Brendan I. Koerner's Blog, page 78

Your Tax Dollars at Work

What initially struck us about the downfall of Kentucky fireworks dealer Sam Droganes was the Greek-tragedy element to the tale. To hear Droganes tell it, this was a classic tale of hubris gone amok—the man desperately wanted to be the biggest fireworks tycoon in the Bluegrass State, and that ambition led him to make some shady deals involving far-too-powerful explosives.

Upon further inspection, however, what really wows us about Droganes's case is the fate of his former stock, all of which ...

The Lowdown on Brown-Brown

If you haven't read it already, Jon Lee Anderson's latest dispatch from Guinea is well worth your time. The piece does an excellent job of conveying the chaos of Moussa Dadis Camara's brief reign, which was marred by one of the great atrocities of recent vintage. Suffice to say that Dadis and his cronies come off as dangerously erratic; the fact that they were briefly able to rule a sovereign nation, even one as hardscrabble as Guinea, is an absolute farce.

There is one reportorial...

Feel the Chemistry

An exceedingly quick Bad Movie Friday this week, as we need to duck away and deal with some weighty matters. So we're going with a slam dunk: Cyborg Cop, directed by quasi-legendary (aka the man who gave birth to that cinematic abomination known as American Ninja). While Firstenberg may have some action chops, we feel like the clip above pretty much proves that romance in the Hepburn-Tracy vein just isn't his bag.

Also, action heroes shouldn't wear fanny packs. Ever.

For the Glory of the Company

In the midst of researching a forthcoming post on the economics of sports bribery, we've been learning a heckuva lot about the backstory on Shoeless Joe Jackson, the baseball great whose legacy is tarnished by the Black Sox Scandal of 1919. We dig the fact that Jackson was a linthead who spent his childhood working in a textile mill, and would have stayed there were it not for Textile League Baseball. Because back before professional baseball was a vertically integrated monopoly, some of the ...

The Trick of a Dreadful Trade

We realize you need no convincing that life in a Bangladeshi brothel is beyond abysmal. But this NGO's dispatch from the frontlines of the South Asian nation's flesh trade is still a stunner. As if a prostitute's lot in life wasn't bad enough already, there is now tremendous pressure on brothel employees to warp their bodies through pharmacological means:

One girl called Asha is just a teenager but she has to serve customers all day. Her name means 'hope' but there appears to be very little...

The Real World Cup

Look, we're as excited as the next khan about the forthcoming FIFA World Cup—if Paraguay wins it all, we stand to make a pretty penny. But our enthusiasm for soccer's top tournament pales in comparison to the love we feel for the Kabaddi World Cup 2010, currently taking place in Punjab, India. Longtime readers already know that kabaddi holds a special place in our hearts. And so you can only imagine how intently we've been following the results filtering out of Amritsar and Gurdaspur...

The Coltan Revolution

The upheaval in Kyrgyzstan has been both violent and quick, with autocratic president Kurmanbek Bakiyev electing to flee as soon as his security forces proved themselves incompetent. It seems like just yesterday that Bakiyev came to power amidst the hope spawned by the Tulip Revolution. And now destitute Kyrgyzstan is back to square one, in terms of establishing some sort of functional government.

In the grand tradition of recent political tumult, the turnover in Kyrgyzstan will need a...

A Metaphor for Parenthood

Last night, we attempted to offer a pal of ours some reassurance. He's expecting his first kid this summer, and he naturally has mixed feelings about what the future holds in store—the unabashed joy of ushering new life onto Planet Earth, of course, but also the loss of a whole bunch of personal autonomy for the next 18 years. We did our best to tell him that the pluses vastly outweigh the minuses, but he sort of scoffed at our sweet words. People who wax rhapsodic about the pleasures of...

Where Smirnoff Gets Its Due

From the northernmost portion of Canada comes a salient lesson on mankind's bottomless thirst for booze—a thirst that we'll go to ridiculous lengths to slake:

The announcement of an alcohol task force comes on the heels of a string of bootlegging busts across the territory. At a news conference Wednesday, RCMP Sgt. Jimmy Akavak said the police seized $400,000 worth of bootleg booze since January alone.

Bottles can command high prices, especially in dry communities, where a 60-ounce bottle of...

"Gumaruk Might Not Be Wise…"

We're just days away from the Sudan's hotly anticipated elections, and no one can say for certain how the process will unfold. But after reading this haunting dispatch, we fear that violence will mar the nation's fledgling attempt at democracy. It was written by photographer Pete Muller, who has been accompanying music-star-turned-aspiring-politician Mary Boyoi on the campaign trail. Suffice to say, Boyoi is taking huge risks simply by running for office:

As night descends on Pibor, Mary...