A Nepalese cyclist in the midst of a nine-year, around-the-world ride hits Ghana. The roughest part of Lok Bandhu Karki’s epic journey so far? Getting jacked in Malaysia:
The journey has not been without difficulties. “Courage keeps me going,” he says of his worst experiences in a journey, which has also been characterised by robbery in Thailand, Malaysia and Sudan.
“When my money was stolen in port Kelang of Malaysia, I had to work in a butchery for six days to earn ferry charge from Batam Island to Sumatra Island of Indonesia,” he says.
Karki had some fellow travelers when he started in 2004, but he’s been going it alone for years now. And according to some Nepalese expats he’s encountered along the way, he’s got a bit of a huckster streak.
The latest issue of Agricultural Research, a monthly must-read ’round Microkhan headquarters, contains an interesting nugget about fire ant immigration patterns. A Floridian entomologist who specializes in evolutionary genetics has concluded that our national fire-ant nightmare started with as few as nine queens, all of whom touched down in Mobile, Alabama, during the Great Depression. It is generally assumed that these early invaders, who originated in South America, stowed away in the vast lumps of soil that old cargo ships used as ballast.
Our natural follow-up question to this report, of course, is “Why Mobile?” Turns out we’re not the only ones to wonder:
Perhaps we should ask not, Why Mobile?, but rather Why not New Orleans? or Pensacola? During the first half of the 20th century, New Orleans received more cargo from South America than did either Pensacola or Mobile. During the same period, New Orleans was swept by another exotic species, the Argentine ant, which became so abundant that it was colloquially known as the “New Orleans ant.” This virulent invader wiped out most of the native ants in the New Orleans area and may have prevented S. invicta and S. richteri from becoming established there. If so, then why not Pensacola, which was free of Argentine ants? Why did both fire-ant species first appear in Mobile and only in Mobile? Wilson speculates that S. richteri “preconditioned” the native ant community to ease the entry of S. invicta. In view of the superior competitiveness of S. invicta, it would hardly seem to have needed the help. We will never really understand why Mobile. Whatever charm the city holds for ants must simply be accepted, much like the southern hospitality on which Mobile prides itself.
We wonder whether the fire ants simply wanted to participate in the city’s unique form of Mardi Gras.
The sumo world is saddened by the passing of Larry Loyes Kukahiko Aweau, the man most responsible for the sport’s “Hawaiian invasion.” A judo black belt whose cousin was among the first Americans to wrestle in Japan, Aweau spent decades combing the 50th state in search of sumo talent. His greatest scouting find was an ex-basketball player named Chad Rowan—a man now better known to history as Akebono.
Aweau met the teenage Akebono at a funeral, and was immediately struck by boy’s size and athleticism. But despite the scout’s best efforts, Akebono decided to play basketball at Hawaii Pacific University instead. The classwork was a killer, though, and Akebono dropped out after just a year. He took a job at a flower nursery and fretted about the future:
As he lugged cinder blocks, he tried to think of an alternative to college if he as still to help take care of his parents and his brothers. To become a hotel manager in Waikiki, he would have to be able to speak Japanese. Uncle Larry [Aweau] had offered him that chance months ago, and he hadn’t forgotten it…”If you go up there,” Uncle Larry had once told him, “you’re going to get all the glory in Japan. With your mind, I think you can be a yokozuna—the greatest champion in sumo. You’ll never regret going. I know you’ve got everything in you to make it. You just concentrate, and learn from them.” It was a free ticket—they would take care of everything. If Chad went to Japan for a couple of years, at the very least he would learn the language. And what if Uncle Larry was right? Yokozuna. He didn’t know anything about sumo. But he didn’t know that much about football, either, and they wanted him for that at the University of Hawaii. Sumo couldn’t be that hard. Just push the other guy out of the ring.
Learn more about the relationship between Akebono and Aweau in the great Sumo East and West, a documentary about sumo’s increasingly international flavor.
Headed downtown to meet with our trusted rep and discuss that frightening concept known as The Future. So we’re gonna outro with the best track off The Beatnuts debut album. Like all songs by the pride of Corona, Queens, the lyrics are definitely not safe for work, so please do not play within earshot of sensitive souls.
Also, can anyone identify the piano sample in this cut? Probably one of the most infectious riffs we’ve ever heard. Alas, our CD of this album seems to have disappeared somewhere en route to Harlem, so we can’t consult the liner notes.
In response to yesterday’s post about the rough-and-toughMongol Derby, one of the race’s brave competitors wrote in to ask for Microkhan’s support. So let it be known that from this point forward, we’ll be pulling for 26-year-old Hannah Ritchie to a) survive the race with nary a broken bone or crushed pelvis, and b) to be the first rider to pull into Kharkhorin.
Follow Hannah’s pre-race preparations here, and maybe kick over a few quid to the charity she’ll be risking life and limb for.
As we walked across Little Senegal this morning, a throng of devout Muslim men got us thinking about Bangladesh. That may sound like a non sequitur, but our internal logic went something like this: Though most Islamic societies obviously feature male-dominated governments (note, for example, that all of Iran’s mullahs are male), Bangladesh’s two leadingpoliticians are female. Why is that?
The answer obviously has a lot to do with family connections, as both Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia are tied to political dynasties. So perhaps there’s not a great lesson to be learned here about Islamic political life. There is, however, a fascinating tale to be spun out of Bangladesh’s current attempts to encourage even more female political participation, using a system dreaded by so many Americans: quotas.
Bangladesh is already one of approximately 112 countries that use some sort of quota system to draw women into politics. Most of these quotas are mild in practice, often consisting of nothing more than mandates that a certain percentage of a political party’s candidates be female. But then there are countries like Bangladesh, which set aside a block of national parliamentary seats for females. And Bangladesh is now looking to increase that quota to 100 seats, out of a total of 330.
Such parliamentary quotas are a relatively new phenmenon, so the jury’s still out as to their effectiveness. A mountain of country-by-country case studies is available here; we were particularly struck by this balanced look (PDF) at Bangladesh’s experience, which concludes that the devil’s in the details:
Electoral and party history shows that, in the first election held in 1973, political parties used the reserved seats as the means to elect women. The quota was treated as the sole avenue for women’s entry into the legislature and the general seats as the monopoly of male politicians. This approach to reserved seats left electoral politics open to male domination and control, with women left to contest the reserved seats. Parties demonstrated no political commitment to share general seats with women.
While quotas ensure that a critical mass of women are elected, the quota moves beyond numbers and involves an expectation among those whose entry was facilitated by the quota to intervene in policy issues. By and large, women in Bangladesh have not served as advocates of women’s rights. The system by which women are elected into politics limits their possibility to become political actors in their own right, as well as their ability to function as advocates for women’s issues. Women who seek to introduce a gender perspective into politics risk their own position in the political establishment, and if a woman is elected through special measures she is also not seen as a full member of parliament.
In other words, the creation of special female-only seats was seen as diminishing those seats’ importance. Nations that view quotas as their only means of correcting a political gender imbalance must thus plan carefully, or risk creating nothing more than window dressing.
Meanwhile, as Bangladesh expands its quota system, conservatives in the Solomon Islands are putting the kibosh on a similar plan.
Granted, in the clip above, the bloke on the right-hand tree gets smoked. But cut him some slack—when this video was shot, Guy German was 53 years old, with nothing else to prove in the world of timbersports. He is, after all, widely recognized as the greatest speed climber in history. And he’s still competing today, having just lost in the quarterfinals at the Aflac Outdoor Games.
The trick to his longevity, German says, isn’t necessarily prime physical fitness, but technological innovation—especially gear changes that reduce weight and enhance grip
[Spikes] were his first and most widely accepted innovation, but certainly not his last. German went to work making the climbing load lighter, exchanging boots for wrestling shoes, steel for aluminum, metal for cloth, and the list goes on.
“Every pound you carry up is more energy you expend and less you can spring,” he said. “I think I’ve cut out around five pounds through the years.”
Want to become the next Guy German? We heartily recommend that, if you’re a novice, you begin with spur climbing and work your way toward the tricky stuff.
The Air Force is currently combing the Utah Test & Training Range in search of a pilot whose F-16 crashed late last night. Even if the pilot managed to safely eject from the doomed aircraft, though, he could be tough to locate. As we previously noted, the UTTR is bigger than some states:
If you ever find yourself at the intersections of Skull Valley and Stark roads in western Utah, take a long peek out the car window. See that barren nothingness that extends as far as the eye can see? That’s paradise for budding Air Force jocks: The Utah Test & Training Range, where the munitions of tomorrow are exploding today. The range measures over 2,600 square miles, making it a fair bit larger than both Rhode Island and Delaware. The military can get away with exploding a 10 kiloton bomb here without having anyone notice.
Contrary to popular belief, F-16 pilots can eject at extremely low altitude and still survive the ordeal, thanks to the hardiness of their seats. Check out this harrowing vid, and thank your lucky stars you’re in a safer line of work.
The 1,000-kilometer Mongol Derby kicks off on August 22nd. Twenty-six equestrians are currently confirmed for the race, which runs between Delgerhaan (home to this awesome Genghis Khan statue) and Kharkhorin. More riders are expected to join the fray as the start date nears, but only those hardy enough to stomach the event’s heavy warning that survival is by no means guaranteed. Our favorite word of caution:
The nature of the Mongol Derby means that if you do fall off, the response time of the medical back up is going to depend on where you are and if you have been able to activate your emergency beacon. And if you are seriously injured you may be hundreds of miles from the nearest hospital.
In other words: You fall? You die.
Follow a Mongol Derby competitor’s blog here. Want to join the fun yourself? Hope you have deep pockets—the entry fee alone is $4,500.
Last night we started reading Harp of Burma, a book often touted as Japan’s post-World War II version of All Quiet on the Western Front. It provides a soldier’s eye view of Lieut. Gen. Renya Mutaguchi‘s ill-fated campaign in Burma, which ended up turning into one giant suicide mission as the war turned against the Imperial Japanese Army. We’re only a few pages in, but already we’re hooked—surprised it took us this long to discover such an obvious classic.
Delving into the psyche of WWII-era Japanese foot soldiers got us thinking about how difficult it is to understand the mindset of humans raised in sharply different circumstances than our own. In many ways, this is the great challenge of our times—in a world made small by cheap travel and information technology, how do we reconcile the sharp differences between products of disparate cultures, even when our fundamental similarities far outnumber the schisms? That question’s certainly been on a lot of minds in light of Iran’s post-election tumult—the protests’ endgame is tough for us Westerners to forecast in part because we can’t quite process how theocracy and democracy can ever co-exist. But in a society that simultaneously embraces individual freedom and abhors Western decadence, those two strains of government needn’t be mutually exclusive.
Fortunately, the best writers tackle the cultural-empathy problem via the art of observation. Though we’ve traveled extensively in Japan, for example, we probably learned more about the nation’s core values by reading Haruki Murakami’s Underground than we ever gleaned riding the bullet train. Unlike Murakami’s typically labyrinthine novels, Underground is a straightforward affair—a collection of interviews with people who survived the 1995 sarin gas attacks in the Tokyo subway. One passage, in particular, has haunted us for years, chiefly because it so neatly encapsulates something very profound about Japanese society. The snippet comes from an interview with a subway station attendant named Toshiaki Toyoda, who encountered the poison gas with several co-workers. Before escaping to the surface, though, he stopped by the bathroom:
I went to wash my face. Nose running, eyes watering, not a pretty sight. Have to make myself a bit more presentable, I thought. I stripped off my jacket and washed my face in the sink. I always take off my uniform when I was so as not to get it wet. Sheer habit. Only later did I find out that taking my uniform off was a good thing, because it was soaked with sarin. Same goes for washing my face.
(Our bolding.) Think about this moment for a second—having been gassed, and having seen two of his co-workers taken away on stretchers, Toyoda’s first impulse is not to flee the subway system, but rather to make sure that he doesn’t look like a slob. And in doing his duty, he inadvertently saves his own life.
We find the intrinsic Japanese-ness of this tale difficult to put into words, since it involves such contradictory feelings. While we admire Toyoda’s dedication, we can’t help but be puzzled by his priorities in the midst of an obviously lethal crisis. Yet for Toyoda, of course, his actions could not have been more natural. Understanding that mindset—if not necessarily agreeing with it—has changed the way we look at Japan. And it will certainly change the way we process Harp of Burma in the coming days.
Rick Yelton, editor-in-chief of The Concrete Producer, has obviously been feeling nostalgic of late, a sentiment spurred by his discovery of an old box of photos. The picture above, he informs us, is of his graduating class from a 1987 Master Builders conference. In the immortal words of that radio DJ from This is Spinal Tap, Yelton considers these ex-colleagues to be residing in the “Where Are They Now?” file.
But he’d like to change that, and he’s calling on Joe Q. Public to aid him in his quest. And since needle-in-a-haystack research is one of our favorite pastimes, Microkhan would like to throw his full force and weight behind Yelton’s endeavor. Check out his appeal and examine the photo closely—might your father be number fifteen? Or maybe number six?
We’re on a soul-crushing Wired deadline for the day’s remainder, so we’re gonna outro with a little vintage Tony Allen. Soak it in, and catch you again tomorrow morning.
“Being in that situation made me more humble. I thought there was no way I could ever be off point, and I finally felt what it was to be stifled. I was still studying music theory and trying to make songs though. I didn’t care if she was trying to stab me or throw my drum machine through the window… I wouldn’t have cared if the house was burning down. And if you’re working that hard up against something, as soon as the pressure is gone, you’re jumping on clouds like Goku. Your power level’s just hella high, you feel me?”—Del the Funky Homosapien, explaining how the end of a traumatic romantic relationship inspired him to finally end an eight-year solo hiatus.
Just as we’d hoped, The Economist decided to memorialize the late Gabonese president Omar Bongo in its current issue. And as befits an old-school strongman who appeared to care not a whit for his people’s welfare, the obituary is fairly damning—though, granted, not as gloves-off as the magazine’s posthumous takedown of Prabhakaran. The choicest bit, which follows a sentence mentioning that Bongo—president of a nation where 70 percent of the population lives in poverty—had upwards of $130 million stashed in Citibank accounts:
The suggestion of fiddling public finances flummoxed and infuriated him. Corruption, he once explained to a reporter, was not an African word. No more was nepotism: he simply looked after his family, supplying them with villas in Nice as well as the ministries of defence and foreign affairs. When French judges in 2009 froze nine of his 70 bank accounts, he was outraged. An attack on him was obviously an attempt to destabilise his country. He was equally indignant when in 2004, after a “Miss Humanity” pageant was held in Libreville, Miss Peru charged him with sexual harassment for summoning her to the palace and, he hoped, to his nifty behind-the-panelling bed. If something was in Gabon, by nature or chance, he évidemment had first dibs on it.
A contemporary account of the Miss Peru drama can be read here. The whole “Miss Humanity” pageant appears to have been a ruse.
Color us surprised to learn that Nigeria recently overtook the United States as the world’s second-leading producer of movies, behind only India. True, the vast majority of Nollywood’s “major productions” are straight-to-video affairs, but that’s to be expected in a nation where cheap DVD players reign and movie theaters are scarce.
Yet the nature of Nollywood’s film distribution makes the industry far more precarious than its American counterpart. Because when all of your revenue comes from video sales, pirates can exact an awful toll—especially on Nollywood subsets such as the Yoruba-language sector:
Chairman of Yoruba Video Film Producers and Marketers Association of Nigeria (YOVIFPMAN), Alhaji Saheed Ishola Ayedun, has appealed to the Minister of Information and Communications, Professor Dora Akunyili, to save the Yoruba film industry from total extinction as it suffers a huge loss due to piracy.
He said the DVDs produced at Alaba International Market, which have about 14 different Yoruba films in one jacket are fake and the association has formally written to the Censors Board and the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC), for action.
According to him, “we have written to the NCC and the Censors Board on this issue. We have held series of meetings with the two bodies but their response is not as fast as we expect because we are really suffering from piracy. Most of our members take facilities from banks to produce their jobs and these Alaba people are killing us, destroying the future of our business and further impoverishing our artistes.”
Lamenting the losses recorded by his members to piracy, he said, “the pirates put between six and 20 different Yoruba films in a single DVD and sell at a highly ridiculous price. You can imagine a movie that was released on Monday would have been pirated and put into circulation by pirates on Tuesday. We are indeed suffering and something must be done urgently before it develops into an inter-tribal war. How can these people come here, make money from our land and still kill our business? We will never allow this to happen.”
Not helping matters? The fact a past president of the YOVIFPMAN was once caught pirating films himself.
In keeping with last week’sBad Movie Friday theme, we’re gonna once again focus on the thespian debut of a notorious athlete. In this case, our critical eye turns toward Brian Bosworth, the ex-Sooner star turned Bo Jackson doormat. Shortly after his pro football career came to an embarrassing end, Bosworth shifted gears and starred in the 1991 action vehicle Stone Cold, the first scene of which is posted above. To his credit, Bosworth is…not terrible, and certainly a good deal more of a natural in front of the camera than Double Team‘s Dennis Rodman. And has Lance Henriksen ever been anything less than scene-stealing when given a juicy bad-guy role? (Here he plays the wonderfully named “Chains Cooper,” leader of a white-supremacist biker gang in Mississippi.) But as you might have guessed, Stone Cold isn’t exactly classic cinema. As the Washington Post so neatly summed things up:
Most of “Stone Cold” is plain silly, regurgitated biker-film cliches underscored with awful hard rock cliches. To its minimal credit, things get wackily out of hand in the last 15 minutes, when the Brotherhood stages a full-scale assault on the Mississippi State Capitol. At this point the action becomes so preposterous that you’ll feel less cheated than you would otherwise, but “Stone Cold” is ultimately most likely to provoke another 22-year hiatus in major-studio biker-action films.
Terrible call on that prophecy, though. Because, for better or worse, biker films live.
Among the many ghostlymemories conjured up by Iran’s current tumult, the unsolved murder of Paul Klebnikov is one of the most unexpected. After all, Klebnikov was known primarily for his investigative journalism in Russia, where he exposed myriad tales of corruption, thuggery, and outright theft. Yet The Lede recently reminded us of Klebnikov’s fine work in Iran, where he courageously delved into the family finances of the nation’s religious leaders. One of his key targets was Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, now one of the ongoing drama’s key players. What Klebnikov discovered certainly made him persona non grata in Tehran’s corridors of power:
The 1979 revolution transformed the Rafsanjani clan into commercial pashas. One brother headed the country’s largest copper mine; another took control of the state-owned TV network; a brother-in-law became governor of Kerman province, while a cousin runs an outfit that dominates Iran’s $400 million pistachio export business; a nephew and one of Rafsanjani’s sons took key positions in the Ministry of Oil; another son heads the Tehran Metro construction project (an estimated $700 million spent so far). Today, operating through various foundations and front companies, the family is also believed to control one of Iran’s biggest oil engineering companies, a plant assembling Daewoo automobiles, and Iran’s best private airline.
Revisiting Klebnikov’s “Millionaire Mullahs” piece made us wonder about the state of the investigation into his assassination. Alas, the news is not good—last year, Russia’s permitted the prosecutors to suspend the case indefinitely, meaning that it’s virtually guaranteed that no one will ever face justice for the crime.
But Klebnikov’s friends haven’t given up. And we’re encouraged by the fact that the effort is being led by the great Richard Behar, author of perhaps the best investigative business story ever written—and not just because it describes the Sultan of Brunei’s eldest son as someone “who can’t walk and chew gum.”
While delving into the current doings in the Powerboat Superleague, we came across this tidbit from the Peoria Journal Star. Apparently the league won’t let you race unless you undergo “capsule training” every two years. This process entails being sealed up in a boat cockpit which is then flipped upside down in a pool. If you can’t escape the predicament, you probably shouldn’t be zooming across a lake at 130 miles per hour.
Yet the stakes in such capsule training are relatively low compared to those in the Air Force’s Eisenhower-era version of the drill. Back then, “capsule training” referred to trials conducted in this not-so-comfy “couch”. And those trials were truly for all the primate glory marbles:
At Holloman Air Force Base, N.M., Air Force researchers trained chimpanzees to push levers in response to timed and colored lights in order to approximate human behavior in spaceflight. The training couch on display contains two levers and a selection of lights. Holloman’s group of six chimps underwent 29 training sessions before one chimp was selected for the first Mercury primate test flight.
Your winner here and (in full-color awesomeness) here. According to NASA’s official history, Ham the Chimp suffered dehydration and exhaustion while zooming along at approximately 5,900 miles per hour, but was otherwise none the worse for wear. How we wish they’d let him try his hand at powerboating after his astro-career was through.
We honestly wonder what Sandi Saraya‘s four kids think when they encounter video evidence of mom’s eponymous ’80s band. Our best guess is that they feel an almost indescribable mix of embarrassment and pride. Microkhan, on the other hand, can only chuckle at Saraya’s oversized hair, rote guitar licks, and tragically trite lyrics (“Take my heart/Take my soul/Love has taken its toll”). Be forewarned: The video for “Back to the Bullet” is not much better, although we’re mightily impressed by the keyboardists six-synth array (as well as Ms. Saraya’s shameless rocking of a pirate shirt).
We’ve always been puzzled by the fact that the two main holdouts against international whaling laws are Japan and Norway—nations from opposite ends of the globe, with no apparent shared culture or history. How did these two countries form such a strong alliance in favor of the continued slaughter of aquatic mammals?
The stock explanation is that it’s merely a matter of economics—the Japanese ostensibly enjoy consuming whale meat, and Norway has identified that demand as a big source of revenue. But that theory doesn’t really hold water when you look at the numbers: Though growing in recent years, Japanese whale-meat consumption remains relatively trifling. (Greenpeace figures here (PDF); Japanese government figures here.) Norway is a wealthy country, buoyed by its vast oil deposits, and would surely suffer little bottom-line harm were its whaling industry to disappear.
But as it turns out, there’s a 19th-century connection between the two nations’ whaling industry’s that’s seldom brought to light—and which may well explain why Japan and Norway find common ground on this issue. In 1897, a Japanese scientist named Oka Juro visited Norway to learn about a game-changing technological innovation: Svend Foyn‘s grenade harpoon. The device was more challenging to master than Juro anticipated, so when he returned to Japan the following year, he did so in the company of several Norwegian whaling experts. And those experts went on to become the “gunners” for the first-ever Japanese commercial whaling company. From that point forward, Norwegians were in high demand in Japan, and many were given special immigration status so that they could prowl the Pacific in search of whales. And so a strange bond was created between two very different nations, by virtue of their shared, somewhat ghoulish devotion to a certain kind of hunting.
Plenty more on the Japan-Norway whaling relationship here. And those hundreds of whales that Japan now kills annually in the name of scientific research? This is where the bulk of ’em end up. We get the feeling that the whales don’t feel like saying “You’re welcome” when this organization expresses its gratitude.
The peaceful resolution of a Mexican kidnapping saga brings to mind a strange bit of American religious history: The Mormons’ 19th-century trek south of the border to establish a series of colonies. Those colonies were far more numerous before Pancho Villa came on the scene, but some hardy souls stuck out the conflict (PDF). Among those Mormons who stayed the Mexican course? A family by the name of Romney.
We’re taking the rest of the day to hit the creative reset button—that is, catch up on a zillion-and-one e-mails, and start collating all of the project ideas that piled up while we were banging out the Now the Hell Will Start screenplay. So we’ll outro with this gem from the great African Music Machine, one of so many great ’70s bands to record at Louisiana’s Sound City Studios. More tracks via the band’s (unofficial?) MySpace page. For the record, only one member of the group was actually African—frontman Louis Villery was apparently Tunisian.
Given our admitted lack of expertise in contemporary Iranian affairs, we’ll henceforth do our best to leave the running protest commentary to far more qualified folks. But since we’re obviously somewhat transfixed by the Iranian opposition’s humble request for electoral fairplay, we couldn’t help but spend much of the morning delving into the nation’s history. Let’s face it, few of us know much about Iran before 1953, the year that the U.S. helped reinstall the Shah.
Of particular note is this hyperbolic Spectator clip from 1889, which was syndicated in The New York Times. Much of the ostensibly eyewitness account of Iran is typical of the era, complete with the requisite revulsion at “Mohammedanism” and an embarrassingly ethnocentric view of ordinary citizens. But there are nuggets of wisdom amidst the dreck; Microkhan was particularly struck by this passage about the Shah, who is described as being:
…powerless for good or for a single reform so long as the Mujitahids, the priestly order in Persia, with their enormous influence over a superstitious people, dread and dislike “infidel” and Western innovations likely to weaken their own power.
Of course, that rather perceptive passage is followed by this:
The great mass of the people are as apathetic in political matters as they are fanatical in religion.
As of right this moment, it seems nothing could be further from the truth.
The most gargantuan machines on Earth usually operate far outside the public eye, in remote corners of the globe where the substances that make modern life possible are extracted from the ground. We’ve previously posted about one such device, an abandoned component of a German coal-mining operation. Today we’d like to focus on another plus-sized metal marvel: The locomotives that haul Western Australian coal from Newman to Nelson Point:
The 426-kilometre railway line from Newman to Nelson Point is one of Australia’s longest privately-owned railways. It services the mines – with spur lines to Mt Whaleback, Orebodies 18, 23, 25 and 29, Jimblebar, Yandi and Area C – with the longest and heaviest trains in the world.
A typical train will have six, 6,000 horsepower locomotives pulling more than 26,000 tonnes of ore. Most trains are 208 cars, each carrying approximately 125 tonnes of ore.The trains are up to 3.75 kilometres long and the journey from Newman to Port Hedland takes approximately eight hours.
Once you finish being wowed by the sheer scale of the system, however, you start to realize why such projects complicate our move toward a lower-carbon future. So many billions of dollars have been invested in the coal-mining infrastructure, and entire regions—even nations—are dependent on the continued extraction of ore. If we’re truly intent on decreasing our coal consumption, what is to become of these systems? Do we leave them to decay into ghosts? Or can they be repurposed for cleaner ends? And how do you convince the politically mighty likes of BHP Billiton to go along with whatever the plan may be?
A Greenville man and woman are facing drug charges after police said they stopped a vehicle with an active methamphetamine lab inside it at North Pleasantburg Drive and Wade Hampton Boulevard.
The arrests occurred after the two were stopped at 10:20 p.m. in a Ford Taurus about half a mile from Bob Jones University, a police incident report said.
The officer said he was given verbal consent from the driver to search the car and found items commonly used to manufacture methamphetamine, the report and warrants said.
Also in the car was 2.8 grams of methamphetamine and a Mountain Dew bottle with meth actively being cooked in the trunk of the vehicle, warrants said.
Our emphasis. We also can’t help chortle at the fact this couple was nabbed so close to BJU, where clean living is considered sacred. Perhaps they were merely getting geeked up for this campus casting call.
Granted, this was a pretty heavy day here at Microkhan—a bummer vibe perhaps not helped by our rare stab at outright earnestness. So let us make it up to you by ratcheting up the zany for our Bloomsday outro: Senor Coconut’s acid-merengue remix of Kraftwerk’s “Tour de France.” The source material is here, if you dare to compare. If nothing else, we’re wagering that Senor Coconut certainly wears far more tight-fitting polyester than the boys from Düsseldorf.
Our ongoing First Contact series continues with a look at the initial encounter between the Aztecs and the Spanish. Rather than rehashing the conquistadors’ standard accounts of Tenochtitlan‘s grandeur and the horrors of human sacrifice, we thought we’d focus on the Aztecs’ point of view—specifically their mistaken belief that Hernando Cortes and his soldiers were pale-skinned gods.
Despite its obvious civic and scientific achievements, Aztec civilization was hamstrung by its devotion to magic. The royal court spent an inordinate amount of time on divination, and listened far too closely to the advice of priests who were little more than charlatans. And so when a pair of Aztec messengers returned from Cortes’s ship to report on the visitors technology, they couldn’t help but describe what they’d seen as nothing short of supernatural:
[The king] was terrified to learn how the cannon roared, how its noise resounded, how it caused one [messenger] to faint and grow deaf. The messengers told him: “A thing like a ball of stone comes out of its entrails: it comes out shooting sparks and raining fire. The smoke that comes out with it has a pestilent odor, like that of rotten mud. This odor penetrates even to the brain and causes the greatest discomfort. If the cannon is aimed against a mountain, the mountain splits and cracks open. If it is aimed against a tree, it shatters the tree into splinters. This is a most unnatural sight, as if the tree had exploded from within.”
The messengers also said: “Their trappings and arms are all made of iron. They dress in iron and wear iron casques on their heads. Their swords are iron; their bows are iron; their shields are iron; their spears are iron. Their deer carry them on their backs wherever they wish to go. These deer, our lord, are as tall as the roof of a house.
“The strangers’ bodies are completely covered, so that only their faces can be seen. Their skin is white, as if it were made of lime. They have yellow hair, though some of them have black. Their beards are long and yellow, and their moustaches are also yellow. Their hair is curly, with very fine strands.
“As for their food, it is like human food. It is large and white, and not heavy. It is something like straw, but with the taste of a cornstalk, of the pith of a cornstalk. It is a little sweet, as if it were flavored with honey; it tastes of honey, it is sweet- tasting food.
Their dogs are enormous, with flat ears and long, dangling tongues. The color of their eyes is a burning yellow; their eyes flash fire and shoot off sparks. Their bellies are hollow, their flanks long and narrow. They are tireless and very powerful. They bound here and there panting, with their tongues hanging out. And they are spotted like an ocelot.
When Motecuhzoma heard this report, he was filled with terror. It was as if his heart had fainted, as if it had shriveled. It was as if he were conquered by despair.
The Spanish, of course, felt no such despair upon seeing the great cities that the Aztecs had constructed. Even when most wowed by the Aztecs’ ingenuity and craftsmanship, they never once thought they had stumbled upon a divine people. And that attitude, combined with the fear their strangeness struck within Motecuhzoma, goes a long way toward explaining why Cortes was able to conquer Mexico with such a tiny coterie of men and arms.
A major East Coast port finally wakes up to the environmental benefits of cold ironing. Granted, running an idle ship off shore-side electricity is pretty energy intensive. But it pails in comparison to letting the ship’s diesel engines keep on humming:
Broward County Commissioner Kristin D. Jacobs said that by shutting down the engines and using electric shore-side power on the Oasis-class ships, which will be the two largest cruise ships in the world, each ship will experience annual reductions of 40.9 percent less CO2 emissions, 97.7 percent less nitrogen oxide emissions, 95.2 percent less sulfur dioxide emissions, and 88.1 percent less particulate matter.
We tend to blog best when we’re focused on relative esoterica like competitive eating, bootleg cigarettes, and the films of Klaus Kinski. But as noted in Microkhan’s mission statement, we—okay, I—reserve the right to tackle more mainstream topics when the situation warrants. And the ongoing tumult in Iran is just such an occasion.
I can’t shake the Iran story because the country is so integral to one of my formative memories: The 1979-80 hostage crisis at the American embassy in Tehran. I was five years old at the time, and had obviously never heard of Iran before. But when I saw terrifying newspaper photographs like the one above, I could only conclude that the nation was a sinister place, as dark and foreboding as fairy-tale forests. And when first impressions are made in a child’s mind, they can be tough to shake.
Over the years, of course, I’ve slowly come to discover the complexities and contradictions of Iran—the passion for science amidst theocracy, the genuine interest in democratic institutions despite the Supreme Leader’s political omnipotence, the flourishing arts amidst a climate of intellectual repression. But somewhere in the back of my mind, the five-year-old still exists. And he still can’t help but view Iran as the epitome of all that’s frightening about the world.
And so to see the streets of Tehran flooded with people demanding a most basic right—that their leaders live up to a sacred promise—has been a somewhat overwhelming emotional experience for me—even more so than watching the Berlin Wall crumble. And that’s despite the fact that the endgame is still far away, and no one—absolutely no one—can say for certain what Iran will look like a week hence. [Read more →]
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We’ve always been puzzled by the fact that the two main holdouts against international whaling laws are Japan and Norway—nations from opposite ends of the globe, with no apparent shared culture or history. How did these two countries form such a strong alliance in favor of the continued slaughter of aquatic mammals?
Given our admitted lack of expertise in contemporary Iranian affairs, we’ll henceforth do our best to leave the running protest commentary to far more qualified folks. But since we’re obviously 
