Brendan I. Koerner's Blog, page 74

The Fungi's Second Front

Having dedicated the better part of 2009 to understanding the threat posed by Ug99, a fungus that threatens to decimate much of the Eastern Hemisphere's wheat crop, our ears always prick up when we hear of looming agricultural catastrophes. The latest comes in the form of Pathogen206, which afflicts wheat with yellow rust (aka stripe rust). Like Ug99, the emerging pathogen overcomes one of mankind's key genetic defenses—a gene in which we seemingly placed far too much trust:

Following the...

Angels With Dirty Faces

We were gonna hit you with another Bulletproof Project entry this afternoon, but paying gigs and prior commitments have conspired against us. The next few hours are all about writing FOIA requests and researching an upcoming "Mr. Know-It-All" column for Wired, before we bolt downtown for an evening of industrial design, Pakistani food, and Cavs-Celtics. Let us outro with a tune that we already know to be a favorite 'round these parts. It surprised us on an archived WEFUNK show the other...

Lord of the Board

A few months ago, in the course of writing about the phenomenal track record of the UMBC chess team, we briefly flicked at the notion that chess intelligence is a unique beast that doesn't necessarily predict classroom (or life) success. The ability to imagine a game's progress several moves ahead, as well as consider the implications of certain strategies before an opponent can even respond, is obviously a great skill, but one that doesn't have nearly as many real-world applications as...

Sofia Rock City

Okay, quick word association game: When we say "Bulgaria," what's the first thing that pops to mind? For us it's french fries slathered in partially melted sirene, but heavy metal is a close second. And so you can only imagine the great times we've been having sifting through the archives of this stupendous site, inarguably the world's leading repository of Bulgarian metal music and trivia.

The site led us to discover the clip above, from Bulgarian metal forefathers Impulse. It's off this...

Ripped in the Kingdom of Happiness

In what must certainly rank as the least surprising athletic triumph ever, bodybuilder Tshering Dorji has been named . Though his victory is just days old, Dorji has obviously been expecting this title for years—something we assume based on the fact that his three-year-old charitable foundation is called Mr. Bhutan. Also, going in to the competition, he was the only competitor with experience on the international level—he actually lives in Finland, and has garnered...

A Notch Below the Opti-Grab

While using the U.S. Patent Office's records to try and discern what genius invented the jalapeno popper, we accidentally stumbled upon an invention for the ages: the flavored boot for eyeglasses. We'll let the application's description do the dirty work for us:

Many individuals who wear eyeglasses frequently will remove their eyeglasses and place the end of the temple arm into their mouth, and either chew or suck upon the end of the temple arm. Such actions, particularly chewing, can leave...

Bumps for Life

Yesterday, a pal of ours asked whether the following stat (gleaned from a recent Harpers article) could possibly be true: One out of every 85 humans living today will meet their end as a result of a vehicular accident. That figure may sound ridiculously astronomical, but data from the World Health Organization lends some powerful support to the factoid's veracity. According to the WHO, 2.2 percent of 2004 deaths were attributable to "road traffic injuries." (We're not sure why there's a...

Thugged Out

A treasured Friend o' Microkhan recently directed us toward this insightful yet depressing Foreign Policy piece, about the seemingly endless nature of Africa's various armed conflicts. The author makes a convincing case that we do ourselves a disservice by trying to understand these ultra-violent clashes as wars, since one side usually has no interest in seeking peace. In other words, an outfit such as the Lord's Resistance Army shouldn't be viewed as an army at all, but rather a criminal...

Representing the +95

The sitter's deathly ill and the Grand Empress is at JFK picking up a shipment of lacey undergarments (slightly NSFW), so Microkhan Jr. is our sole responsibility 'til his afternoon playdate. That means no time for words o' wisdom this morning, an announcement we make with heavy hearts. Hope to get back to y'all once the progeny is off our hands; in the meantime, check out the video above from Sai Sai, the most famous rapper in all of MyanmarBurma. (Rational for our word choice to be found

"People Who Died for Our Entertainment"

Back in the 1930s, a New York subway conductor named Manuel Velazquez befriended a middling boxer named Pete "Kid Indian" Nebo. Like many pugilists of the era, Nebo fought two to three times per week in order to make ends meet. As a result of his athletic pursuit, Nebo suffered terrible brain damage, and was forced to live out his final days in a mental hospital. Saddened by his pal's decrepit end, Velazquez decided to crusade against boxing. To that end, he began clipping out newspaper...