We could easily spend the rest of the year—and probably a fair chunk of 2010—blogging exclusively about Cold War nuclear testing. But since doing so would certainly lead to a mass exodus of readers, we’ll spare you the endless geek out. For now, content yourself with this short-yet-fascinating report (PDF) on the Nevada Test Site‘s […]
Tags:Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission·atomic testing·Hiroshima·Japan·Nevada·World War II
One of Microkhan’s most faithful correspondents wrote in yesterday regarding our recent Taiwanese landmines post. Our piece quoted from a report on Mozambique’s mine removal program, which suggested that dogs were doing much of the detection. But our reader, who obviously knows Mozambique better than the Average Joe, points out that giant pouched rats are […]
Tags:animals·Black Death·coal mining·landmines·Mozambique·rodents·weapons
These are somewhat dark days for sumo, with a celebrated trainer about to serve six years in prison for the bizarrely violent hazing death of one of his pupils. (It involved beer bottles, metal bats, and rubber hoses.) And the sport’s still reeling from a drug scandal, albeit one that would cause little outrage in […]
Tags:Harumafuji·Mongolia·sports·sumo
Jammin’ on the Now the Hell Will Start screenplay ’til quitting time, so we’re gonna leave you with an invaluable bit of barbarian wisdom. To be perfectly honest, we sorta find ourselves more in agreement with the nature-loving warrior who speaks first, and is promptly shouted down by the master. We’re just not that into […]
Tags:barbarians·movies·Oliver Stone
In our all-too-fleeting free time, we’ve been researching the development of Nigerian Pidgin (primarily so we can better understand the comedic stylings of Basketmouth). This exploration recently led us to another mash-up language: Solomon Islands Pijin, which shares some English influence but not much else with its Nigerian cousin. According to a leading Pijin scholar, […]
Tags:Beach-la-mar·language·Nigeria·pidgin·pijin·Solomon Islands
We were grateful to come across this tale not only due to its sordidness, but also because it answered a long-standing question we’ve had: What’s the going rate for a serving of moonshine nowadays?: A Duplin County couple is facing multiple charges after a shocking discovery at their home daycare business. Authorities confiscated a stash […]
Yesterday we came across an alarming factoid: Only 30 percent of our fellow Americans hold a passport. That strikes us as absurdly low, especially now that all travel to Mexico and Canada will require the precious document. And while one could argue that the expense of international travel is a factor in our exceptionally low […]
We know you’re sick of hearing this excuse, but we’re seriously slammed on the screenplay today; hoping to get a complete rough draft done by end-of-day Friday, so the weekend can be all about Microkhan Jr. So we’re gonna be lazy right this second and just post a great video of yore—the public-access-style promo for […]
Tags:East Flatbush Project·hip-hop·music·prisons·Sergio Leone
We’re a sucker for unintentionally wry headlines, so we were delighted to come across this gem last night: “Demining efforts to make Taiwan’s Kinmen island more tourist-friendly.” Why, yes, that seems quite logical—few tourists are fond of vacationing amidst landmines. Yet once we stopped chortling, we couldn’t help but become engrossed in Taiwan’s project. Kinmen […]
Tags:China·Depression v2.0·dogs·Kinmen·landmines·Mozambique·Taiwan·weapons
Two weeks ago, we posted about a pub kerfuffle in Ireland that appeared to stem from anti-Traveller prejudice (mixed in, perhaps, with some randy behavior by the Travellers themselves). We’ve since kept our eyes peeled for Traveller-related news, seeing as how we only scratched the surface of the community’s history and contemporary situation. The news, […]
Tags:boxing·Britain·crime·sports·Travellers
We’re suffering from a major, extremely ill-timed case of writer’s block today, and have thus been relegated to listening to the above song on repeat in order to reboot our creative powers. We’re actually far more familiar with the Ashe Bhosle version, which sounds a touch more ethereal to our amateur ears. But this’ll do […]
Tags:Ashe Bhosle·Bollywood·music
Those few of you who’ve perused our mission statement know that Microkhan’s a devoted fan of female billiards. Our favorite player has long been Vivian “The Texas Tornado” Villareal, in part because of the classy way she endured a weirdo kidnap drama. But we’ve recently considered switching our allegiance to South Korean upstart Yu Ram […]
Our semi-regular First Contact series continues with a look at the needlessly violent encounter between Captain James Cook and the Maori of New Zealand. Cook himself is our source, as he was a fastidious diarist during his travels around the world. And he recorded the strange events of October 9th, 1769 in great detail. Things […]
Tags:Captain James Cook·First Contact·Maori·maritime·Sydney Parkinson·tattoos
We always figured that the advent of cheap CGI effects would have a deleterious effect on living, breathing stuntmen. But we had no idea things were so rough in the Filipino film industry. The Manila Times sheds some depressing light: Stuntmen are not covered by life or health insurances, but merely hope for the assistance […]
That’s a wrap for the work week, as we look forward to a weekend full of goat roasting and screenplayin’. What might you have missed if your Microkhan-ing was sporadic these last few days? So much good stuff, dear reader, so much good stuff. We’re talking hilariously frivolous lawsuits against your humble narrators, the launch […]
Tags:hip-hop·housekeeping·music
For today’s installment of Bad Movie Friday, we’d like to shred a flick that must’ve seemed so great when William Friedkin pitched it: Cruising, a murder mystery that’s several degrees clumsier than the worst Encyclyopedia Brown shortie. Now we can see why this got made. The milieu (the gay leather-bar scene) was ultra-edgy at the […]
Tags:Al Pacino·Bad Movie Friday·cowboys·Cruising·movies·New York City
Several years ago, we read a revealing interview with Wilbert Rideau, former editor of the newspaper at Angola State Prison. He was asked whether harsher sentences, including the death penalty, would deter criminals. Rideau bluntly answered “no”—criminals never think they’re going to get caught. That’s in part because (as noted in the chart above) the […]
Tags:crime·Germany·Guatemala·Japan·Louisiana·prisons·statistics·Wilbert Rideau
Perhaps Randy “Macho Man” Savage didn’t have quite the acting career of some of his fellow ’80s wrestlers (see: “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, Sgt. Slaughter), but you can’t fault the man’s instinct for licensing only the hottest fashion. When we came across the jacket above, via the somewhat NSFW THEM THANGS, we knew we had no […]
A few years back, Bhutan rather famously announced that it would no longer be a slave to the concept of Gross Domestic Product. Instead, it would measure its progress in terms of Gross National Happiness, as measured by a regular survey of its citizens. (The exact methodology can be found here). This announcement attracted its […]
With less than two week to go ’til the screenplay’s due, the rest of the afternoon’s gonna be all about tweaking dialogue. But Microkhan will leave you with a special treat: Chubb Rock, a man whose girth is rivaled only by his underratedness. Apologies for the five second commercial at the beginning of the clip; […]
Tags:Chubb Rock·hip-hop·music
In the midst of researching a minor Batman villain named The Actuary—please, don’t ask why—we came across a rather curious contest held by the Society of Actuaries. In the spirit of stoking its members’ right brains, the Society annually puts out the call for fictional short stories that evoke the essence of actuarial science. This […]
Tags:Haruki Murakami·literature·Society of Actuaries·statistics
Like a zillion other toddlers, Microkhan Jr. loves him some Cheerios. And never more so when the circular cereal gives away toys—General Mills has recently been on a kick of offering a free Lego car in every box. For a fifteen-month-old obsessed with rolling objects, nothing could make that oat-y goodness any better. Yet Cheerios’ […]
Tags:Cheerios·Civil War·Confederacy·counterfeiting·food·Iowa·money
Allied troops in Afghanistan are celebrating a heroin bust reputed to be one of the biggest ever: Approximately 92 tons of street-ready horse, along with several tons more of “processing chemicals.” Given our nerdly inclinations, our first thought upon learning of this seizure was, “Why no details on those chemicals?” Because the unsung villain in […]
Tags:acetic anhydride·Afghanistan·chemistry·drugs·heroin·India
We’re in bunker mode on the screenplay for the day’s remainder, so no semi-deep thoughts this p.m. We’ll just leave you with the above snippet of the classic documentary 80 Blocks from Tiffany’s, an account of gang life in the Carter-era South Bronx. The social background is ceaselessly tragic, the clothing style mind-blowingly great. And […]
Tags:80 Blocks to Tiffany's·Bronx·fashion·movies·New York City
There’s a movement afoot in the Senate of the Philippines to designate arnis the national sport. From the text of Senate Bill 1424 (PDF): Arnis is a sport that is indigenous and uniquely Filipino. Among the many games in the country, it can be considered as one of our national cultural gems that completely originated […]
Today’s New York Times features a fascinating account of the Shinnecock Indians’ three-decade quest for federal recognition—a quest that should finally be resolved this year, at least according to an Interior Department promise. At stake is the tribe’s right to build a casino, as well as its potential to lay claim to large swaths of […]
As the great Jack Shafer has noted time and again, British-style obituaries are a zillion times more entertaining than ours. And that’s primarily because the Brits aren’t afraid of speaking ill of the dead when such treatment is warranted. Such is the case with The Economist‘s recent farewell to Prabhakaran, the Tamil Tigers’ slain leader. […]
Tags:obituaries·Prabhakaran·Sri Lanka·Tamil Tigers·The Economist
So at long last, we’ve come to the appointed hour: The Now the Hell Will Start paperback hits stores today, and can currently be had via Amazon for as little as a tenner. Not a bad deal in our humble (albeit biased) opinion, considering the nearly five years’ worth of mental toil contained within those […]
Tags:books·headhunting·Herman Perry·housekeeping·Now the Hell Will Start·NtHWS Extras Month·World War II
It’s not often that Microkhan has a personal stake in the day’s big news. But the curious case of Jonathan Lee Riches, a.k.a. Irving Picard, is a notable exception. Riches, a federal inmate doing a stint for wire fraud, has apparently passed the time by engaging in a most curious hobby: Filing as many frivolous […]
Tags:Bill Belichick·Jonathan Lee Riches·law·Martha Stewart·Wired
In devouring the weekend’s reports regarding North Korea’s latest atomic machinations, we were struck by the technological limits of the global monitoring system. Seismic readings indicate that something went down that Mother Nature didn’t intend, but such tremors can be caused by conventional explosions. (Yeah, that’s a lot of TNT, but it can be done.) […]
Tags:CTBTO·earthquakes·North Korea·radionuclides·technology·weapons·xenon
