I’m a sucker for a tale in which the American legal system is asked to rule on the legitimacy of a medical treatment. No matter how dubious a quack’s product, he or she can always scrounge up satisfied customers to attest to its power, as well as a few expert witnesses who will say almost […]
Tags:Dinshah Ghadiali·gadgets·law·medicine·pseudoscience·Spectro-Chrome
Just wanted to offer a quick bayarlalaa to y’all for sticking with this project over the past few weeks. Been hectic times here at Microkhan global headquarters, what with the book deadline looming and both the health-insurance and education systems conspiring to make the fam miserable. Better days ahead, for sure.
Tags:Ireland·Miami Showband·music
I’m a sucker for creative metrics, such as measuring a creature’s ferocity by how quickly it can skeletonize a cow. One of my favorites is the way in which a nation’s development is assessed by how rapidly it’s being colonized by Western franchises. Take Indonesia, which is revealed here to be “opening a new convenience […]
Tags:7-11·corruption·economics·food·Indonesia
Back to the book today, after receiving some tragic news about one of the lead characters. Make do with some classic Joan Jett from the heyday of West German television. Back tomorrow about Indonesia’s raucous business climate.
Tags:Joan Jett·music·West Germany
I’m a few pages from the end of Kevin Myers’ Watching the Door, the peak of which is an extended discussion of how The Troubles became economically advantageous for both sides. I particularly enjoyed this dissection of how Belfast’s various paramilitary organization profited off the mayhem they created: Glaziers—who, because they were associated with the […]
Tags:books·economics·Kevin Myers·Northern Ireland·The Troubles·Watching the Door
Far be it from me to shed a tear for a murderous scoundrel whose various scams increased the price of everything in my adopted hometown. But did John Gotti get a raw deal when the Catholic Church denied him a funeral mass? A scholar makes the case here (PDF), arguing that the Church broke its […]
Tough to believe I just recently stumbled upon this treasure trove of Roma-related information, which includes a bevy of rare photos and dozens of audio-enhanced oral histories. I came across the project while trying to get a better sense of what it’s like to endure aerial bombardment—more on that soon—but I ended up most absorbed […]
Was just about to post about Roma wedding rituals when a health-insurance catastrophe struck. Can’t believe how hard they’re screwing us right now—jetting into town to see if I can fix anything through bribery and/or high-volume yelling. Back soon.
Tags:insurance
Based on my formative experiences with BJ and the Bear reruns, I’ve long imagined the archetypal American trucker as a picture of health. But the men and women who brings goods to market are actually a pretty grizzled lot these days (PDF): The average age of a truck driver in the United States is over […]
I’m sorely tempted to launch a whole new Microkhan series about the late-career floundering of high achievers. I’m just fascinated by this concept of how the truly great cope with the inevitable diminishment of their skills, as well as the revelation that they really should have taken better care of their personal affairs while riding […]
My tremendous thanks to everyone who turned out for last night’s live performance in Soho, at which I hopefully did a passable job of explaining Yuriy Sedykh’s physical genius. There was one technical hiccup for which I must apologize, though—the video of Sergey Litvinov, the Soviet Union’s golden boy of the hammer throw, cut out […]
Tags:hammer throw·sports
Saddened to hear of the passing of John Christopher, creator of one of my formative sci-fi experiences: the harrowing Tripods Trilogy. As I discussed nearly two years ago, Christopher’s tale of alien overlords was far more than crackling adventure yarn; it also centered on a powerful metaphor for parenthood that I admire to this day. […]
Tags:books·comics·John Christopher·sci-fi·The Tripods Trilogy·writing
If you have access to the New York City subway system, please consider coming down to Housing Works Bookstore Cafe this evening to check out Microkhan in the flesh. I’ll be performing as part of the revamped Adult Education lecture series, waxing poetic about a certain Soviet hammer thrower who has gotten much attention ’round […]
Just slammed today, with both reporting for my Wired column and preparations for tomorrow’s performance in Soho. Leaving you with some classic Europop and some salient thoughts on creativity from the great Sean Price: HipHopCanada: What starts your creative process? Sean Price: The beat. The beat’ll tell me what to do. And sometimes I have […]
A big challenge I’ve faced with my book is the difficulty of grasping the rationales of truly eccentric characters. Even when I’ve been able to interview such folks, I rarely come away with a full understanding of why they made certain choices—their reasoning tends to be opaque, at least to a fairly normal bloke like […]
Tags:circuses·knife throwing·philosophy·psychology·The Next Book
Gonna spend this unusually warm Queens day tackling the book, having finally surfaced after a ten-day stretch of Wired work. I have roughly 648 hours before the first three-quarters of the first draft is due, so I’m feeling the heat. Enjoy a track culled from the latest installment of Fresh Produce, and see you back […]
The recent unpleasantness is Papua New Guinea provides a salient reminder that the global financial system, despite employing some very sharp minds, often acts on impulse. In response to the recent mutiny outside Port Moresby, Standard & Poor’s has slashed PNG’s credit rating. An S&P analyst explained the firms rational thusly: We have these ratings […]
I recently finished up Bill Buford’s Among the Thugs, which is an absolute beast of a book. Aside from that great apocalyptic party scene in Bury St. Edmunds, there’s a terrific set piece in which Buford gets pummeled by Italian riot cops. I love the way he recounts his thought process while being savaged with […]
One of the book-related research tangents I’ve become ensnared in is the early history of parachuting. As you might suspect, the development of this important life-saving technology produced more than a few martyrs to the cause, as well as some heroes with complicated backstories. One of my favorite examples from the latter category is Carroll […]
Getting thwacked by this Wired story I’m working on, which requires me to comprehend the nuances of both ribonucleic acid and artificial intelligence. Suffice to say, my brain’s full-up for the next twenty-four hours; see you back here shortly.
Tags:animation·M.A.S.K.·technology·TV·Wired
The loyalest of y’all may have noticed that I have a longstanding fascination with the legal system’s efforts to value the supposedly invaluable. Which is why I was struck by this recent tidbit out of the Solomon Islands: THE High Court has ordered the Solomon Islands Government and the Ministry of Fisheries to pay Marine […]
Tags:cetaceans·cows·dolphins·economics·intelligence·law·Solomon Islands
Given my attraction to tales about how folks cope with nasty twists of fate, I was bowled over to discover this rarest of Korean War artifacts: a program from the 1952 prisoner-of-war Olympics held at Pyoktong, North Korea. In addition to containing numerous photos of the sports contested—such as tug of war, football, and bizarre […]
Though Europeans are generally drinking a great deal less these days, the Scottish are bucking the trend. Per the chart above, alcohol consumption has been steadily rising in the land north of the border established by the Treaty of York. The question that no one seems able to answer with any degree of certainty is […]
Taking a day to plow through edits on Chapters Three and Four of the forthcoming book. Need to have the first 50,000 or so words to my editor by February 27th, so I’ll be ducking out on occasion to enter the hardcore writing bubble. Back tomorrow with a post about the dispiriting trend in Scottish […]
By now you may have heard of the landmark federal conviction of Alfred Anaya, who played a key role in a drug trafficking ring that moved product from Mexico to the Midwest. What makes Anaya’s downfall so interesting is that fact that, by the government’s own admission, he never touched any drugs himself; his role […]
Tags:Alfred Anaya·cars·crime·drugs·engineering·smuggling·technology
I’m a few pages from the end of Bill Buford’s Among the Thugs, a study of Thatcher-era football hooliganism that doubles as a meditation on crowd dynamics. It’s perhaps best known for its opening set-piece, in which the author tags along with a bunch of Manchester United supporters on a depraved trip to Turin. But […]
Tags:Among the Thugs·Bill Buford·books·psychology·racism·soccer·sports·writing
A moved-up book deadline has me scrambling over these next few days, so I’m just gonna ease you into the holiday weekend with some Uzbek pop. I don’t understand a word, of course, but my hunch is the ladies of Shahrizoda are preaching against the evils of materialism. The highlight is around the 1:08 mark, […]
Tags:music·Shahrizoda·Uzbekistan
It’s a little hard for Americans to wrap their heads around alcoholism’s social toll in places like Mongolia, where the perpetually inebriated constitute a significant percentage of the potential workforce (and also commit the majority of crimes). So it will be interesting to see whether the government’s lead-by-example campaign makes any sort of impact on […]
This memoir by the former bassist for Barbara Allen and the Tennessee Hot Pants includes a great vignette about playing Greenland’s Thule Air Force Base, where young men once scanned the skies for incoming Soviet ICBMs. Deprived of female companionship for months at a time, and surrounded by little but shiny white nothingness for most […]
Tags:Barbara Allen and the Tennessee Hot Pants·gender·Greenland·music
One should perhaps never be surprised by the nature of political discourse in a country where the Simon and Garfunkel song “Cecilia” was once banned. Yet there is still something rather jarring about a leader who willfully disparages his own populace, as Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika did last week: Mutharika challenged Malawians to appreciate […]
