The Cubans checked in for their flight lugging new mountain bikes, televisions, espresso machines and other purchases made during their historic stay in Miami. It was the first time in 40 years that a Cuban Olympic team in any sport had competed in this city, a hotbed of anti-Castro sentiment.

As she waited for a bike to be wrapped in plastic, tournament gold medalist Idalys Ortiz said she was proud of her team's performance. Like her teammates, Ortiz declined to talk about Laborde, who won gold in the 78-kilogram division.

"Of that, I don't know anything," Ortiz said.

Coach Ronaldo Veitia Valdivie said he trusted Laborde, whom he had trained since she was 12. He said he had worked hard to enable her to compete in Miami, since she was already qualified for this summer's Beijing Olympics.

"She wasn't thinking it through. You know how youth is," he said.

In the 1990s, New York State's tourism board let the trademark on its "I ♥ NY" slogan lapse, encouraging a flood of unlicensed souvenirs carrying the famous logo. Since then the state has renewed its trademark and, in an attempt to rejuvenate the "brand," plans to crack down on what The New York Times calls "unlicensed fakes." But what exactly is inauthentic about T-shirts, towels, salt and pepper shakers, beer can holders, and paperweights that declare "I ♥ NY" without state authorization? Surely they clothe the torso, dry the hands, dispense the seasonings, keep the beverage cold, and hold the paper down at least as well as their licensed counterparts. Is the sentiment itself less sincere because it's not officially certified? Although it's easy to understand why the state wants its license fees, it'd hard to see how consumers are shortchanged by unofficial souvenirs.

In addition to the revenue from licensing, the state wants to control the types of merchandise associated with Empire State love. Ashtrays and lighters, for instance, are right out. The desire to control the messages linked to "I ♥ NY" has gone to decidedly unlovely extremes. The Times reports that the Pataki administration threatened to sue Milton Glaser for trademark infringement over his post-9/11 "I ♥ NY More Than Ever" logo. Who is Milton Glaser? The graphic designer who developed the "I ♥ NY" symbol in 1977 and let the state use it free of charge.

NPR's On the Media did a long segment over the weekend about Ayn Rand's continuing popularity and influence. Among the folks they interviewed was reason's Nick Gillespie. Snippets here:

BROOKE GLADSTONE: That's Gary Cooper playing Howard Roark, the tall, angular architect of tall, angular buildings in The Fountainhead. That book has sold something like six million copies since it was published in 1943. Ron Paul should be so lucky.

Rand died in 1982 - but Rand lives!

NICK GILLESPIE: Let's put it this way: Ayn Rand's work, I think, is popular for the same reason Prometheus has always been popular with humans. It's about somebody who dares to struggle against great odds and, you know, steals fire.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Nick Gillespie is the editor of Reason.com and Reason TV and former editor of Reason Magazine, a Libertarian journal whose name is a nod to Rand's favorite wordreason, above all - reason above conventional pieties, reason above religion, above especially collectivist societies and command economies, the horrors of which she witnessed as a child in St. Petersburg during the Russian Revolution - reason that finds its purest expression in capitalism.

NICK GILLESPIE: Virtually every CEO of every major company will list Ayn Rand as a major influence. A bevy of Hollywood stars, ranging from Brad Pitt to Angelina Jolie to Vince Vaughn - a director like Oliver Stone, who is fond of Castro, says that Ayn Rand is one of the most important figures in his intellectual life. Martina Navratilova, Billie Jean King, Hugh Hefner - I mean, the reach of this author is pretty astonishing....

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I don't think that influence derives from her persuasive argument against command economies.

NICK GILLESPIE: She gives egoists a positive case for why the world should revolve around them and around their efforts. If you are the person who is creating value, if you are the star, the sun really does revolve around you. And not only should it be that way, but that's the moral order of the universe....

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Nick Gillespie, of Reason, says he was never wowed by Rand's novels but that the attacks on them are often swipes by people who would rather not seriously engage her ideas.

NICK GILLESPIE: How many characters from Saul Bellow novels, how many characters from Don DeLillo novels, inarguably great writers, how many of them have penetrated the American cultural consciousness in the way that a Howard Roark or a John Gault [sic] has, to a degree where these are shorthands for an entire system of ideas?

I think that that speaks pretty highly of her power as a writer. She is a great author because she has a phenomenal audience, including a lot of people who go through a worshipful phase with her. And, you know, here we could be talking about Alan Greenspan, the former head of the Federal Reserve, as well as any number of pimply-faced adolescents who decide to grow beyond her.

Whole transcript here.

The piece, which runs about 15 minutes, is rich with bits of audio. Listen to it:

reason on Rand here.

When it comes to international academic assessments, especially in math and science, a few Asian countries regularly kick world posterior. Many observers chalk this up to these countries having national curricula, but this seems a specious conclusion given that most of the countries that do worse than Asian nations—and sometimes even worse than the U.S.—have national curricula, too.

A couple of additional—and quite likely more accurate—potential secrets of Asian success are touched on in a Saturday Washington Post article about South Korea:

South Koreans are working up a lather over working too much.

They put in far more time on the job than citizens of any other free-market democracy. Compared to Americans, they average 560 more hours at work a year — the equivalent of 70 more eight-hour days. And that is down significantly from the go-go 1990s.

In the OECD, they rank second to last in leisure spending, first in suicide and last in bearing children.

Despite the dearth of children, South Korea leads the OECD in per capita spending on private education, which often includes home tutors, after-school cram sessions and intensive English-language courses.

South Koreans, it seems, rely not primarily on government schooling as we do, but abundant private options, including tutoring companies that appear to be almost ubiquitous in many Asian nations. Indeed, in 2002 Education Week reported that in Japan “more than 50,000 private cram schools are taking in some $12 billion a year by some estimates.”

The massive consumption of private education is not the only likely explanation for outstanding Asian academic performance. So too is the culture that drives that consumption: As the Post highlights, Koreans put more emphasis on work than the citizens of any other industrialized nation. Of course, that appears to be a double-edged sword, probably yielding great testing outcomes but, as the suicide and income data in the article hint, not necessarily outsized success in life—or happiness. And while national academic standards and tests don’t likely create academic success, they could very well exacerbate the ugly side of Korean culture, taking an already work-obsessed mindset and forcing it on those students and families who might find happiness—and long-term success—in other ways.