I remember being in Hollywood at the age of 16 and marveling at the stars. The idea of being part of it never entered my mind. It was too far-fetched.

We have become a society that can't self-correct that can't address its obvious problems that can't pull out of its nosedive. And so to our list of disasters let us add this fourth entry: we have entered an age of folly that - for all our Facebooking and the twittling tweedle-dee-tweets of the twitterati - we can't wake up from.

We have entered an age in which education is not just a luxury permitting some men an advantage over others. It has become a necessity without which a person is defenseless in this complex industrialized society. We have truly entered the century of the educated man.