I know this is getting reblogged all over the place, but damn, it totally rocks.
Lailah, Isda, Hamaliel, Shekinah.
(img via leadapronbooks)
I totally forgot about this song. Good call on it. Perfect for the day.
On a side note, it is kinda awkward celebrating Independence Day in Britain…
[ uh-merica….regina spektor ]
In Defense of the Pledge of Allegiance
The Pledge of Allegiance is pretty stupid. In fact, the way it is used nowadays is more than stupid, it is a token to misplaced patriotism and probably corrosive to many of the ideals that America should stand for. I see no reason why children should have to say the pledge, and it seems really wrong that enforced in such a way (hello, first amendment?).
And, I absolutely despise the version that has been used since the 1950’s. Not only does it contain one of the most objectionable phrases in American history, but it is just bad worded - i.e. there is no need for it is say ‘to the Republic’ when surely just ‘the Republic’ would suffice.
But, I must say that reading the original version has somewhat restored my faith in it as a pledge for the nation.
The original reads as follows:
‘I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands: one Nation indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.’
There are two things that strike me as a great improvement, the first of which is that it is shorter and flows much easier. That is achieved because of the second improvement, which is simply a difference of one word. Rather than saying ‘the flag’ it says ‘my flag’. That has great consequences in the way I view the pledge - it means that flag is no longer the flag of the United States of America, but it is our flag.
We are citizens of the United States, not subjects but citizens therefore we have a collective part in the flag. It is not the flag of ‘the government’ but the flag of ‘our government’ - it is the idea, enshrined in the Declaration of Independence that ‘Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed’.
In this, the original version of the pledge, it is not telling you to mindlessly pledge allegiance to the nation, it is asking you to show that you are a part of this society and the principles on which this society stands - ‘Liberty and Justice for all’.
So, on this July 4th, have a think about this old pledge, perhaps even say it if you feel particularly inspired by the creation, against all odds, of America as a free society. Maybe you can memorize this version and next time you are called upon to recite the pledge, say ‘your’ version, the truly patriotic version, the one where we take a stake in society.
Here's An Idea
Hey tumblr,
How about, instead of featuring a million photos from ffffound and weheartthis, you feature original content. Everyone has seen the ffffound pictures a million times already.
Just check antoinetta.tumblr.com who fills my dashboard everyday with great images that aren’t straight from ffffound. There are enough photos on tumblr that it doesn’t need to be this way, I’m sure.
.Lomography 3.0~ / _homesDeLuxe
One last one from the roll. This is an old Renault (or maybe Citroen) in Brussels. You don’t see them that much outside of the Francophone world.
.Lomography 3.0~ / _homesDeLuxe
A photo from the aforementioned roll of film from my Holga. The film was cross processed (or x-pro as the cool kids say) which gives the colors a strange kick.
The yellow in this comes from my colorsplash flash though, which used a yellow colored flash rather than white.
This is us in the car, at night and scarily lost. I wasn’t really much of a help with my photo taking.
Lomography
I got the first roll back from my Holga today.
It was a 36 exposure film, but someone dropped the bag my camera was in pretty bad (yes, I am no longer friends with them) and the film door opened up, blasting my precious Lomo slide film with destructive light photons. Anyway, twenty frames survived, though a few of them went pretty crazy due to the high light that they got hit with.
Pure American photo. People sometimes think of America as having forgotten sex, they haven’t, it has just been a little lost in a country that big.
home.jpg (JPEG Image, 688x440 pixels)
Rap Is Wack | The New York Observer
Great article about a new film called ‘The Wackness’ about a dude in New York during the summer 1994 (a summer that has weird significance for me too, but for totally different reasons) who deals a little weed and listens to a lot of hip-hop. The writer, J. Boylan, takes issue with the sentimentalization that has occurred around hip-hop. I slightly find myself indulging in that a bit - I wrote about it a few years back and wrote a little more about it more recently. I am a position of slightly backpedalling, summer 1994 was indeed a great cultural highpoint for hip-hop, but, as Boyland writes, the more we defend that as ‘the end of hip-hop’ the more boring it seems. The music really wasn’t made for middle class white kids in mind, but the nostalgia ignores that. It takes away the troublesome bits of Biggie and just becomes another song that denotes a time -like All Along the Watchtower or Smoke on the Water do for another era.
For a generation that was so in the shadow of the Boomers horrible and incessant nostalgia the X-ers and Y’s are becoming remarkably similar in their repackaging of their youth.
HEARTSREVOLUTION - C.Y.O.A (via handzTV)
I challenge anyone to say that this isn’t the best video they have seen all year (or at least up there with Kanye’s Flashing Lights twin - soon to be triplet?).
[yeah, I probably have posted it before, but I was listening to it again and this video totally rules.]
Matt Lauer Joins the Obama bin Laden Club
Now we’ve burned half the available oil, or close to it, and burning it (along with so much coal) has altered the earth’s equilibrium. Our future, like our past, may be virtually free of oil, and global culture, and many of the social safeguards we enjoy. Thus the novel of future catastrophe threatens to become a version of the historical novel.
Spectacular article about catastrophe fiction, and how it relates to the world around us, so will change to adapt to the different world around us now. In the fictional post environmental catastrophe world violence will stop being monopolized by state actors and will fall into the realm of the people.
This is drastically different to the ideas in older dystopian fiction, e.g. 1984. In books like that technology (which was seen to be limitless back then) would empower the state so much that there could be no freedom.
Kinda reminds me of the idea in Battlestar Galactica ‘this has all happened before and will happen again’.