I am out of 1000-word opinions. In any case, I doubt you have the attention span to deal with my typical article anyway. Therefore I will give you a few mini-opinions this week, each of which is just long enough to tell you what I think but not long enough for me to justify the opinion.

•Computers. I hate computers. Two different computers ate my first two articles. And it wasn’t because I didn’t save–it happened when I tried to save. This article, therefore, will be written very quickly and with a minimum of attention, like most of my essays. I think that this computer is possessed by an evil spirit.

•Beanie Babies. I still don’t understand the beanie baby phenomenon. You can buy the beasts for five bucks. You should therefore never pay more than that for one. So what if one of them is rare? The common ones are just as cuddly. They aren’t like baseball cards or gold bullion that have some intrinsic worth. You should therefore give me all your beanie babies.

•Near-Earth asteroids. These asteroids are a sword that can cut two ways. In case you haven’t heard of them, they are asteroids that orbit near the Earth (hence the name). They are the gateway to outer space. We can use their resources to produce rocket propellant, air, materials necessary for life support, and raw materials for simple manufacturing in space. They have abundant water and may have many rare and valuable metals. However, they could also hit our planet and kill us all.

•Pamela Anderson. She had her breast implants removed in an attempt to become more credible.

That’s great. I’m glad that she thinks that large breasts are not the key to success anymore. Although she is of course wrong; bloated mammaries are indeed the key to success. I’m considering implants myself.

Also, the removal of her implants is not so great a victory for body acceptance as it seems. After all, by having the implants removed, she is saying that she needs to change her body again in order to change her image.

That is exactly the wrong message to send. It’s the attitude that leads people to get implants in the first place, the attitude that a woman must have a chest size appropriate for the image she wants to create.

Certainly, it would be best not to have gotten the implants in the first place. Also, implants may be accompanied by health risks, although the jury is literally still out on that one. Still, from a symbolic point of view it would have been best had she accepted her body the way it was, absurdly large breasts and all.

I wonder what happened to the implants. If anyone knows, please get in touch with me. They should be in a museum somewhere as a monument to something or other. The oppression of women, that’s it.

And what’s she doing staying with her abusive husband anyway? If she wants us to respect her intelligence, she should dump the man who has been arrested for beating her. Unless, of course, she already did, in which case I withdraw my argument.

•The end of the school year. I’m all for it. Enough said.

•The BFS. As far as I know, the Claremont City Council has not yet decided whether to allow Keck to be built on the BFS. They will most likely approve it, though. Therefore we must look to the future.

The Colleges want to keep the BFS open for more development. That is no good. There is widespread support for the preservation of the field station. The students want the field station preserved. The faculties of the various colleges want it preserved. The community wants it preserved. I want it preserved.

Why, then, do the administrators persist in refusing to block development? Money. According to Stanley, the folks who gave the BFS land made it clear that they wanted it used for the construction of more colleges. I am not convinced that it is true, but let’s assume that it is.

If we went against the donor’s wishes, no one would ever give Pomona money ever again, the theory goes. That makes sense. Still, no past donor is writing angry letters demanding that we start building more schools soon. The BFS was undeveloped for fifty years, after all.

Therefore, we would be perfectly within our rights to build on the gravel pit, and no one would be upset. The Colleges should build all new buildings on the pit. They are going to have to fill the pit up eventually anyway, and it would be cheaper now than in the future. Then the Colleges could turn the useless pit into a financial asset.

President Stanley, however, argues that it would be very expensive to fill the pit. That’s true, but even if you accept the high-end estimates of the cost to fill the pit, it would be a pittance compared to the total cost of constructing a college.

I have also heard it said that the pit is too far away. But that is outright wrong; just look at a map. It’s about as close as the field station. As I see it, we are going to fill the pit eventually. It therefore makes much more sense to fill the pit before we build more colleges than afterwards.

•Abortion. Freedom of choice all the way. Don’t even get me started about people who bomb abortion clinics. They are one of the few good arguments for the death penalty.

•The death penalty. Speaking of the death penalty, I don’t like it. Is it a deterrent? No. Criminals don’t expect to get caught. Besides, the prospect of spending a lifetime in prison is quite a deterrent in itself. I doubt that many people would commit a crime if they thought that they would get caught and sentenced to life in prison.

Moreover, the death penalty as it is currently enforced is absurdly unjust. I don’t have the statistics memorized, but we all know that it’s minorities who get the chair.

The death penalty sure doesn’t rehabilitate the criminal. It doesn’t save money, either; after all, it actually costs more to kill a criminal than to keep him in prison for life. All it gets anybody is retribution. Why do we want retribution?

•Gun control. We need to get rid of the Second Amendment. If you actually read the Constitution, it says that we can’t restrict the people’s right to bear arms. If you take that literally, then any gun control in any form is forbidden. It is a bad thing for guns to be unregulated. Therefore, the Constitution must be amended. The Second Amendment says that the reason for its existence is that well-organized militias are necessary. That is not true. If it is true, than we can amend the Constitution to make guns available for use only by well-organized militias in national defense, like in Switzerland. That would be better than it is now.

•Technology. We need to develop robots to do all our manufacturing and labor for us. One complaint about that idea is that it would put everyone out of a job. That’s the whole point! With robots doing all the manufacturing, there will be plenty of everything. It won’t matter that no one will have a job. Then people will be able to dedicate themselves to intellectual pursuits, like creating great art, writing symphonies, and making great discoveries. That or hedonistic revelry.