Our long holiday weekend would’ve been much more enjoyable had New York City enjoyed its typical July weather. Instead, we were slammed with a heatwave of the utmost severity, which made strolling the streets only slightly more pleasant than roaming the post-apocalyptic Outback from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. And, alas, the worst is yet to […]
We’re operating on the assumption that the masses have either a) already bolted for the holiday weekend or b) are too absorbed in the World Cup quarterfinals to pay attention to fresh information on The Tubes. As such, we’re signing off for a spell with the most patriotic scene from 1980s filmdom: Sylvester Stallone’s final […]
Count us among the many millions who are counting the seconds until The RZA’s directorial debut, Wu-Tang vs. The Golden Phoenix, hits the big screen. In the meantime, we must sate our martial-arts jones with less cinematic fare, starting with this 13-year-old account of Manipuri swordfighting. The denizens of the Indian province have long been […]
Tags:anthropology·India·Manipur·martial arts·movies·The RZA·Wu-Tang vs. The Golden Phoenix
Audio above of our morning appearance on The Takeaway. The other guest was a 14-year member of AA from Kentucky—many thanks to her for coming on. And apologies for a couple of malapropisms strewn throughout—we hadn’t yet gotten our requisite caffeine dose, and the gentle strains of Winnie the Pooh emanating from Microkhan Jr.’s room […]
Do women make for better deminers? That could be the case in Sudan, in part because of the culture’s traditional division of labor: In these war-torn communities it is typically women who are involved in gathering wood and water for their families in more remote locations. Due to their knowledge of these lesser-known areas, women […]
As a counterweight to the critique offered in the post below, I offer one of the more intriguing pro-AA responses I’ve received this week. It comes from a longtime AA member who offers an unusually harsh take on the organization’s history: I’m 28 years sober…My master’s thesis looked at the influence of James and Jung […]
As noted in the post below, I’ve been absolutely deluged with e-mail responses to the Alcoholics Anonymous piece. I’ve been doing my best to read each and every one, and to respond when appropriate. Apologies to those who don’t receive replies—I’ve only got one brain and two hands. Though the vast majority of the feedback […]
Sorry for the slow start to the day. We’re working on a couple of solid posts, including a great kidnapping yarn from the ’70s, but getting clear of our other chores is taking longer than anticipated. That’s in part because of the five million e-mails that currently sit unopened in our inbox—the Times piece on […]
One of our favorite cop-show cliches is the one about the streetwise detective who’s consigned to desk duty after committing some grievous procedural sin. The implication is that doing paperwork is significantly less useful than pounding the pavement, not to mention less manly. “Pencil pusher,” after all, is invariably an insult, is it not? In […]
Tags:crime·FBI·Joe Luis Saenz
What little we know about the efficacy of the 12 Steps, the system at the heart of Alcoholics Anonymous, comes from a lengthy study called Project MATCH. As I mention in my Wired piece, Project MATCH confirmed that the Steps perform as well as other therapies when applied in a clinical setting—though, as critics like […]
We can trace our lifelong fascination with technology to a few choice childhood experiences: our first time playing Pitfall on an Atari 2600, watching The Black Hole on Betamax, and, perhaps above all, visiting The Magic Castle. The foyer of said castle featured a self-playing piano, which responded to audience requests (as long as those […]
Tags:1980s·Encore Automatic Banjo·music·musical instruments·robots·technology
In response to a rash of homicides, the bedraggled city of Chester, Penn., has instituted an unusually harsh curfew, which mandates that everyone be off the streets of certain crime-plagued neighborhoods by 9 p.m. A noble effort to reduce violence, perhaps, but the evidence doesn’t bear out the crime-prevention strategy. Just ask the good citizens […]
Tags:crime·curfews·Pennsylvania·Scotland
We couldn’t bear to leave an AA-related post atop the blog all weekend, so let us instead sign off with another addition to our growing Asha Bhosle collection. Back on Monday with more AA extras, as well as the standard Microkhan fodder that hopefully makes the drudgery of existence a little brighter for all involved.
Tags:Asha Bhosle·Bollywood·music
One of the most controversial aspects of AA’s history is the role that psychedelics may have played in Bill Wilson’s creative process. As I discuss in the Wired piece, when Wilson experienced his spiritual epiphany in December 1934, he did so at a New York City drying-out facility. Part of his treatment there consisted of […]
Tags:alcohol·Alcoholics Anonymous·alcoholism·drugs·LSD·medical science·War on Drugs
When I started working on the AA piece for Wired, I assumed that the nascent organization insisted on anonymity because of a 1930s stigma against alcoholism. But as it turns out, Bill Wilson created the policy for a more pragmatic reason, which he explained thusly: [In the past], alcoholics who talked too much on public […]
Tags:alcohlism·alcohol·Alcoholics Anonymous·Washingtonian movement·Wired
Regular readers know that I’ve been spending the better part of 2010 working on a Wired piece about addiction. Well, the feature is finally live, and now the full truth can be revealed—the article’s central narrative is about the history and science (or lack thereof) of Alcoholics Anonymous, which just celebrated its 75th anniversary. Here’s […]
Tags:alcohol·Alcoholics Anonymous·alcoholism·neuroscience·Wired
Those of you who follow Microkhan’s microblog know that the situation near headquarters was beyond hectic yesterday—not just because we had the kid on our hands, but also due to our physical proximity to a senseless tragedy. A police pursuit of two robbery suspects ended with a massive collision about 50 feet from our front […]
We’ve been doing our best to work up a healthy antipathy toward Algeria, whose national team we face tomorrow in a must-win World Cup match. As big fans of The Battle of Algiers and longtime observers of the country’s ruinous civil war, our hearts go out to the Algerian generations that have endured so much […]
We’re still on the hook with Microkhan Jr., at least until the early afternoon. We’ll try to check back in then, as we don’t want a long-gestating post on Algeria’s legacy of anti-Americanism to go to waste. In the meantime, we present you with two data points involving public health in Mongolia. The video above […]
So much for our grand plans to start this momentous week on the right foot. Microkhan Jr.’s sitter canceled on us last minute, and unlike our Mongolian forebear, we don’t have a legion of fur-clad handmaidens waiting in the wings to take over childcare duties. And so we must dedicate our morning to tackling a […]
Despite our general abhorrence of slasher flicks and Eli Roth-style “torture porn,” we do have a soft spot for macabre statues. Hyungkoo Lee’s series of cartoon skeletons, for example, still ranks as one of the finest exhibits we’ve ever seen in New York. And we’re similarly enthralled by the work of Jessica Joslin, who incorporates […]
Once again, a fresh track has led us to discover a gem from distant shores. In this case, Gonjasufi’s haunting “Sheep” inspired us to seek out its source material, “Yeh Hawa Yeh Fiza” from the 1983 Bollywood classic Sadma. To our great delight, the singer is one of our all-time favorites, Asha “The Enchantress” Bhosle, […]
In response to the previous post regarding a biker gang’s seemingly childish obsession with stealing their rivals’ sew-on patches, a few sharp readers pointed out that this game was once the essence of warfare. One, in particular, mentioned the following: I’m definitely no Civil War expert, but I believe more medals were awarded during the […]
If you’ve ever been curious about the day-to-day operations of outlaw motorcycle gangs (OMGs), the recent federal racketeering indictment against the Outlaws is an absolute goldmine. The lengthy document lays out exactly how a multi-chapter “one percenter” organization generates revenue, enforces discipline, and has a raucous (albeit morally objectionable) good time. What struck us most, […]
Our adopted home state may have a progressive reputation, owing chiefly to its principal city’s joie de vivre, but it’s also been woefully behind the times on certain political matters. The notorious Rockefeller drug laws, for example, are just now being scrapped, though vestiges seem certain to remain. And over three decades later than most […]
Tags:divorce·law·New York·War on Drugs
To our tremendous relief, the 65-day blockade of Manipur appears to be over, thereby allowing much-needed food and medicine to flow into the Indian state. (Microkhan’s backgrounder on the crisis can be found here.) Now, perhaps, the local government can focus on what strikes us a problem of only slightly lesser importance: the long decline […]
The ship above, the gargantuan M/V Dole Chile, was recently found to be carrying $2 million worth of cocaine into Delaware’s main port. The drugs were stashed in the ventilation system of a container loaded with bananas, which the ship delivers weekly to the Port of Wilmington. All in all, a nice little catch for […]
Tags:cocaine·Delaware·drugs·maritime·smuggling·trade·War on Drugs
While researching the economic feasibility of a Bering Strait tunnel, we came across this recent dispatch from the Edmonton Journal. In addition to alerting us to the manner in which the residents of Little Diomede were used as Cold War pawns, the article made us aware of the callow manner in which the Russian coal […]
Tags:Alaska·coal·Cold War·labor·Little Diomede·Pyramiden·Russia·Soviet Union
We’ve been lassoed into some emergency parenting today, and Microkhan Jr. is tugging on the hem of our deel as we type these very words. So let us just quickly share with you two things that bring much gladness to our collective heart: the above Donny Hathaway gem, an Afro-Cuban spin on “The Ghetto,” and […]
Tags:Donny Hathaway·Genghis Khan·Jamukha·Medieval history·Mongolia·music·R&B
Despite a government ban, Cambodian dredgers are once again raking the floor of the Koh Pao River in search of vast quantities of sand. The risk of running afoul of the authorities is apparently far outweighed by the riches to be gained from exporting sand to Singapore, which desperately needs the granular commodity to expand […]
Tags:Cambodia·crime·economics·Indonesia·sand·Singapore·smuggling·trade·War on Drugs
