Dreaming of a remote island where you can really get away from it all? So far away that you may never (be able to) come back? This week, we’ll take you on brief tours of five prime vacation non-destinations. Before starting, you might want to fire up Google Earth, just so you’ll know to get back home.

The Commander Islands

If you center your Google Earth screen at 54 degrees, 59 minutes north and 166 degrees, 17 minutes east, you’ll look down on Bering Island in the Commander archipelago off Kamchatka Peninsula. Although part of Russia, the Commander Islands are geologically an extension of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. The gap between the Commanders and the rest of the Aleutians is such, however, that the Aleuts, the indigenous marine hunters of the north Pacific, never made it the islands – nor did anyone else until the 1700s. As a result, this little archipelago formed the last redoubt of Steller’s Sea Cow, a three ton, 25-foot long, kelp-grazing relative of the manatee. By 1768, 27 years after the islands’ discovery by Vitus Bering, these floating blubber balls had been driven into extinctions by rapacious sailors, fur traders and seal hunters.
Times have changed, and now most of the region lies within the Komandorsky Nature Reserve, noted for its vast populations of sea birds and marine mammals (several of Steller’s other creatures – such as his sea lion, sea eagle, and eider – are still there in numbers). The 750 residents of the islands are concentrated in the single settlement of Nikolskoye, which looks none too inviting. Zoom in, setting your pointer at 55 11’42 N and 156 59’38 east, and take at look at this “village’s” forlorn setting and industrial-style buildings.

Not a single tree grows in Nikolskoye, or the rest of the archipelago, for that matter. “Bleak” is an apt descriptor. But then so too is “interesting.” Check out, for example, the odd, linear feature on Bering Island’s northern tip (55 21’47 N; 156 58’02 east). Know what it is? If so, please enlighten the rest of us!

UP NEXT: The Commander Islands (and why you don’t want to go there) And if you missed yesterday’s post on the Andaman Islands, click here.

Guest Blogstar Martin W. Lewis is lecturer in international history and director of the program in International Relations at Stanford University. He’s also one of Mangesh’s favorite professors!

Dreaming of a remote island where you can really get away from it all? So far away that you may never (be able to) come back? This week, we’ll take you on brief tours of five prime vacation non-destinations. Before starting, you might want to fire up Google Earth, just so you’ll know to get back home.

North Sentinel Island

North Sentinel Island, Andaman Archipelago, India. For Google Earth explorers, start out at about 5000 kilometers and center your screen at 11° 33’N, 92° 14’ E. Gazing down at the Bay of Bengal between India and Southeast Asia, you’ll see the Andaman Islands, an Indian territory not far from some of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. For thousands of years, however, mariners studiously avoided this archipelago, noted for the isolation and inhospitality of its inhabitants (their rule of thumb was to kill all interlopers). In the mid-1800s, however Britain (wouldn’t you know it?) subdued the large islands in the chain, mostly to build a massive prison for its recalcitrant Indian subjects. With outsiders came disease, leading to the gradually disappearance of most Andamanese hunter-gatherer tribes.

One island, however, escaped the fate of its neighbors: North Sentinel. Google Earthers should zoom down to about 10 kilometers, where the island fills the screen. Nothing is visible except trees and coral reefs. But the lack of human indicators is misleading. North Sentinel Island is inhabited, but by how may people is anyone’s guess. We know next to nothing about their language or culture. In the late 20th century, a few Indian anthropologists tried to make contact, but failed.

more after the jump…

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Before this week, I would have told you that the Iowa State Fair is arguably the best State Fair in the U.S. After visiting the State Fair of Texas this week, I will tell you that the Iowa State Fair is definitely the best in the U.S. Because I grew up going to the fair, I am more than familiar with delicacies such as the Hot Beef Sundae, Meatballs on a Stick, and, my personal favorite, the Pickle Dawg. However loyal I am to the Iowa State Fair, though, I have to admit that the Texas fair has us beat in one area: variety of fried foods. Purely for research purposes, I made it my mission to sample as many strange foods as I could possibly get my hands on. Check out my in depth and very scientific analysis below.

1. Fried Coke

As in Coca-Cola. I had heard of this before but couldn’t quite wrap my head around the concept. Turns out, it’s basically just discs of fried dough with Coke syrup and whipped cream on top. I was not impressed at all. My rating: 3/10.

2. Fried Cookie Dough

In a NASCAR box. This was delicious, but rather overwhelming. The inside of the fried cookie dough is exactly like biting into a really underbaked cookie – gooey, warm, heavenly. The problem is that they were the size of a small egg and it was just a bit much. Make them bite-sized and we’ll call it perfection. My rating: 7/10.

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Whether you believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone or think that John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 was the result of a huge government conspiracy, there’s no question that Dallas is the place where it all went down. Since that’s where I was last week, of course I had to check out the Grassy Knoll.

As a side note, when we were consulting the GPS system in our rental car, we weren’t totally sure how to look up the site of JFK’s assassination. We didn’t know it had taken place at Dealey Plaza and didn’t know what the name of the museum was (or, in fact, that there even was a museum). We jokingly wondered if it would be listed under “Grassy Knoll” in the GPS Yellow Pages. Guess what? It was.

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At this time, we’d like to introduce you to the other new member of this ensemble, InternStacy Conradt, who’s currently a graduate student at Iowa State University. Please give her a warm welcome. – Mangesh & Jason

I was driving to Sioux Falls, S.D. the other day and let me tell you, the drive from Des Moines to Sioux Falls is not particularly thrilling. It’s so dull, in fact, that I found myself consulting the atlas just for fun (disclaimer: I do not endorse the act of map reading while driving). I discovered one of those “places of interest” printed in red, fairly close to my destination: The Corn Palace. The Corn Palace?! How could I stay within an hour of a place called The Corn Palace and not check it out?
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Earlier this summer, my wife and I journeyed westward to California – San Diego, San Francisco and Napa Valley. On the last day of our trip, for two reasons, we required an alcohol-free activity. First, we were pretty wine-tasted out. And second, I had to drive our PT Cruiser convertible 67 miles back to rental car return.

We saw a sign pointing the way to Old Faithful. For about ten seconds, my hungover geography would have made Miss South Carolina cringe. Is Old Faithful really in California? Why wouldn’t anyone mention Napa Valley’s proximity to Yellowstone?

Wait, there are two Old Faithfuls?

There are indeed. Since we’d never seen a geyser and had eight hours to kill, we put down the top and (PT) cruised toward Calistoga. Here’s what we saw.

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I saw these great photos of Stephen Huneck’s Dog Chapel at TheCellar’s IOTD, and I had to share. The chapel is located in Vermont, and everyone and their dog’s been invited. From the official website:

I wanted to build a chapel, one that celebrated the spiritual bond we have with our dogs, and that would be open to dogs and people. People of any faith or belief. I built that chapel on Dog Mountain, our mountain-top farm in St. Johnsbury. I have styled it in the manner of a small village church built in Vermont around 1820. It is important to me that the chapel looks like it belongs with its setting of rolling mountains and pasture. The white steeple points up to the heavens, and on the top is a Lab with wings that turns in the wind and proclaims this place has a special affinity with dogs.

Link via TheCellar.

The Sun is reporting that a fully-reclined daredevil named Marek Turowsk has broken the Fastest Furniture Land Speed Record by kicking his couch into high gear. His pimped-out, high-performance sofa (fully furnished with a desk, plants, and a plate of cookies) crushed the previous record of 87 mph, that had held since 1998. For his speedy accomplishments, Turowsk will be featured in the 2008 Guinness Book of World Records, and will no doubt be talked about at water coolers from Ikea to Pier 1. Link via Boingboing.

Oh, God bless the Grenada Chocolate Company, makers of the world’s best organic dark chocolate (the Guardian agrees with me on this). I learned one particularly interesting factlet on the tour of the darling factory, which claims to be the world’s smallest — a fact so surprising that I almost hated to check it, lest it turn out to be untrue. But Yahoo backed it up:

Because of the ingredients, many people (including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration) don’t consider “white chocolate” to be chocolate at all. …

The highest quality chocolate comes from cocoa beans that are dried naturally in the sun for a week — shorter, artificial drying yields inferior chocolate. Next, the beans are roasted, and the shells are removed. Then the cocoa is ground, resulting in a thick liquid called chocolate liquor (it’s not alcoholic). This liquor is used to make unsweetened chocolate.

For other chocolaty purposes, the liquor is pressed to extract the fat, which is called cocoa butter. With the fat removed, the liquor becomes a powder that is blended with the cocoa butter and other ingredients to make different kinds of chocolate. Plain chocolate is made of cocoa powder, chocolate liquor, cocoa butter, and sugar. Milk chocolate, of course, has milk added. White chocolate is made of cocoa butter, milk, and sugar. …

Because white chocolate has no cocoa solids from the chocolate liquor, the FDA doesn’t classify it as chocolate. However, the organization is working with chocolate manufacturers to establish a standard definition for white chocolate. Until a standard is published, check labels and beware of “white chocolate” that contains vegetable fat instead of cocoa butter. The quality and taste are inferior.

I can guarantee you, however, that what the Grenada Chocolate Company makes is the exact opposite of inferior… (shovels chocolate bar into mouth…)

In Europe they have the Eurovision Song Contest; in Carriacou, there’s Parang, which features slightly less ridiculous outfits but has all sorts of other elements of competitive showmanship:

• The main objective of organizing the festival was to revive and keep alive the “house to house” serenading of string bands. At that time this indigenous aspect of our culture was slowing dying. …
• Carriacou Parang is filled with fun, humor and excitement. The lyrics in the songs are rather controversial at times, since they reflect on political events in the country, historical events and the social wrong doings that occur in people’s lives through out the year. The festival is held in the form of a competition, with organized parang groups from villages through out Carriacou & Petit Martinique and even Grenada all competing for cash prizes along with a challenge trophy.
  The groups are comprised of not more than eight (8) members and they are all dressed in colorful outfits to reflect the festive season. All of the instruments used for this occasion are percussion instruments, these include: base drum, iron, guitar, quarto, violin, marack (shack – shack), mandolin, saxophone, tambourine and any other percussion instrument that can make a melodious sound.

Sadly, we will be missing the sweet sounds of Parang this year – we’re a week early.