Because my timezone is ahead of your timezone, I get to wish Cindylu a very happy birthday before you do. Suckas! I know I talk about a lot of blog homies around here, but Cindylu is my OG blog homie. Serious.
Here we are just a couple hours before I threw up all over her [...]

Georgia and I are compiling a list of our favorite words, phrases, and concepts as we travel around and meet more of our Global Voices colleagues. Among our favorites are “take my salam” which leads every email written by Taslima and “are you in integrity?”, which is Kevin’s much kinder and more philosophical way of [...]

In addition to struggling through Amartya Sen’s The Argumentative Indian, I’m also reading Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture. I first encountered Lessig in an international political economy class in college. This was before I was blogging and before Lessig became a minor deity for half the Internet. His book The Future of Ideas was an assigned [...]

An eBook version of Kalam’s annual anthology of poetry from marginalized communities in Calcutta is now available on Rising Voices. A $5 PayPal donation is suggested.
I’ll be honest, I’ve never been the biggest fan of poetry, at least compared to novels and short stories. Maybe I’m too lazy or not imaginative enough, but I get [...]

Cindylu is right, Oscar Wao is straight-up addictive. It captures the turn-of-the-millenium, multi-culti, global reality of right now through the lens of Dominican New Jersey.
Many people call this Oscar’s novel, but Oscar - the fat lonely kid in high school we all felt sorry for, but nevertheless always avoided - is only one of a [...]

A Californian woman named Bernann McKinney paid a South Korean scientist nearly $50,000 to clone her deceased pit bull, Booger. How much would I pay to clone my very own Booger? That’s right, $51,000. Though I’d make her miniature and stuff her in my suitcase and carry her around with me so she could make [...]

Two new songs from Oakland artists:
Via Revaz, The Grouch’s ARTSY (Give that man a Wikipedia page!):

Via Britt, Michael Franti’s Say Hey:

This post is for the new Rising Voices blog carnival which Rezwan is organizing every month. This month’s topic is to write about your favorite holiday. Today I was at the Nari Jibon center with Nasrin, Rabaya, Sonia, and Zannat while they wrote about their favorite holidays here in Bangladesh. Sujon also has a great [...]

I’m in Dhaka now, but here are some tunes I was listening to while in Calcutta.

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Finallly, I published the long video-filled post on why I’m here in Calcutta. Here’s a teaser:

The first song in the video, “Oceanic, Part 2″, is by Anoushka Shankar. If you know her at all, it’s probably because she’s the half-sister of Norah Jones and the daughter of Ravi Shankar. For me, Anoushka was the shy [...]