Brendan I. Koerner's Blog, page 104
October 12, 2009
Won't Somebody Please Think of the Airlines?
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. Or perhaps not—though it's tough to imagine the U.S. government forgiving such a crime, perhaps they're willing to let bygones be bygones given the rather archaic...
October 9, 2009
Blue Screen Blues
A quick Bad Movie Friday this week, as we're absorbed in the game of narrative non-fiction writing (i.e. the gig that pays the bills 'round here). Let's just say that we probably owe Krull another look; we saw it at a grade-school birthday party back when it came out, and probably didn't yet have the mental faculties to process the concept of the glaive. But if this clip is any indication, the special effects are bound to leave us cold. Plus that line about getting inside before the twin...
Official Sport of the Health Care Debacle
When folks ask us about out take on the health care mess, we always bring up the tale of our pal "Lancer." (Names have been Robotech-ed to protect the potentially moritified.) A few years back, poor Lancer was playing a little pickup basketball when his ACL decided that it no longer enjoyed being a complete entity. Alas, Lancer was temping at the time, and thus among the ranks of the uninsured. The ensuing surgery landed him in mammoth credit-card debt, which we believe he's still trying to c...
Controversial Prizes
We usually care little for news of prizes—we refuse to watch the Academy Awards, for example, and we're always hard-pressed to name the regining National Hockey League MVP. But we can't help but take note of this morning's news regarding our president's newly minted Nobel laureate status. Talk about a topic sure to stay on people's lips for days or weeks…
Much of the forthcoming chatter, of course, will center on whether or not President Obama deserves the prize. To us, however, the more...
October 8, 2009
Fighting to Survive (Journalism Edition)
We're up to our eyeballs with the day job, though happy to report that last night's moderate alcohol consumption helped us overcome a serious creative block. This afternoon's all about moving the narrative forward and avoiding mixed metaphors; in our absence, please enjoy what is inarguably Stan Bush's finest work. Not safe for the squeamish, though—kumite apparently encourages gory leg-breaking maneuvers.
The Insects Cannot Hold
The fact the map above is entirely green-and-white attests to the success of one of modern history's great international projects: the FAO's Locust Watch. When the project started in 1979, the ravenous critters were a regular menace from Mali to eastern India, in large part because of a lack of information flow—countries were seldom aware of nascent plagues in their neighbors. So the FAO developed a hierarchical system, equipping local officials throughout Saharan Africa and Asia with the...
The Walls Tell All
We've long believed that there's far more wisdom scrawled on bathroom walls than is to be found in, say, the average self-help manual or Chick tract. And we know we're certainly not alone in that contrarian assessment. But until this morning, we never realized that loo graffiti was also a subject of serious academic discourse (PDF) out in our native state:
Whether or not graffiti writers take the permanence of their writing implement into consideration can only be definitively proven by...
October 7, 2009
The Situation Overpowers My Imagination
Writing up the Kenya piece through the lunch hour; hopefully back to Microkhan-ing in the mid-p.m. In the meantime, enjoy a little Syl Johnson—yet another soul nugget that the RZA feasted upon during the Wu-Tang Golden Age. This came on Radio Nova last night just as our stress level was beginning to peak; rarely has a shot of sonic calmness been so welcome.
Rejecting Baal
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 an eye at the Care Bears?
A close Microkhan ally responded to our jest by rightly pointing out that such a theme already exists in the motorcycle world: the existence of a mighty evangelical ...
October 6, 2009
Counting the Jumbos
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 precise, the genus) be entirely extinct before the next Summer Olympics, if not sooner?
As it turns out, African elephants are seemingly much more plentiful
