An Update about Raif Badawi

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

A couple weeks ago I wrote about the plight of an activist and blogger named Raif Badawi, who was arrested and found guilty of insulting his country’s religion and sentenced to 20 straight weeks of public whipping, among other punishments. (“For Raif Badawi.”)

As I wrote nine days ago, the first set of fifty blows against him was delivered three Fridays ago, just before the weekly call to prayers in Jeddah, Saudia Arabia. Cellphone videos showed some of the whipping.

Word is out today that for the second week in a row, the authorities have decided to postpone Friday’s series of fifty lashes. His health may be at risk, according to an update on Amnesty International’s website (“Doctors find Raif Badawi unfit for flogging“), so this week’s flogging has been put off:
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Daily Habits of Uninteresting Me

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

A writer and editor named Mason Currey started a blog almost a decade ago with the intent of compiling the habits and day-to-day minutiae of famous and successful individuals. The web site was titled Daily Routines and several years later he had compiled so many entries that a book was published, called “Daily Rituals.” It is a fun website and an interesting book, and they are both great to get lost in and waste time reading, which may not have been Currey’s intention.

That was probably a fun meeting, the one in which they decided to change the name from “routines” to “rituals.” Being that I have named approximately zero things that have become successful, I am not going to second-guess the decision. “Rituals” certainly does sound more interesting—and purchasable—than “routines,” because routines are something we are told we must get out of.
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The Old Ways Were Better

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The photo above was taken on November 26, 2014. The coordinates: 41°24′07″N 74°19′22″W, which if you have a globe, direct you to Goshen, New York.

In “Connect the Colors,” I wrote, “Perception may be the most unique and personal portion of human experience—or it may be the most identical; either way, we do not have a means of testing it, except based on anecdotes from individuals. Perhaps strawberries taste the same for you as they do for me, or they do not.” Perhaps an exception can be made to this perception about perception: the weather.
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