Caribou Barbie strikes again!

Here's an (almost) exact copy/paste of something I posted last December.

• SF Chronicle interview with Wikipedia founder* Jimmy Wales on the move of the Wikioffices to San Francisco. Q: Do you worry that people at some point will feel like their work here is done? A: I used to worry. Part of the appeal in the early days of Wikipedia (was that) you could click on Africa and there (would be) nothing there and you (could be) the first person to type, "Africa is a continent." Whereas now to write a brand new article on something that does not already exist is kind of hard in English. You're writing about fairly obscure topics. But we haven't seen participation decline at all. It continues to grow.

It looks like certain people would have done well to have paid attention. (The advantage of a wiki is of course that if you-know-who gets to it first, you can easily change the inquiry "Is Africa a continent?" into a statement of fact.) On the other hand, maybe she was just a very early Wikipedia reader, and hasn't had a chance to go back and look for that particular article?

* -- Co-founder.

Sierra Leone's Refugee All-Stars

This looks like a good documentary: Sierra Leone's Refugee All-Stars. NPR profile here, MySpace page here, Rosebud Agency page here, Calabash here, album here. (No, I wasn't watching Oprah today either.) It's about these musicians who were victims of the civil war in Sierra Leone who have called attention to their country's situation through music.

Update: If you're not sure where Sierra Leone is exactly, see how well you do on this quiz.

Movie trailer:

In Japan:

At Music Millennium:

Ghanaian Fantasy Coffins

I've been watching a National Geographic mini-series on Africa on DVD recently. I like the way they go back and forth between the people, animals, and geography of various parts of the continent. I was just watching it while I was putting together an office chair I got for The ♥G♥ for Sweetest Day and they had a segment about these carpenters in Ghana who make these whacked-out coffins. Check 'em out!

• BBC photo essay on coffin makers.
• Book on Ghanian coffins.
• NPR feature story.
• Death online.
• National Museum of Funeral History.
• Washington Post story. Excerpt: The Norteys (the family of the departed) sought the services of Joseph Tetteh, who has become world famous crafting designer coffins. It is not uncommon for foreign tourists to stop by his workshop and buy them. Two years ago former president Jimmy Carter visited his shop and bought three: an eagle, a fish and a bell pepper. Tetteh, one of several makers of custom coffins in the Accra area, has made attention to detail his trademark. As he prepared Holala's four-door wooden Mercedes, he included windshield wipers, rearview and side-view mirrors (with real glass), an antenna (apparently taken from a radio), a Mercedes-Benz emblem on the hood, exhaust pipe, reflectors and tags (GG7155).