“I would long since for the time that no votes buy our cares;
For people that once possessed command, high civil office, legions and all else,
now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.”
– From Satire X, Juvenal, ca. 100 AD
When the Roman satirical poet Juvenal wrote these lines centuries ago, he meant it as an exposé of government corruption. It also represented a warning to a populace too eager to sacrifice freedom for immediate delights.
Unfortunately, rather than a cautionary alert, Juvenal’s “bread and circuses” has become a blueprint from which every dictator since has built his empire.
You can now add Andrew Cuomo to the long sorry list of power-mad rulers seeking to Continue Reading “We Need High-Speed Broadband, Now!”
OK, I’m Ready To Admit It…
What day is it?
Maybe it was the Holidays. Maybe it was non-stop football. Whatever it was, my internal chronometer, once an adept timepiece, can’t tell whether Monday, or Thursday, Tuesday or Saturday, Wednesday or Friday.
And Sundays? Isn’t every day Sunday now?
Lest you think this represents a sudden onset of temporal disorder, bear in mind that, for a few years now, my question has been “What week is it?”
You see, when you write for publication, you write for a deadline. That deadline rarely is Continue Reading “OK, I’m Ready To Admit It…”