Brendan I. Koerner's Blog, page 81

Nothing Exceeds Like Excess

Yesterday's New York Times featured a piece on the lavish lifestyles of South African president Jacob Zuma and his fellow African National Congress bigwigs. The article was accompanied by a photograph of Zuma sitting on a gilded banquet chair, which bears a striking resemblance to a throne. (Not to Zuma's handlers: If your boss is weathering corruption charges back home, best not to let him be photographed on anything throne-like while abroad.)

The photo couldn't help but remind us of one of ...

The Cattle and the Mark

The Amish generally prefer not to mess with the American legal system, but the Wisconsin left them no choice. Badger State authorities decided to make the Amish comply with regulations that made the registration of "livestock premises" mandatory. One farmer, Emanuel Miller, decided to fight back, claiming that the program infringed on his religious freedom. The Clark County Circuit Court saw it his way:

An Amish farmer in Clark County has won his fight against the state's livestock...

Losing Teeth

If all goes according to plan, today's the day we finally finish the second draft of our next Wired bit—the one about addiction that we've been yammering on about for a good two weeks now. Tomorrow will then be all about edits, as we scramble toward our 5 p.m. PST deadline. (The editorial mothership is in San Francisco, so we always get a three-hour cushion.) Not entirely sure we're gonna make it, especially since our trusty Vaio is on its last legs—it has come to resemble astronaut clone...

The Last Beer Run

The sign above, which features script that translates as "Attention: Drunks," was briefly part of a safety initiative in the Romanian town of Pecica. The mayor was concerned that too many of inebriated pedestrians were getting mowed down by cars, and so sought to duplicate a series of warning signs that he had once encountered in Germany. All was going well until the international media caught wind of the story, and made the program out to be ridiculous. The poor mayor was forced to relent.

T...

The Yngwie Malmsteen of Kazakhstan

Totally immersed in addiction science this afternoon, which means we're giving ourselves permission to half-ass it with a highlight from one of Kazakhstan's most beloved variety shows. We have no idea what this song is about, but we must admit, that one dude in the shiny shirt absolutely tears it up on the dombra. When the instrument inevitably becomes a part of American rock 'n roll—perhaps as part of TV on the Radio's inevitably awesome Beatles-in-India moment?—just remember that Microkhan ...

A Lovely Place to Say Goodbye To

There is plenty of statistical candy to consume in the CIA Factbook's latest net migration figures. We had no idea, for example, that people were actually flocking to strife-torn Cyprus, or that Grenadians were so hot to leave the erstwhile Isle of Spice. But what really struck us was a stat that harkens back to a topic of discussion last week: the sheer magnitude of the Guyanese diaspora.

According to the CIA, Guyana's net migration rate last year was an astronomical -17.31 per every...

"An Alligator Half That Size Would Starve in a Week"

We're a bit embarrassed to admit this, but we once wrote a magazine piece that seriously examined the physiological feasibility of Godzilla. We called various eggheads and asked them to assess whether a lizard-like creature as massive as Tokyo's favorite monster could ever exist in the real world. The universal answer, of course, was nyet—Godzilla's weight would instantly crush all of his internal organs. Not to mention the fact that he couldn't possibly consume enough salarymen to satisfy...

A Nation of Lushes

So we're starting the second draft of our addiction piece for Wired today, which means the majority of our mental bandwidth shall be dedicated to inebriation for the next six to seven days. A rough ride for us, as the topic is a beast—we're still not entirely sure we understand what takes place in the mesolimbic pathway when a shot of Wild Turkey works its dark magic.

But the upside is that we'll have plenty of great tidbits to Microkhan as we plow through, starting with this historical...

Dyed by Their Own Hands

For the umpteenth year in a row, we failed to take advantage of our Atlah locale and check out the annual Phagwah parade in Richmond Hill, Queens. But we got our Guyanese festival kick by checking out these shots, which amply demonstrate the splattery fun that was had by all.

More great photos of Phagwah parades past here. And you can read about the history of the parade here. We tried to find some info on the festival's celebration in Guyana itself, but didn't come up with much of interest. ...

Ransom as Lifeblood

For fairly obvious reasons, we find it unable to resist scholarly examinations of North Korea's currency weirdness. Why would Dear Leader's regime see fit to instantly vaporize what little wealth the Hermit Kingdom's poor citizens have managed to scrape together? (We suspect the answer has something to do with the abuse of Hennessy, which has been known to spur some of Microkhan's more foolish behavior.)

We hoped to find an answer to our question in this Japan Focus article. But we came away ...