Astronomers now know that the galaxy is teeming with at least as many planets ”” the presumed sites of life ”” as stars. Advanced life and technology might be rare in the cosmos, said Geoffrey W. Marcy, the Watson and Marilyn Alberts in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence professor at the University of California, Berkeley, “but surely they are out there, because the number of Earthlike planets in the Milky Way galaxy is simply too great.”

A simple “howdy,” a squeal or squawk, or an incomprehensible stream of numbers captured by one of the antennas here at the University of California’s Hat Creek Radio Observatory would be enough to end our cosmic loneliness and change history, not to mention science. It would answer one of the most profound questions humans ask: Are we alone in the universe?

Despite decades of space probes and billions of NASA dollars looking for life out there, there is still only one example of life in the universe: the DNA-based web of biology on Earth. “In this field,” said Jill Tarter, an astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., the “number two is the all-important number. We count one, two, infinity. We’re all looking for number two.”

Read it all.

ME: Dr. McCardell, you’re a lifelong Episcopalian, a scholar of the American South, and the new Vice Chancellor of Sewanee, a university founded in the mid 19th century by the Episcopal Church. You also have a second home here in Beaufort, where you attend the Parish Church of St. Helena when you’re in town. It’s an understatement to say you seem uniquely qualified to talk about the history of the Church here in Beaufort. Your first lecture will focus on St. Helena’s Parish ”“ founded in 1712 ”“ during the Colonial period. Is there anything you can tell our readers about the church during this era that might whet their appetite to learn more?

JM: Where to begin?! This is, above all, a story of courage and faithfulness through good times and bad, and a story of perseverance in the faith often at moments of extraordinary external challenge.
Beaufort, founded in 1711, as many of your readers know, is the second oldest town in South Carolina. Under the terms of the Church Act of 1706, Anglican parishes in South Carolina were to be the units of government as well as centers of worship. Thus, within a year, by 1712, the Anglican Parish of St. Helena was created to serve this dual purpose for Beaufort and the Sea Islands. The Vestry of St. Helena’s thus had broad powers to tax, to hold elections, for example, as well as to conduct regular worship services.
The Rev. William Guy served as the first minister at St. Helena’s. Technically he was a missionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. The assignment to this, “the most remote Parish in the country,” as he described it, posed considerable challenges. In his first report back to the SPG in 1714, Rev. Guy noted that he had fourteen communicants, while there were also “several dissenters” in Beaufort. “As to the heathen and Infidels,” he added, “the number being in my Parish are 270.”

Read it all.

This year’s college freshmen are more studious than their counterparts of the past few years, says an annual survey released today on their high school academic habits.

More of them took notes in class, did homework and took more demanding coursework as high school seniors, and fewer said they drank alcohol, partied or showed up late for class.

Those and other trends point toward an entering college freshman class that has a better chance of succeeding academically, say researchers who conducted the survey.

Read it all.

One might add to the list of the many causes of the divide: cynicism spread by cynical popular culture and mass media; hyper-individualism (St. Ayn Rand) and denigration of community and support of “the common life;” polarization in politics and the loss of civility in “discourse;” quick-fix solutions to problems in religious, educational, and cultural life where patience would have more to offer; certainly the move into the world(s) of virtual reality with artificiality and insubstantiality in the bytes-world; radical pluralism and the jostling it brings. I know, I know: there is an up side to most of these, but we need to remind ourselves of more causes of division and isolation of “classes” than get much attention in Charles Murray’s world.

That being said, [Charles] Murray is still worth a read, not least of all because of data with which he works and statistics he presents. Of the numerous “worlds” he headlines for the “white working class”: “Marriage down 36 percentage points;” “males with jobs working fewer than 40 hours per week, ” “percentage doubled;” “secularism up 21 percentage points. . . .”

Read it all.

America is coming apart. For most of our nation’s history, whatever the inequality in wealth between the richest and poorest citizens, we maintained a cultural equality known nowhere else in the world””for whites, anyway. “The more opulent citizens take great care not to stand aloof from the people,” wrote Alexis de Tocqueville, the great chronicler of American democracy, in the 1830s. “On the contrary, they constantly keep on easy terms with the lower classes: They listen to them, they speak to them every day….”

When Americans used to brag about “the American way of life”””a phrase still in common use in 1960””they were talking about a civic culture that swept an extremely large proportion of Americans of all classes into its embrace. It was a culture encompassing shared experiences of daily life and shared assumptions about central American values involving marriage, honesty, hard work and religiosity.

Over the past 50 years, that common civic culture has unraveled….

Read it all.

In the past, workers with average skills, doing an average job, could earn an average lifestyle. But, today, average is officially over. Being average just won’t earn you what it used to. It can’t when so many more employers have so much more access to so much more above average cheap foreign labor, cheap robotics, cheap software, cheap automation and cheap genius. Therefore, everyone needs to find their extra ”” their unique value contribution that makes them stand out in whatever is their field of employment. Average is over.

Yes, new technology has been eating jobs forever, and always will. As they say, if horses could have voted, there never would have been cars. But there’s been an acceleration. As Davidson notes, “In the 10 years ending in 2009, [U.S.] factories shed workers so fast that they erased almost all the gains of the previous 70 years; roughly one out of every three manufacturing jobs ”” about 6 million in total ”” disappeared.”

And you ain’t seen nothin’ yet….

Read it all.

…a tragedy in Lewis’ life — the death of his mother from cancer while he was still a teenager — spurred a period of introspection, what Lewis called “the dark nights of my soul.”

After reading many books on religion — “Mere Christianity” by C.S. Lewis being a particular influence — talking with friends and studying Bible Scripture to find the true meaning behind the words, Lewis had what he called “an intense conversion experience in college.”

“Even though I thought Scripture was dumb, it started compelling me more and more as I read,” he said. “Faith didn’t emerge until I began to take my life seriously.”

Read it all.

For teachers, the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday comes with some heavy challenges. One reporter sat down with a group of teachers, who talked about keeping the lesson fresh ”” and whether white teachers are prepared to teach about civil rights.

Listen to it all.

A group of American college students stands in a semicircle, clapping and hopping on one foot as they sing in Yiddish: “Az der rebe tantst, tantsn ale khsidim!”

In English, the lyrics mean: “When the rebbe dances, so do all the Hasidim.”

This isn’t music appreciation or even a class at a synagogue. It’s the first semester of Yiddish at Emory University in Atlanta — one of a handful of college programs across the country studying the Germanic-based language of Eastern European Jews….

Read it all.

St.Margaret’s C of E Primary School in Toppes­field, Essex ”” a Victorian village school with just 63 pupils ”” was ranked first in this year’s primary-school league tables, announced on Thursday of last week. The tables are compiled from the results of the annual Year 6 attainment tests.

One in four of all primaries are C of E foundations, and a total of 88 C of E schools were among the 194 primaries in England where all Year 6 children (aged ten and 11) achieved the expected Level 4 in English and maths. Six were among the top ten. As well as St Margaret’s, they were: Clatford, Hamp­shire; Orchard Primary, Broughton Astley; Bladon Primary, Oxfordshire; St Mary’s Primary, York; and Ashhurst Primary, West Sussex.

At St Margaret’s, the six pupils in Year 6 achieved level 5, the standard aimed at by 14-year-olds. The head teacher, Kim Hall, said that the secret of the voluntary aided school’s success was its strong Christian values and the strong support re­ceived from the local community. “We all ”” pupils and staff ”” care for each other, and we’re very much part of the community.”

Read it all.

The western tradition has infused and guided and built this nation, and all of us – whatever the position we hold in life – should take care to fight to retain it.

Eighteen months ago the Institute of Public Affairs in Melbourne – admittedly, an institution on the conservative side of our intellectual and political life – decided to launch a project in defence of western civilisation, and I was paid the honour of being invited along with Cardinal George Pell to a joint presenter at the launch.

The whole purpose, of course, was to remind people in all walks of life – and particularly those who might seek to influence public thought in Australia – that we should not take our inheritance for granted.

His Lordship Bishop Geoffrey Jarrett in his homily made reference to an issue of particular relevance: the attempt to persuade the Australian public to believe that changing the definition of marriage, which has lasted for time immemorial, is not an exercise in human rights and equality, but an exercise in de-authorising the Judeo-Christian influence in our society – and anybody who pretends otherwise is deluding themselves.

Read it all.

Excuse the capital letters, but sometimes major emphasis is required. This is one such moment. Some football coaches pay recruits. Georgia’s football coach dips into his personal finances to reward the guys who’ve worked for him. He committed a violation, all right. He showed the rest of us what it means to put (literal) money where your mouth is.

Read it all.

Founded in 1977, AFTE is the creation of two regal figures within United Methodism who could hardly have been more different””Dr. Albert Outler, the erudite seminary professor who at the time was the world’s foremost authority on all things Wesleyan, and Dr. Ed Robb Jr., traveling evangelist and the day’s best known critic and reformer of the UM Church.

Ironically, this oddest of couples discovered that they had much in common. They both loved the church, treasured our Wesleyan heritage, and were greatly concerned about the state of theological education within the denomination. And they both felt that true renewal would never be possible or lasting if UM pastors were not trained in the great tradition of classical Wesleyan theology….

Albert Outler and Ed Robb were vexed over the theological trends in the seminaries preparing United Methodist preachers and professors. They wanted something substantial and transformative that would provide long-term change. What they agreed upon was AFTE, a program designed to raise up a new generation of leaders.

Much food for thought here; read it all.

Lord, for thy tender mercy’s sake,
lay not our sins to our charge,
but forgive that is past,
and give us grace to amend our sinful lives.
To decline from sin and incline to virtue,
that we may walk in a perfect heart before thee,
now and evermore.
Amen.

–Richard Farrant (1530–1580)

The setting is Bowdoin College Chapel. This is posted by one who sang in this very group what seems like many moons ago–listen to it all–KSH.

Everything’s going digital these days ”” including cheating….

“There’s an epidemic of cheating,” says Robert Bramucci, vice chancellor for technology and learning services at South Orange Community College District in Mission Viejo, Calif. “We’re not catching them. We’re not even sure it’s going on.”

Several security-related companies, such as Spycheatstuff.com, will even overnight-mail a kit that turns a cellphone or iPod into a hands-free personal cheating device, featuring tiny wireless earbuds, that allows a test-taker to discreetly “phone a friend” during a test and get answers remotely without putting down the pencil.

Read it all.

Paul Klingler likes his job as a mold-maker for a Rochester plastics manufacturer.

But the 54-year-old Parma resident also liked his last mold-making job, which he held for four years before being laid off early this year. And when he didn’t get a call back regarding an open position at another company, Klingler chalked it up to his lack of a college degree. “I know I have all the other skills they’re looking for,” he says.

That’s why Klingler is working with Monroe Community College here to figure out what coursework he needs to earn an associate’s degree in its machine trades apprentice training program. He plans to start this spring.

Read it all.

Nearly one in nine high school seniors have gotten high in the past year on synthetic drugs, such as “K2” or “Spice,” second only to the number of teens who have used marijuana, a new survey shows.

“Monitoring the Future,” the nation’s most comprehensive survey of teenage drug use, found 11.4% of the high school seniors had used the synthetic substances, often packed as potpourri or herbal incense and sold in convenience stores, which mimic the effects of marijuana.

“It is astounding,” said Rep. Tom Latham, R-Iowa. “I don’t think they have any idea how dangerous these synthetic drugs are.”

Read it all.

In his leading article in the 19 December issue of the New Statesman, which he has guest-edited, the evolutionary biologist and bestselling author Richard Dawkins launches a scathing attack on David Cameron and his government’s imposition of religious tradition on society in the form of faith schools.

Dawkins’s open letter, addressed to the Prime Minister, leads with a warning that we must not be distracted “from the real domination of our culture and politics that religion gets away with in (tax-free) spades”; indeed, these religious traditions are “enforced by government edict”.

In a direct rebuke to David Cameron’s “government, [which,] like its predecessors, does force religion on our society, in ways whose very familiarity disarms us”, Dawkins lists examples, from bishops in the House of Lords and the fast-tracking of “faith-based charities to tax-free status” to the “most obvious and serious” case of government-imposed religion: faith schools.

Read it all.

The Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, announced on Thursday 8 December 2011 that the Reverend Canon Dr Samuel Wells has been appointed as the next Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields.

Sam, who will take up the post in the summer of 2012, is currently Dean of the Chapel and a Research Professor of Christian Ethics at Duke University in North Carolina, USA, where he leads a staff of 25 in upholding the Chapel’s reputation for preaching, music and liturgy, oversees the 35 campus ministers and is the regular preacher at the year-round Sunday services, which regularly attract a congregation of around 900….

Read it all.

The Faculty of Theology plans to change its name to the Faculty of Theology and Religion from October 2012, subject to approval from the Council of the University.

The change of name continues to reflect the Faculty’s longstanding traditions of Christian Theology, while acknowledging the greater breadth of teaching and research found in the Faculty today….

Read it all.

The Sumner County Board of Education settled a lawsuit with the American Civil Liberties Union over teacher-led prayer and other religious activity in public schools.

This is the third time in three years that the ACLU has taken a Middle Tennessee school district to court over religion. The Sumner suit was filed in May on behalf of nine students who complained that teachers were leading prayer in classrooms, religious groups were distributing Bibles, school events were being held in churches, and schools were allowing local churches to send youth ministers into the lunchrooms to preach to children, unsupervised.

Read it all.

How did you find Oxford in 1993 after Stanford?

The differences were stark. Stanford is sunny, dry, very California, very informal; Oxford is cloudy, wet, and quite formal! Stanford was founded in the late 19th century, and Oxford’s ethos at first glance appears to belong to another era. But both schools are places of ideas and have a very committed academic culture.

What were your first impressions?

I lived at Magdalen in a ground-floor room looking onto Longwall Street. It was quite dismal so I spent as much time as I could in the Magdalen gardens. But in my second year I had a beautiful apartment that overlooked Rose Lane and the rose gardens in the Daubeny Building, and that was like being moved from a black hole into the most beautiful place on campus.

Read it all.

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear a Bronx church’s case on whether it can hold worship services in New York City public schools.

The decision ends a 16-year legal battle over the rights of churches in city schools and means 160 area churches have roughly two months to find new places to hold worship services.
Lawyers for the Bronx Household of Faith, an evangelical congregation that meets at P.S. 15 in the Bronx, filed a petition in late September asking the court to review a June appeals-court ruling barring churches from holding worship services on school property.

Now that congregation, along with dozens of others, has until Feb. 12 to find a substitute house of worship.

Read it all.

This appeared in yesterday’s (London) Times (at the top of the Ipad). You have to guess what you think it means before seeing the article’s beginning.
Pupils should learn that studying the form can improve their chances of winning a bet, an industry-funded body has advised

Children as young as 12 should be taught in school how to gamble, a government education review has been told.

Pupils should learn that studying the form of race horses, dogs and sports teams can improve chances of winning a bet, an industry-funded body has advised. They should also play the dice game craps, learn about fruit machines and how to calculate betting odds.

Read it all (my emphasis) [requires subscription].

Pondering a gender change began with his doctoral studies at Harvard Divinity School in the ’90s. “I was out as gay at that point,” he recalls. The run-up to his change was not the turmoil-filled time you might expect. “I’m not a huge fan of the trapped-in-the-wrong-body narrative” of some other transgendered people, Partridge says. “I know it’s true and real for some folks, but I never felt like God made a mistake. I’ve not had a problem with God about this, I really haven’t. I just had a sense of this growing””discomfort, disjunction.” With the change, “I felt like I was able to kind of reclaim the body that God had given me.”

Seeking a unisex name, he was stumped until he went for take-out sushi one day when he was still a woman and the clerk misheard the name, asking, “Cameron?” Partridge looked the name up and learned it meant “crooked,” just the name, he thought, for someone who believes gender is not linear.

As for his agenda as chaplain, he’s exploring ways to involve students in environmental justice, an interest that has come up in conversations with them.

Read it all.

The number of students receiving subsidized lunches rose to 21 million last school year from 18 million in 2006-7, a 17 percent increase, according to an analysis by The New York Times of data from the Department of Agriculture, which administers the meals program. Eleven states, including Florida, Nevada, New Jersey and Tennessee, had four-year increases of 25 percent or more, huge shifts in a vast program long characterized by incremental growth.

The Agriculture Department has not yet released data for September and October.

“These are very large increases and a direct reflection of the hardships American families are facing,” said Benjamin Senauer, a University of Minnesota economist who studies the meals program, adding that the surge had happened so quickly “that people like myself who do research are struggling to keep up with it.”

Read it all.

The District of Columbia has dismissed a complaint against The Catholic University of America that charged the school’s return to same-gender student housing discriminates against women.

In an order issued Tuesday (Nov. 29), the city’s Office of Human Rights said offering only single-sex dormitories is not unlawful discrimination under the District’s Human Rights Act.

To follow the complaint’s reasoning would lead to “a prohibition on same-sex bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports teams, which would lead to absurd results,” the order said.

Read it all.

Mr. [ Robert] Champion, a hard-working clarinet player, tried out twice before being selected as one of six drum majors in the spring of 2010. He died just hours after marching on the field at the Florida Classic, a football game between Florida A&M and its longtime rival, Bethune-Cookman University.

He collapsed in a bus parked at an Orlando hotel, where the band was staying. It was evening, and the buses should have been locked, Dr. White said. After interviewing band members, he said, it appeared that Mr. Champion had been punched repeatedly by a small group of band members on the bus as part of a hazing ritual, then vomited and passed out. When others in the bus could not revive him, they called for an ambulance. He died a short time later at a hospital….

“It’s kind of a ”˜don’t ask, don’t tell’ culture,” said Christopher M. Chestnut, the family’s lawyer. “No one’s shocked. Everyone knew it happened.”

Read it all.

Ah uh–guess first–then take a look.

Susan Howatch, whose books have sold more than 20 million copies, is financing the Starbridge Lectureship in Theology and Natural Science. She wants to ”strike a blow for theology to show that religion is not dead, but complements scientific discovery”.

Ms Howatch, 52, believes God has been guiding her. Although she made her first fortune writing blockbusters such as Penmarric, success and its trappings left her spiritually empty. She had houses in several countries, drove a Porsche and a Mercedes and after the break-up of her marriage had too many ”facile, transient liaisons”. In the early Eighties she told her editor she would be late with a novel and he said: ”What will I tell the accountants?”

”I was not interested in fame and fortune any more – I’d had it all since I was 30 and it hadn’t satisfied me. So I thought, ‘If I’m not in it for that and I’m not in it to keep my publishers in the black, what the hell am I doing it for?’

”God seized me by the scruff of the neck, slammed me against the nearest wall and shook me until my teeth rattled. I thought: ‘Okay, what does God actually require of me?’ ”

–The Independent, March 18, 1993, page 7, emphasis mine (a section of this was quoted by yours truly in this morning’s sermon)