Friday High Five: A Crooked Forest, Lynch’s LA and Media Undercover

Read Thursday, 16 Oct 2014

Jo Case

Asylum seekers, poetry and mental health

How do asylum seekers care for their mental health while in detention centres? One surprising way is through a Facebook poetry and writing group, run from a kitchen table in Castlemaine. Around 100 asylum seekers take part. You can find out more about it by watching the below video, produced as part of the ABC’s mental health project, Speak Your Mind.

Writing Through Fences from ABC Open Central Victoria on Vimeo.

Poland’s crooked forest

In western Poland, there’s a forest where the trees grow in strange curves, reminiscent of fairy tale illustrations of a haunted wood. What makes them grow like that? No one quite knows, but there are a few theories – from a unique gravitational pull to enemy tanks during World War II, to a deliberate man-made experiment.

Share this content

Lynch’s LA (and it’s happening again …)

David Lynch has been in the news and all over the internet lately, with the news that Showtime has commissioned a new series of Twin Peaks, with Lynch and co-creator Mark Frost firmly at the helm. It’s got critics reflecting on Lynch’s early status as a pioneer of the ‘golden age of television’ – something Anthony Morris wrote about for us last this year.

And there’s a timely essay in the LA Review of Books reflecting on David Lynch’s three LA movies: Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire.

Why boring research is important in preventing Ebola spread

When the Dallas nurse who treated the first US Ebola patient contracted the disease, infection prevention experts were unsurprised. Why? Because infection prevention is a science of tiny, banal-seeming details, and it’s starved of research funding as a result.

If there were more infection-prevention research, the nurse in Dallas (and probably the one in Spain, who may have contaminated herself doffing her gear) might not have become infected. Hospitals would not now be wondering whether any of their procedures can protect them against this unseen threat.

Media editor goes undercover at Australian university

The new media editor of the Australian, Sharri Markson, recently went undercover at University of Technology and University of Sydney, attending lectures and getting hold of course material. She was concerned about the way media students are taught to question the power and intent of media companies, calling it ‘indoctrination’. Junkee has reported on it, interviewing UTS journalism lecturer Jenna Price.