Dive into the archives.
- Spank that child…
Speaking of Frosted Flakes, this could be the funniest video ever. I’m all for selective reproduction. And old-school discipline.
Thank you. Good night, and good evening.
Apr 7, 2008 · category: Culture, Funny, Humor, WTF, just something to think about, life, random, video
Posted by John Daniels
- A letter written by Martin Luther King, Jr. from prison in 1963
I came across this picture, and an accompanying letter posted on flickr today. The letter was written by Martin Luther King, Jr. from a jail cell in Birmingham to a group of clergymen who opposed him.
It is unclear why King is in jail, but the picture and letter are both quite moving. In his Author’s Note, King tells (us) that he wrote the letter (which is very long) “in the margins of a newspaper”, and then continued onto scraps of paper, “and concluded on a pad [his] attorneys were eventually permitted to leave [him].”
His reason for being in Birmingham? Quite biblical:
But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their “thus saith the Lord” far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I. compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.
What is even more interesting is King’s description of how they prepared themselves for non-violent demonstrations. They did not merely ready themselves to not be violent, but they taught themselves to take violence, and turn the other cheek, as it were.
We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves : “Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?” “Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?”
King, in answer to the letter’s question of “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” makes this extremely eloquent and still relevant statement:
The answer lies in the fact that there fire two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the Brat to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”
Mar 5, 2008 · category: Culture, political
Posted by Tom Collins
- Photographing the Queen
If you have about 8 minutes, this is a strangely alluring article and video of Annie Leibovitz photographing the Queen of England.
The whole video is intriguing, but the most interesting part is right at the end of the clip, where the spokesperson for the Queen is asked if the Queen liked the pictures. Her reply is that the Queen simply “approves the release” of the portraits. “She doesn’t express her views, she simply takes understandably close interest” in the photos that are taken of her. Interesting.
Another interesting tidbit:
Annie really shows her tenacity in this video when she immediately tries to get the Queen to remove her crown after deciding it doesn’t look good in the first shot and not giving up on an original request request to shoot the Queen on horseback inside the state apartments. She brings it up at the end of the shoot as the picture she’d really like to take, laying the groundwork for next time.
Mar 5, 2008 · category: Culture
Posted by Tom Collins
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(via kottke)
Mar 5, 2008 · category: Culture, random
Posted by Tom Collins
