If it looks like a recession and feels like a recession …

“Quite frankly,” said Senator Charles Schumer, peering over his glasses at the Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke, “I think we are at a moment of economic crisis, stemming from four key areas: falling housing prices, lack of confidence in creditworthiness, the weak dollar and high oil prices.”

He asked Mr. Bernanke, at a Congressional hearing Thursday, if we were headed toward a recession.

An aide handed the chairman his dancing shoes, and Mr. Bernanke executed a flawless version of the Washington waffle. He said: “Our forecast is for moderate, but positive, growth going forward.” He said: “Economists are extremely bad at predicting turning points, and we don’t pretend to be any better.” He said: “We have not calculated the probability of recession, and I wouldn’t want to offer that today.”

With all due respect to the chairman, he would see the recession that so many others are feeling if he would only open his eyes. While Mr. Bernanke and others are waiting for the official diagnosis (a decline in the gross domestic product for two successive quarters), the disease is spreading and has been spreading for some time.

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The YouTube killer who shot dead eight members of his school in Finland before turning his gun on himself had internet contacts with an American teenager who was planning a shooting spree in a high school in Philadelphia, it was claimed yesterday.

The disclosure could turn upside down previous assumptions about the dynamics of school massacres. Until now, teenage killers were regarded as depressed loners whose imagination had been stoked by aggressive computer games. Now it seems that information may have been shared by potential killers over the internet: a virtual community of young people who idolise the 1999 Columbine High School murders.

“It’s highly probable that there was some form of contact between Pekka-Eric Auvinen and Dillon Cossey,” a spokesman for the cyber crime department of Helsinki police said. Dillon Cossey, 14, was arrested last month on suspicion of planning to storm his old school, Plymouth Whitemarsh. Police acting on a tipoff found a 9mm semi-automatic rifle, handmade grenades, a .22 pistol and a .22 single-shot rifle at his home. Less than two weeks later Auvinen, already a member of a shooting club, was buying his first gun ”” a .22 pistol ”” and expressing interest in a 9mm semi-automatic.

Police do not believe this to have been a coincidence. The two youths are thought to have made contact over two MySpace groups, “RIP Eric and Dylan” ”” a reference to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who killed 12 schoolmates at Columbine ”” and “Natural Selection”.

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Mr. Mailer belonged to the old literary school that regarded novel writing as a heroic enterprise undertaken by heroic characters with egos to match. He was the most transparently ambitious writer of his era, seeing himself in competition not just with his contemporaries but with the likes of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.

He was also the least shy and risk-averse of writers. He eagerly sought public attention, and publicity inevitably followed him on the few occasions when he tried to avoid it. His big ears, barrel chest, striking blue eyes and helmet of seemingly electrified hair ”” jet black at first and ultimately snow white ”” made him instantly recognizable, a celebrity long before most authors were lured out into the limelight.

At different points in his life Mr. Mailer was a prodigious drinker and drug taker, a womanizer, a devoted family man, a would-be politician who ran for mayor of New York, a hipster existentialist, an antiwar protester, an opponent of women’s liberation and an all-purpose feuder and short-fused brawler, who with the slightest provocation would happily engage in head-butting, arm-wrestling and random punch-throwing. Boxing obsessed him and inspired some of his best writing. Any time he met a critic or a reviewer, even a friendly one, he would put up his fists and drop into a crouch.

Gore Vidal, with whom he frequently wrangled, once wrote: “Mailer is forever shouting at us that he is about to tell us something we must know or has just told us something revelatory and we failed to hear him or that he will, God grant his poor abused brain and body just one more chance, get through to us so that we will know. Each time he speaks he must become more bold, more loud, put on brighter motley and shake more foolish bells. Yet of all my contemporaries I retain the greatest affection for Norman as a force and as an artist. He is a man whose faults, though many, add to rather than subtract from the sum of his natural achievements.”

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The Rev. Chad Varah, an outspoken, publicity-sly, sometimes cantankerous Anglican priest who started a telephone hot line for the suicidal after concluding that loneliness is the most heart-rending anguish, died Thursday in Basingstoke, England. He was 95.

His death was announced by Samaritans, the suicide-prevention charity he founded.

From his initial rush to the aid of a despairing mother in November 1953, Father Varah’s mission to give hope to the perhaps fatally depressed grew to 200 branches in Britain and Ireland and 200 more in 38 other countries. It became a model for crisis hot lines.

Father Varah’s vision began in 1935, when, as a 23-year-old deacon, he brooded bitterly after the first burial service he conducted for a girl, who, by varying accounts, was 13 or 14. She had killed herself because she wrongly feared that the onset of menstruation meant she had a venereal disease.

“Here was a life that could have been saved if only there had been an intelligent person she could bring herself to talk to,” he said in an interview with Church Illustrated magazine in 1959.

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Egyptian and Saudi Arabian intentions to begin or revive their nuclear programs in the face of Iran’s continued race toward nuclear power present an “apocalyptic scenario” for Israel as well as for the rest of the world, Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.

Lieberman’s remarks came a week after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak announced a decision to restart his country’s nuclear program. On Wednesday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that his country had begun operating 3,000 centrifuges for the enrichment of uranium.

“If Egypt and Saudi Arabia begin nuclear programs, this can bring an apocalyptic scenario upon us,” Lieberman told the Post. “Their intentions should be taken seriously and the declarations being made now are to prepare the world for when they decide to actually do it.”

Lieberman also said Pakistan was a major threat to Israel due to the political instability there and the fact that the country had “missiles, nuclear weapons and a proven capability.”

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Integrity congratulates Jeffrey Lee on his election as the next Bishop of Chicago. “We look forward to working with Bishop-elect Lee in continuing Chicago’s long history of working for the full-inclusion of the LGBT faithful in the life and witness of the diocese,” said the Rev. Susan Russell, President of Integrity.

“Integrity also commends the Search Committee of the Diocese of Chicago for including the Very Rev. Lind as a candidate despite the chilling effects of Resolution B033””and Dean Lind herself for standing for election in spite of the House of Bishops’ recent statement in New Orleans,” continued Russell. “We may never know how significant a factor Resolution B033 was in the outcome of the Chicago election. However, we do know that Resolution B033 is noncanonical and discriminatory. Two dioceses””California and Rochester””have already passed resolutions to General Convention 2009 that will nullify B033. We strongly urge all bishops and deputies to support such resolutions and their intent to end B033’s inequity when we get to General Convention 2009 in Anaheim.”

Indeed, Anderson still leads seven services a weekend at Wooddale Church. But the story of the spurned candidate, whom he declined to name, offers some insight into his vision for the NAE ”” an organization that represents 45,000 churches and 30 million members.

“My life is not in Washington,” Anderson said. “I am not a politician. What evangelists are about is primarily faith, and not politics.”

Anderson, who moved from interim president to president of the NAE in October, brings both his biblical focus and a wide-ranging set of concerns about the environment and human rights to the leadership of the NAE at an unsettled time.

His predecessor, Ted Haggard, resigned last year in a sex-and-drugs scandal.

Meanwhile, evangelicals have been finding it difficult to settle on a Republican presidential candidate who is seen as viable and opposes both abortion and same-sex marriage.

Anderson, 63, is among a group of evangelical leaders who are “just as orthodox in their theology” as leading conservative Christians but think that relating faith to culture is more complex than just a couple of issues, said George Brushaber, president of the evangelical Bethel College near St. Paul.

“He wants the church to be part of the conversation in the public square, and not be owned by any narrow base,” said Brushaber, who has known Anderson for several decades.

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A months-old U.S. Supreme Court ruling quickly weakened the ability of taxpayers to sue government for violating the separation of church and state, legal experts say.

The court ruled in June that taxpayers could not sue over executive branch spending that allegedly promoted religion. The 5-4 decision dismissed a lawsuit by the Madison-based Freedom From Religion Foundation that challenged President Bush’s faith-based initiative.

Taxpayers only have the standing to sue when Congress specifically authorizes money for religious purposes, Justice Samuel Alito wrote. Otherwise, courts would be clogged with cases complaining about the day-to-day activities of government employees, he wrote.

At the time, advocates for the separation of church and state said the ruling’s impact would be limited. But less than six months later, legal observers are startled by the fallout in cases claiming violations of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits government-sponsored religion.

“This is a bigger deal than anybody realized and can really change the dynamics of when these cases get brought,” said George Washington University law professor Ira Lupu. “This could actually turn out to be quite sweeping in the way it limits the ability of people to challenge what the government does as a violation of the Establishment Clause.”

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The first ballot tabulations are available.

Update: Lee elected on the second ballot.

Just when it felt like it was safe to get back in the water, a second and potentially much meaner version of this summer’s credit crisis has reappeared. This week we look at why there are more mortgage write downs coming (in a self-fulfilling prophecy) in the financial sector, how an obscure new accounting rule is shedding light on a lot of risk in the world’s banking system, how this is all tied to the consumer and is part of the reason for the fall in the dollar. It’s a complex world, and I am going to spend a considerable part of a beautiful Friday evening in Texas trying to make it simple for you, gentle reader. That’s my job, and I love it. And since I can’t think of my usual “but first” we’ll jump right in.

I have written for some time that we are in a credit crisis brought on by a lack confidence which has the real possibility of devolving into a credit crunch which will make loans harder to get and has the potential to slow down the US economy, on top of a weakening consumer. Data released in the past few months, and again this week, have shown that banks and other lenders are tightening their standards for all sorts of loans. And it is not just that they are becoming more like an old-fashioned banker who actually wanted to know that he could get his money back. Their new found conservatism is being forced on them. But let’s start at the beginning.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) is the referee for accounting practices. They recently issued a new rule which will be implemented November 15. Essentially, Statement 157 requires a financial firm to divide its assets into three categories called simply enough, Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3.

Under FASB terminology, Level 1 means assets that can be marked-to-market, where an asset’s worth is based on a real price, like a stock quote. Level 2 is mark-to-model, an estimate based on observable inputs which is used when no quoted prices are available. You can go get several bids and average them, or base your assumption on what similar assets sold for.

Level 3 values are based on “unobservable” inputs reflecting companies’ “own assumptions” about the way assets would be priced. That would be market talk for best guess, or in some cases SWAG (as in Simple Wild-***ed Guess.)

Financial companies have never had to break out this information. As you might expect, there is particular interest in how much and what kind of Level 3 assets a bank or brokerage firm might have. It turns out, that there may be more problems lurking in those assets than we realize.

Read it all.

One of the largest provinces in the Anglican Church has voted to “extend its jurisdiction” to cover the whole of the US.

The decision marks the formal start of a “realignment” of the Anglican Communion in the row over gays and could help stave off actual schism.

The province of the Southern Cone, which includes Argentina, Peru and Chile and is headed by expatriate British Bishop Greg Venables, is offering itself as a “safe haven” for traditionalist US dioceses that wish to secede over gays.

The plan will allow disaffected US dioceses to leave the oversight of The Episcopal Church Primat Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori but to remain within the body of the Anglican Communion and in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury.

According to well-informed insiders, Dr Rowan Williams, while opposed to separatist solutions to the Anglican crisis, has described the plan of Bishop Venables as a “sensible way forward.”

Read it all and also see the entry on her blog here which includes this:

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s recent letter to John Howe was apparently one of the documents which encouraged Southern Cone bishops to take this path of extending provincial jurisdiction to the US.

In keeping with laudable and true Catholic tradition, Rowan made it clear in the letter that diocesan autonomy is paramount. The Southern Cone solution also offers a means of maintaining unity while allowing a degree of separation within that unity. But it does demand a new frame of mind from archbishops and bishops, one that permits a new form of structure, with extra-geographical boundaries. This will be resisted, for reasons of ecclesiological tradition. But I do have to ask, if doctrine can be changed unilaterally, why not structure? It seems to me the latter is and should be the lesser ‘sin’, as sin it will certainly be deemed by some to be.

I have it on impeccable authority that Rowan’s response to Bishop Greg, while not exactly falling over himself with joy, was that this was a ‘sensible way forward’. Bishop Greg discussed it briefly with the Archbishop in London in September, I understand, but Greg himself declined to tell me what the Archbishop said.

Much has changed in the once-blue-collar neighborhood of Locust Point in South Baltimore. Factories have made way for pricey developments, watering holes have been displaced by upscale eateries.

But the edifice on Fort Avenue, Our Lady of Good Counsel, has stood unaltered, long a pillar for the area’s Catholics. Down the street is the Episcopal Church of the Redemption. A few blocks away is the Christ United Church of Christ, better known as the German Lutheran church.

For more than 100 years, congregants from these three churches have gone to one another’s dinners and carnivals, attended funerals and weddings together, and collaborated on bake sales and bingo nights.

So the news yesterday that the Rev. Ray Martin, pastor of Our Lady of Good Counsel, was forced to resign for offenses that included officiating at a funeral Mass with an Episcopal priest, was met with outrage. Community members of all faiths decried Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien’s action and vowed to protest, noting how sharply it seemed to break from the emphasis on religious tolerance by his predecessor, Cardinal William H. Keeler.

“Locust Point was ecumenical before it was kosher to be,” said Joyce Bauerle, 65, who attends the Church of the Redemption. “The three churches have always worked together. We do dinners together. We work at their church. They work at our church. Christmas bazaars, Easter bazaars, we always help each other.

“This is just a big slap in the face to this whole community,” she said yesterday. “We’re appalled by this.”

Read it all.

The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church warned the leader of the conservative Fort Worth diocese this week that he could face discipline if he continues to back proposals to separate from the U.S. church.

The warning was issued in advance of a meeting next week in which Fort Worth will consider taking steps to leave the national church over deep differences in biblical interpretation.

“I call upon you to recede from this direction and to lead your diocese on a new course that recognizes the interdependent and hierarchical relationship between the national Church and its dioceses and parishes,” Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said in a letter Thursday to Fort Worth Bishop Jack Iker.

Read it all.

When Gene Robinson was elected and approved as the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire in 2003, it ignited a forest fire in the Episcopal Church. Robinson is the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal diocese — a big problem for many church conservatives.

The Episcopal Diocese of Chicago, of which Kankakee is a part, will hold its election for bishop Saturday, and one of the candidates is an openly gay priest from Cleveland, the Rev. Tracey Lind.

The issue of ordaining gays and lesbians and electing them to positions of power in the church has been one of contention since before Robinson’s election, and some Episcopal churches have left the denomination to join up with the more conservative Anglican branches, like the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, which is sponsored by the Church of Nigeria.

The House of Bishops, which must approve each diocesan election, has said it will not approve Lind if she is elected, said the Rev. Frank Warthan, the priest at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Kankakee. He is unsure of where he stands on the topic of electing gay clergy to the top position in the church, but he is bothered that the church would even let Lind run after it has already said it won’t consider her.

“I think the diocese is being cruel for including her in that,” Warthan said, and he added that if she is elected, he thinks she should be approved.

Read it all.

With the election of a new diocesan bishop on the agenda tomorrow (Nov. 10), clergy and lay delegates to Diocese of Chicago’s two-day convention in Wheeling decisively approved a resolution calling on General Convention 2009 to overturn the moratorium on the consecration of partnered homosexual candidates to the episcopacy.

“By approving this resolution we would join a growing list of dioceses who have voted to uphold the canons of our church,” said the Rev. Ruth Meyers, professor of liturgy at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, prior to debate. “It does not endorse a particular candidate for tomorrow’s election.”

There are eight nominees on the ballot for the election of a bishop. One is a partnered lesbian. The House of Bishops, meeting in New Orleans in late September, affirmed that the bishops would “as a body” honor Resolution B033, which calls on standing committees and bishops with jurisdiction to exercise caution before granting consent to the consecration of a partnered homosexual candidate.

About 15 people followed Ms. Meyers to the podium to speak to the motion, nearly all in favor of adoption, including the Very Rev. Gary Hall, dean and president of Seabury, who described B033 as bad legislation theologically and a violation of church law. The resolution also runs the risk of politicizing the consent process, he said.

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It’s a topic that jumped up like a stunned ferret from God’s own hot plate three separate times recently ”” indicating, I think, that I’d better pay some sort of attention to it ”” the topic being the obvious but still desperately under-discussed idea that perhaps the most dangerous problem facing man in this modern age of radical technology and dazzling scientific conundrum and otherworldly raspberry vodka and ever-expanding notions of love and sex and human interconnection is the sad and treacherous fact that, well, religion and belief as we know them in America are, by and large, far too horribly stuck, limited, fixed in time and place and stiff karmic cement.

Put another way: We as a culture just might be suffering a slow, painful death by spiritual stagnation, by ideological stasis, by cosmic rigor mortis. It has become painfully, lethally obvious in the age of George W. Bush and authoritarian groupthink that our major religious systems and foundations don’t know how to move. They don’t learn, adjust, evolve, see things anew. They don’t know how to dance. And what’s more, this little problem might just be the death of us all.

The idea is everywhere, and not just in the obvious, sour religious outhouses of evangelical Christianity and fundamentalist Islam and rigid Catholicism. It even popped up while I was in conversation with tattooed Buddhist and author of “Dharma Punx” Noah Levine at the Roxie theater during LitQuake ’07, he and I chatting about the dangers of dogma and the problem of trying to adhere too closely, too severely, to classical Buddhist rules of behavior, concluding that even Buddhism has its dangers, its limits and its issues and general theological potholes.

Read it all.

Ugh.

“It’s going to take some time for these problems to work their way through the financial system,” said Matt DiFilippo, a Pittsburgh-based senior portfolio manager at Stewart Capital Advisors LLC, which has about $1 billion under management. “They might provide a cap on the market, particularly when you start to see an overflow into what most would believe are non-related sectors.”

Indeed.

A counterterrorism project in Los Angeles that would collect information about Muslim neighborhoods is drawing outrage from Islamic groups and civil libertarians who say it unjustly singles out residents based on faith and could lead to unconstitutional police tactics.
The groups complain that the Los Angeles Police Department’s “community mapping” project, which aims to prevent radicalization and homegrown terrorism, unfairly brings suspicion on Muslims.

They say it undermines trust established between Muslims and police since the 9/11 attacks and is reminiscent of how Nazis identified Jews during the Holocaust.

“This is anti-Semitism reborn as Islamophobia,” said Shakeel Syed, director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California. “We will fiercely resist this.”

The mapping project would collect information about specific neighborhoods but not individuals, according to Michael Downing, the LAPD’s counterterrorism chief.

Read it all.

Baltimore’s new Roman Catholic archbishop removed a priest who was pastor of three South Baltimore parishes for offenses that include officiating at a funeral Mass with an Episcopal priest, which violates canon law.

Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien personally ordered the Rev. Ray Martin, who has led the Catholic Community of South Baltimore for five years, to resign from the three churches and sign a statement yesterday apologizing for “bringing scandal to the church.”

Martin led the funeral Mass on Oct. 15 for Locust Point activist Ann Shirley Doda at Our Lady of Good Counsel with several clergy, including the Rev. Annette Chappell, the pastor of the Episcopal Church of the Redemption in Locust Point, Martin said.

Doda’s son, Victor, who had invited Chappell to participate in the service, was stunned and outraged by the action taken against Martin.

“I am sickened that they would treat our pastor this way,” he said. “It doesn’t sound possible that the church would take such a petty thing and ruin a man’s career.”

Read it all.

Is the Episcopal Church’s impending schism really about the theological rift that sprung up after the consecration of its first openly gay bishop, the Rev. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire?

Or is the brouhaha really about a church in battle with itself about how to be financially solvent and theologically relevant in today’s competitive religious marketplace?

Last weekend, the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh voted in favor of separating from the national church over theological beliefs on homosexuality. “What we’re trying to do is state clearly in the United States for the authority of Scripture,” Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh said after the vote.

But “authority of Scripture” doesn’t hold weight here because the Episcopal Church has always been challenged on this issue.

Read it all.

I will consider posting comments to this thread submitted by email first: Kendall’s E-mail: KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

A colleague recently took me to task for consulting Jews and Christians on how to keep American Buddhism alive. He didn’t agree with either premise–that Jews and Christians could offer advice to Buddhists, or that Buddhism was in any danger of decline. But he was wrong on both counts. American Buddhism, which swelled its ranks to accommodate the spiritual enthusiasms of baby boomers in the late 20th century, is now aging. One estimate puts the average age of Buddhist converts (about a third of the American Buddhist population) at upwards of 50. This means that the religion is almost certain to see its numbers reduced over the next generation as boomer Buddhists begin to die off without having passed their faith along to their children. And Jewish and Christian models offer the most logical solution for reversing that decline.

The basic problem is that non-Asian converts tend not to regard what they practice as a religion. From the beginning, Buddhism has been seen in its American incarnation not as an alternative religion, but as an alternative to religion. American converts have long held Buddhism apart from what they see as the inherent messiness of Western religious discourse on such issues as faith and belief, and from the violence that has so often accompanied it.

Read it all.

Lehman Chief Global Bond Strategist sees “deepest correction” ever in structured finance. Current market is in ‘recession-risk denial’.

More than 195,800 military veterans were homeless on any given night last year, and there are “troubling” indications that many service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan could face the same fate, according to a study released Thursday.

The report, from the National Alliance to End Homelessness, found that veterans make up one-quarter of the U.S. homeless population.

The report, which relied on data from Veterans Affairs facilities across the country, reflects a slight increase from previous estimates and confirms past surveys showing that former service members are much more likely to face homelessness than the rest of the population.

Although veterans make up about 11 percent of the civilian adult population, they represent 26 percent of homeless people, a figure the report calls “shockingly disproportionate.”

“As a country, I think we should be shocked and concerned that [nearly] 200,000 veterans don’t have a place to go,” said Stacey Stewart, former president and chief executive of the Fannie Mae Foundation, which announced a $200,000 grant Thursday to build housing for veterans. “Shouldn’t those who served their country be better served by the society that benefited from their service?”

Read it all.

It was the day that Finns broke their silence, abandoned their legendary stoicism.

As flags fluttered at half-mast across the nation and candles lit in the icy wind, the survivors of the country’s first chilling school bloodbath tried to talk away their fears.

“Finns usually prefer to maintain a stiff upper lip during an emotional crisis,” said youth worker Jenni Lehtinen in Jokela church, an hour’s drive out of Helsinki. “This time it’s different ”” the kids cannot stop talking, asking where it is safe nowadays if not in their own school.”

As if to underline the new sense of insecurity in this most placid of Nordic societies, two armoured personnel carriers have been parked close to the school. Only the Army and the church, it seems, can reassure these young Finns.

The shooting spree by a disturbed 18-year-old student, Pekka-Eric Auvinen, has stunned the nation. In 20 minutes around noon on Wednesday ”” maths for some pupils, English for others ”” Auvinen used his newly acquired Sig Sauer pistol to kill the headmistress, the school nurse and six pupils. At least a dozen others were injured.

Read it all.

Now, almost one year after having left The Episcopal Church (TEC), we look back at our experience and some frequently asked questions regarding our departure.

You really need to take the time to read it all.

Read it all.

These four social transformations together have helped dramatically to alter the experience of American life between the ages of 18 and 30. Studies agree that the transition to adulthood today is more complex, disjointed, and confusing than it was in past decades. The steps through and to schooling, first real job, marriage, and parenthood are simply less well organized and coherent today than they were in generations past. At the same time, these years are marked by an historically unparalleled freedom to roam, experiment, learn (or not), move on, and try again.

What has emerged from this new situation has been variously labeled “extended adolescence,” “youthhood,” “adultolescence,” “young adulthood,” the “twenty-somethings,” and “emerging adulthood.” I find persuasive Jeffrey Arnett’s argument that, of all of these labels, “emerging adulthood” is the most appropriate””because rather than viewing these years as simply the last hurrah of adolescence or an early stage of real adulthood, it recognizes the unique characteristics of this phase of life. These, according to Arnett in Emerging Adulthood, mark this stage as one of intense (1) identity exploration, (2) instability, (3) focus on self, (4) feeling in limbo, in transition, in-between, and (5) sense of possibilities, opportunities, and unparalleled hope. These, of course, are also often accompanied by big doses of transience, confusion, anxiety, self-obsession, melodrama, conflict, and disappointment. Many popular television shows of the last two decades””Beverly Hills 90210, Dawson’s Creek, Seinfeld, and Friends, for example””have taken as their point of departure the character and challenges of this new, in-between stage of life. I think it all signifies something big and serious.

Note that some of the statistics about emerging adulthood today are not historically unique. For example, young Americans in the 19th and very early 20th century, when society was more rural and agricultural, also married later in life than they did in the 1950s. Nevertheless, changes in the larger culture and social order in late 20th-century America make the experience of emerging adulthood today very different from the young adulthood of a century ago.

Read it all.

Read it all.

Update:The New York Times has an article entitled “Rising Demand for Oil Provokes New Energy Crisis” which begins thus:

With oil prices approaching the symbolic threshold of $100 a barrel, the world is headed toward its third energy shock in a generation. But today’s surge is fundamentally different from the previous oil crises, with broad and longer-lasting global implications.

Just as in the energy crises of the 1970s and ’80s, today’s high prices are causing anxiety and pain for consumers, and igniting wider fears about the impact on the economy.

Unlike past oil shocks, which were caused by sudden interruptions in exports from the Middle East, this time prices have been rising steadily as demand for gasoline grows in developed countries, as hundreds of millions of Chinese and Indians climb out of poverty and as other developing economies grow at a sizzling pace.

“This is the world’s first demand-led energy shock,” said Lawrence Goldstein, an economist at the Energy Policy Research Foundation of Washington.

Forecasts of future oil prices range widely. Some analysts see them falling next year to $75, or even lower, while a few project $120 oil. Virtually no one foresees a return to the $20 oil of a decade ago, meaning consumers should brace for an era of significantly higher fuel costs.

THE BISHOPS of Chester, Chichester, Exeter, and Rochester issued a statement on Tuesday in support of the Rt Revd Robert Duncan, the Bishop of Pittsburgh, after the warning letter sent to him by the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Dr Katharine Jefferts Schori.

She wrote to Bishop Duncan on Wednesday of last week, asking him to lead his diocese “on a new course that recognises the interdependent and hierarchical relationship between the national Church and its dioceses and parishes” (see above).

If his course did not change, she wrote, “I shall regrettably be compelled to see that appropriate canonical steps are promptly taken to consider whether you have abandoned the Communion of this Church . . . and whether you have committed canonical offences that warrant disciplinary action.”

The English bishops’ statement, which was instigated by the Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, read: “We deeply regret the increase in the atmosphere of litigiousness revealed by the Presiding Bishop’s letter to Bishop Duncan. At this time, we stand with him and with all who respond positively to the Primates’ Dar es Salaam requests. We hope the Archbishop’s response to Bishop John Howe of Central Florida will also apply to Bishop Bob Duncan of Pittsburgh.”

The Bishop of Chester, Dr Peter Forster, said on Tuesday that the statement gave personal support to Bishop Duncan. He described the Presiding Bishop’s letter as “aggressive, inappropriate, and unfortunate”. “They are acting as if it is the OK Corral. This is the North American culture: it is a managerial rather than a pastoral approach.”

Read it all.

Which company has committed the greater evil? Yahoo Inc. helped send a reporter to prison by revealing his identity to the Chinese government. Cisco Systems Inc. helps send thousands of Chinese dissidents to prison by selling sophisticated Internet surveillance technology to China.

If bad press is to be the judge, the “stool pigeon” Yahoo is clearly the bigger villain. In 2004, after the Chinese government ordered the country’s media not to report on the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests, journalist Shi Tao used his Yahoo e-mail account to forward a government memo to a pro-democracy group. When China’s Internet police — a force of 30,000 — uncovered this, it pressured Yahoo to reveal Shi’s identity. Yahoo caved quicker than you can say Vichy France, and Shi is doing 10 years in a Chinese slammer for one click of his subversive mouse.

For ratting out Shi, Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang has been dragged before Congress, called a “moral pygmy” and forced to issue an apology. In contrast, Cisco and Chief Executive John Chambers have received little public scrutiny for providing China’s cadres of Comrade Orwells with the Internet surveillance technology they need to cleanse the Net of impure democratic thoughts.

Cisco is hardly alone in helping China keep the jackboot to the neck of its people. Skype, an EBay Inc. subsidiary, helps the Chinese government monitor and censor text messaging. Microsoft Corp. likewise is a willing conscript in China’s Internet policing army, as Bill Gates’ minions regularly cleanse the Chinese blogosphere. Google Inc.’s brainiacs, meanwhile, have built a special Chinese version of their powerful search engine to filter out things as diverse as the BBC, freeing Tibet and that four-letter word in China — democracy.

Read it all.