Children are getting “unrealistic” expectations about sex as a result of watching online pornography, a study indicates.
The survey conducted by Plymouth University discovered that youngsters are regularly watching porn from the age of 11 and some are “addicted” to it before they are sexually active.
It found that watching the material gives them expectations that are impossible to fulfil and can cause problems in later life once they are in a relationship.

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An ecumenical summit of leaders from Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist and Presbyterian churches and organizations affirmed common theological ground and sought practical ways of working together during a recent conference in Dallas, TX.

In their statement, titled “Jesus Christ: Our common ground and common cause”, the leaders said “Even as we fully acknowledge the imperfections of Christian institutions and the broken nature of our collective witness to the world, we commit to strive together for a faithful way of being the Church together. Our hearts are burdened for the millions of our neighbors who are estranged from God and the Church.”

The gathering formed working groups and listened to plenary sessions on ecumenical relations and theological education, engaging North American culture, church planting and mission as well as social witness during the four-day meeting. Participants affirmed an ecumenical statement that addresses each of these subjects on the summit’s final day. The leaders agreed to explore working together in areas of church planting, theological education and training. They also committed to meet again for a second summit in 2013. While each of the participants endorsed the statement they were not necessarily doing so on behalf of their respective churches/organizations.

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The Ontario Medical Association’s call to slap hot fudge and French fries with a so-called fat tax is a regressive measure that will hurt consumers without any provable benefit. The association is also off-base with its proposal to put graphic photos of diseased organs and limbs on junk food packaging. While the association’s aim of raising awareness is laudable, food is not tobacco and shouldn’t be treated as an inherently harmful substance….

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The young American was agitated, increasingly emotional, and had laid a loaded gun on the table. The Soviet Union must grant him a visa as soon as possible, he pleaded. His life was being made intolerable by FBI surveillance and he, a dedicated communist, wished to return to the arms of Mother Russia.

One of the three Soviet diplomats present took the gun and unloaded it before returning it to its owner. There would be no visa in the near future, he explained calmly. Dejected, the American gathered up his documents and departed the Soviet consulate, bound not for his previous home in New Orleans, but Dallas. It was Mexico City, Saturday, September 28 1963, and the man wanting the visa was Lee Harvey Oswald. Fifty-five days later, he would assassinate John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th president of the United States.

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‘Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is assistant curator Mia Fineman’s response to a persistent question she has been asked over the past five years: Have digital technology and software programs that alter an image with a few clicks on a comkeyboard destroyed faith in the evidentiary truth of photography?

Her persuasive answer: not nearly as much as we’ve been led to believe. Supported by an astute selection of some 200 works that goes back to the painted daguerreotype and forward to darkroom alchemy from the early 1990s, she argues that photographers have been “lying” to us since the medium’s invention, often with our encouragement.

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The prolonged campaign for the White House shows why the US finds it so difficult to pursue a rational foreign policy in a world of unprecedented complexity. Articulating foreign policy in the heat of an election produces an irresistible temptation to proclaim simplistic remedies to complicated foreign challenges.

Hence the hasty public declarations that Syria’s Bashar al-Assad must go even before a realistic US policy to achieve that goal had been formulated. And hence the deference shown to the fevered pleas of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, for an ultimatum to Iran and the repeated references to the eventual use of US military power, without much consideration for potential regional or even global consequences. Hence, also, the pledge by Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate, to announce that on day one of his presidency ”“ without any prior negotiations ”“ he would take punitive steps against China’s “currency manipulations”, irrespective of likely retaliation.

Alas, such a foreign policy ”“ derived from politically expedient, short-term commitments ”“ risks setting in motion dynamics that ultimately lead to international chaos….

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The man often credited as being the father of internet defense says it’s still unclear where a recent wave of hacking attacks targeting the U.S. financial industry are coming from.

Gil Shwed is the co-founder and CEO of Check Point Software Technologies. Many recognize him and the company’s other co-founder, Marius Nacht, as the world’s pioneers in cyber-security. Shwed developed his expertise designing systems for an elite technology unit in the Israel Defense Forces years before the internet became a daily part of our lives.

Shwed said today “Iran is definitely capable of launching these kinds of attacks but so is just about any other developed country….”

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Demographics are destiny, some say, and there’s plenty of truth to that. If you live in the South, you’re more likely to be an evangelical Christian than if you live in San Francisco. And if you live in San Francisco, you’re more likely to be an environmentalist (or at least recycling your soda can) than if you live in San Antonio.

More unusual are people who combine the two: Evangelical environmentalists. Rare, but rising in influence, evangelical environmentalists are equally well versed in ecology and theology. They and other proponents of the “creation care” movement may be harbingers of a cultural shift, albeit a slow one.

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Can you give us a sneak peek into the plot?

Son of a Gun presents an interesting mashup of music and narrative. And, from a story perspective, it’s funny. It’s a dark comedy with a serious arc to it. It addresses this question of family and how to hack your way through a life that can be filled with pain, and it asks where the redemption is in the midst of all of it.

Is it autobiographical?

The story emerged from my own life experiences. There are plenty of times where we would hit a roadblock in the narrative, like, What should we do next with this character or this thing? And I would say, “Well, here’s what happened to me.” And that would be the best dramatic solution to the problem. So there’s times it’s stunningly true to my own life, but, of course, I did not grow up in a family band. We were not from Appalachia. My dad didn’t play guitar or sing. There were no duels anywhere. And so on….

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Where is the theology which can give to Christian social thinking and prophetic witness its sanctions and its impetus, the theology which can justify the Church in its attempts to say what ought or ought not to be in the social order? I offer no more than some introductory hints.

We start with the doctrine of the Church as standing over against society. “The Church is the redeemed community comprised of redeemed men and women and children. It is Christ’s new creation: its life is already the life of the world to come. Ontologically, its members are reborn. Sociologically, they have fellowship with the Father and the Son through the indwelling of the Spirit, and no secular concept of fellowship means the same thing. Morally, they are able to fulfil the hardest of Christ’s commandments because his grace enables them so to do. They can turn the other cheek, abandon their goods in a vocation to poverty, or retain their wealth and (only just) be safe in its possession: they can follow a vocation to celibacy or carry out the marriage vow as the heathen cannot be expected to who lack the grace which is at work within the Church. Here is a realm in which Christian sociology is possible, an island-realm amid the perishing world. But do not expect such possibilities in the world that lieth in the evil one. Any moral impact the Church may have upon the world is in God’s hands and cannot be made the subject of theory. Furthermore, expect that any approximations to God’s Kingdom from the side of the world may be bogus and misleading, because pride and titanism infect such efforts and bring them to grief.”

I start with this doctrine of Church over against world because it seems sensible at first sight, and indeed it can claim much support in the New Testament. But we must see how it needs modification, and as it becomes modified the possibilities of Christian social action begin to arise.

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Dependency is woven into human life. We are born needing the care of others, and we die that way. Illness, disability and circumstance often make us dependent on others. The Christian philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre has called human beings “dependent rational animals” to underscore the fact of dependency. Part of becoming “rational” dependent animals, MacIntyre argues, is recognizing that we have an obligation to care for and nurture others just as others have cared for and nurtured us.

–from a Christian Century Editorial, “Giving and Receiving,” in the October 17, 2012 edition, page 7

Imagine no “Imagine”: it’s easy if you are a crematorium with a moratorium on “unsuitable” songs for funerals.

Alongside its most recent survey on popular funeral music, the largest funeral director in the UK, Co-operative Funeralcare, has revealed that one in four funeral parlours has had song requests turned down by clerics. Among them is John Lennon’s song, with its lyrics “Imagine there’s no heaven”….

Huge numbers continue to ask for Frank Sinatra’s version of “My Way”. It has received the highest billing in each of the past seven surveys, and is requested at 15 per cent of all funerals. “Time To Say Goodbye”, by Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli, is next on the list, followed by Bette Midler’s “Wind Beneath My Wings”.

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The financial markets have been notably calm of late. Stock indexes have ticked upwards and interest rates on sovereign bonds have drifted downwards. The euro has also remained relatively stable against the dollar. And investor panic seems to have dissipated.

But appearances can be deceiving, said German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble on Tuesday. “I’m not so sure that the worst of the crisis is behind us,” he said at a mechanical engineering conference in Berlin, warning that reform efforts needed to be re-doubled to ensure that trust in the euro returns.

His comments were echoed by Yves Mersch, a member of the European Central Bank Governing Council who was also present at the event. He warned that even if calm had returned to the markets, it could be deceptive. “The bleeding has been stopped, but the patient is not yet in the clear,” he said.

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The federal government has filed another mortgage-fraud lawsuit against Bank of America, contending that defective loans generated by the bank’s Countrywide Financial Corp. subsidiary caused mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to lose more than $1 billion.

A statement Wednesday from the office of U.S. Atty. Preet Bharara in New York said that after the subprime mortgage market collapsed in 2007, Calabasas-based Countrywide devised a loan-processing system called “Hustle” to “process loans at high speed and without quality checkpoints.”

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O Heavenly Father, who hast taught us to show forth thy praise in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs: So fill us, we pray thee, with thy Spirit that we may make melody to thee both in our hearts and with our lives, evermore giving thee thanks for all things, in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.

–Frank Colquhoun (1909-1997)

And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read?” And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have answered right; do this, and you will live.” But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was; and when he saw him, he had compassion, and went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; then he set him on his own beast and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’ Which of these three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed mercy on him.” And Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

–Luke 10:25-37

Taxes and government spending. Health care. Immigration. Financial regulation.

They are the issues that have dominated the political debate in recent years and have played a prominent role in this presidential campaign. But in many ways they have obscured what is arguably the nation’s biggest challenge: breaking out of a decade of income stagnation that has afflicted the middle class and the poor and exacerbated inequality.

Many of the bedrock assumptions of American culture ”” about work, progress, fairness and optimism ”” are being shaken as successive generations worry about the prospect of declining living standards. No question, perhaps, is more central to the country’s global standing than whether the economy will perform better on that score in the future than it has in the recent past.

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“Companies are having to retool their thinking, saying, ”˜What is it that our customers are doing through the mobile channel that is quite distinct from what we are delivering them through our traditional Web channel?’ ” said Charles S. Golvin, an analyst at Forrester Research, the technology research firm.

He added, “It’s hilarious to talk about traditional Web business like it’s been going on for centuries, but it’s last century.”

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