Revival

Ok, I know it was a long long time ago (in a galaxy far far away) when I last posted to Epicycle. I did actually move the site for a while onto a Freedom2Operate hosted site, and used Wordpress, but sadly that blog stagnated and died as Freedom2Operate expanded.

In the last few years bandwidth has become cheaper, web standards have become richer and the rise of social networking has made personal publishing more of a norm than a niche. With this, the Blogger interface has also become more capable. It's still not as configurable as Wordpress et al. but given my habit of "tweaking" I think I'm more likely to post using Blogger than anything Wordpress based. ;) Moreover, there have been a lot of changes (within as well as without) since my last post, and what with the coming new world order, I can't help thinking that the next several years will be interesting enough to blog about.

So I've decided to revive Epicycle. I can't promise that I'll post more frequently, or even more poignantly, than before. But I'll try. My layout template still needs some working (told you I love "tweaking") and some of the old links are now dead (please let me know if you stumble across any of them). So please mind the wet paint.

And if you are a citizen of the U.S.A.: VOTE!

No more drinking stupid

Abdul Taiyab sent me the graphic below. Apparently it's from a Coke advert being shown in Israel (can anyone confirm this?). Time to boycott coke, me thinks. Anyone for Mecca Cola?

Iraq Body Count

Whilst googling the web this morning, I found this "alternative" to all those webcounters you find dotted around the net: the Iraq Body Counter.

I have a huge distrust for the statistics that are presented by normal webcounters, and no doubt the results of the Iraq Body Counter are questionable too, but I have more faith in it simply because maximum and minimum limits are provided, as opposed to hard numbers.

And just look at those numbers! Call me cynical, but I wonder if the war will stop once the number of Iraqi civilians killed exceeds the number of people killed in the 9/11 attacks? :P

Mesopotamia. Babylon. The Tigris and Euphrates.

There's a great article by Arundhati Roy in today's Guardian, where she brings together alot of anti-war sentiment.

I didn't much like Roy's God Of Small Things because her prose was so embelished, and this made it hard for me to follow. So I never finished it. But her emotion (and sarcasm!) comes through graphically in this article, which makes it thought provoking and readable, whatever frequency of the war-spectrum you happen to be tuned to. I highly recommend it.

And now this talk of bringing the UN back into the picture. But that old UN girl - it turns out that she just ain't what she was cracked up to be. She's been demoted (although she retains her high salary). Now she's the world's janitor. She's the Philippino cleaning lady, the Indian jamadarni, the postal bride from Thailand, the Mexican household help, the Jamaican au pair. She's employed to clean other peoples' shit. She's used and abused at will.
[ Mesopotamia. Babylon. The Tigris and Euphrates. -- Arundhati Roy ]