Yesterday morning, while tearing through the Stanford Faculty Club’s equivalent of a Denny’s Grand Slam (sans flapjacks, alas), we recalled how Americans were asked to collect their bacon drippings during World War II. We always assumed that this grease was then converted into fuel. But, boy, were we wrong—as the friendly Disney characters explain in [...]
Entries Tagged as 'weapons'
The Arms Trade, Illustrated
July 28th, 2009 · 4 Comments
In the course of learning about contemporary cattle raiding in Sudan, we found ourselves sifting through a recent edition of the annual Small Arms Survey. It’s an informative publication, no doubt, but also mind-numbingly dense; our eyes glazed over midway through Chapter Three, during the extended exploration of “security enhancement projects.”
Thankfully, the survey’s authors must [...]
Tags:AK-47·arms trade·firearms·Small Arms Survey·Somalia·Sudan·weapons
The Washington Generals of Rome
July 9th, 2009 · 1 Comment
Perhaps due to our early exposure to the Mel Brooks versus Gregory Hines fight scene in History of the World: Part I, we always figured that trident-and-net gladiators—known in Latin as retiarii—were decidedly badass. For years, in fact, we’ve always claimed that, should we ever suddenly be cast back to the year 100 A.D. and [...]
The Middle Ages Get a Bad Rap
July 7th, 2009 · 3 Comments
So you think Medieval knights were condemned to lug around unwieldy swords, while their Renaissance counterparts bounced around with mere wisps of metal weaponry? Dr. Timothy Dawson believes you’ve been grossly misinformed—a fact he expounds upon at length in one of Microkhan’s all-time favorite publications, the Journal of Western Martial Art:
These results show that full [...]
Tags:history·Journal of Western Martial Arts·Medieval history·Renaissance history·weapons
Man’s True Best Friend?
June 4th, 2009 · 3 Comments
One of Microkhan’s most faithful correspondents wrote in yesterday regarding our recent Taiwanese landmines post. Our piece quoted from a report on Mozambique’s mine removal program, which suggested that dogs were doing much of the detection. But our reader, who obviously knows Mozambique better than the Average Joe, points out that giant pouched rats are [...]
Tags:animals·Black Death·coal mining·landmines·Mozambique·rodents·weapons
Elbow Grease and Lots of Kevlar
June 2nd, 2009 · 8 Comments
We’re a sucker for unintentionally wry headlines, so we were delighted to come across this gem last night: “Demining efforts to make Taiwan’s Kinmen island more tourist-friendly.” Why, yes, that seems quite logical—few tourists are fond of vacationing amidst landmines.
Yet once we stopped chortling, we couldn’t help but become engrossed in Taiwan’s project. Kinmen was [...]
Tags:China·Depression v2.0·dogs·Kinmen·landmines·Mozambique·Taiwan·weapons
Keeping Tabs on Dear Leader’s Nukes
May 26th, 2009 · No Comments
In devouring the weekend’s reports regarding North Korea’s latest atomic machinations, we were struck by the technological limits of the global monitoring system. Seismic readings indicate that something went down that Mother Nature didn’t intend, but such tremors can be caused by conventional explosions. (Yeah, that’s a lot of TNT, but it can be done.) [...]
Tags:CTBTO·earthquakes·North Korea·radionuclides·technology·weapons·xenon
“This is for the Molokai Cops…”
May 19th, 2009 · 5 Comments
Screenplayin’ and parentin’ for the day’s remainder, so we’re gonna leave you with a follow-up to last week’s Bad Movie Friday winner, the seminal Hard Ticket to Hawaii. This particular scene does not feature unnecessary use of a rocket launcher, but it does teach us all a valuable lesson: When a stranger asks you to [...]
Bombs and Otters
April 17th, 2009 · 3 Comments
There’s such a wealth of fascinating tidbits in this National Nuclear Security Administration archive, it’s hard to know where to begin. Many of the goodies, such as this mind-blowing clip from Operation Castle, will already be familiar to students of atomic-testing history. But others are of a much rarer nature, and some were declassified just [...]
Tags:Alaska·Amchitka·atomic testing·movies·Operation Castle·sea otters·weapons
“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 [...]
Shiv the Destroyer
March 10th, 2009 · No Comments
One of this blog’s core beliefs is that human ingenuity knows no bounds. Today’s Exhibit A: Prison inmates’ MacGyver-like knack for crafting weapons from ordinary objects. This particular set is in the possession of a San Francisco comic-book seller, who got the shivs from a crooked prison guard. Here’s his favorite:
This was made as a [...]
Ares’s Laboratory
February 24th, 2009 · 1 Comment
If you ever find yourself at the intersections of Skull Valley and Stark roads in western Utah, take a long peek out the car window. See that barren nothingness that extends as far as the eye can see? That’s paradise for budding Air Force jocks: The Utah Test & Training Range, where the munitions of [...]
Yet Another Mammoth Fear
February 19th, 2009 · No Comments
Life was apparently no picnic for the Pleistocene epoch’s woolly mammoths. For starters, they had to be super-wary of where they clomped—one careless step and the tar pits would snag you for all eternity (as well as the eventual edification of schoolchildren). And there were always plenty of saber-toothed tigers lurking about, waiting to snatch [...]
