Letter to My Aunt

            Just as a bit of a disclaimer going into this – this post is primarily for me and my family, a sort of catharsis. It’s going to be raw, emotional, and honest. I guess the best writing always is. My family is hurting right now. I’m hurting right now. My youngest aunt just passed away.

Rebirth

There comes a time in almost every person’s life when birthdays simply don’t mean what they once did. The annual anniversary meant to celebrate the very fact that we exist becomes just a reminder of how old we really are. For me, that point came at the ripe old age of 22.

We Are The Gatekeepers

Today is a day that will live in infamy, at least in the realm of the Internet. Today, on January 18, 2012, the masses and technology corporations rallied together as a host of influential websites, including such power players as Google, Craigslist, Tumblr, and Wikipedia, blacked out their websites in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a bill that according to Wikipedia, “would expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods”. This, from what I have been able to gather, means that if I, a mere blogger hoping to have some kind of positive impact on the world, were to post a link to a page that itself contained links to copyrighted material, my blog could be shut down, I could be sued, and the company that hosts my blog might even be liable to be sued. As a student of business and journalism hoping someday to have a future on this great thing called the Internet, this does not sit right with me.