Link Banana

This image — presented excellently by Mr. Kleon — from Colin Powell’s appearance on Meet the Press made me cry:

Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is no. That’s not America. Is there something wrong with a seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing he or she could be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion that he is a Muslim and might have an association with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

I feel particularly strong about this because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay, was of a mother at Arlington Cemetery and she had her head on the headstone of her son’s grave. And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone, and it gave his awards - Purple Heart, Bronze Star - showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death, he was 20 years old. And then at the very top of the head stone, it didn’t have a Christian cross. It didn’t have a Star of David. It has a crescent and star of the Islamic faith.

And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan. And he was an American. He was born in New Jersey. He was fourteen years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he could serve his country and he gave his life.

A bit of history was Twittered into my lap today. Jourdan Anderson writes his former master in 1865 to decline — or more accurately, ask for more details about — an invitation to return to his plantation. This may be my favorite part:

…we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty- two years and Mandy twenty years. At $25 a month for me, and $2 a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to $11,680. Add to this the interest for the time our wages has been kept back and deduct what you paid for our clothing and three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams Express, in care of V. Winters, esq, Dayton, Ohio.

Three random things:

• Feist performs a version of “1 2 3 4” — the song made famous by iPod nano ads — on Sesame Street. (via Austin Kleon)
• Chris Blake made a music video showcasing the Google results for “biggest regret.” (via Boing Boing)
  
• The word count of popular songs has increased. It was 176 in the ’60s, 436 last year. The untested consensus (to which I assent) is that it’s mostly due to the increased popularity of rap and hip hop.

Austin Kleon is rather excited that Hulu — a synonym for legal, free, ad-supported streaming — now has some Three Stooges episodes. Personally I’ve never much watched the classic, but now I think I mights have to.

For a little linguistic fun, consider the following sentences:

• The old man the boat.
• The horse raced past the barn fell.
• The cotton clothing is made of grows in Mississippi.

(via Austin Kleon)

Austin Kleon’s latest “newspaper blackout poem” it truly great. You should take the next 30 seconds and read it.

I probably wouldn’t be linking to this cute/strange/odd essay from the NY Times Book Review were it not for what Austin Kleon (a recent favorite) had to say about it:

last night we watched MARGOT AT THE WEDDING, and this morning I read this essay. these poor, miserable, over-educated, imbred [sic] bastards. doomed to loneliness. this whole stupid American Hologram has somehow convinced us that we are what we consume — and intellectuals buy into it just as much as anybody else. “You’ve never read Nabokov? Oh, I could never marry you.” Losers. A nation of losers.