Not sure how many Italian speakers I have in the Microkhan fold, but I felt the need to give some love to this new edition of Now the Hell Will Start from Milan-based Edizioni Piemme. I was tasked with approving the text, a job that gave me a new appreciation for the art of translation. […]
Tags:books·Italy·Now the Hell Will Start·Tom Clancy·translation·Vivo o Morto
For the year’s first installment of Microkhan’s much-beloved Bad Movie Friday feature, I was sorely tempted to call out Cindy Crawford’s disastrous attempt to evolve from model to mactress: 1995’s Fair Game, not to be confused with the recent Plame Affair dramatization of the same name. But I decided to shift course upon reading Crawford’s […]
Tags:Bad Movie Friday·Cindy Crawford·Guardie del copo·Italy·movies·Silvio Berlusconi
Did the codpiece come into vogue because a bunch of Italian counts were trying to conceal their fights against syphilis? An Australian doctor makes the case: The treatment of the disease was for the most part empirical with multiple agents applied locally, which along with the bulky dressings would give large frontal bulges, impossible to […]
Tags:codpieces·Italy·Larry Blackmon·medical history·music·Renaissance history
Because so few potential clients are directly threatened by volcanoes, the insurance industry hasn’t developed sophisticated models to estimate damage due to cataclysmic eruptions. But sooner or later, a volcano located near a major population center is going to blow, and government cash alone may not be enough to heal the economic wounds. Could the […]
Tags:economics·Indonesia·insurance·Italy·Mount Tambora·Mount Vesuvius·volcanoes
We’re getting down to the wire on a major, major deadline, and thus don’t have even a neuron to spare for poor Microkhan this afternoon. As previously promised, we’ll be back to full strength on Monday. Thanks for bearing with us as we toil elsewhere. As a small token of our immense gratitude, please enjoy […]
With the Chinese town of Ziketan locked down on account of pneumonic plague, it’s worth looking back at a similar incident from 15 years ago: the Surat plague of 1994. The Indian city ended up recording approximately 5,150 cases of pneumonic plague, which resulted in a shade under 60 fatalities—by no means a major epidemic, […]
Tags:bubonic plague·China·India·Italy·pneumonic plague·public health·Renaissance history·Surat plague
Continuing on with our recent divorce obsession, a reader comment inspired us to look at the split rate in ancient Rome. We recall that the union between Emperor Augustus and Livia came about only after the two lovebirds divorced their first spouses. (Livia’s husband, Nero, actually approved of the maneuver, and attended the ensuing wedding […]
When we first established Microkhan HQs a few years back, we were immediately struck by the nabe’s vibrant cigarette bootlegging scene. For a while there, we couldn’t walk 10 feet without having someone pull up alongside us and whisper, “Newport, Newports.” (The pace of solicitations has since decreased a bit, in part due to mounting […]
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
