Brendan I. Koerner's Blog, page 111

"I Charm Freaks and Bomb Geeks…"

As noted yesterday, we're absolutely swamped with paying gigs between now and Friday, so posting here will be lighter than usual 'til Monday. In the name of picking off some low-hanging fruit as we scramble on multiple deadlines, we're posting the above classic Big L vid—a tune we never tire of, in part of because of the late Mr. Coleman's unparalleled knack for rhyming couplets. (We'll forgive him the Swiss flag overalls—the mid-'90s were strange, fashion-wise.) There's a news peg here, too—the

The Analyzer's Sad End, Cont'd

The first hacker we ever wrote about, Israeli national Ehud "The Analyzer" Tenenbaum, could end up serving 15 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to bank fraud charges in New York. We wrote about The Analyzer's odd career during Microkhan's formative days, all the way back in February. He really had a chance to walk the straight and narrow while making money, too, but the dark side proved too great a lure in the end. Perhaps those Israeli PC endorsement deals aren't all that lucrative.

Winged AA

Is it possible to ever tire of zootherapy research? We reckon not, and this study (PDF) from the Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine supports our thesis rather strongly. The paper looks at the use of animals as medicine in a rural corner of Northeast Brazil. Our favorite listed remedy involves the Gray-breasted martin, known to the lab-coat set as Progne chalybea. The Brazilians surveyed swear by the animals' effectiveness in treating alcoholism—as long as you're willing to consume the ent

Pockmarked Immortality

As of this very moment, we have a new life goal: becoming one of the scores of celebrated creative types with a Mercury crater to their name. Yes, we realize the odds of this happening are slim to none—we've got a long way to go before we join the hallowed ranks of Utagawa Kunisada or Theophanes. But let us have our pipe dreams.

(Image of Edgar Degas's crater via NASA)

A Word from Our Sponsor

Apologies, but posting will be a bit more sporadic than usual over the next few days. We're in the homestretch on Draft Two of the Now the Hell Will Start screenplay, and we'd really like to avoid imitating the bloke above by blowing our chance at the end. We're also swamped with an epic Wired piece that requires tracking down some folks in distant corners of the globe. The upshot is that time is pretty precious at the moment, and we find ourselves faced with that all-important choice between, y

Mortality as Morality, Cont'd

Eleven days ago, we questioned whether it might be immoral to keep certain animals captive in zoos. Our hunch is that a species' ability to thrive in a zoo is based not only on its physical needs, but also its intelligence—animals who become aware of the limits of their existence will certainly suffer psychological stresses that can lead to early demises, or so our random thesis goes.

We'd like to pick this thread back up today by looking at one of the most intelligent animals ever held captive f

Why the Jack o' Lanterns?

We admittedly do too many posts on '80s nostalgia, especially now that Microkhan Jr.'s existence has us thinking a lot more 'bout our own formative years. But our worldview back during the Reagan Era was pretty American-centric, so we missed out on plenty of great, junky pop culture from more distant corners of the globe. Among the gems that apparently didn't make it to Los Angeles is the above vide from Cameroon, purported to be one of the greatest kiddie hits of the 1980s. It strikes us as a c

"The Mills of the Gods"

With next year's Census already sparking so much political heat, it's worth looking back at one of Microkhan's favorite-ever technology stories: the 1890 Census, the tabulation fiesta that have birth to (semi-)modern programming.

For the hardcore geeks in the audience, this is already a well-known tale, featuring one of the true rock stars of the field: Herman Hollerith, best known as one of the fathers of IBM. The quickie version of his 1890 genius goes like so:

After receiving his Engineer of Mi

A Fiberglass Romance

Had Corvette Summer been blessed with a better casting director, perhaps it would have escaped the ignominy of our weekly Bad Movie Friday slot. But no—they just had to cast the 27-year-old Mark Hamill as a high-school student, and noted character actress Annie Potts as a Vegas sexpot (a far cry from her ideal role as the Ghostbusters' sarcastic receptionist). As a result, the whole enterprise comes off as slightly askew—or, in the words of The New York Times reviewer, "There isn't a line in Cor

An Advantage in the Air?

In response to our post on athletic gender testing earlier this week, one of our most treasured commenters posed this stumper:

Are there no sports where being a woman might be a competitive advantage over being a man? Equestrian events maybe, or long distance swimming?

Tough one! We've long been familiar with some research vouching for the supposed superiority of women in ultra-marathons, but we're not sure the totality of the sport's results bears out that thesis. And certainly in the longest ru