The laws of Congress and the laws of physics have grown increasingly divergent, and the laws of physics are not likely to yield.

We can no longer imagine that we are part of something larger than ourselves - that is what all this boils down to.

we use TV as we use tranquilizers- to even things out, to blot out unpleasantness, to dilute confusion, distress, unhappiness, loneliness.

What makes us different? We're the creature that can decide not to do something that we are capable of doing.

If you consider that there are a million people forced out of their homes by Katrina, multiply that by 150, and then stick those people in countries who, as inconceivable as it seems, are less prepared than we were to deal with the whole thing.

We also have to engage - and I think this is important - in national politics because there is no way to address questions of this scale in the short time that we have to address them without engaging in real political change.

That's why people are standing up again to fight the Keystone pipeline in Nebraska and South Dakota and Montana. Everyone is well aware of what this industry is about. It engages not only in those kind of practices, polluting people's water, but it has polluted our political life now for a quarter century.