(Please note–the above headline is from the print edition–KSH).

Melanie Poorman swiveled in her chair and punched a button on the phone. The caller, an Iraq war veteran in his 30s, had recently broken up with his girlfriend and was watching a movie, “Body of War,” that was triggering bad memories. He started to cry.

And he had a 12-gauge shotgun nearby. Could someone please come and take it away, he asked.

Ms. Poorman, 54, gently coaxed the man into unloading the weapon. As a co-worker called the police, she stayed on the line, talking to him about his girlfriend, his work, the war. Suddenly, there were sirens. “I unloaded the gun!” she heard him shout. And then he hung up. (He was taken to a hospital, she learned later.)

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Cheap labour has built China’s economic miracle. Its manufacturing workers toil for a small fraction of the cost of their American or German competitors. At the bottom of the heap, a “floating population” of about 130m migrants work in China’s boomtowns, taking home 1,348 yuan a month on average last year. That is a mere $197, little more than one-twentieth of the average monthly wage in America. But it is 17% more than the year before. As China’s economy has bounced back, wages have followed suit. On the coasts, where its exporting factories are clustered, bosses are short of workers, and workers short of patience. A spate of strikes has thrown a spanner into the workshop of the world.

The hands of China’s workers have been strengthened by a new labour law, introduced in 2008, and by the more fundamental laws of demand and supply (see article). Workers are becoming harder to find and to keep. The country’s villages still contain perhaps 70m potential migrants. Other rural folk might be willing to work closer to home in the growing number of factories moving inland. But the supply of strong backs and nimble fingers is not infinite, even in China. The number of 15- to 29-year-olds will fall sharply from next year. And although their wages are increasing, their aspirations are rising even faster. They seem less willing to “eat bitterness”, as the Chinese put it, without complaint.

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“This is the holy grail of artificial intelligence,” said project director Kate Tillman, explaining that the robot instantly performs millions of computations to ensure feelings of unresolved anger and simmering resentment remain deeply buried within its complex circuitry. “We felt we were on the right track when we brought up a personal shortcoming and it paced around the lab muttering, but when it started breaking eye contact and changing the subject, we knew we had accomplished something revolutionary.”

Heh. Read it all.

Scaffolding still obscures the entrance of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, and inside craftsmen are busy manning miter saws and layering ceiling plaster and floor tiles.

But a sneak peek inside the Gothic downtown church suggests a glorious restoration, once the $7 million project is completed this fall.

It has been a long three years for the 4,200 members of the congregation, who have worshipped and wed inside the adjacent Averyt Hall in the Trinity Center for Missions and Ministry during the absence from the cathedral.

The completion of the mammoth project comes at a difficult moment for the congregation. The cathedral’s longtime dean, the Very Rev. Philip C. Linder, was suspended July 14 by Bishop W. Andrew Waldo, the new bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Upper South Carolina. The cause of the action has not been publicized.

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The phenomenal success of the show relies at least in part on the thrill of casual vice, on the glamour of spectacularly messy, self-destructive behavior to our relatively staid and enlightened times. As a culture we have moved in the direction of the gym, of the enriching, wholesome pursuit, of the embrace of responsibility, and the furthering of goals, and away from lounging around in the middle of the afternoon with a drink.

Watching all the feverish and melancholic adultery, the pregnant women drinking, the 7-year-olds learning to mix the perfect Tom Collins, we can’t help but experience a puritanical frisson about how much better, saner, more sensible our own lives are. But is there also the tiniest bit of wistfulness, the slight but unmistakable hint of longing toward all that stylish chaos, all that selfish, retrograde abandon?

In the early ’60s they smoldered against the repression of the ’50s; and it may be that we smolder a little against the wilier and subtler repression of our own undoubtedly healthier, more upstanding times.

All I can say is I sat here wondering if Ms. Roiphe and I were inhabiting the same globe, much less the same country. In any event, read it all–KSH (and you already knew this–the emphasis above is mine).

It appears to be the calm before the storm for the Anglican Communion.

Amid much debate and controversy, last month the Church of England decided to allow women to become bishops in the next two years.

The move greatly upset traditionalist Anglicans, who are now expected to leave the Anglican Communion in large numbers ”” although not just yet.

All of the traditionalists’ wishes were rejected at a heated July 9-13 meeting of the Church of England’s General Synod in York, England. The traditionalists had sought an amendment for alternative male bishops. The amendment would have allowed parishes unwilling to have a woman bishop to call upon a male alternative who would have his own autonomy and “joint jurisdiction” over those parishes.

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A former Roman Catholic priest now serving in the Episcopal Church was enthusiastically embraced by members of an Oklahoma City Hispanic congregation during his recent visit.

The Rev. Alberto Cutie preached and led discussions July 22-25 at Santa Maria Virgen Episcopal Church, 5500 S Western.

At a church dinner July 22 at Imperial Banquet Hall, 4701 S Shields, Cutie spoke candidly about the controversy that swirled around him a little more than a year ago.

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There is no more disputing it: the economic recovery in the United States has indeed slowed.

The nation’s economy has been growing for a year, with few new jobs to show for it. Now, with the government reporting a growth rate of just 2.4 percent in the second quarter and federal stimulus measures fading, the jobs outlook appears even more discouraging.

“Given how weak the labor market is, how long we’ve been without real growth, the rest of this year is probably still going to feel like a recession,” said Prajakta Bhide, a research analyst for the United States economy at Roubini Global Economics. “It’s still positive growth ”” rather than contraction ”” but it’s going to be very, very protracted.”

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Four years ago, Stacy Snyder, then a 25-year-old teacher in training at Conestoga Valley High School in Lancaster, Pa., posted a photo on her MySpace page that showed her at a party wearing a pirate hat and drinking from a plastic cup, with the caption “Drunken Pirate.” After discovering the page, her supervisor at the high school told her the photo was “unprofessional,” and the dean of Millersville University School of Education, where Snyder was enrolled, said she was promoting drinking in virtual view of her under-age students. As a result, days before Snyder’s scheduled graduation, the university denied her a teaching degree. Snyder sued, arguing that the university had violated her First Amendment rights by penalizing her for her (perfectly legal) after-hours behavior. But in 2008, a federal district judge rejected the claim, saying that because Snyder was a public employee whose photo didn’t relate to matters of public concern, her “Drunken Pirate” post was not protected speech.

When historians of the future look back on the perils of the early digital age, Stacy Snyder may well be an icon. The problem she faced is only one example of a challenge that, in big and small ways, is confronting millions of people around the globe: how best to live our lives in a world where the Internet records everything and forgets nothing ”” where every online photo, status update, Twitter post and blog entry by and about us can be stored forever. With Web sites like LOL Facebook Moments, which collects and shares embarrassing personal revelations from Facebook users, ill-advised photos and online chatter are coming back to haunt people months or years after the fact. Examples are proliferating daily: there was the 16-year-old British girl who was fired from her office job for complaining on Facebook, “I’m so totally bored!!”; there was the 66-year-old Canadian psychotherapist who tried to enter the United States but was turned away at the border ”” and barred permanently from visiting the country ”” after a border guard’s Internet search found that the therapist had written an article in a philosophy journal describing his experiments 30 years ago with L.S.D.

According to a recent survey by Microsoft, 75 percent of U.S. recruiters and human-resource professionals report that their companies require them to do online research about candidates, and many use a range of sites when scrutinizing applicants ”” including search engines, social-networking sites, photo- and video-sharing sites, personal Web sites and blogs, Twitter and online-gaming sites. Seventy percent of U.S. recruiters report that they have rejected candidates because of information found online, like photos and discussion-board conversations and membership in controversial groups.

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A 20-year-old Christian mobile phone shop manager in Florida stopped a would-be armed robber by preaching to him about Jesus.

Nayara Goncalves spent nearly five minutes persuading the man that he was doing the wrong thing.

The man eventually apologised, explained his gun was a replica and left the shop in Broward County.

“She was able to remain calm and keep him calm,” a sheriff’s office spokeswoman said.

Read it all and check out the video as well.

John Frost and his wife had been unhappily married for much of their 25 years together when his company relocated him in 2000. So when he moved from Virginia to Knoxville, Tenn., he left her behind.

At first, it wasn’t clear what would happen next. Would she follow him? Or would they end up divorced?

The answer: neither. “After a few months,” Mr. Frost said, “we both realized we liked it this way.”

Technically, the two are married. They file joint tax returns; she’s covered by his insurance. But they see each other just several times a year. “Since separating we get along better than we ever have,” he said. “It’s kind of nice.”

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President Barack Obama may have set his 30,000 Afghanistan troop surge deadline for July, but it could be September before all their necessary equipment catches up.

Case in point: Just this week a C-17 cargo plane took off from Charleston Air Force Base with nearly 100,000 pounds of ammunition stuffed inside its cavernous belly.

Stored not too far away are tons of bridging materials set to move in the coming weeks. That’s on top of the more than 1,700 heavy armored vehicles that have been loaded, chained and flown overseas by Charleston pilots since January.

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South Carolina teems with remote-clenching, sleepy-eyed, unproductive people who rarely exercise and work a mere three hours and 26 minutes a day.

Or so says the latest BusinessWeek ranking.

The magazine rolled together various government studies that examined the nation’s sleeping habits, exercise patterns and overall time spent working. The report declared the Palmetto State the eighth-laziest in the country.

Louisiana ranked as the country’s laziest state, but South Carolinians spend more time watching TV than any other state — averaging three hours and seven minutes per day. The typical South Carolinian also spends eight hours and 42 minutes a day sleeping.

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About 20 people who gather at St. David’s in Pepperell on Sundays embrace and support each other just the way the 30 people at Trinity do. And, together, the two churches have enough parishioners to do missionary work outside the Episcopal church.

“I felt like people were excited about the growth in a sense that we can share our community with other communities to do bigger things,” says Linda Hammill of Townsend, a St. David’s parishioner, about the two churches’ collaboration — which includes sharing their priest, [Marsha] Hoecker.

Hoecker has kept busy over the past 10 months, doubling as the priest for Trinity Chapel Episcopal Church in Shirley as well as for St. David’s Episcopal Church in Pepperell, after
the two parishes agreed to share resources.

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These guidelines are for the clergy of the Diocese of Maryland in keeping with Resolution CO56 of the 2009 General Convention of the Episcopal Church that states that bishops “may provide generous pastoral responses to meet the needs of members of this Church,” and that we “honor the theological diversity of this Church in regard to matters of human sexuality.”

Read it carefully and read it all.

Leaders of Christ Church in Savannah have asked the state’s top court to review a July 8 Court of Appeals decision that the church’s historic downtown property belongs to the Episcopal Church.

On Wednesday, Christ Church officials appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court a recent ruling of the Georgia Court of Appeals upholding Judge Michael Karpf’s decision issued in October 2009 against Christ Church and in favor of the Diocese of Georgia and The Episcopal Church.

That decision upheld the plaintiff’s argument that Christ Church holds its property in trust for the Diocese and the national church, based on a 1979 national church canon.

The church had until Wednesday to file documents with the Supreme Court asking it to review the case.

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Muslim feminists call it the “penalty box.” It’s the area of a mosque where women, segregated from the men, pray. In Islam, prayer is required five times a day and Muslims often pray in congregation at mosques. During these prayers, women usually are partitioned off in a separate room or behind a curtain, “like naughty children,” one Muslim woman tells me, while men pray in a grand main hall.

One Muslim, Fatima Thompson, describes the penalty box at her mosque in Maryland as an overheated, dark back room. Another Muslim woman, Asra Nomani, tells me that at a major Washington D.C. mosque, the female section was in a trailer, where the voice of the imam (the prayer leader) came from a crackling speaker. “It was so humiliating I never went back,” says Ms. Nomani, a former reporter for the Journal.

Now these Muslim feminists have had enough. Hoping to reform Islam by making it more women-friendly, Ms. Thompson””an American convert to Islam””has organized several “pray-ins” at mosques in the D.C. area. These include the Islamic Center of Washington and the Dar Al-Hijra Islamic Center in Falls Church, Va., a mosque attended by several of the 9/11 hijackers and the Fort Hood mass killer Maj. Nidal Hasan. Ms. Thompson’s next pray-in target is a mosque in Washington.

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The County School Board will ask voters this fall to support an eight-year, one-penny sales tax increase that would generate at least $500 million for construction projects.

The money would cover at least 16 new school buildings, two whole school renovations and comprehensive athletic complexes for three areas of the county. The big question now is whether voters will vote in favor of the tax.

If they don’t, county residents instead would see their property taxes increase to pay for the rebuilding of five schools with seismic problems — Buist Academy, Charleston Progressive Academy, James Simons Elementary, Memminger Elementary and Sullivan’s Island Elementary — but none of the district’s other building needs would be addressed. The eight-year tax includes those projects as well as a number of others, and property taxes would not be raised.

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A proposal to separate the Episcopal Church in the United States from the Anglican Communion was rejected by the Communion’s Standing Committee (SCAC) when it met in London over last weekend.

The suggestion, from Dato’ Stanley Isaacs (Church of the Province of South East Asia), led to a discussion, and acknowledgement by committee members of “anxieties felt in parts of the Communion about sexuality issues”, the ACNS reported. But “the overwhelming opinion was that separation would inhibit dialogue on this and other issues”, and would therefore be “unhelpful”.

The Committee also heard the rationale behind the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Pente­cost letter, which proposed excluding from certain ecumenical dialogues provinces that had breached moratoria. Dr Williams and the Communion’s secretary general, Canon Kenneth Kearon, said that the Archbishop “had not acted unilaterally but with the support of the secretary general”, and that they had acted within their powers. The action “had not been punitive in intention”, but had followed “the breaking of the agreed moratoria ”” in response to the needs of the Communion in respect to ecumenical dialogues and faith and order bodies”.

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Armed with a new $400,000 grant and the support of the Episcopal Church, a Berkeley seminary is convening priests from across the country to craft the liturgical rite for same-sex couples to receive religious blessings.

The new rite, which will take years to complete, will most likely consist of a series of original prayers, Bible readings and two essays: one on the theological meaning of same-sex blessings, and one advising priests who administer the new rite. If approved, the new blessing would be just the third addition to Episcopal liturgy since 1979.

“This is very significant,” said the Rev. Ruth Meyers, chairwoman of the church’s Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music, who is heading the effort. “It does acknowledge a fuller participation of gays and lesbians in the life of the church.”

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You may find the link to the audio here.

Catholic leaders in Scotland have denounced the coalition government’s plans to leave intact the 1701 Act of Settlement, which bans the monarch from marrying a Roman Catholic.

“When a monarch is free to marry a Scientologist, Muslim, Buddhist, Moonie or even Satanist but not a Catholic, then there’s something seriously wrong,” said Scottish Roman Catholic Bishop Joseph Devine of Motherwell.

In a written answer given to the House of Commons on June 30, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Cabinet Office, Mr. Mark Harper stated “there are no current plans to amend the laws on succession”

Bishop Devine, who during the General Election had urged Catholics not to vote Labour due to their social policies, expressed outrage over the Cameron government decision.

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…there are many instances in which the laws on the books don’t have much effect, and society runs according to a completely different set of unwritten rules. Some Chinese call these “hidden rules.”

An example of how these hidden rules work can be found just a couple minutes’ walk from one of Beijing’s busiest downtown intersections.

There sits a small hotel run by the government of South China’s Guangxi province. Provincial officials occasionally use the hotel to secretly detain people who come to the capital to complain about local government abuses. They are kept under a sort of house arrest until they can be shipped home.

China has denied the existence of “black jails” to the United Nations’ human rights commission, but almost anyone petitioning the government can show you one.

Read or better yet listen to it all.

As the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) fights to stay out of a legal battle over unpaid pension benefits, all sides agree on at least one point:

More is at stake than the millions of dollars owed to some 500 pensioners of Augsburg Fortress, the ELCA’s publishing arm.

Last month, the ELCA asked a federal court to be dropped from a suit filed by stakeholders in Augsburg’s recently dissolved pension plan. The ELCA contends it bears no responsibility under the 1974 Employee Retirement Income Security Act because Augsburg Fortress’ pension program is a “church plan.” Church plans are exempted from ERISA requirements, which include sufficient funding to meet promised obligations.

Some Lutherans, however, don’t like what they’re seeing.

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The U.S. economic recovery will remain slow deep into next year, held back by shoppers reluctant to spend and employers hesitant to hire, according to an Associated Press survey of leading economists.

The latest quarterly AP Economy Survey shows economists have turned gloomier in the past three months. They foresee weaker growth and higher unemployment than they did before. As a result, the economists think the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates near zero until at least next spring.

Yet despite their expectation of slower growth, a majority of the 42 economists surveyed believe the recovery remains on track, raising hopes that the economy can avoid falling back into a “double-dip” recession.

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Last fall, just days after attending a kick-off ceremony for the Medal of Honor Society’s national convention, recipient Leonard Keller was killed in a Florida motorcycle accident.

Two weeks ago, Vernon Baker, 90, a soldier who belatedly received a medal for his valor during World War II, died quietly at home in Idaho.

Though the deaths were months apart, they weren’t isolated. Five of their medal-wearing comrades also have died since October.

With the Congressional Medal of Honor Society’s September convention in Charleston approaching, the reality of “old soldier” mortality is catching up. From a group of 95 less than a year ago, their numbers have dropped to 88. The youngest, Gordon Ray Roberts, is 60. The oldest is Barney F. Hajiro, 93.

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Though “Ramona and Beezus’s” cinematic creators avoided blatant references to any particular era, the movie’s constant celebration of self-actualization is thoroughly modern. “You don’t worry about coloring inside the lines,” Beezus remarks (admiringly) to Ramona. Mr. Quimby, discovered doodling in a book about new-economy jobs, remarks that “I used to be a creative guy.” This being a movie, we trust he’ll be one again.

The books, though, have a harder edge. When Mr. Quimby loses his job in the film, he turns into an affable, if forgetful, Mr. Mom. In the books, he succumbs to the more realistic depression that often accompanies a breadwinner’s job loss. He sits on the couch, watching TV, smoking heavily and not taking Ramona to the park because someone might call to offer him a job.

In the movie, the great child-care snafu is when Ramona gets sick at school and Mr. Quimby cancels a job interview to take care of her. In the books, he once leaves her, at age seven, locked outside the house in the rain because he’s stuck in the unemployment-insurance line.

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The head of the Anglican Church has urged Kenyans to have a peaceful referendum.

Archbishop Eliud Wabukala said in a statement on Thursday that divisions that now exist could have been avoided had the government heeded religious leaders’ calls to revise the draft constitution.

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Just and eternal God, we offer thanks for the stalwart faith and persistence of thy servants William Wilberforce and Anthony Ashley-Cooper, who, undeterred by opposition and failure, held fast to a vision of justice in which no child of yours might suffer in enforced servitude and misery. Grant that we, drawn by that same Gospel vision, may persevere in serving the common good and caring for those who have been cast down, that they may be raised up through Jesus Christ; who with thee and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid; for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him. Lo, I have told you.” So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples.

–Matthew 28: 5-8