With the start of the World Cup less than two months away, South African cops are working hard to stem the tide of counterfeit jerseys: A Swazi man was on Saturday night arrested at the Oshoek Border gate after allegedly being found with 12,000 fake World Cup soccer shirts worth E3.6million. SAPS spokesman Colonel Vishnu […]
Tags:counterfeiting·crime·economics·soccer·South Africa·World Cup
What initially struck us about the downfall of Kentucky fireworks dealer Sam Droganes was the Greek-tragedy element to the tale. To hear Droganes tell it, this was a classic tale of hubris gone amok—the man desperately wanted to be the biggest fireworks tycoon in the Bluegrass State, and that ambition led him to make some […]
Whenever we find ourselves wandering around a massive Chinese supermarket, we inevitably gawk at the price of dried abalone. The delicacy has never crossed our lips thanks to its exorbitant cost. But millions of Asian consumers are willing to fork over the pretty penny, in part due to the marine snail’s reputation as an aphrodisiac. […]
Tags:abalone·China·crime·drugs·economics·methamphetamine·South Africa·wildlife management
Nearly a year ago, we marveled at the way in which ancient physicians used ant jaws as sutures. Blame our childhood Flintstones habit, but we have a soft spot for techniques that require the assistance of live animals. And so imagine our glee upon discovering the role that dermestid beetles play in the twin disciplines […]
Tags:crime·dermestid beetles·insects·paleontology·taxidermy·tigers·wildlife management
Nations at odds have long resorted to counterfeiting one another’s currencies, on the theory that doing so can severely undermine a foe’s economy. But the tactic just doesn’t sting like it used to, in part because cash is so less essential today, but also because the increasing sophistication of anti-counterfeiting technology has made the gambit […]
Tags:Alabama·counterfeiting·crime·economics·Iran·North Korea
A great piece out of small-town South Carolina on an alleged attempted murder that turned out to be nothing of the sort. The “victim,” Pearl Brown, wasn’t very detailed oriented, and that was ultimately her undoing. She probably should have researched the link between head trauma and amnesia a bit more, a line of inquiry […]
Tags:amnesia·crime·fur-bearing trout·hoaxes·psychology·South Carolina
It’s not often that we read a piece as boldly contrarian as this letter to the editor from the pages of The Bellingham Herald. The correspondent comes out hard in favor of a practice that’s likely to get you arrested if you don’t take care: hitchhiking: As a person who has traveled thousands of miles […]
Tags:cars·crime·hitchhiking·Rutger Hauer·sociology·The Hitcher·urban legends
For reasons too drab to mention, we recently stumbled across this sordid 1982 tale about a self-described “mountain man” who turned murderous. We were struck not so much by the brutality of Henry Burton Merrill’s crimes, but rather by the media’s insistence on referring to him as a “hermit.” And that got us thinking, naturally, […]
Tags:California·crime·divorce·eremitism·Herman the Hermit·Los Angeles·religion
Atop one of our record shelves sits a fossilized trilobite, given to us by a dear friend of the Grand Empress. We’ve long cherished the gift, but as we went about some cleaning chores while catching yesterday’s Ravens-Patriots tilt, a troubling thought entered our consciousness while giving the arthropod a shine: how do we know […]
Tags:arthropods·crime·fossils·fraud·Heinrich Harder·Morocco·trilobites
Last night while cooking dinner, we decided to rev up a documentary that’s been languishing on our Netflix Instant queue for ages: Witch Hunt. Suffice to say that we weren’t anywhere near prepared for the ensuing 90 minutes, in which the filmmakers unwind a completely devastating J’accuse regarding the Kern County child-abuse panic of the […]
Tags:California·crime·economics·John Stoll·law·movies·South Korea·Witch Hunt
Headhunting of the literal sort figures quite prominently in Now the Hell Will Start, our 386-page labor o’ love. We dedicated an entire chapter to the practice, and thus field frequent questions from readers regarding whether or not the tribal inhabitants of North-East India and northwest Burma still take skulls. Our stock answer is that […]
Tags:anthropology·Assam·Borneo·crime·Dayaks·headhunting·India·Indonesia·journalism·Madurese
Growing up in Los Angeles, we were annually subjected to a series of PSAs cautioning against celebratory gunfire on New Year’s Eve. In fact, we distinctly remember a police officer visiting our elementary school one year before the holiday break, in order to caution us against going outside in the initial minutes after they calendar’s […]
Staying on the food-taboo theme, we recommend this recent paper from the eternally irresistible Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine. The whole thing is worth a read, especially the authors’ various theories regarding why taboos exist. Our favorite nugget comes in the section dedicated to explaining why taboos may have formed to protect human health: Eating […]
Upon being presented with the map above, the first question that pops to most minds is, “Why is the incarceration rate in the United States so absurdly high?” But given our proclivity for the esoteric, we now find ourselves wondering, “Why is the incarceration rate in Indonesia so darn low?” There is certainly no single, […]
Tags:crime·Indonesia·law·prisons·witchcraft
In reading about the murder of four police officers near Tacoma, we were most struck by the prime suspect’s obvious paranoid schizophrenia—a disease that seems to have been wholly untreated, in part because his family members were afraid of staging any sort of medical intervention: As part of the child-rape investigation, the sheriff’s office interviewed […]
Tags:Canada·crime·criminal insanity·law·Maurice Clemmons·psychology·Washington
We generally suspect that few fake kidnappings go off without a hitch. And that’s especially true when the perpetrators of the crime don’t understand the basics of cell-phone technology: At about 6am Friday morning Bangor Police received information that Mr. Daniel Chute was being held captive in an automobile in the Bangor Mall Cinema’s parking […]
One of our favorite slept-on tracks of recent years is “Cali Hustle”, off the criminally hard-to-find Bay Bury-Ya compilation. In the song’s final verse, Mac Mall kicks off his bars with this clever line: Colombian neckties for small fries We’ve always taken it for granted that such a grisly fate has befallen many a criminal […]
Tags:cocaine·Colombia·Colombian necktie·crime·urban legends·War on Drugs
One of our favorite scenes in The Godfather trilogy occurs near the beginning of the second installment, as Michael Corleone dances with his wife at a lavish party in honor of their son’s First Communion. Kay Corleone asks her hubby when, exactly, the family will go legit—something that Michael promised several years prior. “I’m trying, […]
Tags:crime·Kenya·Maina Njenga·Mungiki·politics·The Godfather
The man to the right of the pelican above is Bryan Vorster, a South African animal handler who loves to edutain the kids. Under the nom de scène Snake Bite Jones, he’s long been a fixture at the Johannesburg Zoo, where he thrills audiences by trotting out a vast array beasts—including the vultures used in […]
Tags:crime·reptiles·smuggling·Snake Bite Jones·snakes·South Africa·wildlife management
Sad news out of New Mexico this morning: Sonny Jim, a true legend of the Indian rodeo scene, was gunned down during a property dispute. A man of Modoc descent who’d long lived in Navajo country, Sonny Jim was the nation’s top Indian cowboy during the early 1970s, renowned for his long, luxuriant hippie hair […]
Tags:Arizona·cowboys·crime·New Mexico·rodeo·Sonny Jim·sports
In doing a little research on the lethality of sipping syrup, we came across this concise account of Johnny Jolly‘s legal woes. It seems the Green Bay Packers defensive end got caught with some liquid codeine in his native Houston. But he’s apparently in the clear for the moment, due to some rather strange circumstances: […]
Tags:codeine·crime·drugs·forensic science·Houston·Johnny Jolly·law·Texas
We’re extremely curious to learn the backstory on why Louis Armando Peña Soltren decided to return to the U.S. from Cuba yesterday. He’d been hiding in Fidel Castro’s alleged proletarian paradise for over four decades, and now seems likely to spend the rest of his days in a federal penitentiary for orchestrating a 1968 skyjacking. […]
Upon reading this morning’s news that the Feds have moved against the Pagan Motorcycle Club, we cracked via Twitter that two-wheeled outlaws would do well to choose less obviously evil names. It doesn’t take a genius to wonder whether the Pagans might be up to no good; might the cops be less likely to bat […]
Tags:Bikers for Christ·crime·Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs·Pagans·religion
While perusing this AFP piece about a poaching bust in the Central African Republic, we stopped and mumbled “hmmmmm” upon reading this hard-to-swallow stat: Experts say some 38,000 African elephants are killed each year for their tusks. Really? That seems like such a ridiculously high figure; at that clip, wouldn’t the species (or, to be […]
Tags:Africa·animals·Central African Republic·crime·elephants·ivory·wildlife management
A pal of ours is on jury duty this week, and reminded us of one of the great pleasures of the process (at least in New York): getting to view Enter the Jury Room on your first morning. Narrated by the late Ed Bradley, the short film is surprisingly witty and informative, especially for those […]
Tags:Burma·crime·Ed Bradley·Enter the Jury Room·law·Medieval history·movies·trial by ordeal
The first hacker we ever wrote about, Israeli national Ehud “The Analyzer” Tenenbaum, could end up serving 15 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to bank fraud charges in New York. We wrote about The Analyzer’s odd career during Microkhan’s formative days, all the way back in February. He really had a chance to […]
Tags:crime·Ehud Tenenbaum·hackers
We have to duck out for a few hours, to work on a big Wired piece that’s simmering on our front burner. Back as soon as possible; in the interim, please enjoy the above “gotcha!” clip of Dalia Dippolito, who was recently busted for trying to get her husband offed. Like so many murder-for-hire amateurs, […]
Tags:crime·Dalia Dippolito·Florida·police·The Murder Project
We don’t have too many hobby horses here at Microkhan, but one of them is a steadfast belief that many long-accepted practices are far less effective than advertised. This is typically because our species is easily seduced by logical facades, and thus pays too little attention to actual evidence. You can understand, then, why the […]
Tags:alcohol·Australia·bloodletting·crime·medical science·public health
Last night, we got in a brief discussion with a pal regarding the Hollywood history of bearer bonds. These arcane financial instruments played a key role in at least two cinematic classics from our younger years: Beverly Hills Cop, in which Eddie Murphy’s pal foolishly steals some “German bearer bonds” from a drug dealer, and […]
Tags:bearer bonds·Beverly Hills Cop·crime·Die Hard·drugs·Hans Gruber·Mexico·money·movies·Texas
We find ourselves in full agreement with The Economist‘s argument against America’s draconian sex-offender laws, which prescribe too-harsh punishments for youthful blunders and other crimes unlikely to be repeated. But we were struck by this passage from the polemic, which would seem to undercut the magazine’s case: A meta-analysis of 29,000 sex offenders in Canada, […]
