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<\/a>Fr Rob<\/strong><\/a>, on enough is enough, from Lynne Twist, and that we need to waken with thoughts of God\u2019s faithful love. \u201cThat does not mean it has to be this way, which is the author\u2019s ultimate point as it was yours. \u00a0 But it does mean, I think,\u00a0 that we will have to diligent in reconditioning ourselves to live with gratitude and contentment instead of this sense of lack.\u201d<\/p>\nDick Staub on Obama\u2019s faith<\/strong><\/a>: \u201c(RNS) The flap about President Obama\u2019s religious affiliation reveals our national ignorance about religion in general and Christianity in particular. Here are some facts we ought to understand about Christianity before we go around rating the Christian character of Obama or anyone else:\u2026\u201d Apart from the adolescent ending \u2014 Jesus didn\u2019t call himself a Christian \u2014 Staub\u2019s reflections are helpful for civil discussions.<\/p>\n Beauty is in the right eye<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cIt\u2019s said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but that\u2019s only half-true for the Gouldian finch. Jennifer Templeton from Knox College, Illinois has found that these beautiful birds only display their famous fussiness over mates if they\u2019re looking with their right eye. If the right is shut, and the left eye is open, the birds have more catholic tastes. As Templeton writes, \u201cBeauty, therefore, is in the\u00a0right<\/em>\u00a0eye of the beholder for these songbirds.\u201d<\/p>\n Ann on uncommon decency one<\/strong><\/a> and two<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n Julian Hardyman interviews Vaughan Roberts about same-sex attraction<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cJulian<\/em>: Does the disclosure that same sex attraction is one of your personal battles mean you are defining yourself as a homosexual?\u00a0Vaughan<\/em>: No, it doesn\u2019t. It\u2019s important to reiterate that I have acknowledged a struggle in all eight of the areas the book covers and not just in one. The brokenness of the fallen world afflicts us all in various ways. We will be conscious of different battles to varying degrees at different moments of a day and in different seasons of our lives. No one battle, of the many we face, however strongly, defines us, but our identity as Christians flows rather from our relationship with Christ.\u00a0All of us are sinners, and sexual sinners. But, if we have turned to Christ, we are new creations, redeemed from slavery to sin through our union with Christ in his death and raised with him by the Spirit to a new life of holiness, while we wait for a glorious future in his presence when he returns. These awesome realities define me and direct me to the kind of life I should live. In acknowledging that I know something of all eight battles covered in my book, therefore, I\u2019m not making a revelation about my fundamental identity, other than that, like all Christians, I am a sinner saved by grace, called to live in the brokenness of a fallen world until Christ returns and brings all our battles to an end.\u201d<\/p>\n An incomparable resignation<\/strong><\/a> \u2014 thanks to Roger: \u201cAnd so, on and on it goes. Where it stops\u2026. It\u2019s apparently in the DNA of some evangelicals to conduct inquisitions and \u201cinvestigate\u201d fellow evangelicals, even their friends, from time to time to prove some point. I resign right now, in advance, from any organization that engages in or will engage in such nonsense\u2014aimed at fellow evangelicals who are orthodox Christians (Christologically defined). It\u2019s a bad habit.\u201d<\/p>\n Sarah Bessey\u2019s heart-felt confession of faithfulness and love and struggle and mutual changing\u2026 good read<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cI looked back on that season of our marriage, the season when we were\u00a0so<\/em>\u00a0different, and I remembered you telling me that this was not going to change us. We could give each other the gift of time, and space, room to change without fear.\u00a0There wasn\u2019t an urgency of trying to convince each other, was there?<\/strong>\u00a0I didn\u2019t feel the need to make you believe and think in my ways. I understood why you were there. And you gave me the same grace, didn\u2019t you? You even gave me the extra measure, the freedom to explore my struggles and ideas and weaknesses in a public place, you were not threatened by me. And when you were faced with the choice between full-time vocational ministry or a strong marriage, you chose me. Don\u2019t think I\u2019ll ever forget it. Don\u2019t think I\u2019ll ever forget how you stay here, in a small city in Canada, for me, for our tinies, even now. Don\u2019t think I\u2019ll forget how we each let each other be wrong, for a long time, each.\u201d<\/p>\n Local priest \u2014 Bob Barron<\/strong><\/a> \u2014 and evangelism.<\/p>\n Surprised<\/strong><\/a>? Not I. \u201cUp for a promotion? If you\u2019re a man, you might want to get out the clippers.\u00a0Men with shaved heads are perceived to be more masculine, dominant and, in some cases, to have greater leadership potential than those with longer locks or with thinning hair, according to a recent study out of the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Wharton School.\u201d<\/p>\n Roger, I\u2019m reading Swartz\u2019s book<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cBut there are still signs of hope. The other day I met a former student who, when he was my student, was a kind of late hippie and a progressive activist. I remember seeing him demonstrate (peacefully with a sign) at the dedication of a multi-million dollar religious building. Now he wears a suit and tie and his hair is neatly trimmed. He heads up a state non-profit organization to fight hunger. According to him, relying on government statistics, there are millions of children at risk for hunger in America. His organization is bringing religious groups and government agencies together to find constructive ways to use government and private funds to eradicate hunger. It\u2019s a lofty goal, but just the kind of goal the evangelical left talked about in the heady days of the 1970s. I don\u2019t hear that goal talked about among the religious right. So far as I can tell, they have no plan to eradicate hunger among America\u2019s children. So far as I can tell, they are only interested in fighting \u201cgay rights\u201d and abortion and redistribution of wealth. (I have listened to their radio programs and read their books.) May my former student\u2019s tribe increase.\u201d<\/p>\n About as good as it gets when it comes to a sketch of friendship and research<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n Meanderings in the News<\/strong><\/p>\n The USNews and World Report college rankings \u2014 a racket?<\/strong><\/a> \u201cU.S. News likes to claim that it uses\u00a0rigorous methodology<\/a>, but, honestly, it\u2019s just a list put together by magazine editors. The whole exercise is a little silly. Or rather, it would be if it weren\u2019t so pernicious.\u00a0Magazines compile lists because people like to read them. With U.S. News having folded its print edition two years ago, its rankings \u2014 not just of colleges, but law schools, graduate schools and even high schools \u2014 are probably what keep the enterprise alive. People care enough about its rankings\u00a0to pay $34.95<\/a>\u00a0to seek out the details on the U.S. News Web site.\u00a0And they imbue these rankings with an authority that is largely unjustified. Universities that want\u00a0to game the rankings<\/a>\u00a0can easily do so. U.S. News cares a lot about how much money a school raises and how much it spends: on faculty; on small classes; on facilities; and so on. It cares about how selective the admissions process is.\u201d<\/p>\n Global warming and bad weather?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Foodie backlash<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cWestern industrial civilisation is eating itself stupid. We are living in the Age of Food. Cookery programmes bloat the television schedules, cookbooks strain the bookshop tables, celebritychefs<\/a>\u00a0hawk their own brands of weird mince pies (Heston Blumenthal<\/a>) or bronze-moulded pasta (Jamie Oliver<\/a>) in the supermarkets, and cooks in super-expensive\u00a0restaurants<\/a>\u00a0from Chicago to Copenhagen are the subject of hagiographic profiles in serious magazines and newspapers. Food festivals (or, if you will, \u201cFeastivals\u201d) are the new rock festivals, featuring thrilling live stage performances of, er, cooking.<\/p>\n But would the British like that \u201cBritishisation\u201d word?<\/strong><\/a> \u201cThere is little that irks British defenders of the English language more than Americanisms, which they see creeping insidiously into newspaper columns and everyday conversation. But bit by bit British English is invading America too.\u00a0\u201cSpot on<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 it\u2019s just ludicrous!\u201d snaps Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguist at the University of California at Berkeley.\u00a0\u201cYou are just impersonating an Englishman when you say\u00a0spot on<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n This makes sense<\/strong> <\/a>\u2014 IF everyone has a computer and constant access.<\/p>\n To helmet or not helmet?<\/strong><\/a> \u201cI rode all day at a modest clip, on both sides of the Seine, in the Latin Quarter, past the Louvre and along the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es, feeling exhilarated, not fearful. And I had tons of bareheaded bicycling company amid the Parisian traffic. One common denominator of successful bike programs around the world \u2014 from Paris to Barcelona to Guangzhou \u2014 is that almost no one wears a helmet, and there is no pressure to do so.\u00a0In the United States the notion that bike helmets promote health and safety by preventing head injuries is taken as pretty near God\u2019s truth. Un-helmeted cyclists are regarded as irresponsible, like people who smoke. Cities are aggressive in helmet promotion.\u00a0But many European health experts have taken a very different view: Yes, there are studies that show that if you fall off a bicycle at a certain speed and hit your head, a helmet can reduce your risk of serious head injury. But such falls off bikes are rare \u2014 exceedingly so in mature urban cycling systems.\u201d<\/p>\n Need a job? Think tech<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cThat teacher, Steven Edouard, knows a few things about the subject. When he is not volunteering as a computer science instructor four days a week, Mr. Edouard works at\u00a0Microsoft<\/a>. He is one of 110 engineers from high-tech companies who are part of a Microsoft program aimed at getting high school students hooked on computer science, so they go on to pursue careers in the field.\u00a0In doing so, Microsoft is taking an unusual approach to tackling a shortage of computer science graduates \u2014 one of the most serious issues facing the technology industry, and a broader challenge for the nation\u2019s economy.\u00a0There are likely to be 150,000 computing jobs opening up each year through 2020, according to an analysis of federal forecasts by the Association for Computing Machinery, a professional society for computing researchers. But despite the hoopla around start-up celebrities like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, fewer than 14,000 American students received undergraduate degrees in computer science last year, the Computing Research Association estimates. And the wider job market remains weak.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/40\/2012\/10\/Screen-Shot-2012-10-04-at-4.18.07-PM-236x300.png\" "\\"Screen")
<\/a>\u201cSpiritual but not religious\u201d: a good example of a rant by someone<\/strong><\/a> who seems to have no facts and little understanding of this segment of America.<\/p>\n