News of the mercury thermometer’s imminent demise got me wondering about where, exactly, our quicksilver comes from these days. Much to my surprise, I discovered that there is but a single mine in the world dedicated solely to the production of mercury. It is in Khaidarkan, a village in southwestern Kyrgyzstan, where the poor soil […]
The upheaval in Kyrgyzstan has been both violent and quick, with autocratic president Kurmanbek Bakiyev electing to flee as soon as his security forces proved themselves incompetent. It seems like just yesterday that Bakiyev came to power amidst the hope spawned by the Tulip Revolution. And now destitute Kyrgyzstan is back to square one, in […]
Tags:Coltan Revolution·Kurmanbek Bakiyev·Kyrgyzstan·mobile phones·politics
As we continue to plow through Patrick Radden Keefe’s excellent The Snakehead, we’ve been giving tons of thought to the impact of immigrant remittances. We never cease to be amazed by how much working-class immigrants are able to save and then contribute to the families they left behind—so much, in fact, that some economies become […]
Tags:China·economics·Guyana·immigration·Kyrgyzstan·Patrick Radden Keefe·Suirname·Tajikistan·The Snakehead
The main character in my (*knock on wood*) next book began life as a child coal miner, circa 1905. So I’ve recently taken a keen interest in accounts of what it was like to toil in the pits back then, especially for workers well shy of their tenth birthdays. You will be completely unsurprised to […]
