Tuesday, March 31, 2015

UVA Law Prof Who Supports Gay Marriage Explains Why He Supports Indiana's Religious Freedom Law | The Weekly Standard

UVA Law Prof Who Supports Gay Marriage Explains Why He Supports Indiana's Religious Freedom Law | The Weekly Standard: The issue with respect to Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRAs) is whether people should be allowed to practice their religion, even when their acts would otherwise be illegal, if they are not doing any real harm. The American tradition of religious liberty has exempted religious practices since the seventeenth century. Quakers in colonial times didn't have to swear oaths, or serve in the militia.

Sometimes this is entirely uncontroversial. It is illegal to give alcohol to minors, but no one thinks that law should be applied to communion wine, or seder wine at the Jewish Passover.

Saturday, March 28, 2015

Changes in training prompt resignation and protest letter

Changes in training prompt resignation and protest letter:



A PROPOSAL to devolve decision-making about ministerial training to the dioceses, opposed by 17 theological educators in a letter to the Church Times today, prompted one member to resign from the task group behind it, it emerged this week.

The Revd Dr Sarah Coakley, professor of divinity at the University of Cambridge, sent a resignation letter to the group four days before the report - Resourcing Ministerial Education - was published (News, 16 January). In it, she lists several reservations about the report, warning that it is "anodyne and misleading". She describes the devolution to the dioceses as "the most disturbing part . . . I must be blunt: I simply do not believe there is sufficient qualitative theological understanding in most of the dioceses to protect the sort of aspirations that this report promotes."

WCC consults on humanitarian aid for Ukraine

WCC consults on humanitarian aid for Ukraine:

A survey by the Ukrainian polling company Research & Branding showed that the Church is the most trusted organisation in Ukraine: 62 per cent of respondents said that they trusted the Church, compared with 24 per cent who said that they did not. The army generates a 57 per cent trust-rating, as do civic and voluntary organisations.

In contrast, political parties are trusted by only eight per cent of respondents.

Friday, March 20, 2015

Don’t blame Eskom for load-shedding | Opinion & Analysis | BDlive

Don’t blame Eskom for load-shedding | Opinion & Analysis | BDlive: At the end of 1998 the government published a white paper on energy policy. The intention was to restructure the generation as well as the distribution of electricity in SA. Eskom was then prohibited from building any power stations. Future power stations were to be built by private investors. This never happened. One of the many reasons was that the price of electricity was not attractive enough for private investors to enter the electricity market in SA.

Despite the fact that Eskom was not allowed to build power stations, it continued to develop long-term electricity demand forecasts and concomitant generation expansion plans. These forecasts were based on expected long-term economic growth for the country, and also catered for the electrification of houses. Plans based on the moderate long-term Eskom forecast done in 1997-98 had at that stage already indicated that the country would need new generating capacity by 2007.

Monday, March 09, 2015

the ochlophobist: returning. again.

the ochlophobist: returning. again.: I am returning to the Orthodox Church.

I hereby recant my rejection of Orthodox dogma. I ask forgiveness for my ridicule of certain Orthodox beliefs - particularly concerning the energy/essence distinction and uncreated light. I also ask forgiveness for my ridicule of some Orthodox saints (particularly those I assigned to seats in hell), the Athonite tradition, the entirety of the elder tradition, and some of the basic components of Orthodox piety. I was also wrong to laud the Soviet annihilation of nearly all of the Russian Church, and to downplay the horror of their killing of many thousands of believers, and to justify the killing of children in a basement in Yekaterinburg. I also beg forgiveness to those many souls I mocked for their faith and the accouterments of faith that are dear to them. I have never embodied the calling that Fr. Matthew speaks of above. It is my endeavor now to do so.

Saturday, March 07, 2015

Get to Know Robocopy for More Powerful File Management

Get to Know Robocopy for More Powerful File Management: Robocopy (the name is short for Robust File Copy) was introduced with the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit and is included in all editions of Windows 7. Its many strengths include the ability to copy all NTFS file attributes and to mirror the contents of an entire folder hierarchy across local volumes or over a network. If you use the right combination of options, you can recover from interruptions such as network outages by resuming a copy operation from the point of failure after the connection is restored.