Microkhan by Brendan I. Koerner

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The One Thing You Can’t Fix

June 5th, 2009

We’ve been so wrapped up with parenting and screenplaying these last two weeks, we’ve had scant time to ponder the tragic demise of former South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun. As longtime Microkhan readers know, suicide is one of our great topics of interest. And so we were struck by the means with which Roh chose to take his own life—by leaping from a cliff near his ancestral village. This is an extremely rare method of suicide, most likely due to the natural human fear of heights. It is also one that leaves the jumper with a few terrifying seconds to contemplate the wisdom of their decision. And for whatever reason, people who survive such suicide attempts tend to report that they changed their minds in midair. A classic 2003 New Yorker piece, about the suicide problem on the Golden Gate Bridge, contains the most haunting passages on the subject we’ve ever read:

Ken Baldwin was twenty-eight and severely depressed on the August day in 1985 when he told his wife not to expect him home till late. “I wanted to disappear,” he said. “So the Golden Gate was the spot. I’d heard that the water just sweeps you under.” On the bridge, Baldwin counted to ten and stayed frozen. He counted to ten again, then vaulted over. “I still see my hands coming off the railing,” he said. As he crossed the chord in flight, Baldwin recalls, “I instantly realized that everything in my life that I’d thought was unfixable was totally fixable—except for having just jumped.”

We’re curious about this reaction’s relationship to the same neurochemical process that causes near-death experiences. The midair change-of-heart strikes us as a way for the body to keep struggling for life, unaware that virtually nothing can be done once the leap has been taken. Along those same lines, we suspect that NDEs help calm a victim of severe trauma, and thus increase their odds of surviving the awful experience. (For the record, the main character in Now the Hell Will Start experienced an NDE after being shot in the chest at point-blank range.)

All of which leads to a sci-fi question: Might we someday be able to stimulate Baldwin’s life-altering sensation in a safe (possibly pharmaceutical) manner? If so, that could be a mighty effective treatment for the gravest forms of depression.

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Sprinting to the Finish

June 4th, 2009


We’ve literally got less than 24 hours ’til the Now the Hell Will Start screenplay draft is due, so once again, no time for deep afternoon thoughts. Instead, take a mental load off and enjoy an unfortunately attired Debbie Harry doing “Call Me” with a bunch of super-funky Muppets. The extraordinarily brief, theremin-like synth solo at the 1:35 mark will haunt your dreams.

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“Survivor Dosimetry”

June 4th, 2009

We could easily spend the rest of the year—and probably a fair chunk of 2010—blogging exclusively about Cold War nuclear testing. But since doing so would certainly lead to a mass exodus of readers, we’ll spare you the endless geek out. For now, content yourself with this short-yet-fascinating report (PDF) on the Nevada Test Site‘s “Japanese Village,” built in 1956 to help researchers understand why some people managed to survive Hiroshima’s radioactive fallout. The village’s construction was part of the 37-year run of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission, whose mammoth files we’d someday love to peruse. The ersatz settlement was not blasted with an actual atomic test, but rather dosed with radiation created by a BREN Tower.

Notes on the village’s current condition can be found here, though there are crude drawings in place of photographs; visitors are not allowed to bring cameras into the Nevada Test Site.

(via the truly great things magazine)

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Man’s True Best Friend?

June 4th, 2009

landmineratsOne of Microkhan’s most faithful correspondents wrote in yesterday regarding our recent Taiwanese landmines post. Our piece quoted from a report on Mozambique’s mine removal program, which suggested that dogs were doing much of the detection. But our reader, who obviously knows Mozambique better than the Average Joe, points out that giant pouched rats are sharing much of the detection burden. (Video here.) And should you be so inclined, you can even pony up to adopt one of the heroic critters.

This revelation got us thinking about the historic cost-benefit tally for the genus Rattus. Granted, they’re notorious disease spreaders—though, as we’ve previously explored, there’s an outside chance they may have gotten a bum rap on that whole Black Death thing. But you’ve got to balance the bubonic plague against the vermin’s role in medical research—and, back in the ol’ days of King Coal, their role in saving countless miners’ lives. From the October 19, 1889 edition of The New York Times, in which the run-up to a Pennsylvania mine disaster is recounted (PDF):

Suspicions were aroused a few days before the accident occurred by the queer conduct of the mine rats. They were very numerous in the Archibald Mine, and for several days precious to the falling of the roof ther were seen quitting the place in swarms. This the old miners considered a bad omen, because they had learned from experience and tradition that when rats leave a mine, it is a certain sign that an unusual accident is about to occur.

The belief in this particular notion is quite general throughout the coal fields, and repulsive as the great, fierce mine rat is to the miner, he likes to see it at ease in the dismal depths where death is of such frequent occurence. There is good reason for associating the disappearance of the rat from a colliery with an impending disaster. The rat is a sensitive thing; it makes its resting place in the nooks and crannies of the mine, and it feels the first slow movements of the crumbling rocks as they begin to squeeze and settle and shape themselves for the disaster which culminates in the fall of roof.He is dazed by the grinding motion of the rock, he undoubtedly thinks they have suddenly become imbued with life, and he flees with his fellows, panic-stricken from the place.

A prime case of one species’ selfishness benefitting another. And yet we still abhor the rat, primarily due to a childhood trauma involving a trash can. We’ll leave the rest up to your imagination.

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A Ray of Sumo Sunshine

June 4th, 2009


These are somewhat dark days for sumo, with a celebrated trainer about to serve six years in prison for the bizarrely violent hazing death of one of his pupils. (It involved beer bottles, metal bats, and rubber hoses.) And the sport’s still reeling from a drug scandal, albeit one that would cause little outrage in virtually any other country.

Riding to the rescue, though, is Mongolian-born up-and-comer Harumafuji, who formerly grappled under the name Ama. The 25-year-old just won his first Emperor’s Cup, and has his sights set on becoming a yokozuna (“grand champion”). If and when he accomplishes that admirable feat, he’ll join a growing pantheon of Mongolian-bred sumo stars; sons of the Land of the Khans have become to sumo what Dominicans are to baseball (i.e. dominant).

There are plenty more video highlights from the Emperor’s Cup at Chuchai’s BARUTO Mania, an English-language blog dedicated to the flesh-undulating splendors of sumo.

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Conan the Philosopher

June 3rd, 2009


Jammin’ on the Now the Hell Will Start screenplay ’til quitting time, so we’re gonna leave you with an invaluable bit of barbarian wisdom. To be perfectly honest, we sorta find ourselves more in agreement with the nature-loving warrior who speaks first, and is promptly shouted down by the master. We’re just not that into hearing the lamentations of women, though we do enjoy seeing our enemies turn tail.

Oliver Stone wrote this screenplay amidst an astonishing creative run that also included Midnight Express and Scarface. Mixed in, however, was a flick called The Hand, starring Michael Caine in full “I need to pay the mortgage” mode. We’ve never seen it, but the tagline doesn’t seem too promising: “It lives. It crawls. And suddenly, it kills.”

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Esperanto of an Earlier Age

June 3rd, 2009

In our all-too-fleeting free time, we’ve been researching the development of Nigerian Pidgin (primarily so we can better understand the comedic stylings of Basketmouth). This exploration recently led us to another mash-up language: Solomon Islands Pijin, which shares some English influence but not much else with its Nigerian cousin. According to a leading Pijin scholar, the language grew out of something called Beach-la-mar, an archaic 18th-century trade language used in the South Pacific. It’s name stems from a a mispronunciation of a type of edible marine invertebrate, and it was developed due to some callous labor practices—specifically the transportation of indentured servants from island to island, depending on crop profitability.

Check out the vocab list that linguist William Churchill compiled in 1911, right before the language disappeared altogether. We never cease being amazed by our species ability to develop lingua francas on the fly. That talent probably goes a long way to explaining why we’re not in a Planet of the Apes situation, actually.

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Duplin County Blues

June 3rd, 2009

moonshine
We were grateful to come across this tale not only due to its sordidness, but also because it answered a long-standing question we’ve had: What’s the going rate for a serving of moonshine nowadays?:

A Duplin County couple is facing multiple charges after a shocking discovery at their home daycare business.

Authorities confiscated a stash of guns, ammo, gallons of alcohol, marijuana, and moonshine early Saturday morning from Johnnie and Judy Wilson’s home business.

“People have a right to live in their residence and operate a business, but to have these types of items in their residence with children around is very disturbing,” said ALE agent Kenneth Simma.

Investigators say the Wilson’s were not only holding a daycare inside their home, but were also selling illegal alcohol like moonshine for as much as $3 an ounce.

Either the Wilsons’ clients weren’t too good at math, or North Carolina has some outrageous sin taxes about which we’re unaware. Because $3 per ounce is a complete ripoff, considering that an ounce of Jack Daniels goes for about $1 at retail. And we’re assuming the daycare rotgut is far inferior to Lynchburg, Tennessee’s favorite caramel-colored mindbender.

Also a possibility: The local TV news station botched the reporting, or simply bought the cops’ figure hook, line, and sinker.

(Image via Old Pictures)

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A Nation of Homebodies

June 3rd, 2009

homesweethomeYesterday we came across an alarming factoid: Only 30 percent of our fellow Americans hold a passport. That strikes us as absurdly low, especially now that all travel to Mexico and Canada will require the precious document. And while one could argue that the expense of international travel is a factor in our exceptionally low passport rate, we suspect that a combination of laziness and lack of curiosity are the real culprits. We are, alas, not a nation of travelers—the anti-Australia, basically. And Microkhan can’t help but think this fact bodes ill. (For comparison’s sake, 54 percent of Canadians hold passports, and the rates in most EU countries are well north of 70 percent—though, granted, the continent’s relatively small size has to be taken into account in the latter case.)

Thinking about our passport malaise got us thinking about a related issue: Domestic mobility. If we’re shy about going abroad, we wondered, are we also reticent when it comes to moving too far away from our usual surroundings? To our great surprise, the Census survey on historical geographical mobility revealed that we’re becoming increasingly anchored to our current coordinates. In 1947-48, the first period in which mobility was measured, 6.4 percent of Americans moved to a different county, and 3.1 percent moved to a different state. Sixty years later, the respective figures were 3.7 percent and 1.6 percent.

What gives? Home ownership rates are doubtless the prime factor. And therein lies a downside of the whole “ownership society” program. There’s something to be said for having the ability to pull up stakes for better opportunities elsewhere. In fact, as a native of the Golden West, our home state (California) could not have existed without such mobility.

But is there something else at work here, too? Has the homogenization of the American landscape disincented folks from moving (since they figure one place is surely much like another)? And why haven’t The Tubes enabled people to work from where they want, at least in more significant numbers?

Of course, we’re one to talk. Our job is about as mobile as they come, yet we’ve been headquartered on the same miniscule, overcrowded, garbage-strewn island for a decade now. And the farthest we’ve roamed so far in 2009 was up to Lake Placid for a day. So, yes, Microkhan is apparently part of the problem.

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Shove to Shovel

June 2nd, 2009


We know you’re sick of hearing this excuse, but we’re seriously slammed on the screenplay today; hoping to get a complete rough draft done by end-of-day Friday, so the weekend can be all about Microkhan Jr. So we’re gonna be lazy right this second and just post a great video of yore—the public-access-style promo for the quasi-gothic gangster anthem “Tried by 12.” If Sergio Leone had been fixated on East Flatbush instead of the Wild West—and had been born a few decades later—this tune would certainly have appeared in his violent oeuvre.

We were actually latecomers to this song, as we first discovered it via Funkstörung’s remix. It’s stuck with us ever since, especially the line about flowers and prison commissaries. Such sinister yet unassailable logic contained throughout.

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Elbow Grease and Lots of Kevlar

June 2nd, 2009

taiwanlandminesWe’re a sucker for unintentionally wry headlines, so we were delighted to come across this gem last night: “Demining efforts to make Taiwan’s Kinmen island more tourist-friendly.” Why, yes, that seems quite logical—few tourists are fond of vacationing amidst landmines.

Yet once we stopped chortling, we couldn’t help but become engrossed in Taiwan’s project. Kinmen was a site of savage fighting exactly 60 years ago, as Chiang Kai-shek’s retreating Chinese Nationalists were pursued by Mao Zedong’s Red Army. Judging by this tourist album from 2004, the island seems like one of those trapped-in-time places where Microkhan prefers to spend his holidays dollars. And perhaps once all the mines are gone, we’ll put Kinmen on our to-visit list.

How long might that take? Taiwan is aiming for 2013. The process takes so long because demining continues to be a largely by-hand effort. Though there have been several attempts to develop robots, and armored vehicles such as this modified Agri-flail can speed up the task somewhat, the bulk of the work must still be done by brave humans in bulky suits.

Technology fails here for two main reasons. For starters, the land must be left somewhat intact, so massive dredging operations are not viable. More importantly, the stakes are so high that we naturally feel ill-at-ease about entrusting machines to give us the “all clear.” And so deminers are forced to go through painstaking verification checklists—check out this account from Mozambique, where detection dogs are part of the equation:

Once the vegetation is removed, the land must be manually checked and cleared with advanced metal detectors and mine detection dogs. Warnock said the Board of Global Ministries has an agreement with RONCO, a U.S.-based corporation, to purchase seven trained dogs and provide them to ADP. Currently being trained in Zimbabwe, the dogs are expected to arrive in Mozambique in early January. They will receive additional training with human partners from the demining team.

The dogs are released into a one-meter section and can smell the TNT explosive in the soil. If any item is suspected, human deminers use metal detectors to verify the potential mine and remove it. If a mine detection dog determines that the section is clear of mines, it is marked and re-checked by a different dog the next day. When both dogs clear the site, it is deemed safe.

Warnock said none of the detection dogs used in Mozambique since 1996 have been lost because of a mine-related injury. But their ability to smell the TNT evaporates as temperatures rise, so the dogs and their handlers do their work very early in the day, often as soon as it is light enough. “Moister weather actually helps the dogs,” he added.

Mozambique, alas, has it much worse than Kinmen, with more than seven times the number of landmies still in place.

Bonus “fun” fact from the Taiwan gig: The landmine-clearance project is enjoying the consultative services of the delightfully named Explomo Technical Services. The Singapore company is not a military outfit, but rather a developer of fireworks shows and special effects. Hey, whatever pays the bills nowadays.

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The Toughest Traveller in Teesside

June 2nd, 2009


Two weeks ago, we posted about a pub kerfuffle in Ireland that appeared to stem from anti-Traveller prejudice (mixed in, perhaps, with some randy behavior by the Travellers themselves). We’ve since kept our eyes peeled for Traveller-related news, seeing as how we only scratched the surface of the community’s history and contemporary situation.

The news, alas, hasn’t disappointed. A harness race in northern England was recently marred by a nasty case of apparent Traveller-on-Traveller violence. And it involved a man of rather wide renown—such renown, in fact, that he has earned a most un-PC accolade from his fellow Travellers:

A bare-knuckle fighter known as the King of the Gypsies has suffered multiple stab wounds after being attacked by several men wielding knives.

Louis Welch, from Darlington, is expected to make a full recovery after the incident at a harness racing event in Appleby, Cumbria. It is believed a rival group of travellers may have been responsible for the stabbing…

The title King of the Gypsies is usually claimed by the best boxer in the traveller community.

The unfortunate incident at the horse fair brought to mind the documentary above, which chronicles the career of the late Bartley Gorman. As the BBC bio of Gorman makes clear, there’s at least one eerie similarity between his life and Welch’s—Gorman also survived an attempt on his life at a horse race.

The faith-based encyclopedia includes a surprisingly detailed rundown of everyone who’s laid claim to the King of the Gypsies title (though Welch isn’t included). And here’s an in-depth discussion on whether the word gypsy is so pejorative that it should be retired altogether—even when referring to people like Welch, who apparently embraces the term.

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Battling the Inner Sisyphus

June 1st, 2009


We’re suffering from a major, extremely ill-timed case of writer’s block today, and have thus been relegated to listening to the above song on repeat in order to reboot our creative powers. We’re actually far more familiar with the Ashe Bhosle version, which sounds a touch more ethereal to our amateur ears. But this’ll do in a pinch—we’re especially fond on the flashback scenes around the 1:40 mark. No real clue what’s going on here, plotwise, since our Bollywood knowledge is sadly limited. But consider our heartstrings tugged nonetheless.

Now, back to rewriting this same damn paragraph for the 713th time today. Wish us luck, as we sorely—nay, desperately—need it right now.

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Little Lightning

June 1st, 2009

yuramchaThose few of you who’ve perused our mission statement know that Microkhan’s a devoted fan of female billiards. Our favorite player has long been Vivian “The Texas Tornado” Villareal, in part because of the classy way she endured a weirdo kidnap drama. But we’ve recently considered switching our allegiance to South Korean upstart Yu Ram Cha, a 21-year-old protege of Charlie “The Korean Dragon” Williams.

Rest assured, we can already hear you chortling that our Cha fandom is all about her looks—a common theme among the sports’ Lecherous Old Man contingent. But no! We admire Cha (aka “Little Lightning”) purely for her killer instinct at the table, an attribute that recently helped her make history by beating men’s champ Shane Van Boening at a major 10-ball tournament. As we understand it, this was essentially the equivalent of Candace Parker beating LeBron James in game of one-on-one. In other words, a truly remarkable moment in the eternal battle of the sexes.

More on Cha’s rapid ascent here. And if you ever find yourself in Seoul, look for her image as the public face of Myungokhun Oriental Beauty.

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First Contact: New Zealand

June 1st, 2009

captcooknewzealandOur semi-regular First Contact series continues with a look at the needlessly violent encounter between Captain James Cook and the Maori of New Zealand. Cook himself is our source, as he was a fastidious diarist during his travels around the world. And he recorded the strange events of October 9th, 1769 in great detail.

Things went awry virtually right off the bat, when the coxswain of Cook’s landing boat shot a Maori to death before even a single word had been exchanged. Cook tried to salvage the relationship by having Tupia, his Tahitian interpreter, speak to a Maori contingent in his native language. “And it was an agreeable surprize (sic) to us to find that they perfectly understood him,” wrote Cook, perhaps not realizing that he’d stumbled upon key linguistic evidence of Polynesian migration patterns.

Tupia invited the Maori to come aboard Cook’s landing boat, and perhaps make nice despite having just seen their pal mowed down by gunfire. That’s when the true culture-clash acrimony commenced:

We made them every one presents, but this did not satisfy them; they wanted everything we had about us, particularly our Arms, and made several attempts to snatch them out of our hands. Tupia told us several times, as soon as they came over, to take care of ourselves for they were not our friends; and this we very soon found, for one of them snatched Mr. Green’s hanger from him and would not give it up; this encouraged the rest to be more insolent, and seeing others coming over to join them, I order’d the man who had taken the Hanger to be fir’d at, which was accordingly done, and wounded in such a manner that he died soon after. Upon the first fire, which was only 2 Musquets, the others retir’d to a Rock which lay nearly in the middle of the River; but on seeing the man fall they return’d, probably to carry him off or his Arms, the last of which they accomplished, and this we could not prevent unless we had run our Bayonets into them, for upon their returning from off the Rock, we had discharged off our Peices, which were loaded with small shott, and wounded 3 more; but these got over the River and were carried off by the others, who now thought proper to retire. Finding nothing was to be done with the People on this side, and the water in the river being salt, I embarked with an intent to row round the head of the Bay in search of fresh water, and if possible to surprise some of the Natives and to take them on board, and by good Treatment and Presents endeavour to gain their friendship with this view.

The whole journal is worth a read, especially the chapter in which Cook explores New Zealand’s interior. And his staff artist, Sydney Parkinson, did some truly bang-up illustrations of 18th-century Maoris and their impressive facial tattoos.

(Image via the Baldwin Online Children’s Literature Project)

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The Struggles of Stuntmen

June 1st, 2009

filipinostuntmenWe always figured that the advent of cheap CGI effects would have a deleterious effect on living, breathing stuntmen. But we had no idea things were so rough in the Filipino film industry. The Manila Times sheds some depressing light:

Stuntmen are not covered by life or health insurances, but merely hope for the assistance of the Mowelfund Film Institute in times of troubles. “Our purpose is to alleviate marginalized workers in the industry and to put up dignity because we noticed that those behind the cameras, if they were injured in an accident, have no one to run to,” explains Emilio Dollete, the assistant head of the Mowelfund. “Insurance companies won’t accept us,” laments Sorima…

With the decline of local movies goes the livelihood of stuntmen, “Now, we are starving. We only rely on teleseryes. No projects mean the family will starve,” Sorima sadly relates, adding, “Because of the industry’s downfall, it is sad that some of our colleagues are now collecting and selling junks, some became petty criminals while others have gone berserk.”

Who would forget the incident where stuntman Al Villegas was killed after taking four people hostage at the Taguig City Hall of Justice in 2007? “We’ve got to have other sources of income and not just depend on our earnings as stuntmen,” remarks Sorima.

The glory days of studio contracts and live-action shows must seem so very long ago to our stuntmen brethren.

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Before I Let Go

May 29th, 2009


That’s a wrap for the work week, as we look forward to a weekend full of goat roasting and screenplayin’. What might you have missed if your Microkhan-ing was sporadic these last few days? So much good stuff, dear reader, so much good stuff. We’re talking hilariously frivolous lawsuits against your humble narrators, the launch of the Now the Hell Will Start paperback, a lingering controversy over the origins of Filipino stick fighting, and the curious intersection between breakfast cereal and Confederate money. Replay at your leisure, and see you back here on Monday, bright and early (depending on Microkhan Jr.’s willingness to cooperate with that plan).

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The Utter Failure of High Concept

May 29th, 2009


For today’s installment of Bad Movie Friday, we’d like to shred a flick that must’ve seemed so great when William Friedkin pitched it: Cruising, a murder mystery that’s several degrees clumsier than the worst Encyclyopedia Brown shortie.

Now we can see why this got made. The milieu (the gay leather-bar scene) was ultra-edgy at the time, and, hey, Al Pacino doing his Serpico thing. But, alas, the result is pure ham-fisted dullsville, featuring Pacino in full scenery-chewing mode. (Check out his inhalant-inspired, slightly NSFW moves above.) Cruising got a lot of flack for its portrayal of gay New Yorkers as chaps-wearing Caligulas. But the deeper problem here is the nonsensical plotting. Follow the logic, if you dare:

*Pacino is sent undercover into the world of gay bars to find a killer—a killer who opens the film by offing a Columbia professor.
*An hour-plus elapses. Nothing much happens, except lots of gratuitous shots of stabbings and dudes in black leather. Snooze…
*Paul Sorvino’s police captain gives Pacino a Columbia yearbook and says, “Hey, you recognize anyone in here?”
*Pacino does! And he spends the next 30 minutes following this killer, who turns out to be (SPOILER ALERT!)…some random Columbia student with daddy issues.

Question: Why not give Pacino the Columbia yearbook when he started the job, so he could keep an eye peeled for potential suspects? Huh? That would have shaved an hour off the running time, and made the film tolerable. True, it would also have made it just 48 minutes long. But that’s really all the idea merited.

On the plus side, we did like seeing Pacino get decked by a macho gay cowboy. As in that The Godfather scene where he gets punched by the crooked cop, Pacino knows how to take a beatdown.

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A Yardstick for the Fuzz

May 29th, 2009

crimeclearancerates
Several years ago, we read a revealing interview with Wilbert Rideau, former editor of the newspaper at Angola State Prison. He was asked whether harsher sentences, including the death penalty, would deter criminals. Rideau bluntly answered “no”—criminals never think they’re going to get caught. That’s in part because (as noted in the chart above) the majority of cases are never solved. The only way to deter crime, argued Rideau, was to increase police clearance rates, and thereby convince potential criminals that capture was a near certainty.

That observation echoed in our minds as we read this piece about the murder of a high-profile Guatemalan lawyer. As most of y’all likely know, Guatemala has a crime problem that can only be described as grave (as is made abundantly clear in the fantastic The Art of Political Murder.) How bad is it? Yikes:

The murder rate (of nearly 50 per 100,000 people) is higher than its average during the war. Police and courts are understaffed, underpaid and susceptible to bribes and threats. According to the United Nations, just 2% of crimes in the country are solved.

That two percent figure got us wondering about the clearance rates in other nations. The chart above is the best we could come up with, given that no international body appears to track global stats on the matter. (The figure cited in the Economist piece actually comes from a Guatemalan arm of the U.N., not headquarters.) Here’s the full paper (PDF) on clearance rates, which unfortunately relies on somewhat dated data; we were left to wonder how DNA has affected violent-crime cases, in particular.

The big question, then, is what most directly affects clearance rates? Are German cops just awesome at their jobs, or are they helped out by police-friendly laws (e.g. regarding evidence collection and interrogation)? And, of course, how much does fudging play a role? Anyone who’s seen seasons four or five of The Wire knows that cops are under tremendous pressure to manipulate their clearance rates. And instances of statistical hanky-panky are sadly commonplace.

We wonder if there’s a “natural” clearance rate for crimes, and anything above that hints at official misconduct. We certainly recall being skeeved out by reading that Japan’s conviction rate is a whopping 99.8 percent. No legal system can possibly be that flawless.

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Speaking from the Fist

May 29th, 2009

machoman
Perhaps Randy “Macho Man” Savage didn’t have quite the acting career of some of his fellow ’80s wrestlers (see: “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, Sgt. Slaughter), but you can’t fault the man’s instinct for licensing only the hottest fashion. When we came across the jacket above, via the somewhat NSFW THEM THANGS, we knew we had no choice but to post. Reagan Era nostalgia like this just blows our minds.

Also apt to shred your cerebellum this dreary Friday morning: Macho Man’s sadly slept-on single, “Speaking from the Heart.” Sample lyric:

Soaring with the eagles and slithering with the snakes, I’ve been everywhere in between, I am your friend, I am the Macho Man Randy Savage. Speaking from the heart, it’s the Macho Man talking to you right now, let’s rock, dig it, dig it! Freak out, Freak out, oooooh yeah! This is the way it is and I will be there when it happens, the past the present and the future all in one time. We’re all gonna climb that mountain together and we are together forever, ooooh yeah!

Mr. Savage, I’ll climb a mountain with you anytime. Just say the word.

(h/t Adrian Covert)

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Haa Blows the Happiness Curve

May 29th, 2009

grossnationalhappiness
A few years back, Bhutan rather famously announced that it would no longer be a slave to the concept of Gross Domestic Product. Instead, it would measure its progress in terms of Gross National Happiness, as measured by a regular survey of its citizens. (The exact methodology can be found here).

This announcement attracted its fair share of gentle mockery, in part because we’re so accustomed to thinking of happiness as a purely subjective concept. But the lampooning hasn’t stopped Bhutan from refining its GNH formula, and the government-run Centre for Bhutan Studies recently announced its latest results, touting them as the most accurate to date:

How is happiness calculated?

Consider that hours of sleep (a1) and trust in media (a2) are two examples of the 72 indicators that can be measured on a scale of 0 to 1.

The formula is: GNH index = 1 –[(a1+a2+…..+a72)/72]

There is one more method to calculate happiness, but the above one gives a more efficient result, Tshoki Zangmo, a researcher with the Centre for Bhutan Studies, told BT.

Following the formula, Bhutan’s GNH index after a survey of 950 respondents from 12 dzongkhags was 0.812. This means that among the 950 respondents the happiness level is 81%.

The dzongkhags surveyed included Dagana, Tsirang, Wangduephodrang, Samtse, Zhemgang, Pemagatshel, Samdrup Jongkhar, Trashigang, Trashiyangtse, Gasa, Haa, and Thimphu.

The survey conducted between December 2007 to March 2008 showed Haa to be happiest district with an index of 0.8273 and Dagana to be the least happy with an index of 0.8026.

Each respondent was asked a long list of questions and an interview took about half-a-day to be completed.

If the 72 indicator indexes are first weighted to the nine domains, the GNH index is 0.805 and the happy-dzongkhag list changes with Wangduephodrang topping the list with a weighted index of 0.818 and Trashigang trailing as the least happy with 0.790.

The survey was an improved version of the three-month pilot conducted between September 2006 and January 2007 where 350 people in nine dzongkhags were interviewed. It took about seven to eight hours for one interview.

We somehow doubt such an approach could work in the United States, alas. Few of us are hardy enough to endure even 15 minutes with a census taker, to say nothing of a half day. Perhaps if liquor was served…

We are, of course, compelled by Microkhan House Rules to end any Bhutan post with a nod to Peter de Jonge’s classic New York Times piece, “Television’s Final Frontier.” In pondering the impact of Bhutan late entry into the TV Era, de Jonge came up with one of the best magazine quips in history:

Admittedly, inner Bhutan has a transcendent tranquillity. An hour’s walk in either direction can take you from tropical jungles to an alpine ridge. Yet how many Bhutanese will want to stay put in their cozy villages once they’ve glimpsed the hubbub beyond? History strongly suggests that few people will choose to spend eight hours a day knee deep in mud behind an ox if there’s an alternative.

Funny ’cause it’s true!

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Fish, Chips, Hips

May 28th, 2009


With less than two week to go ’til the screenplay’s due, the rest of the afternoon’s gonna be all about tweaking dialogue. But Microkhan will leave you with a special treat: Chubb Rock, a man whose girth is rivaled only by his underratedness. Apologies for the five second commercial at the beginning of the clip; make it past that, and you’ll find yourself in awe of the Chubbster’s flow. Not to mention his affection for getting fanned with peacock feathers, Roman Emperor-style.

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“It Was a Dark and Methodical Night…”

May 28th, 2009

actuarialshirtIn the midst of researching a minor Batman villain named The Actuary—please, don’t ask why—we came across a rather curious contest held by the Society of Actuaries. In the spirit of stoking its members’ right brains, the Society annually puts out the call for fictional short stories that evoke the essence of actuarial science. This year’s winner, Chris Fievoli’s “No Country for Young Men,” can be read in its entirety here (PDF). A taste of what the Faulkner of actuaries produced en route to the $200 top prize:

When, after about an hour’s effort, he was able to get his first mortality ratios, it was apparent that he had made some sort of error. The ratios seemed to be off by a factor of ten or so. Assuming he simply misplaced a decimal, Dorian carefully went through his calculations in search of his mistake. When he failed to find it, a feeling of concern began to come over him. Mortality rates ten, eleven, twelve times expected simply didn’t make sense. Did he read the experience data correctly? A check of that appeared to confirm that he did.

Perhaps the data itself was faulty. He got a hold of his contact in the IT area, a nonagenarian by the name of Justin who, despite repeatedly cursing the systems he had to manage, proved to be a reliable resource. Together, they made the requisite checks, and determined no problems from that end either. They even opened a few claims files and verified that the death notices were in fact valid, and duly documented.

Eat your heart out, Haruki Murakami.

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Cheerios and Johnny Reb’s Ersatz Dough

May 28th, 2009

cheeriosconfederatecurrency
Like a zillion other toddlers, Microkhan Jr. loves him some Cheerios. And never more so when the circular cereal gives away toys—General Mills has recently been on a kick of offering a free Lego car in every box. For a fifteen-month-old obsessed with rolling objects, nothing could make that oat-y goodness any better.

Yet Cheerios’ freebies haven’t always been so obviously geared toward the Sesame Street set, as we recently learned after reading this tale of an Iowan auction gone awry. A man purchased $800 worth of Confederate money (which cost him $200 Yankee bucks). Upon returning home, alas, he was aggrieved to discover that the notes’ serial numbers were listed as known fakes. A lawsuit followed, with predictable results. (Aren’t all auction items sold “as is”?)

In checking out the serial-number site, Microkhan was somewhat astonished to learn that a major source of fake Confederate cash is Cheerios boxes from the 1950s (pictured above). The cereal enticed Eisenhower-era consumers by featuring fake Confederate notes on its boxes. The reprints are said to be very high quality, as far as detail goes, and thus often show up at auctions masquerading as the real thing.

Now, the big question this all raises: If you saw a Cheerios box today with Confederate money printed on the back, would you be less likely to buy it? Or more?

Confederate counterfeiting is nothing new, of course—during the Civil War, a Yankee named Samuel Curtis Upham was the acknowledged master.

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The Secret Lives of Chemists

May 28th, 2009

heroinadAllied troops in Afghanistan are celebrating a heroin bust reputed to be one of the biggest ever: Approximately 92 tons of street-ready horse, along with several tons more of “processing chemicals.”

Given our nerdly inclinations, our first thought upon learning of this seizure was, “Why no details on those chemicals?” Because the unsung villain in the heroin trade is acetic anhydride, a compound widely used in the production of film coating, aspirin, and treated lumber. It’s also key to turning morphine into heroin, and has been since C.R. Wright first synthesized the drug 135 years ago.

The problem for Afghan heroin labs is that no acetic anhydride is manufactured in the country. And so thousands of tons of the stuff must be smuggled in, as surely as thousands of tons of heroin are annually smuggled out. A by-the-numbers breakdown from last year:

Acetic anhydride is the essential precursor used for converting opium into morphine base and heroin. It looks and smells a lot like vinegar. Its sole use in Afghanistan is in drug refineries that have increased their annual demand from about 200 tons to 1,330 tons during the last six years.

None of the precursors are manufactured in Afghanistan. In all, some 11,000 tons of chemicals were required to process opium in Afghanistan during 2007.

The chemicals are smuggled into Afghanistan from China, India, Pakistan, and the Central Asian Republics. Sometimes they’re labeled as cleaning solutions or industrial chemicals, but most of the time they’re simply trucked into Afghanistan without inspection or detection on either side of the border. There have been no significant seizures of precursor chemicals in any of the countries bordering Afghanistan since 2001. The lack of seizures during the last two years, when record levels of Afghan opium and heroin were being produced, is especially troubling.

“Over 1,000 tons of acetic anhydride is needed to process all of this opium into heroin,” said Hakan Demirbuken, regional monitoring expert with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). “Last year more than 90 percent of the precursor seizures were at the eastern part of Afghanistan in the provinces of Nangarhar, Khost, and Paktya near the Pakistan border.” There are virtually no seizures across the border, in spite of the fact that the majority of precursor chemicals arrive by way of Pakistan.

India, in particular, appears to be the hot new source for acetic anhydride. International law enforcement has been trying to restrict the trade in the chemical, but might a newish, cold-temperature production method foil their best-laid plans?

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Skulls and Nomads

May 27th, 2009


We’re in bunker mode on the screenplay for the day’s remainder, so no semi-deep thoughts this p.m. We’ll just leave you with the above snippet of the classic documentary 80 Blocks from Tiffany’s, an account of gang life in the Carter-era South Bronx. The social background is ceaselessly tragic, the clothing style mind-blowingly great. And if nothing else, you’ll learn a valuable lesson—if a gap-toothed bloke named “Heavy” says he wants to buy your club, you really should consider selling.

(h/t Kick to Kill)

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Two Sticks Better Than One

May 27th, 2009


There’s a movement afoot in the Senate of the Philippines to designate arnis the national sport. From the text of Senate Bill 1424 (PDF):

Arnis is a sport that is indigenous and uniquely Filipino. Among the many games in the country, it can be considered as one of our national cultural gems that completely originated from the Philippines.

This art was practiced primarily for self-defense by the Filipinos during the pre-Spanish period. While during the Spanish period, Arnis was used to fight against the Spanish invaders. The Filipinos stand against the superiorly armed adversaries in mortal combat in the areas of battle is now held in immortal inviolability by history. It would not be farfetched to surmise that one of the earliest Filipino heroes, Lapu-Lapu, was an Arnis expert.

Sounds like a political slam dunk to us. But how much of Sen. Zubiri’s paean is true? That’s where things start to get tricky, as elucidated in this detailed examination of arnis’s origins.

Much more on the Filipino martial arts here, courtesy of the man credited with the great arnis revival of the past two decades.

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Microtribe

May 27th, 2009

augustinebandToday’s New York Times features a fascinating account of the Shinnecock Indians’ three-decade quest for federal recognition—a quest that should finally be resolved this year, at least according to an Interior Department promise. At stake is the tribe’s right to build a casino, as well as its potential to lay claim to large swaths of the tony Hamptons.

What struck Microkhan the most about the Shinnecock’s bind is the relatively large size of the tribe—about 1,000 members. That got us thinking about the Western tribes that have managed to obtain federal recognition, yet are many times smaller than the Shinnecocks. And in all the land, no tribe is smaller than the miniscule Augustine Band of Cahuilla Indians, which appears to have eight—count ’em—eight current members. Yet that hasn’t prevented the Augustine Band from opening up a casino and experimenting with solar energy.

The tribe’s continued existence seems to be the handiwork of one woman, Mary Ann Green (aka MaryAnn Martin). Here’s a a little backstory on her:

Martin said she’s had a lot of catching up to do because clues about her Indian roots came few and far between as she grew up in several cities across Southern California.

Her father was a black man who came and went during her childhood.

Her mother, Roberta Augustine, was a Cahuilla Indian who could not care for herself because she suffered from epilepsy and an undiagnosed mental disability that slowed her thinking. As a result, Augustine rarely spoke of her Indian heritage, and when she did it made little sense to her three children.

Raised by a black paternal grandmother, Martin considered herself black yet sensed part of her life was missing.

Martin’s journey to find her roots began after her grandmother died in Monrovia in 1986. Reading a newspaper article, Martin learned that her mother, Roberta Augustine, was not just a Cahuilla Indian but was the last federally enrolled member of the Augustine Indian tribe.

Martin’s quest took her to the Morongo Indian Reservation near Banning to find relatives on her mother’s side of the family. There, Martin discovered she and her two brothers had ancestral ties to the unoccupied Augustine reservation in the Coachella Valley. In fact, Martin is a direct descendant of Capt. Vee-Vee Augustine, her great-great grandfather and namesake of the reservation.

A far less flattering account of Martin/Green and her business dealings is available here. And there’s a full map of California’s myriad Indian tribes here.

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“Like Some Large Grub”

May 27th, 2009

As the great Jack Shafer has noted time and again, British-style obituaries are a zillion times more entertaining than ours. And that’s primarily because the Brits aren’t afraid of speaking ill of the dead when such treatment is warranted. Such is the case with The Economist‘s recent farewell to Prabhakaran, the Tamil Tigers’ slain leader. The magazine’s acidic take on his life is nothing short of devastating:

No philosophy or ideology guided him, as far as anyone could tell. He did not like abstractions. Nor could he tolerate debate. Despite a peace agreement in 2002 a separate Tamil homeland, with its enemies eliminated, was all he would accept. In Vanni he more or less constructed one, neat and organised as he always was, with thatched huts and coconut groves along dirt roads. There was no power, but the place had its own banks and law courts. The Sinhalese army fenced it in with barbed wire and bombed it. Among the craters were the remains of lush gardens, and lagoons filled with lilies, that might have made the sort of Tamil paradise Prabhakaran carried in his head.

Both the Sri Lankan and Indian governments had arrest warrants out for him. He stayed mostly underground where, like some large grub, he was oiled twice a day by his bodyguards and fed on curry and Clint Eastwood movies, in which cops and cowboys shot themselves out of trouble. He had an escape plan, or several. His cadres would kill him, and burn the body; he would squeeze himself into a submarine; he would bite on the cyanide capsule that hung on a black string round his neck.

His people, confined in the end to a beach in north-eastern Sri Lanka and shelled by the Sinhalese army, could not get away so easily from the mayhem Prabhakaran had drawn them into.

Microkhan truly pities the bodyguards who were tasked with those daily oilings.

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Now the Paperback Will Start

May 26th, 2009

antiquatedledoroadmap
So at long last, we’ve come to the appointed hour: The Now the Hell Will Start paperback hits stores today, and can currently be had via Amazon for as little as a tenner. Not a bad deal in our humble (albeit biased) opinion, considering the nearly five years’ worth of mental toil contained within those pages.

We’ve been building up to this since late April, with our daily NtHWS Extras series of factoids, anecdotes, and other material gleaned off the cutting-room floor. For the outro, we decided to go simple and post the map above. It’s taken from a U.S. Army publication, a commemorative booklet issued to soldiers upon the “completion” of the Stilwelll (née Ledo) Road. We put completion in quotes because the Road was never totally finalized; when V-J Day rolled around, they were still ironing out the kinks as the monsoon rains pounded. Mere hours after Japan’s official surrender, the order came down from Washington to abandon the Road; when a New Republic reporter visited northwest Burma a year later, he couldn’t even travel 20 miles on the highway. So much of it had already been reclaimed by the jungle.

We’ll try not to bore you with too much salesmanship, but suffice to say that Now the Hell Will Start was a true labor ‘o love that we hope you’ll check out. It’s got everything a curious mind needs to get through the day: War, murder, love, political folly, vintage drug use, and, yes, headhunting. Not yet convinced? Peep the flap copy:

A true story of murder, love, and headhunters, Now the Hell Will Start tells the remarkable tale of Herman Perry, a budding playboy from Washington, D.C., who wound up going native in the Indo-Burmese jungle—not because he yearned for adventure, but rather to escape the greatest manhunt conducted by the United States Army during World War II.nthwspaperback

An African American G.I. assigned to a segregated labor battalion, Perry was shipped to South Asia in 1943, enduring unspeakable hardships while sailing around the globe. He was one of thousands of black soldiers dispatched to build the Ledo Road, a highway meant to appease China’s conniving dictator, Chiang Kai-shek. Stretching from the thickly forested mountains of northeast India across the tiger-infested vales of Burma, the road was a lethal nightmare, beset by monsoons, malaria, and insects that chewed men’s flesh to pulp.

Perry could not endure the jungle’s brutality, nor the racist treatment meted out by his white officers. He found solace in opium and marijuana, which further warped his fraying psyche. Finally, on March 5, 1944, he broke down—an emotional collapse that ended with him shooting an unarmed white lieutenant.

So began Perry’s flight through the Indo-Burmese wilderness, one of the planet’s most hostile realms. While the military police combed the brothels of Calcutta, Perry trekked through the jungle, eventually stumbling upon a village festooned with polished human skulls. It was here, amid a tribe of elaborately tattooed headhunters, that Herman Perry would find bliss—and would marry the chief ’s fourteen-year-old daughter.

Starting off with nothing more than a ten-word snippet culled from an obscure bibliography, Brendan I. Koerner spent nearly five years chasing Perry’s ghost—a pursuit that eventually led him to the remotest corners of India and Burma, where drug runners and ethnic militias now hold sway. Along the way, Koerner uncovered the forgotten story of the Ledo Road’s black G.I.s, for whom Jim Crow was as virulent an enemy as the Japanese.

You can also check out the Slate slideshow here, Boing Boing’s great shout-out here, and the movie news here. C’mon, give in to temptation—your life will be oh-so-much richer with a copy of Now the Hell Will Start on your bookshelf. Guaranteed.

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