I’m a huge believer in the notion that the good ol’ days were not quite as halcyon as they’re cracked up to be. That anti-nostalgia truism becomes especially clear when one examines crime data from bygone eras; Americans, it turns out, have been treating one another quite unkindly for generations. I made that point in […]
Tags:1920s·auto theft·crime·Detroit
Following up on an earlier post about the decline of England’s enthusiasm for eels, I spent (wasted?) a fair bit of time this morning digging into America’s long-standing hatred for lampreys. These parasitic fish, widely held responsible for the death of King Henry I, were once on the verge of conquering the Great Lakes; they […]
Tags:Asian carp·eels·environment·fish·fishing·food·Great Lakes·invasive species·lampreys·New Zealand
I have mixed feelings about Ross Dunkley, the Australian who co-founded the Myanmar Times in 2000. It’s impossible not to admire his moxie; rare is the publishing soul brave enough to open a new information venture in a totalitarian state. But Dunkley obviously had to make some bargains to earn that opportunity, and that meant […]
Tags:Burma·business·dictatorship·journalism·law·Ross Dunkley
Those commendable souls who frequent this space may have noticed Microkhan’s recent obsession with Papua New Guinea. This is by accident more than design, I assure you; the endlessly fascinating linchpin of Oceania simply has a lot going on these days, to the point that it has become a topic of much conversation in America’s […]
Tags:Bougainville·dictatorship·French Revolution·Noah Musingku·Papua New Guinea·Turkmenbashi
Apologies, but squeezed for time today—have to bolt early to record a segment for Here & Now, as well as arrange a trip out to East Texas for next week. A classic above to tide you over, as you surely count the minutes ’til tomorrow’s post about the new Great Game and the madness it’s […]
Tags:music·R&B·Sylvia Striplin
Modern slang is full of gastronomical synonyms for money: dough, bread, cabbage, cake. Notably absent from the long list, however, is a foodstuff that once actually functioned as a form of currency: the humble eel, a traditional English delicacy often served in jellied form. Nine centuries ago or thereabouts, eels were more than just a […]
Tags:currency·economics·eels·England·fish·food·Medieval history
I somehow went almost an entire month without pimping my latest Wired feature, which appears in the March issue (alongside Joel Johnson‘s excellent cover story on the Foxconn suicides). The piece is a deeply reported essay that tackles a tricky business proposition: For companies that make products out of atoms, does manufacturing in China and […]
I’ve previously written about the continued existence of anti-sorcery laws in the Vanuatuan penal code, so I felt compelled to post about the current debate in Papua New Guinea over similar statutes. The PNG government has grown increasingly alarmed over a rash of murders linked to beliefs in witchcraft: In Papua New Guinea (PNG), the […]
If I don’t get some serious writing done on my behind-schedule Wired feature today, I fear that all will be lost. Wish me luck, and brace for tomorrow’s post about gambling in the highlands of Papua New Guinea.
Tags:games·Pole Position·TV
Having grown up in fear of nuclear catastrophe, the post-earthquake turmoil at the Fukushima reactors has really knocked me for a loop. From the moment the plants’ administrators started issuing mealy-mouthed explanations about the situation, I knew that disaster was imminent. The big question now is not only how much radiation will blow toward Japan’s […]
Tags:books·earthquake·Fukushima·Haruki Murakami·Japan·nuclear power·Underground
I just split my morning between two fruitless tasks: the first an investigation of pending nuclear projects in the developing world, the second an attempt to understand naming conventions in the world of cattle breeding. My curiosity about the latter issue was piqued by news of a bull auction in North Platte, Nebraska, where bovines […]
I was all set to end the week with a post about a particularly egregious patent-medicine fraud, but it somehow seems wrong in light of the catastrophe in Japan. We often forget how much our species is at the mercy of the planet, and how quickly everything we treasure can be snatched away. For the […]
Though English may be gaining an ever-greater toehold in the rest of the world, the United States appears to becoming increasingly polyglot. At the same time, first-generation immigrants are making landfall in far-flung locations throughout the U.S., rather than concentrating in a handful of urban centers. Those two trends spell trouble for courts with slim […]
Tags:Arkansas·crime·Kiti·law·linguistics·Marshall Islands·Micronesia·Pohnpei·technology
Sad news out of Port Moresby, as cartoonist Bob Browne has passed on well before his time: He was the creator of Mr Grass Roots, perhaps Papua New Guinea’s most loved comic character, which the magazine Islands Business once called “the social conscience of PNG”… Roots became the Papua New Guinean Everyman, the knock-about character […]
Though I frequent Broadway shows about as often as I indulge in White Castle—that is, once in a blue moon—I’ll admit to taking undue pleasures in the travails of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. Not in the various serious injuries that the production has incurred, mind you, but rather in seeing what happens when unchecked […]
Tags:Duke Minks·economics·Leonardo da Vinci·mining·Nauru·phosphate·theater
I’d wager that there isn’t a single state in the nation that lacks an architectural oddity dubbed something like “The Strangest House in the World.” You know what I’m talking about—that random tourist attraction that lies somewhere between two medium-sized towns, and is a testament to mankind’s ability to develop total (and somewhat frightening) tunnel […]
Tags:architecture·mental illness·neuroscience·Palace of Depression·psychology
Whenever I find myself running behind on a major project, my thoughts turn to a certain passage from Easy Riders, Raging Bulls that discusses Michael Cimino’s utter disdain for logistical constraints. When infamous director started shooting Heaven’s Gate in the spring of 1979, he did so with orders to stay within a $10 million budget […]
News of the mercury thermometer’s imminent demise got me wondering about where, exactly, our quicksilver comes from these days. Much to my surprise, I discovered that there is but a single mine in the world dedicated solely to the production of mercury. It is in Khaidarkan, a village in southwestern Kyrgyzstan, where the poor soil […]
Something went terribly awry this morning when Microkhan Jr. dismounted from a shoulder ride; my glasses snapped in half as his size eights kicked against my nose, and I now find myself staring through crooked, taped-together frames that make me feel as if I’m wandering through a funhouse. I have a late-morning appointment to get […]
Over the past day or so, I’ve once again been flooded with mail regarding my Alcoholics Anonymous opus from last July’s Wired. The reason, of course, is Charlie Sheen’s recent decision to come out hard against the organization, which he accuses of being (and I paraphrase) a fraudulent mind-control cult with an abysmal success rate. […]
Tags:Alcoholics Anonymous·alcoholism·Charlie Sheen·drugs·movies·Wired
Yesterday’s Supreme Court decision in favor of the admissibility of deathbed hearsay has attracted a fair bit of attention, primarily because the two dissenters were an unlikely pair: Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Both justices objected to the fact that police officers were permitted to testify about a murder victim’s last words, since doing […]
Tags:crime·dying declarations·law·Legal Affairs·medical science·Supreme Court
Just one of those days, alas. Back tomorrow with a post on mercury mining in Kyrgyzstan; ’til then, bone up on the history of China’s space shuttle, one of my favorite pieces of aeronautic vaporware.
Tags:China·space·Space Shuttle
I have no plans to watch the Academy Awards this weekend; any enterprise that once saw fit to honor the abysmal Crash is simply not worthy of my time. But I do harbor some fond memories of ceremonies past, including the most hilarious no-show in the Oscars’ history: Michael Caine’s failure to accept his Hannah […]
Tags:Bad Movie Friday·Jaws IV·Michael Caine·movies·The Swarm
Back in 1985 or thereabouts, I made the worst business decision of my life: I traded all of my Star Wars action figures to a classmate, in exchange for a Fisher-Price Space Shuttle that made “beep beep” noises when a rubber buttons was depressed. To my credit, I realized within a matter of days that […]
Tags:1980s·economics·NASA·space·Space Shuttle
From the 1915 paper that first legitimized the scientific study of combat-related trauma, Charles Samuel Myers’ “A Contribution to the Study of Shell Shock”: Dec. 27th–While in hypnosis he gives the name of hte man in the same trench with him as K. He “sees” very clearly the position of the trenches, their shallowness and […]
Tags:Achilles in Vietnam·books·hip-hop·MF Doom·music·psychology·PTSD·Vietnam War·World War I
One of the core tenets of the scientific method is total transparency. An experiment cannot be trusted if it can’t be replicated, so every step in the process must be documented and described for the masses. Those who resist these guidelines are often guilty of chicanery. Thus the good people of Srinagar, Kashmir’s gorgeous capital, […]
All this solo parenting has reacquainted me with the role that animation plays in kids’ development. In those moments that I’ve plopped Microkhan Jr. down in front of Team Umizoomi in order to secure a few minutes of peace, I’ve usually spent some time reminiscing about the cartoons that shaped my worldview. As previously noted, […]
Thanks a million for putting up with sporadic, half-baked posting this week. Totally drained by Mr. Mom-ing it, a routine that left precious little time to formulate ideas into coherent paragraphs. But help is on the way, as the Grand Empress is making her way back to Atlah this very moment. All should be back […]
When I’ve looked at cases of urban decay in the past, I’ve typically focused on two types of hollowed-out human settlements: towns that were suddenly abandoned, and those that transformed from prosperous to troubled as their principal industries waned. But there’s a third model of decay to be considered, and that is one in which […]
Absolutely nothing in the tank today—totally drained by a fifth consecutive day of solo parenting. Gotta use all available mental bandwidth to start outlining a forthcoming Wired opus ’bout an ingenious casino scam. You know the drill—enjoy the prime example of Malaysian movie music above, and catch you again as soon as I’m able.
