Threats

Three little things to brighten your Sunday:

The "war on terrorism"/"war on terrorists" - "Remember, the bad guys are totally committed — and they are not tired." Worth reading if only this is Tom Freidman writing, not Bill O'Reilly.

The Aging of America - This chart updates every couple seconds showing the distribution by age over time of our nation's population. And yet we shouldn't worry about the solvency of social security.

"Moralistic Therapeutic Deism" - "Basically, God exists and watches over human life, which was created by God. God wants people to be nice, as it says in the bible and in most world religions. God does not have to be involved in our lives except to solve our problems and make us happy. Good people will be even happier in heaven after they die. The religious beliefs of American teens tend to be -- as a whole, across all traditions -- that simple. It’s something Jews and Catholics and Protestants of all stripes seem to have in common. It is instrumentalist. "This God is not demanding," say the authors. "He actually can’t be, because his job is to solve our problems and make people feel good." (from "The Revealer".)