Perhaps because they were so enthusiastic about ritualistically slicing hearts out of their fellow humans, the Aztecs are rarely examined with much seriousness. This University of Texas collection seeks to correct that oversight, by chronicling the tenets of the legal system that sustained Aztec society until the conquistadors showed up. There is great stuff throughout, […]
The typical peace of Oslo was recently shattered by one of my favorite wedding traditions: the Chechens’ enthusiasm for turning vehicular processions into demolition derbies, as participants jockey for the exalted slot just behind the bride and groom’s car. (More examples here.) Lives are occasionally lost in such a manner, which is why various governments […]
I am generally no great fan of books about mountaineering disasters, but Buried in the Sky really got its hooks into me. That’s partly because of its unique narrative viewpoint: the tale’s protagonists are not the Western adventurers who met with bitter fates on K2, but rather those adventurers’ Sherpa guides. The authors did a […]
Tags:anthropology·books·Buried in the Sky·marriage·mountaineering·Sherpas·Tibet
One of our big hobby horses ’round here is the natural rate of divorce—that is, the theory that a certain percentage of marriages are invariably doomed, and that policymakers should realize this when crafting divorce laws. If those laws are too strict, you just get a lot of miserable couples who become a drag on […]
Left-of-center politicians are often demonized for simply “throwing money at a problem” instead of concocting a more innovative solution. But there are, in fact, instances in which direct cash incentives are by far the most efficient tact. Such appears to be the case in India, which continues to have a serious problem with female infanticide, […]
Tags:bribery·India·infanticide·marriage
Yesterday we looked at the economic benefits of the Philippines’ divorce ban. In doing so, we noted that while legal splits are certainly uncommon over there, they’re certainly not unheard of. Filipinos who want out of bummer marriages must opt for an annulment, which is ostensibly tough to obtain. But as is usually the case […]
Continuing on with our recent divorce obsession, a reader comment inspired us to look at the split rate in ancient Rome. We recall that the union between Emperor Augustus and Livia came about only after the two lovebirds divorced their first spouses. (Livia’s husband, Nero, actually approved of the maneuver, and attended the ensuing wedding […]
Following up on last week’s divorce theme, we thought we’d take a look back at pre-modern marital splits. While divorce may not have been common in the West until the advent of women’s lib, it was apparently a staple of several Asian and Middle Eastern societies for centuries: The outpouring of scholarly and popular works […]
Tags:divorce·Indonesia·Japan·Malaysia·marriage·Medieval history·Ottoman Empire
Due to some less-than-stellar writing on our parts, we attracted some mystified “huhs?” regarding yesterday’s post on arranged-marriage divorce rates versus those for “love” marriages. That admittedly confusing post, in turn, referred back to a concept we mentioned about two months back: what we’ve termed the natural rate of divorce. Okay, let’s slow down and […]
Staying on the marriage string, we wanted to note a stat we found buried in this recent piece on Unification Church mass weddings. The reporter found a figure that Microkhan has long been on the hunt for, regarding the divorce rate for arranged marriages (of the non-Moonie sort): Amitrajeet A. Batabyal, an economics professor at […]
An eagle-eyed reader, obviously aware of Microkhan’s longtime obsession with all things Sri Lanka, recently turned us on the marriage-proposal ads in one of the island nation’s leading papers. They make for fascinating reading, in part as evidence of how closely first-generation immigrants remain tied to the marital practices of their homelands; the bulk of […]
America’s sky-high divorce rate is often cited as a prime example of our moral decay. But how many other nations avoid such matrimonial chaos only through the maintenance of draconian laws? Microkhan would like to direct your attention toward Uganda, which has recently experienced a surge in divorces. The culprit seems to be the repeal […]
