{"id":5657,"date":"2019-08-30T20:56:37","date_gmt":"2019-08-31T04:56:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/?p=5657"},"modified":"2019-08-30T20:56:39","modified_gmt":"2019-08-31T04:56:39","slug":"things-glen-found-interesting-volume-216","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2019\/08\/30\/things-glen-found-interesting-volume-216","title":{"rendered":"Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 216"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

<\/a> On Fridays I share articles\/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues. Be sure to see the explanation and disclaimers at the bottom. No, really. I mean them and they matter. <\/strong>I welcome your suggestions, so if you read something fascinating please pass it my way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Things Glen Found Interesting<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
  1. The Cops Who Abused Photoshop<\/a> (Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic): this is outrageous. Difficult to excerpt, but well worth reading. Recommended by a student.<\/li>
  2. How Pornography Makes Us Less Human and Less Humane<\/a> (Matthew Lee Anderson, The Gospel Coalition): \u201cBeneath pornography is the supposition that the mere fact of our desire for a woman makes us worthy of her. And so, not being bound by any kind of norm, desire must proceed endlessly. It is no surprise that the industrialized, cheap-and-easy sex of pornography has answered and evoked an almost unrestrained sexual greed, which allows us to be gods and goddesses within the safety of our own fantasies. It is for deep and important reasons that the Ten Commandments use the economic language of \u2018coveting\u2019 to describe the badness of errant sexual desires.\u201d Many insights in this essay. 
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    1. Related: In the Face of Sexual Temptation, Repression Is a Sure-Fire Failure<\/a> (Rachel Gilson, Christianity Today): \u201cRepression and avoidance are ultimately human-centered responses. They stuff desire, suffocate it, banish it, and yet rarely succeed at engendering true purity. By contrast, Christian asceticism reminds us that we are not<\/em> stronger than desire and then invites us to cast our gaze toward the One who is. It asks the Christian to follow the sight line of desire\u2014like looking down the barrel of a gun\u2014and train it on what all desire is ultimately satisfied by: the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 4:6).\u201d<\/li>\n
    2. Related What Genetics Is Teaching Us About Sexuality<\/a> (Steven M. Phelps and Robbee Wedow, New York Times): \u201c\u2026genetic differences account for roughly one-third of the variation in same-sex behavior.\u201d The authors are professors (one of biology at UT Austin and the other of sociology at Harvard). They are also both gay men. They are reflecting on research published in the journal Science: Large-scale GWAS reveals insights into the genetic architecture of same-sex sexual behavior<\/a> (which Wedow coauthored).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>
    3. What Majority-World Missions Really Looks Like<\/a> (Dorcas Cheng-Tozun, Christianity Today): \u201cIn 2015, 9 of the top 20 sending countries\u2014including Brazil, the Philippines, China, India, Nigeria, and South Africa\u2014were in the majority world (also referred to as the developing world), with a total of 101,000 international missionaries.\u201d For context, the combined total is close to the number sent from the USA.<\/li>
    4. Why do Chinese people like their government?<\/a> (Kaiser Kuo, SupChina): \u201cIt\u2019s the rare person who can truly separate, at both an intellectual and an emotional level, criticism of his or her country from criticism of his or her country\u2019s government \u2014 especially if that government is not, at present, terribly embattled and is delivering basic public goods in a reasonably competent manner.\u201d 
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      1. Related: 9 questions about the Hong Kong protests you were too embarrassed to ask<\/a> (Jen Kirby, Vox): \u201c\u201dWhat began as a targeted protest against a controversial extradition bill in June has transformed into what feels like a battle for the future of Hong Kong. Protesters are not just fighting their local government. They\u2019re challenging one of the most powerful countries on earth: China.<\/li>\n
      2. Related: Hong Kong Democracy Activists Arrested Ahead Of Planned March<\/a> (Emily Feng & Scott Neuman, NPR): \u201cJoshua Wong, Hong Kong\u2019s most famous pro-democracy leader, was arrested on Friday along with fellow activists and politicians in what appeared to be a coordinated sweep by the city\u2019s police ahead of a mass anti-government march that had been planned for the weekend.\u201d<\/li>\n
      3. Related: The One United Struggle For Freedom<\/a> (David Brooks, New York Times): \u201cMany suspect America will never step in to help. The American right no longer believes in spreading democracy to foreigners. The American left embraces a national narrative that emphasizes slavery and oppression, not that America is a beacon or an example. Neither party any longer sees America as a vanguard nation whose very mission is to advance universal democracy and human dignity.\u201d<\/li>\n
      4. Related: China\u2019s Spies Are On The Offensive<\/a> (Mike Giglio, The Atlantic): \u201cEspionage and counterespionage have been essential tools of statecraft for centuries, of course, and U.S. and Chinese intelligence agencies have been battling one another for decades. But what these recent cases suggest is that the intelligence war is escalating\u2014that China has increased both the scope and the sophistication of its efforts to steal secrets from the U.S.\u201d Recommended by a student.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>
      5. Why Everything They Say About The Amazon, Including That It\u2019s The \u2018Lungs Of The World,\u2019 Is Wrong<\/a> (Michael Shellenberger, Forbes): \u201c\u2018What is happening in the Amazon is not exceptional,\u2019 said Coutinho. \u2018Take a look at Google web searches search for \u2018Amazon\u2019 and \u2018Amazon Forest\u2019 over time. Global public opinion was not as interested in the \u2018Amazon tragedy\u2019 when the situation was undeniably worse. The present moment does not justify global hysteria.\u2019 And while fires<\/em> in Brazil have increased, there is no evidence that Amazon forest fires<\/em> have.\u201d I found this article quite informative.<\/li>
      6. The Trump Administration Sides With Nurses Who Object to Abortion<\/a> (Emma Green, The Atlantic): \u201cBeyond its outcome, this case is a signal of the Trump administration\u2019s priorities: It sees religious freedom and conscience protections as central parts of American civil rights, and officials plan to enforce those laws.\u201d 
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        1. Related: By their tweets you will know them: The Democrats\u2019 continuing God gap<\/a> (Ryan Burge, Religion News Service): \u201cWhile the Nones have grown dramatically over the last 20 years, it\u2019s still important to realize that more than six in ten Americans identify as a Christian, according to the 2018 Cooperative Congressional Election Study. If Democrats want to win back the White House, it would behoove them to reach out to those Christian voters. However, at least on social media, Democratic candidates fail to do so.\u201d<\/li>\n
        2. Related: Democratic Party embraces nonreligious voters, criticizes \u2018religious liberty\u2019 in new resolution<\/a> (Caleb Parke, Fox News): \u201cThe Democratic National Committee (DNC) passed a resolution Saturday praising the values of \u2018religiously unaffiliated\u2019 Americans as the \u2018largest religious group within the Democratic Party.\u2019 The resolution, which was unanimously passed at the DNC\u2019s summer meeting on Aug. 24 in San Francisco, Calif., was championed by the Secular Coalition of America, an organization that lobbies on behalf of atheists, agnostics, and humanists on public policy.\u201d<\/li>\n
        3. Related: Michael Wear\u2019s commentary on Twitter: \u201cI just want to be clear. This is both politically stupid, but also, just stupid on a fundamental level that transcends electoral politics.\u201d<\/a> (Wear was an Obama staffer)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>
        4. Let\u2019s have open borders for people and closed borders for capital<\/a> (Jeff Spross, The Week): \u201c\u2026human beings aren\u2019t the only things that cross borders: goods, services, and financial capital do it all the time as well. A better response to Trump might not be to debate whether borders should be enforced, but rather enforced against what? <\/em>Specifically, the left-progressive position on borders should be something like: maximum enforcement against the movement of financial capital, moderate enforcement against goods and services, and minimal enforcement against people.\u201d 
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          1. Related: Christianity and Capitalism Reconsidered<\/a> (Alan Jacobs, personal blog): \u201c[the claim] that capitalism makes us wealthier, lets us live longer, and improves our ethics \u2014 could be right and even so<\/em> Christianity and capitalism might not be compatible. Maybe God doesn\u2019t want us to be richer and longer-lived, and maybe there are certain matters of faithfulness that transcend what most people call \u2018ethics.\u2019\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

            Less Serious Things Which Also Interested\/Amused Glen<\/h3>\n\n\n\n