{"id":4045,"date":"2016-05-27T14:38:14","date_gmt":"2016-05-27T22:38:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/?p=4045"},"modified":"2016-06-10T13:31:45","modified_gmt":"2016-06-10T21:31:45","slug":"things-glen-found-interesting-volume-51","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2016\/05\/27\/things-glen-found-interesting-volume-51","title":{"rendered":"Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 51"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

    \n
  1. Why America Spends So Much On The Military<\/span><\/a> (reddit): this was a surprisingly educational read. It was written in response to the claim that \u201cnext year\u2019s proposed military budget could buy every homeless person a $1 million home.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. Chewbacca Laughter Brings Unexpected Platform<\/a> (Dan Van Veen, PE News): \u201cOn 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 \u2018divine opportunity\u2019 waiting.\u201d<\/li>\n
  3. Making Sense of the Numbers of Genesis<\/a> [pdf link] (Carol Hill, Perspectives on Science and the Christian Faith): \u201cJoseph and Joshua were each recorded as dying at age 110\u2014a number considered \u2018perfect\u2019 by the Egyptians. In ancient Egyptian doctrine, the phrase \u2018he died aged 110\u2019 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 \u2018dying at age 110\u2019 bore no necessary relationship to the actual time of an individual\u2019s life span.\u201d You will not agree with everything in this article, but it is full of fascinating insights.<\/li>\n
  4. Unsafe Cars Can Save Lives<\/a> (Alex Tabarrok, Marginal Revolution): \u201cSafety is relative so cars judged unsafe by global standards could save lives in India. The bigger lesson is that it\u2019s always dangerous to impose global standards without taking into account the differing circumstances of time and place.\u201d<\/li>\n
  5. The Big Uneasy<\/span><\/a> (Nathan Heller, The New Yorker): \u201cA [university] president\u2019s job is to push past contradictions, while an activist\u2019s 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.\u201d Bonus points for quoting Tocqueville. <\/span><\/li>\n
  6. The Transgender Bathroom Debate and the Looming Title IX Crisis<\/span><\/a> (Jeannie Suk, New Yorker): \u201cWhether 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\u2026. 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.\u201c The author is a professor at Harvard Law School. <\/span><\/li>\n
  7. Claims by transgender schoolteacher (who wants to be called \u2018they\u2019) yield $60,000 settlement, agreement to create disciplinary rules regulating \u2018pronoun usage<\/span><\/a> (Eugene Volokh, Volokh Conspiracy): the second half is what captured my attention. \u201cWhen 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 \u2014 or radical grammatical modifications of old, familiar words \u2014 that convey government-favored messages about gender identity or anything else.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n
  8. Peter Thiel\u2019s funding of Hulk Hogan-Gawker litigation should not raise concerns<\/span><\/a> (Eugene Kontorovich, Volokh Conspiracy):  \u201cif 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.\u201d Also see <\/span>Tyler Cowen\u2019s take<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/li>\n
  9. Amusing: <\/span>Other Promises of God<\/span><\/a> (xkcd)<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Why Do You Send This Email?<\/b><\/h3>\n

    In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar produced shrewd warriors \u201cwho understood the times and knew what Israel should do\u201d (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.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Disclaimer<\/b><\/h3>\n

    Chi Alpha is not a partisan organization. To paraphrase another minister: we are not about the donkey\u2019s agenda and we are not about the elephant\u2019s agenda \u2014 we are about the Lamb\u2019s agenda. Having said that, I read widely (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass <\/span>the ideological Turing test<\/span><\/a> and in part because I do not believe I can fairly say \u201cI agree\u201d or \u201cI disagree\u201d until I can say \u201cI understand\u201d) 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\u2019ll usually mention it).<\/span><\/p>\n

    Also, remember that I\u2019m not reporting news \u2014 I\u2019m giving you a selection of things I found interesting. There\u2019s a lot happening in the world that\u2019s not making an appearance here because I haven\u2019t found stimulating articles written about it.<\/span><\/p>\n

    If you want to view the archives they are at <\/span>http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/category\/links<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    On Fridays I share articles\/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues. Be sure to see the explanation and disclaimers at the bottom.  Why America Spends So Much On The Military (reddit): this was a surprisingly educational read. It was written in response to the claim that \u201cnext year\u2019s proposed military budget could buy every \u2026 Continue reading \u201cThings Glen Found Interesting, Volume 51\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[124,156,113,157],"class_list":["post-4045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links","tag-apologetically-interesting","tag-campus-activism","tag-lgbtq","tag-testimonies"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Ded-13f","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4045"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4049,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4045\/revisions\/4049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}