It is an interesting social convention to celebrate this event, which has no biological significance, especially because today has no real association with that day except for, by an act of providence, to have the same markings on a particular calendar. Due to the peculiarities of our “modern” Gregorian calendar, there have actually been 27 years, 7 days and 13 seconds (if you consider a year to be a 365-day period, and a day to be 86,400 seconds) between that point and the same time today. On a purely celestial scale, the Earth has orbited the sun 27 times plus about 7/100 of a degree, while the Moon has waxed and waned almost 334 times, or 27.8299 lunar years.

Leaving all this out, some incredibly (as expected) awesome things have happened throughout history on this date:

• Soldiers of the First Crusade starve themselves and walk barefoot around Jerusalem so that nine days later they can claim it was God’s will that they wade in their enemies blood “up to their ankles,” ironically, bled from Jews and Muslims alike.
• Vasco da Gama set out on the first ever direct journey from Europe to India, which is probably the only reason modern American schoolchildren know of the Cape of Good Hope. Unlike Columbus, he actually arrives.
• The first confirmed tornado death in America happens in Cambridge, MA. Remains the only tornado not to target a trailer park.
• The Second Continental Congress adopts the Olive Branch Petition, promising to resolve differences with the crown peacefully, which is basically a footnote in history because a year later…
• The Declaration of Independence is given its first public read in Philadelphia, the (third) Liberty Bell is rung, and the United States begins its first war (and wins).
• Commodore Perry sails into Tokyo harbor on his “black ship” and initiates trading relations between the Empire and the U.S. under the threat of military force, setting an ironically accurate tone for the rest of history.
• The newly-formed Royal Canadian Mounted Police (then the North-West Mounted Police) begin their first assignment: march West to force drunk Americans to respect their authority. Canada still considered to be “America’s Hat.”
• The first issue of the Wall Street Journal is published, beginning its illustrious career as a status symbol for pretentious snobs everywhere.
• Count Ferdinand Adolf Heinrich August Graf von Zeppelin is born, later perfects navigable lighter-than-air transport, and, like all pre-1940 German engineering advances, is forgotten by the world, which continues to be surprised with the craftsmanship of a BMW.
• The first reports of aliens in Roswell, NM are broadcast. Alien hats go on sale a few hours later.
• John D. Rockefeller is born, who would later become an evil rich white oil baron and setup the modern, targeted philanthropic structure, fight racial segregation, improve public health and directly or indirectly fund 23 Nobel laureates. He continues to confuse hippies to this day.
• The IBM CICS software is released, still in use by 90% of fortune 500 companies 40 years later.

I hope you now know more than you ever wanted to about this date, and can now resolve the inferiority you feel in my presence by way of fate.

It’s simple really, warfare and media have taken a serious turn, and no one in this country seems to care, or even notice. As an aside, it is scary how often those two topics, warfare and media, follow each other.

On the warfare front, I believe we are seeing one of the first examples of true cyber-strategy during conflict, which in the near future will simply be called war. The Iranian government has taken great steps to block or limit the passage of electronic data in and out of the country. Social networking sites news organizations have been cut off, and a BBC satellite has even been jammed.

Our nation’s military has historically been very unwilling to adopt or adapt to new technology. The air supiriority we flaunt to the rest of the world was a gift from the Japanese; if they hadn’t incapacitated our battleship fleet at Pearl Harbor, we never would have relied on aircraft carriers. Submarine warfare was taught to us through a brutal series of lessons by the German U-Boats. And (unless we’re uncharacteristically careful) the necessity to be able to wage offensive and defensive battles on the information front will be learned only after serious casualties to our technology infrastructure. China spends so much time hacking our networks that its not a far fetched notion that it stems from some sort of cyber boot-camp.

Some lip service has been given to the creation of a “Cyber Czar,” a scary doublespeak title that will amount to little. No one seems able even to decide who he will report to. This position is important enough that it should almost be a fifth branch of the military, if that part of our government had even a chance of being able to support it.

Another interesting outcome of the “Iranian issue” is that old media is most assuredly dead. When the US State Department asks Twitter to postpone their scheduled maintenance because they’re the only news outlet from Iran, newspaper editors, radio producers and TV network execs. should be jumping out of their windows. Add to this the fact that one of the few “traditional” reporters active in Iran works for a show that airs on a comedy channel, and you have a clear message that your parent’s media is dead.

I’ve been trying to follow the activities over there as best I can, and the two resources I’ve relied on the most are Fark and Twitter. Hardly considered equals of the “hard reporting” provided by CNN and the NYT, but in the information age, an age completely ignored by traditional media, their past weaknesses have become their current advantages.

So its official. I will no longer be watching, listening to or reading the news, I’ll be browsing and tweeting it, and at the earliest opportunity, I will be augmeting my “end-of-the-world” bag with some cyber weapons. Rest assured, however, that the 36″ titanium Halligan is still around.