a thaumaturgical compendium

Brilliant talk by Clay Shirky:

Apparently my blog is all about the videos lately…

There’s still a chance to vote on the finalists in the Obama in 30 Seconds contest for Citizen-created political ads.

(via tmttlt)

(via LLVE)

I’m boring. I only have one passport. I am a citizen only of the US. Everyone else seems to be collecting passports faster than they are collecting credit cards.

Getting one of those passports is not an easy thing. It seems to be required that you marry someone and then swap nationality. But what ever happened to renouncing one’s citizenship in another country when you add citizenship of one. Yes, strictly speaking, you are supposed to give up your citizenship when you become an American citizen. With a small number of exceptions, dual citizenship is not formally recognized I believe. But in practice, about half my friends have a selection of passports to choose from when traveling internationally.

And at least in some cases, the “issue” of those marriages seem to inherit those multiple citizenships. How long is it before we have a global passport, perhaps with little stamps to indicate your claimed citizenships? Or perhaps a north-south passport: a passport that indicates you are a citizen of Europe or North America, for example, and then individual passports for other countries. Or, given the trajectory of politics in the US more recently, maybe we will see the opposite: required loyalty oaths and surrendering alternative papers as the border.