Brendan I. Koerner's Blog, page 87
February 1, 2010
A Hive of Scum and Villainy
The recent passing of J.D. Salinger got us thinking about the small role The Catcher in the Rye played in our decision to wield the (figurative) pen for a living. While we're pretty sure the book wouldn't hold up should we crack it again today, it wowed us during junior high. It was, in fact, one of the first semi-adult books we kept on jonesing to read until we finished, a feeling we'd only had about Tolkien and the Hardy Boys up to that point.
But The Catcher in the Rye's artistic...
The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Astronaut
About a decade ago, we had the privilege of spending some time out on Greenland's ice sheet, in the company of the Air National Guard unit responsible for keeping polar scientists stocked with food and medicine. Much of that trip is a blur, due to the fact that we lost innumerable brain cells due to both frostbite and schnapps, but we do have vivid memories of the jocular scientists, who spent six months at a time living in tents out on the ice. It was an unbelievably harsh existence, yet...
The Commandos Take Nagaland
It should go without saying that we do our best to keep apprised of the goings-on in North-East India, a place near-and-dear to our hearts. (Yeah, we have multiple hearts—what of it?) We were thus chilled to learn recently that the esteemed province of Nagaland has been invaded by Mary Kay Cosmetics. And the grand-dame of multi-level marketing enterprises is taking no prisoners in its attempt to turn India's tribal citizens onto the supposed wonders of the MelaCEP Whitening System:
"There are...
January 29, 2010
The Midnight Rider on Sobriety
No Bad Movie Friday this week, in part because we had a change of heart about calling out the 1993 Bruce Willis vehicle Striking Distance. Yes, it was almost certainly pitched to the producers as "Die Hard meets Serpico…on the water!" And we'll never, ever buy Sarah Jessica Parker as a Pittsburgh cop. But watching Hard...
The Scourge of Wine
Given our obvious enthusiasm for the effects of alcohol, we were a bit taken aback by a recent New York Times piece extolling the virtues of half-bottles of wine. Apparently there are people out there for whom a regular ol' 750-mL bottle of wine is too much to split with a loved one—the writer includes a line about such a ghastly amount of alcohol causing its imbibers to "stumble into bed without doing the dishes."
We initially guffawed at such lightweights, but they actually have some pretty ...
Reason Through the Haze
Having finally closed the Wired story that sent us out to Kenya last fall, we've moved on to another big project for the magazine. This time the focus will be on addiction, which means you should expect plenty of drug-policy posts in the coming months. We'll kick off the fiesta today by noting this paper out of Britain, in which the authors make a truly contrarian claim: that heroin use needn't always lead to abuse:
Our findings suggest that sustained heroin use does not inevitably lead to...
January 28, 2010
"Make Them Understand the Cost of a Helping Hand"
We've long been planning a meditative post on an axiom that's caused us no shortage of angst these past few months: "People always run from what they're best at." Those musings will follow eventually, once things on the paying-work end have settled down a bit. In the meantime, take the above soul cut, off The 24-Carat Black's classic Ghetto: Misfortune's Wealth, as an object lesson in what we'll be talking about. Dale Warren, the man behind the group, was one of Stax Records' in-house...
Anatomy of a Hoax
A great piece out of small-town South Carolina on an alleged attempted murder that turned out to be nothing of the sort. The "victim," Pearl Brown, wasn't very detailed oriented, and that was ultimately her undoing. She probably should have researched the link between head trauma and amnesia a bit more, a line of inquiry that might have led her to conclude that she couldn't possibly fake memory loss by gashing herself on the noggin. And it was unwise to call 911 from her cell phone while...
The King's Gambit
With the possible exception of Texas A&M's poultry judging squad, no college team is as dominant right now as University of Maryland-Baltimore County's chess club. The school recently earned yet another national title, its ninth in the past 14 years. It has done so by recruiting a United Nations' worth of grandmasters, including such notables as "The Polish Magician" and "The Uzbekdragon". But the UMBC program first rose to prominence thanks to "The Exterminator":
[Coach Alan:] Sherman...
January 27, 2010
"Like When We Used to Climb the Rope in Gym Class…"
If you've heard of the traditional Indian sport of mallakhamb, it's likely in relation to its supposed role in the creation of modern pole dancing. But there's an offshoot of the sport that involves rope tricks rather than pole stands, and it's quite a sight to behold (see above). While mallakhamb may be little know outside the Subcontinent, it's apparently making great strides in Germany these days. And why is that? An Indian master endeavors to explain:
"I have coached players in Japan...
