This morning Robbie was doing his regular daily German language studies (ie. reading the sports pages in the Weser Kurier , which is delivered to us every morning). There were a couple of interesting articles which I pointed out to him and before long we were having a lively discussion about various articles.
The daily quote was Voltaire's "If god didn't exist then man would have found it necessary to invent him", leading to a discussion of who Voltaire was and whether he was an atheist.
A little report about the increase in dog licenses grabbed Robbie's attention and got him wondering about the whole purpose of taxes. When he said, "They'll be taxing curtains next"! I brought up the window tax. From there the conversation moved onto the ethicality of governments making money by taxing tobacco and then the pros and cons of smoking (by now it was a debate with me playing devil's advocate).
The last item of interest was an article on the names that celebrities inflict on their children. I was familiar already with the likes of Fifi Trixibelle Geldof and Dweezil and Moon Unit Zappa but that Penn Jillette had named his daughter Moxie Crimefighter was news to me. I wonder what kind of names Voltaire, a skeptic like Jillette, would have given his children had he lived today.
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