{"id":6992,"date":"2022-08-19T14:03:46","date_gmt":"2022-08-19T22:03:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/?p=6992"},"modified":"2022-08-19T14:03:46","modified_gmt":"2022-08-19T22:03:46","slug":"things-glen-found-interesting-volume-364","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2022\/08\/19\/things-glen-found-interesting-volume-364","title":{"rendered":"Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 364"},"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. I welcome your suggestions. If you read something fascinating please pass it my way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This, the 364th installment, can also be expressed as the sum of consecutive primes: 11 + 13 + 17 + 19 + 23 + 29 + 31 + 37 + 41 + 43 + 47 + 53<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Things Glen Found Interesting<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
  1. One Manner of Law<\/a> (Marilynne Robinson, Harpers): \u201cAlmost fifty years ago, I learned by pure accident that a code of law was drawn up in Massachusetts in 1641 that substantially anticipated the Bill of Rights. I happened to read a letter to the editor in the New York Times<\/em> that mentioned the Massachusetts Body of Liberties. I had a PhD by then and was supposedly an Americanist by training, yet I was learning of this for the first time. When I finally read these laws, I wondered why the narrative of American history did not begin with them.\u201d<\/li>
  2. The Girls Who Resisted Boko Haram<\/a> (Jonathon Van Maren, First Things): \u201cWhile the world demanded their return, the captive girls were under relentless pressure to convert to Islam and marry militants chosen for them. They were threatened with beheading or brutal slavery if they refused. Many of the girls, paralyzed with fear, succumbed. Others buckled under the brainwashing of a militant assigned to inculcate them into the doctrines of Islam. He forced the \u2018daughters of infidels\u2019 to take hours-long classes in which they memorized the Quran. The girls were told that if they married, they would receive homes, slaves, and honor. In secret, the girls shared Bible passages and prayed fervently together for strength and rescue. They sang hymns into their hands and cups of water to stifle the sound.\u201d<\/li>
  3. Why I Left Academia (Since You\u2019re Wondering)<\/a> (William Deresiewicz, Quillette): \u201c\u2026it wasn\u2019t so much that I wanted to be treated differently than everybody as that I wanted everybody to be treated differently. I wanted the rules to change; I played by the ones that I thought we should have. I insisted on behaving as if I existed in an environment that valued teaching as much as scholarship and intellectualism as much as specialization. Where opening the eyes of a hundred undergraduates was worth as much as supervising one more dissertation, and publishing an essay in a periodical that\u2019s read by tens of thousands was as valuable as adding one more item to the pile of disregarded studies.\u201d This is quite good, more relevant to the humanities than to the sciences. <\/li>
  4. I Didn\u2019t Want It to Be True, but the Medium Really Is the Message<\/a> (Ezra Klein, New York Times): \u201cAmericans are capitalists, and we believe nothing if not that if a choice is freely made, that grants it a presumption against critique. That is one reason it\u2019s so hard to talk about how we are changed by the mediums we use. That conversation, on some level, demands value judgments. This was on my mind recently, when I heard Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist who\u2019s been collecting data on how social media harms teenagers, say, bluntly, \u2018People talk about how to tweak it \u2014 oh, let\u2019s hide the like counters. Well, Instagram tried \u2014 but let me say this very clearly: There is no way, no tweak, no architectural change that will make it OK for teenage girls to post photos of themselves, while they\u2019re going through puberty, for strangers or others to rate publicly.\u2019 \u201d