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IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair.
We’ve hand-picked the week’s best reads for you to savour.
A look at what it was like on board the ill-fated Diamond Princess cruise ship, which suffered a coronavirus outbreak earlier this year.
(GQ, approx 38 mins reading time)
For a week more, the Diamond Princess cruised on. The Amigos took a memorable kayak excursion in Vietnam, among the karst monoliths of Ha Long Bay. They enjoyed street food in Taiwan. But while there, panicky headlines and more temperature guns made the virus impossible to ignore. Still, they considered themselves safe, unaware that an 80-year-old passenger—a man who had coughed through the first third of the cruise before disembarking in Hong Kong—had been admitted to a hospital, where it was discovered that he was infected with the coronavirus. When the ship was two days away from returning home to Yokohama, a typo-riddled email from a Hong Kong port agent arrived in the inboxes of cruise line personnel, alerting them to the danger that had been found: “Would kindly inform the ship related parties and do the necessary disinfection in needed. Many thanks!”
Richard Philips was innocent, but spent 46 years in prison. While there, he made a plan to kill the man who framed him.
(CNN, approx 35 mins reading time)
Two days after he was sentenced to life in prison in 1972, Phillips wrote a poem. It may have been the first poem he ever wrote. He was 26 years old, and had left high school in tenth grade, and now, with plenty of time to wonder, he took a pencil and set his wondering down on the page. He wondered about the color of raindrops, the color of the sky, the color of his heart, the color of his words when he sang aloud, and the color of his need for someone to hold. He missed holding his children, missed lacing their shoes and wiping away their tears, and he knew the only way he’d ever return to them was to somehow prove his innocence.
Our news reporter Daragh Brophy looks at the legal loophole that caused the explosion in Irish pirate radio.
(TheJournal.ie, approx 10 mins reading time)
I said: ‘When am I starting’? Carey said: ‘Oh, in about two weeks’ time’. ‘Why?’ ‘Well you’ve got to get the Nova way. And the way to get it is you go to Los Angeles… I’ve got a condominium there and there’s a great radio station, Kiss FM. There’s the keys to the car, the keys to the condo – here’s your airline tickets. Bring your girlfriend and listen for two weeks to the station, to Kiss FM. That’s your job, you’re actually working for me, and come back as if you’re working on that radio station – absorb the philosophy of it.
An oral history of the day everything changed for America.
(Wired, approx 50 mins reading time)
Dan Pfeiffer: The Minneapolis airport that morning was empty—it was shocking. My flight was very empty. My wife had told me 100 times to make sure I wiped down everything in my area, and I’m sitting next to this guy—he’s actually watching Fox on the Direct TV next to me—and I wiped down everything. He sees me wiping down and I guess he sees that he has permission to do what his wife had also told him to do—so, he takes out his wipes and wipes out everything.
5. Why the coronavirus is so confusing
It’s a very strange time right now, and it can be really confusing too. This piece explains why that’s the case.
(The Atlantic, approx 30 mins reading time)
Prasad’s concern is that COVID-19 has developed a clinical mystique—a perception that it is so unusual, it demands radically new approaches. “Human beings are notorious for our desire to see patterns,” he says. “Put that in a situation of fear, uncertainty, and hype, and it’s not surprising that there’s almost a folk medicine emerging.” Already, there are intense debates about giving patients blood thinners because so many seem to experience blood clots, or whether ventilators might do more harm than good. These issues may be important, and when facing new diseases, doctors must be responsive and creative. But they must also be rigorous.
6. Marie Kondo wants to fix your life
This is a really interesting look at Marie Kondo’s career, and how she has managed to turn herself into a brand – but how she’s also making some unexpected decisions.
(Fast Company, approx 15 mins reading time)
Over the past year, Kondo has been forced to negotiate the tension between her introverted personality and her desire to introduce her philosophy to larger audiences. Tidying Up With Marie Kondo, her Netflix series that launched in January 2019, went on to become the global streaming service’s most-watched nonfiction show of the year. Suddenly, Kondo was vaulted into a new constellation of stardom, alongside other goddesses of wellness and domesticity such as Martha Stewart, Oprah Winfrey, and Gwyneth Paltrow. By the end of 2019, she had established an e-commerce site, a blog, and a newsletter.
…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES…
Ever wanted to spent some time somewhere in complete and utter silence? The author of this 2012 piece writes about his time going on an extreme meditation retreat in India. It might not have been all he dreamed of…
(Men’s Journal, approx 25 mins reading time)
Not just silence. I have – we all have – signed a pledge to observe what’s called “noble silence.” This means no speaking, no gestures, no eye contact. “You must live here,” we’re told, “as if you’re completely alone.” There is also no exercise permitted, except walking. No cellphones. No computers. No radios. No pens or paper. No books, pamphlets, or magazines. Nothing at all to read. There will be only two simple vegetarian meals a day. My suitcase, with my phone and laptop, is locked away in the meditation center’s office. I have just a day bag, with a couple of toiletries, a med kit, and a single change of clothes. I’m wearing sandals and sweatpants and a loose T-shirt.
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Horrific, we really don’t look after our elderly. Too many cases like this
@R2BApp: red thumb
@R2BApp: I think most of us do look after our elderly. To use a less-than-perfwlect analogy; if somebody beeaks into your car, steals it and burns it out, it doesn’t mean you haven’t been looking after your car. It means some skulbag nicked it.
@Neal, not Neil.: I meant at goverment level not a personal level. Majority of cases like this are rural elderly living alone. They are very vunerable to attacks like this, most attackers are known by the victim in these cases. One solution would be to have a grant available to OAPs to install a surveillance system, preferably one that is monitored by Gardai or outsourced to a security company in the area
@R2BApp: Ah, fair enough.Maybe next time use “they” instead of “we’!
Mandatory prison sentences for those guys required. Shall we start with ten years? they don’t deserve their freedom and hope they will be caught soon, vile cowards.
@Scundered: I am a great believer in labour camps for these urchins, many of whom have never worked a day in their lives. They get sentenced and are sent to camp where they are presented with a shovel and barrow. They are then instructed to dig a hole in the ground ,, say 1m square and 1m deep, and to use the dug up earth to fill the hole dug the previous day by their fellow inmate. They do this for six and a half days a week. Start of the day is at 6am, after breakfast and they finish at 6pm. The only escape from this drudgery would be classes which would prepare them for the outside world. After five years of that their tiny minds would be ready for the world.
putting pillowcase over his head, ransacking his house &leaving him tied up. very brave of them it must feel great intimmidating a lone pensioner like that.still at least the courts will take it very seriously these thugs will be looking at a hefty 3months suspended sentence if they’re ever caught
This is shocking. The ramifications go beyond this poor old man, every other elderly person living alone nearby will be badly affected. Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions but I think this type of crime could be the work of a certain ethnic group
Slight chance of some justice maybe up north. Down south the current prison sentence for such crime is 10-12 minutes behind bars for the 50th offence, unless the elderly person is a juge in which case its a 20 year sentence.
All the hallmark of our traveller ethnic waslerils
@Gerard Henry: a lot of foreign nationals and druggies about kilkeel , from my experience look at the junkies first.
Low Life S##m that’s what they are hope that they get cot.to do that to an Elderly man….
Poor man!! What a frightning experience!! It pains me to hear of any kind of cruelty but attacking an old defenceless man is an all-time low in my opinion!! Fcuking degenerates!!!!!
Escaped on a pieball.
have your say