Letters to the Editor
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My favorite quote from Goethe
I guess this is what happens to people who get their law degrees from the University of Chicago: they spend their lives wondering on what rational basis some people find "accidents of nature," like, say, a redwood tree, more attractive than McDonald's Golden Arches.
Ah yes, the divine spark of reason -- it does have a dark side.
If Goethe were alive, he'd probably say something like this:
Er nennt's Vernunft und braucht's allein,
Nur tierischer als jedes Tier zu sein.
The poetic translation by Walter Kaufmann goes:
He calls it Reason and uses it, resolute,
to become more beastly than the meanest brute.
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There are few things ...
... more pointless than discussing the merits of anything with a *doctrinaire* Libertarian. Though they have the normal range of intelligence, as a general rule they'll value intellectual consistency with Ayn Rand over any other common measurement of braininess, including anecdotal common sense. ;-)
I've encountered less rigidity from 2nd Amendment absolutists.
That said ... walk away from the edge and you can find all flavors. Over at the Cato Institute, you can even find the semblance of a debate about whether one can be a "Libertarian Democrat." Despite my tongue-in-cheek disdain, I appropriate "Libertarian" as an adjective for some of my own relativistic (shudder) views ...
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The moon has nothing to fear for another reason
There's a more fundamental problem with space advertising than aesthetics. Even if you could get past the "yuck" factor involved in putting the Pizza Hut logo on the moon (or in orbit), there's no way that Pizza Hut, Inc, could ever afford to do so. Think about what would be required. You'd have to make a sign roughly the size of North America to be visible from the moon, and you'd have to transport all the labor (with associated life support) and materials straight up for 250,000 miles. Not. Gonna. Happen.
I have this conversation with space travel enthusiasts all the time, who like to believe that there's this big NASA conspiracy to prevent private exploration and exploitation of space. They have trouble grasping the fact that space travel is really, really expensive, and it's unlikely that space advertising (or space manufacturing, space elevators, etc) would ever pay off.
This whole argument is reminiscent of census taking for angels dancing on the heads of pins. Vastly entertaining, but doesn't signify too much.
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Perhaps you could do it with lasers
Some really powerful Earth-based lasers might be able to project the Pizza Hut logo onto the lunar surface. Then it wouldn’t cause any permanent damage. You could also animate the image or change it every night.
Of course, the better solution would be for Pizza Hut to change its logo to an image of the moon.
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Balls flying everywhere!
That's silly! Why, you can never play a game in space because the balls would fly everywhere! Oh wait, I'm sorry. I thought you said "Billiards in space". Sorry.
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Moon beams
Most libertarians I know are opposed to political force, not becoming one.
Mr. Leonard's alternatives to abstract thought are common sense (whose?) and majority rule, which principle gave us the killing of Jesus, slavery, Bill Clinton and George Bush.
I once thought nothing abstracter
Than a doctrinaire libertarian
Til I asked to see my signature
Of a social contractarian
Tmcgee