Understanding Power: A Comprehensive Guide to Electrical Energy & Applications for Home, Business & Industry

"Well, Foont, Canada..." That's the way many of his talks or in this case his responses begin. "Well," or "So in my view," or "Look," or even "This point has been understood forever, actually." In other words, the famous M.I.T. professor, the scientist, teacher, social historian and philosopher, reveals himself as an accessible human being who -- despite being one of the world's celebrated linguists -- speaks in simple, ordinary language. Anybody can understand him. He is not one of the speaking heads, the pundits, and neither does he direct himself to them: he is -- like Diogenese the cynic, or Socratese -- a street philosopher ready to mix-it-up with passers-by, for the sake of the soul of the City.This book is, as the Amazons say, a compilation of transcripts from his speeches and seminars given around the country over more than a decade. Indeed, sewing the thing together must have been a challenge in and of itself, disregarding the constant hope that the spirit or breath of the speaker might survive and live within the patched-up and improvised body. But, it does, somehow, though two or three times in the first half of POWER I felt myself skidding over what appeared to be ver batim repetitions of phrase as well as whole paragraphs, like rows of upraised sutures at the joints. Distracting, but far from crucial. Anyway, the editors post this notice on the back cover: "FIVE HUNDRED PAGES OF EXPLANATORY FOOTNOTES COMPILED BY THE EDITORS WILL BE AVAILABLE ON THE BOOK'S WEBSITE, [...]" Which means you can check anything he says at any point.Is UNDERSTANDING POWER worth reading? I think so. Is it entertaining? I believe it is. Is it informative? Ohhhh yes! What's the point? The point is to wake you up, Neo, or Flaky, so that you can brush the scales from your eyes, "Rise and look around you, and you'll see who you are." And what you're part of.But rather than to describe further a book nearly everybody on the site has described adequately and in detail, let me offer you a snippet of Chomsky: A man in the audience calls out, "It seems to me that in Canada, the fact that they have a labor party makes people somewhat more attuned to issues that Americans largely miss, like worker's issues for example." Chomsky responds, "That's right -- Canada's an interesting case. It's a pretty similar society to us, except different somehow. It's much more humane. It has the same corporate rule, the same capitalist institutions, all of that's the same -- but its just a much more humane place. They have a kind of social contract that we don't have, like they have this national health-care system which makes us look bad because its so efficient. And that IS related to their having a labor-based party, I think. The New Democratic Party in Canada (N.D.P.) isn't really a labor party, but its kind of labor-based. However, that party's ability to enter the political system in Canada wasn't a result of having proportioal representation, it was due to the same thing that would be necessary to get any kind of change like proportional representation in the first lace: a lot of serious popular organizing."You don't have to be any kind of scientist. Anybody can understand what he's talking about. His range of subject matter is wider than the questions and responses he's offered. Animal Rights? On page 357 it seemed for an instant he'd channeled The Buddah. And (Fall down!) he did, namelessly, in spirit. Newt Gingrich? "Newt Gingrich and the rest of those people may talk about supporting 'family values,' but they actually want families destroyed -- because families are not rational from the point of view of profit-making." P. 363. Welfare for the Rich as opposed to Welfare for the Poor, and what George Herbert Walker Bush called "The New World Order." He says, "What's been happenign in the contemporary period is really somethign quite new in history, actually. I mean, in recent years a completely new form of government is being pioneered, one designed to serve the deveoping needs of this new international corprate ruling class -- it's what has sometimes been called an emerging 'de facto world government.' P. 381. And at about that point, near tne end, he brings us up to speed on the financial collapse we've only just narrowly squeaked by, and sketches its inevitable reprocussions, as we sit, terrified to find ourselves robbed of all our cash and awaiting the next move(s) of those few, invisible rich individuals who having stolen our money (Goldlman Sachs) will now rule our lives in fact.Unbelievable!