Ewan McGregor and friend Charley Boorman ride motorbikes from London to New York, traveling east by road (and offroad) through Europe and Asia, aided only by a brief train ride in impassable Russia and a lift across the Bering Strait before crossing North America. Highly recommended travel documentary. Yeah, even if these guys did have a comparatively endless amount of money to fund their journey, they really did accomplish an amazing feat, and we're lucky to have this documentary as the proof. I totally want to go to Kazakhstan now.

Alice Lake in the Sawtooth Mountain Range, Idaho.

I suddenly remembered why I love living in Idaho.

'Nuff said. Just thought I'd share a few shots of the view from my tent this past weekend.

Language and culture form walls between a Hmong refugee family and the public health care system in Merced, California as they both work to treat the Lee's infant epileptic daughter. Fadiman captures both sides of the struggle with amazing tenderness and impartiality, describing the conflict between shamanistic and Western medicine while entering the hearts and minds of the family, doctors and caretakers brought together to save Lia Lee's life.

This book was completely engrossing; as is commonly said, the truth is grander than fiction. Here is written the history of the colonization of the Congo, the mass murder and exploitation, and the mass deception King Leopold II was able to pull off, until a series of heroes breaks open and publicizes the truth and the horror, the horror. Stars (amongst others) King Leopold II, Henry Morton Stanley (of Stanley and Livingstone), a gay Irishman, a narcoleptic lawyer, and of course, Joseph Conrad has several cameos.

Isaac Stern visits China in 1980 to check out the development of musicians and musical talent post-Mao. Linked to the DVD because it includes a half-hour program where Stern revisits China 20 years later, to see how a few of the students he'd met were doing. Very moving to see Stern recognize and encourage the talent in such gifted young musicians.

A favorite blog of mine by an expat in Korea. One of his running themes is his hangover-induced kitchen sink concoctions ("What NOT to cook in Asia...") usually involving whatever's left in the fridge, some kimchi or gochujang, a slice of processed cheese, all topped with mayonnaise and ketchup.





(Note martini olives and bacon in omelet above.)





His latest: Sam Gyup Sandwich.

Rox Populi pulls off a slick April Fool's joke with a parody of Michelle Malkin's website. Detailed even down to a scathing memorial to Korematsu.

Fred Korematsu passed away March 30, 2005 at his daughter's home of respiratory illness. He is known for having challenged the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II in the court case Korematsu v. United States (1944), where the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the internment was justified due to "military necessity."

"...300 Japanese women in identical blonde wigs take part in an event to counter the supposedly stereotypical western concept of beauty." [via tokyotimes]

A pair of Colorado girls decided to stay home from a dance (ahem, haven't been there before) and bake cookies for their neighbors. They wrote cute little notes on construction paper hearts saying, "Have a great night. HEART, the T and L Club," and left them on the doorsteps of their neighbors, knocking and then leaving before the door could be answered. Aww.

Apparently the surprise was so much for one neighbor that she decided to sue the teens for $900 for a subsequent emergency room visit, because she had been so startled at the knocking. She thought an intruder had come to her door when no one answered her calls. Though the teens offered to pay her bills, she insisted on taking them to court. [Original Denver Post article here.]

"The victory wasn't sweet," Young said. "I'm not gloating about it. I just hope the girls learned a lesson." [link]

Wait, there's more!

Tidal waves death toll rises to 44,000. [ABC News]
Tsunami: waves of destruction. Complete coverage by rediff.com.

Asia gears up for a massive relief operation. [Voice of America]

How you can help. [rediff.com]
The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami blog (The SEA-EAT blog for short): News and information about resources, aid, donations and volunteer efforts.

Learn to say "howdy" in like, 800 different languages! Jennifer's language page also features a healthy list of online language resources, grouped by continent and language. Yum. [via bookofjoe]

...it's a century old, take a ride around and enjoy what you seeeee... (Idaho's state song*, and yes we learned this in grade school.)

The more coastal my friends get, the more I realize how different it is, being here in the red states. I swear we should have some sort of cultural exchange between native coastal and interior folks; it might give us some more perspective (and maybe we'd even be a little less surprised come election time...?).

So here's Dot, with your occasional report from Middle America. I've come to edju-ma-kate you on my state, via blacktable's Six Things You Don't Know About series, which lists six things you don't know about random states.

Ecce, Etymologic, the newest 'thing that makes me go "ergghh!"' [via anggarrgoon]

"I intimidated them with my car," Seltzer told police. "I was exercising my political expression." [via YAAKE]

Dude speakin' to my Ida-homies. We were born in the same town!

All the more reason to take my vote on the road! Or to the sea?

That said, and given that Hawaii is the only state with an Asian and Pacific Islander majority population, Asian Americans have even more opportunity to make their voice heard in this election.

angryasianman has made it public he will be voting for Kerry, as has the man Greg Pak, who has a new site up: Swing Hawaii for Kerry!

As for me, I've got my DOTWHO shirt on. I don't care if I live in a red state, let's rock this vote.

MTV's PRElection results. Oh, if only MTV were the Real World...

Language Logger Mark Liberman challenges you to try your hand at field linguistics. Can't wait to do this in grad school.

"Blogs" as a category on Jeopardy! [via thousand robots].