One-minute book review: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Genre: Classics/Science Fiction Recommended: yes

Synopsis: In America of the future, books are outlawed and one man fights the system.

Opinion: When I read the first few chapters of this book, my overwhelming feeling was "this is just like 1984!" And general plot lines are so similar that Bradbury must have borrowed from Orwell's famous book, which was written 4 years earlier (1949 vs. 1953).

But Bradbury takes his tale in a different direction. The evil in his world is not a totalitarian central government, but a society full of self-imposed censorship and book burning. Where 1984 warned us about Big Brother, this one warns us about the dangers of political correctness and reality TV.

Why should I read it? It has some good things to say about the dangers of censorship, and a society that chooses to be entertained instead of informed.

AlterNet -- The Great Deception: Elusive Enemy, Endless War

This is interesting, because it is so reminiscient of the book 1984. The writer sums it up in this quote:

How useful to have an enemy who is so elusive, whose defeat will require an endless war. Because so long as the nation is in a state of war, it is possible to control the population by saying: we are at war, and this is no time for division, we must sacrifice our freedoms.

AlterNet -- The Enron-Cheney-Taliban Connection?

These guys have quite an imagination. But I guess that's how some of the biggest scandals get broken.

Yahoo! News - Agent: FAA buried lapses

Lynn came across this one. Pretty strong argument against government control of airport security.

Fayettevilleinc.com - Police officer kills soldier during training exercise

Robin Sage is the annual army special forces training exercise in North Carolina. In a sad misunderstanding, soldiers "attacked" a police officer they thought was part of the exercise, the officer shot one of them.

For more info about Robin Sage, check out the book Special Forces which is (sort of) written by Tom Clancy.

Bangkok Post Monday 25 February 2002 - Toyota to make car fuelled by hydrogen

This is where America needs to be heading. You want security for the U.S. in the next 20 years? Get out of Saudi Arabia. And hydrogen is the technology to let us do that.