Microkhan by Brendan I. Koerner

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The Purpose Server

October 3rd, 2012


The tri-winged Barling Bomber was one of the most notorious military boondoggles of the 1920s. The exorbitantly expensive plane, which never made it out of prototype, was knocked for being ludicrously slow despite being equipped with an unprecedented six engines. It was a prime example of what happens when designers feel obligated to respond to the demands of bean counters (PDF):

At the close of World War I, the Army owned Liberty aircraft engines far in excess of its airframes. Consequently, Congress mandated that the World War I surplus be used before the service could purchase new equipment. The Barling was one of many aircraft that featured government-furnished engines. The Barling’s wingspan of 120 feet (the exact distance of the first sustained heavier-than-air flight and longer than the B-17’s wingspan of 104 feet) made it unwieldy and underpowered, yet it needed only 320 yards to take off. The maximum speed of 96 miles per hour and range of 170 miles were far less than Army-aviation enthusiasts had hoped to achieve with the design. Initially costing $375,000, the aircraft carried a final price tag of $525,000, excluding its special hangar, which cost more than $700,000.

On the plus side, the Barling inspired some pretty heavy-metal art in its day.

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The Persistence of Myth

October 2nd, 2012

It has become an article of faith that the illicit drug business is every bit as sophisticated as its Fortune 500 counterparts. But a closer look at the industry’s transportation practices reveals some definite scientific shortcomings. As this Dutch study of drug-courier techniques demonstrates, trafficking networks continue to employ concealment practices that have long been discredited. Case in point:

In this 44-year-old man, end-on coin was found along with rectosigmoid bolitas. Some traffickers have mistaken belief that coins or other metallic objects will degrade image sufficiently to make bolitas invisible [to X-rays]. In fact, coin is positive indicator; every case (n = 35) found with internal coins was positive for contraband.

After years of feedback regarding the ineffectiveness of this technique, why do drug traffickers keep using it? Perhaps it is because, unlike in legit enterprises, those at the top of drug-trafficking organizations have zero incentive to care about the fates of their lowest-level employees. There is no possibility of a class-action suit by wronged mules, after all, so why even bother paying attention to evidence regarding the efficacy of smuggling tricks? Enough get through to keep the profits rolling in. Unparalleled success breeds laziness.

An illustrated summary of the Dutch study is available here.

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Here Comes the Boom

October 1st, 2012


Our species ability to control avalanches remains more art than science, which makes sense given the challenges involved. A thousand different variables play into each situation, ranging from the constitution of the snow to incremental changes in air temperature. On top of that, the means by which we knock away threatening snow—namely, by pelting it with explosives—tends to be a bit unpredictable; a mortar shell, after all, is about the furthest thing away from a scalpel, in terms of exactitude.

Yet we have made great strides in increasing the precision of the ordnance used in avalanche control, as evidenced in this awesome presentation (PDF) from the Wyoming Department of Transportation. Note the evolution in the means by which explosives are delivered to the desired impact points—we’ve gone from vintage howitzers to GazEx pipes to chairlift-like contraptions (above) that can seed a whole mountainside with bombs. The last of these innovations is important because the latest research shows that different parts of the target area should be treated with different amounts of explosives, since snow pack can vary greatly within small areas.

The lift is also important because it takes humans out of the equation. That was a major drawback with the old howitzer method.

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Attention to Detail

September 28th, 2012


Deep apologies for failing to Microkhan much this week, but I have an excellent excuse: I’m in the thick of endnoting my book, which will finally start wending its way through the production process on October 15th. (Street date: June 15, 2013.) Back next week with plenty of tasty victuals; in the meantime, please check out the bonkers scene at this week’s Australia-Papua New Guinea rugby match in Port Moresby. And there are some great photos here from a Kiwi expat who attended the raucous annual event, one that I hope to check out before my time on Spaceship Earth is up—though perhaps I’ll first test my mettle by seeing if I can survive Belgrade’s Eternal Derby.

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Honor Among Kidnappers

September 26th, 2012


Because it happened during the frenetic final throes of the Cold War, the 1983 abduction of 66 Czechoslovaks by Angolan rebels didn’t get much coverage on these shores. Were a similar event to occur today, though, it would receive immense attention, primarily because of the kidnappers’ rough tactics: In addition to taking children as well as adults, they also forced their captives to march over 800 miles through the bush.

Yet when it came time for the rebels to negotiate the hostages’ release, they were surprisingly honorable—or, perhaps more accurately, true to their stated aims. A Czechoslovak diplomat recalls his dialogue with rebel leader Jonas Savimbi thusly:

Savimbi demanded 300,000 dollars to cover food and board for the year they were holding our men captive. I told him that we could discuss that option, but that in that case we would announce that we had paid a ransom for our captured citizens, and that at that moment UNITA could change from a national liberation movement into a pack of bandits who had kidnapped our citizens for ransom. Savimbi thought about that and said, “Fine, I’ll free them unconditionally, I only ask that none of them return to our country for the duration of the conflict.”

I very much doubt that any current insurgency would be shy about accepting cash for hostages. The revolutionary goal posts have moved quite a bit since the early eighties, toward a more cynical end of the field.

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The Turkmen Neil Peart

September 24th, 2012


Here at Microkhan, we spend an awful lot of time highlighting all that is wretched about Turkmenistan’s political culture. Heartless autocracy can never fully squelch creativity, however, as the raucous drumming of Rishad Shafi so ably demonstrates. His prog-fusion band Gunesh started out as a mainstay of state-run Turkmen television, but later involved into something much more ethereal and, quite frankly, bizarre. Check out a ye olde music video of Gunesh here; it starts to get good when they journey to sub-Saharan Africa to set up an outdoor recording session.

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The Art of Getting By

September 21st, 2012


A while back, I explored the athletic means by which American prisoners-of-war coped with confinement in North Korea. That story popped to mind when I recently came across Bill Manbo’s color photographs of life in Japanese-American internment camps, which depict the unfortunate inmates’ efforts to inject some sense of normalcy into their daily lives. Sports was often the centerpiece of those efforts, as camp society coalesced around a regular scheduled of ultra-competitive baseball games. There also seemed to have been some volleyball and hoops in the athletic mix. But the pastime that perhaps mattered most was sumo, because its mere practice doubled as a middle finger to the machine that created the camps in the first place. Grappling wasn’t just a way to pass the time and establish some sense of community; it was a statement of bitter disagreement with the prevailing notion that Nisei had something to be ashamed of.

Another great image here. No idea how they managed to cobble together the ref’s splendid uniform.

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No Half Measures

September 19th, 2012

The Ivorian government thinks it’s trying to do its cocoa farmers a solid by guaranteeing export prices, rather than leaving folks at the mercy of a capricious market. But the farmers don’t seem to appreciate the gesture, for the way the prices are apparently being calculated by bureaucrats who don’t understand the country’s on-the-ground realities:

Cocoa merchants in Ivory Coast are threatening to block supplies or resort to smuggling if a prolonged dispute with the country’s marketing body over transport costs is not resolved before the start of the new season next month.

The world’s top grower will begin harvesting the 2012/13 crop on October 1 under a sweeping reform aimed at guaranteeing prices for farmers. The Coffee and Cocoa Council (CCC) is due to set both a CIF (cost insurance, freight) export price and a farmgate price, which takes into account taxes and estimated handling costs incurred to get the beans from farm to port.

But merchants say a 51.7 CFA franc per kilogramme over-land transport cost estimate proposed by the CCC in July does not reflect the myriad bribes and illegal taxes they must pay to soldiers, police and customs agents en route to port.

“There are unauthorised roadblocks to pay, but they are not taken into account. We can’t work with 51.7 francs when right now even at 100 francs you’re making nothing,” said Daniel Aka, a cocoa merchant based in Abengourou in the country’s east.

Mr. Aka’s reality check reminds me of Rodney Dangerfield’s economics lesson from Back to School. Systems with numerous (and avaricious) moving parts are never as simple as textbooks make them out to be.

(Image via Cara in Cocody)

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The Jueteng Economy, Cont’d

September 18th, 2012

Nearly two years ago, I wrote about the Philippines’ futile efforts to stamp out jueteng, an illegal lottery analogous to the mob-run numbers games of yore. At that time, the government was about to launch legal lotteries that would offer higher payouts than their underground counterparts—the same strategy that states in the U.S. used to kill numbers-running in the eighties. After all, why would a consumer risk possible legal repercussions—or, at the very least, seizure of their wagers—in order to vie for a smaller jackpot than is offered through official channels?

While the basic logic of that approach may seem ironclad, however, the legal lotteries have been abject failures:

President Aquino on Monday declared that the controversial small-town lottery would soon be stopped, but he said a new numbers game that would benefit the government and host communities would replace STL.

“STL as an experiment is over,” Mr. Aquino told reporters on the sidelines of his visit here to witness the mass oath-taking of new Liberal Party members in Quezon province. The President said there was a need to stop STL because it failed to stamp out illegal numbers games, particularly “jueteng.”

So what went wrong? An anti-gambling member of the Catholic hierarchy sheds a little light by breaking down the mechanics of jueteng:

Jueteng has an operational structure made up of seven grades: The “cobradores,” who collect the bets; the “cabos,” who supervise the collectors; the “revisadores,” who review the bets placed; “caja,” where the money goes; “boladores,” those responsible for drawing the winning numbers; the “pagadores,” who pay the winning bets; and, the jueteng lords.

Archbishop Emeritus Oscar Cruz said if Loterya ng Bayan would employ the same “hierarchy,” it would be easy for gambling lords to use it as cover for their illegal operations. “It’s correct that STL is out and now they are preparing the Loterya … but it will also be a failure just like the former so they should no longer continue with it,” the prelate said.

There is a great lesson to be learned here about the drawbacks of organizational complexity: Each time you add another layer of supervision, you create a fresh opening for corruption. With so many hands involved in processing the legal bets, it must be fairly easy for jueteng organizations to coax one person to double-dip and handle illegal numbers, too. The only way to stop that from happening is through active law enforcement, but the cops are firmly on the crooks’ payrolls.

The only real solution, of course, is automation, so that bets go directly from consumer to databank without passing through employees who also field jueteng wagers. If there’s a company out there with the IT vision to tackle that project, they need to open a Manila office, stat.

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Hazerunner

September 17th, 2012


On deadline for my Wired column today, so I must ask that you content yourselves with some Polish rock. A full discography of the band in question, Breakout, can be glimpsed here.

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Swept Under the Rug

September 14th, 2012

I make no bones about wearing my Salman Rushdie fandom on my sleeve, even going so far as to use an out-of-context Midnight’s Children quote as the epigraph for my first book. So there was no way I wasn’t going to read the man’s recent New Yorker piece about the years he spent living in fear of assassination due to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s extreme distaste for The Satanic Verses. The story was a tough slog at first, in part because of its weird third-person voice, but also because it emanates a slight humblebrag vibe. (The first section, in which Rushdie crosses paths with the cream of Britain’s literary elite, gave me the sense that the article’s title should have been “I Hang Out With Cooler People Than You.”) But once Rushdie hit the backstory on why he chose to write The Satanic Verses, and how his intentions were woefully misunderstood by readers who refused to engage with the text, I was hooked.

This passage, in particular, stood out as a perfect summation of the whole furor’s tragi-comical nature:

“Death, perhaps, is a bit too easy for him,” Iqbal Sacranie, of the U.K. Action Committee on Islamic Affairs, said. “His mind must be tormented for the rest of his life unless he asks for forgiveness from Almighty Allah.” (In 2005, this same Sacranie was knighted at the recommendation of the Blair government for his services to community relations.)

I would bet everything I own that Sacranie never read a single word of The Satanic Verses before condemning its author to Sisyphean torments. As always, backlashes are driven more by the straightforward narrative that an allegedly wronged groups wishes to tell, rather than the more complex one that actually exists.

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For Those About to Crash…

September 13th, 2012


I have recently become interested in the trials and tribulations of Truman-era test pilots, the same ballsy crew whose death-defying exploits were chronicled in a book you may have read. Brave men, for sure, but their pursuit was relatively safe compared to that of aviation’s earliest pioneers. As this amazingly exhaustive necrology (PDF) makes clear, the fatality rate for pre-1914 pilots was nothing short of astronomical. If the sheer length of the documents makes your eyes glaze over, you can instead check out the handy-dandy visual chart above, which unfortunately has an equally large part two. These are the men and women whose sacrifice you should keep in mind the next time you feel your flight’s wheels safely slam into a runway’s pavement.

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A Real Political Gambit

September 11th, 2012


I was amused by the recent hullabaloo over whether athletes have a right to comment on controversial issues. There was something uniquely American about the controversy, for we are the rare nation that pretends that jocks must check their political leanings at the door. This concept must sound bizarre to the soccer fans of Brazil, where Corinthians and its star player, Sócrates, were instrumental in ending the country’s military dictatorship in the eighties.

As this (paywalled) 1989 article points out, Sócrates organized Corinthians’ supporters into a pro-democracy movement by leveraging his own athletic value:

Much was at stake in the 1982 club elections, and the opposing sides knew it…Sócrates, a lanky, bearded medical doctor, captain of Brazil’s 1982 World Cup team, and the Corinthians star player, issued a stern ultimatum: He would retire from soccer if “Order and Truth” won.

Sócrates’ gambit worked that time, but his results two years later were disappointing—perhaps because his new threat lacked a severe edge:

Corinthian Democracy reached its peak at the April 1984 free-election rally
in Sâo Paulo. The rally was held just a few days before the scheduled Congressional vote on the constitutional amendment to re-establish free elections in the nation. Sócrates, speaking before some 500,000 people, pledged that, if the amendment passed, he would refuse a million-dollar offer to play in Italy and stay in Brazil to participate in the rebuilding of democracy. His gesture was criticized as demagogic, but it was absolutely consistent with the spirit of Corinthian Democracy.

As things turned out, the free-election amendment did not pass.

More on Sócrates’ political career here. Disagree with his mildly extortionate methods if you like, but you must give him credit for risking everything for a righteous cause.

(Image via In Bed with Maradona)

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The Mystery of Throatboxing

September 10th, 2012


Throat singing is considered something of a female pursuit in Inuit culture, but Nelson Tagoona has no qualms about incorporating the artform’s esophagus-expanding techniques into his beatboxing. Check out the above clip, then move onto this related performance, which took place this summer in front of one of Microkhan’s favorite architectural curiosities.

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Tougher Than His Rep

September 7th, 2012


The common narrative about the end of the Cold War is that the Soviet Union’s decline began to inevitably steepen on the day that Ronald Reagan assumed the presidency. His peanut-farming predecessor, the conventional wisdom goes, was too soft to strike fear into the heart of the Kremlin, as evidenced by the Soviets willingness to invade Afghanistan in 1979.

The truth, of course, is always more complex than any brief story can convey. While Jimmy Carter may not have been quite the verbal swordsman that Reagan was, his defense policy was far more aggressive than most folks realize—certainly aggressive enough to antagonize the KGB and is rising-star chief, Yuri Andropov. East German spymaster Markus Wolf made this clear when recounting a February 1980 conversation he had with the future Soviet premier:

We began discussing the East-West conflict. I had never before seen Andropov so somber and dejected. He described a gloomy scenario in which a nuclear war might be a real threat. His sober analysis came to the conclusion that the US government was striving with all means available to establish nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union. He cited statements of President Carter, his adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, and of Pentagon spokesmen, all of which included the assertion that under certain circumstances a nuclear first-strike against the Soviet Union and its allies would be justified….

Carter’s presidency had created great concern in the Kremlin, because he had presented a defense budget of more than $157 billion, which he invested in the MX and Trident missiles and nuclear submarines. One of the top Soviet nuclear strategists confided to me that the resources of our alliance were not sufficient to match this.

See? And you thought Carter only flexed his muscles when dealing with killer rabbits.

(Image via Iconic Photos)

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The Greatest Love of All

September 6th, 2012


The recent passing of uber-successful businessman Rev. Sun Myung Moon brought to mind a long-ago possession that I dearly, dearly wish I hadn’t lost during one of my I-95 moves: a poster advertising a 1997 Unification Church mass wedding at Washington D.C.’s RFK Stadium. The poster was particularly fantastic not because of the bizarre event it touted, but rather because it prominently featured a photograph of Whitney Houston in mid-croon. And why would that be? Because the talented-yet-troubled singer had agreed to headline the ceremony, allegedly in exchange for at least $1 million.

Houston, however, failed to make good on her commitment, as recounted in this excellent account of the day’s festivities:

Houston, who was supposed to collect about $1 million for a 45-minute concert, sent word two hours before her scheduled appearance that she was ill, according to festival organizers.

“Her band is here; her publicist is here,” said an exasperated Lavonia Perryman, a publicist for the event.

Organizers waited until after the fireworks show that concluded the program to tell the crowd that Houston wasn’t coming.

Clearly someone close to Houston convinced her that the potential damage to her reputation (and, by extension, future earning power) wasn’t worth the million or so bucks. But why did that organizational revelation not occur until the eleventh hour? Houston surely had a vast coterie of managers, publicists, and consultants on staff whose express purpose was to foresee such problems. The breakdown of her decision-making apparatus was pretty stunning.

I often think of Houston’s near-miss with the Moonies when I hear of an egregious mistake by a supposedly well-oiled machine—for example, the Qwikster debacle. Amazing how a gathering of very large and attentive brains still has the capacity to make horrendously shortsighted mistakes.

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“Earth Proved a Great Disappointment to Us”

September 5th, 2012


Okay, almost got this ultra-parenting thing nailed down. Please allow me one more day to catch up on sleep and book-related work, and I’ll be back atcha in the morning—probably with some belated thoughts about the intersection between the Rev. Sun Myung Moon and the organizational disaster that was Whitney Houston’s entourage. In the meantime, enjoy the intro to the 1975 TV series Star Maidens, which this incredibly thorough critique neatly summarizes as “hot German blondes in space.”

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The Grand Emprette

September 1st, 2012


Apologies for my failure to keep pace with this project in recent days, but I have an unassailable excuse for my absence: the Grand Empress has yielded us a seven-pound, nine-ounce Grand Emprette, who is currently rocking in her automated swing at the foot of my desk. Needless to say I’m dazed, albeit in a good way. Taking a 72-hour paternity leave to attend to the affairs of the royal household and the cohesion of the horde; see you back here after the holiday.

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“A Boy Has Never Wept nor Dashed a Thousand Kim”

August 29th, 2012


Even if Rutger Hauer had stopped making art before the turn of the millennium, he would still occupy a hallowed place in the Microkhan pantheon for his trailblazing work in Surviving the Game. Fortunately for us, the Dutch actor continued to hammer away at his craft in the early part of this century, including a turn as the lead in little-seen The Last Words of Dutch Schultz (above). The 22-minute film features a smorgasbord of surreal images to accompany Hauer’s reading of Dutch Schultz’s dying declaration, a masterpiece of accidental poetry. (Please note that the film has virtually nothing to do with William S. Burroughs’ infamous unproduced screenplay of the same name.)

Hauer’s throaty, slow-paced interpretation of the deluded rant probably bears almost no relation to Schultz’s actual delivery, which was likely woozily mumbled on account of his bullet wounds. But the narration works beautifully regardless—Hauer has a gift for making even the most nonsenical lines, like the one referenced in this post’s title, sound like pearls of Socratic wisdom.

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The Power of Gorgor

August 28th, 2012

A mammoth gold mine on Papua New Guinea’s Lihir Island is currently shut down due to a compensation dispute. There is, of course, nothing unusual about that situation, for conflicts between foreign mining companies and local interest are par for the course in the resources-extraction game. What makes the Lihir protest notable, however, is the means by which the island’s landowners made their displeasure known: By placing taboo markers from a ginger root plant, known locally as gorgor, around the site:

Under Melanesian custom, landowners on Lihir island have traditionally raised grievances with local miners through the traditional cultural practice of placing ginger plants, known as a gorgor, on the site, signalling that talks are needed.

“People in Papua New Guinea are good at making their feelings known, and if mining companies don’t take note of what they are concerned about it can lead to a disruption in operations,” said Annmaree O’Keeffe, acting director of the Lowy Institute for International Policy’s Melanesia Program.

I am impressed that the mining company in question, Australia’s Newcrest, had the cultural chops to recognize that such a seemingly insignificant gesture was a sign worth heeding. I have no doubt that many prominent firms would have simply ignored the plants, thereby leaving the landowners to contemplate more violent means of articulating their grievances.

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The Flip Side of Red Dawn

August 24th, 2012

Our eternal gratitude to whoever posted the full text of What to Do When the Russians Come, one of great artifacts of Cold War literature. The book assumes that the Wolverines did not, in fact, fend off the Soviet invasion, and so us poor subjugated Americans are left to make the best of a dreadful Stalinist situation. The authors’ advice, which tends toward the bizarrely practical, includes this fantastic tidbit about how to retain some basic creature comforts:

There usually comes a time in any Soviet occupation, usually in the early stages, when most people who own valuable furniture have to sell it off for food or fuel. You should look over your household effects in good time with a view to such an eventuality. Acquire a few more chairs than you need. Choose them in a style that will appeal to the taste of the new rich class of Communist bureaucrats: ornate, pretentious, with some claim to being heirlooms handed down from members of the French aristocracy (or whatever story seems plausible). The proceeds of such a sale may keep you going for weeks or months and may also give you a useful connection with members of the new elite.

Also, just because you are now living under the heel of Soviet oppression doesn’t give you an excuse to let your living quarters go totally to seed:

A good set of ladders (padlocked) will be useful as well as several sheets of glass. It is demoralizing to have to live in a house whose windows are broken or boarded up with plywood or cardboard, and being able to mend your smashed windows will give you a small psychological lift. On the other hand, it will not be advisable to paint the exterior of your house or lavish too much care and attention on it. See that it is sound-and-water-proof, but otherwise foster a discreet shabbiness. You won’t want your house to stand out. Begin to cultivate early the art of keeping a low profile.

On a personal note, this would be a tough pill to swallow:

If you are a political columnist or commentator, or have otherwise become known for ideas antipathetic to the Communist view, you will have little chance of remaining at liberty. Anyhow, you will have no future in journalism. If the offense you have committed is judged to be minor, you might be able to secure some sort of job in the bureaucracy. We would suggest that you acquire some appropriate skill such as bookkeeping.

A bookkeeper in the dictatorship of the proletariat—tough to imagine that might have been my fate if Yuri Andropov had sent his forces across the Bering Strait.

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Phase Three

August 23rd, 2012


Plunging into the third and final draft of the book today. Please occupy yourselves by checking out this stupendous collection of secret-hideout illustrations from The Secret World of 007. The laboratory complex beneath Piz Gloria is a personal favorite, primarily for its impeccable collection of stolen art.

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Simple Things

August 22nd, 2012


As I have previously explored, Bangladesh has some of the world’s most lethal roads. The nation’s motor vehicle-related fatality rate is about fifty times greater than in any Western country. As this piece makes clear, that sad fact is creating a massive drag on the Bangladeshi economy:

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), road traffic injuries cause a loss of about 2% of GDP in Bangladesh, or about £1.2bn annually. This is almost equal to the total foreign aid received in a fiscal year.

Bangladesh currently lacks the enforcement mechanisms necessary to make people obey posted speed limits or buckle their seat belts. So what can be done to reduce the human and economic toll of motoring without asking too much of the state? Fortunately, there are some low-cost solutions that, at the very least, can save hundreds of lives (and millions of dollars) each year:

At the invitation of the ministry of communications, the International Road Assessment Programme (Irap) last year carried out assessments on the Dhaka-Sylhet and the Dhaka-Mymensingh highways, identifying design and maintenance flaws that are contributing to the growing toll of death and disability.

“We don’t want gold-plated roads,” says Greg Smith, Asia-Pacific regional director of Irap, who led the study. “With a scientific approach, sometimes a coat of white paint will save lives.”

According to this IRAP report, simply erecting median barriers on 30 miles’ worth of Dhaka’s highways would prevent 8,400 deaths and injuries every year. Bangladesh’s economy would get five dollars back for every dollar spent on such an investment, and the project could be completed in a matter of weeks assuming some small modicum of official commitment. Tough to imagine a more cost- and time-efficient way to reduce our species’ collective misery quotient.

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Bobby Lee Hunter, Cont’d

August 21st, 2012


One of the great joys of this whole Microkhan endeavor is reaching folks who might not otherwise have occasion to check out our work. And some of those good correspondents are not only interested observers, but also characters in the various yarns we unspool. Our recent post about the rise and fall of incarcerated pugilist Bobby Lee Hunter brought two such commenters out of the woodwork, both of them former world-class boxers. The first, Pat Cowdell, was an English fighter who lost a decision to Hunter at a London Hilton. The other, Tim Dement, was the man who ultimately denied Hunter’s Olympic dreams (see clip above); I’m reprinting his comment here in full, as it’s such a lovely testament to the strange camaraderie that can develop between men who are supposed to pummel each other for our enjoyment:

I also wondered what happened to my buddy Bobby Lee Hunter… We became friends in 1971 as team mates on the USA team that traveled to London and Russia to box. I was a light flyweight and Bobby was a flyweight. I have a newspaper clipping from London paper saying in the headlines “Tiny Tim Too Young to Fight.” I was just 16 years old. They would not allow me to box. However I enjoyed the fights however I had beaten the two Polish Champs aged 31 and 27.

Pat and I must be the same age. In London only men attended the matches all dressed in tuxedos. Pat did good with Bobby.

Bobby and I trained and sparred together in 1971 in Miami at the dog race track before he went to that Pan Am games and won a bronze.

Please take a second look at my match with Bobby at the 72 Olympic trails (see on YouTube) and tell me who won.

I understand they asked Bobby to box against me again at the box offs two weeks later and he refused. I told them please don’t ask him again. I did feel lucky. I love Bobby lee and would love see him again.

To thank Dement for his kind contribution to Microkhan, I am front-paging the clip of his Olympic Trials bout with Hunter. I still think it’s a close call as to who won, but I can see now that there’s no concrete reason to quibble with the judges’ decision.

Also: Howard Cossell, you are missed. Sorely missed.

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Sly Like a Roach

August 20th, 2012

A terrific little crime yarn out of southern Colorado, where an exterminator has been sentenced to 21 years in prison for burglary. That punishment may sound harsh, but Charles Edward Trogdon was no run-of-the-mill breaking-and-entering specialist. He allegedly spent three decades nicking precious items from the homes of clients, a vocation that allowed him to support a suspiciously extravagant lifestyle. (How many snowmobiles and trips to Paris can the average exterminator afford?) Trogdon would likely still be at his illicit craft if he hadn’t made one careless error in 2010:

Trogdon was arrested Nov. 1, 2010, after a woman watched him enter her home without permission, open a dresser drawer and steal money where money previously had gone missing.

Authorities served multiple search warrants at Trogdon’s home and recovered dozens of items that had been stolen from other customers’ homes over a period of many years.

Trogdon said he purchased many of the items at local flea markets.

This detail, I believe, is the greatest testament to Trogdon’s criminal genius:

Trogdon lived an extravagant life, Champagne said. He had multiple houses, boats, snowmobiles and took trips around the world. He since has transferred all of his assets to his wife, preventing victims from obtaining restitution.

Amazing that such a loophole exists in Colorado’s legal code. I have to think that Trogdon knew about it for many years, and started the necessary paperwork as soon as he was arrested. He would thus be the rare crook blessed with some measure of foresight.

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Knockoffs: Grizzly

August 17th, 2012


In honor of Shark Week, I feel compelled to pick a killer-animal-on-the-loose flick for our second installment of Knockoffs. A year after Jaws set the standard for the genre, 28-year-old William Girdler made Grizzly, which rather shamelessly presented itself as a ursine-centric alterative to Steven Spielberg’s box-office hit. When one of your movie’s taglines is “The Most Dangerous Jaws on Land,” you’re obviously assuming that your audience will equate imitation with flattery.

Like all memorable knockoffs, Grizzly attempts to one-up is inspiration by ratcheting up the absurdity a notch. In Jaws, the shark of the title is eventually done in by the puncturing of a tank of compressed air. Girdler “improves” upon that finale by resorting to a favorite Microkhan trope: unnecessary rocket launcher use. (See also here and here.) The video above is all cued up to that glorious man-versus-beast confrontation, so just hit play and enjoy. And try to freeze the clip right at the 3:19 mark—the impact special effect is a wonder to behold.

A sad coda, though: Girdler died just two years later, while scouting film locations in the Philippines. He was working on yet another knockoff at the time, a Star Wars imitator that would have been called The Overlords (link SFW despite warning).

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Deathboats

August 15th, 2012

In the midst of some maritime-related research, my mental record needle stopped upon reading this counterintuitive claim:

Statistics indicate that lifeboats have cost more lives during training drills than they saved during actual rescue situations. The hook release system, which attaches the boats to the wire and winch that lowers them into the water, is the cause of about 80% of these accidents.

Really? So our species would actually be slightly in the plus column if we just left shipwreck victims to their own devices? It sounds too brutal to be true, but there is credible evidence to support the contention here:

In 2001 the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) studied (PDF) the UK’s merchant fleet accident reports for ten years and it showed that alongside entering confined spaces and falling overboard, lifeboat practice was the most dangerous area of operation. Sixteen per cent of fatalities happen during lifeboat drill – one death in eight – a chilling statistic.

MAIB concluded that there were major three factors in lifeboat training accidents which in the studied decade killed 12 seafarers and injured a further 87. Ironically over the same period they did not record one single instance where someone was saved by a lifeboat.

The report emphasized deficiencies in lifeboat design, maintenance and training. Their findings were confined to UK waters and therefore only pointed towards the global problem, but they were backed up by the Norwegian and Australian authorities with their separate investigations coming to similar conclusions. The Norwegians estimate that globally there are about 214,000 drills a year causing 1,000 accidents and as many as half causing fatalities.

So let’s say that puts us somewhere around 500 fatalities per year due to lifeboat accidents. How does that compare to how many lives the small vessels save annually? That’s tougher to calculate, for there do not seem to be any international statistics. On top of that, we do need to question whether lifeboats launched from shore to rescue shipwreck victims are equivalent to those stored on the ships themselves. But there is one data point from the United Kingdom here, and it definitely hints at the fact that the claims of lifeboats’ overall lethality could hold water.

None of this may be good reason to jettison lifeboats from ships. But perhaps the maritime industry should follow Allen Iverson’s fabled lead and disdain the practice of practice.

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True Heroism

August 14th, 2012


Made it back from Helsinki late last night, but too dazed today to be of much use to y’all. That’s largely because I did the noble thing on the flight back home: I yielded my aisle seat to a young Dutch woman who was keen to be next to her boyfriend. My reward was a middle seat smushed between two fidgety types who made sleep impossible. Throw in jet lag and the ravages of a Nordic alcohol bonanza, and you can hopefully understand why I’ll spend most of today barely holding onto reality. Back tomorrow with something worth your while.

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Helsinki

August 10th, 2012


By the time you read these words, I’ll be exploring the streets of Finland’s capital. It’s a quick trip, as I don’t want to miss the birth of the heiress to the Grand Empress’s throne. But while I’m here, I will likely to be blotto on sahti to keep pace with Microkhan. See you upon my return to Queens early next week.

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Confessions of a Snake Eater

August 9th, 2012

An in-depth perusal of the Sword Swallowing Hall of Fame led me to this gem of Victorian non-fiction—an anonymous first-person account of a life spent shoving dangerous objects down one’s gullet. Our storyteller’s most curious pursuit involves the ingestion of a reptile with which our species has a complicated relationship:

I was the second one that every swallowed a snake. I was about seventeen or eighteen when I learnt it…The snakes I use are about eighteen inches long, and you must first cut the stingers out, ‘cos it might hurt you…

When I first began swallowing snakes they tasted queer like. They draw’d the roof of the mouth a bit. It’s a roughish taste. The scales rough you a bit when you draw them up. You see, a snake will go into ever such a little hole, and they are smooth one way.

The head of the snake goes about an inch and a half down the throat, and the rest of it continues in the mouth, curled round like. I hold him by the tail, and when I pinch it he goes right in. The tail is slippery, but you nip it with the nails like pinchers. If you was to let him go, he’d go right down; but most snakes will stop at two inches down the swallow, and then they bind like a ball in the mouth.

Read the whole thing. It’s like the most gothic Studs Terkel interview ever.

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