Great, Kathryn. I’m upstairs just now, unable to get to sleep, thinking about Derb’s essay. I come downstairs to get a glass of water, log on for a sec to check The Corner — and ba-da-bing, the FBI is telling us all to worry a whole damn lot.

You know what I thought was so effective about Derb’s piece? It was the scariest doomsday scenario essay I’ve read that didn’t require the reader to believe that any of these dire things going on in the world were part of some divine chastisement, or scheme set out in the book of Revelation. It was an entirely secular case for apocalypse now. And thus more chilling, at least to me. One doesn’t have to believe in an eschatological vision to recognize, as Derb does, that the world might or might not be ending, but a world certainly is.

I had lunch with an NYPD friend last week. He said to me that he was at a loss to explain why terrorists haven’t gotten away with anything else here since 9/11. So many of us get through the day depending on dumb luck and thoughtlessness. I suppose if we really stopped to think about what could happen, we’d never leave the house — or we’d head for the hills.

Well, that does it. I’m up for the night. Hell, I might as well see if there’s a “Jerry Springer” re-run on now…