Redesign of Coat of Arms Overdue

Seriously Mauritius. A dead and lazy bird on the left. An imported animal on the right. Both dressed in colonial tailcoats. A dead industry in the middle. A boat that we haven't used to go to work for at least a week. Hopefully it's not one of those boats that was involved in large-scale human trafficking. 3 palm trees. A key that will now be appropriate only when our independent country turns 52. And a star (mullet argent). Plus the 200-plus-year old reason why the British seized the island: Star and Key of the Indian Ocean. That was before the birth of the Wright brothers and Santos Dumont.

This beauty was apparently designed in 1906 by Johann Van Der Puf, the Mayor of Johannesburg. Might have been relevant then. But is definitely not now. We should organise a design competition. To get rid of this embarrassment.

Kozelidir is 4

Just found out that August 23rd is remembrance day for the slave trade. What a coincidence because on the same date four years ago the first post of Kozelidir made its way to the blogosphere. We crossed another milestone today: we reached our 1,000th post a few hours ago. 3,232 comments have also been published. Some are longer than most of the posts here. We put a premium on brevity. And a big one on insight value. A few comments have been rejected mostly because they were off-topic.

Where do we go from here? There are a lot of conversations here that need to be brought to the surface. So expect an even simpler experience when you visit. And more posts and comments. That hopefully will sharpen the way you look at things.

Thank you for stopping by.