Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 51

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

  1. Why Amer­i­ca Spends So Much On The Mil­i­tary (red­dit): this was a sur­pris­ing­ly edu­ca­tion­al read. It was writ­ten in response to the claim that “next year’s pro­posed mil­i­tary bud­get could buy every home­less per­son a $1 mil­lion home.”
  2. Chew­bac­ca Laugh­ter Brings Unex­pect­ed Plat­form (Dan Van Veen, PE News): “On Wednes­day night before mak­ing the video, she felt that the Holy Spir­it had direct­ed her to a spe­cif­ic restau­rant for sup­per just pri­or to church. There, God had a ‘divine oppor­tu­ni­ty’ waiting.”
  3. 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.
  4. Unsafe Cars Can Save Lives (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Safe­ty is rel­a­tive so cars judged unsafe by glob­al stan­dards could save lives in India. The big­ger les­son is that it’s always dan­ger­ous to impose glob­al stan­dard­s with­out tak­ing into account the dif­fer­ing cir­cum­stances of time and place.”
  5. The Big Uneasy (Nathan Heller, The New York­er): “A [uni­ver­si­ty] president’s job is to push past con­tra­dic­tions, while an activist’s duty is to call them out. The insti­tu­tions that give many peo­ple a lan­guage and a forum to denounce injus­tice are, inevitably, the near­est tar­gets of their criticism.” Bonus points for quot­ing Tocqueville. 
  6. The Trans­gen­der Bath­room Debate and the Loom­ing Title IX Cri­sis (Jean­nie Suk, New York­er): “Whether or not the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment act­ed unlaw­ful­ly, it has now set in motion a poten­tial Title IX col­li­sion course between its direc­tives on sex­u­al vio­lence and on bath­room­s…. The dis­com­fort that some peo­ple, some sex­u­al-assault sur­vivors, in par­tic­u­lar, feel at the idea of being in rest rooms with peo­ple with male sex organs, what­ev­er their gen­der, is not easy to brush aside as bigotry.“ The author is a pro­fes­sor at Har­vard Law School.
  7. Claims by trans­gen­der school­teacher (who wants to be called ‘they’) yield $60,000 set­tle­ment, agree­ment to cre­ate dis­ci­pli­nary rules reg­u­lat­ing ‘pronoun usage (Eugene Volokh, Volokh Con­spir­a­cy): the sec­ond half is what cap­tured my atten­tion. “When the gov­ern­ment is act­ing as sov­er­eign, telling us what we must or must not say on pain of coer­cive­ly imposed legal lia­bil­i­ty, the First Amend­ment is at full force. That force, I think, should pre­clude gov­ern­ment com­mands that we start using new words — or rad­i­cal gram­mat­i­cal mod­i­fi­ca­tions of old, famil­iar words — that con­vey gov­ern­ment-favored mes­sages about gen­der iden­ti­ty or any­thing else.”
  8. Peter Thiel’s fund­ing of Hulk Hogan-Gawk­er lit­i­ga­tion should not raise con­cerns (Eugene Kon­torovich, Volokh Con­spir­a­cy):  “if the law­suit is not friv­o­lous, it is hard to see how the moti­va­tions of fun­ders are rel­e­vant (or dis­cernible). One would not say a civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tion could not accept dona­tions from phil­an­thropists angered by a per­son­al expe­ri­ence with discrimination.” Also see Tyler Cowen’s take.
  9. Amus­ing: Oth­er Promis­es of God (xkcd)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

If you want to view the archives they are at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 50

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

  1. What are the most-cit­ed pub­li­ca­tions in the social sci­ences (accord­ing to Google Schol­ar)? (Elliot Green, Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics Impact Blog): I am famil­iar with many of them, but some I have nev­er even heard of. Appar­ent­ly I am less well-read than I thought.
  2. The False Promise of DNA Test­ing (Matthew Shaer, The Atlantic): DNA test­ing exon­er­ates some but false­ly impli­cates oth­ers.
  3. Good Cit­i­zen­ship as Barack Oba­ma and Clarence Thomas See It (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “There are real diver­gences in the ways that Oba­ma and Thomas view cit­i­zen­ship, but their approach­es are more com­ple­men­tary than con­tra­dic­to­ry. Tak­en togeth­er, their advice encom­pass­es the per­son­al and the polit­i­cal, afford­ing a bet­ter por­trait of the whole cit­i­zen than either offers in isolation.”
  4. The cul­ture wars play out in the most fas­ci­nat­ing ways:
    • Media Want To Make Sure You Nev­er Hear About The Lit­tle Sis­ters of the Poor (Mol­lie Hem­ing­way, The Fed­er­al­ist): “A case of “Little Sis­ters of the Poor” vs. “Powerful Men in Gov­ern­men­t” is a gift from the edi­to­r­i­al god­s…. If any Repub­li­can pres­i­dent went to war against a group called Lit­tle Sis­ters of the Poor, that edi­to­r­i­al gift would be unwrapped on every front page of every news­pa­per in the land.” (addi­tion­al com­men­tary at GetRe­li­gion)
    • Relat­ed: Pro­fes­sor Michael McConnell on Zubik v. Bur­well (Michael McConnell, Volokh Con­spir­a­cy): “the deci­sion was basi­cal­ly a qui­et, face-sav­ing, non-prece­dent-set­ting defeat for the government.”
    • How The Fight Over Trans­gen­der Kids Got A Lead­ing Sex Researcher Fired (Jesse Sin­gal, NY Mag): this is a very long piece which I found utter­ly fas­ci­nat­ing. It shows that for some peo­ple 90% agree­ment is not enough: “And if you look close­ly at what real­ly hap­pened — if you read the review (which CAMH has now pulled off of its web­site), speak with the activists who effec­tive­ly wrote large swaths of it, exam­ine the sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence, and talk to for­mer GIC clin­i­cians and the par­ents of patients they worked with, it’s hard not to come to an uncom­fort­able, polit­i­cal­ly incor­rect con­clu­sion: Zucker’s defend­ers are right. This was a show trial.”
    • Yes, my sex­u­al­i­ty is a choice: Why I reject the “born this way” nar­ra­tive (Mar­cie Bian­co, Salon):  “The pro­gres­sive move away from iden­ti­ty cat­e­gories negates the need for the nor­ma­tive, ‘born this way’ nar­ra­tive that has been used to social­ly val­i­date them…. if sex­u­al­i­ty is social­ly con­struct­ed and expressed through cul­ture, then there is no norm, nor is there deviance.”
    • State-Man­dat­ed Mourn­ing for Abort­ed Fetus­es (Emma Green, The Atlantic): I am some­what baf­fled that this sto­ry doesn’t men­tion the Cen­ter for Med­ical Progress videos from last year. There is clear­ly a rela­tion­ship.
  5. Quick Links:

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 49

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

  1. The Exper­i­ment Exper­i­ment (Plan­et Mon­ey): a con­sis­tent­ly excel­lent pod­cast. This episode is the best expla­na­tion I’ve heard about the repli­ca­tion cri­sis that plagues many dis­ci­plines.
  2. The Faith­ful: René and Juan Car­los set out to con­vert their Colom­bian megachurch to Ortho­dox Judaism. This is what hap­pened. (Gra­ciela Mochkof­sky, The Cal­i­for­nia Sun­day Mag­a­zine): this is a very sad sto­ry. The temp­ta­tions Paul warned the Gala­tians about are real.
  3. A Con­fes­sion of Lib­er­al Intol­er­ance (Nicholas Kristof, NY Times): “This bias on cam­pus­es cre­ates lib­er­al priv­i­lege. A friend is study­ing for the Law School Admis­sion Test, and the test prepa­ra­tion com­pa­ny she is using offers test-tak­ers a tip: Read­ing com­pre­hen­sion ques­tions will typ­i­cal­ly have a lib­er­al slant and a lib­er­al answr.”
  4. Face­book is going to get more polit­i­cal­ly biased, not less (Ezra Klein, Vox): “The bad press Face­book has received for polit­i­cal bias in recent days is like­ly to push it away from human cura­tion and toward yet more algo­rith­mic cura­tion. The irony is that will make Face­book more of an echo cham­ber, not less of one. Face­book’s human cura­tors are under pres­sure to present both sides, but its algo­rith­mic cura­tors are not.” The arti­cle Klein is respond­ing to is For­mer Face­book Work­ers: We Rou­tine­ly Sup­pressed Con­ser­v­a­tive News (Michael Nunez, Giz­mo­do).
  5. World Hunger Is At Its Low­est Point In 25 Years. Thank Democ­ra­cy. (Lib­by Nel­son, Vox): and as I nev­er tire of point­ing out, for wide­spread democ­ra­cy thank Bible-believ­ing Chris­tians. You’re wel­come.
  6. Ravi Zacharias On The Chris­t­ian View Of Homo­sex­u­al­i­ty (YouTube): the clip is 11 min­utes long.
  7. Where John Piper and Oth­er Evan­gel­i­cals Stand on Black Lives Mat­ter (Mor­gan Lee, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Piper also encour­aged white evan­gel­i­cals to ‘pause’ before say­ing any­thing like, ‘All lives matter.’ ‘Because if you quick­ly add that, it sounds like a rebuke,’ he said. ‘It sounds like a min­i­miz­ing of what was just said. It sounds like the point that was try­ing to be made isn’t worth being made,’ he said. ‘… Of course that is true, all lives mat­ter, but oh how tim­ing mat­ters and how con­text matters.’”
  8. How Bath­rooms Became the New Legal Bat­tle­ground of the Reli­gious Right (Michelle Gold­berg, Slate): Very slant­ed but inter­est­ing piece. “Polls sug­gest that a slight plu­ral­i­ty of Amer­i­cans believe peo­ple should have to use the bath­rooms that match the sex on their birth cer­tifi­cate. To a lib­er­al, this is evi­dence that more edu­ca­tion is need­ed. To a con­ser­v­a­tive, it’s proof that aver­age people’s pref­er­ences are being tram­pled on.”
  9. Amus­ing:

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 48

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. The dis­claimers are espe­cial­ly rel­e­vant for many of today’s links.

  1. This first sec­tion is a lot — buck­le up if you’re inter­est­ed. Two pas­tors recent­ly debat­ed guns — both are very thought­ful and are skill­ful debaters.  Here is the con­ver­sa­tion so far. All the posts are pret­ty short.
  2. The Mer­cy Girls (Jen­nifer Miller, Slate): a very inter­est­ing piece about a Chris­t­ian coun­sel­ing min­istry. One sig­nif­i­cant bit buried with­in it: “Ninety-four per­cent of respon­dents on 2013 sur­veys (com­mis­sioned by Mer­cy and con­duct­ed by inde­pen­dent firms) answered ‘yes’ to the ques­tion, ‘Did Mer­cy Min­istries help you trans­form your life and restore your hope?’ Eighty-two per­cent said they were ‘well adjust­ed to life’ after leav­ing the pro­gram. And 85 per­cent said they had spent time at oth­er treat­ment cen­ters before Mer­cy, with­out long-term results.” Those sta­tis­tics should have been even more cen­tral to the sto­ry.
  3. Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty May Help HIV Patients Sur­vive Longer (Emma Green, The Atlantic): inter­est­ing. The last para­graph is a reminder that one’s assump­tions great­ly influ­ence one’s inter­pre­ta­tions.
  4. Why Has There Been An Exo­dus Of Black Res­i­dents From West Coast Lib­er­al Hubs? (Aaron Ren, LA Times): “Though results vary to some extent, the broad trend is clear: West Coast pro­gres­sive enclaves are either see­ing an exo­dus of blacks or are fail­ing to attract them. Mid­west­ern and North­east­ern urban areas are attract­ing blacks to the extent that they are afford­able or pro­vid­ing mid­dle class eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ties. And South­ern cities are now expe­ri­enc­ing the most sig­nif­i­cant gains.” I expect wild­ly diver­gent reac­tions to this. I found it very inter­est­ing. A relat­ed line of thinking: why col­leges are the way they are.
  5. Amus­ing:

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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.

Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links (you can also have your non-Stan­ford friends sign up to receive them at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/subscribe)

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 47

On Fri­days I share articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

  1. Chi­na Reveals What It Wants To Do With Chris­tian­i­ty (Brent Ful­ton, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “how China’s athe­is­tic regime plans to deal with the country’s grow­ing Chris­t­ian pop­u­la­tion, pro­ject­ed to become the world’s largest with­in the next cou­ple decades.”
  2. After Pas­tor’s Wife Buried Alive, Chi­nese Church Wins Land Bat­tle (Sarah Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): use­ful to read in con­junc­tion with the pre­ced­ing arti­cle.
  3. Radi­ant Zinc Fire­works Reveal Qual­i­ty of Human Egg (Mar­la Paul, North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty News): you were formed in a burst of light. For real. “I praise you because I am fear­ful­ly and won­der­ful­ly made” (Psalm 139:14)
  4. You’re More Like­ly To Die In A Human Extinc­tion Event Than A Car Crash (Robin­son Mey­er, The Atlantic): but did they fac­tor in the return of Christ?
  5. Relat­ing To The Skep­tics (Robert Mims, PE News): short and encour­ag­ing.
  6. Are History’s “Greatest Philoso­pher­s” All That Great? (Gre­go­ry Lewis, Dai­ly Nous): inter­est­ing but miss­es a huge point. Socrates is not famous mere­ly for the words he used — he is famous for the life he lived. Great­ness is not a mat­ter of clev­er­ness alone. 
  7. Things that tick­led me:

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 46

On Fri­days I share articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

  1. The Dan­ger Of A Sin­gle Sto­ry (David Brooks, NY Times): “stories have become iden­ti­ty mark­ers. This is a phe­nom­e­non bor­rowed from cam­pus polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness. In order to express your sol­i­dar­i­ty with the vir­tu­ous team, you have to embrace the social­ly approved sto­ry. If you dif­fer from the offi­cial sto­ry.… it is a sign that you have false alle­giances. You must embrace the approved sto­ry to show you are not com­plic­it in a sys­tem of oppression.”
  2. How To Fix Pol­i­tics (David Brooks, NY Times): “People put pol­i­tics at the cen­ter of their psy­cho­log­i­cal, emo­tion­al and even spir­i­tu­al life. This is ask­ing too much of pol­i­tics. Once pol­i­tics becomes your eth­nic and moral iden­ti­ty, it becomes impos­si­ble to com­pro­mise, because com­pro­mise becomes dishonor.”
  3. Ohio State Turns The Con­cept of ‘Safe Space’ Against Stu­dent Pro­test­ers (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “speech codes imple­ment­ed in the late 1980s and ear­ly 90s with the inten­tion of pro­tect­ing black stu­dents were ulti­mate­ly used to charge and pun­ish more black stu­dents than white stu­dents. Inso­far as cam­pus con­cepts like safe spaces, microag­gres­sions, and claims of trau­ma over minor alter­ca­tions spread from activist cul­ture to cam­pus cul­ture, the pow­er­ful will inevitably make use of them.” See his fol­low-up The Tools Of Cam­pus Activists Are Being Turned Against Them.
  4. Fired For Preach­ing: Geor­gia Dumps Doc­tor Over Church Ser­mons (Todd Starnes, Fox News): “First, they silenced the sheep – and now they are try­ing to silence the shepherds.”
  5. More From Michael McConnell On The Sup­ple­men­tary Brief­ing In ‘Zubik vs Bur­well’ (Eugene Volokh, Wash­ing­ton Post): the title is a lit­tle snore induc­ing, but the con­tent is quite stim­u­lat­ing. It’s a Stan­ford law professor’s thoughts on the nun­s suing the gov­ern­ment.
  6. Brazil’s Evan­gel­i­cals Flex Polit­i­cal Pow­er In Impeach­ment Dra­ma (Cather­ine Osborne, NPR): I rec­om­mend lis­ten­ing to the audio rather than mere­ly read­ing the tran­script.
  7. Har­ri­et Tub­man: The “Moses” Of Her Peo­ple (Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “If a slave want­ed to quit in the midst of a res­cue, Tub­man would hold a revolver to his head and ask him to reconsider.” Note that this arti­cle is not a response to Tub­man appear­ing on the $20 bill, this is from an old series called 131 Chris­tians Every­one Should Know (FYI — the relat­ed arti­cles are quite inter­est­ing). For some­thing more recent, check out the GetRe­li­gion post Hon­or­ing Har­ri­et Tub­man, a Methodist, Repub­li­can, Evan­gel­i­cal Woman For the Ages.
  8. The Absurd Pri­ma­cy of the Car in Amer­i­can Life (Edward Humes, The Atlantic): “If U.S. roads were a war zone, they would be the most dan­ger­ous bat­tle­field the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary has ever encountered.”
  9. Trust Us: Politi­cians Keep Most Of Their Promis­es (Tim­o­thy Hill, FiveThir­tyEight): Inter­est­ing arti­cle, although I note that “most” is a very key word. A friend who keeps â…” of the promis­es they make to you keeps most of their promis­es — but would you call that friend trust­wor­thy?
  10. Amus­ing:

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 45

On Fri­days I share articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

This week there are a few more links than nor­mal. Enjoy!

  1. New Evi­dence On When The Bible Was Writ­ten: Ancient Shop­ping Lists (Isabel Ker­sh­n­er, New York Times): “One of the long­stand­ing argu­ments for why the main body of bib­li­cal lit­er­a­ture was not writ­ten down in any­thing like its present form until after the destruc­tion and exile of 586 B.C. is that before then there was not enough lit­er­a­cy or enough scribes to sup­port such a huge under­tak­ing. But if the lit­er­a­cy rates in the Arad fortress were repeat­ed across the king­dom of Judah, which had about 100,000 peo­ple, there would have been hun­dreds of lit­er­ate peo­ple, the Tel Aviv research team suggests.” — also check out the AP/Guardian on this.
  2. Is Porn Immoral? That Doesn’t Mat­ter: It’s a Pub­lic Health Cri­sis (Gaile Dines, Wash­ing­ton Post): “After 40 years of peer-reviewed research, schol­ars can say with con­fi­dence that porn is an indus­tri­al prod­uct that shapes how we think about gen­der, sex­u­al­i­ty, rela­tion­ships, inti­ma­cy, sex­u­al vio­lence and gen­der equal­i­ty — for the worse…. just as the tobac­co indus­try argued for decades that there was no proof of a con­nec­tion between smok­ing and lung can­cer, so, too, has the porn indus­try, with the help of a well-oiled pub­lic rela­tions machine, denied the exis­tence of empir­i­cal research on the impact of its products.”
  3. Face­book Employ­ees Asked Mark Zucker­berg If They Should Try To Stop A Don­ald Trump Pres­i­den­cy (Michael Nunez, Giz­mo­do): “Facebook has toyed with skew­ing news in the past. Dur­ing the 2008 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, Face­book secret­ly tam­pered with 1.9 mil­lion user’s news feeds. An aca­d­e­m­ic paper was pub­lished about the secret exper­i­ment, claim­ing that Face­book increased vot­er turnout by more than 340,000 peo­ple. In 2010, the com­pa­ny tam­pered with news feeds again. It con­duct­ed a 61-mil­lion-per­son exper­i­ment to see how Face­book could impact the real-world vot­ing behav­ior of mil­lions of peo­ple. In 2012, Face­book delib­er­ate­ly exper­i­ment­ed on its user­s’ emo­tions.  The com­pa­ny, again, secret­ly tam­pered with the news feeds of 700,000 peo­ple and con­clud­ed that Face­book can basi­cal­ly make you feel what­ev­er it wants you to.”
  4. I Was A Clos­et­ed Chris­t­ian At The Pen­ta­gon (Matthew Spence, Wash­ing­ton Post): “I feared how com­ing out as a prac­tic­ing Chris­t­ian would define me. I wor­ried that my boss­es, peers and sub­or­di­nates might asso­ciate me with Amer­i­can offi­cials who have spo­ken of U.S. mil­i­tary engage­ments in the Mid­dle East as ‘cru­sades’ or with the Islam­ic State’s dec­la­ra­tion of holy war. I feared that talk­ing about my faith would detract from the log­ic of my argu­ments. And, as a rel­a­tive­ly young per­son in a senior posi­tion, I need­ed every scrap of cred­i­bil­i­ty I could claim.”
  5. Why Jesus’ Skin Col­or Mat­ters (Chris­te­na Cleve­land, Chris­tian­i­ty Today):  “While Christ the Lord tran­scends skin col­or and racial divi­sions, white Jesus has real consequences.”
  6. Hous­ton police offi­cer presents a few “dou­ble-edged sword” sce­nar­ios regard­ing body cam­eras (red­dit): unin­tend­ed con­se­quences are always dif­fi­cult to pre­dict.
  7. Was It Wrong To Hack and Leak the Pana­ma Papers? (Tyler Cowen, blog): sur­pris­ing­ly stim­u­lat­ing.
  8. Onward Chris­t­ian Sol­diers: In the Era of Trump-Style Pol­i­tics, Evan­gel­i­cal Vot­ers Are Not a Mono­lith (Julie Lyons, Hous­ton Press): this is a very insight­ful and data-rich arti­cle.
  9. The Ten­sions Threat­en­ing the Future of Reli­gious Free­dom Law (Kelsey Dal­las, Deseret News): this is a very good sum­ma­ry of the cur­rent state of reli­gious free­dom leg­is­la­tion.
  10. Chris­tian­i­ty and Korea (Dave Haz­zan, The Diplo­mat): “Evangelical zeal to send mis­sion­ar­ies to places most oth­ers would nev­er go – includ­ing Afghanistan, Iraq, Jor­dan, and Yemen – have caused headaches for the gov­ern­ment. In 2007, after ignor­ing the government’s advice, 27 Kore­an mis­sion­ar­ies to Afghanistan were kid­napped by the Tal­iban, and two were killed. In 2009, the Kore­an for­eign min­istry warned Kore­an Chris­tians to stop mis­sion­iz­ing in Arab coun­tries, fear­ing it was mak­ing Kore­ans ter­ror­ist targets.”9
  11. Kin­da Ran­dom

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 44

On Fri­days I share articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

  1. How Covenants Make Us (David Brooks, NYT): “A con­tract pro­tects inter­ests, Pal­ly notes, but a covenant pro­tects rela­tion­ships. A covenant exists between peo­ple who under­stand they are part of one anoth­er. It involves a vow to serve the rela­tion­ship that is sealed by love: Where you go, I will go. Where you stay, I will stay. Your peo­ple shall be my peo­ple. Peo­ple in a con­tract pro­vide one anoth­er ser­vices, but peo­ple in a covenant delight in offer­ing gifts.”
  2. When Reli­gious Groups Do What the Gov­ern­ment Won’t (Alana Semuels, The Atlantic): inter­est­ing through­out.
  3. Let’s Make Foot­ball A Col­lege Major (David John­son, Aeon): I am large­ly per­suad­ed. If a per­for­mance art can be a major, then why not a sport such as foot­ball? At least give ath­letes aca­d­e­m­ic cred­it for the work they put in.
  4. Is It Time for Amer­i­can Chris­tians to Dis­obey the Gov­ern­ment? (David Koyzis, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): the piece is much less alarmist than the title sug­gests. Worth read­ing.
  5. PIN Analy­sis (Nick Berry, blog): this is a pret­ty cool analy­sis of the dis­tri­b­u­tion of four dig­it PIN codes.
  6. Final­ly, some arti­cles by stu­dents in or alum­ni from our min­istry. If you get some­thing pub­lished, be sure to let me know!

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

 

 

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 43

On Fri­days I share articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

  1. Mid­dle Knowl­edge and the Calvin­ist-Armin­ian Debate (Craig Blomberg, per­son­al blog): This is what I was talk­ing about in my ser­mon this week. Also see the YouTube video where Dr. William Lane Craig explains it to a Sun­day School class.
  2. What Apple’s Encryp­tion Fight Has To Do With Reli­gious Free­dom (Chelsea Langston, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “[Apple’s] exam­ple reminds us of the broad impor­tance of pro­tect­ing organizations—both sec­u­lar and reli­gious, for-prof­it and non-profit—from com­pul­sion to act against their most foun­da­tion­al values.”
  3. How To Hack An Elec­tion (Jor­dan Robert­son, Michael Riley, and Andrew Willis, Bloomberg Busi­ness­week): this is a fas­ci­nat­ing and unset­tling arti­cle. ‘On the ques­tion of whether the U.S. pres­i­den­tial cam­paign is being tam­pered with, he is unequiv­o­cal. “I’m 100 per­cent sure it is,” he says.’
  4. Is Islam a Reli­gion of Peace? A For­mer Mus­lim Weighs In. (Dar­gan Thomp­son, Rel­e­vant Mag­a­zine): “What I’m say­ing is the foun­da­tions of Islam—I’m talk­ing about the Quran and the life of Muhammed—are very vio­lent. Islam can be for­mu­lat­ed in non-vio­lent ways, but to do so, you have to depart from its foun­da­tions, as many Mus­lims do.”
  5. Reli­gion is the Foun­da­tion of Democ­ra­cy and Pros­per­i­ty (Clay­ton Chris­tensen, Mor­mon Per­spec­tives): the author, a Har­vard pro­fes­sor, talks about a con­ver­sa­tion he had with a friend, “I learned the impor­tance of reli­gion for the strength of democ­ra­cy and cap­i­tal­ism in a con­ver­sa­tion 12 years ago with a Marx­ist econ­o­mist from Chi­na who was near­ing the end of a Ful­bright Fel­low­ship in Boston. I asked my friend if he had learned here any­thing that was sur­pris­ing or unex­pect­ed. His response was imme­di­ate and, to me, quite pro­found: ‘I had no idea how crit­i­cal reli­gion is to the func­tion­ing of democ­ra­cy and cap­i­tal­ism.’ ”
  6. Per­son­al Love and the Call to Chasti­ty (Saman­tha Schroed­er, The Pub­lic Dis­course): there is a lot I like and a lot I don’t like about this arti­cle.
  7. Here’s Every Bib­li­cal Ref­er­ence in ‘Hamilton’ (Alis­sa Wilkin­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): of inter­est to the Hamil­ton fanat­ics who seem to abound in Chi Alpha.

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links (you can also have your non-Stan­ford friends sign up to receive them at that site)

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 42

On Fri­days I share articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

  1. Jesus of Nazareth, Whose Mes­sian­ic Mes­sage Cap­ti­vat­ed Thou­sands, Dies at About 33 (Sam Roberts, Van­i­ty Fair): What would Jesus’ New York Times obit­u­ary have looked like? Clever, well-done, and Good Fri­day appro­pri­ate.
  2. Anato­my of Doubt (Ira Glass, This Amer­i­can Life): this is an amaz­ing, dis­turb­ing sto­ry. There are com­pan­ion print pieces as well, but lis­ten to the podcast. 
  3. Do We Still Need Pris­ons? (Paul Kir­by, Volte­face): this arti­cle by David Cameron’s for­mer direc­tor of pub­lic pol­i­cy is full of cre­ative ideas. Two relat­ed thoughts worth pon­der­ing: the Bible nev­er com­mands a gov­ern­ment to build pris­ons, and Jesus said He came to set the pris­on­ers free.
  4. How well online dat­ing works, accord­ing to some­one who has been study­ing it for years (Rober­to Fer­d­man, Wonkblog): this an inter­view with a Stan­ford prof.  “It’s kind of super­fi­cial. But it’s super­fi­cial because we’re kind of super­fi­cial; it’s like that because humans are like that. Judg­ing what some­one else looks like first is not an attribute of tech­nol­o­gy, it’s an attribute of how we look at peo­ple. Dat­ing, both mod­ern and not, is a fair­ly super­fi­cial endeavor.”
  5. A Dia­log On Race and Speech at Yale (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): the colum­nist has a very insight­ful email inter­change with a Yale under­grad.
  6. Ban­ning Cred­it Checks Harms African-Amer­i­cans (Tyler Cowen): “In states that passed cred­it-check bans, it  became eas­i­er for peo­ple with bad cred­it his­to­ries to com­pete for employ­ment. But dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly, they seem to have elbowed aside black job-seekers.” — read a more thor­ough sum­ma­ry at Wonkblog.
  7. A clus­ter of voic­es speak­ing about the reli­gious free­dom case recent­ly argued before the Supreme Court:
    • Stan­ford pro­fes­sor Michael McConnell’s take on the oral argu­ments: “At a time of ris­ing divi­sive­ness and polar­iza­tion, it would be great­ly calm­ing if the Court could unite in this case to pro­tect the rights of many with absolute­ly no injury to any­one else, or to the pub­lic good.”
    • Reli­gious Free­dom Deserves Def­er­ence: Our View Edi­to­r­i­al Board, USA Today): “To imag­ine that non-prof­its whose very exis­tence is tied to reli­gion do not deserve more def­er­ence than for-prof­it busi­ness­es is quite a stretch.”
    • Lit­tle Sis­ters, Big Case (Rus­sell Moore, The Hill): “Over 100 mil­lion Amer­i­cans don’t have health plans that must offer the government’s drugs. The gov­ern­ment exempts big busi­ness­es such as Exxon and big munic­i­pal­i­ties such as New York City, and does so just to reduce admin­is­tra­tive incon­ve­nience for these enti­ties. The gov­ern­ment even exempts itself, refus­ing to require the U.S. military—the nation’s largest employer—to pro­vide the same drugs they want to force the Lit­tle Sis­ters of the Poor to provide.”
  8. Quick Links

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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