The End of the Affair

You fell unconscious

Of me

The Role of Blogs in Transition from Reader to Writer

Blogs are a tremendous advance in the process of making creative activity, writing in particular, available to the broad masses of people.

Previous such advances: the invention of the printing press, compulsory school attendance and the resulting mass literacy.

The amount of fantastically interesting thoughts and marvellous images that appear in the blogosphere is enormous.

Will B. used to hate blogs. According to him, the vast majority of blogging consists of pieces along the lines of "Today I fed my fish. I am going to ride my bike."

Perhaps that's true, but within the great heaps of dirt an occasional gem will be found. With such vast quantities of writing being produced, the gems can be found relatively often.

Anyway, Will has started his own blog now. Writes about computer games mostly.

I don't have a fish to feed.

But I am about to go ride my bike.

The United States of America as Rome

The Romans did not colonise the conquered territories in the modern sense; they posted their garrisons and extracted tributes. The Roman Empire was not a state, but the sphere of extension of Roman power, with the Roman citizens enjoying superior status to the local populations. Read: the network of American military bases all over the world, business opportunities for the US multinationals, superior status of Americans in any particular country.

The English are to the Americans as the Greeks were to the Romans: a race whose own empire belongs to the bygone age, looking up to the far more powerful newcomers with a mixture of awe, envy, and contempt, the last arising from the a cultural superiority complex.

What about the Soviet Union? Why, of course, it played the role of Carthage, complete with its rival but less extensive empire and its human sacrifice (both real and as embellished by its enemy's scribes). The rollback of Communism? "Carthage must be destroyed."

Given that the American president is the effective ruler of the world - foreign policy being the most extensive decision-making arena of the office - citizens of other countries should be allowed to cast votes in the US presidential election. An outrageous idea from the US citizens point of view - analogously, Rome refused to grant Roman citizenship to its Latin allies, leading to the Social War/Marsic War.

However, we are anyway at the period where the Republic is giving way to the Empire proper; this is signified by the rise of the dynastic presidential contenders (both the Bushes and the Clintons) and most especially by Bush's non-election in 2000.

Philip K. Dick was right.

The Empire never ended.

P. S. Islamic terror warriors as the barbarian invaders? (Les Invasions barbares, well of course.) China as the future Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, at once the descendant of the destroyers of Rome and an inheritor of some of its legacy?

Endless possibilities. Mind boggles.