Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 243

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. Recov­er­ing Friend­ship (Devo­rah Gold­man, Pub­lic Dis­course): “And then you go at it, ham­mer and tongs, far into the night, night after night; or walk­ing through fine coun­try that nei­ther gives a glance to, each learn­ing the weight of the other’s punch­es, and often more like mutu­al­ly respect­ful ene­mies than friends. Actu­al­ly (though it nev­er seems so at the time) you mod­i­fy one another’s thought; out of this per­pet­u­al dog­fight a com­mu­ni­ty of mind and a deep affec­tion emerge.”
  2. In God We Divide (Thomas Edsall, New York Times): “The more reli­gious­ly engaged a white vot­er is, the more like­ly he or she will be a Repub­li­can; the less reli­gious the vot­er, the more like­ly to be a Demo­c­rat. But, as we shall see it’s not that sim­ple: The deep­er you go, the more com­plex it gets.”
    • Note the adjec­tive “white” in the first sen­tence — almost all dis­cus­sion about the pol­i­tics of reli­gious peo­ple focus­es on white vot­ers. The piece lat­er acknowl­edges vot­ers of col­or but doesn’t explore how their faith influ­ences their votes. Instead non-white evan­gel­i­cals are usu­al­ly treat­ed as though faith is irrel­e­vant to their polit­i­cal views, which is absurd. All that to say: the arti­cle has inter­est­ing insights but bear in mind its crip­pling lim­i­ta­tion.
  3. Is Joshua’s Altar on Mount Ebal in Israel Myth? Or Real­i­ty? (Ralph Hawkins, Logos): “When I was work­ing on my doc­tor­al dis­ser­ta­tion about the Ebal site, I spent a week with Zer­tal. One morn­ing while we were dri­ving to the site, he told me his crit­ics had accused him of try­ing to prove the Bible. They said he imposed a cul­tic inter­pre­ta­tion onto the stone struc­ture he had found. He explained, though, that he had been born and raised in Ein She­mer, Israeli kib­butz that was affil­i­at­ed with a sec­u­lar move­ment. He said he had grown up believ­ing that the Bible was full of myths. When he did his grad­u­ate work in archae­ol­o­gy, he did it at Tel Aviv, the most lib­er­al uni­ver­si­ty in Israel, where those views were rein­forced. He insist­ed he had not embarked on his exca­va­tion at Mount Ebal in order to prove the Bible. What he found there, how­ev­er, had a pro­found effect on him. He said, ‘I became a believ­er at Mount Ebal.’”
    • I love sto­ries like this. Archae­ol­o­gy and the Bible is fas­ci­nat­ing to me.
  4. Chris­tian­i­ty & Coro­n­avirus
    • When Coro­na Makes Us More Like The New Tes­ta­ment (Andrew Wil­son, Think The­ol­o­gy): “In a num­ber of curi­ous ways, the Coro­n­avirus out­break is mak­ing us more like the New Tes­ta­ment church.” See also Sam Allberry’s Twit­ter thread about God’s Pur­pos­es In Pan­dem­ic. It reminds me of Num­bers 11:18–20.
    • Coro­n­avirus, Courage, and the Sec­ond Temp­ta­tion of Christ (David French, The Dis­patch): “Shun per­for­ma­tive reck­less­ness. Do not pre­sume that our faith makes us immune to the laws of biol­o­gy and viral trans­mis­sion. At the same time, believ­ers should not shrink from pur­pose­ful and sac­ri­fi­cial per­son­al risk. There may come a time when you must care for those who are sick. Do so with­out reser­va­tion, but do so pru­dent­ly with the knowl­edge that you should not impute your risks to others.”
    • Can­celed Mis­sion Trips Expect­ed to Have Long-Term Fall­out (David Roach, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Approximately 20 per­cent of all US-based inter­na­tion­al mis­sion work each year is done by short-term vol­un­teers, accord­ing to an analy­sis by soci­ol­o­gist of reli­gion Robert Wuth­now. That trans­lates to 1.6 mil­lion US church mem­bers annu­al­ly going on inter­na­tion­al mis­sion trips and doing work val­ued at $1.1 bil­lion (not count­ing prepa­ra­tion time and trav­el days).”
    • Church as a Non-Essen­tial Ser­vice (Matthew Schmitz, First Things): “Judg­ing by the response of many reli­gious lead­ers, church is a non-essen­tial ser­vice. We are capa­ble of tak­ing pru­dent mea­sures to keep our super­mar­kets open, but not our sanc­tu­ar­ies. Coro­n­avirus has shown what we val­ue. In Penn­syl­va­nia, beer dis­trib­u­tors are deemed essen­tial. In San Fran­cis­co and New York, cannabis dis­pen­saries are.” This is actu­al­ly a con­tri­bu­tion to an online dust­up but I find it more inter­est­ing than the dis­pute itself.
    • Dig­i­tal Com­mu­nion: His­to­ry, The­ol­o­gy, and Prac­tices (John Dyer, per­son­al blog): “A few weeks ago, I post­ed a graph­ic that attempts to show that the ele­ments of a ser­vice that are trans­ac­tion­al or broad­cast ori­ent­ed are usu­al­ly the eas­i­est to move online, but the rela­tion­al parts of church are often the most challenging—and most overlooked—elements of dig­i­tal church.”
    • In Leviti­cus, an unex­pect­ed les­son in sur­viv­ing quar­an­tine (Rachel Sha­ran­sky Danziger, For­ward): “Before, I could nev­er under­stand why we should learn in so much detail about every lit­tle rit­u­al in the Taber­na­cle, and who does what, and when. Now, as I work hard to make our new­ly claus­tro­pho­bic home into a place of calm and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, I under­stand the book’s insis­tence on such details.” A Jew­ish per­spec­tive.
  5. Gen­er­al Coro­n­avirus Com­men­tary
    • That Dis­com­fort You’re Feel­ing Is Grief (Scott Beri­na­to, Har­vard Busi­ness Review): “There is some­thing pow­er­ful about nam­ing this as grief. It helps us feel what’s inside of us. So many have told me in the past week, ‘I’m telling my cowork­ers I’m hav­ing a hard time,’ or ‘I cried last night.’ When you name it, you feel it and it moves through you. Emo­tions need motion. It’s impor­tant we acknowl­edge what we go through.”
      • Pas­toral aside: this is (some of) you. Paula and I have both talked to peo­ple who have been mourn­ing with­out real­iz­ing what they were doing. You are griev­ing. A few days ago I uploaded a two-minute video reflect­ing on Psalm 137:1 which touch­es on this.
    • Leisure in a Time of Coro­n­avirus (Nathan Schlueter, Pub­lic Dis­course): “Schools are closed. Sports and music lessons are can­celled. Every­one is at home. What are you going to do? Instead of allow­ing coro­n­avirus con­trol your life, why not plan for leisure? Use this time to do the things you are always wish­ing you had the time to do—or do bet­ter. Now you have that time, so do those things.”
    • Face Masks: Much More Than You Want­ed To Know (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “Some peo­ple with swine flu trav­elled on a plane from New York to Chi­na, and many fel­low pas­sen­gers got infect­ed. Some researchers looked at whether pas­sen­gers who wore masks through­out the flight stayed health­i­er. The answer was very much yes. They were able to track down 9 peo­ple who got sick on the flight and 32 who didn’t. 0% of the sick pas­sen­gers wore masks, com­pared to 47% of the healthy pas­sen­gers. Anoth­er way to look at that is that 0% of mask-wear­ers got sick, but 35% of non-wear­ers did. This was a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence, and of obvi­ous applic­a­bil­i­ty to the cur­rent question.”
    • The Fog of Pan­dem­ic (Derek Thomp­son, The Atlantic): “The U.S. is fight­ing a war with extreme uncer­tain­ties. It may be weeks before we know whether we are flat­ten­ing the coro­n­avirus curve, and months before we know what kind of econ­o­my we’ll have in the sec­ond half of this year.”
    • When can we let up? Explor­ing how to relax coro­n­avirus lock­downs (Stat News): “The approach get­ting the most sup­port is one that experts have long doubt­ed could work with a res­pi­ra­to­ry virus: aggres­sive case find­ing, con­tact trac­ing, com­mu­ni­ty sur­veil­lance, iso­la­tion of cas­es, and quar­an­ti­ning of con­tacts. Both Sin­ga­pore and South Korea used that, allow­ing them to make tac­ti­cal deci­sions about schools (most­ly open in both coun­tries) and pub­lic move­ment, spar­ing them from shut­ting down to the extent that the U.S. and many coun­tries in Europe have.”
    • Coro­n­avirus Pan­dem­ic: We Need the Skep­tics (Michael Bren­dan Dougher­ty, Nation­al Review): “When a bad thing hap­pens to a good per­son, we are tempt­ed to rage at God. When innu­mer­able bad things hap­pen to half of every­one we know, we rage at each other.”
    • On Coro­n­avirus, Rea­son To Hope (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): This week we saw FDA approval of new test­ing sys­tems from Roche and from Abbott labs that run tests ten times faster than cur­rent meth­ods. To give you an idea of what this means, Roche brags that their Cobas 8800 machine can process over 3000 tests per day. Until today, Louisiana hadn’t had a total of 3000 peo­ple test­ed. Roche is now mak­ing and ship­ping 400,000 test kits per week in the US, while Abbott is mak­ing a mil­lion of their test kits each week. Those sys­tems will be com­ing online this com­ing week…. And there are more com­pa­nies in the process of get­ting approval. In two weeks, we should be able to test 150,000 – 200,000 Amer­i­cans dai­ly, and that means that we don’t all need to stay home anymore.”
      • You can see the num­ber of tests admin­is­tered so far at The COVID Track­ing Project — this is one of the best indi­ca­tors to keep an eye on because it deter­mines the reli­a­bil­i­ty of every oth­er sta­tis­tic.
    • The World After Coro­n­avirus (Yuval Noah Harari, Finan­cial Times): “But tem­po­rary mea­sures have a nasty habit of out­last­ing emer­gen­cies, espe­cial­ly as there is always a new emer­gency lurk­ing on the hori­zon. My home coun­try of Israel, for exam­ple, declared a state of emer­gency dur­ing its 1948 War of Inde­pen­dence, which jus­ti­fied a range of tem­po­rary mea­sures from press cen­sor­ship and land con­fis­ca­tion to spe­cial reg­u­la­tions for mak­ing pud­ding (I kid you not). The War of Inde­pen­dence has long been won, but Israel nev­er declared the emer­gency over, and has failed to abol­ish many of the ‘temporary’ mea­sures of 1948 (the emer­gency pud­ding decree was mer­ci­ful­ly abol­ished in 2011).”
    • Safe­ty Pro­to­cols and Zones of Quar­an­tine (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “In oth­er words, this part of the virus response should tran­si­tion to a health and safe­ty reg­u­la­to­ry con­cern that is impor­tant, but han­dled like most of the oth­ers. For exam­ple, poor food hygiene can also kill you, but gov­ern­ments gen­er­al­ly don’t respond by decid­ing which cuisines are essen­tial and which are not. Rather, any­one will­ing to fol­low the safe­ty rules can put up any menu they want. So it should be for eco­nom­ic activ­i­ties of all kinds.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Preach­er And Pol­i­tics: Sev­en Thoughts (Kevin DeY­oung, Gospel Coali­tion): “I have plen­ty of opin­ions and con­vic­tions. But that’s not what I want my min­istry to be about. That’s not to say I don’t com­ment on abor­tion or gay mar­riage or racism or oth­er issues about the which the Bible speaks clear­ly. And yet, I’m always mind­ful that I can’t sep­a­rate Blog­ger Kevin or Twit­ter Kevin or Pro­fes­sor Kevin from Pas­tor Kevin. As such, my com­ments reflect on my church, whether I intend them to or not. That means I keep more polit­i­cal con­vic­tions to myself than I oth­er­wise would.” First shared in vol­ume 150. 

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 242

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.

A lot of links this week. Can you tell I’m on lock­down in the Bay Area? Since some of you are, too, you’ll have time to read them! 😂

Kid­ding aside, I nev­er assume any­one reads all of these. Skim the links and open the ones that inter­est you in new tabs, but be sure to open all the amus­ing stuff at the end — you need it.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Pan­dem­ic Visu­al­iz­ers:
  2. Chris­t­ian Pan­dem­ic Per­spec­tives:
    • The Emo­tion­al Impact Of Cam­pus Clo­sures (Michele Phoenix, per­son­al blog): “There are few things in life as pre­dictable as one’s col­lege tra­jec­to­ry. From the dread­ed fresh­man-fif­teen to changes in aca­d­e­m­ic majors or find­ing out last minute that you’re two cred­its short… It all plays out accord­ing to an estab­lished time­line. Then comes a virus that upends every­thing and predictability—one of the pri­ma­ry sta­bi­liz­ing fac­tors of our lives—suddenly morphs into a whirl­wind of shift­ing unknowns.”
      • Relat­ed: Unfin­ished nar­ra­tives (Jes­si­ca de la Paz, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “Everyday there’s anoth­er email, and with every email anoth­er string of hope we wear hang­ing around our necks is yanked off, and we’re left with a red impres­sion of where it once was. My immi­grant par­ents who fought tooth and nail for me and my broth­ers won’t get to see me walk across the stage to get my diplo­ma. There will be no pho­tos or laugh­ter-filled reception.” Jes­si­ca is a Chi Alpha stu­dent. She is also quot­ed in this Wall Street Jour­nal arti­cle: To Fight Coro­n­avirus, Col­leges Sent Stu­dents Home. Now Will They Refund Tuition?
    • In Coro­n­avirus Pan­dem­ic, Chris­tian­i­ty Has Ancient Lessons (Lyman Stone, For­eign Pol­i­cy): “The mod­ern world has sud­den­ly become reac­quaint­ed with the old­est trav­el­ing com­pan­ion of human his­to­ry: exis­ten­tial dread and the fear of unavoid­able, inscrutable death. No vac­cine or antibi­ot­ic will save us for the time being. Because this expe­ri­ence has become for­eign to mod­ern peo­ple, we are, by and large, psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly and cul­tur­al­ly under­equipped for the cur­rent coro­n­avirus pandemic.” Side note: I have very much enjoyed the author on Twit­ter.
    • Respond­ing to Pan­demics: 4 Lessons from Church His­to­ry (Glen Scriven­er, Gospel Coali­tion): “Plagues inten­si­fy the nat­ur­al course of life. They inten­si­fy our own sense of mor­tal­i­ty and frailty. They also inten­si­fy oppor­tu­ni­ties to dis­play coun­ter­cul­tur­al, coun­ter­con­di­tion­al love. The church rose to the chal­lenge in the sec­ond cen­tu­ry, win­ning both admir­ers and also converts.” High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. A longer ver­sion is avail­able as a 45 minute YouTube video (which, full con­fes­sion, I have not watched). 
    • The­o­log­i­cal Reflec­tions on the Pan­dem­ic (Bri­an Tabb, Gospel Coali­tion): “All people—rich and poor, young and old, reli­gious and non-religious—are sus­cep­ti­ble to sick­ness and are cer­tain to die one day. Yet for fol­low­ers of Jesus, sick­ness tests our faith, reveals our hope, and moves us to be zeal­ous for good works.”
    • Plague and Prov­i­dence: What Huldrych Zwingli Taught Me About Trust­ing God (Stephen Ecch­er, Gospel Coali­tion): “I first came across Huldrych Zwingli’s ‘Plague Song’ while study­ing the Protes­tant Ref­or­ma­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of St. Andrews: ‘Help, Lord God, help in this trou­ble! I think death is at the door. Stand before me, Christ, for you have over­come him.’”
    • Does Reli­gion Impact What Peo­ple Are Afraid Of? (Ryan P. Burge, Reli­gion in Pub­lic): “Among Protes­tants who nev­er attend church, their total num­ber of fears is no dif­fer­ent than Catholics at just about six­teen. How­ev­er, as a Protes­tant increas­es their fre­quen­cy of wor­ship atten­dance their total num­ber of fears begins to decline. Among Protes­tants who attend more than once a week, the mod­el pre­dicts just 11.5 fears – which is sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant from both low attend­ing Protes­tants and all Catholics.”
    • This is not the end of the world, accord­ing to Chris­tians who study the end of the world (Julie Zauzmer and Sarah Pul­liam Bai­ley, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Could this be a sign of the apoc­a­lypse? It sure might feel apoc­a­lyp­tic. But not if you ask Chris­t­ian writ­ers and pas­tors who have spent years focus­ing their mes­sage on the Book of Rev­e­la­tion — the New Testament’s final book.”
  3. Gen­er­al Pan­dem­ic Think­pieces:
    • Buzz Aldrin has some advice for Amer­i­cans in quar­an­tine (Eric Berg­er, Ars Tech­ni­ca): “Buzz Aldrin knows a thing or two about quar­an­tines. After return­ing from the Moon in 1969, Aldrin, Neil Arm­strong, and Michael Collins spent 21 days in quar­an­tine to pre­vent the spread of any con­ta­gions they might have brought back from the lunar surface.” Very short. Mild­ly amus­ing.
    • NIH Direc­tor: ‘We’re on an Expo­nen­tial Curve’ (Peter Wehn­er, The Atlantic): “When I asked him how he sees faith now, in his late 60s, com­pared with how he saw things in his late 20s, he told me, ‘I think I’ve also arrived at a place where my faith has become a real­ly strong sup­port for deal­ing with life’s strug­gles. It took me awhile, I think—that sense that God is suf­fi­cient and that I don’t have to be strong in every circumstance.’” Fran­cis Collins is a sol­id believ­er who we co-host­ed to speak at Stan­ford around a decade ago. Good inter­view. Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
    • A fias­co in the mak­ing? As the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic takes hold, we are mak­ing deci­sions with­out reli­able data (John Ioan­ni­dis, Stat News): “The most valu­able piece of infor­ma­tion for answer­ing those ques­tions would be to know the cur­rent preva­lence of the infec­tion in a ran­dom sam­ple of a pop­u­la­tion and to repeat this exer­cise at reg­u­lar time inter­vals to esti­mate the inci­dence of new infec­tions. Sad­ly, that’s infor­ma­tion we don’t have.” The author is a Stan­ford pro­fes­sor of med­i­cine, of epi­demi­ol­o­gy and pop­u­la­tion health, of bio­med­ical data sci­ence, and of sta­tis­tics.
    • Chi­na Is Avoid­ing Blame by Trolling the World (Sha­di Hamid, The Atlantic): “A gov­ern­ment is not a race. It’s a regime—and eas­i­ly one of the worst and most bru­tal in our life­time. Crit­i­ciz­ing author­i­tar­i­an regimes for what they do out­side their own bor­ders and to their own peo­ple is sim­ply call­ing things as they are. To do oth­er­wise is to for­go analy­sis and accu­ra­cy in the name of assuag­ing a regime that deserves no such consideration.”
      • Relat­ed: Don’t blame ‘China’ for the coro­n­avirus — blame the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty (Josh Rogin, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Let’s stop say­ing ‘Chinese virus’ — not because every­one who uses it is racist, but because it need­less­ly plays into the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Party’s attempts to divide us and deflect our atten­tion from their bad actions. Let’s just call it the ‘CCP virus.’ That’s more accu­rate and offends only those who deserve it.”
    • “Dishonesty…Is Always an Indi­ca­tor of Weak­ness”: Tuck­er Carl­son on How He Brought His Coro­n­avirus Mes­sage to Mar-a-Lago (Joe Hagan, Van­i­ty Fair): “I felt I had a moral oblig­a­tion to be use­ful in what­ev­er small way I could, and, you know, I don’t have any actu­al author­i­ty. I’m just a talk show host. But I felt—and my wife strong­ly felt—that I had a moral oblig­a­tion to try and be help­ful in what­ev­er way pos­si­ble. I’m not an advis­er to the per­son or any­one else oth­er than my chil­dren. And I mean that. And you can ask any­body in the White House or out how many times have I gone to the White House to give my opin­ion on things. Because I don’t do that. And in gen­er­al I real­ly dis­ap­prove of peo­ple stray­ing too far out­side their lanes and act­ing like just because they have sol­id rat­ings, they have a right to con­trol pub­lic pol­i­cy. I don’t believe that. I think it’s wrong.” Unex­pect­ed­ly fas­ci­nat­ing.
    • Coro­nalinks 3/19/20 (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “I’m usu­al­ly pret­ty harsh on Bay Area gov­ern­ments here. So I want to give cred­it where cred­it is due: they’ve react­ed to the coro­n­avirus epi­dem­ic with a lev­el of swift­ness and feroc­i­ty they usu­al­ly reserve for attempts to build new housing.” I am includ­ing the link entire­ly for that glo­ri­ous line. The rest is worth­while, but that line is majes­tic.
    • Coro­n­avirus: The Ham­mer and the Dance (Tom­sa Pueyo, Medi­um): “This is prob­a­bly the sin­gle biggest, most impor­tant mis­take peo­ple make when think­ing about this stage: they think it will keep them home for months. This is not the case at all. In fact, it is like­ly that our lives will go back to close to normal.”
      • The author is quite crit­i­cal of the USA. Maybe it’s because I live in Sil­i­con Val­ley and am cur­rent­ly on lock­down, but I think we’re respond­ing pret­ty aggres­sive­ly. Hon­est­ly, I think we’re doing bet­ter than most coun­tries around the world (def­i­nite­ly not Sin­ga­pore, though — respect to that island tech­noc­ra­cy). Also, Amer­i­ca often takes a while to mobi­lize in response to great chal­lenges but once we do the strength of our response is stag­ger­ing. We engage in relent­less and pub­lic self-crit­i­cism that leads us to over­com­pen­sate; for exam­ple, the news keep empha­siz­ing that we are piti­ful­ly behind on test kits. It is true that we were inex­cus­ably behind. How­ev­er, our capac­i­ty for test­ing is explod­ing — pre­cise­ly because every­one believes we are piti­ful­ly behind. There remain oth­er areas in which we are still falling flat, and they are hav­ing bright spot­lights trained upon them. So I’m cau­tious­ly opti­mistic. Things will be bad but not near­ly as bad as they could have been. For all of her faults, Amer­i­ca is still pret­ty amaz­ing.
      • Also, the author inex­plic­a­bly trusts China’s reports about their cur­rent lev­els of infec­tion. Giv­en extreme­ly recent his­to­ry, that is per­plex­ing.
    • Why Telling Peo­ple They Don’t Need Masks Back­fired (Zeynep Tufek­ci, New York Times): “It used to be said that back in the Sovi­et Union, if there was a line, you first got in line and then fig­ured out what the line was for — peo­ple knew that there were going to be short­ages and that the author­i­ties often lied, so they hoarded.” The author is a pro­fes­sor at UNC. Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
    • We’re not going back to nor­mal (Gideon Lich­field, MIT Tech­nol­o­gy Review): “…one can imag­ine a world in which, to get on a flight, per­haps you’ll have to be signed up to a ser­vice that tracks your move­ments via your phone. The air­line wouldn’t be able to see where you’d gone, but it would get an alert if you’d been close to known infect­ed peo­ple or dis­ease hot spots. There’d be sim­i­lar require­ments at the entrance to large venues, gov­ern­ment build­ings, or pub­lic trans­port hubs. There would be tem­per­a­ture scan­ners every­where, and your work­place might demand you wear a mon­i­tor that tracks your tem­per­a­ture or oth­er vital signs.” Shared by a con­cerned stu­dent.
  4. Non-pan­dem­ic (YES!!!!):
    • Book Review: Hoover (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “Herbert Hoover is the first stu­dent at Stan­ford. Not just a mem­ber of the first grad­u­at­ing class. Lit­er­al­ly the first stu­dent. He arrives at the dorms two months ear­ly to get a head start on var­i­ous mon­ey-mak­ing schemes, includ­ing dis­trib­ut­ing news­pa­pers, deliv­er­ing laun­dry, tend­ing live­stock, and help­ing oth­er stu­dents reg­is­ter. He would lat­er sell some of these busi­ness­es to oth­er stu­dents and start more, oper­at­ing a con­stant churn of enter­pris­es through­out his col­lege career. His aca­d­e­mics remain mediocre, and he con­tin­ues to have few friends – until he tries out for the foot­ball team in sopho­more year. He has zero ath­let­ic tal­ent and fails mis­er­ably, but the coach (whose eye for tal­ent appar­ent­ly tran­scends ath­let­ics) spots poten­tial in Hoover and asks him to come on as team man­ag­er. In this role, Hoover is an unqual­i­fied suc­cess. He turns the team’s debt into a sur­plus, and starts the Big Game – a UC Berke­ley vs. Stan­ford foot­ball match played on Thanks­giv­ing which remains a beloved Stan­ford foot­ball tradition.” Long but good (if you are inter­est­ed in Stan­ford, pres­i­den­tial his­to­ry, or clever thoughts).
      • Relat­ed: Scott Alexan­der on Her­bert Hoover (Scott Sum­n­er, The Library of Eco­nom­ics and Lib­er­ty): “Hoover was not the most tal­ent­ed per­son to ever become Pres­i­dent, but he was prob­a­bly the most com­pe­tent. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, his areas of com­pe­tence did not dove­tail with the prob­lems fac­ing the US dur­ing the ear­ly 1930s. Hoover was very good at orga­niz­ing large endeav­ors, but the prob­lems faced by the US dur­ing the ear­ly 1930s were macro­eco­nom­ic in nature. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, being a good admin­is­tra­tor doesn’t have much cor­re­la­tion with under­stand­ing macroeconomics.”
    • ‘Dead Sea Scrolls’ at the Muse­um of the Bible are all forg­eries (Michael Greshko, Nation­al Geo­graph­ic): “Loll insist­ed on inde­pen­dence. Not only would the Muse­um of the Bible have no say on the team’s find­ings, her report would be final—and would have to be released to the pub­lic. The Muse­um of the Bible agreed to the terms. ‘Honestly, I’ve nev­er worked with a muse­um that was so up-front,’ Loll says.”
      • The Muse­um of the Bible comes off look­ing pret­ty good in this arti­cle. I feel bad for them.
    • Porn Restric­tion for Real­ists (Tan­ner Greer, per­son­al blog): “…a world where the tube-sites are gone and peo­ple must go back to pay­ing for their porn is a sig­nif­i­cant improve­ment over the world we live in now. This world is pos­si­ble: it exist­ed two decades ago. Tech­no­log­i­cal change is part of what hap­pened, but only part. Just as impor­tant in the cre­ation of the new, porn-flushed world we live are legal pro­tec­tions giv­en to web­sites like Porn­Hub and X Ham­ster which allow them to dodge lia­bil­i­ty for the theft their busi­ness mod­el is based on. It also allows them to dodge lia­bil­i­ty for much worse sins.”
    • Learn­ing From His­to­ry: How Con­gress Can Pro­tect Both Rights and Beliefs (Don Bonker, Real­Clear­Reli­gion): “Back in 1984, I received an unex­pect­ed call from Sen­a­tor Mark Hat­field (R‑OR), a high­ly regard­ed Repub­li­can who chaired the pow­er­ful Sen­ate Appro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee. I won­dered, why would he call a young Demo­c­rat who had no sig­nif­i­cant posi­tion and lit­tle influ­ence in the halls of Congress?”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Every­thing That’s Wrong Of Rac­coons (Mal­lo­ry Ort­berg, The Toast): “Once when my dog died a pas­sel of rac­coons showed up in the back­yard as if to say ‘Now that he’s gone, we own the night,’ and they didn’t flinch when I yelled at them, and I found it dis­re­spect­ful to 1) me per­son­al­ly and 2) the entire flow of the food chain. Don’t dis­re­spect me if you can’t eat me, you false-night-dogs.” (first shared in vol­ume 97)

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 241

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. Con­cern­ing Coro­n­avirus and Chris­tian­i­ty:
    • Love in the Time of Coro­n­avirus — Andy Crouch (Andy Crouch, The Prax­is Jour­nal): “…while gov­ern­ment at all lev­els can enforce a cer­tain amount of behav­ior change, for exam­ple through quar­an­tines and “lock­downs,” it is almost impos­si­ble for coer­cive author­i­ty to increase people’s capac­i­ty for love and ser­vice to oth­ers. This is the role of faith and above all, we believe, the Chris­t­ian faith. Equip­ping Chris­tians for moments like this is the role of Chris­t­ian lead­ers.” THIS. READ THIS.
    • What Mar­tin Luther Teach­es Us About Coro­n­avirus (Emmy Yang, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “In a cli­mate of fear sur­round­ing the out­break, I come back to Luther’s let­ter for guid­ance. As a med­ical stu­dent and a future physi­cian, I have a clear voca­tion­al com­mit­ment to car­ing for the sick—whether they have coro­n­avirus, tuber­cu­lo­sis, or influen­za. Pre­cau­tions I will take, yes. But I am remind­ed by Luther that they are indi­vid­u­als deserv­ing of care all the same.”
    • Here is an Eng­lish trans­la­tion of Luther’s orig­i­nal let­ter: Whether One May Flee From A Dead­ly Plague: “Since it is gen­er­al­ly true of Chris­tians that few are strong and many are weak, one sim­ply can­not place the same bur­den upon every­one. A per­son who has a strong faith can drink poi­son and suf­fer no harm, Mark 16[:18], while one who has a weak faith would there­by drink to his death.”
    • Wuhan Pas­tor: Pray with Us (anony­mous, Chi­na­Source): “Thus, my broth­ers and sis­ters, I encour­age you to be strong in Christ’s love. If we more deeply expe­ri­ence death in this pesti­lence, under­stand­ing the gospel, we may more deeply expe­ri­ence Christ’s love, and grow ever near­er to God.”
    • How DC Church­es Respond­ed When the Gov­ern­ment Banned Pub­lic Gath­er­ings Dur­ing the Span­ish Flu of 1918 (Caleb Morell, 9 Marks): “Dur­ing one of the worst epi­demics to ever hit our coun­try, church­es respect­ed the direc­tives of the gov­ern­ment for a lim­it­ed time out of neigh­bor­ly love and in order to pro­tect pub­lic health. Even when church­es began to dis­agree with the Com­mis­sion­ers’ per­spec­tive, they con­tin­ued to abide by their orders.”
    • Should Your Church Stop Meet­ing to Slow COVID-19? How 3 Seat­tle Church­es Decid­ed. (Daniel Chin, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “After work­ing for WHO and then the Bill and Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion in Chi­na, my wife and I moved to Seat­tle in 2015 to lead the foundation’s work to con­trol tuber­cu­lo­sis in sev­er­al coun­tries. For a quar­ter of a cen­tu­ry, I’ve answered a call­ing as a fol­low­er of Christ to stop the spread of dis­eases and work to elim­i­nate them, and now I heed that call­ing to speak to my broth­ers and sis­ters in Christ to take this epi­dem­ic seri­ous­ly and respond.” The author is an evan­gel­i­cal and a physi­cian who spe­cial­izes in infec­tious dis­eases.
  2. Con­cern­ing Coro­n­avirus More Gen­er­al­ly:
    • How Much Worse the Coro­n­avirus Could Get, in Charts (Nicholas Kristof and Stu­art A. Thomp­son, NY Times): “What’s at stake in this coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic? How many Amer­i­cans can become infect­ed? How many might die? The answers depend on the actions we take — and, cru­cial­ly, on when we take them. Work­ing with infec­tious dis­ease epi­demi­ol­o­gists, we devel­oped this inter­ac­tive tool that lets you see what may lie ahead in the Unit­ed States and how much of a dif­fer­ence it could make if offi­cials act quick­ly.” Note that this is not pay­walled. Many promi­nent news orga­ni­za­tions have kind­ly made their pan­dem­ic news freely avail­able.
    • Why it’s so hard to pin down the risk of dying from coro­n­avirus (Marc Lip­sitch, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Sev­er­al esti­mates have sug­gest­ed that the risk of dying, for those infect­ed with covid-19 and show­ing its flu-like symp­toms, is around 1 or 2 per­cent. Elder­ly adults have a con­sid­er­ably high­er risk of both becom­ing infect­ed and dying, as do peo­ple with com­pro­mised immune sys­tems. The esti­mates might change as new data arrive, but the range of 1 to 2 per­cent for fatal­i­ties among the symp­to­matic seems to be the con­sen­sus for now. The over­all fatal­i­ty rate for peo­ple infect­ed with covid-19 will be low­er — pos­si­bly much low­er — when we know how many peo­ple are infect­ed but asymp­to­matic.” The author is a Har­vard epi­demi­ol­o­gist. 
    • COVID-19 Event Risk Assess­ment Plan­ner (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Now here is the most impor­tant point. It’s the size of the group, not the num­ber of car­ri­ers that most dri­ves the result. For exam­ple, sup­pose our esti­mate of the num­ber of car­ri­ers if off by a fac­tor of 10–that is instead of 20,000 there are just 2000 car­ri­ers in the Unit­ed States. In this case, the prob­a­bil­i­ty of at least one car­ri­er at a big event of 100,000 drops not by a fac­tor of ten but just to 45%. In oth­er words, large events are a bad idea even in sce­nar­ios with just a small num­ber of car­ri­ers.” (source code for the embed­ded graph is at https://github.com/jsweitz/covid-19-event-risk-planner) The code and the graph come from a biol­o­gist at Geor­gia Tech and the expla­na­tion comes from an econ­o­mist at George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty.
    • Track­Coro­na — COVID-19 Track­er and Live Map — one of the peo­ple run­ning the web­site is a Stan­ford under­grad. 
    • Coro­n­avirus: Why You Must Act Now (Tomas Pueyo, Medi­um): “Coun­tries that act fast can reduce the num­ber of deaths by a fac­tor of ten. And that’s just count­ing the fatal­i­ty rate. Act­ing fast also dras­ti­cal­ly reduces the cas­es, mak­ing this even more of a no-brain­er.”
    • How Chi­na’s “Bat Woman” Hunt­ed Down Virus­es from SARS to the New Coro­n­avirus (Jane Qiu, Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can): “Shi—a virol­o­gist who is often called China’s ‘bat woman’ by her col­leagues because of her virus-hunt­ing expe­di­tions in bat caves over the past 16 years—walked out of the con­fer­ence she was attend­ing in Shang­hai and hopped on the next train back to Wuhan.” This is a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle.
    • $1 mil­lion plus in Emer­gent Ven­tures Prizes for coro­n­avirus work (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “I believe that we should be using prizes to help inno­vate and com­bat the coro­n­avirus. When are prizes bet­ter than grants? The case for prizes is stronger when you don’t know who is like­ly to make the break­through, you val­ue the final out­put more than the process, there is an urgency to solu­tions (tal­ent devel­op­ment is too slow), suc­cess is rel­a­tive­ly easy to define, and efforts and invest­ments are like­ly to be under­com­pen­sat­ed. All of these apply to the threat from the coro­n­avirus.”
    • COVID-19 reduces eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty, which reduces pol­lu­tion, which saves lives. (Mar­shall Burke, G‑Feed): “…dis­rup­tion is only like­ly to increase in com­ing days in regions where the epi­dem­ic is just begin­ning. Strange­ly, this dis­rup­tion could also have unex­pect­ed health ben­e­fits — and these ben­e­fits could be quite large in cer­tain parts of the world.” Real­i­ty is com­pli­cat­ed.
    • How social dis­tanc­ing for coro­n­avirus could cause a lone­li­ness epi­dem­ic (Ezra Klein, Vox): “Make no mis­take: The rapid imple­men­ta­tion of social dis­tanc­ing is nec­es­sary to flat­ten the coro­n­avirus curve and pre­vent the cur­rent pan­dem­ic from wors­en­ing. But just as the coro­n­avirus fall­out threat­ens to cause an eco­nom­ic reces­sion, it’s also going to cause what we might call a “social reces­sion”: a col­lapse in social con­tact that is par­tic­u­lar­ly hard on the pop­u­la­tions most vul­ner­a­ble to iso­la­tion and lone­li­ness — old­er adults and peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties or pre­ex­ist­ing health con­di­tions.”
    • The effect of trav­el restric­tions on the spread of the 2019 nov­el coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) out­break (Chi­nazzi et al, Sci­ence): “The trav­el quar­an­tine around Wuhan has only mod­est­ly delayed the epi­dem­ic spread to oth­er areas of Main­land Chi­na…. The mod­el indi­cates that while the Wuhan trav­el ban was ini­tial­ly effec­tive at reduc­ing inter­na­tion­al case impor­ta­tions, the num­ber of cas­es observed out­side Main­land Chi­na will resume its growth after 2–3 weeks from cas­es that orig­i­nat­ed else­where.”
  3. Keep It Sim­ple (Ed Fes­er, First Things): “Math­e­mat­ics appears to describe a realm of enti­ties with qua­si-­di­vine attrib­ut­es. The series of nat­ur­al num­bers is infi­nite. That one and one equal two and two and two equal four could not have been oth­er­wise. Such math­e­mat­i­cal truths nev­er begin being true or cease being true; they hold eter­nal­ly and immutably. The lines, planes, and fig­ures stud­ied by the geome­ter have a kind of per­fec­tion that the objects of our ­expe­ri­ence lack. Math­e­mat­i­cal objects seem ­imma­te­r­i­al and known by pure rea­son rather than through the sens­es.” This is a very inter­est­ing review of a book by William Lane Craig.
  4. Con­cern­ing Woody Allen:
    • Woody Allen: Issues and Prin­ci­ples (Steven Brust, per­son­al blog): “Pre­sump­tion of inno­cence in the courts is the legal reflec­tion of the prin­ci­ple that we need to be cer­tain some­one is guilty before inflict­ing pun­ish­ment, that, ‘it is bet­ter 10 guilty men go free than one inno­cent man be pun­ished.’ The prin­ci­ple pre-dates its legal reflec­tion, which, in West­ern soci­ety, we can find in sixth Cen­tu­ry Rome, as well as both Tal­mu­dic and Islam­ic law. The prin­ci­ple has always been fought for by the oppressed, and for good rea­son: it is the oppressed who are most vul­ner­a­ble, and most like­ly to be abused both by the legal sys­tem and bour­geois pub­lic opin­ion. Those who want to chuck the pre­sump­tion of inno­cence, whether in law or in the pub­lic are­na, are doing the work of the oppres­sors.” The author is a social­ist, which I men­tion because the next author is very con­ser­v­a­tive. When thought­ful peo­ple from dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed tribes call foul it is worth pay­ing atten­tion. 
    • The Woody Allen Witch Hunt (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “But we are not sup­posed to live in a soci­ety in which some­one who has mere­ly been accused of a hor­ri­ble thing finds him­self unable to pub­lish a book telling his side of the sto­ry, or silenced because the cul­tur­al winds have shift­ed. Thir­ty years ago, or less, chil­dren who made accu­sa­tions against pow­er­ful men were not believed. Women too. It is not progress to go from dis­be­liev­ing women and chil­dren as a mat­ter of course to believ­ing them reflex­ive­ly. We think we are advanc­ing jus­tice, but real­ly we are just rear­rang­ing our prej­u­dices.” The author is a very con­ser­v­a­tive, which I men­tion because the pre­vi­ous author is a social­ist. When thought­ful peo­ple from dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed tribes call foul it is worth pay­ing atten­tion.
  5. How Many Nones Are There? Maybe More than We Thought (Ryan P. Burge, Reli­gion In Pub­lic): “When you com­pare those who say they have “no reli­gion” in the GSS, to those who say they are either athe­ist, agnos­tic, or noth­ing in par­tic­u­lar in the CCES, a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence emerges…. The upshot is this: the share of Amer­i­cans who have no reli­gious affil­i­a­tion is near­ly a third of the Unit­ed States, not the 23.1% fig­ure which comes from the GSS.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Deal­ing With Nui­sance Lust (Dou­glas Wil­son, per­son­al blog): “Minimize the seri­ous­ness of this, but not so that you can feel good about indulging your­self. Min­i­mize the seri­ous­ness of it so that you can walk away from a cou­ple of big boobs with­out feel­ing like you have just fought a cos­mic bat­tle with prin­ci­pal­i­ties and pow­ers in the heav­en­ly places, for cry­ing out loud. Or, if you like, in anoth­er strat­e­gy of see­ing things right­ly, you could nick­name these breasts of oth­er woman as the ‘principalities and powers.’ What­ev­er you do, take this part of life in stride like a grown-up. Stop react­ing like a horny and con­flict­ed twelve-year-old boy.” (first shared in vol­ume 148)

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 240

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. I often bury my per­spec­tive, but here is my two ¢ on the Coro­n­avirus: Amer­i­ca is respond­ing to this dis­ease so bad­ly that I find it hard to believe. Giv­en the amaz­ing­ly com­pe­tent peo­ple who pop­u­late this coun­try, our col­lec­tive inep­ti­tude is stag­ger­ing.
    • Deal­ing With a Once-In-A-Cen­tu­ry Pathogen (Claire Lehmann, Quil­lette): “In ear­ly Octo­ber 1918, when the Span­ish flu hit the east coast of the Unit­ed States, the health com­mis­sion­er of St Louis, Max Starkloff, ordered the clo­sure of schools, movie the­aters, saloons, sport­ing events and oth­er pub­lic gath­er­ing spots. While the mea­sures were protest­ed by some cit­i­zens, the quar­an­tine went ahead. A month lat­er, as the pan­dem­ic raged on, he ordered the clo­sure of all busi­ness, with a few excep­tions, such as banks. While dras­tic quar­an­tine mea­sures were being imple­ment­ed in St Louis, the health com­mis­sion­er of Philadel­phia, Wilmer Krusen, gave per­mis­sion for a parade for the war effort to go ahead in his city. It is report­ed that with­in 72 hours of the parade, every bed in Philadelphia’s 31 hos­pi­tals was filled, and in the week end­ing Octo­ber 5th, 1918, 2,600 peo­ple in Philadel­phia had died, with the fig­ure almost dou­bling a week lat­er. At the end of the out­break, St Louis had the low­est record­ed death rate in the US, while in Philadel­phia mor­tu­ar­ies over­flowed and ‘bodies [were] piled up on sidewalks.’”
    • Coro­n­avirus: Links, Spec­u­la­tion, Open Thread (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “If we hadn’t let our cul­ture reach the point where gov­ern­ments ban things by default and review at leisure, and where indi­vid­ual ini­tia­tive is frowned upon in favor of wait­ing for offi­cial per­mis­sion to do the right thing, we could have recov­ered from all of these mis­takes. Hos­pi­tals would have used their exist­ing tests which they already have more than enough of, doc­tors would have had per­mis­sion to test sus­pi­cious cas­es at their dis­cre­tion, and we would have had a chance to catch infec­tions ear­ly before they could spread. If the gov­ern­ment didn’t already reg­u­late adren­a­line, bus­pirone, insulin, and genet­ic test­ing to the point of near-unavail­abil­i­ty, maybe peo­ple would have thought it was weird­er, or raised more of a fuss, when they start­ed doing it for coro­n­avirus tests.”
    • Exclu­sive: The Strongest Evi­dence Yet That Amer­i­ca Is Botch­ing Coro­n­avirus Test­ing (Robin­son Mey­er & Alex­is C. Madri­gal, The Atlantic): “Testing is the first and most impor­tant tool in under­stand­ing the epi­demi­ol­o­gy of a dis­ease out­break. In the Unit­ed States, a series of fail­ures has com­bined with the decen­tral­ized nature of our health-care sys­tem to hand­i­cap the nation’s abil­i­ty to see the sever­i­ty of the out­break in hard numbers.”
    • Before and after: coro­n­avirus emp­ties world’s busiest spaces  (Agence France-Presse, The Guardian): “Empty pub­lic squares, a high­way with no cars on it and desert­ed holy sites – a series of strik­ing satel­lite images have revealed the impact of the coro­n­avirus epi­dem­ic on some of the world’s busiest spaces.”
    • Prepar­ing Your Church For Coro­n­avirus (Lyman Stone, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Thus, Chris­tians have two cru­cial duties. First, not to use plague, and the fear of the death of the body, as an excuse to aban­don our God-giv­en duties. We must care for the sick, both the sick in soul and in body. Where dis­ease kills par­ents, we must care for the chil­dren. Where dis­ease kills chil­dren, we must tend to the wounds of the fam­i­ly. Where dis­ease spreads fear, we must be bold in faith. But we should not be idiots. We have a moral oblig­a­tion to pro­tect oth­ers by lim­it­ing the spread of dis­ease. To ignore that duty mur­ders our neighbors.” A bit long but excel­lent. 
  2. Men Too Eas­i­ly For­got­ten (Greg Morse, Desir­ing God): “Real men do not bul­ly. Real men do not watch porn. Real men do not abuse women. Real men do not live at home after col­lege play­ing video games in their parent’s base­ment. Amen to what real men are not, but what, then, is a real man? Can we not say more than just a male who doesn’t do bad? We need men who not only avoid evil but embody what is good. There is a pro­found dif­fer­ence. One sees man­hood as an incur­able ill­ness of soci­ety to be man­aged; the oth­er, a pil­lar to build civ­i­liza­tion upon.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  3. Low-Income Col­lege Stu­dents Are Being Taxed Like Trust-Fund Babies (Eri­ca L. Green, New York Times): “In the past, a stu­dent from a house­hold with a joint income of $50,000 who was award­ed a schol­ar­ship that cov­ered $11,500 in room and board would be taxed at their par­ents’ rate of 12 per­cent. Under the new law, that mon­ey would be taxed up to 35 percent.” This is a few months old, shared with me by a stu­dent. For the record, this is insane.
  4. The oth­er way to lose a war (Ed Fes­er, per­son­al blog): “Some crit­ics like to chalk up pro­longed Amer­i­can engage­ment in places like Afghanistan and Iraq to war­mon­ger­ing or realpoli­tik or some oth­er sin­is­ter moti­va­tion. In my opin­ion, that is the reverse of the truth. The fault of those who advo­cate such engage­ment isn’t world­ly cyn­i­cism, but oth­er­world­ly idealism.” Thought­ful and thought-pro­vok­ing. Rec­om­mend­ed. 
  5. My Same-Sex Attrac­tion Has an Answer (Rachel Gilson, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “For peo­ple like me who expe­ri­ence same-sex attrac­tion, the world begs us to believe that our authen­tic selves are only found in giv­ing in. It promis­es hero sta­tus if we sub­mit to our attrac­tions. Our desires whis­per, like a ser­pent in a gar­den, that there is no death in going against God’s Word.”
  6. The lure of ‘cool’ brain research is sti­fling psy­chother­a­py  (Allen Frances, Aeon): “…I can affirm con­fi­dent­ly that there are no neat answers in psy­chi­a­try. The best we can do is embrace an ecu­meni­cal four-dimen­sion­al mod­el that includes all pos­si­ble con­trib­u­tors to human func­tion­ing: the bio­log­i­cal, the psy­cho­log­i­cal, the social, and the spir­i­tu­al. Reduc­ing peo­ple to just one ele­ment – their brain func­tion­ing, or their psy­cho­log­i­cal ten­den­cies, or their social con­text, or their strug­gle for mean­ing – results in a flat, dis­tort­ed image that leaves out more than it can capture.” The author was chair of the psy­chi­a­try depart­ment at Duke. 
  7. Let’s Decon­struct a Decon­ver­sion Sto­ry: The Case of Rhett and Link (Alisa Childers, Gospel Coali­tion): “Our cul­tur­al moment is a caul­dron of infor­ma­tion and celebri­ty wor­ship in which the cult of per­son­al­i­ty can fer­ment and grow. With every hit of the ‘like’ but­ton, the per­son­al­i­ties we’ve sub­scribed to have become our author­i­ties for truth.”
    • Red Flags in the Spir­i­tu­al Decon­struc­tion of My Old Friends Rhett and Link (Shel­by Abbot, per­son­al blog): “After they left staff with Cru, I kept in touch with the guys for a few years. But time and life hap­pened, and my com­mu­ni­ca­tion with them fad­ed. Every now and then I’d send a mes­sage, but both Rhett and Link stopped rec­i­p­ro­cat­ing. I fig­ured they prob­a­bly changed their num­bers and email address­es, or had too many DM’s from fans to find my ran­dom mes­sages say­ing hel­lo. [After hear­ing their] per­son­al spir­i­tu­al decon­struc­tion sto­ries. It sud­den­ly made a lot sense to me why I nev­er heard back from them.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have On Polit­i­cal Cor­rect­ness (William Dere­siewicz, The Amer­i­can Schol­ar): a long and thought­ful arti­cle. “Selective pri­vate col­leges have become reli­gious schools. The reli­gion in ques­tion is not Method­ism or Catholi­cism but an extreme ver­sion of the belief sys­tem of the lib­er­al elite: the lib­er­al pro­fes­sion­al, man­age­r­i­al, and cre­ative class­es, which pro­vide a large major­i­ty of stu­dents enrolled at such places and an even larg­er major­i­ty of fac­ul­ty and admin­is­tra­tors who work at them. To attend those insti­tu­tions is to be social­ized, and not infre­quent­ly, indoc­tri­nat­ed into that reli­gion…. I say this, by the way, as an athe­ist, a demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist, a native north­east­ern­er, a per­son who believes that col­leges should not have sports teams in the first place—and in case it isn’t obvi­ous by now, a card-car­ry­ing mem­ber of the lib­er­al elite.” (first shared in vol­ume 92)

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 239

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

I was sick last week and did­n’t have a chance to post. It was refresh­ing to take a break from the infor­ma­tion del­uge that is the mod­ern age!

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Coro­n­avirus Is More Than a Dis­ease. It’s a Test. (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “So already, the virus has exposed a clear weak spot in what you might call the lib­er­al-glob­al­ist imag­i­na­tion: an overzeal­ous ‘remain calm’ spir­it in the face of the real risks of a hyper-con­nect­ed world.”. 
    • The Pan­dem­ic Is Com­ing (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): Dreher has been post­ing lots of great infor­ma­tion on this. Worth fol­low­ing on this top­ic gen­er­al­ly.
    • China’s Book­stores Band Togeth­er To Sur­vive the Epi­dem­ic (Ken­rick Davis, Sixth Tone): unex­pect­ed­ly inter­est­ing with strik­ing pic­tures.
    • How Fast Can a Virus Destroy a Sup­ply Chain? (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg Opin­ion): “Glob­al sup­ply chains have yet to come apart most­ly because trade and pros­per­i­ty gen­er­al­ly have been ris­ing. But now, for the first time since World War II, the glob­al econ­o­my faces the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a true decou­pling of many trade con­nec­tions. It is not suf­fi­cient­ly well under­stood how rapid that process could be. A com­plex inter­na­tion­al sup­ply chain is frag­ile pre­cise­ly for the same rea­sons it is valu­able — name­ly, it is hard to con­struct and main­tain because it involves so many inter­de­pen­den­cies.”
  2. The boss who put every­one on 70K (Stephanie Hegar­ty, BBC): ‘“Before the $70,000 min­i­mum wage, we were hav­ing between zero and two babies born per year amongst the team,’ he says. ‘And since the announce­ment — and it’s been only about four-and-a-half years — we’ve had more than 40 babies.’”
  3. China’s ‘War on Ter­ror’ uproots fam­i­lies, leaked data shows (Dake Kang, Asso­ci­at­ed Press): “Rea­sons list­ed for intern­ment include ‘minor reli­gious infec­tion,’ ‘dis­turbs oth­er per­sons by vis­it­ing them with­out rea­sons,’ ‘rel­a­tives abroad,’ ‘think­ing is hard to grasp’ and ‘untrust­wor­thy per­son born in a cer­tain decade.’ The last seems to refer to younger men; about 31 per­cent of peo­ple con­sid­ered ‘untrust­wor­thy’ were in the age brack­et of 25 to 29 years, accord­ing to an analy­sis of the data by Zenz.”
  4. Are We Liv­ing Out Romans 1? (Rosario But­ter­field, Desir­ing God): “Romans 1:26 tells us that peo­ple give them­selves over to homo­sex­u­al­i­ty because they wor­ship and serve the cre­ation. There­fore, from God’s point of view, homo­sex­u­al prac­tice is the sex­u­al dis­play of false wor­ship. Well-heeled Gay Pride march­es, with big-mon­ey cor­po­rate spon­sors smil­ing in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the LGBTQ machine, give us a mod­ern-day pic­ture of what wor­ship­ing the crea­ture looks like.”
  5. Chesa Boudin: San Francisco’s Law­less Rev­o­lu­tion­ary (Maxwell Mey­er, The Stan­ford Review) “In Com­rade Gringo’s new San Fran­cis­co, a naked pros­ti­tute on hero­in can defe­cate in a gro­cery store aisle, take up to $950 of goods, walk back to their tent on a city side­walk, steal a hand­gun and drop some nee­dles along the way, and then solic­it sex or drugs‚ or both, to pedes­tri­ans out­side a local busi­ness, with just a cita­tion (if that). But God for­bid that pros­ti­tute should offer those pedes­tri­ans a plas­tic straw, for hell hath no fury like San Fran­cis­co offi­cials when ‘The Plan­et’ is threat­ened.”
    • This rant in a stu­dent paper reads like pro­fes­sion­al pun­dit­ry in a nation­al-lev­el pub­li­ca­tion. I wish to acknowl­edge the author’s excel­lent writ­ing skills.
  6. The Rise and Tri­umph of the Mod­ern Self (Carl True­man, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Every age has its mal­adies, and I for one have no wish to have lived my life in an era when chil­dren worked as chim­ney sweeps or, like my father, grew up in the shad­ow of the Luft­waffe. We do not choose our time, and we must not waste ener­gy lament­ing our time. We need first and fore­most to under­stand our time and then to respond to it with informed wis­dom.”
  7. The Val­ue of Study Abroad Expe­ri­ence in the Labor Mar­ket: Find­ings from a Resume Audit Exper­i­ment (Cheng & Florick, SSRN): “Com­pared to resumes that list no study abroad expe­ri­ence, resumes that list study abroad expe­ri­ence in Asia regard­less of length are about 20 per­cent more like­ly to receive a call­back for an inter­view if the resume stud­ied. The dif­fer­ences in rates increas­es to 25 per­cent when com­par­ing resumes with­out study abroad expe­ri­ence to those that list two-week pro­grams in Asia. Resumes that list study abroad expe­ri­ence in Europe for one year are 20 per­cent less like­ly to receive any call­back and 35 per­cent less like­ly to receiv­ing [sic] a call back for an inter­view, rel­a­tive to resumes that do not list study abroad expe­ri­ence.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have some thoughts about slav­ery and the Bible – Does The Bible Sup­port Slav­ery? (a lec­ture giv­en by the war­den of Tyn­dale House at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, the link is to the video with notes) and Does God Con­done Slav­ery In The Bible? (Part One – Old Tes­ta­ment) and also Part Two – New Tes­ta­ment (longer pieces from Glenn Miller at Chris­t­ian Think­tank). All three are quite help­ful. (first shared in vol­ume 76)

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 238

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Nuclear Fam­i­ly Was a Mis­take (David Brooks, The Atlantic): “If you want to sum­ma­rize the changes in fam­i­ly struc­ture over the past cen­tu­ry, the truest thing to say is this: We’ve made life freer for indi­vid­u­als and more unsta­ble for fam­i­lies. We’ve made life bet­ter for adults but worse for chil­dren. We’ve moved from big, inter­con­nect­ed, and extend­ed fam­i­lies, which helped pro­tect the most vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple in soci­ety from the shocks of life, to small­er, detached nuclear fam­i­lies (a mar­ried cou­ple and their chil­dren), which give the most priv­i­leged peo­ple in soci­ety room to max­i­mize their tal­ents and expand their options. The shift from big­ger and inter­con­nect­ed extend­ed fam­i­lies to small­er and detached nuclear fam­i­lies ulti­mate­ly led to a famil­ial sys­tem that lib­er­ates the rich and rav­ages the work­ing-class and the poor.” High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
  2. Will Some­body Please Hate My Ene­mies for Me? (David French, The Dis­patch): “Here’s the end result—millions of Chris­tians have not just decid­ed to hire a hater to defend them from haters and to hire a liar to defend them from liars, they active­ly ignore, ratio­nal­ize, min­i­mize, or deny Trump’s sins.”
    • Not quite in response, but kin­da relat­ed: Under­stand­ing Why Reli­gious Con­ser­v­a­tives Would Vote for Trump (Andrew Walk­er, Nation­al Review): “In my expe­ri­ence, huge num­bers of reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives are not proud about vot­ing for Trump. They don’t need any more hot takes denounc­ing them as irre­deemable hyp­ocrites. Their con­sciences bear a dis­com­fort gov­erned by their love for Amer­i­ca and the rep­u­ta­tion of their faith. But if these reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives have to choose between the duel­ing dump­ster fires of either Trump or a pos­si­ble Bernie Sanders pres­i­den­cy, they will vote over­whelm­ing­ly for Trump. And any­one who mis­un­der­stands this will con­tin­ue pro­ject­ing onto reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives the usu­al tired bro­mides that refuse to reck­on with a com­pli­cat­ed situation.”
    • Def­i­nite­ly in response to both arti­cles: Evan­gel­i­cals Still Ago­niz­ing Over Trump (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “It’s not sexy to say it, but I don’t hate peo­ple who vote for Trump, I don’t hate peo­ple who vote against Trump, I don’t hate peo­ple who vote for Sanders, or any­body. I don’t believe we are fac­ing a Twi­light Of The Gods show­down between Good and Evil. I believe we are fac­ing a par­tic­u­lar­ly vivid, emo­tion­al­ly charged ver­sion of the usu­al choice between deeply flawed can­di­dates. Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t get worked up into spit­ing the Oth­er, because if I put myself in their shoes, I can see why they would vote as they do, even if I think they’re wrong. Is this luke­warm­ness? OK, it’s luke­warm­ness. But pol­i­tics are not my god, so I don’t care.” 
  3. Is Crit­i­cal Race The­o­ry Com­pat­i­ble with Chris­t­ian Faith? (Ger­ald McDer­mott, Juicy Ecu­menism): “Slavery and Jim Crow were evil and sys­temic. Racism is sin. But Chris­tians must not allow their hatred for the sin of racism to so cloud their vision that they put their faith in a phi­los­o­phy that has become a new reli­gion for its devotees—a reli­gion that in sig­nif­i­cant ways con­flicts with his­toric Chris­t­ian faith.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of divin­i­ty at Bee­son.
  4. Gen­er­a­tion Z and Reli­gion: What New Data Show (Melis­sa Deck­man, Reli­gion In Pub­lic): “…it appears that the rate of younger Amer­i­cans depart­ing from orga­nized reli­gion is hold­ing steady… As Amer­i­ca heads ever more quick­ly into becom­ing a minor­i­ty major­i­ty nation with respect to race/ethnicity, with White Chris­t­ian Amer­i­ca becom­ing a less dom­i­nant pres­ence in soci­ety, schol­ars should pay more atten­tion to how minor­i­ty groups are start­ing to shift their reli­gious behav­ior. My data sug­gest that these groups are look­ing very dif­fer­ent from coun­ter­parts in old­er generations.” The author is a pro­fes­sor at Wash­ing­ton Col­lege. 
    • Is the rise of the nones slow­ing? Schol­ars say maybe (Yonat Shim­ron, Reli­gion News): “There are a cou­ple of pos­si­ble expla­na­tions for the slow­ing of reli­gious decline: The country’s grow­ing racial diver­si­ty…. The cul­ture war sort­ing is most­ly over…. A chang­ing social desir­abil­i­ty bias”
    • The Decline of Reli­gion May Be Slow­ing (Paul A. Djupe and Ryan P. Burge, Reli­gion In Pub­lic): “This bomb­shell find­ing sent us run­ning for oth­er datasets. Like all good sci­en­tists, we trust, but ver­i­fy. In this post, we run through evi­dence from the Gen­er­al Social Sur­vey, 2018 Coop­er­a­tive Con­gres­sion­al Elec­tion Study (a RIP favorite), and the recent release of the Vot­er Study Group pan­el. The take­away is that the find­ing is val­i­dat­ed – the rate dri­ving up the reli­gious nones has appeared to be slow­ing to a crawl.”
    • Rea­sons to be Cau­tious About a Gen Z “Religious Rebound” (Joseph O. Bak­er, Reli­gion In Pub­lic): “…if we look at reli­gious salience, Gen Z is less like­ly to say they are ‘not reli­gious’ (25.3%) com­pared to Mil­len­ni­als (28.4%), but Gen Z is also less like­ly to say they are ‘very reli­gious’ (7.8%) com­pared to Mil­len­ni­als (10.2%). So, if any­thing, Gen Z is more ‘meh’ about religion.”
  5. What Can We Learn from the #MeToo Moments in Gen­e­sis? (Kevin DeY­oung, Gospel Coali­tion): “The first book of the Bible is a pic­ture of sin run amuck. Of course, we also find in Gen­e­sis a dis­play of God’s cre­ative pow­er, his plan of redemp­tion, and his sov­er­eign mer­cy in bless­ing his unde­serv­ing peo­ple. But even amid this won­der­ful good news, we see plen­ty of exam­ples of the cor­rupt­ing effects of sin from Gen­e­sis 3 through the end of the book. In par­tic­u­lar, Gen­e­sis is replete with exam­ples of sex­u­al sin.”
  6. Why Did­n’t Ancient Rome have Dun­geons and Drag­ons? (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Innovation doesn’t hap­pen very often. How many peo­ple have ever invent­ed a new way of doing any­thing? If sta­sis is the norm, then we should expect that many great ideas are rou­tine­ly over­looked. For an econ­o­mist this is an uncom­fort­able thought because we tend to think that prof­it oppor­tu­ni­ties are quick­ly exploit­ed (no $500 bills on the ground). But while that is cer­tain­ly true for choic­es with­in con­straints it may not be true for choic­es that change constraints.”
  7. No One Can Explain Why Planes Stay in the Air (Ed Reg­is, Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can): “accounts of lift exist on two sep­a­rate lev­els of abstrac­tion: the tech­ni­cal and the non­tech­ni­cal. They are com­ple­men­tary rather than con­tra­dic­to­ry, but they dif­fer in their aims. One exists as a strict­ly math­e­mat­i­cal the­o­ry, a realm in which the analy­sis medi­um con­sists of equa­tions, sym­bols, com­put­er sim­u­la­tions and num­bers. There is lit­tle, if any, seri­ous dis­agree­ment as to what the appro­pri­ate equa­tions or their solu­tions are…. But by them­selves, equa­tions are not expla­na­tions, and nei­ther are their solutions.” I had low expec­ta­tions of this arti­cle, but it is pret­ty good.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The 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. (first shared in vol­ume 67) 

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 237

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. “My Gang Is Jesus” (Alex Cuadros, Harpers Mag­a­zine): “A year ago, I flew to Rio and fol­lowed Mar­tins around for a few weeks as he preached. I hoped to rec­on­cile two com­pet­ing nar­ra­tives of the evan­gel­i­cal church’s role in the fave­las. For the country’s poor, all but neglect­ed by the state, church­es serve not only as a source of spir­i­tu­al sal­va­tion but as a haven of last resort—a place to find com­mu­ni­ty, job tips, and coun­sel­ing, or sim­ply to gath­er and sing with­out fear of vio­lence. Yet sto­ries of crooked pas­tors abound in the new Brazil; in recent years, sev­er­al have been caught trans­port­ing weapons for the drug trade. While many gang mem­bers find in Jesus the courage to quit this life, oth­ers seem to have inter­nal­ized a skewed set of bib­li­cal lessons, even com­mit­ting acts of vio­lence in Jesus’ name.”
  2. Reli­gious Lib­er­ty: Not Just for Social Con­ser­v­a­tives (David French, The Dis­patch): “The beau­ty of civ­il lib­er­ties case law is that each law­ful exer­cise of lib­er­ty rein­forces anoth­er. So it is with this case. Pro­gres­sives will like­ly cheer that these four activists will escape pun­ish­ment for sav­ing immi­grant lives. And which cas­es helped them win? One of them was Hob­by Lob­by—an asser­tion of reli­gious free­dom by Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives against the Oba­ma administration’s con­tra­cep­tion man­date, a cause that many pro­gres­sives despised.”
  3. Lov­ing to Know (N.T. Wright, First Things): “The sci­en­tist may be fas­ci­nat­ed by the way a can­cer cell grows, but that fas­ci­na­tion will increase his deter­mi­na­tion to stop it in its tracks. The his­to­ri­an may be intrigued by the caus­es of the First World War, but she may well hope that her inves­ti­ga­tion of the com­plex tan­gle of moti­va­tions will help us spot future warn­ing signs. And the par­ent who enjoys watch­ing the child climb­ing a tree will, as a mat­ter of love, simul­ta­ne­ous­ly affirm the child’s free­dom and seek to mit­i­gate any clear dan­ger. Love is always on the lookout.” This arti­cle is a lit­tle uneven but very insight­ful at places.
  4. Edu­cat­ed Fools (Thomas Geoghe­gan, The New Repub­lic): “Meritocracy has its own deep state—with secrets unknown even to those of us who are part of it. And the worst thing is the way it can taunt the work­ing class with the ideals of the Enlight­en­ment, when it is we mer­i­to­crat­ic lib­er­als who have the great­est inter­est in lim­it­ing its spread. We think we’re act­ing in such good faith in push­ing for col­lege and even com­mu­ni­ty col­lege edu­ca­tion. But real sal­va­tion can be offered only to a few, on a retail, not a whole­sale, basis: Instead of rais­ing peo­ple up col­lec­tive­ly, we’re being care­ful to do it one diplo­ma at a time.
”
    • The author’s blind­ness to the con­tin­ued exis­tence of church­es stood out to me. “There is no foothold left in big cities, or any­place else where the glob­al win­ners live, for high school grad­u­ates to exer­cise even a tiny bit of pow­er. There’s no church to slot into as a dea­con…” (empha­sis added) Fact check: church­es are flour­ish­ing in big cities.
  5. Nige­ria is a killing field of defense­less Chris­tians (Reli­gion Unplugged): “The list of Niger­ian Chris­tians slaugh­tered, shot dead, hacked to death, stran­gled and tor­tured to death, grows by the day. From vil­lages in the arid North­ern Nige­ria to ham­lets in the lush Savan­nah South, wail­ing, mourn­ing, and curs­es pierce the air, while tears fall from tired eyes.”
    • Relat­ed: All Across Nige­ria, Chris­tians Marched Sun­day to Protest Per­se­cu­tion (Jayson Casper, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Adeboye and his con­gre­ga­tion, one of the largest in the world, answered the call issued by the Chris­t­ian Asso­ci­a­tion of Nige­ria (CAN) for a three-day fast this past week­end, con­clud­ing in a prayer walk. Based on reports from its state chap­ters and local media, CAN esti­mates 5 mil­lion peo­ple marched in 28 of Nigeria’s 36 states on Sunday.”
  6. The Ene­mies of Writ­ing (George Pack­er, The Atlantic): “Fear breeds self-cen­sor­ship, and self-cen­sor­ship is more insid­i­ous than the state-imposed kind, because it’s a sur­er way of killing the impulse to think, which requires an unfet­tered mind. A writer can still write while hid­ing from the thought police. But a writer who car­ries the thought police around in his head, who always feels com­pelled to ask: Can I say this? Do I have a right? Is my ter­mi­nol­o­gy cor­rect? Will my allies get angry? Will it help my ene­mies? Could it get me ratioed on Twit­ter?—that writer’s words will soon become lifeless.”
  7. 11 Rea­sons Not to Become Famous (or “A Few Lessons Learned Since 2007”) (Tim Fer­riss, per­son­al blog): “In that short span of time, my month­ly blog audi­ence had explod­ed from a small group of friends (20–30?) to the cur­rent size of Prov­i­dence, Rhode Island (180,–200,000 peo­ple). Well, let’s dig into that. What do we know of Prov­i­dence? Here’s one snip­pet from Wikipedia, and bold­ing is mine: ‘Com­pared to the nation­al aver­age, Prov­i­dence has an aver­age rate of vio­lent crime and a high­er rate of prop­er­ty crime per 100,000 inhab­i­tants. In 2010, there were 15 mur­ders, down from 24 in 2009. In 2010, Prov­i­dence fared bet­ter regard­ing vio­lent crime than most of its peer cities. Spring­field, Mass­a­chu­setts, has approx­i­mate­ly 20,000 few­er res­i­dents than Prov­i­dence but report­ed 15 mur­ders in 2009, the same num­ber of homi­cides as Prov­i­dence but a slight­ly high­er rate per capita.’ The point is this: you don’t need to do any­thing wrong to get death threats, rape threats, etc. You just need a big enough audi­ence. Think of your­self as the leader of a tribe or the may­or of a city. The aver­ages will dic­tate that you get a cer­tain num­ber of cra­zies, con artists, extor­tion­ists, pos­si­ble (or actu­al) mur­der­ers, and so on.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have How 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). (first shared in vol­ume 63)

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 236

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. Behind the Great Fire­wall (Thomas Brown, Quil­lette): “The Chi­nese are proud of Chi­na, not just of 5,000 years of his­to­ry and a glob­al­ly rec­og­nized ancient cul­ture, but of mod­ern Chi­na. Chi­na the indus­try leader, Chi­na the pro­tec­tor of Chi­nese busi­ness, Chi­na the pow­er­ful and beau­ti­ful and rich. Chi­na the unapolo­getic. This is a sto­ry the Chi­nese want to hear and they don’t care if orga­ni­za­tions seem­ing­ly deter­mined to only tell the sup­pos­ed­ly bad things about Chi­na are kept out.”
    • Relat­ed: Polit­i­cal and Prac­ti­cal Impli­ca­tions of the Wuhan Virus (Tan­ner Greer, per­son­al blog): “The Chi­nese peo­ple have an inter­est­ing rela­tion­ship with the Par­ty pro­pa­gan­da and cen­sor­ship sys­tem. Chi­nese are well aware that the gov­ern­ment lies to them. What they often have dif­fi­cul­ty dis­cern­ing is what it decides to lie about. Some­times it does not lie. Oth­er times it sim­ply leaves the truth unsaid.”
  2. Sun­day Morn­ing With Kanye (David French, The Dis­patch): “As we made our way close to the stage, I was struck by some­thing unusu­al. I didn’t see any mer­chan­dise for sale. There was no Kanye gear. There were no pro­mo­tions for Kanye. There were no pic­tures of Kanye—at least not that I saw. If you’d just walked up, you’d have no clue that one of the world’s biggest stars was about to perform.”
  3. Wokeademia (John Cochrane, per­son­al blog): “The game is no longer to advance can­di­dates who are them­selves ‘diverse.’ The game is to stock the fac­ul­ty with peo­ple of a cer­ti­fied ide­o­log­i­cal stripe, who are com­mit­ted to advanc­ing this cause. Tom Sow­ell need not apply.” The author is an econ pro­fes­sor at Stanford’s Hoover Insti­tu­tion.
  4. Why These Young Amer­i­can Chris­tians Embraced Social­ism (Sarah Ngu, Reli­gion & Pol­i­tics): “…their evan­gel­i­cal expe­ri­ences pushed them to take the Bible seri­ous­ly and read it literally—which meant they end­ed up con­clud­ing that being a Chris­t­ian meant car­ing about the poor and dis­trust­ing the state (which, after all, killed Jesus).”
  5. On Killing Human Mon­sters (Mark LiVec­chi, Prov­i­dence): “‘The inter­nal con­di­tion of God’s exter­nal expres­sion of wrath,’ writes the the­olo­gian and rab­bi Abra­ham Joshua Hes­chel, ‘is grief.’ To the best I can deduce, there­in is com­mu­ni­cat­ed the com­plex dis­po­si­tion of the just war­rior.… I do not rejoice that I wor­ship a God who kills. I only rejoice that I wor­ship a God who is will­ing to.” 
  6. What If We Don’t Have to Choose Between Evo­lu­tion and Adam and Eve? (Rebec­ca Ran­dall, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “If we keep straight what the sci­ence is actu­al­ly say­ing, the sto­ry of Gen­e­sis could be true as lit­er­al­ly as you could imag­ine it, with Adam being cre­at­ed by dust and God breath­ing into his nos­trils and Eve being cre­at­ed from his rib. But evo­lu­tion is hap­pen­ing out­side the Gar­den, and there are peo­ple out there who God cre­at­ed in a dif­fer­ent way and who end up inter­min­gling with Adam and Eve’s descen­dants. It’s not actu­al­ly in con­flict with evo­lu­tion­ary science.” This is an inter­view with S. Joshua Swami­dass, a com­pu­ta­tion­al biol­o­gist at Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty in St. Louis. The book he wrote has been get­ting rave reviews.
  7. The Lost His­to­ry of West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion (Stan­ley Kurtz, The Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Schol­ars): “In Jan­u­ary of 1987, stu­dents at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty chant­i­ng ‘Hey hey, ho ho, West­ern Culture’s got to go,’ kicked off this cul­ture war. The fis­sure that opened three decades ago at Stanford—between the new mul­ti­cul­tur­al way, on the one hand, and tra­di­tion­al Amer­i­can con­cep­tions of his­to­ry and cit­i­zen­ship, on the other—has widened now into a chasm.” This is long and not for every­one. It caught my atten­tion because Stan­ford plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in the nar­ra­tive. The author has a Ph.D. from Har­vard and has taught at both there and at U Chica­go. He is cur­rent­ly a senior fel­low at the Ethics and Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Cen­ter.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). 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 235

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. Weath­er­ing the Storm: How Faith Affects Well-Being (Byron John­son & Chris­tos Makridis, Pub­lic Dis­course): “First, and con­sis­tent with pri­or stud­ies, active Chris­tians exhib­it 6 per­cent greater cur­rent life sat­is­fac­tion and are 6 per­cent­age points more like­ly to report that they are thriving—a mea­sure from Gallup that com­bines respon­dent infor­ma­tion on both cur­rent life sat­is­fac­tion and expect­ed future life sat­is­fac­tion over the next five years. Sec­ond, and at least as impor­tant, we found that SWB is either acycli­cal or slight­ly coun­ter­cycli­cal for active Chris­tians, where­as it is strong­ly pro­cycli­cal for (inac­tive) Chris­tians and theists.”
  2. More Non-Evan­gel­i­cals Are Call­ing Them­selves Born Again (Ryan Burge, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Just over 36 per­cent of the entire sam­ple said that they were born again in 1988, the first year the ques­tion was asked. The ques­tion appeared spo­rad­i­cal­ly on the GSS until 2004, when it became a part of every bi-annu­al sur­vey as the num­ber of affir­ma­tive respons­es began to rise. In the last 14 years, the share of born-again Amer­i­cans has risen to 41 per­cent, and much high­er (54%) among peo­ple of col­or. Since 2010, at least half of peo­ple of col­or say that they have had a ‘turning point in their life’ when they com­mit­ted them­selves to Christ.”
  3. Sex dif­fer­ences in chim­panzees’ use of sticks as play objects resem­ble those of chil­dren (Sonya M. Kahlen­berg & Richard W. Wrang­ham, Cur­rent Biol­o­gy): “…when pre­sent­ed with sex-stereo­typed human toys, cap­tive female mon­keys play more with typ­i­cal­ly fem­i­nine toys, where­as male mon­keys play more with mas­cu­line toys. In human and non­hu­man pri­mates, juve­nile females demon­strate a greater inter­est in infants, and males in rough-and-tum­ble play. This sex dif­fer­ence in activ­i­ty pref­er­ences par­al­lels adult behav­ior and may con­tribute to dif­fer­ences in toy play. Here, we present the first evi­dence of sex dif­fer­ences in use of play objects in a wild pri­mate, in chim­panzees (Pan troglodytes). We find that juve­niles tend to car­ry sticks in a man­ner sug­ges­tive of rudi­men­ta­ry doll play and, as in chil­dren and cap­tive mon­keys, this behav­ior is more com­mon in females than in males.” https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2010.11.024
  4. When a sex offend­er calls, she’s there to lis­ten (Ser­e­na Solomon, Vox): “On the desk in her liv­ing room, a [Women Against Reg­istry] sign sum­ma­rizes her pitch: ‘Destroying Fam­i­lies Does Not Pro­tect Children.’ It’s a mes­sage geared toward women. WAR argues that the reg­istry can pre­vent reg­is­trants from liv­ing with sup­port­ing rel­a­tives; it can bank­rupt fam­i­lies and invites vig­i­lante attacks.” A fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle. Rec­om­mend­ed by a Chi Alphan.
  5. Detroit man set­tles race dis­crim­i­na­tion law­suit, then bank won’t cash his check (Tre­sa Bal­das, Detroit Free Press): “Thomas closed his [exist­ing bank] account that day and left the premis­es. With­in an hour, he deposit­ed the checks into a new account at a Chase bank in Detroit. They cleared with­in 12 hours. Thomas, who had no car and walked to work, used the mon­ey to buy a 2004 Dodge Durango.” This sto­ry bog­gles the mind.
  6. Adven­tures in the Old Athe­ism, Part IV: Marx (Ed Fes­er, per­son­al blog): “Indeed, oppo­si­tion to Marx­ism is in my view a pre­req­ui­site to being a seri­ous crit­ic of cap­i­tal­ism, for Marx­ism con­tains none of the good that is in cap­i­tal­ism, much of the bad that is in it, and adds grave evils of its own to boot.” That’s not the main thrust of this essay, but I loved that quote. The whole thing is worth read­ing.
  7. Peo­ple crit­i­cize pro-lif­ers for focus­ing so much on abor­tion. But there’s a rea­son we do. (Matthew Lee Ander­son, Vox): “But for the pro-lif­er, that ‘clump of cell­s’ is as won­drous, as potent, as mys­te­ri­ous as, well, the cos­mos. The recog­ni­tion of the ‘baby’ induces a hushed rev­er­ence. The uni­verse once appeared out of noth­ing, a fact that rea­son­ably seems to induce the strange ver­ti­go of awe, but the for­ma­tion of a new human being is not so dif­fer­ent from this. The embryo con­tains a whole world of pos­si­bil­i­ties and adventures.”
    • Relat­ed: Abor­tion Regret Isn’t a Myth, Despite New Study (Maria Baer, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “…researcher Michael J. New not­ed that women who vol­un­teer to respond to ques­tions fol­low­ing an abor­tion are more like­ly to be the ones who feel pos­i­tive­ly about it, and there­fore the find­ings do not rep­re­sent the full spec­trum of women who have had abor­tions. New—a pro­fes­sor at the Catholic Uni­ver­si­ty of Amer­i­ca and a schol­ar with the pro-life Char­lotte Lozi­er Institute—noted that of all the women asked to par­tic­i­pate, less than 40 per­cent agreed, and rough­ly 30 per­cent of the 667 who par­tic­i­pat­ed had stopped respond­ing by the end of the five-year study.”
    • Relat­ed: Trump March­es For Life (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “So, I am gen­uine­ly sur­prised that Don­ald Trump has been so good on pro­life issues, and that he came to the March For Life today. And if peo­ple wor­ry that the march is becom­ing too asso­ci­at­ed with Repub­li­can pol­i­tics, then they should not fault Trump for it, but should redou­ble efforts to get more Democ­rats to get involved.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). 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 234

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. Reflec­tions on Inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty (Cole­man Hugh­es, Quil­lette): “I don’t know what pro­por­tion of stu­dents at elite schools are part of the inter­sec­tion­al sub­cul­ture. But it is com­mon enough that I nev­er go more than a few days with­out encoun­ter­ing it. As a crude point of com­par­i­son, I’m more like­ly to meet a com­mit­ted inter­sec­tion­al­ist on any giv­en day at Colum­bia than I am to meet a com­mit­ted veg­e­tar­i­an, and much more like­ly than I am to meet a com­mit­ted Christian.”
  2. The Unit­ed States is Starved for Tal­ent (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Overall, get­ting (approx­i­mate­ly) one extra high-skilled [H1‑B] work­er caus­es a 23% increase in the prob­a­bil­i­ty of a suc­cess­ful IPO with­in five years (a 1.5 per­cent­age point increase in the base­line prob­a­bil­i­ty of 6.6%). That’s a huge effect. Remem­ber, these star­tups have access to a labor pool of 160 mil­lion workers.”
  3. Why Bad Things Must Hap­pen to Good Peo­ple (Nathaniel Givens, Pub­lic Square): “It’s also fair to say that when we know in advance the bound­aries of the bad that can hap­pen, we can hedge our bets and selec­tive­ly choose our course through life to opti­mize risk and reward. The prob­lem isn’t that we will make dif­fer­ent deci­sions under con­di­tions like these. The prob­lem is that we will make them for dif­fer­ent rea­sons.” A Mor­mon take on theod­i­cy, quite inter­est­ing and not con­tin­gent on Mor­mon dis­tinc­tives.
  4. Aus­tralian rap­tors start fires to flush out prey (John Pick­rell, Cos­mos): “Black kites (Mil­vus migrans), whistling kites (Halias­tur sphenu­rus) and brown fal­cons (Fal­co berig­o­ra) all reg­u­lar­ly con­gre­gate near the edges of bush­fires, tak­ing advan­tage of an exo­dus of small lizards, mam­mals, birds and insects – but it appears that some may have learnt not only to use fire to their advan­tage, but also to con­trol it.”
  5. Big Data+Small Bias « Small Data+Zero Bias (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Suppose you want to esti­mate who will win the 2016 US Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. You ask 2.3 mil­lion poten­tial vot­ers whether they are like­ly to vote for Trump or not. The sam­ple is in all ways demo­graph­i­cal­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the US vot­ing pop­u­la­tion but poten­tial Trump vot­ers are a tiny bit less like­ly to answer the ques­tion, just .001 less like­ly to answer (note they don’t lie, they just don’t answer).” I was stunned.
  6. Coach O. Vs. The Acela Grad­grind (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “You’d think that the media elites would by now have learned the cost to their own cred­i­bil­i­ty of not under­stand­ing this coun­try. But they keep being sur­prised. Nobody expects a New York Times edi­to­r­i­al writer to agree with the deci­sion to can­cel col­lege class­es because of a foot­ball game. But one would like to think that a man of the world such as him­self would have enough sense to think about why this deci­sion might have been made, and what it says about cul­tur­al dif­fer­ence. I sus­pect if the LSU Board of Super­vi­sors had can­celled class­es for Trans­gen­der Day Of Remem­brance, the New York Times edi­to­r­i­al board would have wet its col­lec­tive pants with delight.”
    • Relat­ed: Where Ivy Mat­ters: The Edu­ca­tion­al Back­grounds of U.S. Cul­tur­al Elites (Brint et al, Soci­ol­o­gy of Edu­ca­tion): “We find that the lead­ing U.S. edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions are sub­stan­tial­ly more impor­tant for prepar­ing future mem­bers of the cul­tur­al elite than they are for prepar­ing future mem­bers of the busi­ness or polit­i­cal elite. In addi­tion, mem­bers of the cul­tur­al elite who are rec­og­nized for out­stand­ing achieve­ments by peers and experts are much more like­ly to have obtained degrees from the lead­ing edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions than are those who achieve acclaim from pop­u­lar audiences.”
  7. See­ing Both Sides (Andrew Bunt, Think The­ol­o­gy): “One of the things I find most dif­fi­cult about being a celi­bate gay/same-sex attract­ed Chris­t­ian is when I feel a strong attrac­tion to a spe­cif­ic guy.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Weight of Glo­ry (C.S. Lewis): It was orig­i­nal­ly preached as a ser­mon and then print­ed in a the­ol­o­gy mag­a­zine. Relat­ed: see the C. S. Lewis Doo­dle YouTube chan­nel – it’s real­ly good! (first shared in vol­ume 36)

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.