… and I have a few links — all from the New York Times — burning a hole in my inbox pocket. So before I leave you to your weekend adventuring, here they are:

This is science fiction come to life. Since I was a little kid frustrated by having to put my ideas into words, I have yearned for a tool that could read my mind and transfer my pre-verbalized thoughts into another person’s brain, and vice versa. I never, ever thought it was actually possible. Well, this comes pretty close:

Meanwhile, this is the story of the last three years of my life, and perhaps it resonates with your life story as well?:

I’ve been thinking a lot about “fair trade tourism” recently, and I intend to write about it here as soon as I have time to compose my wide-ranging thoughts in a somewhat organized manner. In the meantime, I found this article on ethical travel thought-provoking — especially how narrowly they defined the term for the purposes of the article.

When I read the article below, it sounded highly familiar. I searched my blog and lo and behold, four years ago, in a blog post with an almost identical title to this one, I linked to an earlier New York Times article about this same exact subject. It remains fascinating.