{"id":7648,"date":"2025-04-04T23:18:13","date_gmt":"2025-04-05T06:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/?p=7648"},"modified":"2025-04-04T23:18:13","modified_gmt":"2025-04-05T06:18:13","slug":"things-glen-found-interesting-volume-498-armageddon-arxiv-and-penguins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2025\/04\/04\/things-glen-found-interesting-volume-498-armageddon-arxiv-and-penguins","title":{"rendered":"Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 498: Armageddon, arXiv, and penguins"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

<\/a>\n\n 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

Things Glen Found Interesting<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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  1. Archaeologists find first evidence of epic biblical battle at \u2018Armageddon\u2019<\/a> (Rossella Tercatin, The Times of Israel): \u201cFor the first time, a team of Israeli archaeologists has uncovered ancient artifacts at northern Israel\u2019s \u2018Armageddon\u2019 site that might offer proof of an epic battle documented in the books of Kings II and Chronicles between a king of Judah and an Egyptian pharaoh. Two academic papers published earlier this year explained how an unprecedented amount of 7th-century BCE Egyptian pottery was found in recent excavations at Megiddo, suggesting that Egyptian soldiers were indeed in the right biblical place at what could be the right biblical period.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. \u2018I Applied for a Work Visa\u2014and Was Thrown in Prison for Weeks\u2019<\/a> (Jasmine Mooney, The Free Press): \u201cThen I was taken to the nurse\u2019s office for a medical check. She asked what had happened to me and said she had never seen a Canadian here before. When I told her my story, she looked at me, grabbed my hand, and said, \u2018Do you believe in God?\u2019 I told her I had only recently found God, but that I now believed in God more than anything. \u2018I believe God brought you here for a reason,\u2019 she said. \u2018I know it feels like your life is in a million pieces, but you will be okay. Through this, I think you are going to find a way to help others.\u2019 She asked if she could pray for me. I held her hands and wept.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Inside arXiv\u2014the Most Transformative Platform in All of Science<\/a> (Sheon Han, Wired): \u201cFor scientists, imagining a world without arXiv is like the rest of us imagining one without public libraries or GPS. But a look at its inner workings reveals that it isn\u2019t a frictionless utopia of open-access knowledge. Over the years, arXiv\u2019s permanence has been threatened by everything from bureaucratic strife to outdated code to even, once, a spy scandal. In the words of Ginsparg, who usually redirects interview requests to an FAQ document\u2014on arXiv, no less\u2014and tried to talk me out of visiting him in person, arXiv is \u2018a child I sent off to college but who keeps coming back to camp out in my living room, behaving badly.\u2019\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. Rubio Orders U.S. Diplomats to Scour Student Visa Applicants\u2019 Social Media<\/a> (Edward Wong, New York Times): \u201cAs a senator from Florida, Mr. Rubio pressed the Biden administration\u2019s State Department, run by Antony J. Blinken, to cancel the visas of students involved in campus protests against Israel\u2019s military campaign in Gaza. Since becoming secretary of state in late January, Mr. Rubio has revoked perhaps 300 or more visas, many of them belonging to students, he told reporters last Thursday. He said he had been signing letters daily revoking visas.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. Trump\u2019s intuitions on tariffs won\u2019t help Americans (or penguins)<\/a> (Megan McArdle, Washington Post): \u201c\u2026I spent the twilight hours goggling at the Trump administration\u2019s new tariff schedule, trying to grasp its logic. For example, the tariffs on the Heard and McDonald islands, which have populations of zero, except for the penguins and assorted other animals. I mean, I\u2019m glad that the rapacious waddlers will no longer fleece American consumers by dumping their shoddy goods on our markets. But still the thing vexed me \u2026 what do penguins export? Besides nature documentaries, I mean. Obviously someone at the White House, possibly a soon-to-be-ex intern, pulled up a list of territories without checking whether those territories were, you know, inhabited.\u201d