For pre-election listening -- some more earnest antiwar vinyl, from Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. The single's called "What if we all stopped paying taxes?" which, apart from sounding nice, is a weird so-far-left-it-merges-right deal: anti-Bush, pro-tax-cut. The real gem though is the b-side, a superfunky version of Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land".

[via tunes.co.uk]

"Chuu Chuu!!" -- What the Bengali donkey says. For his Afrikaner donkey cousin's retort (and much much much much more), head to Sounds of the World's Animals. I've been wishing for something like this for a long time. Some day I'll have to dredge up my old Tamil barnyard vocabulary and send it to them.

[via xblog]

"'The biggest tomato producer in the world today?' Smith paused, for dramatic effect. 'China. You don't think of tomato being a part of Chinese cuisine, and it wasn't ten years ago. But it is now.'" -- Malcom Gladwell, "The Ketchup Connundrum"

[via aldaily.com]

Radio Australia/Pacific Beat: "A Tongan nobleman has complained to the New Zealand government, after he and his wife were detained and their flight from Australia held up for 45 minutes -- and all, apparently, because of his name. The Honourable Luani, like all Tongan aristocrats, only has one name. But when he and his wife were flying home to Tonga from Sydney via Auckland at the end of September, he says the Air New Zealand ground staff found his lack of a last name a huge problem. Although, a spokeswoman for Air New Zealand says the airline has since written to the Honourable Luani to formally apologise, and has paid some compensation."

"The Chayma and Tamanac verbs have an enormous complication of tenses: two Presents, four Preterites, three Futures." -- Humboldt on northeast Venezuelan indigenous languages.

Got sent a NY Times article about the local Bengali-language independent press, interesting in itself, but even more so its mention of the New York Independent Press Association's project, Voices that Must Be Heard, which runs weekly articles (in translation where necessary) from various local ethnic newspapers. Scrolling through the archives of news stories and editorials provides something of an overview of immigrant and minority experiences in New York (and the broader US). The overall feel of things is simultaneously small-towny and internationally engaged. Three samples that jumped out at me:

Why Bush must go: Armenians should wake up and smell the Turkish coffee

Don't call me Puerto Rican; I'm Ecuadorian

What is gained and what is lost in America?

Polish rollerblader crosses country to seek help from Bill Gates

[email fragment] Are you getting the LA Times at home there? Last month I wrote a little applescript to download front page PDFs from a handful of newspapers via newseum.org (newseum.org!!). Of the batch I get the LA Times has become the hands-down favorite. Whoever their weekday P.1 and photo editors are, I'm a fan. The photos especially, which are almost always great compositions. I'm also developing this theory that they're purposely de-saturated, both to bring them in line with the elegantly utilitarian layouts, and with the actual light and landscape of the region. Even when they run the same AP photo as the Boston Globe, the LA version winds up looking like it was taken with a zoom from the grounds of the Getty museum.

Have you ever seen the old Audrey Hepburn movie A Nun's Story? I watched it on tape a couple weeks ago. Very good, quietly surprising on several levels, and brimming with good spiritual-thought-provoker moments around issues of calling, submission, authority, and the like.

Trio of top-of-the-page headlines in today's Toronto Globe and Mail:

• SpaceShipOne wins X prize ($10-MILLION (U.S))


• Canada gets tiny smart car


• Janet Leigh dies quietly