We’re in the midst of watching The Nazis: A Warning from History, which really should be required viewing for anyone who casually throws around Hitler analogies when discussing contemporary politicians. It’s chilling stuff through-and-through, loaded with interviews with unrepentant party members and victims of persecution alike. The series essentially argues that the Third Reich was […]
Tags:Adolf Hitler·books·Germany·Mein Kampf·Nazism·politics·TV
We’re extremely curious to learn the backstory on why Louis Armando Peña Soltren decided to return to the U.S. from Cuba yesterday. He’d been hiding in Fidel Castro’s alleged proletarian paradise for over four decades, and now seems likely to spend the rest of his days in a federal penitentiary for orchestrating a 1968 skyjacking. […]
A quick Bad Movie Friday this week, as we’re absorbed in the game of narrative non-fiction writing (i.e. the gig that pays the bills ’round here). Let’s just say that we probably owe Krull another look; we saw it at a grade-school birthday party back when it came out, and probably didn’t yet have the […]
When folks ask us about out take on the health care mess, we always bring up the tale of our pal “Lancer.” (Names have been Robotech-ed to protect the potentially moritified.) A few years back, poor Lancer was playing a little pickup basketball when his ACL decided that it no longer enjoyed being a complete […]
We usually care little for news of prizes—we refuse to watch the Academy Awards, for example, and we’re always hard-pressed to name the regining National Hockey League MVP. But we can’t help but take note of this morning’s news regarding our president’s newly minted Nobel laureate status. Talk about a topic sure to stay on […]
Tags:Barack Obama·Carl von Ossietzky·Nobel Peace Prize·politics
We’re up to our eyeballs with the day job, though happy to report that last night’s moderate alcohol consumption helped us overcome a serious creative block. This afternoon’s all about moving the narrative forward and avoiding mixed metaphors; in our absence, please enjoy what is inarguably Stan Bush‘s finest work. Not safe for the squeamish, […]
The fact the map above is entirely green-and-white attests to the success of one of modern history’s great international projects: the FAO‘s Locust Watch. When the project started in 1979, the ravenous critters were a regular menace from Mali to eastern India, in large part because of a lack of information flow—countries were seldom aware […]
We’ve long believed that there’s far more wisdom scrawled on bathroom walls than is to be found in, say, the average self-help manual or Chick tract. And we know we’re certainly not alone in that contrarian assessment. But until this morning, we never realized that loo graffiti was also a subject of serious academic discourse […]
Tags:bathroom graffiti·Chick tracts·education·Humboldt State University
Writing up the Kenya piece through the lunch hour; hopefully back to Microkhan-ing in the mid-p.m. In the meantime, enjoy a little Syl Johnson—yet another soul nugget that the RZA feasted upon during the Wu-Tang Golden Age. This came on Radio Nova last night just as our stress level was beginning to peak; rarely has […]
Tags:music·Syl Johnson·Wu-Tang
Upon reading this morning’s news that the Feds have moved against the Pagan Motorcycle Club, we cracked via Twitter that two-wheeled outlaws would do well to choose less obviously evil names. It doesn’t take a genius to wonder whether the Pagans might be up to no good; might the cops be less likely to bat […]
Tags:Bikers for Christ·crime·Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs·Pagans·religion
While perusing this AFP piece about a poaching bust in the Central African Republic, we stopped and mumbled “hmmmmm” upon reading this hard-to-swallow stat: Experts say some 38,000 African elephants are killed each year for their tusks. Really? That seems like such a ridiculously high figure; at that clip, wouldn’t the species (or, to be […]
Tags:Africa·animals·Central African Republic·crime·elephants·ivory·wildlife management
A pal of ours is on jury duty this week, and reminded us of one of the great pleasures of the process (at least in New York): getting to view Enter the Jury Room on your first morning. Narrated by the late Ed Bradley, the short film is surprisingly witty and informative, especially for those […]
Tags:Burma·crime·Ed Bradley·Enter the Jury Room·law·Medieval history·movies·trial by ordeal
Aware of our fascination with the current wave of Bhutanese refugees alighting in the U.S., our favorite correspondent from the Nushagak Bay area alerted us to this great A/V feature from the Anchorage Daily News. Apparently a small group of the Lhotshampas have landed in the Land of the Midnight Sun, after a gobsmacking 17 […]
Tags:Alaska·Bhutan·Botswana·immigration·Minnesota·Nebraska·Nepal·Soviet Union
The NBA fans in the audience are surely aware that the Minnesota Timberwolves are about as hapless as they come nowadays—an even less promising squad than Microkhan’s beloved Los Angeles Clipppers, a team once declared “The Worst Franchise Ever” by Sports Illustrated. But the T’wolves’ woeful prospects haven’t affected the loyalty of a certain Nairobi […]
Tags:basketball·Kenya·Los Angeles Clippers·matatus·Minnesota Timberwolves·Nairobi·software
For those of us who worship at the altar of hops and malted barley, no trip to Kenya can be complete without sampling a bottle or twelve of Tusker, East African Breweries’ flagship beer. It’s by no means a great lager—when served cold, it reminded us of the thin-yet-refreshing Brazilian brew Antarctica. But Tusker gets […]
Tags:animal attacks·beer·elephants·George Hurst·Kenya·Tanzania·Tusker
After an interminable 27-plus hours in transit from Nairobi, punctuated by some dire experiences aboard Swiss Air, we finally made it back to Microkhan HQs late yesterday. Great to be back in sunny Atlah, though an enjoyable and productive time was had by all in Kenya. We’ll be posting plenty of East Africa-related material in […]
Tags:Africa·baboons·corruption·drought·Kenya·Mwai Kibaki·primates·traffic
This is the last post we scheduled before departing for Kenya last weekend—a Bad Movie Friday entry that rankles with its unrealistic depiction of vehicular combustion. Even the 1971 Ford Pinto wasn’t quite this fragile. Thanks to those of you stuck with us this week, despite knowing that a WordPress bot was at the posting […]
Tags:Bad Movie Friday·cars·housekeeping·movies·Silent Night Deadly Night 2
We can’t say we’re utterly convinced as to the verisimilitude of the Children’s Crusade. But there is, at the very least, a primary source. And it doesn’t mince words: About the time of Easter and Pentecost,without anyone having preached or called for it and prompted by I know not what spirit, many thousands of boys, […]
An absolutely haunting collection of photographs that document America’s push westward. The one above is by no means the most dramatic, but something about the facial expressions stuck with us. The caption simply reads: A noon meal in Ferdinand V. Hayden’s camp of the U.S. Geological Survey. Red Buttes, Wyo. Terr., August 24, 1870. Hayden […]
Tags:Ferdinand V. Hayden·geology·National Archives·surveying·U.S. history·Wyoming
Back in March, we brought you news of mankind’s triumph over the rodent denizens of Rat Island, Alaska. Now comes word that many thousands of miles to the south, a veritable Cat Island (aka Wake Atoll) has been similarly scourged of its furry invaders (PDF): At the end of the second week in July, we […]
Tags:animals·cats·rats·rodents·Wake Atoll·wildlife management
If all goes precisely according to plan, this post will publish at the exact moment our flight departs Zurich for Nairobi. But we scheduled some goodies to keep you tantalized in our absence. And we’ll also try to post an update or two from the road, assuming something noteworthy happens as we journey west from […]
Via Radio Nova. The soundtrack for the stacking of shirts. And if you’re a soul music fan, GStrongRaw’s entire channel is well worth a visit.
On our forthcoming trip to Africa, we certainly hope we don’t suffer Kathy Ireland’s fate and slip into an underground realm populated by refugees from an Olivia Newton-John video. But we reckon anything’s possible, so we’ll be sure to conceal our surface-world origins should foam columns give way. Believe it or not, we actually saw […]
We have to think there’s some sort of correlation between Pakistan’s persistent internal turmoil and its atrociously bad system of primary education. The nation may have one of the world’s top fifty economies, but its literacy rate officially languishes around the 50 percent mark. That makes Pakistan’s population less bookish than such poverty-stricken countries as […]
Though we recently vowed to avoid apologizing for light posting, we can’t help ourselves today. Sorry, just swamped with prepping for our East Africa trip—gotta pick up our doxycycline, along with a host of other odds and ends. For the moment, though, we’ll leave you with sonic stylings of the late Joe Higgs. And we’ll […]
So many statistical goodies to sift through in the latest report on American asylum cases (PDF). But by far our favorite oddity can be glimpsed in the chart above. What’s going on with the Bhutanese? Only three citizens of the isolated kingdom claimed asylum in the U.S. three years ago, and then none in 2007. […]
On a crushing Wired deadline right now, made all the worse by the fact we’re still trying to figure out our Africa logistics. (Anyone know the intercity bus situation in southern Kenya?) But no reason you should have to feel our stress—sit back and enjoy the classic cut above (which we’re pretty sure features a […]
Tags:Africa·hip-hop·housekeeping·music·Remo Fernandes·Tha Alkaholiks·travel
As we’ve given ever-deeper thought to our nation’s distressingly high infant morality rate, we’ve started to wonder how best to address the problem. Everything we’ve read in recent days seems to indicate that the rate could be dramatically lowered if more expectant mothers took better care of their bodies—specifically by quitting smoking, which pretty clearly […]
Tags:cigarettes·infant mortality·medicine·Nicorette·philosophy·public health
Via the invariably spectacular Ptak Science Books blog, a quick peek back at the brief heyday of airborne horses: “Sep 1850 English Aeronaut Gale on horseback suffocated Bordeaux”. Is this the first man-on-horseback-in-flight death? And death by suffocation? (?) I’m not so sure that the ascent records for 1850 would’ve made allowance for running out […]
As previously noted, we’re about to jet for East Africa for a spell. The trip will doubtless entails many hours of waiting around—the flights alone will keep us either aloft or in airports for a grand total of 44 hours. A dreary prospect, perhaps, but at least we’ll have the chance to catch up on […]
Tags:Africa·books·housekeeping
