tions. A 2023 Gallup poll found that although more than two-thirds of Amer­i­cans believe abor­tion should be legal in the first trimester, just 22 per­cent think it should be legal in the third. And a 2021 Asso­ci­at­ed Press poll found that just 8 per­cent of respon­dents believe that third-trimester abor­tions should be legal in all cas­es.”
  5. A Defense of Lega­cy Admis­sions, the Sur­pris­ing Engine of Mer­i­toc­ra­cy (Ted­dy Ganea, Stan­ford Review): “The pur­pose of col­lege admis­sions isn’t to cre­ate a new elite from scratch. It’s to meld mer­i­to­ri­ous non-elites with the exist­ing elite, to incor­po­rate fresh tal­ent and ideas into the high­est ech­e­lons of pow­er. It should be a win-win-win: estab­lished elites ben­e­fit from new mer­it, new mer­it ben­e­fits from elite con­nec­tions and resources, and soci­ety ben­e­fits from a more mer­i­to­crat­ic elite. Lega­cy admis­sions is a pre­req­ui­site for this mis­sion state­ment, because you can’t meld togeth­er two groups if one of them is miss­ing.… Crit­ics of lega­cy admis­sions ignore the key real­i­ty of human his­to­ry: that the exist­ing elite is almost always deeply entrenched, and break­ing into it requires more than just indi­vid­ual tal­ent — it requires access. And this is where lega­cy admis­sions play their most cru­cial role: by enabling mer­i­to­ri­ous non-elites to mix with the exist­ing elite, they open up the real oppor­tu­ni­ty for upward mobil­i­ty.”
    • Well-argued and provoca­tive. My favorite kind of arti­cle!
  6. 55/45 is a real­ly close race (Nate Sil­ver, Sub­stack): “I’ve nev­er seen an elec­tion in which the fore­cast spent more time in the vicin­i­ty of 50/50, and I prob­a­bly nev­er will… on aver­age, since our fore­cast relaunch on July 30, Har­ris has won 49.4 per­cent of sim­u­la­tions, and Trump has won 50.2 per­cent. (These don’t quite add up to 100 because of the slim pos­si­bil­i­ty of a 269–269 Elec­toral Col­lege tie.) Peo­ple under­stand intu­itive­ly that a 50/50 or 49/51 fore­cast is a toss-up. If the fore­cast is 55/45 in some direc­tion instead, how­ev­er, con­fu­sion can abound — even though this isn’t any dif­fer­ent from 50/50 for most prac­ti­cal pur­pos­es. Some of the prob­lem is that peo­ple can con­fuse this fore­cast for a pre­dic­tion of vote share: if Har­ris were to win 55 per­cent of the vote and Trump 45 per­cent, that would be the biggest land­slide in an Amer­i­can elec­tion since Ronald Rea­gan in 1984. But that’s not what this fore­cast is say­ing. Rather, it’s that Har­ris will win the Elec­toral Col­lege about 11 times out of 20 and Trump will win it 9 times out of 20: still basi­cal­ly a toss-up, just with the coin weight­ed ever so slight­ly in Harris’s favor.”
  7. Don’t Vote Like Your Life Depend­ed on It (Chris Stire­walt, The Dis­patch): “Politi­cians and media hype mer­chants tell us every cycle that this is the most impor­tant elec­tion in his­to­ry, but the truth is that in a nation with sta­ble sys­tem of elec­tions held in a free, fair man­ner and abun­dant con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions for polit­i­cal minori­ties, the knowl­edge that no elec­tion is the final word helps us to live in rel­a­tive har­mo­ny.… It’s not the end of any­thing if the par­ty oppo­site your own wins an elec­tion, just the con­tin­u­a­tion of a 235-year long argu­ment that, Lord will­ing, will go on for anoth­er 235.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • Doc­tor admits wear­ing dis­guise to poi­son mom’s part­ner with fake covid shot (Leo Sands, Wash­ing­ton Post): “A British doc­tor has been found guilty of attempt­ing to kill his mother’s long­time part­ner by dis­guis­ing him­self as a nurse and inject­ing his elder­ly vic­tim with a flesh-eat­ing tox­ic sub­stance while pre­tend­ing to admin­is­ter a rou­tine coro­n­avirus vac­ci­na­tion.”
    • I do not mean to sug­gest that attempt­ed mur­der is less seri­ous than the sorts of things includ­ed above — but I do mean to sug­gest this is a sto­ry you will read because it is wild more than because it has any­thing to do with your life.
  • The ‘Goth’ Vol­ley­ball Play­er Was Actu­al­ly Ton­ing Things Down (Cal­lie Holter­mann, New York Times): “I was in a film study meet­ing with my whole team, and I was telling one of my team­mates that I was so con­fused why my Insta­gram was blow­ing up. And Alli­son [Voigt, her team’s head coach] turned to me and showed me Twit­ter, and was like, ‘You’re going viral. You have two mil­lion views right now.’ I was just in shock. I didn’t know what to do or what was going to hap­pen from this.”

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 472



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

This is vol­ume 472. There are (I am told) 472 ways to tile a 5x5 grid with inte­ger-sized squares (1x1 squares mixed with 2x2 squares and 3x3 squares, etc).

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. “We Lost Our Baby”: North Car­oli­na Fam­i­ly Los­es 3 after Climb­ing to Roof to Escape Helene Floods (FOX Weath­er on YouTube, 11 min­utes long): “I want them to remem­ber that there is joy beyond the pain… My son could­n’t be more proud at me for hang­ing on; my par­ents were prob­a­bly lift­ing me up when I was between the two things that were hold­ing me down. They are rejoic­ing at the fact that I now can tell them what God did for me, because it was God. He said, ‘Be still. I am in con­trol, and you will pass on.’ This is a back­fire for the dev­il, because he tried to take me out, and her I am shar­ing the word that my sev­en-year-old is a hero, and my par­ents live on in God’s glo­ry.”
    • You will absolute­ly cry watch­ing this. Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  2. How Tolkien and Lewis Re-enchant­ed a War-Weary World (Lev Gross­man, New York Times): “‘The Myth­mak­ers’ takes us through 20 years of deep intel­lec­tu­al friend­ship between Lewis and Tolkien — which widened to include the social cir­cle around them, known as the Inklings — but it’s just as inter­est­ing when doc­u­ment­ing the slow, regret­table ship­wreck of that friend­ship. Jack and Tollers turned out to be not so very, very like each oth­er after all. After his con­ver­sion, Lewis, loud as ever, became famous as a radio lec­tur­er on Chris­tian­i­ty; this irked the qui­et, rig­or­ous Tolkien, because Lewis had nev­er for­mal­ly stud­ied the­ol­o­gy, and Tolkien would nev­er have lec­tured on any­thing with­out earn­ing six advanced degrees in it first.”
  3. What Would Lecrae Do? (Christi­na Gon­za­lez Ho, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “…to hear one of the most tal­ent­ed and dec­o­rat­ed rap­pers alive name-check an artist whose work has revolved around Jesus was deeply heart­en­ing. What moves me is not the idea that some­day my own work might be noticed by some­one more famous. It’s the thought that a sin­cere, intel­li­gent, and pro­found artist like Kendrick Lamar, some­one who’s seen no end of good ideas and inter­est­ing art, might find some­thing in straight­for­ward­ly Chris­t­ian music that gives him pause, that makes him recon­sid­er.”
    • Christi­na is one of our alum­ni: a for­mer wor­ship leader and offi­cer in our min­istry.
  4. Held Hostage Over­seas? The IRS Wants Your Back Tax­es. (Emma Camp, Rea­son): “Many Amer­i­cans who return home after being ille­gal­ly detained over­seas arrive to find they’ve been billed thou­sands of dol­lars by the IRS—including late fees for unpaid tax­es.… ‘I got one of those bills from the IRS say­ing, you owe this much on this year, you owe this much on this year because of fail­ure to pay on time—here’s the inter­est that’s accrued,’ Wash­ing­ton Post reporter and for­mer hostage Jason Reza­ian told NPR. He faced more than $6,000 in fees for unpaid tax­es after his release, fol­low­ing 544 days of deten­tion in Iran.”
  5. Become Slaves to One Anoth­er (John M. G. Bar­clay, Plough): “Paul under­stands the world not as an emp­ty space in which indi­vid­u­als carve out their pri­vate sphere of free­dom, but as a ter­rain already pop­u­lat­ed by com­pet­ing pow­ers greater than human actors, who only imag­ine that they are free. As far as Paul is con­cerned, our search for an indi­vid­u­at­ed, atom­ized auton­o­my is itself an enslav­ing delu­sion, because we are, and are meant to be, free only as we are formed by rela­tion­ships with God and with oth­ers.”
    • The author is a pro­fes­sor of ear­ly Chris­tian­i­ty at the Durham Uni­ver­si­ty in Eng­land. He’s a well-regard­ed Bib­li­cal schol­ar.
  6. I Spent 13 Years Liv­ing as a Man. But After My Spouse’s Exposé, I’m Detran­si­tion­ing. (Tiger Reed, The Free Press): “For detran­si­tion­ers, there is no clear path. Gen­der-affirm­ing clin­i­cians have been ignor­ing and dis­miss­ing our con­cerns. While my tran­si­tion was cov­ered by insur­ance, my detran­si­tion is not. To restore my hair­line and remove my body hair will cost me thou­sands. In the next few years I may have breast recon­struc­tive surgery. There are many ques­tions I don’t have the answers to—such as whether my kids, now rang­ing in age from two to 16 years old, should still call me ‘Dad.’ I am plan­ning to change my name back to Rox­xanne, and to change my license so it says ‘female’ again. But I won­der if I’ll ever pass as a woman.  The gen­der-affirm­ing care mod­el relies on vul­ner­a­ble people’s impatience—rushing them toward major med­ical changes rather than stop­ping to under­stand the root of their pain and suf­fer­ing.”
  7. As America’s Mar­i­jua­na Use Grows, So Do the Harms (Megan Twohey, Danielle Ivory and Car­son Kessler, New York Times): “The accu­mu­lat­ing harm is broad­er and more severe than pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed. And gaps in state reg­u­la­tions, lim­it­ed pub­lic health mes­sag­ing and fed­er­al restraints on research have left many con­sumers, gov­ern­ment offi­cials and even med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers in the dark about such out­comes.… as more peo­ple turn to mar­i­jua­na for help with anx­i­ety, depres­sion and oth­er men­tal health issues, few know that it can cause tem­po­rary psy­chosis and is increas­ing­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the devel­op­ment of chron­ic psy­chot­ic dis­or­ders.”
    • This is sad, both because of the human suf­fer­ing involved and also because some peo­ple seem gen­uine­ly shocked that drugs can have neg­a­tive side-effects.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 471



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

This is vol­ume 471, appar­ent­ly the small­est num­ber with the prop­er­ty that its first 4 mul­ti­ples con­tain the dig­it 4.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. A Con­cise The­ol­o­gy of Fail­ure (Samuel D. James, Sub­stack): “The gospel fuels risk-tak­ing because we under­stand that what­ev­er we fail at is noth­ing com­pared to the fail­ure that was com­plete­ly and total­ly wiped out by the death and res­ur­rec­tion of Jesus. If our worst fail­ure has no pow­er over us, then no oth­er fail­ure has that kind of pow­er, either.”
  2. The Orwellian Evo­lu­tion of Banned Books Week (John Byron Kuh­n­er, First Things): “I go past the ‘banned books’ dis­plays of 1984 and To Kill a Mock­ing­bird and Beloved and The Col­or Pur­ple and have to laugh: These are the oppo­site of banned books. These are required books, books that have been assigned read­ing for Amer­i­can stu­dents for gen­er­a­tions. They have enjoyed most-favored-title sta­tus in the indus­try from the moment of pub­li­ca­tion. They are pro­mot­ed books—relentlessly pro­mot­ed. Indeed, call­ing them banned is just the lat­est morph of a mar­ket­ing pro­gram that hasn’t stopped want­i­ng you to read these books for—in some instances—six or sev­en decades now.”
  3. The Auton­o­my Trap (James R. Wood, Plough): “I come from a stock of rela­tion­ship-quit­ters. Dur­ing my child­hood, pret­ty much every­one in my life had divorced at least once, extend­ed fam­i­ly con­nec­tions were strained, long-term friends were nonex­is­tent, and moves were fre­quent. Over time I came to adopt a con­cep­tion of free­dom that had destroyed the lives of many around me, and which would threat­en to destroy my own as well: the pop­u­lar idea of free­dom as uncon­strained choice. Since this is impos­si­ble, the default was a more achiev­able ver­sion: the abil­i­ty to drop com­mit­ments and rela­tion­ships at any point when they become too com­pli­cat­ed. Free­dom as the license to leave when things get tough.”
  4. Some of Christianity’s Biggest Skep­tics Are Becom­ing Vocal Con­verts (Nathan Guy, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “…intel­lec­tu­al con­ver­sion sto­ries are not new. My own doc­tor­al super­vi­sor at Cambridge—Janet Mar­tin Soskice—converted in col­lege pre­cise­ly because of Christianity’s intel­lec­tu­al sat­is­fac­tion. Philoso­pher Edward Fes­er returned to the Catholi­cism of his youth for the same rea­son. But this trend seems to have increased expo­nen­tial­ly in recent years, with a grow­ing num­ber of sec­u­lar intel­lec­tu­als mak­ing sim­i­lar dec­la­ra­tions.…. It seems many of the bright philoso­phers grad­u­at­ing from emi­nent pro­grams and tak­ing posi­tions in promi­nent uni­ver­si­ties were—shockingly—theists. And many of them were Chris­tians, bring­ing their intel­lec­tu­al pow­ers to bear on the apolo­getic front. These schol­ars were slow­ly mak­ing inroads among the intel­li­gentsia, and their influ­ence was trick­ling down into the pub­lic square.”
    • The author is a phi­los­o­phy prof at Hard­ing Uni­ver­si­ty. Unlocked.
  5. In a First Among Chris­tians, Young Men Are More Reli­gious Than Young Women (Ruth Gra­ham, NYT): “For the first time in mod­ern Amer­i­can his­to­ry, young men are now more reli­gious than their female peers. They attend ser­vices more often and are more like­ly to iden­ti­fy as reli­gious.”
    • Unlocked, rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent
  6. Legal­iz­ing Sports Gam­bling Was a Huge Mis­take (Charles Fain Lehman, The Atlantic): “The rise of sports gam­bling has caused a wave of finan­cial and famil­ial mis­ery, one that falls dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly on the most eco­nom­i­cal­ly pre­car­i­ous house­holds. Six years into the exper­i­ment, the evi­dence is con­vinc­ing: Legal­iz­ing sports gam­bling was a huge mis­take.… Look­ing specif­i­cal­ly at online sports gam­bling, they find that legal­iza­tion increas­es the risk that a house­hold goes bank­rupt by 25 to 30 per­cent, and increas­es debt delin­quen­cy. These prob­lems seem to con­cen­trate among young men liv­ing in low-income counties—further evi­dence that those most hurt by sports gam­bling are the least well-off.”
    • Unlocked.
  7. Con­fes­sion of a Church Snob (Susy Flo­ry, Sub­stack): “My deci­sion to try this lit­tle church, the kind I’d passed by with­out a thought as I was on my way to my—I’ll be honest—what I viewed as my supe­ri­or big church, was direct­ly influ­enced by FF Bruce [a famous Bib­li­cal schol­ar] who wrote in his mem­oir that even though he didn’t agree with all of the prac­tices and beliefs of the Ply­mouth Brethren, no mat­ter where he was in the world he looked up the clos­est lit­tle Ply­mouth Brethren out­post and qui­et­ly showed up to serve, whether it was giv­ing, teach­ing, or putting away fold­ing chairs.”
  8. Mind-Blow­ing Game Invent­ed by Russ­ian Soci­ol­o­gy Stu­dent (YouTube, one minute): the sig­nif­i­cance of the game Were­wolf (and social deduc­tion games in gen­er­al) — rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 470



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

This is vol­ume 470, a rel­a­tive­ly unin­ter­est­ing num­ber. There are few­er links than usu­al this week owing to some trav­el. I did­n’t have much time to read and I’m exhaust­ed today.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Can AI Help a Stu­dent Get Into Stan­ford or Yale? (Lau­ren Cof­fey, Inside High­er Ed): “Lee is among hun­dreds of stu­dents try­ing out Esslo—whose name is a mashup of the words ‘essay’ and ‘Elo,’ a rank­ing sys­tem used in chess and esports. The pro­gram is the brain­child of two Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents look­ing to tack­le what they believe is one of the most stress­ful parts of col­lege appli­ca­tions: the admis­sions essay.”
    • The two Stan­ford stu­dents in ques­tion are part of Chi Alpha. Way to go, guys! The web­site: https://www.esslo.org/ — if you know any high school seniors, pass the link their way.
  2. Evan­ge­lize Like You’re a Sin­ner (Claude Atcho, Gospel Coali­tion): “The Samar­i­tan woman’s bold wit­ness teach­es us a truth some­times deemed too sim­plis­tic: the key to apolo­get­ics isn’t pithy answers or irrefutable argu­ments but a sense of awe in Jesus that can’t be silenced.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  3. As a Sin­gle Man, I Felt Lit­tle Pres­sure to Get Mar­ried. I Wish I Had. (Brett McCrack­en, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Sin­gle­ness and mar­riage can both be good when they’re done for God’s glo­ry and take a cru­ci­form shape. And when cho­sen for self­ish rea­sons or lived out in unhealthy ways, both sin­gle­ness and mar­riage can also be bad. I’m not mak­ing an argu­ment for one being uni­ver­sal­ly bet­ter than the oth­er. I’m sim­ply observ­ing that in our cul­tur­al moment, and per­haps in cer­tain cul­tur­al con­texts (like mine in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia), argu­ments for the good of mar­riage need to be sound­ed more urgent­ly.”
  4. How Stan­ford and Its West Coast Brethren Planned for Long Road Trips in Con­fer­ence Realign­ment (Pat Forde, Sports Illus­trat­ed): “The Car­di­nal are mak­ing their Atlantic Coast Con­fer­ence debut on Sept. 20, at Syra­cuse. The fol­low­ing week, Stan­ford will vis­it Clem­son. Of all the hands realign­ing schools have been dealt, this is the sin­gle worst one in foot­ball. None of the oth­er Pac-12 diaspora—in the ACC, Big Ten or Big 12—will play league road games on con­sec­u­tive weeks. And these are three-time-zone sojourns of 5,000 miles or more round trip.”

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 469



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

This is vol­ume 469, which is appar­ent­ly the largest known n for which n!-1 is prime.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Chat­G­PT Goes to Church (Arlie Coles, Plough): “Acci­den­tal­ly gen­er­at­ed heresy is a tech­ni­cal fail­ure; a pas­tor refus­ing to speak from the heart and pre­fer­ring to gen­er­ate the most prob­a­ble word sequences for a ser­mon to the con­gre­ga­tion in his care is a moral fail­ure.… There is no world where defer­ring preach­ing and pas­toral care to a text gen­er­a­tor does not end with dete­ri­o­ra­tion – first of for­ma­tion, then of the cler­gy, and final­ly of the peo­ple in their care.”
    • The author is a research sci­en­tist who focus­es on deep learn­ing.
  2. Sci­en­tists use food dye found in Dori­tos to make see-through mice (Car­olyn Y. John­son, Wash­ing­ton Post): “In a series of exper­i­ments that could have been plucked from the pages of sci­ence fic­tion, researchers at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty mas­saged a solu­tion con­tain­ing tar­trazine, the chem­i­cal found in the food dye known as ‘yel­low No. 5,’ onto the stom­achs, scalps and hind legs of mice. About five min­utes lat­er, the opaque skin of the mice trans­formed tem­porar­i­ly into a liv­ing win­dow, reveal­ing branch­ing blood ves­sels, mus­cle fibers and con­trac­tions of the gut, they report­ed Thurs­day in the jour­nal Sci­ence.”
    • One of the study’s lead­ers, Dr. Guosong Hong, was part of Chi Alpha at Stan­ford. See the actu­al jour­nal arti­cle for more details and some wild images.
  3. Amer­i­ca Must Free Itself from the Tyran­ny of the Pen­ny (Caity Weaver, New York Times): “Most pen­nies pro­duced by the U.S. Mint are giv­en out as change but nev­er spent; this cre­ates an inces­sant demand for new pen­nies to replace them, so that cash trans­ac­tions that neces­si­tate pen­nies (i.e., any con­clud­ing with a sum whose final dig­it is 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 or 9) can be set­tled. Because these replace­ment pen­nies will them­selves not be spent, they will need to be replaced with new pen­nies that will also not be spent, and so will have to be replaced with new pen­nies that will not be spent, which will have to be replaced by new pen­nies (that will not be spent, and so will have to be replaced). In oth­er words, we keep mint­ing pen­nies because no one uses the pen­nies we mint.”
  4. D.E.I. Is Not Work­ing on Col­lege Cam­pus­es. We Need a New Approach. (Paul Brest and Emi­ly Levine, New York Times): “Rather than cor­rect­ing stereo­types, diver­si­ty train­ing too often rein­forces them and breeds resent­ment, imped­ing stu­dents’ social devel­op­ment. An exces­sive focus on iden­ti­ty can be just as harm­ful as the pre­tense that iden­ti­ty doesn’t mat­ter. Over­all, these pro­grams may under­mine the very groups they seek to aid by instill­ing a vic­tim mind-set and by pit­ting stu­dents against one anoth­er.”
    • The two authors are Stan­ford affil­i­ates. Paul Brest is a for­mer dean of Stan­ford Law School, and Emi­ly Levine is asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of edu­ca­tion and his­to­ry at Stan­ford.
  5. Why I changed my mind about vol­un­teer­ing (Rachel M. Cohen, Vox): “Phil­an­thropy cer­tain­ly has some great vic­to­ries in fund­ing ‘root’ solu­tions, but Buchanan urges against the men­tal­i­ty that only per­ma­nent­ly erad­i­cat­ing a prob­lem is worth doing. ‘You shouldn’t assume that a focus on roots is nec­es­sar­i­ly supe­ri­or,’ he writes. ‘Trim­ming branch­es is also impor­tant.’ In a way, it can feel safe to dis­trust the val­ue of indi­vid­ual action. Being wary of phil­an­thropy and char­i­ta­ble groups that promise to bet­ter the world res­onates with the skep­ti­cism I’ve been trained to have, pro­fes­sion­al­ly and cul­tur­al­ly. It also allows me to avoid mak­ing sac­ri­fices; there’s no real vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty or bets required.”
  6. I did­n’t know that Tolkien had explained Tom Bom­badil (Alan Jacobs, a Bay­lor prof).

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 468



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

This is vol­ume 468, which is writ­ten as 3333 in base 5. I find that pret­ty cool.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Near­ly Half of the World’s Migrants Are Chris­t­ian (Chloë-Ari­zona Fodor, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “While Chris­tians make up about 30 per­cent of the world’s pop­u­la­tion, the world’s migrants are 47 per­cent Chris­t­ian, accord­ing to the lat­est data col­lect­ed in 2020.… US migrants are much more like­ly to have a reli­gious iden­ti­ty than the Amer­i­can-born pop­u­la­tion in gen­er­al. The influx of reli­gious migrants can have a sig­nif­i­cant impact on the reli­gious com­po­si­tion of their des­ti­na­tion coun­tries. In the case of the US, ‘immi­grants are kind of putting the brakes on sec­u­lar­iza­tion,’ Kramer said.”
  2. Meet new­ly crowned Miss USA Alma Coop­er M.S. ’25 (Semi­ra Aro­ra, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “Before Stan­ford, Coop­er grad­u­at­ed in the top five per­cent of her class at West Point. Cur­rent­ly, she is a part of the high­ly selec­tive Knight-Hen­nessy schol­ar­ship pro­gram, which aims to cul­ti­vate mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary lead­ers and offers schol­ars up to three years of fund­ing for grad­u­ate stud­ies.”
  3. A Scary Date Can Help You Find a Good Mate (Coltan Scrivn­er, Sub­stack): “Female par­tic­i­pants enjoyed the hor­ror clip the most when watch­ing with a male who dis­played mas­tery, while male par­tic­i­pants enjoyed it most in the pres­ence of a dis­tressed female. For males con­fed­er­ates whose pho­tographs were rat­ed less attrac­tive, dis­play­ing mas­tery increased how attrac­tive they were per­ceived by the female par­tic­i­pant that watched the clip with them. In oth­er words, women enjoyed a scary sit­u­a­tion more when they expe­ri­enced it with a man who dis­played mas­tery of their fear, and those men were, in some cas­es, seen as more attrac­tive than men who dis­played indif­fer­ence or dis­tress.”
    • The author is a Behav­ioral Sci­en­tist at the Recre­ation­al Fear Lab at Aarhus Uni­ver­si­ty in Den­mark and also has an appoint­ment in the Psy­chol­o­gy Depart­ment at Ari­zona State Uni­ver­si­ty. The “Recre­ation­al Fear Lab” — what an amaz­ing name!
  4. New Train­ing and Tougher Rules: How Col­leges Are Try­ing to Tame Gaza Protests (Alan Blind­er, New York Times): “The strate­gies that are com­ing into pub­lic view sug­gest that some admin­is­tra­tors at schools large and small have con­clud­ed that per­mis­sive­ness is per­ilous, and that a hard­er line may be the best option — or per­haps just the one least like­ly to invite blow­back from elect­ed offi­cials and donors who have demand­ed that uni­ver­si­ties take stronger action against pro­test­ers.”
    • Relat­ed: At Michi­gan, Activists Take Over and Shut Down Stu­dent Gov­ern­ment (Hali­na Ben­net, New York Times): “But last spring, pro-Pales­tin­ian activists, run­ning under the Shut It Down par­ty, won con­trol over the stu­dent gov­ern­ment. They imme­di­ate­ly moved to with­hold fund­ing for all activ­i­ties, until the uni­ver­si­ty com­mit­ted to divest from com­pa­nies that prof­it from Israel’s war in Gaza.… When cam­paign­ing for stu­dent gov­ern­ment, the Shut It Down par­ty did not keep its inten­tions a secret. Its plat­form ‘ran with one sin­gle point: to halt the oper­a­tions of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan Cen­tral Stu­dent Gov­ern­ment,’ Ali­fa Chowd­hury, the pres­i­dent of the par­ty, wrote in a state­ment to The Times.”
  5. Gos­sip­ing Is Fun. It’s Nat­ur­al. And These Peo­ple Won’t Do It. (Michal Lei­bowitz, New York Times): “I found the lives and rela­tion­ships described by the abstain­ers com­pelling. I was intrigued by their opti­mism, by their grace, by their com­mit­ment to judg­ing oth­ers by their best fea­tures. Which is not to say I’ve sworn off gos­sip entire­ly. But I’ve def­i­nite­ly cut back. And what do you know? The less I judge peo­ple, the less I want to judge peo­ple. The less I com­plain, the less I want to com­plain. The less, maybe, that I even see things to com­plain about.”
  6. How your mind­set could affect your response to vac­cines (Tay­lor Kub­o­ta, Stan­ford News): “It’s impor­tant to remem­ber that our body’s respons­es to any­thing – the med­ica­tions we take, the foods we eat, and the stress we expe­ri­ence – are influ­enced by our mind­sets as well as the objec­tive prop­er­ties of those things. And this is also true of the COVID-19 vac­cine. Our mind­sets about the vac­cine can affect not just how we feel after­ward but also our expe­ri­ence with side effects. And in some instances, your mind­set about the vac­cine’s side effects can poten­tial­ly influ­ence your immune response.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed to me by a med­ical doc­tor.
  7. Can We Be a Lit­tle Less Selec­tive With Our Moral Out­rage? (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “Of all the world’s injus­tices, per­haps the sad­dest is that so many of them are sim­ply ignored.”
    • A depress­ing list of a bunch of hor­ri­ble gov­ern­ments around the world.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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