Brendan I. Koerner's Blog, page 126

The Most Jersey Thing Ever

We honestly wonder what Sandi Saraya’s four kids think when they encounter video evidence of mom’s eponymous ’80s band. Our best guess is that they feel an almost indescribable mix of embarrassment and pride. Microkhan, on the other hand, can only chuckle at Saraya’s oversized hair, rote guitar licks, and tragically trite lyrics (”Take my heart/Take my soul/Love has taken its toll”). Be forewarned: The video for “Back to the Bullet” is not much better, although we’re mightily impressed by the ke

Against All Cetaceans

We’ve always been puzzled by the fact that the two main holdouts against international whaling laws are Japan and Norway—nations from opposite ends of the globe, with no apparent shared culture or history. How did these two countries form such a strong alliance in favor of the continued slaughter of aquatic mammals?

The stock explanation is that it’s merely a matter of economics—the Japanese ostensibly enjoy consuming whale meat, and Norway has identified that demand as a big source of revenue. B

From Salt Lake to Chihuahua

The peaceful resolution of a Mexican kidnapping saga brings to mind a strange bit of American religious history: The Mormons’ 19th-century trek south of the border to establish a series of colonies. Those colonies were far more numerous before Pancho Villa came on the scene, but some hardy souls stuck out the conflict (PDF). Among those Mormons who stayed the Mexican course? A family by the name of Romney.

The Sound of Shreveport

We’re taking the rest of the day to hit the creative reset button—that is, catch up on a zillion-and-one e-mails, and start collating all of the project ideas that piled up while we were banging out the Now the Hell Will Start screenplay. So we’ll outro with this gem from the great African Music Machine, one of so many great ’70s bands to record at Louisiana’s Sound City Studios. More tracks via the band’s (unofficial?) MySpace page. For the record, only one member of the group was actually Afri

Iranian Half-Truths During the Harrison Years

Given our admitted lack of expertise in contemporary Iran affairs, we’ll henceforth do our best to leave the running protest commentary to far more qualified folks. But since we’re obviously somewhat transfixed by the Iranian opposition’s humble request for electoral fairplay, we couldn’t help but spend much of the morning delving into the nation’s history. Let’s face it, few of us know much about Iran before 1953, the year that the U.S. helped reinstall the Shah.

Of particular note is this hyper

An Iron Horse for the Ages

The most gargantuan machines on Earth usually operate far outside the public eye, in remote corners of the globe where the substances that make modern life possible are extracted from the ground. We’ve previously posted about one such device, an abandoned component of a German coal-mining operation. Today we’d like to focus on another plus-sized metal marvel: The locomotives that haul Western Australian coal from Newman to Nelson Point:

The 426-kilometre railway line from Newman to Nelson Point

Meth on the Go

Despite the obvious depravity of this South Carolina couple’s operation, we can’t help but admire their efficiency:

A Greenville man and woman are facing drug charges after police said they stopped a vehicle with an active methamphetamine lab inside it at North Pleasantburg Drive and Wade Hampton Boulevard.

The arrests occurred after the two were stopped at 10:20 p.m. in a Ford Taurus about half a mile from Bob Jones University, a police incident report said.

The officer said he was given verbal co

We Are the Salsa

Granted, this was a pretty heavy day here at Microkhan—a bummer vibe perhaps not helped by our rare stab at outright earnestness. So let us make it up to you by ratcheting up the zany for our Bloomsday outro: Senor Coconut’s acid-merengue remix of Kraftwerk’s “Tour de France.” The source material is here, if you dare to compare. If nothing else, we’re wagering that Senor Coconut certainly wears far more tight-fitting polyester than the boys from Düsseldorf.

First Contact: The Aztecs Meet the Spanish

Our ongoing First Contact series continues with a look at the initial encounter between the Aztecs and the Spanish. Rather than rehashing the conquistadors’ standard accounts of Tenochtitlan’s grandeur and the horrors of human sacrifice, we thought we’d focus on the Aztecs’ point of view—specifically their mistaken belief that Hernando Cortes and his soldiers were pale-skinned gods.

Despite its obvious civic and scientific achievements, Aztec civilization was hamstrung by its devotion to magic.

Cold Ironing at Port Everglades

A major East Coast port finally wakes up to the environmental benefits of cold ironing. Granted, running an idle ship off shore-side electricity is pretty energy intensive. But it pails in comparison to letting the ship’s diesel engines keep on humming:

Broward County Commissioner Kristin D. Jacobs said that by shutting down the engines and using electric shore-side power on the Oasis-class ships, which will be the two largest cruise ships in the world, each ship will experience annual reductions