Brendan I. Koerner's Blog, page 114

Who Will Slip?

We find ourselves in full agreement with The Economist's argument against America's draconian sex-offender laws, which prescribe too-harsh punishments for youthful blunders and other crimes unlikely to be repeated. But we were struck by this passage from the polemic, which would seem to undercut the magazine's case:

A meta-analysis of 29,000 sex offenders in Canada, Britain and America found that 24 percent had re-offended after 15 years.

Those aren't the sorts of odds that will make an already ju

The Sacrificial Ferret

Whatever you may be drinking this weekend, please plan on pouring a little out for the heroic ferret in this classic The Beastmaster clip. We have no idea why Marc Singer's character, supposedly a Dr. Doolittle-like friend to the animals, doesn't try and help his rodent savior. But that's just one of the many eternal mysteries we regularly leave unsolved here on Bad Movie Friday.

A Bad Time to Get Bitten

We've long assumed that antivenins were stocked in every hospital pharmacy, so that snakebite victims need only worry about getting medical attention in time. But, alas, that's really not the case at all—even mainstream antivenins such as CroFab must often be shipped in to address specific cases, and rarer remedies are getting increasingly hard to find. The largest antivenin bank in the United States, which is under the aegis of the Miami-Dade County's fire department, is suffering from budget s

Zezo's World

Once in a while, we receive a comment that merits bumping to the front page. Such is the case with an anecdote just appended to this April post, in which we wondered about the fate of Charles Manson's children—particularly Zezozose Zadfrack Glutz, the product of his carnal union with Susan Atkins. A reader chimed in with an update that struck us as worth highlighting:

I met Zezozose about 11 years ago in Richmond, Virginia. We hung out a bunch of times and I had hours of conversations with him.

He

"Scotch Taped with a Razor Blade…"

There are two salient factoids that we'd like to pass along about the song above:

1) This was the first hip-hop 12-inch we ever purchased, from the Music+ retail store on Ventura Boulevard. (Don't look for it—much like the Electric Banana, it's not there anymore.) We were so enamored of the tune that we recorded every single episode of Yo! MTV Raps for a month straight, just so we wouldn't miss the video.

2) Fifteen percent of the MCs featured on "Self Destruction" are now hardcore Scientologists

Snipped by Disney

The entertainment conglomerate behind Dumbo also recognizes that elephants aren't always sweethearts—especially when too many pachyderms are competing for too few resources. And so Disney's top veterinarian has spent the past few years traveling the globe, making sure that elephant populations stay within reason. His method? Straight-up surgical:

Wildlife officials in several countries are considering killing elephants to control the burgeoning population, according to Disney officials, but surg

The Fog of Plague

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, despite an initial shortage of antiobiotics. But in the early days of the outbreak, the widespres fear was the most difficult thing to control (PDF):

When news of the plague b

Tilting at (Underwater) Windmills

Apologies for the dearth of posting today. We're hip deep in a pair of major projects right now, and we spent way too much time sorting through murder-for-hire data this morning. Now we're off to cold call a bunch of Mexican scientists, who will doubtless chortle at our ugly Spanish. Wish us luck, and please enjoy this small token of our gratitude for your forbearance: a great account of two of the nuttiest (yet subtly ingenious) 19th-century submarines every built. More technical info available

The Murder Project: By the Numbers

Bloggers are lazy? Microkhan chortles at that stereotype. We just wrapped up a long morning of analyzing FBI data, all in the name of furthering The Murder Project, our ongoing effort to assess the state of today's contract-killing marketplace. And today's verdict does not exactly lift our hearts.

As mentioned previously, the only reliable pricing study we've come across (via Slate's Nina Shen Rastogi) is this one from Australia. It examined 163 contract killings in that nation, and found that th

Farewell, Arena Football League

We can't say we ever watched more than 90 seconds of an Arena Football game, so news of the league's imminent demise didn't exactly make us cry hot, salty tears. But 22 years is a long time for an upstart pro-sports league to make it—the likes of the USFL could only dream of achieving such longevity. So the clip above shall serve at our tribute to the soon-to-be-defunt AFL and its unique brand of heavily regulated violence. Here's to hoping some of the laid-off players can find gigs in the Japan