Brendan I. Koerner's Blog, page 106
September 25, 2009
Packing Music
Via Radio Nova. The soundtrack for the stacking of shirts. And if you're a soul music fan, GStrongRaw's entire channel is well worth a visit.
"It's Dangerous for Strangers in Atlantis"
On our forthcoming trip to Africa, we certainly hope we don't suffer Kathy Ireland's fate and slip into an underground realm populated by refugees from an Olivia Newton-John video. But we reckon anything's possible, so we'll be sure to conceal our surface-world origins should foam columns give way.
Believe it or not, we actually saw this whole dog back in '88; we were big fans of Ireland's work in the swimsuit oeuvre. Alas, our only memory of the movie is of being vaguely disappointed in the ...
The Literacy Laggard
We have to think there's some sort of correlation between Pakistan's persistent internal turmoil and its atrociously bad system of primary education. The nation may have one of the world's top fifty economies, but its literacy rate officially languishes around the 50 percent mark. That makes Pakistan's population less bookish than such poverty-stricken countries as Haiti, Liberia, and Malawi, all of which presumably have far less public lucre to spend on educating their children.
Yet is the...
September 24, 2009
Slack, Please
Though we recently vowed to avoid apologizing for light posting, we can't help ourselves today. Sorry, just swamped with prepping for our East Africa trip—gotta pick up our doxycycline, along with a host of other odds and ends. For the moment, though, we'll leave you with sonic stylings of the late Joe Higgs. And we'll return soon.
A Hole in the Happiness Theory?
So many statistical goodies to sift through in the latest report on American asylum cases (PDF). But by far our favorite oddity can be glimpsed in the chart above. What's going on with the Bhutanese? Only three citizens of the isolated kingdom claimed asylum in the U.S. three years ago, and then none in 2007. But then the hordes came last year. What gives? Are the Bhutanese masses far less happy than their monarchical government so famously claims?
In searching for the answer, we noted this c...
September 23, 2009
"With the Priest Holmes Fakeout"
On a crushing Wired deadline right now, made all the worse by the fact we're still trying to figure out our Africa logistics. (Anyone know the intercity bus situation in southern Kenya?) But no reason you should have to feel our stress—sit back and enjoy the classic cut above (which we're pretty sure features a Remo Fernandes sample). Lyrics NSFW, but you probably knew that already.
Can Nicorette Be Righteous?
As we've given ever-deeper thought to our nation's distressingly high infant morality rate, we've started to wonder how best to address the problem. Everything we've read in recent days seems to indicate that the rate could be dramatically lowered if more expectant mothers took better care of their bodies—specifically by quitting smoking, which pretty clearly results in low birth weights (and thus increased risk of death in the first year of life).
But we realize those cancer sticks can be...
September 22, 2009
Unwinged Pegasus
Via the invariably spectacular Ptak Science Books blog, a quick peek back at the brief heyday of airborne horses:
"Sep 1850 English Aeronaut Gale on horseback suffocated Bordeaux". Is this the first man-on-horseback-in-flight death? And death by suffocation? (?) I'm not so sure that the ascent records for 1850 would've made allowance for running out of oxygen at high altitudes–if not, then how did this man suffocate? According to the Dictionary of National Biography, which, somehow...
Book Recs?
As previously noted, we're about to jet for East Africa for a spell. The trip will doubtless entails many hours of waiting around—the flights alone will keep us either aloft or in airports for a grand total of 44 hours. A dreary prospect, perhaps, but at least we'll have the chance to catch up on some reading—an all-too-rare treat given our parenting duties nowadays.
But what should we read? We're midway through Crime and Punishment, so that's definitely coming with. Can you, dear readers...
Even More on the Venom Trade
On the heels of yesterday's post about the snake-catching monopoly enjoyed by India's Irula people, we thought we'd turn our gaze slightly east and see who runs the reptile round-ups in neighboring Bangladesh. Though the erstwhile East Pakistan has no formal caste system, its society does tend to frown on a semi-nomadic people known as the Bede, who traditionally spend several months a year living on ramshackle houseboats. The Bede steer those boats into far corners of Bangladesh's...
