Part of our goal with The Murder Project series is to assess how hitman prices have changed over time. Our assumption going in is that these prices shift according to the certainty (or lack thereof) of capture, and so more lawless epochs will be marked by lower murder-for-hire fees. A logical guess, perhaps, but does [...]
Entries Tagged as 'New York City'
The Murder Project: “Doing the Big Job”
July 30th, 2009 · 1 Comment
Tags:crime·New York City·police·The Murder Project·U.S. history
The Eyes of Ms. T.J. Eckleburg Diaz
July 15th, 2009 · No Comments
We recently stumbled across the photo above while sifting through the National Archives “Picturing the Century” website, in search of images of child coal miners. Something about the two girls’ sharply differing expressions stuck with us—the one on the left strikes us as the contemplative member of the duo, the one on the right the [...]
Explaining the Fujian Conundrum
July 6th, 2009 · 6 Comments
Over the holiday weekend, in addition to bidding farewell to our dead-tree labor o’ love, we found a few spare moments to start reading The Snakehead, the new book from Chatter author Patrick Radden Keefe. We’re only 50 pages in, but so far this tome gets Microkhan’s equivalent of an Ebert-ian “thumbs way up” rave. [...]
Tags:China·Golden Venture·immigration·New York City·Patrick Radden Keefe·The Snakehead
Last Call in Red Hook
July 2nd, 2009 · 2 Comments
To borrow a sentiment from Mötley Crüe, it’s time to turn the page on Now the Hell Will Start, our dead-tree labor o’ love. This Sunday, July 5th, we’ll be reading from the book for the very last time, amid the cozy waterfront confines of Sunny’s Bar in beautiful Red Hook. If you’re in New [...]
Tags:Herman Perry·Ledo Road·New York City·Now the Hell Will Start·Red Hook·Sunny's Reading Series
Microkhan World New York Tour
June 8th, 2009 · 2 Comments
To celebrate the paperback release of Now the Hell Will Start, we’re gonna be hitting the subway system over the coming weeks, doing a trio of readings in our adopted hometown. If any of y’all are in the environs of Gotham, we’d be honored if you’d turn out to support The Cause. Come up and [...]
Tags:Brownstone Books·housekeeping·New York City·Now the Hell Will Start·Sunny's Reading Series·The Half King
The Utter Failure of High Concept
May 29th, 2009 · 2 Comments
For today’s installment of Bad Movie Friday, we’d like to shred a flick that must’ve seemed so great when William Friedkin pitched it: Cruising, a murder mystery that’s several degrees clumsier than the worst Encyclyopedia Brown shortie.
Now we can see why this got made. The milieu (the gay leather-bar scene) was ultra-edgy at the time, [...]
Tags:Al Pacino·Bad Movie Friday·cowboys·Cruising·movies·New York City
Skulls and Nomads
May 27th, 2009 · No Comments
We’re in bunker mode on the screenplay for the day’s remainder, so no semi-deep thoughts this p.m. We’ll just leave you with the above snippet of the classic documentary 80 Blocks from Tiffany’s, an account of gang life in the Carter-era South Bronx. The social background is ceaselessly tragic, the clothing style mind-blowingly great. And [...]
Tags:80 Blocks to Tiffany's·Bronx·fashion·movies·New York City
Subways and the Smart Grid
March 26th, 2009 · No Comments
As promised yesterday, Microkhan’s gonna continue with its week-long series of “extras” taken from the cutting-room floor of my Wired smart-grid essay. Today’s treat? How subways can become part of distributed-generation networks, along with rooftop solar panels and backyard wind turbines.
Beginning in the early 1970s, the Metropolitan Transit Authority began experimenting with flywheels that can [...]
“Sleek Greyhound of the Seas”
March 24th, 2009 · 2 Comments
Over the weekend, the fam and I paid a visit to the Museum of the City of New York, primarily to check out the exhibit on our fair city’s stab at going green. But the exhibit that really drew me in was “Trade”, an overview of New York’s heyday as a bustling port. As noted [...]
Tags:maritime·New York City·Norman Bel Geddes·trade·transportation
