At the moment I’m about a third of the way through Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks, and I’ve been watching Orphan Black on Amazon streaming, and in the one case I haven’t finished it yet and in the other I don’t … Continue reading →
While Harpagos rampaged through Ionia and environs, Cyrus conquered most of the rest of the Middle East. He triumphantly rolled over of most of modern-day Armenia, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, excepting those portions that he’d already controlled; this period … Continue reading →
I mentioned, last week, that my imagined audience for “I Liked It: A Series of Blog Posts” is basically my sister if she had a little more time on her hands, not a whole lot, just a little. However this It … Continue reading →
Harpagos, the guy whom Astyages forced to eat his own son as punishment for not properly arranging for Cyrus’s death, eventually decided to make Cyrus into the instrument of his vengeance, like you do. Fortunately for Harpagos, Astyages was cruising … Continue reading →
We all listen to too many podcasts; it’s the scourge of the modern media landscape. This is undeniable and in no way a generalization pulled from the very small dataset of me personally. Or, to put it another way: I … Continue reading →
And now we move on to the story of Cyrus the Great, Emperor of the Persians and arguably the mightiest of the House of Achaemenes. Funny side note: the Achaemenid dynasty ruled the Persian Empire for about four hundred years, … Continue reading →
The future of computer games is a topic that I spend more time thinking about that anyone who isn’t a professional computer-game-futurist ought to. A couple of years ago I wrote a terrible short story, the hook of which was … Continue reading →
Before we move on to the second half of CLIO, the epic rise and fall of Cyrus the Great, there are a number of anecdotes and digressions that we need to cover. Herodotus is great for these little side-stories; heck, … Continue reading →
“Alabama? All I know about Alabama is firehoses and football.” “That’s about all there is to know.” I haven’t been to a comic book store on a regular basis in I don’t know how long. Arguably the last time I … Continue reading →
# Then the gods punished Croesus for his arrogance, says Herodotus, in a rare bit of editorializing. The gods sent him a prophetic dream, in which his son and heir, Atys, was slain with an iron spear-point. Croesus awoke convinced … Continue reading →
