Author Archives: Larry Franz

Two-Lane Blacktops

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Thesis: A driver waiting at a traffic light waits for the cars coming from the other direction to pass by before making a left turn.

Antithesis: A driver waiting at a traffic light and wanting to make a left turn doesn’t wait for the cars coming from the other direction to pass by; as soon as the light turns green, the driver quickly makes a left turn without waiting.

Synthesis: A driver at a traffic light sees that a driver coming from the other direction wants to make a left turn, so the first driver doesn’t go when the light turns green; the first driver waits for the second driver to make the left turn; the drivers behind the first driver must wait as well.

Thus culture evolves: drivers get to make left turns more quickly and the drivers behind them don’t have to wait so long.

Or devolves: drivers have to wait while the seemingly polite driver in front of them waits for another driver to make a left turn; and what was a relatively simple rule of the road changes into something more complex.

Propaganda

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Sitting in the waiting room at the doctor’s office, with Fox News loudly playing on the wall-mounted TV, wondering if I can get them to turn it off and feeling mildly sheepish about asking (and mildly guilty about feeling mildly sheepish).

It turns out that one of the receptionists hates Fox News too, so she switches the channel and even turns down the sound. 

Whereof one can speak up….

More Depravity

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From Mitt Romney’s campaign website: “Mitt will enforce the laws already on the books and punish, to the fullest extent of the law, criminals who misuse firearms to commit crimes. But he does not support adding more laws and regulations that do nothing more than burden law-abiding citizens while being ignored by criminals.” 

Of course, professional criminals don’t massacre innocent civilians. There isn’t any money in it. The men who commit these crimes are angry and/or insane but otherwise ordinary people. They don’t have underworld connections. They would find it difficult or impossible to acquire military-style weapons if such weapons were illegal.  

According to Romney, we should simply work harder at catching these people after they shoot up a movie theater, school, campaign event or commuter train. 

Unfortunately, catching them after the fact has never been the problem. The problem is to prevent them from shooting lots of us in the first place.

Depravity

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In the law, “depraved indifference” is a state of mind that can affect a defendant’s criminal liability: “To constitute depraved indifference, the defendant’s conduct must be ‘so wanton, so deficient in a moral sense of concern, so lacking in regard for the life or lives of others, and so blameworthy as to warrant the same criminal liability as that which the law imposes upon a person who intentionally causes a crime” (www.definitions.uslegal.com).

Compare what Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin recently said about  our supposed constitutional right to own assault weapons that can fire up to 100 rounds without reloading: “These are rifles that are used in hunting. Just the fact of the matter is this is really not an issue of guns. This is about sick people doing things you simply can’t prevent. It’s really an issue of freedom” (Fox News Sunday, 7/22/12). 

These are rifles that are used in hunting people.

Trafficking

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The state of Maryland apparently requires that the sign below be displayed in public restrooms. At least the ones at highway rest stops. That’s a good idea, since human trafficking is a substantial problem, even in the US. This is mainly the English portion of the sign. The same message is displayed in Spanish (and was photographed tonight just as poorly).

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