Given that I’m all about narrative arc these days, Barnaby Barford is an artist who’s right up my alley. He uses his ceramic skills to tell stories, and his latest project is a doozy—a modern update on A Rake’s Progress that recounts an English lottery winner’s rise and fall. One moment our protagonist is sitting […]
Tags:A Rake's Progress·art·Barnaby Barford·Britain·lotteries
Inspired by a post delectably entitled “A Short History of Weaponised Umbrellas,” I decided to delve into the existing literature on the topic. What I found was a prime example of early 20th-century prose, notable for ornate turns-of-phrase that are sorely lacking in today’s self-defense manuals. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the intelligent-yet-florid glory […]
One of the most interesting aspects of researching my slot-machines yarn for Wired was the whole extradition angle. In fact, I’d daresay that’s what attracted me to the story in the first place—the fact that the United States government deemed the crime grave enough to go an fetch someone from Latvia, a country that had […]
Tags:Britain·chemistry·drugs·extradition·law·methamphetamine·Scotland
Apologies for the late start to the day, but Microkhan Jr. decided to rob the clan of some much-needed sleep in the wee hours. Unable to get back to the Sandman’s realm once the kid had been pacified, I passed the time by catching up on The World at War. Lots of good stuff there, […]
Tags:Britain·pseudoscience·racism·The World at War·TV·World War II
It takes a hard heart indeed not to be intrigued by the intricacies of a Vanuatuan cargo cult, especially one as puzzling as the Prince Philip Movement. The small sect believes that Queen Elizabeth II’s husband, a native of Greece known primarily for his verbal gaffes, is actually a Vanuatuan spirit in disguise, and that […]
(Cross-posted from Ta-Nehisi Coates) Sorry to start this gorgeous summer day on an exceedingly somber note, but it’s time to talk suicide. I’ve written a lot about this topic, primarily from a public-health angle. Despite all we’ve learned about human psychology over the past several decades, we seem unable to make much of a dent […]
Tags:Britain·public health·suicide
This will be our last Ug99-related post, we promise. But before we ended our brief run of bonus material related to “The Red Menace”, we thought we’d shout out one of the potential heroes of this story: the late A.E. Watkins, a British botanist who spent much of the 1930s roaming the globe in search […]
There’s an old chestnut (of dubious veracity) about how more rock climbers perish in auto accidents to-and-from the cliffs than from accidental falls. We thought of that contrarian info-nugget this morning upon stumbling across some surprising morbidity news from Britain: Last week, the House of Commons’s Environmental Audit Committee heard evidence that about 35,000 people […]
Tags:Britain·cars·environment·Manila. economics·Philippines·pollution·public health
Having finally closed the Wired story that sent us out to Kenya last fall, we’ve moved on to another big project for the magazine. This time the focus will be on addiction, which means you should expect plenty of drug-policy posts in the coming months. We’ll kick off the fiesta today by noting this paper […]
You might recall how a few years back, Britain’s anti-insurgency tactics in 1950s Malaysia were touted as a model for American forces in Iraq. That turned out to be poppycock, of course, since the British method involved tactics far too unpalatable for the post-colonial world to stomach. Among those tactics, as described in today’s edition […]
Tags:Britain·Communism·insurgencies·Iraq·Malaysia·military·Thailand
We always love it when The Economist makes a cutting reference to Americans’ preference for bright shiny teeth. It’s almost as if the magazine takes pride in English teeth, as a sign of lack of vanity, wise allocation of health resources, or what have you. The mag’s latest crack got Microkhan thinking about the reasons […]
Tags:Belarus·Britain·Cuba·dentistry·Dominican Republic·Estonia·Lebanon·medicine·Norway·Slovakia·Soviet Union·Uruguay·World Health Organization
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, […]
Tags:boxing·Britain·crime·sports·Travellers
Last night, Microkhan finally got around to completing the Stanley Kubrick circuit by watching Paths of Glory. Suffice to say that the film is a potent reminder of the World War I’s absolute ghastliness; we can scarcely imagine what it must have been like to be an 18-year-old lad in the trenches, ordered to venture […]
Tags:Britain·France·Paths of Glory·psychology·shell shock·Stanley Kubrick·World War I
In the course of researching the Now the Hell Will Start chapter that deals with wartime prostitution, we stumbled upon a great little artifact called Morale-Building Activities in Foreign Armies. It’s an illustrated 1943 pamphlet that delves into the various methods used by both Axis and Allies to pep up their troops’ spirits. And it […]
Tags:Britain·Germany·Italy·Now the Hell Will Start·NtHWS Extras Month·World War II
A surprise court decision in Bangladesh may shutter the nation’s vast shipbreaking industry, at least temporarily. The judges were swayed by arguments made by the Bandladesh Environmental Lawyers Association, who have long contended that the industry is among the planet’s dirtiest. Indeed, you probably don’t want to know what happens to the guts of a […]
The most troubling part about this story is not that Nigerian e-scammers were likely able to wheedle a few pounds out of Jack Straw’s pals and constituents (who really should have known better, given the con artists’ straight-out-of-Lagos grammar and syntax). No, what’ll keep me up tonight is that fact that Britain’s former Foreign Secretary, […]
Tags:Britain·crime·information technology·Jack Straw·Nigeria
