Check out BA contributor Tyler Stiem’s awesome essay on Liberia, “Goodbye, Babylon King”, in the current issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review.

Russians have for decades fashioned functional objects from such cast-off items as forks, plastic bottles and onion bags. Collector Vladimir Arkhipov sheds light on the artful labours collected in his archive of “post-material folklore”.

Got a notion for a business and need a foreign partner? Looking to out-source production to a country where the wages are cheap and the workers so compliant they’ll break into choreographed flag-waving teams? Consider North Korea.

The rise of the ‘Third World Preacher’ and how the increasingly global reach of African Pentecostalism is proving there are many ways of being modern.

A commonplace Hindi term, jugaad describes everyday acts of innovation. As artist Sanjeev Shankar tells it: “A guy with 10 rupees has a dream to own a tractor or a television. He’ll start thinking in a radically inventive manner to get it, and do so with whatever means or resources he has at hand.”

The UK has Susan Boyle, Brazil has Andressa Soares, AKA “The Watermelon Woman.” It’s just that singing isn’t the first thing that made her famous.

Havana’s most conspicuous foreign mission is the former Soviet (now Russian) embassy, which seems to glower rather direly back at anyone who dares to look at it. The obelisk erupting from its brutalist tower block does suggest a periscope from which those inside might be surveilling the city, but for those of us with an unhealthy fascination with totalitarian design the building is utterly compelling.

Now reading Herzog on Herzog. When asked whether he’s obsessed with chickens, filmmaker Werner answers yes, that for him “They are the most horrifying, cannibalistic and nightmarish creatures in the world.”

While in Ghana researching my article on African Pentecostalism now in The Walrus, I also spent time observing and interviewing people involved in African traditional spirit worship. In particular, I visited the Black and White Powers Shrine in Kumasi several times, and spoke with its founder and fetish priest, Nana Abas.

During my recent Brazil excursion to research the book I stopped in Salvador, without much of a specific agenda. I had long wanted to visit, mostly because the city and the surrounding state of Bahia, predominantly Afro-Brazilian, have had such a definitive influence on the country’s culture (from samba to candomblé and capoeira).