MetaFilter posts tagged with isolation

America's 10 Worst Prisons

zarq — Tue, 14 May 2013 09:15:31 -0800

"'If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.' So goes the old saying. Yet conditions in some American facilities are so obscene that they amount to a form of extrajudicial punishment." Mother Jones is profiling "America's 10 Worst Prisons." Facilities were chosen for the list based on "...three years of research, correspondence with prisoners, and interviews with reform advocates." The List 1: ADX (federal supermax: "A federal isolation facility that's "pretty close" to hell.") 2: Allan B. Polunsky Unit (Texas: "'The hardest place to do time in Texas'—and then you die.") 3: Tent City Jail (Phoenix: Feds say notorious facility has a 'pervasive culture of discriminatory bias against Latinos.') 4: Orleans Parish (Louisiana: "'A violent and dangerous institution,' says the Justice Department.") 5: LA County Jail (Los Angeles: "And you thought the Rodney King beating was bad?") 6: Pelican Bay (California: "Where a Christmas card might land you in the hole.") 7: Julia Tutwiler (Alabama: "Prisoners fear 'that it's not safe to take a shower, that it's not safe to go to sleep...that you can be manipulated into sexual favors, it's really horrific.'") 8: Reeves Country Detention Complex (Texas: "An overcrowded, understaffed lockup—with health care bad enough to spark riots.") 9: Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility (Mississippi: "'A picture of such horror as should be unrealized anywhere in the civilized world.'") 10: Riker's Island (New York City: "New York City lockup has a "deeply entrenched" pattern of violence by guards, lawsuit claims.") The piece will conclude tomorrow with a list of "Dishonorable Mentions." Accompanying Articles (Some are older pieces covering the same topic) * Maps: Solitary Confinement, State by State: "An exclusive review of how state prisons use isolation to discipline inmates and weed out gang members." * God's Own Warden: "If you ever find yourself inside Louisiana's Angola prison, Burl Cain will make sure you find Jesus—or regret ever crossing his path." * The Silent Treatment: "Imagine serving decades in prison for a crime your sibling framed you for. Now imagine doing it while profoundly deaf." * Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America's Prisons: "We throw thousands of men in the hole for the books they read, the company they keep, the beliefs they hold. Here's why." (Previously on Mefi) * Life in the Hole: Inside a Solitary Cell: "A guided tour of the seven-by-eleven-foot space where inmates spend 23 hours a day."

The Taiga Life

2N2222 — Thu, 02 May 2013 12:44:32 -0800

Featured previously, Vice does a 35 minute video chronicling a rare visit to the sole surviving member of the Lykov family, Agafia. The Lykovs were a family of Old Believers (a splinter sect from the Russian Orthodox Church), who had exiled themselves to Siberia in 1936 to escape Soviet persecution, and remained in complete isolation until 1978 when a geological survey accidentally discovered their homestead.

Space Oddity

Artw — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 22:20:42 -0800

The Man who Fell to Earth was Nicholas Roeg's Sci-fi classic featuring a fragile cocaine addicted David Bowie, between his Thin White Duke days and his Berlin trilogy, as a homesick alien falling into despair. Years later Duncan Jones - AKA Zowie Bowie, subject of a sentimental song on Hunky Dory - would make a Sci-Fi film of his own with similar themes of isolation.

Life on Matinicus Island

flex — Sun, 28 Oct 2012 07:44:42 -0800

Life on Matinicus Island: "Matinicus lies 23 miles out to sea, the most remote inhabited island on the Atlantic seaboard... one of a vast necklace of islands, more than 3,000 in all, spread out along the Maine coast as far north as the Bay of Fundy. A century ago, 200 or more of them were fishermen's communities; today, only 14 are inhabited year-round... Today, two years after putting a bullet into the neck of another lobsterman, in defense, he says, of his daughter, Vance Bunker is a pariah on the island: legally acquitted but privately unforgiven, widely but quietly reviled." (via longform)

"Cocaine for Snowblindness"

zarq — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 10:13:26 -0800

You're about to be the base doctor at Halley Research Station in Antarctica for a year. For ten months, no one gets in or out. Fourteen lives are in your hands, including your own. What do you put in your medical kit? And how do your choices differ from those of your predecessors (Eric Marshall and Edward Wilson) a century ago?

Facebook and sadness

jason's_planet — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 07:59:45 -0800

By helping other people look happy, Facebook is making us sad. The human habit of overestimating other people's happiness is nothing new, of course. Jordan points to a quote by Montesquieu: "If we only wanted to be happy it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, which is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are." But social networking may be making this tendency worse. Jordan's research doesn't look at Facebook explicitly, but if his conclusions are correct, it follows that the site would have a special power to make us sadder and lonelier. By showcasing the most witty, joyful, bullet-pointed versions of people's lives, and inviting constant comparisons in which we tend to see ourselves as the losers, Facebook appears to exploit an Achilles' heel of human nature. And women—an especially unhappy bunch of late—may be especially vulnerable to keeping up with what they imagine is the happiness of the Joneses.

Long hard times in space

ambient2 — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 16:24:49 -0800

"Tubes of space borscht are on sale in the museum gift shop. “There are white and black tubes. On the white is written: ‘BLONDE.’ On black one: ‘BRUNETTE.’ " Astronauts relate challenges of life in space.

Screaming is the Message

anotherpanacea — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 18:14:54 -0800

Japan: It's not funny anymore

Far, Far, Away

phrontist — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:01:48 -0800

Get aw ay fr o m i t a l l . Nauru has been linked before, but I feel its worth mentioning in the context of this post.

Unearthly Island

Kronos_to_Earth — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 22:57:11 -0800

Even the inhabitants of Socotra might think some of their island is beautiful but a bit outré.... Alien landscapes on Earth.

Clipperton or bust

mdonley — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:29:07 -0800

1200 kilometers southwest of Acapulco lies the only atoll in the eastern Pacific: one of France's most isolated overseas possessions. First named for an English pirate/buccaneer/privateer, written about here by one John Harris in 1744, the island has changed hands numerous times: claimed by France as part of Tahiti, claimed by the US under the Guano Islands Act of 1856. The island remained uninhabited until 1906, when a British and Mexican mission began mining guano (still in demand today, though sources can now be found a little closer to home). The atoll was thought to have been polished off entirely by an earthquake rumored to have sunk the islands outright in August of 1909. Sovereignty over the atoll passed back and forth between France and Mexico again until the Vatican, given the task of arbitrating the dispute, passed the decision to the Emperor of Italy, who on January 28, 1931, decided that Clipperton was French: JSTOR link here. (Full citation if you've got access: Edwin D. Dickinson, "The Clipperton Island Case". The American Journal of International Law, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Jan., 1933), pp. 130-133). Since then, Clipperton has been the object of FDR's attention, who visited en route to the Galapagos in the hopes of creating a seaplane stop en route to Australia, an amateur radio enthusiast destination, a new destination for commercial diving operations (huge album of photos!), and most recently a scientific research base, chronicled for English speakers in a 2003 National Geographic expedition with Lance Milbrand, and televised for French viewers on the program Expedition: Clipperton, which includes a fantastic, if Francophone, photo album of discoveries made on the island, in its surrounding waters, and in its freshwater lagoon. Google Books possesses a copy of a recent history of the island, which goes into the motivation for FDR's visit to the island in 1938. Here's a shot of some leftover American ammunition. Given the island's massive exclusive economic zone - which covers an area nearly the size of metropolitan France itself - the place will certainly be on the radar from now on. And no post about a isolated, uninhabited tropical island in 2008 would be complete without the Wikipedia article that I found which started this little adventure today, and a link to a relevant Flickr photo set...in this case, a set of amateur radio operators.

Coming Home

hadjiboy — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 06:57:28 -0800

Homeless people are just too lazy to work, aren't they? Besides, they panhandle to get by, so what's the big deal? What does it mean to be homeless [previously] anyway? How do people find themselves in these sorts of situations, and why can't they get out of them? How do they feel about it? And are there any alternatives that we can supply them with?

This Dying City

Jazznoisehere — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 12:52:28 -0800

Cleveland is dying, and it is beautiful. A collection of stark photographs of Cleveland as it is dying before our very eyes.

Suburban Moscow only seems like outer space

dkg — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 20:00:38 -0800

Russians are planning a trip to Mars, but first they want to better understand the psychological and practical issues involved with long, isolated human travel. So the Russian Institute for Biomedical Problems will be locking volunteers into a small, closed system for ~500 days. The ESA is collaborating on the so-called Mars500 project. There is a current call out for volunteers which is open until the end of this month. Communication with the outside world will be possible during the experiment, but it will be time-delayed to simulate radio transmission from a remote spacecraft back to earth.

Isolation in America

digaman — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 08:34:22 -0800

Are we getting lonelier?

Scrutiny on the Bounty.

dhartung — Wed, 17 Jul 2002 16:15:43 -0800

Scrutiny on the Bounty. After investigating a single rape charge, a British prosecutor assigned to Pitcairn Island, the refuge of the Bounty mutineers, began interviewing young girls. Now 20 Pitcairn men may be charged; the island's entire population is just 44. (Most Pitcairners were removed to Norfolk Island, near Australia, in the 19th century; despite the precarious existence, some descendants returned to Pitcairn and have insisted on remaining.) The primary defense is that the island was following Polynesian customs with an age of consent as young as 12; but many Pitcairners are indistinguishable from European expats, and many spend much of their lives in New Zealand or Australia for school or work. Until recently the island's inhabitants {official site} mainly worried about underpopulation and economic isolation despite touting a communal, agrarian lifestyle. "It's like a small English town," said a teacher who spent two years there. "But you can't get away."

Read this.

baylink — Mon, 02 Apr 2001 11:37:54 -0800

Read this. No, really. It's worth your time.