I haven't blogged in a while because I've been visiting Disneyland with my wife and 2 and 5 year-olds. Very important family time for us -- because both my wife and I work long hours, we just don't have as much of it as we want.
One thing I didn't expect. There is so little excellence in the world, that it was truly refreshing to go to a place like Disneyland, where half the lights aren't burned out on the rides as they are in most amusement parks, and everything seems to be done with a high level of quality. On the surface everything is fun and light, but I'm sure that under the covers there is enormous discipline making it all work. I was really glad to see that. It's the exact opposite of the scene Ayn Rand describes at the beginning of Atlas Shrugged, where the building walls are unpainted and cracking, the public clocks don't work, etc., which is all too common to see in the real world.
Even if you go into some of the best and most expensive hotels in New York, you'll find that the big clocks over the registration desks, often built with high style a number of decades ago, usually are no longer functional. And they don't have the pride to fix them, while charging hundreds of dollars a night per room. It's worse than sad. It's truly depressing.
So while it was an enormous pleasure and of real importance for us to have this family time, an unexpected side-benefit was the pleasure of seeing the rare phenomenon of excellence.
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