How interesting to come across this story from the NY Times today (hat tip to Pat Dague) after we’d already prepared to post the entry below on the new faith and politics blog that’s past of the Washington Post/Newsweek’s On Faith site. Blogging, faith, and politics especially in relation to the 2008 Presidential election certainly seem to be a very hot topic at the moment.

WASHINGTON ”” The morning meeting could have been at any news outlet, with discussion around the glass conference-room table about stem cells, Iraq and the presidential candidates. But afterward the members of the small group in the room bowed their heads in prayer.

“I just pray for all of us, reporters, photographers and editors,” said David Brody, a reporter. “Give us the strength to get through the day. Bless our work, Lord. Give us the right words to say.”

Mr. Brody, 42, writes a blog and covers politics for the Christian Broadcasting Network, the television station founded by Pat Robertson. With the three leading Republican presidential candidates in the early going each confronting his own serious obstacles in winning over evangelical Christians, Mr. Brody occupies a position of influence in the 2008 presidential campaign as a gatekeeper to a crucial constituency.

CBN has about a million viewers a day on television, making it a big platform for Mr. Brody and the Republican candidates.

In addition, Mr. Brody’s blog, the Brody File, which scours the conservative credentials of Republican candidates but also looks at Democrats on occasion, has become required reading for political insiders, and is frequently cited by mainstream news organizations and bloggers on both ends of the political spectrum. With its blend of reporting, jokey commentary and savvy explanations of the concerns of evangelical voters, it now draws almost 100,000 hits a month, more than five times the traffic it was getting just several months ago.

Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York recently became the latest Republican presidential candidate to appear with Mr. Brody on the network’s main news program, “The 700 Club,” with segments posted on the Brody File. Earlier this year, Mr. Brody interviewed Senator John McCain of Arizona. He has twice sat down with Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts.

The full article is here.

The link to the Brody File is here.

———

This elf confesses that she isn’t yet following the Presidential election very closely, has never to her knowledge read the Brody File, and doesn’t have a lot of political blogs in her list of bookmarks. (Unless, of course we’re talking ANGLICAN politcs! That’s a whole ‘nother story! 😉 )

What political blogs do you all recommend, and which do a good job of focusing on issues of faith and politics?

Newsweek and the Washington Post have launched a new branch of their “On Faith” blog/website: Georgetown/On Faith. Here’s what the blog has to say about its scope and goals:

THE GOD VOTE
The Religion-Industrial Complex
–

The 2008 presidential election is probably the first in American history that has spawned a veritable faith and politics industry.

Entire non-profit organizations, university departments, think tanks, polling operations, and web divisions at prestigious East coast newspapers, have marshaled their resources in an attempt to make sense of the role that religion will play in the run for the White House. The industry is immense. Its wares displayed on every boulevard, sidewalk and back alley of the mass media. Its potential for influencing public opinion is considerable.

The faith and politics industry also has a variety of “applied” or “hands-on” subsidiaries. There are the lobbyists who work for religious special interest groups. There are demographers who conduct surveys for any client willing to cough up the fee. There is the very lucrative traffic in what I call “religious imaging.” By this I refer to the work of political consultants–an astonishing percentage of whom are graduates of theological seminaries–who advise and often rehabilitate candidates who have somehow drifted off (religious) message.

And did I mention that the industry is completely deregulated? That is to say, there are no standards for entrance, let alone excellence. No one seems to be interested in the identity of the employees or employers in the industry. It doesn’t hold annual conventions in a big, deep carpet-y Hotel where everyone gets to expense their meals back to Headquarters. In fact, no one seems to have much to say about the industry as a whole. It floats under the radar. Which is strange because as regards religion and politics the Industry is the radar.

The goal of this blog is to change that by casting a self-reflexive glance on the 2008 faith industry from a non-partisan perspective (about which more anon). By necessity, this will be an incomplete look, a peek. The industry is so vast and decentralized that no one observer could hope to cover it all. But, if all goes well I hope to draw your attention to key trends, emerging patterns, failures of judgment, and moments of critical heroism that will come to pass in 2008.

The rest is here.

Here’s how the Living Church reports the debate and outcome of the CoE General Synod resolution on the Anglican Covenant.

Separation of faith: Vestal church’s parting from Episcopal Church not a one-issue decision

By Warren Musselman

As a member of St. Andrew’s Anglican Church, I was disappointed that the June 22 article “Vestal church to sever ties to Episcopal organization” on our separation from the Episcopal Church (TEC) emphasized homosexuality as the issue. The acceptance and blessing of homosexual behavior by TEC is only a symptom of the theological problems that we, and most Anglicans in the world, have with it.

Radical changes over the last 40 years or so have made it acceptable in TEC to deny the Trinity, the Resurrection, the divinity of Jesus, and many other basics of Christianity. Even some priests and bishops deny these basic tenets of the faith, and are not corrected or disciplined in any way. We know that no church on Earth can be perfect, but we cannot belong to a church that openly and blatantly contradicts the faith that we believe. Homosexuals are welcome at St. Andrew’s. We do not reject them. We will accept and embrace them as we would anyone else. Their sins, whatever they are, are no worse than ours. Just don’t ask us to bless any sins, either ours or theirs.

Read it all here.

“All those vague theosophical minds for whom the universe is an immense melting pot are exactly the minds which shrink instinctively from that earthquake saying of our Gospels, which declare that the Son of God came not with peace but with a sundering sword.”

–G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, chapter 8 (“The Romance of Orthodoxy”)

The headline above is from yesterday’s WSJ Europe, page 9–KSH.

Last Saturday afternoon, baggage handler John Smeaton was standing in front of Glasgow Airport smoking a cigarette when a Jeep Cherokee burst into flames nearby. He watched its burning driver emerge. A police officer pursued the passenger.

What happened next has turned Mr. Smeaton, 31 years old, into an unlikely folk hero. When he saw the passenger hitting the officer, Mr. Smeaton ran over and kicked the assailant.

Mr. Smeaton has been interviewed on the BBC, CNN and other networks about his response to the attack in which two suspected terrorists attempted to ram into the airport’s main terminal. (See the CNN interview.) In a Glaswegian accent that is at times impenetrable — Australia’s Channel 7 subtitled its interview with him — Mr. Smeaton voiced a defiance that has turned him into a de facto spokesman for Glasgow’s fighting spirit. His message to terrorists: “You come to Glasgow, we don’t stand for it,” he says. “We’ll just set aboot ye.” (Translation: “In Glasgow, we’ll just deck you.”)

By the next evening, an admirer had created a Web site devoted to Mr. Smeaton — nicknaming him Smeato. It includes links to his media interviews, purported details from his past (he once owned a ferret) and a plea for Britons to buy him a pint in the bar at the airport’s Holiday Inn hotel. There is also a picture of Osama bin Laden with the caption: “You told me John Smeaton was off on Saturdays!”

Read it all.

AGAIN: Turning from the ancient to the modern, can you give us an overview of the state of Anglicanism today? Orthodox Christians in America need to know about the Anglican communion in order to have a fruitful dialogue with individual Anglicans and Episcopalians and with their parishes as they live out their own witness of the Orthodox faith.

TM: It is important for me to explain just a little bit how the Anglican compromise has resulted in such interesting things in terms of structure, which has so much to do with the current problems. The more conservative elements of Anglicanism tend to be its most Protestant elements, and its most liberal elements are usually people who think of themselves as highly catholic. . . .

The heart of the Anglican compromise boils down to putting St. John Chrysostom and John Calvin in the same pew. But neither one of those men want to be there. There are things on which they do not agree with each other, and they would not compromise. And yet the Anglican compromise tried to have both sides of a Protestant and ancient equation be equal. You simply can’t pull that off.

People need to understand that there are very strong parts of Anglicanism that are rigorously Protestant. Some of the liveliest Anglicanism you will meet in the world is thoroughly Reformed, very Calvinistic. This is the John Stott and J. I. Packer wing of low-church Anglicanism. In that context, you will find a heavy emphasis on congregationalism. They will be very Protestant, and this is probably the most conservative and biblical part of modern Anglicanism. That’s where, for the most part, you had the missionary societies that went to the Third World. Then you have the traditional branch that would be called Anglo-Catholic, which would deny or water down a lot of the Protestant side of the compromise and put a much heavier, more Roman emphasis on ecclesiology, on the role of the bishop, on church tradition as a part of interpreting Scripture as opposed to sola scriptura””a very consciously Catholic element. . . .

Anglicans are highly skilled and genuinely talented in compromise. When you say that Anglicanism is the church of the via media””the middle way””that implies a kind of compromise position between two camps that often don’t want to compromise. And on moral and social issues, what you have ended up with is a never-ending march to the left””because you’re constantly compromising on the church traditions of the ages. This steadily, slowly but surely, pulls you to the theological left on critical issues. . . .

Episcopal bishop William Frey used to say that Anglicans have been doing this via media theological method for so long they can’t stop. As he put it, if one side says Jesus is Lord, and the other side says Jesus is not Lord, the Anglican compromise is Jesus is occasionally Lord. He meant that as a joke, but you can see that in the history of the Frey Amendment. [Editor’s note: This was a failed attempt by traditionalists to make a doctrinally conservative addition to Episcopal Church law.] Frey said Episcopal clergy must not be sexually active outside of marriage. That leads to a theological statement: Sex outside of marriage is sin. But the other side says sex outside of marriage is not always a sin. Which means the Anglican compromise is sex outside of marriage is occasionally sin. The left isn’t happy, and the right isn’t happy, but you have moved in the leftward direction. You’ve compromised the absolute truth of an ancient doctrine. That’s how the mechanism works.

Right now, what we have is two groups of true believers who don’t want to compromise. It’s so interesting that sexuality ended up being the line in the sand, when it could have been””and I argued it should have been””the Resurrection. Why when Anglican bishops began to deny historic doctrines related to the Incarnation and Resurrection and salvation through Christ alone, and other critical doctrines, why didn’t the war break out then? Whereas now it has broken out over sexuality.

AGAIN: Why do you think that is so?

TM: My own hunch is that first of all sexuality gets covered in the media, whereas a doctrine about theological language is harder for the press to cover. The other thing frankly is that the theological left has learned how to state its beliefs about Resurrection and Incarnation in a way that sounds OK. And, they’re very hard to pin down. In other words, you could talk about the hope of the Resurrection, but you’ve redefined what all the words mean. You need to understand that Anglicanism defines itself as being united by certain liturgical texts””but you don’t have to all agree on what the words mean. A lot of Anglicans will say it’s important that when they say the Creed, instead of saying “I believe,” most Anglican churches say, “We believe.” Meaning the body affirms this, but it is not necessary for the individual to do the same.

AGAIN: Since issues of sexuality have been what has sparked the current conflicts, though, do you have thoughts in general on how that is playing out? Where are the lines being drawn? And, to what extent are the issues of sexuality bound up with the related issues of gender in general, like say the female priesthood?

TM: For the Anglicans, sexual issues do not automatically connect with gender issues, even though Orthodox would see that they do. For a lot of Protestant Anglicans, remember that they are placing more of an emphasis on congregationalism and less on classic catholic orders. So, there are a lot of charismatic Episcopalians and evangelical Episcopalians who have no problem with the ordination of women, because their concept of priesthood is subtly different from those who see it in the full catholic sense. Even though they are conservative, the ordination of women was not a make-or-break issue for them. They don’t connect it with the transcendent, sacramental understanding of what the priesthood is, because their theology is more Protestant and more Reformed. There’s this very low church Protestant element there that can be conservative on some issues but not on others that the Orthodox would see.

AGAIN: It seems that something the Orthodox need to keep in mind in their encounters with Anglicans is that they need to be prepared to speak to two different audiences. On the one hand, you have the more Protestant wing, where you may have more agreement on questions of, say, scriptural truth and their application to social issues. And on the other hand, there is the more Catholic side of the Anglican communion, where you may have some common ground about, for example, sacramentalism and mystery in the faith.

TM: There are still conservative Anglo-Catholics, but not as many. The most vital and alive conservative elements in modern Anglicanism are charismatic or evangelical low-church Anglicans. There are still some very high-church, fully Catholic Anglicans. But I find it very interesting that modern liberal Anglicanism tends to identify much more with a high-church, liturgical smells-and-bells approach to Anglicanism.

This makes many Orthodox confused, because they see these people and they say, gosh, they even have icons in their church. We have a lot in common with them. When theologically, you may have almost nothing in common with them. And then you walk into another Anglican church, and it will be like a megachurch. There will be a rock band, and it will be very low church. The liturgy may be much more informal, but their view of morality and basic doctrines and biblical authority and ancient traditions of the Church would be much closer to the Orthodox””even though it doesn’t look like it in terms of style.

The whole interview is here.

This elf’s opinion? TMatt not only “Gets Religion” but he really gets Anglicanism too!

Sunday’s New York Times had a long feature on the July 1967 Newark NJ riots. Interesting reading for one for whom news of these riots and the anxiety of family members (my grandfather’s factory was on the outskirts of Newark) is one of her earliest memories. The feature includes lots of photographs here.

NEWARK, July 6 ”” Four decades later, many people here still cannot agree on what to call the five nights of gunfire, looting and flames that disemboweled the geographic midsection of this city, leaving 23 people dead, injuring 700, scorching acres of property and causing deep psychic wounds that have yet to fully heal.

To the frightened white residents who later abandoned Newark by the tens of thousands, it was a riot; for the black activists who gained a toehold in City Hall in the years that followed, it was a rebellion. Those seeking neutrality have come to embrace the word disturbance.

“There is not one truth, and your view depends on your race, your age and where you lived,” said Linda Caldwell Epps, president of the New Jersey Historical Society.

The society has planned a series of panel discussions and film screenings to mark the 40th anniversary of the violence, which began the night of July 12, 1967, after false rumors spread that an African-American cabdriver had been killed by police officers after his arrest for a traffic infraction. Avoiding the semantic controversy, the society has titled a planned exhibit “What’s Going On? Newark and the Legacy of the Sixties.”

There are no public monuments to mark the episode that painted Newark as a national symbol of racial disparity, police brutality and urban despair, but there is a newfound willingness here to confront the past. City officials, who ignored previous anniversaries, will dedicate a plaque Thursday at the Fourth Precinct station house, where the first skirmishes erupted between residents and the police.

“It’s still a touchy and contentious subject, but the fact that there is dialogue taking place is highly positive and would not have happened 10 years ago,” said Max Herman, a sociology professor at Rutgers University who has collected 100 oral histories about those five calamitous days. “I think for the first time Newark feels secure enough to turn back and look its history straight in the eye.”

Of course, that history is still open to interpretation.

The rest is here.

On the front page of this morning’s FT:

The world is facing an oil supply “crunch” within five years that will force up prices to record levels and increase the west’s dependence on oil cartel Opec, the industrialised countries’ energy watchdog has warned.

In its starkest warning yet on the world’s fuel outlook, the International Energy Agency said “oil looks extremely tight in five years time” and there are “prospects of even tighter natural gas markets at the turn of the decade”.

The IEA said that supply was falling faster than expected in mature areas, such as the North Sea or Mexico, while projects in new provinces such as the Russian Far East, faced long delays. Meanwhile consumption is accelerating on strong economic growth in emerging countries.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that supply from non-members of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries will increase at an annual pace of 1 per cent, or less than half the rate of the demand rise.

Read it all.

From This is London:

A mother is facing jail after it was discovered she was married to a man and a woman at the same time.

Suzanne Mitchell has appeared in court accused of being the country’s first lesbian ‘bigamist’.

The mother of five admitted making a false statement to the registrar at her civil partnership ceremony by failing to mention she was already married.

Read it all.

From yesterday’s Telegraph:

Mr Duncan Smith has made uncompromisingly clear that, in his commission’s view, it is the breakdown of the two-parent family and the decline of marriage that is at the heart of this collapse of values in British social life – and heaven be praised, Mr Cameron has indicated that he endorses this conclusion.

This is not to be construed – as everybody keeps hurrying to point out – as some sort of moralistic condemnation of existing single parents or an attempt by politicians to impose a particular pattern of personal life on the entire population.

It is simply a statement of hard fact based on overwhelming empirical evidence: children are far less likely to fall into crime and addiction, to fail at school and to end up as teenage parents if they are raised by two parents who remain together.

And those two parents are far more likely to remain together if they are married than if they are cohabiting.

The statistical support for these propositions is now so crushing as to extinguish any rational argument to the contrary.

Read it all.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori is on an official visit to the Province of Brazil this week. ENS has its first report of her trip online. Here’s an excerpt:

Primate (or “Bispo Primaz” in Portuguese) since 2006, Andrade also pointed to the shared mission priorities engrained in the ties between the two churches, including pastoral and environmental care consonant with inter-Anglican commitments to achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

One emphases is environmental advocacy informed by Amazon-region experts vigilant in the protection of Brazil’s unique natural resources: 12 percent of the planet’s fresh water and 20 percent of the world’s animal species are found in this vast nation of more than 8.5 million square miles and 170 million people — South America’s largest country with 26 states and one federal district — now working systematically to fight deforestation and climate change.

Environmental minister outlines progress
Welcoming the delegation on July 6 to government offices in Brasilia, national environmental minister Marina Silva told the group of the “holistic, integrated” work of protecting the nation’s unique biodiversity locally, regionally and globally amid such factors as climate change and economic exploitation.

Silva’s perspective, shaped by her own upbringing in the Amazon, takes an egalitarian, comprehensive, multi-agency approach to environmental protection seeking “self-maintaining development,” she said.

Because Brazil is “a developing country, we cannot talk about the environment unless we talk about the social issues facing the nation, including the distribution of wealth and the reality of 53 million people living below the poverty line,” Silva said, speaking through interpreter Ruth Barros, wife of Amazonia bishop Saulo Barros, also present for the briefing.

The Barroses had earlier that afternoon outlined for the delegation the challenges of ministry in the newly formed Amazonia diocese where social services are stretched to capacity given demand. The diocese would benefit from a companion relationship with a dedicated and supportive diocese of the Episcopal Church, the delegation agreed.

Similar existing and emerging companion relationships, in addition to Brasilia-Indianapolis, include Sao Paulo-Central Pennsylvania; Rio de Janeiro-Atlanta; Curitiba-California (San Francisco Bay Area); and Pelotas-Ottawa, Canada. Open to new companion relationships, in addition to Amazonia, are the Recife, Southern, and Southwestern dioceses, as well as the Missionary District of the West.

“The great challenge is to achieve a process of social inclusion that is just,” environmental minister Silva said, noting that in the last four years of Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva’s government, the number of persons living in poverty has decreased by some 19.4 percent.

“Developing countries don’t want to make the same mistakes developed countries have made,” she added.

Silva spoke of her agency’s tenacious work to overcome problems with large-scale private-sector development projects, including the building of roadways.

“Now a diverse group of various segments of society is involved in building this road, and this group is evaluating the process to see the government keeping its promises according to the plan,” Silva said. “Today, the road is being built, and deforestation has diminished by some 91 percent.”

She said the matter of “combating deforestation in the Amazon now involves 13 government ministries” coordinated by national officials under a plan begun in 2004.

“In the beginning, no one believed it would work. In its second year, the plan decreased deforestation in this area by 50 percent,” Silva said, “and this year, the plan’s third year, it appears that deforestation will decrease again.”

Noting Jefferts Schori’s own training as an oceanographer, Silva spoke of the need to protect Brazil’s fresh water supply and unique animal species.

Jefferts Schori, in sermons following the dialogue, said Silva “has passion and certainty about her work, and she believes it is about bringing peace that is only about bringing justice”¦ bringing abundance to those who suffer with so little,” considering the “whole garden” of creation.

Preaching in both the Brasilia and Porto Alegre cathedrals on the Sunday scripture lessons of Isaiah 6:1-8 and John 20:19-23, Jefferts Schori called the congregations to “Receive Holy Spirit, and go out there to build a world of peace.”

She asked: “What prevents us from being able to say ‘yes’ to God’s dream of a healed world? Who can God send? Who will go for us?

“The prayer of our hearts is that we will be able to say, ‘Here I am, send me,'” she said. “May peace be the product of our hands and hearts and minds. May we be peace for the whole world.”

The full article is here.

Through [Samuel] Crowther’s consecration in Canterbury, the apostolic succession was assured. Apostolic succession, however will be ineffective and irrelevant if it is not followed with apostolic focus and success. The Bishop with apostolic succession must follow in the steps of the apostles as a leader in mission, ministry and community development, as a teacher and pastor. As Archbishop Peter Akinola would say at the consecration of bishops, “the days of ceremonial bishops are over!” Through Crowther and his successors has come the vital passion and drive for mission and evangelism today. The demonstration of the power of the gospel runs through our veins from head to foot. In Nigeria other great African Bishops and Archbishops have followed in the wake of Crowther, down to Archbishop Olufosoye in 1979 and Archbishop Adetiloye in 1988, and now our present primate, Archbishop Peter Akinola. In their time the Church of Nigeria has grown, and grown beyond human expectation. It has developed from being a part of the Province of West Africa, to being the Province of Nigeria, then three Provinces and now ten Provinces. From just a handful of dioceses, we now have 121 ”“ and more are on the way! The creation of missionary dioceses was an inspiration from the time of the Decade of Evangelism and has proved its value and effectiveness. Anglicanism in Nigeria is only Anglican in its true sense when it is missionary, evangelical and socially active in community development and community transformation. It was not actually an Anglican, but a Roman Catholic missionary to Africa who summed it up so well:

“Mission is the meaning of the church. The church can exist only insofar as it is in mission, insofar as it participates in the act of Christ, which is mission. The church becomes the mission, the living outreach of God to the world. The church exists only insofar as it carries Christ to the world. The church is only part of the mission, the mission of God sending his Son to the world. Without this mission, there would be no church. The idea of church without mission is an absurdity.” (Vincent J Donovan Christianity Rediscovered, London SCM 1978, p.102).

Read it all.

Until the American Anglican Church defied the rest of the Communion and ordained the openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson, in 2003, the idea of an Anglican rule book would have been unthinkable.

One of the hallmarks of Anglicanism is its lack of rules. In fact there’s barely any definition of what it is to be an authentic Anglican.

But on Sunday evening, the synod faced up to what many of its members see as a regrettable necessity and voted for a covenant – or binding agreement – setting out the responsibilities of each Church to the others.

It was best put by the Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright.

“We thought we had some sort of agreement and then, four years ago, it turned out that we didn’t,” he said testily.

“Lambeth, and the Primates [the archbishops leading the 38 independent Anglican churches] asked the Americans not to do something, and they did it anyway.”

Read it all.

=========

Note: thanks to a kind reader, we have an unofficial transcript of Bishop NT Wright’s remarks posted below in the comments.

Gordon Brown’s announcement that the Government will no longer have the final word in the appointment of diosesan bishops in the Church of England has fascinated the General Synod that is meeting in York. The announcement ends two centuries of intrigue over episcopal patronage, and many in the Church ? with memories of recent prime ministerial interference ? will be grateful that appointments are not being sanctified by a prime minister, who, in theory, could be a Catholic. But it also reawakens the vexed issue of disestablishment, bringing nearer a break between Church and State for which many, within the Church and beyond, have been campaigning.

Despite a general feeling that the Church of England should not enjoy unique favour by a secular State, not all the bishops are unreservedly pleased at the prospect of a change. One issue that troubles some is money. Would disestablishment also mean disendowment?….

Read it all.

From today’s Wall Street Journal Europe:

In neat Arabic writing above the mirrors of the Easy Cut barbershop here, signs tell patrons to praise Allah, work toward paradise and refrain from talking politics in the shop.

“You’re not allowed to talk about religion or politics here because we don’t want trouble between our customers,” said Ejaz Ahmed, who owns the shop in this city’s Pollokshields section.

His modest storefront is around the corner from a mosque on Forth Street where police found a car tied to the plot to ram a burning jeep into Glasgow Airport’s main terminal on July 1.

As a handful of customers waited for haircuts and Middle Eastern news played on a grainy television set one recent afternoon, Mr. Ahmed said religion and politics can lead to heated argument and he would rather not risk it.

Read it all.

from Wired magazine:

Children with autism are often described as robotic: They are emotionless. They engage in obsessive, repetitive behavior and have trouble communicating and socializing.

Now, a humanoid robot designed to teach autistic children social skills has begun testing in British schools.

Known as KASPAR (Kinesics and Synchronisation in Personal Assistant Robotics), the $4.33 million bot smiles, simulates surprise and sadness, gesticulates and, the researchers hope, will encourage social interaction amongst autistic children.

Developed as part of the pan-European IROMEC (Interactive Robotic Social Mediators as Companions ) project, KASPAR has two “eyes” fitted with video cameras and a mouth that can open and smile.

Children with autism have difficulty understanding and interpreting people’s facial expressions and body language, says Dr. Ben Robins, a senior research fellow at the University of Hertfordshire’s Adaptive Systems Research Group, who leads the multi-national team behind KASPAR.

“Human interaction can be very subtle, with even the smallest eyebrow raise, for example, having different meanings in different contexts,” Robins said. “It is thought that autistic children cut themselves off from interacting with other humans because, for them, this is too much information and it is too confusing for them to understand.”

With this in mind, the team designed KASPAR to express emotion consistently and with the minimum of complexity.

KASPAR’s face is made of silicon-rubber supported on an aluminum frame. Eight degrees of freedom in the head and neck and six in the arms and hands enable movement.

The researchers hope that the end result is a human-like robot that can act as a “social mediator” for autistic children, a steppingstone to improved social interaction with other children and adults.

“KASPAR provides autistic children with reliability and predictability. Since there are no surprises, they feel safe and secure,” Robins said, adding that the purpose is not to replace human interaction and contact but to enhance it.

Robins has already tested some imitation and turn-taking games with the children and his preliminary findings are positive.

“When I first started testing, the children treated me like a fly on the wall,” he said. “But each one of them, in their own time, started to open themselves up to me. One child in particular, after weeks on end of ignoring me, came and sat in my lap and then took my hand and brought me to the robot, to share the experience of KASPAR with me.”

The full article with a bunch of embedded links is here.

By the end of this year, police officials say, more than 100 cameras will have begun monitoring cars moving through Lower Manhattan, the beginning phase of a London-style surveillance system that would be the first in the United States.

The Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, as the plan is called, will resemble London’s so-called Ring of Steel, an extensive web of cameras and roadblocks designed to detect, track and deter terrorists. British officials said images captured by the cameras helped track suspects after the London subway bombings in 2005 and the car bomb plots last month.

If the program is fully financed, it will include not only license plate readers but also 3,000 public and private security cameras below Canal Street, as well as a center staffed by the police and private security officers, and movable roadblocks.

Read the rest here

The following story from the Washington Post is already over 2 weeks old, but this elf hadn’t seen it before tonight and found it quite fascinating.

Changing Patterns in Social Fabric Test Netherlands’ Liberal Identity

By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, June 23, 2007; Page A12

AMSTERDAM — For years, W.B. Kranendonk was a lone ranger in Dutch politics — the editor of an orthodox Christian newspaper in a nation that has legalized prostitution, euthanasia, abortion and same-sex marriage and allows the personal use of marijuana.

Today, with an orthodox Christian political party in the government for the first time, and with immigration anxieties fueling a national search for identity, the country that has been the world’s most socially liberal political laboratory is rethinking its anything-goes policies.

And suddenly, Kranendonk no longer seems so all alone.

“People in high political circles are saying it can’t be good to have a society so liberal that everything is allowed,” said Kranendonk, editor of Reformist Daily and an increasingly influential voice that resonates in the shifting mainstream of Dutch public opinion. “People are saying we should have values; people are asking for more and more rules in society.”

In cities across the Netherlands, mayors and town councils are closing down shops where marijuana is sold, rolled and smoked. Municipalities are shuttering the brothels where prostitutes have been allowed to ply their trade legally. Parliament is considering a ban on the sale of hallucinogenic “magic mushrooms.” Orthodox Christian members of parliament have introduced a bill that would allow civil officials with moral objections to refuse to perform gay marriages. And Dutch authorities are trying to curtail the activities of an abortion rights group that assists women in neighboring countries where abortions are illegal.

The effort to rein in the Netherlands’ famed social liberties is not limited to the small, newly empowered Christian Union party, which holds two of the 16 ministries in the coalition government formed this year. Increasingly, politicians from the more center-left Labor Party are among the most outspoken proponents of closing some brothels and marijuana shops — known here as “coffee shops.”

“Has the Netherlands changed? Yes,” said Frank de Wolf, a Labor Party member of the Amsterdam City Council. “There is not only a different mood among our people and politicians, but there are different problems now.”

The full Washington Post article is here.

Sadly, we are now faced with a much less clear situation. Events are now likely to unfold in a way that is piecemeal in a context that is very uncertain. All this means that it is going to be harder, not easier, to maintain peace and unity within the church.

The synod has left us in a confusing and parlous state. On the one hand, it has been unwilling to affirm the right of dioceses to make pastoral provision for the blessing of same-sex unions where they might need or wish to do so. Although, technically, this does not take away the right of a diocese to proceed on the grounds that the defeat of a motion is not the affirmation of its contrary ”” it seems unlikely that many dioceses will not proceed as dioceses.

On the other hand, the synod has also ruled that the blessing of same-sex unions in not contrary to “core doctrine.” Further, in its response to the St. Michael report, it has affirmed the conclusions of that report, which stated that blessings were not core doctrine but rather had the status of “adiaphora,” meaning a matter that is not essential to salvation, or not essential to our identity as Anglican.

If this is true, it becomes unclear what could be the basis of a decision to discipline any priest who in blessing a same-sex union acts on the basis of a matter indifferent even if he or she does so, on a matter of significant controversy, and without the authorization of the church.

Read it all.