I dog-eared a whole bunch of pages in Mark Bowden’s Guests of the Ayatollah, including one featuring a passage about a longtime favorite topic: the psychology of captivity. I am a firm believer in the proposition that extended confinement can warp the mind in terrifying ways, which means I’m also a great admirer of men […]
Tags:books·Guests of the Ayatollah·Iran·Mark Bowden·prisons·psychology
This spot-on passage from Mark Bowden’s Guests of the Ayatollah is something that I’ll be keeping at the forefront of my thoughts today, as I tackle an especially tricky section of my book: Revolution gives ordinary people the false belief that they can remake not just themselves, their country, and the whole wide world but […]
Tags:books·Cambodia·Guests of the Ayatollah·Iran·Mark Bowden·photography
I’m almost ashamed to admit how much time I’ve wasted over the past few days sifting through this nifty archive of World War II “newsmaps,” which were essentially weekly progress updates published by the Army’s Special Service Division. Though tinged with the air of propaganda—it’s not like they ever reported on setbacks, and the enemy […]
Tags:art·Iran·maps·propaganda·World War II
Yesterday’s cross-country plane ride gave me the chance to catch up with Jon Lee Anderson’s sobering dispatch from Iran, which pretty much cements the notion that the Islamic Republic will never give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Not that I didn’t already know that on some level—as Anderson so eloquently puts it, Iran seems […]
Tags:atomic testing·diplomacy·Iran·nuclear power·South Africa·Vela Incident·weapons
As we jam on our monthly Wired column deadline, we thought we’d give y’all something to chew over—a interesting snippet pulled from this excellent Discover piece about the kidney black market in India. Given our philosophical leanings, we generally find ourselves arguing for the legalization and regulation of kidney sales. But then we come across […]
Tags:Discover·economics·India·Iran·medical science·organ donation
We need to invoke khan’s prerogative today and step away from the blog, on account of yet another brutal Wired deadline. In our absence, enjoy this archive of photos from the defunct League of Nations. The one above is of the Iranian delegation, circa 1920—we reckon that was the Golden Age of women’s fashion in […]
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
One of the most ghoulish-yet-wise sayings we’ve ever heard is “Earthquakes don’t kill people, buildings do.” (Or, a bit more accurately, “poorly constructed buildings do.”) So as soon as we heard news of Haiti’s latest natural catastrophe yesterday, we knew the death toll would be high. There is little chance that the nation’s relatively weak […]
Tags:California·concrete·earthquakes·engineering·Haiti·Iran·natural disasters
Given Iran’s reputation for dispensing harsh justice, it surprised us to learn that the country is home to a thriving crystal-meth industry—one so big, in fact, that it’s now exporting to Southeast Asia. As the United Nations graph at right makes clear, use of the drug (locally known as shisheh, or glass) has exploded since […]
Tags:drugs·Iran·methamphetamine
The controversy over Iran’s nuclear ambitions has sent plenty of folks scurrying back to the history books, to examine what made South Africa give up its bomb-building program. In joining the throng, though, we stumbled upon a curious factoid from the annals—an assertion, in an old (and offline) Foreign Affairs article, that South Africa initially […]
Last night we started reading Harp of Burma, a book often touted as Japan’s post-World War II version of All Quiet on the Western Front. It provides a soldier’s eye view of Lieut. Gen. Renya Mutaguchi‘s ill-fated campaign in Burma, which ended up turning into one giant suicide mission as the war turned against the […]
Tags:chemical weapons·Haruki Murakami·Iran·Japan·Tokyo subway attacks·writing
Among the many ghostly memories conjured up by Iran’s current tumult, the unsolved murder of Paul Klebnikov is one of the most unexpected. After all, Klebnikov was known primarily for his investigative journalism in Russia, where he exposed myriad tales of corruption, thuggery, and outright theft. Yet The Lede recently reminded us of Klebnikov’s fine […]
Tags:Iran·Paul Klebnikov·Richard Behar·Russia·Sultan of Brunei
Given our admitted lack of expertise in contemporary Iranian affairs, we’ll henceforth do our best to leave the running protest commentary to far more qualified folks. But since we’re obviously somewhat transfixed by the Iranian opposition’s humble request for electoral fairplay, we couldn’t help but spend much of the morning delving into the nation’s history. […]
We tend to blog best when we’re focused on relative esoterica like competitive eating, bootleg cigarettes, and the films of Klaus Kinski. But as noted in Microkhan’s mission statement, we—okay, I—reserve the right to tackle more mainstream topics when the situation warrants. And the ongoing tumult in Iran is just such an occasion. I can’t […]
Tags:Iran
Apologies for the slow start today, but we’re completely absorbed in the ever-changing situation in Iran—a situation that appears to be growing more violent by the hour. Packing up and heading to our mobile headquarters (i.e. the Columbia University library) in a matter of minutes. More soon.
Tags:housekeeping·Iran
Given that the Iran hostage crisis is one of our formative memories, we’ve taken a keen interest in the recent tumult on the streets of Tehran. Of particular note has been the regime’s effective use of technology to foil grassroots communications. First the mullahs shut off text messaging and The Tubes, then they actually managed […]
Tags:Iran·satellites·technology
As the husband of a lingerie designer, I’m accustomed to being surrounded by bra-and-panty images pretty much 24/7. My daily existence, in other words, could not possibly be more un-Iranian. Because as shown above, that nation’s censors make sure that no one gets a peek at non-family flesh. This photo comes from the must-see Flickr […]
With the 30th anniversary of Iran’s Islamic Revolution upon us, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini is back in the news. How does a run-of-the-mill cleric become an ayatollah in the first place? Here’s the scoop, which I unearthed during my days as Slate‘s “Explainer” columnist. Two key tips: Study hard, and work on your rep.
