Ebola Diary, London Houses, Waiting Rooms, Islam & Journalism, Fast-Food Architecture
Ebola: Eyewitness Account From Sierra Leone
Erika Check Hayden | Nature | 11th December 2014
Reporter's diary. "Quarantines have been widely deployed in this outbreak, but it’s not clear how effective they have been. One million Sierra Leoneans now live in quarantined districts. That hasn’t stopped Ebola from traveling down roads and highways to infect new areas. People resent the quarantines, and sometimes resist them: residents of a village down the road fought off quarantine officers with machetes a few weeks ago" (2,480 words)
London’s Monster Houses
Ruth Bloomfield | Financial Times | 12th December 2014
Billionaire buyers want London houses that are huge in size as well as price. A Qatari royal is knocking together three houses on Regent's Park for a 35,000-square-foot mansion. A 53,000-square-foot club on Piccadilly is being converted into a £250m house. "Their financial advisers have told them to park say 3 per cent of their net worth in London and they think a single house is easier to manage than several flats” (1,040 words)
Why Magazines In Waiting Rooms Are Old
Bruce Arroll et al | British Medical Journal | 11th December 2014
Magazines in your doctor's waiting room are always old because people steal the new ones. "Almost half (47%) of 87 magazines left in a general practice waiting room in Auckland, New Zealand, had disappeared after 31 days, and current magazines were more likely to go missing than older ones. Gossipy magazines, having five or more photographs of celebrities on the front cover, were most likely to disappear" (2,300 words)
Before The Beheadings
Jeffrey Goldberg | Atlantic | 16th November 2014
Remembering a time when Islamist extremists wanted to persuade reporters, not kill them. Daniel Pearl was the watershed. "The extremists don’t need us anymore. Fourteen years ago, while I was staying at the Taliban madrasa, its administrators were launching a Web site. I remember being amused by this. I shouldn’t have been. There is no need for a middleman now. And when there is no need for us, we become targets" (1,690 words)
Ghosts Of Fast Food Past
Sarah Baird | Medium | 11th December 2014
On the awkward second life of chain-restaurant buildings, designed to be easily recognised. When a Pizza Hut or a Burger King falls empty, and another business moves in, you can never un-see the fast-food origins. "Whether in Topeka or Tampa, the A-frame shape of an International House Of Pancakes and the trapezoidal windows of a Pizza Hut are similarly recognizable and — for many — comforting" (1,510 words)
Video of the day: Floating Cube Illusion
What to expect: Optical illusion. Just 15 seconds long. But you'll want to watch it twice
Thought for the day
Autobiography is increasingly the only form in all the arts
Rachel Cusk (http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/writing-outside-philosophy-an-interview-with-simon-critchley)