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On trash day in San Francisco, bins in three colors line the streets, each with a different purpose.

The city requires residents to put recyclable materials into a blue bin, compostables into a green one and regular old garbarge into a black one.

“We even recycle batteries,” says Johanna Partin, the mayor’s director of climate protection initiatives, adding they can be placed in a clear bag on top of any bin.

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The Council on American-Islamic Relations has earned a fierce reputation for defending Muslim civil rights.

Middle Tennessee Muslims turned to the group this year over a proposed state law they feared would threaten their faith. When vandals torched a Columbia mosque and construction equipment at the new Islamic Center of Murfreesboro site, CAIR demanded authorities investigate both incidents as hate crimes.

But the Washington, D.C.-based group’s work is being threatened as it faces scrutiny for failing to file tax returns.

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This came in this morning from a friend who lives in Washington:

WA state is so good. I got my new property tax assessment yd, house and land dropped 8.3% but property will will actually be $194.67 higher each 6 months. ggggg what a deal

Perhaps of interest–

November 14-16: Clergy Conference
The Rt. Rev. Michael Nazir-Ali will be the guest speaker at the upcoming Clergy Conference to be held at St. Christopher. Online registration will open soon. Additional details to follow.

January 19-20: Mere Anglicanism
Mere Anglicanism will be held at St. Philip’s, Charleston. The theme is “The Once and Future Church.” Registration will be online starting September 1, and further details will be available at www.mereanglicanism.com.

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For two superb sets Wednesday, everything looked so routine for Roger Federer, precisely the way it did for so many years at Wimbledon — and nearly everywhere else, too.

Little comes easily for Federer anymore, even at the All England Club, where he’s won six of his record 16 major championships.

Before Wednesday, Federer was 178-0 when taking the first two sets of a Grand Slam match.

Now he’s 178-1.

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The Obama administration said Wednesday that al Qaeda and its acolytes””including radicalized Americans””remained the “preeminent security threat to the United States” even after the death last month of Osama bin Laden.

In its first formal document on counterterrorism strategy, the administration said direct attacks on the homeland by foreigners or homegrown militants were its top priority, ahead of such militant-heavy regions as Yemen and the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

“We seek nothing less than the utter destruction of this evil that calls itself al Qaeda,” John Brennan, the president’s chief counterterrorism adviser, said in a speech Wednesday.

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It seems strange that the Church of England seems intent on embracing perverse disincentives just as everyone else has woken up to their destructive effects.

These perverse disincentives are what wrecked the welfare system, ruining social housing by encouraging pathological behaviour. They have promoted long-term unemployment by making low-paid work less rewarding than idleness. They have countered and reversed the financial pressures that traditionally encouraged marriage and male parental investment.

Even the Labour Party realises what has gone wrong ”“ but not the Anglicans.

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Benedict XVI is pushing Vatican communication to take “enormous steps,” according to the president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications.

Archbishop Claudio Celli affirmed this today when he presented News.va, the Vatican’s new Web portal that will bring news from various Church sources to the same site.

Read it all and check the new website.

President Obama’s plan to withdraw thousands of U.S. troops from Afghanistan this year and next wins broad approval from Americans who are increasingly ready for the nation’s longest war to end, a Gallup Poll finds.

The survey, taken after the president’s nationally televised address on Afghanistan last Wednesday, shows an overwhelming 72% favor his blueprint, including 50% of Republicans. Those who support it include a significant number who would like to see a faster withdrawal than he has proposed.

Twenty-three percent of those polled oppose the president’s plan.

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The nation’s banks are holding a much higher rate of defaulted mortgages on their books than mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, according to a report released Wednesday by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates national banks.

The report said that some 19.7% of mortgages held in banks’ portfolios were delinquent at the end of March. By contrast, nearly 6.8% of mortgages backed by mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were nonperforming, and 11.4% of all mortgages that are serviced by banks.

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“Marriage, the union of a man and a woman, forms the foundation of social well-being by promoting love and respect between the two most fundamental representatives of the human community,” he said. “The institution of marriage also affirms the vital and unique importance to children of receiving care from both their mother and father together. Making marriage law indifferent to the absence of either sex creates an institutional and cultural crisis with generational ramifications yet to be seen. To eliminate marriage’s very essence ”“ its essence as the union of husband and wife ”“ from its legal definition is to ignore not only basic anthropology and biology but also the purpose of law generally. Law is meant to uphold the common good, not undermine it. Now, New York’s government will be forced to ignore that children have a basic right to be raised by their mother and father together. Also, as demonstrated in other states where marriage redefinition has occurred, officials there will be in a position to retaliate against those who continue to uphold these basic truths. This is a mark of a profoundly unjust law.”

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Greece has approved an austerity bill that helps pull the debt-ridden country back from the brink of an immediate default. After days of public unrest and impassioned debate, the Greek parliament voted 155-138 on Wednesday in favor of the controversial bill, which authorizes $40 billion in brutal budget cuts and tax hikes over the next several years for a nation already reeling from previous belt-tightening measures.

The tense legislative showdown came as the country continued to squirm in the grip of a 48-hour nationwide strike and as tens of thousands of angry protesters thronged downtown Athens in noisy opposition to the austerity package. Police in riot gear scuffled with some demonstrators and tried to contain the kind of violence that on Tuesday left dozens of people injured, shop windows smashed and tourists running to escape tear-gas fumes.

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Google is trying once again to challenge Facebook’s domination of the social networking business. Its main social networking site “Orkut” is very popular in Brazil, but in the rest of the world, Google trails Facebook.

But the company has a new attempt to catch up.

The new social network is called Google Plus, and you’re not allowed to join it. At least, not yet.

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O God our heavenly Father, who hast taught us by thy Son Jesus Christ that the true worshippers are those who worship thee in spirit and truth: Grant that we may not draw near to thee with our lips while our hearts are far from thee, but that all that is within us may magnify thy holy name; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go up and join this chariot.” So Philip ran to him, and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet, and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” And he said, “How can I, unless some one guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. Now the passage of the scripture which he was reading was this: “As a sheep led to the slaughter or a lamb before its shearer is dumb, so he opens not his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken up from the earth.” And the eunuch said to Philip, “About whom, pray, does the prophet say this, about himself or about some one else?” Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this scripture he told him the good news of Jesus.

–Acts 8:29-34

According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s figures, Knoxville, the see city of the diocese, has grown in population from 173,890 in 2000 to 185,100 in 2009. This represents a population growth of approximately 6.45% in this time frame.

According to Episcopal Church statistics, the Diocese of East Tennessee went from Average Sunday Attendance (or ASA) of 6,376 in 1998 to 5,649 in 2008. The finally released 2009 numbers shows a small further decline in ASA to 5645 in 2009. This represents an ASA decline of about 11.65 % over this eleven year period. Please note that if you go to the link toward the end of this sentence and enter “East Tennessee” as the name of the diocese and then “View Diocese Chart” underneath on the left you can see in pictorial form some of the data from 1999-2009.

Corporate-sized congregations with 351 or more in worship represent…._____% of Episcopal congregations.

Please note the reference is to those in worship. What % do you guess?

No looking, the answer comes later.

Bishop Young was presented with a ring ”“ placed on his finger by his wife during the service ”“ that was designed and made locally by the Eppersons. It features the diocesan seal: Three crosses on the background of a shield symbolize the three dioceses now present in Tennessee, accompanied by representations of mountains and dogwood blossoms. The dogwood blossom is a symbol of Christianity and of the East Tennessee region. The ring also has a crossed key and crosier which represent the bishop. Young’s gold pectoral cross was a gift from the clergy of the diocese. Several of Young’s vestments were gifts from Bishop Keyser, St. Peter’s Church in Fernandina Beach, Florida, where Young was formerly rector, and the Diocese of Florida. The new bishop’s wife, daughter Lucy, and son George, clothed Young with his stole, chasuble, pectoral cross and miter during the service.

Bishop Young succeeds the Rt. Rev. Charles G. vonRosenberg, who has served the diocese as its third bishop since 1999.

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