Even if Rutger Hauer had stopped making art before the turn of the millennium, he would still occupy a hallowed place in the Microkhan pantheon for his trailblazing work in Surviving the Game. Fortunately for us, the Dutch actor continued to hammer away at his craft in the early part of this century, including a […]
Tags:acting·animation·movies·Rutger Hauer·The Last Words of Dutch Schultz·William Burroughs
A mammoth gold mine on Papua New Guinea’s Lihir Island is currently shut down due to a compensation dispute. There is, of course, nothing unusual about that situation, for conflicts between foreign mining companies and local interest are par for the course in the resources-extraction game. What makes the Lihir protest notable, however, is the […]
Tags:anthropology·business·gorgor·Lihir Island·mining·Papua New Guinea
Our eternal gratitude to whoever posted the full text of What to Do When the Russians Come, one of great artifacts of Cold War literature. The book assumes that the Wolverines did not, in fact, fend off the Soviet invasion, and so us poor subjugated Americans are left to make the best of a dreadful […]
Tags:1980s·books·Cold War·Communism·Soviet Union·What to Do When the Russians Come
Plunging into the third and final draft of the book today. Please occupy yourselves by checking out this stupendous collection of secret-hideout illustrations from The Secret World of 007. The laboratory complex beneath Piz Gloria is a personal favorite, primarily for its impeccable collection of stolen art.
Tags:James Bond·movies·Piz Gloria
As I have previously explored, Bangladesh has some of the world’s most lethal roads. The nation’s motor vehicle-related fatality rate is about fifty times greater than in any Western country. As this piece makes clear, that sad fact is creating a massive drag on the Bangladeshi economy: According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), road […]
Tags:Bangladesh·cars·economics·traffic
One of the great joys of this whole Microkhan endeavor is reaching folks who might not otherwise have occasion to check out our work. And some of those good correspondents are not only interested observers, but also characters in the various yarns we unspool. Our recent post about the rise and fall of incarcerated pugilist […]
Tags:Bobby Lee Hunter·boxing·Howard Cossell·Olympics·sports·Tim Dement
A terrific little crime yarn out of southern Colorado, where an exterminator has been sentenced to 21 years in prison for burglary. That punishment may sound harsh, but Charles Edward Trogdon was no run-of-the-mill breaking-and-entering specialist. He allegedly spent three decades nicking precious items from the homes of clients, a vocation that allowed him to […]
In honor of Shark Week, I feel compelled to pick a killer-animal-on-the-loose flick for our second installment of Knockoffs. A year after Jaws set the standard for the genre, 28-year-old William Girdler made Grizzly, which rather shamelessly presented itself as a ursine-centric alterative to Steven Spielberg’s box-office hit. When one of your movie’s taglines is […]
In the midst of some maritime-related research, my mental record needle stopped upon reading this counterintuitive claim: Statistics indicate that lifeboats have cost more lives during training drills than they saved during actual rescue situations. The hook release system, which attaches the boats to the wire and winch that lowers them into the water, is […]
Made it back from Helsinki late last night, but too dazed today to be of much use to y’all. That’s largely because I did the noble thing on the flight back home: I yielded my aisle seat to a young Dutch woman who was keen to be next to her boyfriend. My reward was a […]
By the time you read these words, I’ll be exploring the streets of Finland’s capital. It’s a quick trip, as I don’t want to miss the birth of the heiress to the Grand Empress’s throne. But while I’m here, I will likely to be blotto on sahti to keep pace with Microkhan. See you upon […]
An in-depth perusal of the Sword Swallowing Hall of Fame led me to this gem of Victorian non-fiction—an anonymous first-person account of a life spent shoving dangerous objects down one’s gullet. Our storyteller’s most curious pursuit involves the ingestion of a reptile with which our species has a complicated relationship: I was the second one […]
Techno-pessimists have long argued that the democratization of media will not shame elites into better behavior, but will rather make them more cautious about conducting their dirty business behind well-secured doors. The Euthanex AgPro, which is marketed as “the ultimate humane CO2 solution” for the dispatching of pigs, provides one small data point in favor […]
Per the usual, the Olympic boxing tournament has been something of a farce, with scoring scandals predictably aplenty. Every four years, such controversy reminds me of the tale of Bobby Lee Hunter, a once-celebrated boxer I have been trying to locate for the better part of a decade. Hunter was a world-beating American flyweight who […]
Granted, I haven’t always been great about keeping up with Microkhan series dedicated to pop culture—both Bad Movie Friday and The Ponchos have fallen by the wayside over the years. But that isn’t going to stop me from launching a whole new series, one dedicated to craven acts of imitation which reveal the cynicism behind […]
Tags:Knockoffs·nuclear power·Supertrain·Three Mile Island·TV
If I so desired, I could probably make this blog all about firefighters-turned-arsonists and still have enough material to post at least once a week. The latest example comes from Opp, Alabama, where a firefighter allegedly set a mobile home ablaze for no discernible reason. The problem has been serious enough in years past for […]
I turned in the second draft of my book yesterday, an event that made me more anxious than glad. I realize now that I only have a few weeks left to sort out some lingering mysteries in the central plot, specifically those related to the main characters’ inner dramas. Without giving too much away, my […]
