Lynness: Affluenza, etc.

When we visited Utah in March, I grabbed a few books from Rae's discard pile, one of them being "Affluenza," a follow-up to the PBS documentary of the same name.  I just started it and have gotten through the "symptoms" section.  If you want a book that is well written, moves quickly, and makes you think about really important things, then read this.  I highly recommend it- so far- I hope the rest is as eye-opening as the first part.  Here is my response, written just before bed last night, to the first section:

We are the hollow ones
whose center cannot hold-
so much nothing
made from Something Grand.
And there is something ex nihil
after all:
Piles of debt and dross
And cups running over with emptiness
in the land of plenty.
A land flowing with guilt and money.

It reminds me of a verse in Haggai: (Chapter 1)

  5 Now therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts; ^aConsider your ways.

  6 Ye have ^asown much, and bring in little; ye ^beat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that ^cearneth wages earneth ^dwages to put it into a bag with ^eholes.

Just a completely random question:  had anybody ever read Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South?  (Not the Civil War one- N&S of England in the industrial revolution.  Class conflict, worker's unions, and of course, Jane Austen-ish love).  I absolutely love the movie, but our library system doesn't have the book, though it has Cranford, but I found I couldn't seem to get into that.  I thought about buying it online, but wanted to know if it was good, since Cranford wasn't up my alley.

Also, if you want to read something really prescient about the internet (and really feel like Big Brother is right around the corner in the process), read "The Big Switch."  Did you know Google's stated aim is to create artificial intelligence from all the data it gathers about us?