Weekend Links — 8.8.10

A high school history teaches asks New York state to  Fix the Regents’ Exams .  ”The correlation between increased passing rates and the increasingly content-free nature of the exams is,” he argues, “hard to miss.”

An  English government study says that marriage counselling — actually, counselling for those in “long term relationships” of at least three years — is “intrinsically linked with feelings of failure and defeat”.

The Italian journalist Sandro Magister looks at  who goes to church in Italy , who doesn’t, and what it means for the future of Italian Catholicism.

The Wall Street Journal explains  the new credit card tricks .

The writer Dan Shapiro reflects on  the news that changes everything , which he learns after showing his wife once again that he can’t fix things, while the novelist Candida McWilliam  reflects on losing her sight to a rare disease.

Blogger Maclin Horton praises the singing group The Innocence Mission , while Andrew Klavan explains how American movies are turning into foreign movies .