One of the most interesting things about Ug99, the fungus that is currently threatening the world’s wheat supply, is how it managed to sneak up on us. For nearly four decades, the disease that the Puccinis graminis pathogen causes, known as stem rust, was little seen in the wild, and certainly no great peril to [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Soviet Union'
“There’s a Female Up There Circling Mother Earth”
January 22nd, 2010 · No Comments
Not much time for Bad Movie Friday this week, as we’re scrambling on the Secret Major Project™. So this vintage anti-Soviet propaganda film about the travails of Laika will have to suffice. It gets really amazing around the 42-second mark, when one of Laika’s American peers dons granny glasses in order to peep the space-race [...]
Against Ivan Barleycorn
January 21st, 2010 · No Comments
More than we might care to admit, cultures are defined by their attitudes toward alcohol consumption. And so it makes sense that amateur anthropologists can learn a lot by paying attention not only to consumption habits, but to the psychological tactics that societies use to scare folks away from Demon Rum.
Those tactics are on display [...]
Tags:addiction·advertising·alcohol·anthropology·art·France·Soviet Union·The Netherlands
The Soviet Road Not Taken
January 4th, 2010 · 1 Comment
For anyone with even a passing interest in cult psychology, San Diego State University’s Jonestown Archive is well worth a thorough gander. Our favorite section, of course, is a compendium of primary sources that date back to Jim Jones’s earliest days in Indiana. Among the choice morsels contained therein is a petition that all members [...]
Tags:cults·Guyana·Jim Jones·Jonestown·Peoples Temple·psychology·religion·Soviet Union
Livin’ It Up in Kiev
November 9th, 2009 · No Comments
At first glance, there doesn’t seem to be much of interest in this plain-Jane rundown of Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko’s income and assets. The man who rose to the top of Ukraine’s political structure after surviving a bizarre assassination attempt is certainly well-off by his nation’s standards, but it’s not like he’s pulling a pulling [...]
Renewal to the North
October 6th, 2009 · 4 Comments
Aware of our fascination with the current wave of Bhutanese refugees alighting in the U.S., our favorite correspondent from the Nushagak Bay area alerted us to this great A/V feature from the Anchorage Daily News. Apparently a small group of the Lhotshampas have landed in the Land of the Midnight Sun, after a gobsmacking 17 [...]
Tags:Alaska·Bhutan·Botswana·immigration·Minnesota·Nebraska·Nepal·Soviet Union
Daily Bread
July 29th, 2009 · 3 Comments
Last night’s long subway ride afforded us an opportunity to start reading Ian Frazier’s Siberia travelogue in the latest New Yorker. So far, it’s every bit as astounding as we’d hoped—the long digression about Siberian butter, in particular, made our inner magazine geek nearly burst with glee. What can we say, we’re absolute suckers for [...]
Tags:Evfrosiniia Kersnovskaia·Ian Frazier·prisons·Russia·Siberia·Soviet Union·The New Yorker
The Lunar Also-Ran
July 20th, 2009 · No Comments
As we spend today celebrating the 30th anniversary of mankind’s first visit to the Moon, it’s worth noting that America’s space-race triumph was far from pre-ordained. In fact, the smart money circa 1963 would have been on the Soviets reaching the goal first, due to the seldom recognized genius of Sergei Korolev. The man responsible [...]
Tags:1960s·Laika·Moon·NASA·Russia·satellites·Sergei Korolev·Soviet Union·Venus
The Molar Index
June 8th, 2009 · 4 Comments
We always love it when The Economist makes a cutting reference to Americans’ preference for bright shiny teeth. It’s almost as if the magazine takes pride in English teeth, as a sign of lack of vanity, wise allocation of health resources, or what have you.
The mag’s latest crack got Microkhan thinking about the reasons for [...]
Tags:Belarus·Britain·Cuba·dentistry·Dominican Republic·Estonia·Lebanon·medicine·Norway·Slovakia·Soviet Union·Uruguay·World Health Organization
Nixon in Ceylon
May 1st, 2009 · No Comments
In 1953, America dispatched Vice-President Richard Nixon to the island nation of Ceylon (still nearly two decades away from being rechristened Sri Lanka). The Eisenhower Administration was mighty worried about reports that Ceylon was shipping strategic materials to newly Communist China, a sign that the former colony might be contemplating an even more dramatic leftward [...]
“It’s Time”
April 8th, 2009 · 1 Comment
Microkhan is off to the Elm City today, so this’ll be the last post for the next, oh, 19 hours or so. Thought I’d keep on this week’s Soviet-invasion theme, by offering up the climactic scene to Chuck Norris’s Invasion USA. I don’t think a spoiler warning is necessary, since no moviegoer with a half [...]
“I Am the Hunter”
April 7th, 2009 · 1 Comment
Following on yesterday’s mention of the brief heyday of Soviets-invade-the-Heartland films, Microkhan feels morally obligated to post the above Red Dawn clip. In the interests of novelty, we’ve steered clear of the obvious—no “Wolverines!”, no “Avenge me!” Today’s pick is the more obscure, but equally delicious scene in which the evil Soviet commander demonstrates the [...]
Tags:movies·Red Dawn·Soviet Union
“Where Was All That Patriotism When It Counted?”
April 6th, 2009 · 12 Comments
Even in their wildest schemes, the Soviets likely never contemplated the invasion of America. Okay, maybe they would’ve liked to bite off an Aleutian Island or two. But sweep into the Heartland and bring the word of Lenin at gunpoint? Yuri Andropov wasn’t exactly Genghis Khan, in terms of expansionist vision.
But, oh, how Hollywood wished [...]
Tags:1980s·movies·Soviet Union
The Overlook Hotel Times Twelve
April 6th, 2009 · 2 Comments
One of my great regrets was not bringing a camera on my 1999 trip to the heart of the Greenland ice sheet. I was there doing a freelance piece on the Air National Guard unit responsible for resupplying polar scientific missions; we spent three days on the ice, learning how to survive in the event [...]
In Post-Soviet Russia…
March 27th, 2009 · 8 Comments
…cops evidently go the extra mile with their community policing methods. Sorry, couldn’t quite conjure up a killer Yakov Smirnoff punchline out of this clip of Russian cops going all Michael Phelps. Free Microkhan t-shirt to anyone who can.
Tags:drugs·Russia·Soviet Union
“A Prohibition So Divine…”
March 23rd, 2009 · 3 Comments
A couple of weeks ago, Microkhan delved into the apparent link between literacy and suicide—the more literate a nation’s population, it appears, the likelier it is to have a high suicide rate. This theory might explain in part why so many post-Soviet nations have serious suicide problems—their citizens are well-educated, but also struggling economically (at [...]
Tags:religion·Soviet Union·suicide
The Downside of Reading
March 5th, 2009 · 7 Comments
In scanning the World Health Organization’s latest compilation of suicide rates, you can’t help but wonder why self-slaughter is so prevalent in Eastern Europe. All of the highest rates occur in countries from the former Soviet Bloc, such as Lithuania (68.1 males per 100,000) and Belarus (63.3). The rate in the United States, by contrast, [...]
Tags:Eastern Europe·education·psychology·Soviet Union·suicide
The Greatest Hammer Thrower Ever
February 10th, 2009 · 2 Comments
Track-and-field records tumble with alarming frequency nowadays, but Yuriy Sedykh’s hammer-throw mark is a rare exception. The Ukrainian-born athlete set the world record back in 1986, while wearing the Soviet hammer-and-sickle on his uniform. Sedykh competed for another 17 years after that triumph, but he never again came within a meter of that legendary throw. [...]
