[thechat] Judge throws out hyperlink lawsuit

[Martin Burns]

On Sun, 25 Aug 2002, Chris Evans wrote:

> aardvark wrote:
> >>From: Madhu Menon <webguru at vsnl.net>
> > [...]
> >>Sometimes, I wonder which century we live in...
> > the optimist (and cynic) in me says an early one...
> >
> > the pessimist says one of our last...
> >
> > the realist says it doesn't matter...
>
> I question whether it *is* worse ( or better), or whether it *seems*
> worse ( or better) because we know so much more of the world.

Absolutely. I was listening to a radio phone-in discussion last night,
talking about the role of the media in the recent murders of 2 10-yo girls in
England, and one caller gave the usual line of "It was different when we
were kids - it was safe to go out and play without fear of being abducted
and murdered," and one of the studio guests quite rightly came straight
back with "When we were kids, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley were abducting
and murdering children"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/661139.stm

I'm firmly of the opinion that shit has always happened with only small
degrees of variation - there never was a true golden age. These days, we
know about it better, so it's perceived to be worse than it ever was.

Cheers
Martin
(whose wife's dissertation was on the difference between levels of crime,
and levels of the *fear* of crime. Guess which is always better responded
to...)
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"Names, once they are in common use, quickly
 become mere sounds, their etymology being
 buried, like so many of the earth's marvels,
 beneath the dust of habit." - Salman Rushdie