Current Events

47

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Today is a day unlike the other 364 days (and every four years, 365 days), as today is the 47th anniversary of an important day in my life. Perhaps the only important day in my life. On this date 47 years ago, it became possible for me to do, well, everything, which is not the same as everything well. I became a human being at 6:37 p.m. (just in time for dinner) on November 18, 1968. Thank you, mom.

Age is a statistic, and mine are these (for your own numbers, feel free to play with the age calculator that I linked to): As of today, I have been here for 17,167 days (counting today), which is also more than 412,000 hours and approximately 370,801,080 breaths, and 1,779,845,184 heart beats since I was born.
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#OpParis, Day 2

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The mainstream media has started to take Anonymous more seriously than it has in the past in the last two days. Part of this is born of the mainstream media’s continuous pursuit of an “Us vs. Them” narrative, and part of this comes from the human need to find someone to cheer for in this dark, bloody time.

Here is The Hill, a daily in Washington, DC: “Anonymous claims it has eliminated 5,500 ISIS Twitter accounts.” Here is Rory Cellan-Jones of the BBC, who landed an interview with “the person behind the #OpParis Twitter account” (@opparisofficial, by the way): “Anonymous takes on IS.” Cellan-Jones’ interview was conducted by email, not on camera, and was not recorded.
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‘Darkness cannot drive out darkness’

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Playing the part of The Gad About Town on last night’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” on HBO was Dylan Ratigan, a former anchor and reporter for CNBC and MSNBC who is no longer on television because he tended to say true things correctly with his outdoors voice. The show is aired live, so it was a subdued one because last night’s violence in Paris was still unfolding.

Bill Maher addressed his panel, “When the Charlie Hebdo thing happened, the week after, everybody said ‘Je suis Charlie.’ But not really. They didn’t really stick with them … I’m gonna ask you this question that people asked after 9/11, because I don’t think we really know the answer: Why do they hate us?”
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