Category: Current Events

The Sun in His Pocket

Silvio Berlusconi still believes in himself. His doctors say that he is “almost immortal.” His story is not over.

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Watch Cory Run

A few weeks ago, Cory Booker bought me ice cream. Booker, who wants you to call him “Cory” (but whose legal name is really “@corybooker”), was in town for one of his signature “Run with Cory” campaign events.

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Wijbe’s War

Wijbe nurses a beer and burns through the tenth cigarette of the day, cursing himself for not having the courage to approach the topless Czech girl two beach chairs over. It’s almost noon, and Wijbe is straining to relax at a Turkish resort near Antalya. He mostly succeeds until the evening fireworks boom across the cove and he starts flinching, as if he’s still in war.

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Who’s Smoking That?

Istanbul is for the most part a very clean city. So clean that the only litter on the streets are cigarette stubs. So naturally, on my first night bar-hopping with some friends, when we had settled in to waiting for our cocktails, smoke in the bar wasn’t a big deal. There weren’t that many people in the bar, so maybe we could have evil-eyed the smoker in our midst and gotten him to stop.

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Putin’s Opinion

On September 11, 2013, The New York Times published an op-ed by Vladimir Putin arguing against unilateral American military intervention in Syria without the blessing of the United Nations Security Council.

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Boston

Probably wearing an oversized baseball cap and a big, sloppy grin, at three years old I stepped onto a characteristically purple and yellow car on the Old Colony Line Railroad with my father. The line extends from Boston down to Kingston, my hometown, and Plymouth, where the rock is, both about an hour away from the city. After decades out of service, the line had just been rebuilt, thanks in part to the concrete my dad poured.

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Fuck Tha Police

The next song is very, very deep, but if I want to translate it, it’s fuck the police.” So Da Arabian Mc’s (DAM) introduced one of their final songs on Thursday.

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Two Days in Tahrir

Last night Tahrir Square was a lawless place—masked young men roved, accosted, helped, threatened, fought; buildings loomed, burnt and crumbling, paving stones were absent, having been broken up and used as ammunition against the police a few months ago. But perhaps this experience only applied to Tahrir at 2 a.m. So I returned that afternoon to take photos of ongoing protests and developments. Daylight better illuminated the debris of Tahrir’s damaged past, but also cleared the fog of tension from eleven hours prior.

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Facebook Frenzy

Are people afraid that their deepest darkest secrets will make their way into the hands of their mortal enemies? Why do we see one person’s post on Facebook and instantly delve into a tumultuous back and forth between the meager efforts to protect our photos and the nonchalant I-don’t-give-a-fuck shoulder shrug?

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We Have 99 Problems

By now many have seen the picture of Dr. Cornel West at Occupy Wall Street holding a sign that reads, “If only the war on poverty was a real war then we would actually be putting money into it.”

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Making Time

The history of standard time began in the mid-1800s, when train companies in Britain began to adopt a time standard based on the sun position at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England, called Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Before this, every town would have its own time standard.

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Movers and Shakers

Friday, March 11, Japan’s Pacific shore was hit by a magnitude 8.9 earthquake, which tilted the Earth’s axis and moved the entire island closer to North America. While most people may already be aware of these tragic events, many may not be aware of the fact that Japanese earthquake and its effects were also the comedy event of the year.

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