The loyalest of y’all may have noticed that I have a longstanding fascination with the legal system’s efforts to value the supposedly invaluable. Which is why I was struck by this recent tidbit out of the Solomon Islands: THE High Court has ordered the Solomon Islands Government and the Ministry of Fisheries to pay Marine […]
Tags:cetaceans·cows·dolphins·economics·intelligence·law·Solomon Islands
The ruins on Nusa Roviana, an island off the coast of New Georgia, include a baker’s dozen worth of skull shrines. These mystical fixtures were vital to the political structure of Nusa Roviana’s society, which centered on all-powerful chiefs who claimed an ability to communicate with deceased ancestors. But the islands’ inhabitants were not only […]
Tags:anthropology·headhunting·New Georgia·Nusa Roviana·Solomon Islands
Try as I might to keep apprised of the political situation in the Solomon Islands, I regrettably lose track of the thread from time to time. Thanks, then, to the commenter who recently showed up to offer his two cents regarding Jimmy “Rasta” Lusibaea, the former ethnic militia leader who had become the Solomon Islands’ […]
Tags:corruption·Danny Philip·Jimmy Lusibaea·politics·Solomon Islands·Steve Abana
The last time that Microkhan checked in with Jimmy “Rasta” Lusibaea, he had just found the Lord after a lifetime of sin. The former head of the Malaita Eagles Force (MEF), the Solomon Islands’ most feared militia, Lusibaea had spent years defending his peoples’ turf against ethnic rivals. The MEF was once so powerful that […]
Tags:corruption·fishing·Jimmy Lusibaea·politics·Solomon Islands
The long spell of political violence that rocked the Solomon Islands last decade, commonly referred to as “The Tensions,” is an episode we know far too little about. We were thus delighted to stumble across this excellent post-mortem from New Zealand’s Sunday Star-Times, which details how the conflict’s aftermath still lingers in a major way. […]
Tags:Liberia·religion·Solomon Islands·The Bulletproof Project
The Wired cover story this month is not our Ug99 opus, but rather a brilliant meditation on the future of money. A couple of years hence, you can forget about the ATM—just think “pay this man,” and neural implants will automatically wire dough from your bank account to your creditor. Or something like that. In […]
As we walked across Little Senegal this morning, a throng of devout Muslim men got us thinking about Bangladesh. That may sound like a non sequitur, but our internal logic went something like this: Though most Islamic societies obviously feature male-dominated governments (note, for example, that all of Iran’s mullahs are male), Bangladesh’s two leading […]
In our all-too-fleeting free time, we’ve been researching the development of Nigerian Pidgin (primarily so we can better understand the comedic stylings of Basketmouth). This exploration recently led us to another mash-up language: Solomon Islands Pijin, which shares some English influence but not much else with its Nigerian cousin. According to a leading Pijin scholar, […]
Tags:Beach-la-mar·language·Nigeria·pidgin·pijin·Solomon Islands
