] If someone like Karl Rove had wanted to
] neutralize the most creative, intelligent, and
] passionate members of his opposition, he'd have a
] hard time coming up with a better tool than
] Burning Man. Exile them to the wilderness, give
] them a culture in which alpha status requires
] months of focus and resource-consumptive
] preparation, provide them with metric tons of
] psychotropic confusicants, and then... ignore
] them. It's a pretty safe bet that they won't be
] out registering voters, or doing anything that
] might actually threaten electoral change, when
] they have an art car to build.

Barlow on Burning Man and Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger.

Another amazing dispatch from Barlow. As usual, I find myself either agreeing with everything he says, or at the very least find some great insight in it.

] If someone like Karl Rove had wanted to
] neutralize the most creative, intelligent, and
] passionate members of his opposition, he'd have a
] hard time coming up with a better tool than
] Burning Man. Exile them to the wilderness, give
] them a culture in which alpha status requires
] months of focus and resource-consumptive
] preparation, provide them with metric tons of
] psychotropic confusicants, and then... ignore
] them. It's a pretty safe bet that they won't be
] out registering voters, or doing anything that
] might actually threaten electoral change, when
] they have an art car to build.

No one has ever expressed my thoughts on burning man more accurately.