USA Today is carrying tips on how to not look so danged American when traveling abroad. Here’s a few tips from FP:

Don’t wear T-shirts with slogans or pop-culture icons on them, unless they’re Tintin.

Try wearing leather shoes!

Artificially stain your teeth, or wear amusing gag teeth.

Learn about geography and current events. Know the names of world leaders!

A big deal in Japan is now available in the US, called an “enzyme bath” – it seems to involve being buried, heated, and relaxed in gently fermenting rice bran and other enzymes. I wonder how much my mom would charge me to bury me up to my neck in the compost heap?

Here’s the homepage of the clever fella behind infobreakfast, Ronan Cremin. Take a look at NewsQuakes, the site that makes it look as though all United Statesians live in San Francisco.

If I watched more British courtroom dramas, this accusation from a British court might sound less strange and stilted: “The same day while on a British registered aircraft you had in your possession a dangerous article. That was a hand grenade” I can almost make it into a Canadianism with appropriate punctuation- “The same day? While on a British registered aircraft? You had in your possession a dangerous article? That was a hand grenade.”

I saw this courtesy of infobreakfast, as mentioned by the lovely Bruce Sterling. Though I may need a long vacation before I can get back to his new book, Tomorrow Now. I really liked what I’ve read so far, but I’m totally losing my ability to concentrate.

Are you prepared? Are you really prepared? Learn how to totally freak yourself out with FEMA’s guidebook, Are You Ready?

Those of you who don’t work in a school, don’t work in a library, or don’t have a child in school, probably haven’t heard about the Accelerated Reader program. It involves students being allowed to pick a recreational reading book from a list of pre-approved books that match their assessed reading level and then being tested on their comprehension in order to gain a certain number of points that often apply to their final grade. I can think of few ways to better make children hate reading. The vendors of this program charge for each test purchased, so schools can purchase only a limited number of tests. Meaning that there are many fewer books to choose from than is really good for a growing mind, and there is a huge disincentive for schools to buy tests for books that have a higher reading level than the grade levels they teach, so the better readers are required to read books that are far too easy for them. That pretty much sums up why I don’t think that the AR program is great. Unfortunately, it’s really popular and easy to use.

The measurement of reading level for the tests (and for most reading-level assignments by almost anyone) is done with a formula that only takes into account the difficulty of the words and sentences, not the complexity of thought or age-appropriateness of the ideas raised. The Color Purple, therefore, has a fourth grade reading level. Look up the reading level of your favorite books at AR’s sales web site.

This is so cool: take a quick look at today’s front page— of 159 different newspapers!!!! Take the pulse of the world, and forgive my use of multi-bangs.

Michael Jackson is shocked, shocked, I tell you, that he comes off as a complete freak in a new documentary about him that involved following him around for months. He can’t understand how it happened. And his pal, the spoonbending jerk, Uri Geller, didn’t see it coming.

I was listening to a song where the singer was saying how you hurt those who love you, my little polecat. Polecat? Actually the song was called “Coquette”.

Two books of the day today, both lavishly illustrated coffee table books. The Art of the Airways by Geza Szurow features beautiful reproductions of vintage airline posters, from the days when air travel was romantic. Pacific Legacy: Image and Memory from World War II in the Pacific by Rex Alan Smith and Gerald A. Meehl shows the physical remnants of WWII in the Pacific. From memorials and monuments (on both sides) to rusted-out airplanes crashed in the jungle and helmeted skeletons that turned up in someone’s back garden. Lots of history is given to link these islands of memory to the events that caused them.