Lies, Damned Lies & Statistics?

Here's a quote by Winston Churchill that I'd never seen before:

The only statistcs you can trust are those you falsified yourself.

Roman Tunisia - Bardo Museum

The Tunis suburb of Bardo is home to the extraordinary Bardo Museum, which houses an enormous collection of mosaics from about the 2nd to the 4th century, spanning the Roman period into the Christian period.


Check out the expression, the individuality, the movement of this face. How do they do that in stone? Incredible.


This is a river god, again with great liveliness and movement.


I took a picture of this because it looks like an alien, and we thought George's son would like it. Apparently, it is a symbol of fertility and prosperity and was common near the entrance of a home to bring good luck.

2 men, 2 grocery carts, 1 television

So, I was having a coffee and croissant with my mother this morning at a cafe in Greektown. My mother looked out the window and said, there are 2 guys with grocery carts and a TV walking down the sidewalk. They were just slowly strolling down the street, occasionally stopping to discuss which direction they should go.

We thought it would make a good opening to a surrealist vignette, or would it make the central plot line of a short story. The question is, what would the back-story be? What were these guys doing?

Carthage

Over the next few days, I'm going to tell you a bit about Tunisia. I just returned from about four days there, and I'll start from the beginning - Carthage. It was founded by the Phoenicians in the 3rd century BC and became a rival of Rome, resulting in the Punic Wars (remember Hannibal taking elephants over the Alps?)

After the 3rd of the Punic Wars, Carthage was completely destroyed. The Romans even sowed the soil with salt to make sure no one could live and farm there - pretty spiteful. Here are a few pictures of what is left of Carthage.

Architectural remnants

A very lovely capital

The Punic Ports - this was the port used by Carthage, the mighty seafaring, trading culture used this itty-bitty bit of water as their port. I guess things were on a different scale back then.