The Vatican, which is sending representatives to the July 16-Aug. 4 gathering of the world’s Anglican leadership, will be closely following its deliberations to see what direction it takes on such crucial questions as internal unity, authority, the role of the bishop and Anglican identity.

What has pushed these questions to the forefront is the ordination of openly gay clerics, the blessing of gay unions and the ordination of women bishops in some Anglican provinces.

Those developments have threatened to split the Anglican Communion. For the Vatican, they have raised new questions about the future of the 40-year-old dialogue with the Anglican Church.

“It’s very important for Anglicans to understand the depth of the change in our relationship that, in a sense, is being forced on us by the positions they are taking,” said one Vatican official, who asked not to be named.

In the Vatican’s view, it’s not just a question of ethical and sexual issues. Above all, it is seen as a problem of ecclesiology, as the new tensions in the Anglican Communion have weakened the bonds among the provinces.

Read it all (emphasis mine).

The U.S. bishops adopted a statement on embryonic stem cell research this morning, the first time the conference has spoken specifically on the issue. It asserts that harvesting embryos for research amounts to “the deliberate killing of innocent human beings,” and is therefore “a gravely immoral act.”

The statement was prepared by the Committee on Pro-Life Activities, led by Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia. Because Rigali wasn’t in attendance, it was presented by Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas.

The bishops warn that embryonic stem cell research is potentially part of a slippery slope toward other dangerous outcomes, including:
Ӣ Human cloning
”¢ Putting women’s health at risk in order to obtain eggs for the production of embryos
Ӣ Creating human/animal hybrids that blur the boundaries between species, once again in order to get egg cells

Read it all.

Despite the focus on the housing crisis, gasoline prices and the economy in general, the press has not done a good job capturing the intense economic anxiety ”” and even dread, in some cases ”” that has gripped tens of millions of working Americans, including many who consider themselves solidly middle class.

Working families are not just changing their travel plans and tightening up on purchases at the mall. There is real fear and a great deal of suffering out there.

A man who described himself as a conscientious worker who has always pinched his pennies wrote the following to Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont:

“This winter, after keeping the heat just high enough to keep my pipes from bursting (the bedrooms are not heated and never got above 30 degrees) I began selling off my woodworking tools, snowblower, (pennies on the dollar) and furniture that had been handed down in my family from the early 1800s, just to keep the heat on.

“Today I am sad, broken, and very discouraged. I am thankful that the winter cold is behind us for a while, but now gas prices are rising yet again. I just can’t keep up.”

This forms an interesting contrast to the article from Mr. Easterbrook posted below. Read it all.

The onslaught of cellphone calls and e-mail and instant messages is fracturing attention spans and hurting productivity. It is a common complaint. But now the very companies that helped create the flood are trying to mop it up.

Some of the biggest technology firms, including Microsoft, Intel, Google and I.B.M., are banding together to fight information overload. Last week they formed a nonprofit group to study the problem, publicize it and devise ways to help workers ”” theirs and others ”” cope with the digital deluge.

Their effort comes as statistical and anecdotal evidence mounts that the same technology tools that have led to improvements in productivity can be counterproductive if overused.

The big chip maker Intel found in an eight-month internal study that some employees who were encouraged to limit digital interruptions said they were more productive and creative as a result.

Intel and other companies are already experimenting with solutions. Small units at some companies are encouraging workers to check e-mail messages less frequently, to send group messages more judiciously and to avoid letting the drumbeat of digital missives constantly shake up and reorder to-do lists.

A Google software engineer last week introduced E-Mail Addict, an experimental feature for the company’s e-mail service that lets people cut themselves off from their in-boxes for 15 minutes.

I think there are few snap your fingers or wiggle your nose answers to this struggle. What helps me is to schedule when to read email and only to read it during scheduled times. Read the whole article–KSH.

Recently, proposals have been put forth in our state to recognize so-called “same-sex marriage,” a radical step that would remove from marriage its most basic, fundamental characteristic, thereby altering its very essence.

Our Governor has ordered recognition of such unions from other states as “marriages” in New York. This redefinition defies reason. Additionally, the state Assembly last year approved a measure to permit such “marriages” here, though to date the Senate has not.

Such actions, whether the legal union is called “marriage” or “civil union,” represent a destructive development for our state.

The joining of man and woman in the bond of marriage is a constant and visible reminder of God’s goodness and the beauty of the Divine plan for humankind. The Catholic Church teaches that Jesus Christ himself raised marriage to the dignity of a sacrament. And, indeed, all of the world’s great religions rightfully recognize marriage as a holy union of a man and a woman.

Numerous theological and religious arguments could be advanced as to why same-sex unions should be rejected. However, this is not simply a matter of theology, and religious values are not the sole source of opposition to this plan.

Marriage always has been, is now and always will be a union of one man and one woman in an enduring bond. This is consistent with biology and natural law, and should be obvious to all, no matter what their religion, or even if they have no religion at all. It is a mutual personal gift between the two that serves the individual couple in many ways, allowing them to grow in love and, through that love, to bring forth children.

Just as importantly, this union also serves the larger society. Marriage provides a stable family structure for the rearing of children and is the ultimate safeguard so that civil society can exist and flourish. That is why civil society through the ages has recognized its duty to foster and respect marriage between a man and a woman.

read it all.

The actress Tatum O’Neal was arrested recently on charges of buying crack cocaine from a man on the street near her New York City home. She is a 44-year-old mother of three. She has spent years in and out of drug abuse treatment (which she chronicled in her 2004 memoir), and according to her publicist she will continue to “attend meetings” for drug and alcohol abuse.

Ms. O’Neal illustrates a disturbing trend among those being admitted to substance abuse treatment services: a growing percentage of older women are being treated for harder drugs.

Data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration revealed that the total number of admissions to treatment services from 1996 to 2005 (the last year for which detailed data are available) stayed about the same among people under 40, but jumped 52 percent among those 40 and older. Of the 40 and older group, the rise in admissions among men was 44 percent. Among women, it was 82 percent.

I confess that the 82 percent figure blew my mind. Wow. Read it all.

The groom was shopping for the perfect diamond for his betrothed ”” the other groom. As Rey Almeida, a 47-year-old elementary school principal, perused the Equality Forever rings (a same-sex wedding special at 40 percent off if purchased from June 16 to June 26), he couldn’t help reflecting on the symbolism.

“We’ve been waiting for the right moment,” Mr. Almeida, 47, said of marrying his partner, Alan Pex, a 46-year-old accountant who was initially as standoffish as Mr. Big on “Sex in the City.” “Now there’s the possibility of a ring, a ring that says, I want to marry you and spend the rest of my life with you.’ ”

California is gearing up for the “new summer of love,” as it is being dubbed here: the legalization of same-sex marriage beginning at 5:01 p.m. Monday.

Unlike in Massachusetts, California’s new law does not limit marriages to residents of the state, thus resurrecting old postcard images of California as the promised land….

Read the whole thing.

Debates about Islam and the West can throw up unexpected tensions. Take the American and the Brit, successful young professionals who met recently at a seaside resort in Egypt. As it happens, both were devout Muslims who pray five times a day. But as they discovered, manifest piety, of the sort ubiquitous in poorer bits of Egypt, arouses instant suspicion in parts of the country where rich tourists and important Westerners need cocooning””even when those Westerners have come to attend the august deliberations on “Islam and the West” taking place nearby with the blessing of Egypt’s government.

The young men’s daily supplications were snooped on aggressively by the police and they found themselves longing for the freedom to bow down before God that is taken for granted in California and the English Midlands. Inter-faith encounters, it seems, are tricky enough when they take the form of careful speeches by heads of government and other movers and shakers; for ordinary people who simply want to say their prayers, things can be downright baffling.

That doesn’t, and shouldn’t, stop faiths from trying to talk to each other. Since Osama bin Laden launched the war he describes as the renewal of an ancient conflict between Islam and the “Crusaders and Jews”, there have been many initiatives to head off global confrontations involving religions and the cultures they have spawned. Al-Qaeda’s war on the West is by no means the only religious or pseudo-religious dispute in the world. In India, militant Hindus are at odds with other faiths. Sri Lanka’s Buddhist monks often support the battle with Tamil separatists. In Northern Ireland and the Balkans, conflict has raged ostensibly between different forms of Christianity…

Read it all.

In Ireland, the failure of the referendum was a crushing blow to most of the Irish establishment, including the major political parties and most business groups, which had worked for a yes vote.

But campaigners for a no vote mobilized under the efficient leadership of Declan Ganley, a businessman who argued that the treaty took power away from Ireland.

Ganley, who formed the group Libertas to campaign against the treaty, said that the vote would force the Irish prime minister, Brian Cowen, to renegotiate the treaty and secure a “better deal.”

“We want a Europe that is more democratic, and that if there is to be a president and a foreign affairs minister, they should be elected,” he said in an interview.

Read it all.

Representatives from five Anglican provinces and two other dioceses are participating in regular conference calls for the Anglican Churches in the Americas initiative said Bonnie Anderson, president of the House of Deputies, in opening plenary remarks to Executive Council on June 13 in Albuquerque, N.M.

In addition to The Episcopal Church, the planning group for the Feb. 22-29 event in Costa Rica includes representatives from the provinces of Brazil, Mexico, the Central America region and Canada. Representatives from the dioceses of Cuba and Uruguay are also participating, Mrs. Anderson said.

Read it all.

The Democratic National Committee recently ran an ad blasting John McCain for saying the country is “better off” than in 2000. Yet, arguably, except as regards the Iraq war, Mr. McCain’s statement is true. In turn, Mr. McCain is blasting Barack Obama for suggesting that international tensions are not as bad as they’ve been made to seem. Yet, arguably, Mr. Obama is right.

Democratic attacks on Mr. McCain and Republican attacks on Mr. Obama both seek to punish impermissibly positive thoughts. At a time when there exists a sense of crisis over the economy, fuel prices and many other issues, this reinforces the odd, two realities of life in the United States today: The way we are, and the way we think we are. The way we are could use some work, but overall, is pretty good. The way we think we are is terrible, horrible, awful. Possibly worse.

Read it all.

“The Buffalo Bills organization is devastated in hearing the news of the passing of Tim Russert. Tim, as everyone knows, was a tremendous Bills fan. He was always so proud to let people know just how much he loved our team and was such a great ambassador for Buffalo. So many times he ended his “Meet The Press” show with his patented “Go Bills!” that it became part of our Game Day morning rituals. He was a true friend and we will miss him immensely. Our sincere sympathies go out to his family and our team carries a heavy heart tonight as we mourn the loss of this great man, Buffalo’s native son and a Bills fan forever.”

Watch this NFL.com video also.

It really is worth watching it all. What was most striking is the degree to which his strong Christian faith as a Roman Catholic was evident throughout. My favorite piece is Tim’s coverage of his own father.

But nowhere was Russert’s passing felt harder or deeper than in Buffalo, where he was born May 7, 1950.

When Russert’s father, Timothy J. Russert Sr., who was immortalized in “Big Russ/Father and Son: Lesson of Life,” learned his famous broadcasting son had died, the 83-year-old retired truck driver broke down in tears. His son’s death came at an especially heartbreaking time ”” two days before Father’s Day.

He was in the Orchard Park assisted living facility, where his son had helped him to move just a week ago.

“Big Russ knows his son died. He’s crying right now,” said Joseph Passafiume, the son of Jean Passafiume, Big Russ’ companion for three decades.

Breaking the news to Big Russ were his daughter Kathryn, the last of Tim Russert’s siblings living in Western New York, and Michael Shea, a family friend.

“Kathy and Mike are with Big Russ,” Joseph Passafiume said. “Kathy’s also taking it bad. . . . My mom’s completely heartbroken.”

Mayor Byron W. Brown ordered flags on city property lowered to half-staff.

Read it all.

CNBC’s John Harwood said he and journalist Gerald Seib taped an appearance yesterday morning on Russert’s MSNBC talk show, and that as they left, “Jerry observed that he didn’t think Tim felt well.”

One of the last people to see Russert alive was Michael Hart, a Comcast technician from Waldorf, who struck up a friendship and said the newsman delighted in getting Washington Wizards tickets for Hart’s six children. Hart said they were laughing and joking as he set up cable service for Russert’s son in a Georgetown apartment.

As they rode down in the elevator, Hart said, “we talked about the upcoming campaign. He said, ‘Thank you for looking out for my family. Happy Father’s Day.’ He put both his hands on mine and I gave him a hug.”

Read it all.

Meeting for the first time since Pope Benedict XVI visited the U.S. and spoke of the deep shame he felt over clergy sex abuse, America’s Roman Catholic bishops Thursday began discussing how they can repair relations with priests after six years of scandal.

A small group of bishops and clerics, over a private lunch, started talks about the pain and trauma clergy have suffered since the crisis erupted in 2002. Embarrassment ran so deep that many priests stopped wearing their Roman collars in public at the height of the scandal.

Archbishop Roger Schweitz of the Archdiocese of Anchorage, said bishops are trying to learn directly from clergymen what church leaders should do to improve morale.

“I’m hoping with the priests to work out an equitable and just way to preserve the reputation of priests and also take accusations seriously,” Schweitz said.

Read it all.

A few weeks ago I found myself on a TV Sunday morning programme where Richard Dawkins was a fellow panel member. He probably won’t thank me for saying so, but I found myself more often agreeing with his responses than with some of the wilder Christian members of the audience, not least over the casting out of supposed demons from children. I was reminded of the new King William of Orange’s answer to the person asking for the traditional sovereign’s healing on Maundy Thursday, “May God give you better health and more sense.”

But the strange fact is, that it’s often writers like Dawkins and Philip Pullman who would regard themselves as atheist who touch on some of the most profound and basic religious questions. In Dawkins’s case the necessity or otherwise of a divine creator of a wondrous and awesome universe; in Pullman’s case the tension between human free-will and social control or the interface of parallel universes.

Read it all.

And when did you last see your children? Before you both left at the crack for the office? When they were already in bed? Or do you only see them ”” let’s be brutally realistic here, given our divorce rate ”” at alternate weekends?

So we don’t need to ask any more who tucks them up at night, takes them to school, listens to their Homeric summaries of Harry Potter books, buys them Start-rites, takes them to the dentist, finds out they’re upset, do we?

Because it’s not you two, the parents, who gave them life. No, it’s more likely to be Agnieszka from Gdansk, who doesn’t really give a monkey’s.

All this week, the story has been that we have the least nurtured offspring in the world: as Fathers 4 Justice staged a rooftop protest on Harriet Harman’s roof, David Cameron, a father of three, told Relate that families needed support, money, tax-breaks, but above all, time; we are bottom of the UN table for raising children; and the four children’s commissioners this week reported that the UN convention on the rights of the child doesn’t seem to apply in Britain, with one in three children living in poverty, and over a million in poor housing. The dossier documented failures in all areas ”” asylum, education, learning disability, smacking ”” but even so, it didn’t say the thing I kept waiting for: that even middle-class families with aspirational graduate parents don’t spend that much time just hanging together, chillaxin’, any more.

I’m not saying that our Jessicas and Bens are swigging alcopops on street corners, in hoodies. Of course they’re not. But there is definitely evidence that the middle classes are producing their own, quasi-feral generation of children (sorry, I simply can’t type kids), only in their own, very different, handwringingly guilt-ridden, overcompensating way.

Read it all.

The battle over science education could soon spill into the courts in Louisiana, where looming legislation would allow teachers to bring up scientific criticisms of evolution, global warming and other hot-button topics.

The state House approved the bill Wednesday on a 94-3 vote. Because the Senate already approved a near-identical measure, supporters expect the upper chamber to pass this bill also.

A spokeswoman for Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal would not say whether he will sign the bill, saying only that he will review it when it gets to his desk.

“It’s not about a certain viewpoint,” said supporter Jason Stern, Vice President of the Louisiana Family Forum, a conservative group pushing the bill. “It’s allowing [teachers] to teach the controversy. It’s an academic freedom issue.”

Read it all.

I was surprised by the news, as he was only 58. As a big Meet the Press fan, I can say he will be sorely missed here.

Are we living in the last century of our civilization? Is it possible that all of our technology, knowledge and wealth cannot save us from ourselves? Could our society actually be heading towards collapse?

A dramatic preview of an unprecedented ABC News event called “Earth 2100.”According to many of the world’s top scientists, the answer is yes, unless we take action now.

Read it all.

For millions of children across the U.S., this Sunday will not be a cause for celebration. Because of dramatic increases in divorce and nonmarital childbearing, about 28% of our nation’s children — more than 20 million kids — now live in a household without their father, up from 10 million kids (14%) in 1970, according to a recent Census Bureau report. Moreover, because most of these boys and girls see their dads infrequently (once a month or less), Father’s Day will offer cold comfort to many of these children.

Our nation’s epidemic of fatherlessness is just the most salient indicator of what University of Chicago theologian Don Browning has called the “male problematic” — the tendency of men to live apart from their children and to invest less emotionally and practically in their families than women do.

This situation has not gone unnoticed in America’s houses of worship.

Read the whole article.

Ecclesiastical Court proceedings to determine whether Charles Bennison may remain Episcopalian bishop in the five-county region concluded yesterday.

Two counts against Bp. Bennison concern whether he committed “conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy.” Church prosecutors allege that he failed to protect underage parishioner Martha Alexis from sexual predation by John Bennison, his younger brother, and kept the matter a secret from the girl’s parents.

The abuse continued nearly throughout Ms. Alexis’s high school years in the early 1970s when John served as youth group leader in St. Mark’s Church in Upland, Calif. The elder Bennison, then rector of the church, hired his brother for the job as he worked on his seminary studies.

If the panel of nine priests and bishops finds that Bp. Bennison failed in his priestly duties, he could lose his standing as bishop and face further sentencing. They will issue their ruling within 30 days.

Read it all.

After extensive consultation, and with the consent of the Standing Committee, I am moving the time and place of the 143rd Annual Convention of the Diocese to Saturday, October 4th, 2008, at St. Martin’s Church, Monroeville.

Registration of clerical and lay deputies will be from 7:30 – 8:30 a.m. The Convention Eucharist will begin at 8:30 a.m. The business session of Convention will begin immediately following the Eucharist. Lunch will be served at midday. It is anticipated that all matters required to come before the Annual Convention will be complete during the afternoon, with adjournment at the completion of said business.

The date and place of the Annual Convention having been previously set, I am announcing this change under the provisions of Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution of the Diocese. The expressed threat of deposition of the Diocesan Bishop at a September meeting of the House of Bishops is the “sufficient cause.”

Read it all.

The former Bishop in Jerusalem has lost the second round of his court battle with the diocese over the ownership of a church school in Nazareth. Last month an Israeli court upheld a magistrate’s ruling ordering Bishop Riah Abu al-Assal and his family to turn custody of the “Bishop Riah Educational Campus” in Nazareth over to the Diocese pending a final court decision.

In a statement filed on its website, the Diocese in Jerusalem said that shortly before his retirement in March 2007, Bishop Riah established a charitable trust staffed by members of his family and sought to transfer the assets and administration of the diocese’s Christ Church School in Nazareth over to the new “Bishop Riah Educational Campus.”

Read it all.

Bank repossessions more than doubled in May and foreclosure filings rose 48 percent from a year earlier as previously foreclosed properties dragged down housing prices, RealtyTrac Inc. said in a report today.

One in every 483 U.S. homeowners lost their houses to foreclosure or received either a default warning or notice that their home would go up for sale at auction, RealtyTrac said. That was the highest rate since the Irvine, California-based company began reporting in January 2005 and the 29th consecutive month of year-over-year increases. Nevada, California and Arizona posted the highest rates in the U.S. and New Jersey entered the Top 10, according to RealtyTrac.

“It’s definitely a different kind of market than what we got used to a couple years ago,” said Devin Reiss, owner of Realty 500 Reiss Corp. in Las Vegas. “We used to sell homes in a day. Now 50 percent of our sales are foreclosures.”

Read it all.

Debate about women bishops will dominate the General Synod agenda next month. In all, the Synod will spend about seven-and-a-half hours discussing the various ways forward.

The General Synod will meet on the York University campus from 4 p.m. on Friday 4 July until 1 p.m. on Tuesday 8 July. The chief item on the agenda is the consideration of the recent Manchester report (News, 2 May), which outlined the various options for introducing women into the episcopate in the Church of England, and accommodating those who find women bishops unacceptable.

The matter first comes up on the Friday evening, when the Bishop of Manchester, the Rt Revd Nigel McCulloch, introduces the issue and briefs the Synod on the plans for the following morning. These involve an hour-and-a-quarter in group discussions, beginning with prayer. These are followed by a two-hour “take note” debate, in which the general concerns of the different positions in Synod can be aired.

Controversial matters are customarily avoided on a Sunday during the York sessions, and the Synod returns to women bishops on Monday afternoon, spending three-and-three-quarter hours debating the motion proposed by the House of Bishops: no legislative security for traditionalists, but, instead, a code of practice. The Archbishops have said that they expect amendments to this motion in order to test the mind of the Synod. These can be submitted as late as Sunday afternoon; so it will be impossible to predict until the day what choices the Synod will be faced with.

Read it all.

From the thread below:

I received a note late today from a faculty member of Trinity Schol for Ministry informing me that John Rodgers has personally told him that he is NOT the author of the SPREAD document to which I have responded. (As I noted, no author was cited.) Another name was mentioned as the author, but rather than potentially further confusion by passing along second-hand information, I will not repeat it. According to the note, John Rodgers is NOT the convener of SPREAD either, as David Virtue reported. What he will say at GAFCON, I am told, is not known.

I apologize for associating John Rodgers’ name with a document he apparently did not write, and with an organization for which he is not the convener.

As early as 2005, however, Rodgers was one of two signatories to a Petition to certain Global South Primates (still on the SPREAD website), where he was listed as “Chairman” of SPREAD. Perhaps he no longer is. He seems to know the author of this particular piece. The Petition he did put forward, however, and which he signed certainly covers the same ground as the “Urgent Call”. It describes Rowan Williams as a an “anti-Scriptural” “threat” to the Gospel and to Anglicanism who refuses to “repent”, and the like””the Petition also likewise lumps in Abp. George Carey into an equivalent camp, quite misleading readers as to Carey’s actual views””and so on. The main difference between the two pieces is that, in the earlier one, the need for a new Communion is laid out as implicitly necessary, now it is laid out as absolutely so. My arguments apply in each case across the board””so I have no apologies to offer on that score in the least. The Petition, I would note, lists several items where Williams is imputed views on the basis of his sitting on the editorial board of something. I don’t know whether this should apply, by analogy, to the SPREAD documents.

I shall have my piece revised so that Rodgers’ name is changed to “the author”, and make other related adjustments.

Meanwhile, I find it interesting that in the thread of one post ”“ the present one ”“ the topic is tied to the dean of one seminary associated with a writing that itself associates the Abp. of Canterbury with “anti-Christ” (and yes, “the author” does indeed “associate” him in this way), with many apparently agreeing that this is a fair characterization, while just above is another posting, from a member of that dean’s own faculty, commending Rowan Williams’ fine theology (pace the Petition’s unmitigated condemnation of his orthodoxy), based on an invited paper delivered at an Eastern Orthodox seminary conference. I’m glad it’s all so clear to everybody ”“ including seminary faculty, the Eastern Orthodox, and the Global South ”“ since apparently Williams has “guaranteed” everybody else’s actions in a decisive way, through his failures””proleptically initiating, it seems, the AMiA itself and its vision even before he was Archbishop of Canterbury””and thereby managed through the deployment of his moral vacuum, to set the course for the New Future.

The whole thread is quite important and I encourage your participation therein. I am closing comments on this entry so that any further comment will continue on the thread below–thanks.

When I interviewed Missionary Bishop Martyn Minns of the Convocation of Anglicans of North America (CANA) this week, he was already in Jerusalem a week before the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCon) which will gather 300 conservative bishops representing 35 million Anglicans, more than half of those in the world.

Most are from the “Global South,” such as Africa, Asia, South America, Australia. However, many are “missionaries” from those countries to the U.S., such as Minns, who has attracted 55 conservative congregations, most of which have fled the increasingly liberal Episcopal Church. Another 250 have left for such groups as the Anglican Mission in America.

The gathering of GAFCon bishops is almost revolutionary, because only weeks later, the Archbishop of Canterbury will preside over Lambeth, a conference for the world’s Anglican bishops. The Global South bishops decided not to attend Lambeth, but to hold their own gathering instead.

Does this mean there will be split in the Anglican Communion?

Minns thought not: “We are in a process of realignment. When children grow up, you have to re-do your relationship, and begin to relate as equals. They are no longer kids and want to share in the leadership of the family. Institutional change is difficult.”

Read it all.

One of our readers emailed me this this morning. Check it out–and make sure to watch it for a minute or two as many displays rotate through the clock.