Toronto, Canada
In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon’s every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries the terrifyingly genius pen work of James Braithwaite with masterful digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon’s boundless wit, and timeless message. Enjoy, here…
(I first posted this back in 2008, here).
(thanks to friend Celes Davar—original source unknown)
(from almost anywhere in the Incarcerated States of America)
I’ve blogged about this before, so please forgive me if this sounds like a broken record (those over 50 may actually “get” that reference). I find it incredible (literally) that the nation that wraps itself in the flag of “Land of the free, Home of the brave.” imprisons more of its citizens by far than any other nation on earth. With only 5% of the world’s population the U.S. boasts 25% of the world’s incarcerated population…
Thanks to Linda at the Online Criminal Justice Degree who provided me with the very effective info-graphic shown above. Click on it for access to a larger version, and please feel free to share this more broadly.
[My father was a pacifist pulpiter, so I rant about things like this quite naturally—is that a valid excuse? He taught me maxims such as “if you live by the sword, expect to die by the sword,” and “you can tell a tree by its fruit…” Geez, that sounds self-righteous!]
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“Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution.
Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.”
~ Thomas Alva Edison
“There is no such thing as a minor lapse of integrity”
~ Tom Peters
“The only tyrant I accept in this world is the ‘still small voice’ within.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi
“Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.”
~ Albert Schweitzer
“Even the most rational approach to ethics is defenseless
if there isn’t the will to do what is right.”
~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn
“In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others.
In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.”
~ Immanuel Kant
“No man can purchase his virtue too dear, for it is the only thing whose value must ever increase with the price it has cost us. Our integrity is never worth so much as when we have parted with our all to keep it.”
~ Ovid
“The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home.”
~ Confucius
“It is curious—curious that physical courage should be
so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.”
~ Mark Twain
“Relativity applies to physics, not ethics.”
~ Albert Einstein
(That’s a lesson that my Daddy taught me [he just turned 92]… Respect!)
