We initially didn’t quite believe the top-shelf venom prices quotes in this 1995 piece about Caucasian vipers. Upwards of $1,000 per gram just struck as too high, given the relative abundance of the most desirable species. But sure enough, the latest price list from the Kentucky Reptile Zoo proved our skepticism misplaced; a gram’s worth of poison from the fangs of an Eastern coral snake will, indeed, run your a thousand bucks. A similar quantity of venom from a Mexican bearded lizard, by contrast, is a relative steal at $600.
So why is the venom of such a common snake so expensive? We suspect it has everything to do with Wyeth’s decision to stop producing antivenin for Eastern coral snake bites. The company, now part of Pfizer, started manufacturing this much-needed remedy back in the 1960s, using horses that had been bitten. When it ceased production a few years back, Wyeth promised that stocks would last until October 2008. Now things are getting desperate as supplies are almost out—the few last vials are even getting their expiration dates extended.
We suspect the vanishing of Wyeth’s antivenin means that new treatments must be developed out of genuine coral snake venom, rather than through exposed horses. It’s thus dicier than ever to engage in certain forms of religious literalism.
If we were betting khans, we’d wager all our loose change on the eventual failure of the Communitarian Nation of the Moskitia. There’s just no way that Nicaragua will ever let its northeastern coast secede, no matter how legitimate the grievances of the Miskito people who’ve called it home for centuries. And while the separatist Miskitos can certainly cause a bit of bother, their numbers and financial backing are far too small to cause any lasting impact. Sadly, the forecast probably calls for more rioting, followed by years of seething tension—par for the course when small, poverty-stricken ethnic minorities reach for the secessionist brass ring, despite lacking the muscle to bring that dream to fruition.
What makes the Miskito situation stand out, though, is the fact it may have well been caused by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega’s revolutionary idealism. Certainly the Miskitos have had beef with the Sandinistas for decades now—back in the early ’80s, the Marxist government treated the group quite unkindly. But the Miskitos current boldness seems to have been spurred in part by Ortega’s zeal for supporting secessionists abroad:
President Daniel Ortega, a revolutionary who claims “indigenous blood” and pledges solidarity with underdog struggles for independence around the globe, was the first and only president in the world to recognize the breakaway Russian-backed republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia during last year’s hostilities in Georgia. And at last month’s Summit of the Americas, Ortega advocated for Puerto Rico’s independence from “the colonialist policies” of the United States — a “show of solidarity” that irritated the Puerto Rican government. Now, faced with a popular secession in his own backyard, Ortega has remained tightlipped, and his government has not yet made any substantial response to the claims of the Nation of Moskitia.
A first-hand, English-language account of the Miskito uprising here, from an American woman doing volunteer work in Puerto Cabezas. And a short history of the Miskitos, which included a fruitful 17th-century alliance with a British pirate, can be read here.
Not much Microkhan’ing today, alas, as we’re heading out of town once again—our last trip for the foreseeable future. The destination this time? York, Pennsylvania, for a costume ball honoring the nuptials of a Dirty Doll. We know nothing about York, save for the fact that it’s got a thorny racial history. We’d be much obliged if someone could recommend a notable watering hole or downtown sight worth seeing, as we’ll have some time to kill on Saturday. Is the self-guided Utz factory tour worth checking out? We do like their salt-and-vinegar chips.
Given Iran’s reputation for dispensing harsh justice, it surprised us to learn that the country is home to a thriving crystal-meth industry—one so big, in fact, that it’s now exporting to Southeast Asia. As the United Nations graph at right makes clear, use of the drug (locally known as shisheh, or glass) has exploded since 2004. An Iranian expat gives a first-hand account of the problem here:
Every time I come to Iran I am shocked by the rather open and public use and sale of illicit drugs. The main reason I can think of why this might be is sheer numbers. There are just too many to round up. Last time I was in Tehran, the area where Naser Khosrow empties into Tupkhuneh was practically an open-air drug market in broad daylight. People would first approach and ask if I needed prescription drugs, then “shisheh” (crystal meth), then ecstasy. Right next to a ministry building of all places! A few days later I was walking along the Parkway towards Velenjak and I happened to peek up at the hillside which has some tree and brush cover. There might have been 10-15 people shooting up there.
A 2007 piece claims that a gram of crystal goes for $120 in Tehran, which makes it a drug of the rich—quite a reversal from the situation in the U.S., where meth is commonly considered a cheap alternative to cocaine.
The question now is “why?” Iran obviously has the right demographics for soaring drug use—an exceedingly young population, high unemployment, but also a developing middle class looking to fill some spiritual or intellectual holes (or just fill up some free time). But we also feel that the regime is loath to even admit there’s a problem, as they view drugs—and meth in particular—as something only decadent Westerners could ever fall for. Mounting a public campaign against illicit drugs would first require admitting there’s a problem. And so the regime totters on, willfully oblivious to the toll.
We’ll confess, we often scoff at university courses that focus exclusively on contemporary pop culture—as much as we would have liked to have taken “The Simpsons as Satirical Authors,” for example, we’re not entirely convinced those classroom hours couldn’t be better spent slogging through Ulysses.
But we’d make an exception for a comparative literature course on comic-book superheroes. The way in which various cultures have adopted and tweaked the Marvel/DC model is a source of endless fascination, as is the impact of political trends on comics consumption habits. Case in point: Indonesia, whose comic-book industry has waxed and waned in accordance with the nation’s broader fortunes. An Australian admirer breaks down the basic history:
The first Indonesian comic books in the 1950s were American lookalikes. But while Flash Gordon flooded the local markets, an Indonesian artist named R A Kosasih began to print Sri Asih in 1954, the precursor to his famous comic versions of the Mahabarata and Ramayana.
The 1960s and 1970s saw a proliferation of locally produced copies of foreign comics, adaptations of Chinese kung fu legends complete with Chinese settings, alongside Indonesian martial arts (silat) adventures and traditional hero legends.
This was the Golden Age of Indonesian comics. Everybody was reading them thanks to a brilliant local innovation, the comic rental kiosk. Many Indonesians have described for me their happy memories of sitting under a tree beside a huge pile of comics they just borrowed from the rental kiosk.
Yet more contemporary Indonesian superheroes have increasingly worn their X-Men influence on their sleeves, despite a seeming hostility among the nation’s artists to mutant origin stories. In fact, while their comics’ visuals and plots now borrow heavily from the likes of Chris Claremont, the backstories remain mystical rather than scientific. Our favorite is the one behind Gundala (née Sancaka):
Sancaka was a scientist who invented an anti-lightning struck serum, finally cracking the formula the night of his girlfriend’s birthday… which he forgot about in the midst of his work. She broke up with him, causing the heartbroken Sancaka to run off into the stormy night. He was struck by lightning, and elevated to “Lightning Land” where Kronz, the king of Lightning Land, adopted him as his commander and his son, renaming him Gundala, the son of lightning. Kronz subsequently commanded him to attack Cloud Land. After some adventures on Pangeran Mlaar’s Planet Covox, Gundala returned to Earth.
There is actually a Gundala movie, but it seems tragically devoid of action. We’re gonna hold out for the Putri Bintang flick—the perfect Salma Hayek comeback vehicle.
With your kind permission, we’d like to try something a little different with today’s installment of our occasional First Contact series: an account of a civilization’s initial experience with written language, rather than its introduction to an alien people.
We initially planned on posting something about the development of the Hawaiian alphabet—we’ve long been fascinated by exactly how missionaries of the 1820s arrived at their elegant (and occasionally controversial) twelve-character system. But we got sidetracked upon discovering the following passage from The Voices of Eden, in which missionary and historian Sheldon Dibble recounts the earliest Hawaiian reactions to ink-on-paper:
The people were amazed at the art of expressing thoughts on paper. They started back from it with dread, as though it were a sort of enchantment or sorcery. A certain captain said to Kamehameha, “I can put Kamehameha on a slate,” and proceeded to write the word Kamehameha. The chief scornfully replied, “That is not me—not Kamehameha.” The capitain then said: “By marks on this slate I can tell my mate, who is at a distance, to send me his handkerchief, ” and proceeded to write the order. Kamehameha gave the slate to a servant, who carried it to the mate and brought the handkerchief. He looked at the writing and at the handkerchief—they did not look alike. He felt of the two—they did not feel alike. And what connection there could be between the one and the other he could not imagine. With this ignorance, it is not strange that the people formed very wild conception of the power of letters. They even imagined that letters could speak. Every article of clothing that had a name upon it was for a time was safe; no one would steal it—for there were letters there, and they did not know but they might tell the owner where it was.
Dibble goes on to state that the Hawaiians also briefly assumed that written-down wises would inevitably come true if handed to a foreigner. Which strikes us as disturbingly similar to the theory behind the The Secret‘s vision board.
We recently argued that symbols do, indeed, matter. Is it possible that someone in the administration of Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki read our screed? Because the Nairobi regime has suddenly decided to make a rather brilliant token gesture, obviously designed to indicate a willingness to tackle government excess: it’s forcing officials to give up their precious limos:
Ministers and Permanent Secretaries are set to surrender vehicles with over 1800cc on Wednesday as they receive new ones with lower engine capacities.
The Ministry of Finance on Tuesday announced that 129 new vehicles are with the dealers and ministers, their assistants and PSs will get them while they give back the fuel guzzling limousines.
This was obviously a calculated move, as the Kibaki government has taken significant flack for its taste in Mercedes Benz sedans. And the president and prime minister will still get to travel in stretch-limo style. But we have to admit, there’s something appealing about the idea of haughty minor ministers being forced to travel by Passat—though we’re sure that Kenya’s corruption-weary populace would love to see those vehicles reduced to ’75 Trabants, merely for humiliation’s sake.
Seriously, basketball gods? We finally have an inkling of hope that our beloved Los Angeles Clippers won’t totally self-immolate this season, and then you see fit to break Blake Griffin’s kneecap? Ah, cruel deities—can you do nothing to reward our years of steadfast devotion? Or are you so incensed with owner Donald Sterling’s botched facelift and casual racism that you’ll keep punishing us innocent fans ’til approximately the end of time?
A friend of Microkhan tries to make sense of the cosmic injustice here. We can only seek some sort of catharsis by listening to the mournful Nice & Smooth track above. (Unembeddable video available here.) Compared to Smooth’s woes with his cocaine-addled girlfriend, losing our rookie power forward for six weeks seems like a minor tribulation.
Australia’s epic drought could end up being something of a boon to neighboring New Zealand, at least in terms of aboveboard narcotic production. Half the world’s legal opium crop is grown on tiny Tasmania, largely under the auspices of Tasmania Alkaloids—a company that operates under the all-time most intentionally innocuous slogan of “Value Adding in Tasmania.” The lack of rain has been a killer for TA’s poppy crop, and so they’re experimenting with moving production to South Canterbury.
But New Zealand law forbids the cultivation of poppies rich in morphine. That means TA is consigned to planting only a variety that’s heavy on thebaine, the substance that pharmaceutical firms turn into Oxycontin and other painkilling pills. And that makes us wonder—has the “hillbilly heroin” phenomenon simply been a result of economics? Legal producers have obviously felt compelled to plant the thebaine poppies due to morphine’s sinister reputation. But that has inevitably resulted in a decline in the price of thebaine, and thus extra incentive for drug makers to take advantage of the pricing imbalance.
Once someone’s hooked, of course, they’re willing to pay whatever or their narcotic tipple of choice. But would there be less first-time Oxy users if prices hadn’t been knocked askew by poppy engineering?
Sad news out of New Mexico this morning: Sonny Jim, a true legend of the Indian rodeo scene, was gunned down during a property dispute. A man of Modoc descent who’d long lived in Navajo country, Sonny Jim was the nation’s top Indian cowboy during the early 1970s, renowned for his long, luxuriant hippie hair as well as his bull-riding skills. In 1982, he reinvented himself as a champion steer wrestler—dangerous work for any cowboy, let alone one entering the sunset of his career.
A 1974 piece from Sports Illustrated captured both Sonny Jim and his beloved sport at their finest. And check out some vintage Indian rodeo photographs here, here, and (especially) here, via the excellent Colorado Plateau Digital Archives at Northern Arizona University.
Pity the poor children of Jinja, who have lost one of the great privileges of the grade-school years: the right to periodically spend a day at the zoo, museum, or box factory in the name of education. The field trip is no longer welcome in Uganda’s second city, having been blamed for declining grades and test scores:
Mr Kamwana said head teachers have a tendency of concentrating on pupils’ tours in third term instead of making final touches in preparation for the Uganda National Examination Board examinations.
“You are crying over the lack of money to print tests for primary seven pupils but when it comes to taking these candidates for tours, you don’t spend less than Shs2 million. Is that being serious on your side?” he asked.
This move strikes us entirely draconian, however, given that some of our fondest grade-school memories stem from field trips. (The one to the Griffith Observatory was a particular favorite, though excess enthusiasm did lead to a wounded eye socket.) But aside from the enjoyment we derived from being liberated from our desks for a day, did we actually learn anything meaningful? In other words, are field trips actually an integral part of a school’s curriculum, or are they just a frill?
The scientific literature here is spotty, at best. All we could dig up is this 1983 study, which found that preschoolers treated to regular field trips fared better than their non-mobile peers on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test.
Our gut tells us that much depends on a field trip’s leadership, rather than just the destination. Kids may love those teachers who let them run roughshod among dinosaur skeletons, oblivious to the placards on the walls. But it may take a taskmaster to ensure that such trips are actually worth a school district’s investment of time and money.
In other words, maybe what Jinja needs isn’t a ban on field trips, but more of a Sergeant Hulka type to lead the missions.
Comments Off on Permission Slips…for Failure?Tags:education·Uganda
The rapid warming of the Arctic may delight those keen on easier shipping, but it’s been nothing but terrible news for reindeer and their human overseers. On the Yamal Peninsula, the indigenous Nenet people are watching in horror as their precous herds break legs upon the gravel now popping up from the melted permafrost. And in Alaska, a bare 10,000 reindeer now roam the state’s wildlands, down 600,000 just a century ago.
But a reindeer expert hopes to reverse the Alaskan decline, at least, by using a rater counter-intuitive method: he wants to turn reindeer into a more widely enjoyed delicacy:
Greg Finstad is head of the reindeer program at UAF and a man who has wrangled reindeer alongside Alaska Natives for 25 years. He ordered a 45-foot self-contained slaughter plant, winterized it, had it barged to Nome, and helped design a “high-latitude range management course” at the university campus there…
One of Finstad’s goals with the U.S. Department of Agriculture-funded project is to teach local people how to process reindeer using the plant, which is approved by the USDA and will result in inspected steaks, backstrap, burger, and other cuts of meat.
“(Inspected meat) is worth a lot more money,” Finstad said. “It can be sold to restaurants and stores. It’s the key to success in the reindeer field.”
This strikes us as a rather brilliant idea, actually. Yes, the logic is a bit tough to grok, as the short-term effect is that more reindeer will be killed by humans. But by increasing demand for reindeer meat, Finstad’s program will also increase the value of each individual animal, and thus provide incentive for locals to preserve and grow their thinning herds.
The one potential pitfall we foresee: will reindeer meat ever be able to compete on price with such gamey cousins as buffalo? We’re willing to give the dish a try, but not if it’s gonna run a fortune per pound. Is the taste so magnificent that deep-pocketed diners in the Lower 48 will pay whatever for the privilege?
After a tremendous week of work, contemplation, and gorging on fish tacos out here in Palo Alto, we’re heading back to Microkhan headquarters this evening. Not much time for blogging today, alas, as we try to suck a last few moments of enjoyment out of this trip. So we’re skipping right ahead to Bad Movie Friday, and to a not-so-classic we’ve been storing up for ages: Commando. Unlike some of Arnie’s early vehicles, this one does not stand the test of time. And no better clip makes that clear than the one above, in which California’s current governor spouts a kicker worthy of McBain.
The film’s one saving grace? Bennett’s taste in chain-mail shirts. Kinda badass.
Yesterday morning, while tearing through the Stanford Faculty Club’s equivalent of a Denny’s Grand Slam (sans flapjacks, alas), we recalled how Americans were asked to collect their bacon drippings during World War II. We always assumed that this grease was then converted into fuel. But, boy, were we wrong—as the friendly Disney characters explain in the propaganda film above, that hog fat was a key ingredient in the production of glycerin, which in turn was integral to manufacturing ordnance. Watch and learn.
Also, is it just us, or is this the most genuinely violent Disney cartoon ever made? Though we don’t actually see the screaming Germans on the brink of death, thousands of cartoon characters lose their lives in this film. Though we guess re-watching Das Boot a couple of months back has made us much more sensitive to such issues.
In response to yesterday’s post on the onetime vogue for mining-by-nuke, a treasured commenter asked:
I remember a rumor that someone proposed building an alternative to the Panama Canal (perhaps even at sea level) using nuclear explosives. Did you find any evidence of that in your research?
Indeed we did! This was actually the pet concept of Edward Teller, the man behind the H-bomb. In the interests of harnessing nuclear explosives for peaceful purposes, he founded Project Ploughshare. The organization is perhaps best remembered for its plans to use northwest Alaska as an aboveground testing site—a plan that never quite came to fruition due to local opposition, but still left behind plenty of radioactive nastiness. But Project Ploughshare also had dreams of blasting away a chunk of Panama, too, in the name of doubling the amount of sea traffic across the Isthmus. Timebroke down the plans in 1964:
If nuclear explosives are placed in “strings” with the distance between them equal to half the diameter of the crater that a single shot would dig, and if they are exploded simultaneously, they will excavate a smooth-bottomed ditch, throwing the rock to the sides. One hundred shots, for instance, of 100 kilotons each, will dig a ditch 1,600 ft. wide, 350 ft. deep and 16 miles long. If its bottom is 60-odd ft. below sea level, it can serve as a spacious ship canal…
Ploughshare scientists believe that if they are careful about atmospheric and wind conditions when shots are fired, shock waves in the air will do no serious damage, but scientists are not so sure about ground shock waves. If 50 megatons must be exploded to cut a hole in a mountain ridge, ground shock may shake down buildings many miles away. Luckily, at least three of the most promising canal routes go through almost uninhabited country, with little but jungle and a few huts to be damaged. Another possible danger is radioactivity that may seep up through the bottom of the canal. There is no way to estimate how much will do so, but the strong current that will run through the canal should carry most of it away.
As with proposed mining endeavors, the chief attribute here was price—Project Ploughshare estimated that the new canal could be completed for a relatively paltry $500 million. But we have a hunch that decades of litigation linked to health consequences would’ve pushed that pricetag just a wee bit higher.
Some hopeful news out of southern Sudan: stability has returned to the town of Rumbek, and with it one of the region’s favorite sports:
Rumbek youth have resumed their favorable game of wrestling for the first time since four years after bloody confrontations in cattle raids and inter-tribal fighting.
The wrestling begun between two rival groups of businessmen working in Rumbek Market and students from Rumbek senior secondary school whose are belonging to Greater Yirol Counties of Lakes state.
“Rumbek is returning back into original roots of peace – I’m very glad. May God keep up this shining face of peace in Rumbek for sometime so that our state could remain calm without killing issues,” said one of Rumbek residents, Flora Yar Mamer.
More Sudanese wrestling photos here. And a great video here; be sure to watch through to the 2:39 mark, when things start to go terrible wrong for the humble narrator.
The controversy over Iran’s nuclear ambitions has sent plenty of folks scurrying back to the history books, to examine what made South Africa give up its bomb-building program. In joining the throng, though, we stumbled upon a curious factoid from the annals—an assertion, in an old (and offline) Foreign Affairs article, that South Africa initially had peaceful reasons for developing nukes:
In 1971 Minister of Mines Carl de Wet approved preliminary nuclear explosives research. These investigations were initially limited to theoretical calculations and introductory studies of ballistics. No serious development was carried out. It was not until three years later that Prime Minister John Vorster approved development of a nuclear explosive capability — limited to peaceful applications, such as mining excavation — and authorized the funding for a testing site.
As it turns out, mining-by-nuke was all the rage in certain circles, at least through the mid 1970s. The Soviets thought nuclear explosions could make mining operations much more cost effective, by eliminating the need for expensive human labor. We had similar ambitions, and proposed that the mining industry share part of the cost burden to conduct large-scale experiments.
But could such mining ever be truly safe? We have our doubts, though we would like to know more about any long-term environmental and health impacts associated with underground testing. Still, when we see language like this in a document, it gives us pause:
Nuclear explosives can be used to break large volumes of oil shale in place at depth, where deposits are thick. The diameter of the region (chimney) of shale broken by a nuclear explosion can be as much as hundreds of feet. The height is at least double the diameter. For example, a 20 kt detonation at a depth of 2,000 ft will break about 800,000 tons. Any problems associated with the radioactivity generated by a nuclear explosion in oil shale are expected to be manageable.
Why do we feel like the use of “manageable” here is sorta like when a doctor tells you the pain will be “moderate”?
We’re off taking advantage of our Stanford library privileges, in order to flesh out a few big-picture ideas. The wannabe emperor in the clip above, by contrast, could certainly do a better job of paying attention to the small picture—say, for example, by noticing that there are no sunsets in space. (Unless he has a revolving ship specially designed for this purpose.) He strikes us as exactly the sort of galactic villain/chump whose headquarters will feature a needless thermal exhaust port.
We’re headquartered on the Stanford campus this week, which has brought to mind one of our favorite football scouting reports ever: John Clayton’s strangely damning take on Kwame Harris, an All-Pac-10 offensive lineman for the Cardinal in the early part of the millennium. Clayton loved Harris’s arms, technique, and strength, but didn’t likehis head—and not because of any lackluster Wonderlic scores, either. No, Clayton’s biggest negative was:
Harris is so intelligent that some teammates have a hard time relating to him.
This stuck in our memory for a host of reasons. The biggest one is probably that we’re so accustomed to having “intelligence” lauded as the be all and end all of workplace attributes. And, certainly, success requires the sorts of critical-thinking skills associated with high IQs. But as Clayton implied, can vast differences in intelligence among co-workers lead to dissension? Collegiality can be vital to success, too, particularly in an endeavor such as pro football—as so many ex-players have remarked, you want to enter an extremely violent situation with men who feel like your brothers to some extent. If someone on the team is isolated because their brain operates differently, can that undermine the whole enterprise?
This also made us think about Lisa Simpson’s infamous happiness-versus-intelligence graph. Assuming that greater intelligence does indeed lead to more melancholy, you can see how a man of Harris’s tremendous brainpower might seem like an oddball in a locker room’s fratty atmosphere. Fart jokes only go so far when your idea of humor ranges more toward the comedic stylings of Aristophanes. (We covered a similar topic here, in a post exploring the correlation between literacy and suicide.)
We’re sad to report that Clayton was proved right in his skepticism about Harris’s pro prospects. The Stanford dominator turned into a journeyman in the NFL, and an object of much derision among fans. He’s currently looking for pigskin employment. At least he’s got that music degree to fall back on—though we reckon it’s tough to score a first-chair violin gig nowadays, too.
Following up on last week’s post regarding the general dreadfulness of rulers who get their mugs put on coins, we had to add another rogue to the gallery: the late Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire. One of his personalized coins can be glimpsed here, and some of his paper money above. Mobutu certainly proves our currency rule, as his kleptocratic ways are well-documented;the stat that always sticks in our mind is that, upon his death, Mobutu was one of the world’s ten wealthiest men, despite presiding over one of the world’s ten poorest countries.
But there is something else about Mobutu that strikes us as an early tip-off that he’d be a poor ruler: his decision to change his name upon assuming the mantle of power, and to select a moniker that gives an air of megalomania. The whole backstory can be found in Brandon Grove’s Behind Enemy Walls, a memoir of a diplomatic career that included a long Reagan Era stopover in Kinshasa:
Dick [Walters], ever the linguist, was one of few Americans I knew who could accurately recite Mobutu’s full name: Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga. Roughly translated from the Ngbandi language, it meant in the polite version, “All-conquering warrior who goes from conquest to conquest.” More pungently, what it said was: “The cock who jumps on any hen that moves.” Little moves in Zaire that was not pleasing or profitable to its president.
Grove’s account of the New York City shopping habits of Mobutu’s wife is also well-worth a read. Just search for the word “Mafia.”
Instead of hitting you with our weekly Bad Movie Friday entry, we’ve decided to round out our cough-syrup trilogy with a classic ad: Oddjob shilling for Vicks Formula 44. Good thing there’s no narcotic in there to slow him down. And the phenylpropanolamine should make him a much more energetic opponent for Mr. Bond.
We’re also ditching the movies this Friday because we’re in a rush—not only on deadline, but also prepping for a weeklong trip out to the Bay Area. Next week we’ll be Microkhan’ing from the Pacific time zone. Set your mental clocks accordingly.
When I was a kid, over the counter codeine was legal. On Sunday visits, I used to slip into my grandmother’s medicine chest and for periodic sips out of her Vicks Formula 44 cough medicine bottle. I thought it was the taste I liked, but now I know it must have been more than that.
This got us wondering when Vicks excised the codeine from its celebrated cough syrup, and whether it was forced to do so under pressure. But as it turns out, Formula 44 never contained any opiate derivatives—in fact, that was the product’s chief selling point, as it was marketed under the none-too-catchy (and poorly punctauted) slogan “Effective as codeine—even better—because it is not narcotic.” (Check out a vintage ad from Ebonyhere.)
Vicks touted the primary ingredient as something called Silentium. But as far as we can tell, what made this stuff so lovely to quaff was the absurdly high amount of alcohol in each serving. Mixed into that liquor-y bath was also an ample dollop of phenylpropanolamine, which meant that vintage Formula 44 was essentially sweet Wild Turkey with a crystal meth chaser.
The alcohol got pared back after a while, but the phenylpropanolamine remained well into the modern era. And as it became more prominent on the ingredients list, some serious addiction issues arose. This 1992 case study (PDF) makes for a chilling read:
For 18 months a 25-year-old woman had consumed daily 800 mL of Vicks Formula 44-D (containing 12.5 mg of phenylpropanolamine, 15 mg of dextromethorphan and 100 mg of guaifenesin per 5 mL), the maximum recommended dosage being 10 mL four times daily. On presentation she was dishevelled and frightened, her speech was tangential and her affect labile, and she was deluded that she knew the whereabouts of a US hostage held in Lebanon and must rescue him. She was correctly oriented but had grossly impaired attention and concentration that precluded further cognitive testing…
Vicks Formula 44-D made her “high, hyper….[I] could go the whole day without sitting down … [but] would frequently lose up to 2 hours at a time.” She gradually became convinced that people were staring in through the windows and regularly locked herself in a closet when alone. She spent at least $15 000 in 1 year on Vicks Formula 44-D and later shoplifted it. She often vomited after taking the drug but would save the vomitus and swallow it later.
A sad tale all around, especially the conclusion—after successfully undergoing treatment, the woman relapsed and had to be committed to a mental hospital for “paranoid psychosis.” We are left to wonder what it is about this high that she found so appealing—what hole did this particular sort of buzz fill in her life?
In doing a little research on the lethality of sipping syrup, we came across this concise account of Johnny Jolly‘s legal woes. It seems the Green Bay Packers defensive end got caught with some liquid codeine in his native Houston. But he’s apparently in the clear for the moment, due to some rather strange circumstances:
Donna Hawkins, spokeswoman for the Harris County district attorney’s office, said the Houston Police Department recently acquired a new piece of equipment that measures the amount of codeine in a liquid.
Once police technicians are trained on the device and accredited on testifying about its use and results, the office intends to refile the second-degree felony charge against Jolly, Hawkins said.
As it turns out, the Houston cops have never been able to quantify the amount of codeine in a seized sample of syrup. And that’s a legal problem, because thousands of lean prosecutions in the state have identified the offense quite specifically: “Possession of a compound containing not more than 200 milligrams of codeine, and any of its salts per 100 milliliters and per 100 grams, weighing by aggregate weight, including any adulterants and dilutants, less than 28 grams.”
But as detailed in this 2007 report (PDF) critical of the Houston Police Department’s laboratory procedures, the city’s forensic scientists have long been just guessing at that 200 mg threshold. That lack of scientific accuracy came to light in the case of Sanchez v. Texas, in which a lean possession conviction was overturned by a Texas appeals court. The trial’s key exchange between Sanchez’s defense attorney and the lab technician went as follows:
Q [Defense, on voir dire in presence of the jury]: Mr. Chu, were you able to determine the amount of Promethazine that was in the bottle?
A: No, in the laboratory we don’t perform quantifications on the Promethazine as well as codeine.
Q: You are not able to determine the quantity of Promethazine that was contained within the baby bottle. Is that right?
A: HPD has no policies and no procedure at the time to determine the quantity of codeine and Promethazine.
Q: I understand but, yes or no, you were not able to determine the amount of Promethazine that was contained within the bottle?
A: No.
Q: You have no scientific way of determining unless the compound is brought to you with no more than 200 milligrams of codeine and any of its salts per 100 milliliters and per 100 grams?
A: No, I cannot do a scientific inclusion. I can only do assumptions.
Obviously, the case here is somewhat humorous, in that it centers around a rather weird technicality. But, still, that last line from Mr. Chu gives us tremendous pause. The science performed in police laboratories could scarcely be more critical, given that lives are at stake. It’s chilling to hear that the technicians who work there rely on assumptions at all, even in seemingly minor cases. Science and assumptions don’t mix.
As we went digging into our pocket for some change this morning, we came up with a piece of currency sure to give the vending machine a case of indigestion: a 20 shilling coin from Kenya, a souvenir of our recent East African jaunt. Before tossing back the useless money in frustration, however, we noticed that its heads side featured the visage of Daniel Arap Moi, Kenya’s reigning president when the coin was cast 11 years ago. And that got us thinking—how many nations mint coins featuring sitting heads of state? And, more importantly, isn’t doing so a terrible idea, especially for those nations that at least try to claim the democratic mantle?
Using the images provided by the World Coin Gallery, we investigated the metal money for 40 countries we thought likely candidates for such political idolatory—primarily dictatorships with long-serving leaders. Somewhat to our surprise, we could only find three contemporary countries that have engaged in the practice: Kenya, the Ivory Coast, and (to our utter non-surprise) Tukmenbashi-era Turkmenistan. (There were also some bygone examples, such as the coins issued by Manchukuo, Japan’s puppet state in Manchuria.)
We’d think it self-evident as to why such coinage might have negative political and financial repercussions. In the case of Kenya, whose 40-shilling coins now feature the strangely smirking face of President Mwai Kibaki (above), you have a nation that goes to great lengths to portray itself as a democracy to the world. Yet it has borrowed a page from the Roman Empire when it comes to manufacturing the sort of money that many folks consider rich with symbolism. So you can understand why some Kenyans might be suspicious of election results that favor the man on their shillings.
But beyond that, doesn’t branding one’s coins with an ostensibly temporary leader’s mug make one suspicious of the stability of a currency? It seems like doing so would create a psychological association between the leader’s reign and faith in his nation’s money. Once the leader goes, might not that all-important faith, too?
Also worth noting: the two most totalitarian regimes on Earth low key it in terms of coins. North Korea is all about the animals, while Burma’s mint goes the mythical beast route.
We know our readers are a well-traveled bunch, so please advise as to whether we’re missing any countries that engage in leader worship via coinage. Standard currency only, please—commemorative coins are a whole different ballgame.
Deadline approaches on the piece that sent us out to East Africa. You know the drill—enjoy the Otis Redding as we commit our remaining mental bandwidth to the art of storytelling. More soon.
Shameless plug for the Microkhan clan: Check out what our own personal Börte Ujin has been up to, via the current issue of Inked Magazine. Photo possibly NSFW, though only if you labor in the most Puritanical of environments.
In reading about the recent discovery of an undated film featuring Babe Ruth, we took notice of one of the clues that could yield the clip’s day or origin:
Two college professors separately proposed using the shadows of the flag poles (seen on the field) to determine the position of the sun and, with some serious mathematics, the date of the game. Others noted what appears to be a dirigible in the background over the Bronx and suggested locating dirigible flight schedules.
We stumbled over that dirigible bit, in large part because we very much doubt that late 1920s dirigible flights were frequent enough to merit schedules. But could we be wrong? Could it be that the waning days of the Coolidge Era resembled the fictional world of Watchmen, at least in terms of the preferred means of aerial transport?
A little digging confirmed our suspicions that airship flights were, indeed, a rarity in 1928—although, granted, New York was a destination for transatlantic voyages, and thus that blob in the background could feasibly be a dirigible. But what really jumped out at us during our research was the revelation that airships were considered genuine rivals to airplanes in the late 1920s. This snippet from the great Popular Science article makes the case:
It is an old struggle, this between lighter-than-air and heavier-than-air craft. Which will be the most valuable to man? Who is going to answer? Scientists? Manufacturers? Adventurers? Theorists? None of them: but bookkeppers.For the question has resolved itself into that uncompromising unit of transportation auditors, the ton-mile cost. After due allowance for speed, which type of aircraft will carry a ton of freight a mile for the least amount of money?
More than half the energy expended by an airplane is employed solely to keep the machine in the air. An airship, on the other hand, spends none of its power lifting itself or its load. This vital difference is cited by adherents of lighter-than-air machines as the chief reason why dirigible balloons will win the favor of capital for large scale aerial transportation.
More goodies throughout the piece, whose publication coincided with the debut of Germany’s 127th dirigible, the Graf Zeppelin. Most ominous, perhaps, is the article’s assertion that the Graf Zeppelin will be powered by something called “etan”—”a form of hydrogen gas having the weight of air.” A fateful concept, perhaps?
Our first-ever overseas assignment was covering the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. We thus have incredibly vivid memories of Hermann Maier, the celebrated Austrian skiier who just decided to call it a career. We were at the downhill slopes the day of the crash shown above, and remember instantly thinking “He must be dead” upon witnessing the carnage. (The rough stuff starts about the 25-second mark.) But not only did Maier survive the high-speed wreck—he went on to win a pair of golds (though not in the downhill, of course). Suffice to say the favorite son of Altenmarkt im Pongau is made of sterner stuff than us.
Oh, yeah, he also survived a 2001 motorcycle crash that almost led to the amputation of his legs; three years later, he was once again a World Cup champion. Puts our struggle to complete a 5,000-word article in perspective. Too much perspective, perhaps.
In response to our recent placeholder extolling the virtues of Stan Bush’s work on Bloodsport, one of our faithful Virginia correspondents turned us on to this 1988 exposé, which argues that the film’s biographical subject is a huckster. The piece is behind a subscription wall, so those without a ProQuest account will have to make do with our favorite excerpt regarding the alleged mendacity of Frank Dux:
A brochure for Dux’s ninjitsu schools lists him as “one of the most decorated veterans of the Southeast Asian conflict.” Visitors to his home were shown newspaper articles about him, including an editorial titled “A Silent Hero” that Dux said he clipped from the Washington Star. Told later that the newspaper’s archives have no clippings about him, Dux said he could not remember the source of the editorial.
The piece quotes from a commanding officer’s diary: “We’re hungry. We’re tired. We’re all out of ammo. We all might go mad if not for a spunky kid named Duke for short.” The diary describes Dux crawling through a mine field to rescue an Asian baby that he later turned over to a Taoist priest…
The story evaporates upon inspection, according to military records. The Marine Corps said that Dux served from 1975 to 1981 and that there is no indication he ever left the United States. His military medical file, according to those who saw it, said that on Jan. 22, 1978, he was referred for psychiatric evaluation for expressing “flighty and disconnected ideas.” Though a member of the reserves, which meant he was on active duty only a short time, he reportedly insisted that he was working for an intelligence agency.
A follow-up medical evaluation at a military psychiatric clinic in Long Beach on April 18 of that year found him normal, but seemed to scotch any further talk about his intelligence work, saying that his only possible intelligence work was being “cursorily” involved in gathering information about one individual.
Dux said the military ordered his record sabotaged to discredit him. The government did not know how much he knew about other covert operations, he said, so they placed information in his file to destroy his credibility.
In the interest of fairness, a slightly more sympathetic take on the controversy can be found here. We like the detail about the trophy receipt the best.
Sad news out of New Mexico this morning: Sonny Jim, a true legend of the 
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In doing a little research on the 
