Franklin Webber's Opinions
Opinions are as common as dirt.
Not wanting to muddy you with stuff you've already read or heard,
I therefore confine the opinions on this page to ones that I believe I created
or expressed in a novel way.
(That's why the page is so short!)
If you want to argue with something written here, good;
please send me e-mail at
franklin "at" eutaxy.net.
I also welcome compliments!
On politics:
-
Daylight saving time would be a great idea if the government would pay me
15 minutes interest in the fall on the hour I lend them in the spring.
-
Visualize world liberty first, peace later.
(My answer to the "Visualize World Peace" bumpersticker.)
-
International treaties are like sexual relations:
the bigger the group, the harder to arrange and maintain, and
often you just need to go it alone.
-
From the US National Anthem:
Oh say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
I was well into my 30s before I realized that this question is not only
about a piece of cloth at a fort in 1814
but also a challenge to the people who wave that symbol now.
Is the USA today still the land of the free and the home of the brave?
I'm not sure.
-
The Massachusetts Turnpike is a metaphor for Massachusetts politics:
people who don't want to think much about their driving use the middle lane,
the left lane is crammed with people who expect priority over
all those middle-of-the-roaders, and the right lane, nearly empty,
is often used when leaving.
-
Some lyrics from "Ten Years After", released around 1970:
Tax the rich, feed the poor
'til there are no rich no more
That's a wonderful, though probably unintentional,
summary of the failure of socialism.
My alternative:
Free the good, hire the poor
'til there are no poor no more.
-
The horrible October 2002 sniper murders near Washington, D.C.,
have a bright side: they're evidence that the U.S.A. is not yet a police state.
By way of comparison, the police in the nation of East Germany
would likely not have taken 3 weeks to stop a similar series of
murders near East Berlin.
-
A great debate over same-sex marriage is underway in the U.S.A.
with much more to follow. But why have this debate at all?
Proponents always mention the need for spouses to
"get the same benefits".
OK, then marriage is a deal you make with your insurance company and
in a free market,
same-sex marriages would be served by some carriers.
Opponents often argue that same-sex marriage is wrong in the eyes of God.
OK, then let God sanction marriages, not the state.
Both sides of this debate need to revisit the question:
"Should governments define "marriage"?".
My answer: "No".
On language:
-
A language purist is one who imagines that the lock for a "self-storage"
unit is on the inside.
-
Has any journalist ever used the term "exponentially"
both correctly and nontrivially?
(I'm tempted to say that the number of journalists using the term
is growing exponentially, but that's probably false if measured
over any interval longer than a year.)
If we can't trust journalists to respect the meaning
of a precise term such as "exponential", why should we trust them
to respect the meanings of imprecise terms such as "liberty", "fascism",
or "objectivity"?
-
A nerd is the guy who knows to start over at square zero
and that square sixty-four leads to seg fault.
-
Police and firefighters now present themselves as "first responders"
but that's a lie.
Every time I've been in an emergency situation, I have been the
first responder. OK, next time I'm unconscious or dead I won't be,
but I suspect those situations are in the minority.
This "first responder" theme seems to be another way in which
the ordinary citizen is treated as a pawn to be moved by government.
-
Might "eutaxy" be a rough Greek synonym for feng shui?
(A correspondent tells me no, feng shui is based in a spiritual worldview
whereas eutaxy is not...)
Out of the mouths of babes:
-
At a screening of "Star Wars: Attack of the Clones",
when Anakin Skywalker said onscreen,
"...and not just the men, the women and children too; I killed them all",
a very young girl in the row behind me asked,
"Mommy, why are the women better?".
If there was an answer, I couldn't hear it.
For some unusual quotations, i.e., other people's opinions,
to which I'm sympathetic, go here.
For some common utterances that I despise,
go here.
Finally, you can find some great lyrics
here.
