Saturday, May 09, 2020

She Predicted the Coronavirus. What Does She Foresee Next? NYT

First Sentence:
Like water exploding from behind a broken dam the words gushed out, laced with a frightening combination of anger and bitterness, “I quit!”

First Sentence:
There were great advantages to being unimportant


'Something at your fingertips': Fast-tracked online program promotes creativity at home


With hundreds of free activities and workshops, this curated project is a chance to learn new skills, battle boredom, and connect with like-minded people



One of the key players in the April 8 flight from Wuhan, Australian-based red meat trader Eddie Zhi, told The Age he supplied the Melbourne meat company with 2000 face masks sourced from ...
 When an initial plan to fill it with beef from a Victorian meatworks fell through, Zhi turned to Cedar Meats for 35 tonnes of its mutton.

 A wet market in Wuhan, China, called the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, is believed to be the ... Wildlife markets, also found worldwide, specifically sell wild animals for meat or as ...

23 hours ago · One key organiser, Eddie Zhi, is a red meat trader connected to Cedar Meats, the Victorian abattoir responsible for the state's largest coronavirus outbreak. Mr Zhi said he could not believe ...
The masks were bought from an Australia-based red meat dealer Eddie Zhi – who arranged for a shipment of meat to be taken from Cedar to Wuhan, the epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic ...
 A MUTTON shipment sourced from Cedar Meats in Victoria has been airfreighted to Wuhan in China as the backload on a flight that arrived in Sydney yesterday with COVID-19-related medical supplies.
 Cedar Meats coronavirus cluster: Victorian business says it was not told until three days after diagnosis. Read more. But on the Monday staff were told the meat works would ...

The Neuroscientific Explanation For Why You Need A Hug Right Now


Without touch, humans deteriorate physically and emotionally. “We know from the literature that lack of touch produces very negative consequences for our wellbeing,” says Alberto Gallace, a neuroscientist at the University of Milano-Bicocca. He explains that humans are inherently social creatures; studies have shown that depriving monkeys of physical contact leads to adverse health outcomes. – Wired


 Elvis Was King, Ike Was President, and 116,000 Americans Died in a Pandemic – AIER
Gee, I turned 16 that year and I had forgotten all about it.

 The mystery of why today vast numbers of governments around the world (but not all) have crushed economies, locked people under house arrest, wrecked business, spread despair, disregarded basic freedoms and rights will require years if not decades to sort out. Is it the news cycle that is creating mass hysteria? Political ambition and arrogance? A decline in philosophical regard for freedom as the best system for dealing with crises? Most likely, the ultimate answer will look roughly like what historians say about the Great War (WWI): it was a perfect storm that created a calamity that no one intended at the outset. 


China calls Hong Kong protesters a ‘political virus’ Guardian



Zhang Shoucheng, a brilliant scientist at Stanford, was caught between U.S. and Chinese national interests. When he was found dead, the intrigue only grew 



Cold River- Five Steps to Eradicate COVID-19 Outbreak.Asia. A dash of cold water.








THE SUN IS ‘UNUSUALLY QUIET’, SAY SCIENTISTS Independent


Very few people have more money than they can possibly spend in their own lifetime. It is hard to comprehend what it must be like to be able to spend $3 million on yourself every week of your life and still re- main incredibly wealthy. According to Australian political commenta- tor Robert Haupt (1989: 14), this was the fate of Australia’s richest man – media magnate Kerry Packer. The Forbes Rich List for 2005 ranked Packer at 94 of the 691 billionaires in the world, whose com- bined wealth amounted to US$2.2 trillion (Nason, 2005: 8). Accord- ing to the Merrill Lynch and Capegimini (2005) Ninth Annual World Wealth Report, there were, in 2004, 77,500 people in the world with at least US$30 million in financial assets, and David Smith (2003: 128) estimates that the richest 200 individuals in the world have the com- bined income of 41 per cent of the world’s people.
Ruling class men: money, sex, power

“Girl sitting alone in the Sea Grill waiting for a pickup.”


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Photograph by Esther Bubley, 1943, for the Office of War Information. So lonely, so forlorn. I would write a story about her, but I suspect her story has already been written many times before. (Algren’s “Is Your Name Joe?” comes to mind.)





She Predicted the Coronavirus. What Does She Foresee Next? NYT 



Ghost writers helping UNSW students to cheat on assessments, leaked report reveals





What Do Famous People’s Bookshelves Reveal?


The New York Times – In quarantine, people are inadvertently exposing their reading habits — embarrassing, surprising and impressive. Bibliophiles do not approach bookshelves lightly. A stranger’s collection is to us a window to their soul. We peruse with judgment, sometimes admiration and occasionally repulsion (Ayn Rand?!). With celebrities now frequently speaking on television in front of their home libraries, a voyeuristic pleasure presents itself: Are they actually really like us?..”