I'm a little overwhelmed by the number of responses to my last post...a few quick thoughts:
1) I can't resist...it cracks me up when people that oppose big government and praise self-sufficiency accidentally profess that they have benefitted from the very institution they oppose. Case in point:
"even if you were born into an unsupportive family, it would still have been your choice to go to college or not. i didn't choose to be born into a family that couldn't afford to send me to college. but i was. and i went anyway. i found loans, grants and scholarships and paid my way through."
Wait - loans? Federally subsidized loans? As someone that owes enough student loans to buy a fully-packed Mercedes, I appreciate the sense of American-dream, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps pride that enormous debt can bring but let's not kid ourselves. "Merit" based higher education financing is a late twentieth century phenomena that NEVER would have occurred without the GI Bill - and that's a landmark in big government friends. I've ranted about this before but I highly recommend Nick Lemann's The Big Test as a very good primer on the opening up of higher education to the regular people.
2) I don't want to have an extensive debate about social security but I do want to make this clear: social security was never meant to be a retirement fund, period the end. We think of it that way now - both because so many homemakers are now widows with no other source of income and because the political parties have marketed it as such - but it's meant to be a supplement for folks that just can't make it on their own. It shouldn't be judged in terms of return-on-investment. It benefits not only retirees but also orphans, widowers, and the disabled. The only reason it exists in the first place is a market failure - if private charities and faith-based organizations had been able to sufficiently support the needy population it never would have developed.
3) Jacob, I'll have to get back to you on the Democratic party. I'm still pretty frightened of them (especially the perfectly coiffed Texas chair Molly Beth Malcolm) but I'm thinking about going to the monthly meeting next week. Somebody should come with me for protection.
Now that I have that out of the way...a few reviews:
Amazing Adult Fantasy volumes 1, 2, and 3: Tim Doyle is one funny and brutally honest guy. You can see his artwork online but it's much more worth your time to check out his comic at your earliest convenience.
Adaptation: Rocks. See Seth's blog if you need to know more.
You are Here: The worst film I've seen in a long time. I really wanted to like it.
The Secretary: Another movie I really wanted to like but finished feeling bored and uncomfortable. Think soft core porn with on-the-job sexual harassment as the major plot. You could claim that it's a film about a woman's sexual awakening but I'd say you were full of crap.
I still need to watch Gattica - a movie I've been attracted to but avoided the last couple of years. Keep your fingers crossed - the last 2/3 have been real duds.
Posted by sarah at May 30, 2003 7:33 PM | TrackBack