Short TDE right now. I was up all night with a cough (I feel fine, but couldn't stop coughing), so I slept in. Now I'm running behind. A few brief things:
The current issue of The Atlantic Monthly confirms what I heard a few years ago: Pentecostals are rolling (just like the Eastern Orthodox are rocking):
“Renewalists” (as Pentecostals and Charismatics are collectively known) constitute large and growing chunks of the faithful–23 percent of people in the United States, for instance, are either Pentecostal or Charismatic, and the percentage climbs to 56 percent in Kenya and 60 percent in Guatemala. In many countries, particularly traditionally Catholic strongholds, Renewalists now constitute the vast majority of Protestants–72 percent of Brazilian Protestants are Pentecostals, for instance.
This surprised me:
[S]uburban sprawl might actually be good for your social life and your involvement in the community, a new study suggests. Two economists tracked the relationship between low-density living and social interaction, using data from a nationwide study. They found that Americans who live in lower-density–that is, more-suburban–neighborhoods have more friends overall, are more likely to spend time with their neighbors, and are more likely to belong to local clubs or social groups than are urbanites.
The study appears to have compared suburban areas to inner-city areas, so I'm not terribly surprised. Small town living (my stomping m.o.) would smoke the suburbs.
