Following on from a serious, but interesting, article on what’s happening in Iran were two pieces in the New Yorker this week that were interesting, a little quirky, and made me smile.
The first is a look at what kinds of music soldiers listen to. Unsurprisingly, Metal seems to feature prominently - the research was spurred-on by claims that a ridiculously high proportion of fan-mail sent to Slayer came from serving soldiers - but while Jazz is yet to get a foothold inside the Hummers, Wagner (in homage to Apocalypse Now) is fairly popular.
The second delves inside a class at Mover University, where removal men (and women) are trained up to Elite standard. It’s not an immediately interesting topic, but at the same time a little look into the precision with which they operate is fascinating.
