It’s unusual to hear about any new business owner who feels that giving back is an integral part of the business plan.

Imagine how rare that trait is for a business that started the exact moment as the current recession. Chris Rutledge, the young owner of Red Line Painting had a plan when he started out and despite news reports that sent others to stockpile, he kept his hands open.

He stuck to his plan and faced down the economic tsunami that took out much older corporate giants and kept taking it one day at a time. It’s all working out, slowly but surely.

This is wonderful–read it all.

With the global recession making consumers and businesses more price-conscious, China is grabbing market share from its export competitors, solidifying a dominance in world trade that many economists say could last long after any economic recovery.

China’s exports this year have already vaulted it past Germany to become the world’s biggest exporter. Now, those market share gains are threatening to increase trade frictions with the United States and Europe. The European Commission proposed on Tuesday to extend antidumping duties on Chinese, as well as Vietnamese, shoe imports.

China is winning a larger piece of a shrinking pie. Although world trade declined this year because of the recession, consumers are demanding lower-priced goods and Beijing, determined to keep its export machine humming, is finding a way to deliver.

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When you go to an academic conference you expect to see some geeks, gravitas and graying professors giving lectures. But the people who showed up at the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society’s conference in Lower Manhattan last weekend were so damned young, hip and attractive. The leading figures at this conference were in their 30s, and most of the work was done by people in their 20s. When you spoke with them, you felt yourself near the beginning of something long and important…..

All of these studies are baby steps in a long conversation, and young academics are properly circumspect about drawing broad conclusions. But eventually their work could give us a clearer picture of what we mean by fuzzy words like ”˜culture.’ It could also fill a hole in our understanding of ourselves. Economists, political scientists and policy makers treat humans as ultrarational creatures because they can’t define and systematize the emotions. This work is getting us closer to that.

The work demonstrates that we are awash in social signals, and any social science that treats individuals as discrete decision-making creatures is nonsense. But it also suggests that even though most of our reactions are fast and automatic, we still have free will and control.

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Was it normal for Ms. Lasko to have expected fidelity from her longtime cohabiting partner? The answer is yes, according to the landmark 1994 National Sex Survey from the University of Chicago.

That survey of 3,500 people found that 94.6 percent of cohabiters and 98.7 percent of married people expected sexual exclusivity from their partners.

But the survey found that expecting fidelity didn’t mean getting fidelity, especially among unmarried people. Of married men, 4 percent said they had cheated on their wives in the past year. Of cohabiting men, 16 percent had cheated. And of single men with steady girlfriends, 37 percent had cheated.

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The defense attorney for the Rt. Rev. Charles E. Bennison, Jr., has expressed exasperation with the Episcopal Church’s Court for the Trial of a Bishop as he prepares to appeal his client’s conviction and sentencing.

Most recently the court rejected the bishop’s request for a new trial based on 200 personal letters, which his attorney, James Pabarue of Philadelphia, said conflicted with testimony given in court.

Mr. Pabarue believes the court misapplied Canon IV.14.4 because the case involved Bishop Bennison’s response to sexual misconduct by his brother and not any sexual misconduct by the bishop.

“The church has a way of playing more games than do secular courts,” Pabarue told The LivingChurch.

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He is neither old nor a priest nor particularly attached to time-honored traditions. At 35, John Eriksen, one of the nation’s youngest Catholic-school superintendents, offers a ruthless assessment of parochial education. “The biggest threat that urban Catholic schools face is nostalgia,” he says both of districts nationwide and of his own diocese of Paterson, N.J. A Notre Dame and Harvard graduate fluent in Spanish and Arabic, Eriksen is part of the next generation of Catholic leaders in search of new ways to halt decades of student attrition. “We’ve been running these schools in a way that might have worked 30 or 40 years ago but doesn’t work now,” he says.

Of that, there is no doubt. Nearly 1 in 5 Catholic schools in the U.S. has closed its doors this decade. To non-Catholics, this may not appear to be something worth worrying about. But parochial schools are one of the largest (if not the largest) alternatives to the American public-education system, and their steady decline inordinately affects urban low-income minorities who would otherwise be left at the mercy of public schools that have proven incapable of educating them.

Many Catholic schools, however, are following in the steps of their public brethren and trying to survive by changing the way they do business….

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Sarah Bender is the Buddhist program leader at the Air Force Academy. She says she has plenty of questions herself about whether it’s ever right to kill in order to stop further harm. But, Bender says, she leaves the academy every Wednesday evening feeling like this is where she’s supposed to be.

“People in the military come up ”” for real ”” against questions that most of us just consider abstractly,” Bender says. “The questions of Buddhism are the questions of life and death. So, where else would you want Buddhism than right there where those questions are most vivid?”

Bender says the academy is now a place where cadets and staff are free to practice any religion they choose.

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Over the last three months, banks put 63 percent of their new cash into euros and yen — not the greenbacks — a nearly complete reversal of the dollar’s onetime dominance for reserves, according to Barclays Capital. The dollar’s share of new cash in the central banks was down to 37 percent — compared with two-thirds a decade ago.

Currently, dollars account for about 62 percent of the currency reserve at central banks — the lowest on record, said the International Monetary Fund.

Bernanke could go down in economic history as the man who killed the greenback on the operating table.

After printing up trillions of new dollars and new bonds to stimulate the US economy, the Federal Reserve chief is now boxed into a corner battling two separate monsters that could devour the economy — ravenous inflation on one hand, and a perilous recession on the other.

“He’s in a crisis worse than the meltdown ever was,” said Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital. “I fear that he could be the Fed chairman who brought down the whole thing.”

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Read it all. (Hat tip: Instapundit)

Once again, the Sunday faithful have packed the cavernous sanctuary at Shepherd of the Hills Church in the San Fernando Valley, clapping and swaying for Jesus as a band rocks the hall.

“Come bless the Lord,” the worshipers sing. “Praise his name to the ends of the Earth.”

Most churches would be thrilled to fill their sanctuaries any day of the year.

Shepherd of the Hills, a nondenominational church in Porter Ranch, does it six times a weekend, attracting 8,000 people to its energetic services and offering a lesson about the growth of evangelical Christianity in California.

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Legislation that would transform the nation’s healthcare system cleared a significant hurdle today as the Senate Finance Committee voted 14-9 for a sweeping overhaul.

Just one Republican, Sen. Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, voted for the bill. But that represented a victory for the White House, which had heavily courted Snowe, and it allowed overhaul advocates to claim that there was a vestige of GOP support for the measure.

“Is this bill all that I would want? Far from it,” Snowe said in announcing her vote. “But when history calls, history calls.”

The bill would require Americans to have health insurance, provide federal subsidies to help low-income workers buy insurance, establish new insurance marketplaces, regulate health insurer practices and expand Medicaid. The plan as drafted is estimated to cost $829 billion over the next 10 years.

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Read it carefully and read it all (57 page pdf).

The diocese�s 2010 and 2011 budgets, which were approved by Diocesan Council on Sept. 24 and will go to synod on Nov. 21 for final consideration, contain the following highlights:

� Parish allotment is going down from 24% of assessable net income to 22.65%, leaving more money in the parishes for ministry.
� Episcopal area budgets will be increased from $95,000 each to $112,500 each, creating more opportunity for area-based initiatives.
� Curacy grants will increase from $143,000 to $190,000, allowing more new clergy to receive on-the-job training.
� More money will be put into parish stewardship workshops, advocacy in the media, volunteer training, creating new Christian communities and church planting.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury has called for “unsustainable” air-freighted food to be replaced gradually by homegrown produce from thousands of new allotments.

In an interview with The Times, Dr Rowan Williams said that families needed to respond to the threat of climate change by changing their shopping habits and adjusting their diets to the seasons, eating fruit and vegetables that could be grown in Britain.

He said that the carbon footprint of peas from Kenya and other airfreighted food was too high and families should not assume that all types of food would be available through the year. Dr Williams called for more land to be made available for allotments, saying that they would help people to reconnect with nature and wean them off a consumerist lifestyle.

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Children should be banned from watching television until they are 2 years old because it can stunt their language development and shorten their attention span, according to new Australian recommendations.

The guidelines warn of the damage done by sitting inactive for hours and advise that reading, drawing or solving puzzles should also be kept to a minimum.

For children aged between 2 and 5, time in front of the TV screen should be limited to an hour a day, according to health experts, in the first official guidelines on children’s viewing habits.

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The latest violence in Pakistan, including a successful Taliban attack on its Pentagon, may be an indication that the country is coming apart, or at least on the verge of sharp change.

The degree to which the calamitous situation is a result of U.S. policy toward it or U.S. actions nearby is open to question. What is clear is that whatever U.S. policy toward Pakistan is at the moment, it is not working to achieve U.S. interests there.

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The cardinal archbishop of Nairobi and president of Kenya’s episcopal conference summarized today the overall problem in Africa, saying the continent “continues to thirst for good governance.”

Cardinal John Njue said many African nations “struggle under bad governance where unchecked hunger for power has led to impunity, corruption, manipulation of people, and other similar social political evils bled from human hearts in need of conversion.”

And, he observed, “This is what has impoverished the people across the continent.”

“Bad governance,” the cardinal asserted, “[…] by and large can be termed the cancer of Africa.”

“This synod gives us a special opportunity to reflect on the cancer that is eating up our continent,” Cardinal Njue said. “Good governance is not only a priority but a must. I can as well add that politics in Africa is so important that we cannot leave it to politicians alone. […] The time to act constructively is now!”

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The Israelites spent 40 years a building without a permanent home, the congregation of St John’s Chapel say it took them longer than that but they’re back where they belong Downtown.

The church on 18 Hanover Street was first consecrated in 1840 by Rt Bishop Christopher Gadsden but closed it’s doors in 1958.

The Lord bless them–read it all.

There is no God, there is no heaven and there is no afterlife. At least, not in the way we have traditionally thought of such things.

These days, with atheist arguments topping bestseller lists, such statements might not seem all that contentious.

But when a retired bishop says it, it’s worth noting.

“My audience is not the people who go to church on Sunday morning,” John Shelby Spong, the retired Episcopal bishop of Newark, N.J., said on a recent visit to Toronto.

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Check it out.

Lenny Macklin made it to 10th grade before having a teacher who looked like him ”” an African-American male. Gregory Georges graduated from high school without ever being taught by a black man.

Only about 2% of teachers nationwide are African-American men. But experts say that needs to change if educators expect to reduce minority achievement gaps and dropout rates.

Macklin, now an 18-year-old college student, said he understands the circle that keeps many of his peers out of the classroom professionally.

“A lot of males, they don’t like being in school because they can’t relate to their teacher,” said Macklin, of Pittsburgh. “So why would you want to work there?”

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We look to the Copenhagen conference with hope but also with realism . . . there must be a desire on the part of every nation to do what they know they must, not because they are legally bound, but because they share a vision for a more just and sustainable future . . . We pray that each nation will come to the conference wanting the highest level outcome; that demanding targets will be set, not in an attempt to discipline reluctant participants, or to give some preferential treatment which undermines the whole; but that a greater vision might be shared.

The Anglican Communion occupies a unique position globally in terms of affecting and suffering from climate change:

From all points of the globe we point to the reality of climate change and to the very serious effect it is already having upon our people; from severe weather events, to prolonged droughts, major floods, loss of habitat and changing seasons.

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This is a nice story–before you watch it, guess the estimated number of grandparents taking care of their grandchildren in America right now.

Before I go any further, I had better point out that I am fully aware that it’s a bit rich of me to criticise clergy for recycling sermons when I referred to their obsession with all things ecological in my last column for the Church of England Newspaper. But I can guarantee I won’t do it again, whereas I doubt they could make the same promise.

Anyway, as I was saying, if you look at the website that lists all the press releases put out by Church House during 2009, the words climate (nine times) and environment (eight) crop up more times than God (six), Bible (four) or Jesus (two).

If they’re not ordering you to count your carbon or urging you to pray for the planet, they’re telling you much more than you ever wanted to know about compost toilets.

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It’s Sunday night at Woodlands Church, and Pastor Kerry Shook tells parishioners to pull out their cell phones.

He has pocketed his own iPhone for now, but tells everyone else to turn theirs on.

“OK guys, you can start the twitters,” he tells the crowd of about 250.

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Often, The Episcopal Church is called a “bridge church” between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. Many couples who join The Episcopal Church do so when a Catholic marries a Protestant. Both find in The Episcopal Church a theology and a style of worship that honors the faith traditions in which they were formed.

The foundation of faith in The Episcopal Church is often described using the image of a Three-legged stool.

The first leg of the stool is Holy Scripture. The catechism in the Prayer Book says of the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament that “God inspired their human authors” and that “God still speaks to us through the Bible” (BCP 853). The Old Testament conveys the story of the covenant relationship between Israel and God. The New Testament reveals the Incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ. Holy Scripture serves as the touchstone of our lives.

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My generation’s desire for religion”“but not yet”“is indicative of the sort of relativism that Riley clearly disdains. The Anglican scholar C.S. Lewis once wrote, “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.” The same, I think, could plausibly said of all religions. They are more than lifestyles that we adopt, and they are deeper than our decisions to “settle down” and raise a family. It is precisely that notion of religion that my generation clearly fails to understand.

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Last week I tabled a question in parliament asking the government about the measures it is taking to tackle prostitution.

The Policing and Crime Bill is making its way through the House of Lords and it is important that everyone, regardless of political allegiance or background, unites to ensure the bill is passed so we can send a strong message that funding sex slavery, and the systematic abuse of women, is not acceptable in this country. That is why I feel the time is right to speak out.

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Around the world millions of children are not getting a proper education because their families are too poor to afford to send them to school. In India, one schoolboy is trying change that. In the first report in the BBC’s Hunger to Learn series, Damian Grammaticas meets Babar Ali, whose remarkable education project is transforming the lives of hundreds of poor children.

At 16 years old, Babar Ali must be the youngest headmaster in the world. He’s a teenager who is in charge of teaching hundreds of students in his family’s backyard, where he runs classes for poor children from his village.

Read it all and also enjoy the video.

Father John Sewell wants people in Memphis to stop screaming.

From St. John’s Episcopal Church, where he is rector, he is spreading a message that Central Avenue motorists can see.

In front of the church, a sign reads “ScreamFree Zone.”

Screaming is not always about people raising their voice, Sewell said, “Sometimes they scream by drinking, sometimes they scream by getting depressed. It’s really about how we relate to one another.”

The aim of “ScreamFree Living” is to teach people how to stay calm before reacting, he said.

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