Is kimchi that doesn’t stink really kimchi? KoreAm Journal reports that “Koreans everywhere were stunned” when the Los Angeles Times reported that an odorless type of kimchi had been patented. “Isn’t the pungent aroma precisely what makes kimchi, well, kimchi?” the magazine asks.

In the spirit of celebrating other fetid foodstuffs, KoreAm Journal walks readers through “a breakdown of the smelliest edibles from Asia.” Here are some of our favorite descriptions:

Dried squid: Koreans gnaw on dried squid while drinking beer and soju [a distilled spirit akin to sake]. Too bad the rubbery strands smell like dead mice.

Chungookjang: It’s the amino acid breakdown that gives this soybean paste its foot odor-like fragrance.

Fermented skate: Its hellish aroma is caused by uric acid-soaked flesh that has been left out in room temperature for days.

Durian: The spiky shell should be warning enough. When cracked open, the fleshy, creamy interior emits a scent not unlike gasoline or rotten onions.

Source: KoreAm Journal

Image by Go 4 It, licensed under Creative Commons.

America has been a nation of sports nuts for even longer than you might imagine—a thousand years, in fact. In “America’s First Pastime,” Archaeology magazine (Sept.-Oct. 2009) writes about the early Native American game of chunkey, which involved throwing spears or sticks at a rolling, hockey-puck-size stone disk. The game was an important tradition in the culture that sprang up around the great prehistoric city called Cahokia, which existed near where St. Louis, Missouri, now lies. And apparently it was much more than just a game, being used to win converts, settle scores, and spread culture:

The people of Cahokia practiced human sacrifice, incorporated obelisk-like timber posts into their worship, told stories of superhuman men and women, used Mesoamerican-style flint daggers, and understood the cosmos in ways similar to Mesoamerican notions. They then spread this new way of life, which included intensified maize agriculture, across the Midwest and into the South and Plains with a religious fervor. Archaeologists refer to the culture as Mississippian, after the river that flows by many of its known sites.

One of the primary vehicles for the growth of this new civilization may have been Cahokian envoys who carried chunkey stones in one hand and war clubs in the other as they ventured into the hinterlands with the purpose of making peace or political alliances. These emissaries seem to have established and enforced a region-wide peace of sorts, a veritable Pax Cahokiana, an important element of which may have been the game of chunkey.

The article describes the biggest chunkey contests as great spectacles taking place on large town plazas with a 30- or 40-foot-tall obelisk or wooden post in the center on a raised mound. And if you think things get crazy when Manchester plays Liverpool or the Packers play the Vikings, consider that other nearby posts were used to exhibit enemy scalps, skulls, and recently captured foes who would soon be killed. “Not only was chunkey an important event,” the magazine writes, “but there were other possible associations, direct or indirect, with warfare and enemy executions.” Suddenly, burning a Brett Favre effigy seems almost tame by comparison.

The story of Cahokia itself, with its cultural undercurrents of brutality and power, is an incredible tale in its own right. The author of the Archaeology story, Timothy Pauketat, writes more extensively about it in his book, Cahokia: Ancient America’s Great City on the Mississippi, which is the subject of a recent Salon article, “Sacrificial Virgins on the Mississippi.” “Some of Pauketat’s ideas,” writes Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir, “are both speculative and controversial”—but with characters like “He-who-wears-human-heads-as-earrings,” they certainly are fascinating.

Source: Archaeology (abstract only online), Chippewa Valley Newspapers, Salon

Image by TimVickers, licensed under Creative Commons.

For today’s coffee connoisseur steeped in the finer points of French presses and Italian espresso machines, the latest trend in coffeemaking may seem a bit déclassé: drip brewing. That’s right, the brewing method that our moms used is back, but this time it’s not Folgers in a Mr. Coffee machine: It’s of course being presented as an artisanal experience.

The August 12 Chicago Reader profiles the Asado Coffee Company, where proprietor Kevin Ashtari serves up manual-drip coffee. He roasts his own beans in-house and then practices his patient craft:

For each order of drip, he grinds half a cup of beans somewhere between fine and coarse. He then wets an unbleached, conical Melitta filter, to wash away any potential paper taste that could pollute the coffee. He inserts the filter into a porcelain dripper, set on a rack above a cup, then pours in the coffee and a dollop of hot water, just under the boiling point. Grounds bloom up in the filter and he stirs, slowly adding more water, still stirring and scraping the grounds down from the side of the filter. In about two minutes he’s made a bright, full-bodied, perfect cup of coffee, without a trace of bitterness. … Manual drip is probably most primitive and inconvenient way to make a cup of coffee, but because it allows absolute control over water temperature, proportion, and extraction, in the right hands, it can be dangerously good.

Ashtari become a drip-brew disciple after a 2005 visit to the San Francisco’s Blue Bottle Coffee Company, where baristas served up a cup of drip coffee whose body and clarity blew him away. But don’t expect the trend to spread to every java hut in the land: The Reader points out that Ashtari gets only about seven cups of coffee out of each pound of beans. Despite charging “two bucks a pop” for 12 ounces, “the only reason he makes any money is that he’s roasting his own.”

Retailers are already catering to newly reconverted drip brewers. Bee House sells Japanese-made porcelain coffee drippers, and the “liquid culture” magazine Imbibe writes in its September-October issue about the “coffee sock pot” that will make you a great cup of drip coffee—or should I say “maintain greater control over your coffee extraction”?

Sources: Chicago Reader, Imbibe (article not available online)

Image by biskuit, licensed under Creative Commons.

Last weekend, my two young sons and I attached twin booster rockets to their Burley bike trailer and shot like a comet through the streets of Minneapolis. Actually, the rockets were tomato cages encased in wrapping paper, with red streamers serving as flames. And when I say “shot” I mean we traveled at 2 to 3 miles per hour. We were part of the bike parade in the Tour de Fat, a traveling bike festival with a carnivalesque atmosphere sponsored by the New Belgium Brewing Company.

We had the only twin booster rockets in the parade, but we weren’t the silliest bikers by any stretch. There were cowboys, Vikings, a green bumblebee, an Elvis, and men in dresses. Propellers whirled atop beanies, crazy wigs struggled to stay on heads, at least one toga got caught in rear brakes, and a sound system in a bike trailer pumped out cheesy hits from the ’80s. A good half of the riders had taken to heart the suggestion to “come as a participant, not a spectator” in this “costumed celebration of human-powered transportation.” We looked ridiculous, and we had a blast.

It was a refreshing change from past mega-bike rides I’ve been in, notably the now-infamous Critical Mass, which I sampled more than a decade ago. In the Tour de Fat there were no hyper-aggressive “corkers” blocking traffic at intersections and holding their bikes in the air like triumphant WWF champions. It didn’t feel like a hipster clique, even though there were plenty of trendy bike fashions on parade. Bikers of all ages, sizes, and abilities were welcome. And it didn’t matter what kind of bike you were on, as long as it had pedals. For once I didn’t feel as if the twitchy, track-standing dudes on meticulously color-coordinated fixies were looking down their noses at my ancient Trek mountain bike repurposed as a commuter ride. (I’ve been riding since you were in training pants, punks.) Again, the atmosphere was written right into the guidelines: “Honor all other bikes: All bikes are good bikes, and all those who ride them are good people.”

As we circled Minneapolis’ Lake of the Isles, it was amusing to see bystanders’ reactions to this rolling mass of weirdness. Most of them couldn’t resist a smile, and even the lines of drivers roadblocked to let the parade pass seemed less hostile than drivers held up by Critical Mass—though I admit I saw one unmoved SUV driver wearing that unmistakable “I hate bikers and all they represent” scowl. Looping back to the Tour de Fat venue, we engaged in more silliness: neo-vaudeville stage shows, a ring full of crazy bikes for people to ride, afternoon beer drinking, a funeral for a car (which had been given up by the lucky winner of a deluxe bike).

It struck me that perhaps this was a better approach to promoting bike power than the in-your-face confrontation of Critical Mass. By dressing in crazy costumes, encouraging diversity, and discouraging testosterone-charged grandstanding, we disarmed our potential foes and robbed them of any good reasons to tell us to get back on the sidewalks or, worse, back in our cars. Because, as more than one T-shirt proclaimed, Cars R Coffins. Long live bikes!

Sources: New Belgium, Critical Mass, Cars R Coffins

Image by dustinj, licensed under Creative Commons.

Twitter will not single-handedly save journalism. It’s also not silly and dumb. “The single greatest export on the internet—greater, even, than information—is hyperbole,” Paul Constant writes for the Stranger, and the reactions to Twitter have dolled out hyperbole with gusto. Constant, a former Utne Reader contributor, dissects the Twitter phenomenon, the backlash, and the backlash to the backlash, in messages of fewer than 140 characters. He also includes some great insights into internet culture. Here are some excerpts: 

A great deal of time on the internet is spent finding different ways to say, "Oh, you didn't know that already? Huh. I've known for ages." 

Here's another truth: Nobody has any clue what's going on. That's why sneering at Twitter is worse than blindly loving Twitter.  

Historically, very little has been accomplished by being cynical (maybe some broken hearts have been prevented, but at what cost?).

Source: The Stranger 

On San Francisco’s Haight Street, “the Wal-Mart of bongs” is squeezing out good old-fashioned mom-and-pop head shops, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The city has responded to this double-pronged hippie-capitalist threat by enacting a three-year ban on new head shops in the Haight Ashbury district.

The paraphernalia behemoth in question is Goodfellas, which is described as an “uber-giant bong shop” by Joey Cain, president of the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council. Cain says Goodfellas, with shelves of bongs that stretch from the floor to the rafters, is “what set everyone off.” Chronicle columnist C.W. Nevius tallies the damage and the paradoxes at work here:

There isn’t any question that the bulk bong folks are hurting business for the old timers. Distractions has a for-sale sign over the door—“legendary head shop for sale”—and other stores admit to feeling the pressure. …However, the irony of head shops campaigning for regulation of head shops isn't lost of some of the residents.

Praveen Madan, co-owner of the Booksmith store on Haight, asks, “Do you really want the government to step in and decide which is a good business and which is bad?”

Source: SFGate

Image by Stallio, licensed under Creative Commons.

Fireworks: Who could hate them? Plenty of people, it turns out:

Chris Conway hates fireworks for their “toxic consequences to our personal and environmental health.”

Troy Patterson at Slate hates fireworks for their “pomposity, aggression, triumphalism, and hubris.”

The U.K. campaign Ban the Bang hates fireworks because “all kinds of wild and domestic animals, but also children, the elderly and those of a nervous disposition can be seriously affected by modern, excessive fireworks.”

And finally, the blogger TexasLiberal hates fireworks because they’re dangerous, there’s a drought in his area (Houston), and you ought to be reading a book instead.

Or making fireworks out of yarn.

Happy Fourth of July. Kaboom!

Sources: Toxic Fireworks, Slate, Ban the Bang, TexasLiberal, Craft

Image courtesy of Chris Conway.

Alt Wire is a morning digest of links and information collected and explained by a different guest blogger every weekday. Today's guest is Phil Yu of Angry Asian Man. We asked him for five links and here's what happened:

Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives: An extensive, comprehensive online collection preserving the photographs, letters, art and oral histories of the Japanese American internment experience.  Fascinating, beautiful, and sometimes haunting, it's an invaluable resource for the kind of American stories I never got to read about in my high school history textbook.

A Song For Ourselves: DJ Phatrick's companion mixtape to Tad Nakamura's short documentary 'A Song For Ourselves.' The film is a tribute to the life and legacy of revolutionary folk singer Chris Iijima, an early titan in the Asian American activist movement.  Blending Iijima's songs with the music of conscious hip hop statesmen Blue Scholars and Native Guns, the mixtape drops a serious soundtrack for a new generation of APA activists.

I Know Where Bruce Lee Lives: I can't really explain this, except that this "Ultraineractive KungFu Remixer" takes my favorite cinematic icon and lets you mash up music, sound effects and flashy graphics to make your own little visual/aural Bruce Lee symphony.  I came across it years ago, and it still provides ridiculous loads of fun.

Disgrasian:Jen Wang and Diana Nguyen are the smart and sassy ladies behind this ingenious, hilarious spin on the Asian American issues blog.  Taking on politics, pop culture and current events with thoughtful wit and a healthy dose of snark, they often say the things I can never quite muster up the courage to say myself. And they're damn funny.

Secret Identities: The first ever Asian American superhero comic book anthology, due out this month from The New Press.  Co-editors Keith Chow, Jerry Ma, Parry Shen and Jeff Yang have assembled stories from an impressive array of the comic book industry's Asian American talent. These are the superhero stories I always wanted to read as a kid.  Instead, I was stuck with the stereotypical Samurai from the old "Superfriends" cartoon.

Previous Alt Wire Guests: Matt Novak,  Jason Marsh, David LaBounty, Jen Angel, Will Braun, Regan Hofmann, Josh Breitbart, Andrew Lam,  Jessica Valenti, Jessica Hoffmann, Noah Scalin, Rinku Sen, Paddy Johnson, Melissa Mcewan,  Fatemeh Fakhraie , Joe Biel, Anne Elizabeth Moore 

Mountaintop removal coal mining isn’t just destroying Appalachia’s landscape. It’s also also fracturing the region’s culture, including its traditional music. The "faith, politics, culture" magazine Sojourners reports on the Cowan Creek Mountain Music School in eastern Kentucky, which trains youngsters to play—and be proud of—the old-time music that has been losing its foothold in the hollers.

“East Kentucky is a very poor area, and it gets the short end of the stick in a lot of ways,” school founder Beverly May tells Sojourners. “There are terrible problems of environmental devastation and economic devastation from the strip-mining of coal. The kids see all this, and they know where they stand in the American scene. They’re hillbillies. The Cowan Creek School counters that. It says you have a heritage that is honored all over the world and is one of the main sources of all American popular music. Saving this music is a part of saving this regional community.”

Banjo player Randy Wilson, who teaches at the school, tells Sojourners that coal mining is still a touchy subject in the area: “We got some flak last summer because so many of our music school teachers publicly voiced opposition to strip-mining and mountaintop removal. Some people said we needed to be aware that many of the local people at our events also work for a coal company. It is a shame that we have to pit jobs against honoring our heritage, but that is how it is here in Appalachia.”

This internal conflict is also the thread running through the forthcoming book Something’s Rising: Appalachians Fighting Mountaintop Removal, which will be published in April by the University Press of Kentucky. The authors, Silas House and Jason Howard, both grew up in families with coal-mining backgrounds, and in the introduction they describe the pressure exerted on those who dare to speak out: “Many Appalachians find it difficult to oppose this practice because of the coal industry’s long history of convincing people that to protest any form of mining is to oppose an industry that has long been a major supplier of jobs within the region.”

The book goes on to both puncture that argument—mountaintop removal actually doesn’t provide many local jobs—and give voice to 12 courageous local witnesses to the devastation, including many who also draw connections between coal and culture. One is 86-year-old songwriter Jean Ritchie, sometimes called the “mother of folk,” whose music was recorded by famed musicologist Alan Lomax. In a song that still rings true, she sings of “black waters run down through the land” and says, “The memories, they just push right down on me sometimes.”

Look for more coverage of the book at Utne.com closer to April.

Image courtesy of Cowan Creek Mountain Music School.

When we reflect on evil events of the past and present, it's natural for us to relegate the perpetrators into categories separate from ourselves. We often believe that something innate in these perpetrators’ personalities inclines them toward evil, something neither we nor anyone we know possesses. By placing these individuals outside ourselves, we do not have to think about whether we would be capable of despicable acts.

Photographs recently unearthed from historical obscurity perfectly encapsulate this inner struggle of capability. According to an essay in the latest issue of Culture (pdf available online), a publication of the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, an American soldier last year anonymously donated a photo album found in an empty German apartment to the Holocaust Memorial Museum. At first glance, the photos from the album appear to depict summer camp or a corporate retreat; the subjects are laughing, eating, and relaxing. They are on a retreat of sorts, but not from the daily grind of a corporate office. Instead, the smiling faces are decompressing from their duties as SS personnel at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

Writer Jennifer L. Geddes points specifically to Hannah Arendt’s notion of the “banality of evil” and thoughtlessness as a “moral failing of the highest order,” applying these concepts to those in the photos:

“We are given a chilling vision of this ‘strange interdependence of thoughtlessness and evil,’ of the ways in which these SS personnel refused to think about what they were doing, failed to be reflective about the evil in which they were thoroughly engaged, and were able to enjoy a good time together with bowls of fresh blueberries and accordion music, even as they took part in mass murder.”

Nothing about the people in the photos signifies an innate evilness. One can easily imagine themselves and their own friends lounging on a porch or laughing in the rain. With context, however, the photos assume an ominous, eerie sheen. Taken less than 20 miles from the killing center, during a time when Auschwitz was working over capacity, the photos show the “interdependence of thoughtlessness and evil” better than words could ever tell.

The film documentary Czech Dream, recently reviewed in Utne Reader, chronicled an audacious prank in which a fake superstore was created, working a bunch of shopaholic Czechs into an opening-day frenzy. Now a different bunch of Czech tricksters, the art collective Ztohoven, has seized the limelight by hacking into a public TV weather broadcast and inserting a mushroom cloud into a panoramic shot of the Krkonose mountains. Michael Kimmelman of the New York Times places both hoaxes into a long tradition of Czech “tomfoolery.”

—Keith Goetzman

In an insightful piece for the U.K.-based Prospect magazine, David Goldblatt laments professional sports’ absence from the high culture canon of Western society: art, theater, music, and literature. In an attempt to explain our collective confusion about where sports belong in the cultural hierarchy, Goldblatt describes sports as, among other things, “a religion without a god.” On a whim, I typed “Michael Jordan is god” into Google, and almost a half-million results came up. Keep in mind that Jordan reached the apex of his career more than a decade ago. If Google had existed in 1996, when he led the Chicago Bulls to an NBA-record 72 wins and a championship, I suspect the same search would have easily brought up a million hits. So in the arena of public opinion, at least, sports and professional athletes are a vital, perhaps even sacrosanct, part of our cultural identity.

Renowned musicians sing the national anthem at baseball games, followed by the traditional presidential first pitch of the season. Sports are the subject of award-winning novels and plays. Countless famous pieces of visual art feature athletes. Think of the iconic image of Muhammad Ali standing triumphantly over Sonny Liston. Maybe the idea of sports as being too “common” to truly be art is a uniquely European conceit, as Goldblatt suggests. Yet it seems—when flipping through a history book or strolling the halls of a museum—that this dichotomy of art about sports but never as sports is part of the way Americans view culture as well.

Goldblatt exhorts us to treat sports with “the same seriousness that is accorded to the performing arts.” Although this approach would certainly bring a breed of blue-blooded respectability to such tarnished organizations as the NFL, NBA, and MBL, in practice, it would ultimately damage the accessibility of the game. And as any sports fan will tell you, it’s the game that really matters.

—Morgan Winters

My, how time flies. It’s been 20 years since Dr. Dre first invited us to “witness the strength of street knowledge” on NWA’s seminal sophomore album Straight Outta Compton. The group’s raw appeal and trailblazing history has kept the album fresh, even two decades after it was first released. To honor the anniversary, and calling attention to the album’s recent re-release, Hannah Levin writes for Seattle Weekly about Dr. Dre, Eazy E, and Ice Cube’s wide-reaching impact. Levin waxes nostalgic about the first time she heard Straight Outta Compton on cassette tape, the group’s place in the musical canon, and what it says about American culture that an album about selling crack, abusing women, and dissing police still resonates so strongly today. 

—Morgan Winters