Mark's black page

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page updated: 2005.11.20

The black, the black...We crawl on our hands and knees to oblivion.

Freedom

Is it possible to have freedom of speech and censorship and libel laws all at the same time ?

General

E un giorno disumano.

Housing

It seems (to me) incredibly expensive to find somewhere nice to live. And I think it's getting worse too. Why are people pleased when their house goes up in value/cost ?. The only way to realise that money is to sell, and most people only do that to buy something even more expensive in the same market - crazy. At the same time, there are people living in cardboard boxes.

Media

Have you ever read something in the papers, that you actually knew a lot about ? Got it wrong, didn't they ? Maybe not the whole thing, but just some details, or perhaps it gave the wrong impression altogether. Are they any more likely to get it right when it's something you know nothing about ? The same applies to TV etc. although perhaps they are a little more rigorous in checking their facts.

People who work in journalism just can not understand all of the issues involved in every subject that might come up as a news story. If they were to keep up to date with something they would probably have to be working in that field, and wouldn't have time to write about it.

And then there's bias, censorship etc. It's almost a waste of time looking at local coverage of any war that we are actually involved in (or maybe just have an interest). Sometimes, we get to know the real story decades later.

In these days of the satellite TV, the internet, you can at least get different views on things, but these are not guaranteed to be accurate either.

What to do ? Question everything.

Millennium

What are we celebrating here ? And when ? The religious (which religion ?) interpretation doesn't stand

up to investigation eg. as the 1st year was 1 and not 0, 2000 years aren't up until end of 2000. In the end you're just left with the novelty of a load of zeros on the end of some counter. The various time zones in the world mean that there are going to be lots of ends to the millennium. While we're on the subject, why does the end of the calendar year miss the winter solstice by several days ? Don't you just want to tweak it into line ? Anyway, no such thing as absolute time.

Monopoly

We used to play this game, although I rather missed the point at the time. We seem to be reaching the endgame in the world in general. Increasing globalisation is wiping out competition. In some cases there remains the illusion of choice, but when you look more closely, you find that they are both owned and supplied by the same people.

Privatisation

Some things clearly work better in the open market. Others clearly must be publicly owned. The question is, where should the line be drawn ? I would suggest that there is a simple test ie. can we manage without it ? If not, it must be public. In the UK it has been taken too far eg. the railway system, water supply, electricity (especially nuclear) etc. What happens when it becomes insolvent ?. Generally speaking these things are what I would call "natural monopolies". It makes no sense to have 2 pipes bringing different water into the house.

Religion

Is there a god ? Are there several ? I really don't know. However, I work on the basis that there is nothing.

Isn't it strange that what people believe is mostly determined geographically ?

It often seems to me as though people who claim to be religious have actually only taken on the bits they like from their chosen religion, and ignored the rest.

War

Are we any further forward ? Or are we still fighting over bits of land and resources ? What happened to the war to end all wars ? There seem to have been a quite a few since then. Looks like there might be something serious in 2003.