In 2007, 78.4% of Americans were Christian, in 2014, only 70.6%.

According to the Pew's new U.S. Religious Landscape Study.

The decline appears largely in the mainline Protestant and Catholic segment of Christians, evangelicals having lost only one percentage point.

Those who name no religious affiliation have grown from 16.1% to 22.8% in this 7 year period. That segment is broken down into 3 groups: atheist, agnostic, and "nothing in particular." The "nothing in particular" people dominate. 15.8% of Americans affiliate with nothing religious, up from 12.1%. Atheists have broken through to 3.1%, up from 1.6%, but they're still trailing the agnostics, who've made it to 4.0%, up from 2.4%.

It's interesting to separate "nothing in particular" from agnostic. Is "nothing in particular" even more agnostic than agnostic? They don't even want to go out on a limb and say they don't know? Or (more likely) these are the people who feel they are spiritual or they believe in God in a way that doesn't lead them to join any organizations or they used to be something — such as mainline Protestant — but they lost the sense that membership in that group meant anything. So you can't add the nothings and the agnostics.

These "nothing in particular" people, at 15.8%, now outnumber the mainline Protestants, who are down to 14.7%, from 18.1%.

It's also interesting that Mormons — who might seem like a large and growing group — are only 1.6%, down from 1.7%. And how about Muslims? You hear so much about them, but they're only 0.9% (up from 0.4%). Buddhists hold steady at 0.7%. Hindus are up to 0.7%, from 0.3%. The biggest non-Christian religion is Judaism, and it's not declining. It's up to 1.9%, from 1.7%.

Much more at the link, including issues of age, race, region, and switching religions.

Another Bangladesh blogger is hacked to death.

"Ananta Bijoy Das was attacked by a masked gang wielding machetes in the city of Sylhet," BBC reports.

Mr Das wrote blogs for Mukto-Mona, a website once moderated by Avijit Roy, himself hacked to death in February...

Sara Hossain, a lawyer and human rights activist in Dhaka, has told the BBC Mr Das and Mr Roy were on a list of targets. "They've always believed and written very vocally in support of free expression and they've very explicitly written about not following any religion themselves," she told the BBC World Service's Newsday programme. "These last two have been part of a blog called Mukto-Mona (Free Mind), which is about free thinking and is about explicitly taking on religious fundamentalism and particularly Islamic religious fundamentalism. Their names have been on lists of identified targets."

Relocating the unloved Lucy statue.

The NYT reports:

On Monday, the board of trustees in Celoron, N.Y., the village that had been the reluctant home of “Scary Lucy,” voted unanimously to allow the National Comedy Center to display this notorious statue after it opens next year in nearby Jamestown, N.Y.

Previously blogged here.

"The Prize For The Most Racist Interview Of A 2016 Candidate Goes To Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin."

Writes Ian Millhiser at Think Progress (who's no fan of Ted Cruz (the caption over there says "Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin, who somehow managed to act like a bigger jerk than Ted Cruz")):



"The interview sparked outrage among conservative writers over the weekend. Hot Air called it a 'train wreck.' Twitchy mocked 'Bloomberg Politics reporter-turned-ethnic policeman Mark Halperin.' PJ Media’s Rick Moran opined that '[a]sking Cruz to say something in Spanish is akin to asking a black person to eat watermelon or start dancing.'"

At the Gaylord Café...

... write about anything you like.

I accidentally had the camera on some crazy setting as we walked around our favorite state park, Governor Nelson. We were sober, but the camera was tripping.

"To blanketly say, you must be naked to pass my class — it makes me sick to my stomach."

Says the mother of a student at the University of California, San Diego. 

UCSD professor Ricardo Dominguez has been lighting his classroom by candlelight and baring it all alongside his students as part of the assignment for 11 years and never received any complaints, he told the TV station.

“It’s a standard canvas for performance art and body art,” Dominguez said. “If they are uncomfortable with this gesture, they should not take the course.”

Announcement that the announcement about the police shooting of Tony Robinson will happen on Tuesday.

As promised, we're being notified in advance:

Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne said Sunday he will announce on Tuesday whether a Madison police officer will face criminal charges for fatally shooting 19-year-old Tony Robinson on March 6....

“Given the history, we don’t anticipate District Attorney Ismael Ozanne to charge or to find that there’s probable cause to charge the officer with violating criminal statute. Just like everyone else, we’re just waiting for full disclosure of what happened in those few seconds,” [said Everett Mitchell, of the Young, Gifted and Black Coalition].

In a statement released Sunday, [police spokesman Joel] DeSpain said that police would help facilitate safe movement of people in the event of demonstrations. “It is our belief that Madison can endure without being fractured.”

"American Idol" is cancelled.

After 15 years. That's quite a run. Weirdly, I have watched every year. It's hard to say why. Partly, because it goes away for a pretty long time before it restarts, like an old friend, who's annoying, but is out of town most of the year.

ADDED: This is the 419th "American Idol" post on this blog. Click the "American Idol" tag to read them all. 

"Unable to pay rent in L.A., I slept behind my desk. But what began as a quick financial fix soon became a lifestyle."

The pseudonymous Terry K. "secretly lived in my office for 500 days." (And by "my," he means the office provided by his employer.)

Living in the office had many unexpected perks. But it was far from a permanent solution. When the company started to show signs of budgetary collapse, I began to plan for my future. What did I want life to look like post-office?...

I had to read that last sentence 5 times before I understood it! I was like: What do I want my life to look like? Post office?!

Having spent over a year rent-free, I realized I valued how I spent my expenses differently. Dropping over a grand every month on a single budget item felt like it ought to result in overwhelming returns. Instead, the housing options were bland. Each had a laundry list of glaring flaws—aging units with no parking, thin walls with no outdoor space, poor walkability and a long commute. What’s more was the sense of entitlement on behalf of many landowners, like I was doing them a favor by handing over 40 percent of my income for a glorified doghouse. The transaction felt oddly imbalanced, a product of seriously misplaced supply and demand....

Ultimately, the company went under. I was part of the first round of layoffs. I lost my job and my home all in one, but I saved over $20,000 in living costs and 216 hours of commuting.

Terry K. now lives in a tiny house built on a truck... and blogs: here.

ADDED: I don't know how you can be a writer and write about this subject without mentioning "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street."

The future in micro-grids.

Tesla... batteries... "The goal is complete transformation of the entire energy infrastructure of the world."

The death of a performance artist.

Chris Burden has died at the age of 69.

Burden began his career as an avant-garde performance artist. In 1971’s “Five Day Locker,” he locked himself in a traditional school locker for five days. Later that same year, for “Shoot” -- also captured on film -- Burden had a friend shoot him in the arm. For “Trans-Fixed” in 1974, the artist evoked the crucifixion of Jesus when he lay on top of a Volkswagen Beetle and had nails driven into his hands.

The linked obituary says that Burden was best known for an installation of a large number of street lamps in front of Los Angeles County Museum of Art. I guess the obituarist wasn't around in the 70s!

"Shoot" and "Trans-Fixed" were the ultimate in performance art, continually cited and (I would have thought) never to be forgotten. But sic transit performance art. Put a buncha lamposts in front of a museum in a big city where everyone will see them and want to take selfies and that's what you're famous for. He made ordinary people feel nice. Noted.

Forget about how you meant to deeply disturb us lo those many years ago.

Instead of a realistic-looking nipple...

... there's a new trend in mastectomy tattoos.

"Female serial killers are more rare than their male counterparts, but they aren’t nonexistent; about one in six serial murderers is a woman."

"As a group, they are often overlooked and underestimated," writes Emily Anthes in The New Yorker.

The details of the women’s crimes differed notably from those committed by men. Nearly all of the women in Harrison’s study had killed people whom they knew, often targeting their husbands and children. Male serial killers, in contrast, appear much more likely to kill strangers. Whereas the most common motive for male serial killers is sex, female murderers were most often driven by money....

Harrison also found that many of the killers worked in caregiving roles, as nurses, Sunday-school teachers, babysitters, or stay-at-home moms....

One reason that female serial killers garner so little attention may be their modus operandi—targeting relatives, the elderly, or the ill, and using relatively inconspicuous weapons....

Mother's Day!

With an hour and 39 minutes of old home movies (circa 1950s to 1960), I almost scraped together a full minute of my mother, Marise Beatty Althouse. This came in at 59 seconds. It's like she's hiding from the camera. But maybe there is a glimpse of the real Marise. It's too late to get any more pictures or any more hints of who she was. Cherish your own mother, now, while you can, if you still can, or cherish her memory, children of the world.

"The mathematically proven winning strategy for 14 of the most popular games."

A not-quite-accurate headline for an interesting article with plenty of math.

"This beauty, this icon! I'm so so happy I met her!!!! We spoke about our amazing Armenian journeys!"

In case you're wondering what happened when Kim Kardashian met Cher: They talked about their amazing Armenian journeys!

In case you are wondering why I ended up there — at Cosmopolitan — this morning, it was a journey. Not an amazing journey, and certainly not an Armenian journey, but a journey nonetheless.

I was going through my email and saw another ad for one of these fashion catalog companies and I contemplated blogging something that I've been trying to figure out how to articulate, something about the radical difference between catalog models and runway models. Runway models look fierce, mean, contemptuous, ready for some nonexistent battle. These clothes are not for you. And I am not for you. Peasant! Something like that. By contrast, catalog models look bizarrely weak, as if they are swaying in the wind or about to fall over. They look sleepy and dreamy and so damned accessible I'd fear for their safety if they lived in reality.

I was distracted by the expression on one model's face. She's trying to smize. Remember smizing? It used to seem important to figure out how to get your eyes into the smiling shape without having your mouth smile. Nobody talks about smizing anymore. Or do they? That would be bloggable — if the expression that peaked in public consciousness around 2009 has faded utterly away. But it hasn't faded utterly away, because I found it in Cosmopolitian, which was trying to be cute and flippant. Blecch. Not bloggable.

And yet, I had found something that broke the bloggability barrier for me: the claim that Cher had deigned to share "amazing Armenian journeys!" with Kim Kardashian.

By the way, that phrase "Amazing Journey"... that's something from somewhere. Another non-amazing journey into Google immediately delivers the answer. It's one of the tracks on The Who's "Tommy": "Deaf, dumb and blind boy/He's in a quiet vibration land/Ten years old/With thoughts as bold/As thought can be/Loving life and becoming wise/In simplicity/Sickness can surely take the mind/Where minds can't usually go/Come on the amazing journey/And learn all you should know...."

"Journey" is a much-overused, trite word. (And that was already so back in 1973 when former members of Santana and Frumious Bandersnatch formed the band named Journey.) It's used to bullshit about one's personal narrative over the course of a lifetime, but the original meaning of the word "journey" is one day or one day's travel. (See the French word "jour" (day).) There's no way to return to that meaning. "Journey" has made a long journey from that literal place. But I'd be able to like it if it meant that. I'm oriented to living in the day, day by day. It's an orientation that blogging indulges.