Welcome to a new edition of A La Carte. These weekend editions focus on long-form content and think pieces. There’s lots of great material here, so I’m sure you’ll find something that’s of interest. There are links covering new discoveries about vegetative states, AI and the classroom, funerals in Africa, free speech in Canada, and much more.
For some of the articles, I have provided gift links, which should get you around any paywalls. However, these gift links may expire in a few days or weeks, so they may not be useful for long. Click while the clicking is good!
Sales & Deals
Today’s Kindle deals include more good books! What else would you expect? Among them is the phenomenal When Breath Becomes Air.
Meanwhile, with Mother’s Day approaching, Westminster Books has up to 65% off on books and Bibles for moms.
General Reading
How Funerals Keep Africa Poor. This may be the most interesting article I read all week. It explains how, in many parts of Africa, extravagant funerals consume vast sums of money, despite the poverty of the people. To understand this, we need to know about kinship ties and the way wealth threatens these ties. Hence, “the lavish funeral, in the end, is not a strange cultural quirk of African life, but the most visible manifestation of a social order oriented toward the destruction of accumulated surplus.”
Vegetative Patients May Be More Aware Than We Knew. This is an extremely interesting and concerning article from the New York Times. It explains that as brain-scanning technology improves, we are beginning to understand that many vegetative patients may be more aware than we knew. The reporter interviews the brother of Terri Schiavo, who, of course, has been saying this all along. (Gift link)
The Memory Maker. Here’s a thought-provoking article about the relationship of AI to the human brain. Tim Requarth is a neuroscientist who is growing concerned that picture-perfect AI-generated video is so realistic that it can create false memories within our brains. “How does the brain decide what’s real? It’s a question most of us never have to ask. Our memories feel like records—imperfect, sure, but records nonetheless. We trust them to tell us where we’ve been, what we’ve done, who we are. But that trust rests on neural machinery we can’t access, reality-sorting processes that operate beneath conscious awareness.” These processes may just be fooled by video that is hyper-realistic. (But I wonder: Do actors struggle with this, since they often watch videos of themselves playing characters?)
Can AI Be a ‘Child of God’? Inside Anthropic’s Meeting with Christian Leaders. The Washington Post tells how AI company Anthropic “hosted about 15 Christian leaders from Catholic and Protestant churches, academia, and the business world at its headquarters in late March for a two-day summit that included discussion sessions and a private dinner with senior Anthropic researchers.” It goes on to say, “Anthropic staff sought advice on how to steer Claude’s moral and spiritual development as the chatbot reacts to complex and unpredictable ethical queries, participants said. The wide-ranging discussions also covered how the chatbot should respond to users who are grieving loved ones and whether Claude could be considered a ‘child of God.’” (Gift link)
Is Schoolwork Optional Now? And then there’s this: the relationship of AI to the classroom. Just as I’m thankful that I got my education before the advent of the internet and mobile phone, some people today are expressing gratitude that they got educated before the advent of AI. Why? Because it is quickly forming “a fully automated loop” in which AI does the work, grades the work, and writes the comments about the work, so that in some contexts it is replacing teaching, learning, and everything in between. (Gift link)
History
On the History of Torture. Steven Wedgeworth looks to an old historian to consider a Christian position on torture. “Professor Schaff is wholly opposed to the use of torture in order to extract information or obtain a confession of guilt, and it is clear that he believes the best of Christian thought is also opposed to it. However, Prof. Schaff freely admits the church’s failings on this point. He begins with the ancient history of torture, moves through the early church and middle ages, and then concludes with the 18th and 19th Centuries.”
The Hardest Part Of History To Tell Is How It Felt. I don’t think I have ever linked to Defector before and may never do so again, but this article struck me as especially interesting. It deals with what the author calls “the hardest part of history,” which is going beyond merely describing how events happened to describing how they felt. He explains from his own life and from the travels of Lewis and Clark (about whom he has a new book that releases next week).
Oh Canada
As I travel (even as far afield as southern Africa), I am often asked questions about Canada, especially as it relates to free speech, euthanasia, and other contemporary issues. On that note, here are a few articles that help explain the situation.
Bill C-9: Passes Third Reading with Key Changes. CCCC (commonly known as “the four c’s”) is a helpful resource for Canadians as we consider legal matters, especially as they relate to churches and charities. This article explains the current status of Bill C-9, which aims to combat hate crimes. “The Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights tabled its report on Bill C-9 (‘Report’) in the House of Commons, which made some changes to Bill C-9. However, the Report did not address one of the biggest concerns raised by CCCC and other organizations, namely the removal of the good faith religious defence from the Criminal Code.”
Canada’s Upside-Down Political System. Another helpful organization is ARPA (Association for Reformed Political Action). In this article, they explain how Canada’s political system is meant to work in theory and how it actually works in practice.
The True Story of How Human Rights Tribunals Descended Into Complete Madness. Meanwhile, the National Post explains how human rights tribunals have expanded in their reach, scope, and power to such a degree that they now threaten basic rights and freedoms.
Ontario Distorts Cause of Death Statistics by Refusing to List Euthanasia. Jonathon Van Maren explains that Ontario, which is Canada’s most populated province, deliberately distorts statistics by refusing to list euthanasia as a cause of death. Instead, it lists the cause that made the individual eligible to be euthanized in the first place. He wonders what will happen as eligibility expands to include mental illness and disability.
Feedback
Let me know how you feel about the links in today’s Weekend A La Carte:
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Flashback
Each Gift Has Its Place. And as the gardener suits the plants to his garden, God suits the gifts to his church. He dispenses gifts to each person, each to be used in love and service to others.
Many a brilliant thirty minute sermon was undone by the preacher carrying on to the fifty minute mark.
—Carl Trueman
