Megan McArdle

Megan McArdle is one of the bloggers I occasionally read online. I'm going to introduce her in this post, because in the next post I want to talk about something she recently wrote. Megan McArdle was the first blogger I ever encountered.

The first time I ever visited New York City was in April 2002 with the family (except Brian). One highlight of the trip was the play QED at the Lincoln Center starring Alan Alda as Richard Feynman. Another highlight of the trip was a visit to Ground Zero.

What does this trip to NYC have to do with Megan McArdle? Following is a quote from an e-mail that I wrote to Geoff on 4/27/02 after returning home from that trip:

"I discovered something new yesterday—blogs. Have you heard of blogs before? It's short for weblog, basically an online journal. Anyway I discovered yesterday a blog by a 20-something woman who has worked for the past seven months with the cleanup crews at the WTC. Here's what she wrote about Ground Zero:

http://www.janegalt.net/archives/000701.html

"Here's how it starts:

So I've been sitting on the WTC site for seven months now, and it occurred to me today that it no longer looks like a grave. And though I know that there is, as the book says, a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up, it still makes me sad that it now looks like nothing more than the largest construction site in the world.

Every so often those of us who came in that first week play a game of "Do you remember?"

"And it goes on from there at length. Having just been there two days before this blog was posted, and having seen basically a big hole in the ground surrounded by construction trailers, it was quite moving to read this."

I recommend reading the whole post (link above). Do you remember?

That blog post was written by Megan McArdle, then blogging under the pen name of Jane Galt. Ms. McArdle now blogs under her own name for The Atlantic, mostly about economic issues.

Another blogger that I sometimes read online is Instapundit (Glenn Reynolds). An interesting and easy way to become better acquainted with both bloggers is to watch this interview of Megan McArdle by Glenn Reynolds. They start out talking about managing personal finances and then extend the discussion into managing the finances of the federal government. Good stuff.

Next post — Megan McArdle Quotes Feynman.