Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Articles of Interest (Harry Potter Economics, Asperger Vampires, Coming Back to Judaism, Jewish Gospel Music and Conservative Health Care)


The Economist has an article on Harry Potter, dealing with, with what else, the economic side of Potter. In particular, the article looks to the future of Potter now that the films are about to be finished. Are you looking forward to Harry Potter: The Theme Park? To the people at Bloomsbury and Scholastic, who were transformed into giants of the book publishing industry, may I humbly suggest a musket and magic fantasy series being written on a blog near you?

Speaking of novels being written on the blogosphere, Miss. S. has started posting her Eternal series. This is a story about vampires in the spirit of Twilight and True Blood. (She is another person that I converted to the Gospel According to Stephenie Meyer.) This is not a horror story; this is a story that has some great characters, some of whom happen to be vampires. (Do these vampires have Asperger syndrome?) I unashamedly admit that Miss. S. is the more polished writer than yours truly and I think she has a real shot at being able to turn this into a published novel. I would not solicit readers and comments for myself, though that would be nice too but please give Miss S. your support; she deserves it.

Kosher Academic has a guest post on In the Pink about being the child of a mother who converted out of Judaism and coming to Judaism as an adult. Steven Levitt of Freakonomics has a somewhat similar background. It is the subject of his book Turbulent Souls.

Kerri Macdonald writes, in the New York Times, about Joshua Nelson, a black Jewish gospel singer. No, he is not a convert. According to the article: "When he was growing up, Mr. Nelson and his family went to a black Orthodox synagogue in Brooklyn on holidays." I am curious if anyone knows what synagogue they are referring to.

David Brooks is one of my favorite columnists for his ability to make the case for conservative principles (something different from the Republican Party) and doing it in a judicious and moderate fashion. This is once again on display as he examines his mixed feelings about Health Care Reform. As a Libertarian, I do not support any government involvement in health care. I do not support Medicare; I do not even support a Food and Drug Administration. That being said if we are going to have government health care we might as well try to have good government health care. As of right now we already have government run health care. You will not be refused care in a hospital because you are not capable of paying for it. Our government health care system, though, is simply horrendous. The question for me is that, recognizing that the sort of Libertarian health care reforms I support are not going to happen, not even if Republicans get back into power, should I support President Obama's plan which is relatively sane and moderate as far as government health care plans go?

4 comments:

Miss S. said...

Whoa - serious blushing at your encouragement!

Unknown said...


Harry Potter a great name to every one. I like most to read Harry Potter and movie also enjoyable. Thanks J.K Rowling.

Anonymous said...

You should be libertarian because you understand the pragmatic reasons it is imperative, not simply because you like freedom. Otherwise you risk eventually becoming an Alan Greenspan sort of sellout.

The cold, hard fact is that it's IMPOSSIBLE for there to be good government health care. The more they try, the more damage they will do.

Even not reforming at all would be an improvement over this pork-filled megabill and its massive increase in socialist intervention, even from the point of view of wanting government health care to work.

Here is a list of real, and viable, pro-liberty health care reforms:

http://butnowyouknow.wordpress.com/rights/true-health-care-reform/ which you can also fan and discuss here: http://www.facebook.com/ReformHealthCare?v=info

Izgad said...

Butnowyouknow
I believe in taking multiple approaches to Libertarianism. I do not see this as an either or situation. Here is an example of me offering pragmatic Libertarianism as a solution to our health care problems http://izgad.blogspot.com/2009/07/libertarianism-healthy-choice-for.html.

For me freedom is not just an ideology. I see it as having practical value.