Here and There

I've disappeared for the last few days, not for any real reason. I've actually got several posts in mind, but they're all kind of lengthy and I feel like I've done a lot of those recently so I've been reluctant the last several days to spend too much time blogging. But here are a few things:

This stupid little comic strip captures perfectly my feelings about grad school. My program differs greatly from a law school or MBA experience. If you want to ask how my thesis is going, I'll try and politely answer your question, but this illustrates what I'm really thinking. On the plus side, I did meet with my chair today and we had a good talk about how to handle things from here on out. And today I had a revolutionary idea...are you ready? I think I'm just going to go on to campus everyday at nine and leave at five or six and do everything I can within those hours. That's it. I think it'll work wonders for me.

Yes, this image explains it perfectly.

How about a quote from the Gipper?

We who live in free market societies believe that growth, prosperity and, ultimately, human fulfillment are created from the bottom up, not the government down. Only when the human spirit is allowed to invent and create, only when individuals are given a personal stake in deciding economic policies and benefiting from their success – only then can societies remain alive, dynamic, prosperous, progressive and free.

Trust the people. This is the one irrefutable lesson of the entire post-war period, contradicting the notion that rigid government controls are essential to economic development. The societies that have achieved the most spectacular, broad-based progress are neither the most tightly controlled, nor the biggest in size, nor the wealthiest in natural resources. No, what unites them all is their willingness to believe in the magic of the marketplace.

Can the guy be any more spot on? The answer is no. Wanna know why Obama's health care proposal is a bad idea? It's government in action, which has always proven to be woefully inefficient, and it also stifles free enterprise. It will cost trillions of dollars to create a system that will ultimately prove to be inadequate to meet the needs of those whom it is supposed to be helping.

Did you hear about all the protests about it, particularly in DC? Of course not. They're guessing that about 200,000-300,000 descended upon the capitol to remonstrate against the proposed legislation.

Yes, I just used remonstrate correctly in a sentence. I am in grad school, aren't I?

That's all I've got for now. Good night, dearhearts.