Miscellany: 4/03/13

Quote of the Day
Pick battles big enough to matter, 
small enough to win.
Jonathan Kozol

Cato Institute, "Does HHS Secretary Sebelius Understand Insurance?":Thumbs UP!

I have discussed Sebelius' conceptual misunderstanding of health insurance here and here. Megan McArdle is the interviewee. She made the intellectual voyage from progressive to libertarian after college and was an early prominent blogger, going by the pseudonym of "Jane Galt", a nod to Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged protagonist (see below). She was a prominent writer and editor for The Atlantic, more currently for Newsweek and The Daily Beast and is married to libertarian Reason Magazine senior editor Peter Suderman.

McArdle is a lightning rod (among other things, she initially supported intervention in Iraq, unusual for most libertarians); there is even one website dedicated to her termination. For some reason, it gets personal enough to mock her height (an admitted 188 centimeters); I even saw a post speculating on the adult height of any prospective Suderman children (Peter is the same height as Megan). I don't blame McArdle for occasionally referencing her height in her blogs; she topped the 6-foot mark before reaching her teens, and probably has heard the same questions daily ever since then over her stature, whether the rest of her birth family is also tall, whether she played basketball, etc. (Thankfully the only person interested in my weight is my personal physician.)



Why School Choice Is Critical

The students only recognize X's from standard test papers, the parents are left asking 'Y', while the teachers grab some Z's during summer vacation, piling up semester hours towards their Master's degree next big pay raise.



Ayn Rand: A Brief Overview

Over the past year or so Ayn Rand's name has popped up in this blog: there have been the Atlas Shrugged movies, Paul Ryan admitted to being influenced by her writing, and I just mentioned the new Cato Institute CEO John Allison, whom also was influenced by Rand.



A Young Lady Knows Her Constitutional Rights

As a teen, I would not had much of a shot with this lovely, articulate young woman, on or off the shooting range...



Political Humor

Wow, it's bad enough we have the Satan-Obama lookalike (below) kerfuffle from the recently concluded Bible miniseries, but now a recent survey shows that up to 1 in 4 Americans believe that he is the Anti-Christ of Revelation. Even Snopes had to debunk this rumor.

Courtesy of Hollywood Reporter

Yeah, right... A communications degree. The lackluster economic numbers we've heard this month aren't very encouraging, especially for the bellwether service sector.



Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups

U2, "The Hands That Built America".  Probably my favorite U2 tune in terms of musical arrangement and vocals. As a writer I'm not a fan of indulgent or cryptic verses; it's clear they are paying tribute to Irish ancestors emigrating to New York and helping build  the skyscrapers of New York City, living the American dream. The end of the song is a clear reference to 9/11. I believe the reference to keeping promises, dreams out of reach is not a reference to America but to yet another political attempt to broker peace in troubled Northern Ireland, the world left behind. It's not obvious why the songwriter brings up the old country or 9/11: is he worried about sustainability of the American dream, that America will turn inward, that the Irish who escaped the famine face a new set of challenges in the new world? Or is he hinting that those same immigrants who came here with almost nothing in their pockets will persevere once again? I probably overanalyze songs; I also disdain modern art as overly indulgent and boring: I think that the greater challenge and genius is in communicating directly and succinctly.