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I recently came across an ancient scroll in the public library, the contents were fascinating, if rather fictional, here are some excerpts:
"202 A.D. It was that time, every four years, the panem et circenses seasons, and celebrations spread on the taverns, beaches and the empire's shanty villages because at the Coliseum, a team of well-oiled southerners playing podospheron had beaten a team of well-oiled northerners, bringing "national" pride to a remote southern part of the empire, famous for the wood that the empress chose to redecorate her quarters. At the senate, an increasingly senile humanitarian speculator congratulated the winning province but advised its proud crowd to vote correctly for their provincial ruler. In the forum people were saying how lucky the little girl that had stitched the leather ball for the podospheron final was, when her older sister had been sold to bandits and was now entertaining imperial mercenaries in a tavern. Those that were not roman citizens, or did not look like them, were working in plantations, mines and sweatshops, the important thing was to get into the empire and to get a job, any job. And then to lie low because there were populist speakers in the forum calling for their expulsion from the empire. Meanwhile the powerful imperial armies and the vicious barbarians kept fighting inconclusively in the borders of the empire, conclusively killing the unarmed on both sides. On the economy side, successive financial scandals high up in Rome were reducing respected pillars of the empire, to mere pyramid schemes. The empire crowds were however lethargic and so was the patrician at the empire's helm. An ageing popular performer in the Britania province dared interrupt the deafening silence with a song called "cave canem" but was bitterly dismissed by the vox populi, well, as an ageing popular performer, and a freak. In the southern provinces millions were being infected by an epidemic and had been dying, also silently, in their thousands each day, for a decade. At the same time, imperial scientists were making rapid progress on other more lucrative fields, such as creating emperor clones. Astronomers announced a large comet had just missed the earth by 1/3 of the distance to the moon... They also warned the omens were not good. 203 A.D. People were looking back to the previous year with nostalgia because the... "
How dreadful, I thought, aren't we so lucky to live in the present?

- Antonis B. Petropoulos, ECOCLUB Editor

Cum Grano Salis : Striving for "a world of difference"
"Gaming is a key issue in tourism development in the Caribbean. When you look at 200-room resorts, one with a casino and another without, obviously the presence of a casino makes a world of difference".
- John Bell, Director General, Caribbean Hotel Association, San Juan. (Source: Global Gaming Business, July1,2002)