Excellent article on the oil spill

Gulf Oil Spill: a Hole in the World
by Naomi Klein


"This Gulf coast crisis is about many things--corruption, deregulation, addiction to fossil fuels. But underneath it all, it's about this: our culture's excruciatingly dangerous claim to have such complete understanding and command over nature that we can radically manipulate and re-engineer it with minimal risk to the natural systems that sustain us."

C. S. Lewis on Bureaucrats

“I like bats much better than bureaucrats. I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of ‘Admin.’ The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid ‘dens of crime’ that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern.” -- C. S. Lewis, Preface to 1959 edition of The Screwtape Letters

Politics in a Post-Literate Society

"Forget Red vs. Blue -- It's the Educated vs. People Easily Fooled by Propaganda"
By Chris Hedges

In our post-literate world, because ideas are inaccessible, there is a need
for constant stimulus. News, political debate, theater, art and books are
judged not on the power of their ideas but on their ability to entertain.
Cultural products that force us to examine ourselves and our society are
condemned as elitist and impenetrable.

. . . It feels good not to think. Full article here.