Fall

The authors of II century d.C., observing the rise of Christian religion, considered this faith as a "superstition", an were puzzled by the strange beliefs of christians, that challenged the humanism and the rationalism of their civilization. They were unaware that the Roman Empire would fall in a couple of centuries and that the absurd doctrine will become the indubitable religion for every European. I ponder over these old stories when I browse the web. There you find a large variety of things, but the dominant ones are political conspiracy, UFO, alternative economic theories, crop circles and so on. They appear as something absurd and illogical to the people that received a traditional education based on books (like me), but they seem to establish a coherent doctrine, based more on faith that on rational reasoning - not differently from the early Christina religion. In the Reinessance a synthesis between the humanism of the ancients and christian religion was realized . But this happened 1000 year after the collapse ot the ancient civilization.

Habemus papam

The episode of the dream of Pope Innoncence III - the subject of one of the frescos in the Church of the Saint in Assisi - is well known. The pope dreamed that the Lateran - the official residence of the Bishop of Rome - was ruining and that Francesco sustained it. The reference to this history is obvious in the choice of the name of the new pope, considering that the recent case sof pedophile priests that, remarkably, scandalised in particular the USA catholics. The scandal is probably not unrelated with the abidcation of Ratzinger.

Many sites in the web underscore the ambiguous relationship of Bregoglio with the dictatorship in Argentina, other the conservatism with respect to gay rights; other emphasize the choice of poverty and the care for social problems. In other words, nobody knowns if he is progressive or conservative - not surprisingly. he is a Jesuit.

Italia giusta

Lo slogan di Bersani era "l'Italia giusta". Purtroppo è un ossimoro.

Fecerunt desertum

If you travel inner Sicily or Spain you will find a barren landscape, with sparse or no trees and extensive grasslands. This is ovioulsy related to low rainfall, but this landscape is by no means a natural one; it was originated by overexploitation of the soils for crop harvesting at the time of the Romans. The impoverished soils became unproductive, and were ledt abandoned or destinated to sheep grazing. This is perhaps the most striking heritage of the Roma Empire, much more, possibly, than the imposing ruins of temples and theaters.

And our own civilization probably will leave a simila footprint: the towns and skyscrapers will become sparse heaps of rubbles, but the irreversibly collapsed ecosystem - for instance the desertified rainforests - will remain forever.

Comici

In fondo le elezioni le hanno vinte due comici.

Lucio Dalla

In fondo come cantautore non era un granché. Però un mio amico innamorato del jazz lo venera, e infatti se lo si vede come jazzista, era un grandissimo.