Bion, Frogs And Twitter

  • Share
  • Read Later

Twitter is down, and I cannot tweet about it, which leaves me all atwitter. No one can. The company claims it is a denial-of-service attack, one of several that have been hitting social networking sites in recent days, coinciding with the Defcon Hackers Convention in Las Vegas, at the Riviera, home of the “Crazy Girls” topless review, among other things, which recently concluded. (I, of course, have no idea who might be responsible for the attacks, and would not presume to point any fingers.)

But it does all call to mind that great line often attributed to Bion, the ancient Greek poet: “The boys throw rocks at frogs in jest, but the frogs they die in earnest.”

In the meantime, the two stories I wrote this week for the newsstand copy of TIME, one about President Obama’s golf game, and one about the White House preparations for a widely expected outbreak of H1N1 flu this fall, are now online, two frogs as yet unstoned. (I would add that the flu story comes with lots of great graphics that are not online, but easily avaiable by subscribing–$1.99 for six weeks–or buying a copy at a newstand near you. (On a related note, read this, which is likely to be good news for the reporting industry.))