Many moons ago, one of my good friend’s older brothers spent a summer on an Alaskan fishing boat. He returned with a pocketful of money and some truly harrowing tales of the seafaring life, which included a comrade abandoned off the Aleutian Islands and much drunken thuggery. The anecdote of his that I remember most […]
Tags:England·maritime·psychology·suicide
Along with the transmission methods for mass psychological illness, one of the main themes I’ll be exploring in my next book is how traumatized Vietnam veterans coped with their homecomings. As such, I’ve been digging into the history of post-traumatic stress disorder, particularly the ways in which the condition was glossed over by the medical […]
Tags:art·Bougainville·Kerr Erby·psychology·PTSD·World War II
British Prime Minister David Cameron can take some small measure of solace in the fact that his government is the only one in Europe to be vexed by violent protestors. His French counterparts are suffering through similar civil unrest, though with an asterisk: the nation’s pocket of trouble is located several thousand miles away from […]
I’m rarely impressed by the talent portions of beauty pageants. Yes, I realize that baton twirling went out with leaded gasoline, but the mediocre singing and dancing that are now commonplace in such contests have done nothing to convince me that budding artists eschew the pageant circuit. But just when I’m nearly secure in my […]
Tags:Alaska·beauty pageants·Marjorie Tahbone·Native Americans·sports·World Eskimo-Indian Olympics
One step forward, two steps back with the book project, alas—try as I might, can’t quite seem to make the first-chapter transition from my opening scene to the requisite view-from-30,000-feet riff. Dedicating all of today to hammering my way through the wall, no matter how many thousands of useless words have to get deleted in […]
Tags:Ike & Tina Turner·Ikettes·music·R&B
Back in 2009, I meditated upon the question of whether or not wartime propaganda leaflets are actually effective at weakening an enemy’s resolve or ability to flight. The main takeaway was that design really mattered, as only certain kinds of leaflets—those with clear messages that eschewed graphic imagery—made a real impact on recipients. Ever since […]
Just got back from a morning spent shooting a Canadian documentary about pharmaceutical marketing. I’m one the film’s talking heads, on account of a 2002 piece I did for Mother Jones about the marketing of Paxil. Strange to discuss a story that I hadn’t given a second thought in nearly a decade, but hopefully I […]
Inspired by a post delectably entitled “A Short History of Weaponised Umbrellas,” I decided to delve into the existing literature on the topic. What I found was a prime example of early 20th-century prose, notable for ornate turns-of-phrase that are sorely lacking in today’s self-defense manuals. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the intelligent-yet-florid glory […]
King George Tupou V of Tonga is a man accustomed to getting what he wants, regardless of his desire’s impact on his people or his ability to govern. So it is somewhat heartening to learn that the monocle-wearing monarch was recently pressured into dropping plans to add another seven-figure sum to his already burgeoning coffers: […]
Tags:corruption·King George Tupou V·monarchy·New Zealand·Tonga
Coming off a hugely frustrating weekend of writing, in which I ended up deleting hundreds upon hundreds of words that seemed cold and lifeless upon the screen. After much thought and a few of these, I figured out a big part of my problem: In an effort to make the story more vivid, I was […]
Tags:books·crime·drugs·Killing Pablo·Mark Bowden·Pablo Escobar·writing
One of the most interesting aspects of researching my slot-machines yarn for Wired was the whole extradition angle. In fact, I’d daresay that’s what attracted me to the story in the first place—the fact that the United States government deemed the crime grave enough to go an fetch someone from Latvia, a country that had […]
Tags:Britain·chemistry·drugs·extradition·law·methamphetamine·Scotland
Though I can’t quite claim to have solved the mystery of The Human Fly’s identity and current whereabouts, which I wrote about a month ago, I’m happy to report that Microkhan has at least uncovered another thread to the tale. Canadian film director Steve Goldmann popped by the blog to point us toward his documentary […]
As I believe I’ve mentioned in this space before, the best teacher I ever had was a rotund, sweaty Jesuit who presided over my 10th-grade history class. Among his many wise lessons was one that invoked Napoleon’s rise to power as a case study. He argued quite convincingly that the French Consulate was designed with […]
Tags:corruption·Kenya·Napoleon·politics
Sweltering weather here in the County of Queens, but can’t let it make a bother—gotta pass through what John McPhee termed “the membrane” and get to thinking only about writing. So signing off ’til early next week—might not circle back to y’all ’til Tuesday, when I’ll return with tales of Kenyan anti-corruption efforts, anti-psychic laws […]
Tags:Mary McCreary·music·reggae
As I try and focus on the painful act of book-writing, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the unwritten rules of non-fiction‐or, rather, the fact that those rules seem to vary by creator. While I spend time agonizing over which version of a remembered quote to use, other writers seem to have no […]
Though Microkhan can’t claim to be the most journalistically rigorous blog on The Tubes, we do strive for a certain amount of fairness. And so we feel compelled to publish a response to last week’s post regarding the Tall J Foundation, they mysterious American mining concern that recently drew the ire of Bougainville’s president. He […]
After a gestation period that lasted nearly a year, my latest Wired story is finally out. It’s a tough one to summarize, but the tale centers on a Cuban-Latvian engineer who figured out a way to replicate the slot machines manufactured by International Game Technology (IGT), the S&P 500 company that has long dominated the […]
Searching for motivation to once again get cracking on my book for an eight-hour stretch, I stumbled across this excellent trove of East German labor propaganda. These particular images were produced at the tail end of Communist Era, and they reflect the nation’s struggles to keep pace with the West. There are plenty of mentions […]
I was all set to write a thoughtful post about the declining fortunes of cemetery towns, but looks like there just isn’t going to be enough time today. I’m already running late for Microkhan Jr.’s first violin recital, at which he will allegedly do a solo in “Three Blind Mice.” The morning’s more exciting musical […]
Tags:cows·Papua New Guinea
Moving from Atlah to Queens has been an arduous process, but the act of sifting through one’s detritus has not been without its small pleasures. I’ve had occasion to stumble upon various old magazines that I kept around for one reason or another, and flipping through their pages has often reminded me of why I […]
Tags:Haruki Murakami·magazines·Stephen King·The Paris Review·writing
The crime rate in Bermuda is not particularly high, but I’m still surprised the island nation’s police force had time to solve a five-year-old cold case that was far from dastardly: the theft of $70 worth of meat from a home. The perpetrator of this not-so-sinister act was finally nabbed last month, after Bermudan cops […]
Tags:Bermuda·crime·food·meat·meatlifting
One of the issues I’ll be exploring in my next book is the notion of psychological epidemics. How do certain behaviors go viral, and how do the arcs of such epidemics mirror those of their physiological counterparts? To this point, a lot of my research has focused on incidents of mass hysteria, which are endlessly […]
Tags:Bangladesh·mass hysteria·Nicholas A. Christakis·psychology·social networks·The Next Book
So pretty momentous day here ’round Microkhan’s new-ish Queens headquarters: after many weeks of inventing excuses to procrastinate, I’m finally starting to write my next book. It’s due in April, so I reckon I have just enough time to craft the tale and fill in the remaining research gaps. But right now the endeavor seems […]
Tags:C.L. Smooth·hip-hop·Jennifer Lopez·music·Pete Rock·The Next Book·writing
When last we checked in on Bougainville’s Panguna copper mine, there was considerable talk of reopening the long-shuttered operation—much to the consternation of indigenous groups who have long fought for a more equitable distribution of the proceeds. Now comes word that a few Americans might be sticking their nose in the island’s business, thereby threatening […]
Tags:Bougainville·business·mining·Papua New Guinea·Tall J Foundation
While snooping about some old Google-able papers the other day, I stumbled across this true-crime tidbit about a 1940 murder case involving a pair of Hollywood extras. The killing took place in Gower Gulch, a street corner where former cowboys would gather in hopes of being picked to appear in B-grade Westerns—much like day laborers […]
Years back, in an effort to quell football fan violence, authorities in Philadelphia set up a courtroom at Veterans Stadium, so that drunken brawlers could be punished within minutes of being arrested. Sure, such a legal arrangement wasn’t in the constitutional spirit, since the accused weren’t permitted legal representation or a chance to review the […]
Virtually every ancient mythological system included a deity who was fond of hurling lightning bolts at unfortunate humans. Concocting the notion of such violence-from-above certainly took little imagination on the folklorists’ parts, since lightning fatalities were commonplace in bygone times. In fact, as the chart above shows, it is not until quite recently that the […]
A million things to do before the long weekend kicks in, starting with a journey back to Harlem to snake a drain. (No, this isn’t a euphemism.) Hope y’all have something special planned for the holiday, and see you back here next week. If you have a spare moment before then, though, I highly recommend […]
Friend o’ Microkhan Tristan Patterson is the man most responsible for hipping me to the post-baseball travails of Pedro Guerrero. He is also an immensely talented writer and director whose latest project, Dragonslayer, justifiably took home top honors at the latest SXSW Film Festival. Patterson himself provides a summary of the film that makes it […]
So far this year, Microkhan’s coverage of sorcery-related violence has focused primarily on Papua New Guinea, where efforts at legal reform have done little to reduce the bloodshed. Now comes word that my beloved Assam, one of the primary settings for my first book, is dealing with a similarly tragic wave of killings. The latest […]
