Michelle Alexander is the author of the bestseller, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Speaking at a book event organized last week by the Pasadena Public Library and the Flintridge Center, she informed a standing-room only crowd that:

As the country remains highly polarized and chronically dissatisfied with the performance of the two major parties, the internet, and advent of social media in particular, could catalyze the historic campaign of an Independent presidential candidate as early as 2012.

California's antiquated electrical grid was never designed to handle large amounts of decentralized power. But that's precisely what it's getting now from tens of thousands of small-scale solar installations on homes and businesses.