The last refuge for out of work intellectuals...

The stock market.

It it's a throw-away line from a book my students might have read last week. Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is fast becoming one of my favorites. It's a grim noir, sci-fi parable about a world in which firemen start fires and books are burned. They are burned, not just because the government made them illegal, but because people couldn't be bothered reading them anymore.

The resulting culture in the book is made up of self absorbed people who tune the world out through technological distractions that resemble flat-screen TVs and IPODs and who casually make habits out of abortion and overdosing on sleeping pills. Life is cheap: "disposable tissue" With good reason, I suppose. They are engaged in a never-ending war against some nefarious, indeterminate foe.

Let me say right now that this little grimmoir was written in the intercession of Nazi book burning in the 30s and 40s and the heyday of censorship during the Cold War. So, while it's doubtful George Bush read it either, all the book needs is an update on the USA PATRIOT Act and our journey to the dark side is complete.

Apparently, many of the students in my class didn't get that irony: Many of them didn't bother to read the assignment.

In Fahrenheit, a character named Faber, a retired English professor, was turned out of his job because students stopped signing up for his classes and university English departments were closed.

The last refuge comment is one I didn't bother to point out to the kids. As I said, it's a throw away line - you either get it or you don't. It's not funny enough to bother with explaining.

Anyway, it's also a line I may follow.