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.
Ta-Nehisi Coates drew a lot of attention with his article My President Was Black in 2016. Now he’s back with another look at Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and race. A must-read.
(The Atlantic, approx 51 mins reading time)
His political career began in advocacy of birtherism, that modern recasting of the old American precept that black people are not fit to be citizens of the country they built. But long before birtherism, Trump had made his worldview clear. He fought to keep blacks out of his buildings, according to the U.S. government; called for the death penalty for the eventually exonerated Central Park Five; and railed against “lazy” black employees. “Black guys counting my money! I hate it,” Trump was once quoted as saying. “The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”
Bobby Hadid joined the NYPD after 9/11, wanting to do something to protect his country. But when he started to question the force’s tactics, things started to get difficult.
(The New Yorker, approx 43 mins reading time)
On September 11, 2001, four of his colleagues at Pitney Bowes died in the attacks on the World Trade Center. Hadid watched the television for hours, crying. He thought, I have to protect this beautiful country of ours. I want to move this country forward, even if it’s just by a millimetre. He enrolled at the training academy for the New York City Police Department, which was seeking Arabic speakers. As a child, he had hidden under his bed when he heard police sirens, but now the N.Y.P.D. sounded like “paradise on earth—the money, the shield,” he said.
3. The Silicon Valley CEO’s diet: Fasting
A new craze for fasting is sweeping through Silicon Valley, and CEOs are particularly interested in taking part. But is the diet really safe?
(The Guardian, approx 10 mins reading time)
Intermittent fasting gained popularity with the 5:2 diet, where people eat normally for five days a week and eat a dramatically reduced number of calories (around 500) on the remaining two days. However, Libin and others like him are pushing that idea further and with a focus on performance over weight loss.
The documentary-maker Nick Broomfield has a really fascinating career. Here, he talks to Huck magazine about his life in film and his latest documentary about Whitney Houston.
(Huck, approx 12 mins reading time)
Often that means having no idea where a project will lead. His 1993 film on Aileen Wuornos (The Selling of a Serial Killer) – which came out 10 years before the blockbuster biopic, Monster – brought him so deep into her story that the pair became friends. She even asked him for an interview the day before being executed, leading to a follow-up documentary (Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer) in 2003.
5. The tiny country that could feed the world
National Geographic looks at sustainable farming in Holland, and how it could teach us a thing or two about farming sustainably.
(National Geographic, approx 21 mins reading time)
That copious output is made all the more remarkable by the other side of the balance sheet: inputs. Almost two decades ago, the Dutch made a national commitment to sustainable agriculture under the rallying cry “Twice as much food using half as many resources.” Since 2000, van den Borne and many of his fellow farmers have reduced dependence on water for key crops by as much as 90 percent. They’ve almost completely eliminated the use of chemical pesticides on plants in greenhouses, and since 2009 Dutch poultry and livestock producers have cut their use of antibiotics by as much as 60 percent.
6. How science helps coma patients to communicate
Scott Routley spent 10 years in a vegetative state – but then his family decided to try something called fMRI in an attempt to communicate with him.
(The Guardian, approx 19 mins reading time)
At that moment, we could barely breathe, leaning forward in our chairs. Through the fMRI window, we could see Scott’s inert body in the scanner’s glistening hollow tube. The interfaces of multiple machines all worked together in elaborate synchronisation so that our two minds could briefly touch each other and ask that most basic question: are you in pain?
…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES…
Feeling a bit lazy? So was Bertrand Russell when he wrote this essay, In Praise of Idleness, back in 1932.
(Harpers, approx 25 mins reading time)
I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached.
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