Don’t believe the multitasking hype, scientists say. New research shows that we humans aren’t as good as we think we are at doing several things at once. But it also highlights a human skill that gave us an evolutionary edge.

As technology allows people to do more tasks at the same time, the myth that we can multitask has never been stronger. But researchers say it’s still a myth ”” and they have the data to prove it.

Humans, they say, don’t do lots of things simultaneously. Instead, we switch our attention from task to task extremely quickly.

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Across the country at the Parkrose Community United Church of Christ in Portland, Ore., the Rev. Chuck Currie has noticed that his congregation is rife with “fear and distrust of leaders.”

He tries to calm the flock by saying: “Ultimately, our hope rests with God.”

But, he adds, “economic problems are moral problems and how we respond speaks about our relationship with God and to the world.”

Parkrose is no megachurch. With 114 members, it’s a small house of worship in a modest neighborhood of low-income and elderly people. “We have a responsibility,” Currie says, “to care first for those Jesus called the ‘least of these’ in society: the poor, homeless, sick, children and the elderly.”

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Under a law introduced… [earlier this week], brides and grooms are no longer restricted to marrying in their local parish and can hold their wedding in any church around the country to which they are linked – even if it is just where their grandparents were married.

Bishop Cottrell said: “People who are serious about getting married naturally want a marriage ceremony and a setting which is equally serious.

“Only the church provides this – but until now it has been difficult to get married in church unless it is in the parish where you live or where you regularly worship.

“But from today those who have a connection with the church can be married in the church where they have that connection…”

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Some basic information about the electing convention is here.

Dr. Andrews presentation to the ACC in Nottingham in 2006 is here.

Some biographical information and a picture is there.

“No one goes to church to fight,” said the Rev. Peter Frank, a spokesman for the diocese, whose conservative leader, Bishop Robert W. Duncan, was removed by the national church on Sept. 18 for pushing for secession. “It’s going to be difficult. And, at the same time, there’s hope in this. It’s time to move on.”

The drive to divorce the Episcopal Church arose after the election of V. Gene Robinson, the openly gay bishop of New Hampshire. But the secessionists say the issue is not simply about homosexuality. “Bishop Robinson is a symptom, not the cause of our disagreement with the Episcopal Church,” Mr. Frank said.

The dispute includes complaints that the national church allows open debate on whether Jesus is the Son of God, or that the only way to God is through Jesus ”” tenets of faith that conservatives find indisputable.

But an opponent of secession, the Rev. Jay Geisler of St. Stephens Church in McKeesport, Pa., pointed out that those tenets are in the Book of Common Prayer, which guides the church. Mr. Geisler added, “I just can’t see Jesus Christ forcing us to go one way or the other and split apart.”

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It seems to me that’s also near the point the Prince of Wales was making over the summer with his intervention about GM crops – it’s time we learned to work with nature as our teacher rather than against her. What’s happening at the moment both to honey and to money speaks of a world that’s out of kilter.

The poem by George Herbert is called Providence – all 38 verses flow from a faith that everything is a gift, that all is connected and exists for the praise of God. When that particular thread is pulled the whole fabric eventually unravels

One of the ironies of the present money crisis is that printed on the back of an American 10 dollar bill are the words “In God we Trust”. But all the talk is about ‘lack of confidence’ and everything being ‘out of control’. Maybe it’s time for politicians to listen to poets, for our leaders to learn from nature and for the managers of money to learn from those apian makers of honey about how to create wealth without others having to suffer loss.

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This is dangerous. We have House members, many of whom I suspect can’t balance their own checkbooks, rejecting a complex rescue package because some voters, whom I fear also don’t understand, swamped them with phone calls. I appreciate the popular anger against Wall Street, but you can’t deal with this crisis this way.

This is a credit crisis. It’s all about confidence. What you can’t see is how bank A will no longer lend to good company B or mortgage company C. Because no one is sure the other guy’s assets and collateral are worth anything, which is why the government needs to come in and put a floor under them. Otherwise, the system will be choked of credit, like a body being choked of oxygen and turning blue.

Well, you say, “I don’t own any stocks ”” let those greedy monsters on Wall Street suffer.” You may not own any stocks, but your pension fund owned some Lehman Brothers commercial paper and your regional bank held subprime mortgage bonds, which is why you were able refinance your house two years ago. And your local airport was insured by A.I.G., and your local municipality sold municipal bonds on Wall Street to finance your street’s new sewer system, and your local car company depended on the credit markets to finance your auto loan ”” and now that the credit market has dried up, Wachovia bank went bust and your neighbor lost her secretarial job there.

We’re all connected. As others have pointed out, you can’t save Main Street and punish Wall Street anymore than you can be in a rowboat with someone you hate and think that the leak in the bottom of the boat at his end is not going to sink you, too. The world really is flat. We’re all connected. “Decoupling” is pure fantasy.

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Members from nine congregations on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation slated for closure by the Diocese of South Dakota met Sept. 20 in Kyle to discuss their options.

Some of the congregations scheduled to close by Nov. 30 want to file injunctions in tribal court, claiming that Native American landowners long ago donated land to the diocese for the churches and, in at least some cases, there may have been extra acreage donated along with the church grounds.

“Our concern is the cemeteries, the land and the buildings,” Lydia Bear Killer, vestry president of Church of the Inestimable Gift in Allen, told the Rapid City Journal. “We’re going to do whatever it takes to maintain our church, our land and our cemeteries. Every church has a petition circulating for what it wants from the diocese,” she said.

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Today, people tell pollsters outright that they won’t vote for a black candidate. In Pennsylvania’s Democratic primary, one voter in six said race influenced his vote. The blogs are awash in racist bile, not all of it anonymous. An Associated Press-Yahoo poll found that 40% of white Americans have some negative attitudes toward blacks. The AP story quoted John Clouse in an Ohio coffee shop with his friends, saying flat out, “We still don’t like black people….

I called up Charles Henry, who teaches African American studies at UC Berkeley. In 1983, he was the first to measure the Bradley effect. Yes, perceptions of race are changing, but still, for Obama now, as for Tom Bradley then, Henry calculates that it will take “a double-digit lead to feel confident come election day.”

It grieves me to say so, but he may be right. Good polls don’t change bad attitudes. If America 2008 hasn’t changed much from California 1982, by next year pundits will be calling it the “Obama effect.”

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In a move suggesting how the credit crisis could disrupt American higher education, Wachovia Bank has limited the access of nearly 1,000 colleges to $9.3 billion the bank has held for them in a short-term investment fund, raising worries on some campuses about meeting payrolls and other obligations.

Wachovia, the North Carolina bank that agreed this week to sell its banking operations to Citigroup, has held the money in its role as trustee for a fund used by colleges and universities and managed by a Connecticut nonprofit, Commonfund.

On Monday, Wachovia announced that it would resign its role as trustee of the fund, and would limit access to the fund to 10 percent of each college’s account value. On Tuesday, Commonfund said that by selling some government bonds and other assets held in the fund, it had succeeded in raising its liquidity to 26 percent.

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Of Interest:

Canon 8. Of Property

Section a) Any Congregation or other institution holding or intending to hold title to real property shall be incorporated. Its form of incorporation shall be in accordance with the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and in harmony with the Constitution and Canons of The Episcopal Church and of this Diocese, and the directions of Diocesan Convention.

Section b) All property, real and personal, held by or for the benefit of any Congregation of this Diocese is held in trust for the Diocese and The Episcopal Church. The existence of this trust, however, shall in no way limit the power and authority of the Congregation otherwise existing over such property so long as the congregation remains a part of, and subject to, this Church and its Constitution and Canons.

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On Friday, with its stock plunging 27 percent, Wachovia experienced a “silent run” on deposits, but the bigger worry for regulators was that other banks wouldn’t provide the Charlotte bank with necessary short-term funding when it opened for business Monday, sources familiar with the situation told the Observer.

With Wachovia already looking for a merger partner, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., in consultation with other regulators, required the bank to reach a sale to Citigroup on Monday morning.

The FDIC, for the first time, used legislative authority created in 1991 to help it deal with a “very large complex bank failure” on short notice. It requires approval from heavy hitters ”“ two-thirds of FDIC board members, two-thirds of Federal Reserve board members as well as the Treasury secretary, who must consult with the president.

“When Wachovia opened Monday it would not have had a source of liquidity,” a source familiar with the situation said. “It really could not have opened under those circumstances. That’s why (the FDIC) put together the assistance package.”

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Bloomberg.com reports the cost of borrowing in dollars in London for three months rose for a fourth day, making clear that banks haven’t started to lend after the U.S. Senate approved a $700 bln plan to rescue beleaguered financial institutions. The London interbank offered rate, or Libor, that banks charge each other for such loans climbed 6 basis points to 4.21% today, the highest since Jan. 11, the British Bankers’ Association said.

Some small companies say they are no longer able to get loans from newly cautious banks as credit tightens across the country, and even those who do qualify are increasingly reluctant to borrow and expand, fearful of overextending themselves in the midst of the financial crisis.

Alan Petrucci, whose small factory near Chicago makes metal molds that other manufacturers buy to form plastic parts, says his bank recently offered him an additional loan. Though orders for his molds are still plentiful, Mr. Petrucci says he will borrow only to upgrade existing machinery, not to expand.

“We are bracing for the downturn that is coming,” Mr. Petrucci said. “It is coming; there is no question about that.”

Mark Snyder, another businessman, is more optimistic, but his bank refused two weeks ago to grant another loan to his fledgling medical supply company near Denver. So he turned to a commercial lender, which has offered credit ”” at 30 percent a year. Mr. Snyder does not want to borrow much at that rate. “We desperately need more capital to grow our sales,” he said.

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We emphasised that ”˜be it by birth or by conversion the men and women in GAFCON which the entire Church of Nigeria, Anglican Communion is a part, are people who have grown to be Anglican Christians by conviction, upholding the tenets of Anglican biblical orthodoxy. We have no other place to go nor is it our intention to start another church. Anglicans we are, Anglicans we’ll remain until
the LORD shall return in glory to judge each one according to his deeds.’ Gafcon has been held with a world-wide acclaimed resounding success and with no financial deficit. I call on this holy assembly to express gratitude to all those who made generous donations to help us fund Gafcon. Lambeth Conference too was held. About 263 bishops from around the world including at least three from the Church of England and representing over 45% of the Anglican world chose not to attend. Unlike Gafcon, it ended in huge financial deficit, and there were no clear unanimous declaration or statement[s].

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This might not be the end of the world, but Cubs fans can see it from here. The Cubs spent six months working and hitting and pitching and fielding and sweating to get home-field advantage in the playoffs, and they gave it away in five innings.

They might’ve given this series away, too, because losing the first game at home in a five-game series is exponentially more disastrous than doing it in a seven-game series.

So now what?

Read it all. It was a horrible night for Cubs fans. Dempster didn’t have it, it is as simple as that. Congratulations to the Dodgers–KSH.

There are days when all it takes is a single speech to illustrate the decline of a world power. A face can speak volumes, as can the speaker’s tone of voice, the speech itself or the audience’s reaction. Kings and queens have clung to the past before and humiliated themselves in public, but this time it was merely a United States president.

Or what is left of him.

George W. Bush has grown old, erratic and rosy in the eight years of his presidency. Little remains of his combativeness or his enthusiasm for physical fitness. On this sunny Tuesday morning in New York, even his hair seemed messy and unkempt, his blue suit a little baggy around the shoulders, as Bush stepped onto the stage, for the eighth time, at the United Nations General Assembly.

He talked about terrorism and terrorist regimes, and about governments that allegedly support terror. He failed to notice that the delegates sitting in front of and below him were shaking their heads, smiling and whispering, or if he did notice, he was no longer capable of reacting. The US president gave a speech similar to the ones he gave in 2004 and 2007, mentioning the word “terror” 32 times in 22 minutes. At the 63rd General Assembly of the United Nations, George W. Bush was the only one still talking about terror and not about the topic that currently has the rest of the world’s attention.

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Take a look. Of interest at a local level, the two Senators from South Carolina voted opposite to each other.

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The convention of the Diocese of Fond du Lac is scheduled to consider a resolution that seeks consent from General Convention to explore a junctioning arrangement with the Diocese of Eau Claire when it meets Oct. 18-19 in Fond du Lac, Wis.

Junctioning, as defined in Article V of the constitution of The Episcopal Church, means the joining of two or more dioceses to form a new diocese. In order to come before General Convention, the Diocese of Eau Claire must approve a similar resolution at its convention Nov. 7-8. Fond du Lac is 134 years old. Eau Claire is 80.

Canon Matthew Payne, canon administrator for the Diocese of Fond du Lac, likened General Convention consent as something less than marriage and more like getting permission to date.

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After one spectacular failure, the $700 billion financial industry bailout found a second life Wednesday, winning lopsided passage in the Senate and gaining ground in the House, where Republicans opposition softened.

Senators loaded the economic rescue bill with tax breaks and other sweeteners before passing it by a wide margin, 74-25, a month before the presidential and congressional elections.

In the House, leaders were working feverishly to convert enough opponents of the bill to push it through by Friday, just days after lawmakers there stunningly rejected an earlier version and sent markets plunging around the globe.

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After one spectacular failure, the $700 billion financial industry bailout found a second life Wednesday, speeding toward passage in the Senate and gaining ground in the House where conservative opposition seemed to soften.

Senators loaded the economic rescue bill with tax breaks and other sweeteners for the right and left, hoping to secure approval in the House by Friday, just days after lawmakers there stunningly rejected an earlier version and sent markets plunging around the globe.

The measure has not caused the same uproar in the Senate, where both parties’ presidential candidates, Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, were making rare appearances to vote their support. That would send the package back to the House, where passage would require a turnaround of 12 votes from Monday’s 228-205 defeat.

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The ongoing turmoil in the financial markets has diverted me from my usual tax academic pursuits, including this blog, for which I apologize. This post explores the causes of that turmoil. My next post will explore solutions currently under consideration, including aspects of the so-called “$700 billion bailout.”

The current financial crisis has many causes, some long-term and structural. I focus here, however, on three immediate aspects of the crisis: the trigger, how problems generated by that trigger spread through the markets, and how this produced the liquidity freeze that persuaded Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bush to act (unsuccessfully thus far).

Read it all. This is a pretty good basic analysis. It is missing some important pieces, especially the 1999 decision to expand Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s purview and the role that had in encouraging more risky mortgages. Also, I disagree with him about Lehman, he is way too kind– it was a big mistake by the Fed. More about credit default swaps would have helped too.

Anyway, you take a look and see what you think–KSH.

“We don’t have a lot of leeway on time,” [Harry] Reid told reporters in the Capitol. “One of the individuals in the caucus today talked about a major insurance company — a major insurance company — one with a name that everyone knows that’s on the verge of going bankrupt. That’s what this is all about.”

—As quoted in the Louisville, Kentucky, Courier-Journal political blog

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Check it out if you are so inclined. Is there some symbolism in the fact that what was originally three pages became 110 pages in the House version and has now become 451 pages? Just asking–KSH.

At the core of the financial crisis is a simple problem: Banks don’t fully trust each other. So they hoard cash and only lend to each other if the borrowing bank pays enough to justify the risk.

The best indicator of the simmering interbank distrust is an obscure-sounding interest rate known as Libor, which is flashing red. Libor, or the London interbank offered rate, is the rate that banks worldwide charge each other for short-term loans.

Yesterday, the annualized rate for those overnight loans spiked by more than four percentage points, to 6.9 percent, its highest level ever. Normally, Libor on dollar loans is not much higher than what it costs the U.S. government to borrow short-term money, which yesterday was nearly zero.

That tells experts that banks around the world are basically unwilling to lend to each other at any price. It means that cash is not flowing to places that need it. And, if sustained, would ultimately lead to higher borrowing costs for ordinary U.S. households and businesses.

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As he prepares for October baseball at Wrigley Field, manager Lou Piniella feels good about his team.

He feels good about the starting pitchers. Feels good about the lineup. Feels good about the back end of the bullpen. Feels good about the character of his resilient ballclub.

“I do like our team, yes, and I’ve got a whole lot of confidence in them,” he said.

But, as has been his habit from the beginning of the Piniella era, he cautioned fans not to get overconfident about his 97-win team. If he had a playoff T-shirt licensed by Major League Baseball, it probably would read: Be Happy, Not Giggly.

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The voters will sort out the blame on all this in November. Anger at Washington will feed a hunger for change, and it’s likely to fall harder on the GOP as the party that holds the White House. But for the next president and the next Congress, whatever its makeup, Monday’s performance should be looked at as an example of what it was, a performance designed to undermine the public’s confidence in its elected leadership.

—An article in today’s Washington Post by Dan Balz