Brendan I. Koerner's Blog, page 64

When Best Intentions Fall Flat

In addition to railing against American imperialism and digging up the bones of long-deceased heroes, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has taken a keen interest in improving his nation's literacy rate. One of his key initiatives was a $50 million-plus program to teach 1.5 million Venezuelan adults to read, primarily by providing financial and job opportunity incentives. Just two years after the program's 2003 launch, Chávez pronounced it a rousing success that had completely erased...

Risk and Reward on the Gulf of Aden

If you haven't yet checked out the Financial Times much-discussed breakdown on the economics of Somali piracy, do yourself a favor and allocate a few minutes' worth of reading time. The piece won my heart by using buccaneer salary estimates to convey some perspective on how the notion of "dangerous work" differs so sharply between nations:

The figures debunk the myth that piracy turns the average Somali teenager into a millionaire overnight. Those at the bottom of the pyramid barely made what...

The Khat Economy

Where would the Ethiopian economy be without the mild, broadly illegal stimulant known as khat? Apparently in quite dire straits:

Coffee and khat exports earned Ethiopia close to 737 million dollars, which was 36.9pc of the total foreign exchange of two billion dollars that the country earned in the 2009/10 fiscal year with 36.5pc, 729.1 million dollars, coming from China.

Ethiopia's foreign exchange income from exports for the year increased by 37.9pc to two billion dollars from last...

The Small Pleasures of Camel Meat

Last week I chimed in about the seemingly never-ending quest to bring deposed Chadian dictator Hissène Habré to justice. To add to that sad story, it's worth remembering how Habré first gained international notoriety: the 1974 kidnapping of French archaeologist Francoise Claustre, who was held for nearly three years before gaining her release through the intervention of Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi. Known to the French as L'affaire Claustre, the entire kidnapping saga was a clusterfuck...

Off the Canvas

Apologies for deserting you yesterday, but I was completely pancaked by what appeared to be the dreaded Osaka flu. A good night's sleep and some orange-flavored Gatorade seems to have restored me to halfway decent health, so I'll soon be posting anew about Chadian kidnapping, Malaysian snake control, and the challenges of increasing adult literacy in the developed world. Thanks for your patience.

"Some People Get Mad…The Revenger Gets Even"

Sorry to end the week with a whole bunch of radio silence, but the work crush got the best of me on this sunny summer Friday. Didn't want to leave y'all with Mac Batchelor atop the page—no offense, Mac—so let me outro with yet another installment of Bad Movie Friday. This week's victim/honoree is the 1989 Frank Zagarino vehicle The Revenger, which the IMDb seems to have confused with a far more awesome kung-fu flick that bears the same name. It's never too encouraging when the trailer's...

The Legend of the Swedish Bear

To ardent fans of arm wrestling, there is no greater hero than the famous Mac Batchelor, a Los Angeles bartender who never lost a single match over his twenty-five year professional career. Even more impressively, he won a fair share of those matches while blasted out of his skull on whiskey and beer—his tolerance for hooch was almost as legendary as his upper-body strength. Eat your heart out, Lincoln Hawk. (Much more on Batchelor's incredible career here.)

But despite his status as the...

Jyoti Devithe is Not a Happy Camper

Full context here. Devithe, a legislator in the Indian state of Bihar, probably had her heart in the right place, since massive, endemic corruption can be tough to tolerate. But it's rarely advisable to take a page from the Taiwanese parliamentary playbook.

Rodent Ops in the South Pacific

Ever since reading Robert Sullivan's Rats, I've become convinced that the furry little banes of urban sanitation will someday rule the world. They are like land-dwelling versions of the dreaded zebra mussel, adept at turning a minor incursion into a full-blown invasion before any Homo sapiens are the wiser. And once they've conquered a piece of territory, they're oh-so-difficult to expel—though, granted, not impossible, as evidenced by our recent triumph on Alaska's Rat Island.

But cousins of ...

Ring the Alarm

A Wired deadline just snuck up on me, so off to hit the keyboard. In my brief absence, please check out this excellent history of Tenor Saw, the dancehall legend who never made it to his 23rd birthday. The singer's violent demise remains one of music's great unsolved mysteries:

It shouldn't have come as a surprise when Tenor Saw was found dead on the side of the road in Houston after a performance he put on in August of 1988. The official cause of death was hit-and-run, not a rare occurrence...