Oil’s End: The Age of Oil brought us John D. Rockefeller’s monopoly, and corruption that reached into the White House. It may end with an industry too bloated by profit and too arrogant to pay the costs of its mistakes — and a president who is deaf to the sound an energy empire makes before it crumbles. [NYT]
Cyber-Rebels in Cuba Defy State’s Limits: A growing underground network of young people armed with computer memory sticks, digital cameras and clandestine Internet hookups has been mounting some challenges to the Cuban government in recent months, spreading news that the official state media try to suppress. [NYT]
Coercion, money, and the rise of reproductive freedom: Coercive state power, even under communism, is failing. In procreation, as in profit-making, governments are increasingly working with individual choice instead of against it. They’re learning to respect both the value of women and the ecology of the family. And it isn’t ideology that’s selling this change of mindset to governments or the citizens they’re trying to influence. It’s sheer pragmatism. [Slate]
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