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<\/a><\/p>\nRuss Douthout\u2019s piece on Joe Paterno<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cBad and mediocre people are tempted to sin by their own habitual weaknesses. The earlier lies or thefts or adulteries make the next one that much easier to contemplate. Having already cut so many corners, the thinking goes, what\u2019s one more here or there? Why even aspire to virtues that you probably won\u2019t achieve, when it\u2019s easier to remain the sinner that you already know yourself to be? But good people, heroic people, are led into temptation by their very goodness \u2014 by the illusion, common to those who have done important deeds, that they have higher responsibilities than the ordinary run of humankind. It\u2019s precisely in the service to these supposed higher responsibilities that they often let more basic ones slip away.\u201d<\/p>\n Tim Schmoyer<\/strong><\/a> on how to include teens in church ministries: \u201cI love it that more and more churches are valuing students enough to be intentional about integrating them into the larger church body, realizing that a youth ministry in isolation can have some very detrimental effects. Here\u2019s a few ideas I have for integrating teenagers into the church body and some thoughts on each.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanderings in the News<\/p>\n The Apple Borg is unstoppable<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n A nation of renters?<\/strong><\/a> \u201cIn this way, we are the quintessential young professionals of the new economy \u2013 restless knowledge workers who deal in \u201cprojects,\u201d not \u201ccareers,\u201d who can no sooner commit to a mortgage than we can a lifetime of desk work. Our attitude is a national epidemic. It\u2019s harder to get a mortgage today than it was 10 years ago. But a lot of people also just don\u2019t want one any more. At the height of the housing boom, 69 percent of American households owned their homes. Housing researcher Arthur Nelson predicted to me that number would fall to 62 percent by 2020, meaning every residence built between now and then will need to be a rental.\u201d<\/p>\n And the Roman Catholics are set to begin \u201cevangelizing\u201d their own<\/strong><\/a>, though I\u2019m not sure why it has to be seen in marketing terms: \u201cThe Roman Catholic church in England and Wales has launched its first outreach campaign to get people back into the pews, with its lapsed membership thought to number as many as five million. It started at the weekend in York with Crossing the Threshold, a national tour of talks and workshops to help clergy and parishioners re-evangelise friends and family. Around a million people regularly attend mass on Sundays, but church leaders say there are many more who are baptised but do not go to church. Kieran Conry, bishop of Arundel and Brighton, said no-shows were more likely to do with laziness and children\u2019s extra-curricular commitments than controversies surrounding the pope or clerical sexual abuse scandals. Conry said: \u201cWe have something we\u2019re trying to market and we\u2019re just reminding people there\u2019s something that can bring you happiness, satisfaction and friendship.\u201d<\/p>\n Ancient texts and crowdsourcing<\/a> \u2014 and it works!<\/p>\n On Steve Jobs, a tell-tale summary statement by none other than Malcolm Gladwell<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cPerhaps this is why Bill Gates\u2014of all Jobs\u2019s contemporaries\u2014gave him fits. Gates resisted the romance of perfectionism. Time and again, Isaacson repeatedly asks Jobs about Gates and Jobs cannot resist the gratuitous dig. \u201cBill is basically unimaginative,\u201d Jobs tells Isaacson, \u201cand has never invented anything, which I think is why he\u2019s more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology. He just shamelessly ripped off other people\u2019s ideas.\u201d After close to six hundred pages, the reader will recognize this as vintage Jobs: equal parts insightful, vicious, and delusional. It\u2019s true that Gates is now more interested in trying to eradicate malaria than in overseeing the next iteration of Word. But this is not evidence of a lack of imagination. Philanthropy on the scale that Gates practices it represents imagination at its grandest. In contrast, Jobs\u2019s vision, brilliant and perfect as it was, was narrow. He was a tweaker to the last, endlessly refining the same territory he had claimed as a young man.\u201d<\/p>\n Are the Israelis claiming they did this?<\/strong><\/a> It looks like it.<\/p>\n The ultra-orthodox in Israel and the State<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cRather than being a diorama of traditional Jewish life in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust, as many Israelis and visitors believe, Israel\u2019s present-day version of ultra-Orthodoxy is a creation of the Jewish state. Policies with unexpected effects fostered this new form of Judaism, at once cloistered and militant. So did successful measures by haredi leaders to revive a community that was shrunken by modernity and then devastated by the Holocaust.\u201d\u2026 \u201cIn economic terms, the haredi revival in Israel has been disastrous. Israel\u2019s ultra-Orthodox community is ever more dependent on the state and, through it, on other people\u2019s labor. Exploiting political patronage, ultra-Orthodox clerics have largely taken over the state\u2019s religious bureaucracy, imposing extreme interpretations of Jewish law on other Jews. By exempting the ultra-Orthodox from basic general educational requirements, the democratic state fosters a burgeoning sector of society that neither understands nor values democracy. And to protect their own growing settlements, haredi parties are now essential partners in the pro-settlement coalitions of the right.<\/p>\n Young males are suffering the most<\/strong><\/a> in our economy: \u201cThe unemployment rate for males between 25 and 34 years old with high-school diplomas is 14.4%\u2014up from 6.1% before the downturn four years ago and far above today\u2019s 9% national rate. The picture is even more bleak for slightly younger men: 22.4% for high-school graduates 20 to 24 years old. That\u2019s up from 10.4% four years ago\u2026. The share of men age 25-34 living with their parents jumped to 18.6% this year, up from 14.2% four year ago and the highest level since at least 1960, according to the Census Bureau.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a>Tony Blair\u2019s Proposal<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cThe basic point is this: on every side, in every quarter, wherever we look and analyse, religion is a powerful, motivating, determining force shaping the world around us. For some, this is final proof of the iniquity of religious faith. The answer, they say, is to abandon it. But for millions of people, faith is not measured in prejudice, intolerance or violence; but in love, compassion, a desire for and a striving for a more just and humane world. It is this belief in a higher purpose that makes them assert the civilising force of faith in the modern world. But for this to happen, religious, secular and political people need to start talking with each other to build peaceful coexistence. We need religion-friendly democracy and democracy-friendly religion. I offer here a third way. Those of us inspired by our faith must have the right to speak out on issues that concern us and in the name of our beliefs. At the same time our voice cannot predominate over the basic democratic system that functions equally for all, irrespective of those of faith or of none. In turn, this should lead to a vital debate about the nature of democracy, a debate all the more critical as we witness the Arab revolutions. I find it hard to define democracy by reference to one faith. The essence of democracy is that it is pluralistic. It is inherently secular, even if rooted in cultures that are profoundly religious. This is where democracy-friendly religion really means something very important in the way society is governed.\u201d<\/p>\n