Maggie's Farm

Very fine brief essay by Dinocrat. One quote:

In a way, people live their lives as though magic existed, as the blogger Shrinkwrapped has stated. Flick a switch, the lights go on; get a sinus infection, take a pill and it’s gone; push control-alt-delete, and Windows just might fix itself. There is magic in technology, no doubt about it. But historically the American people have been a can-do bunch, tinkering, and fixing and creating, and not that much given to Utopian fantasies. How much that it still true today is, in our opinion, an open question. Certainly, as Thomas Sowell alluded to, and the Rahmatullah-Yale incident highlights, our educational institutions have become debased. Furthermore, as we discussed in How Your iPod is ruining America, there is a critical need to connect the people of today with the world of 130 years ago in America so they can understand how we came so far so fast from where we were, and this education is not happening. The lack of such awareness and education can lead to alienation, as well as ignorance, and that is quite dangerous.

Read it all. Lots of good links in it.