Parallels
First Edition
Bologna, May 3rd, 2019
n. 1
Japan's prisons are a haven for elderly women
Every aging society faces distinct challenges. But Japan, with the world’s oldest population (27.3 percent of its citizens are 65 or older, almost twice the share in the U.S.), has been dealing with one it didn’t foresee: senior crime. Complaints and arrests involving elderly people, and women in particular, are taking place at rates above those of any other demographic group. Almost 1 in 5 women in Japanese prisons is a senior. Their crimes are usually minor—9 in 10 senior women who’ve been convicted were found guilty of shoplifting. Why have so many otherwise law-abiding elderly women resorted to petty theft? Caring for Japanese seniors once fell to families and communities, but that’s changing.
Continues at page 1.As goes the South, so goes the Nation
Mobile Bay is shaped like a baby’s foot, fat and uncallused. The water is murky teal. At the shore, crisp sea oats jut upward, proud. The seaweed lies liquid and listless. The city at the shore is old. In 1702, Mobile was the capital of French Louisiana, later usurped by New Orleans. NOLA would also claim Mardi Gras and the reputation for being simultaneously the most European and the most African of US cities. All that you imagine of the Big Easy: the masks, the parades, the bacchanals, the slave pens, the beads? It’s been in Mobile the longest, if not the biggest, on these shores. But I am not bitter at the status of New Orleans. That’s not why I mention this. I am just trying to shake loose what TV movies and official declarations have told you.
Continues at page 2.Jerry and Marge go large
Gerald Selbee broke the code of the American breakfast cereal industry because he was bored at work one day, because it was a fun mental challenge, because most things at his job were not fun and because he could—because he happened to be the kind of person who saw puzzles all around him, puzzles that other people don’t realize are puzzles: the little ciphers and patterns that float through the world and stick to the surfaces of everyday things. This was back in 1966, when Jerry, as he is known, worked for Kellogg’s in Battle Creek, Michigan. He was a materials analyst who designed boxes to increase the shelf life of freeze-dried foods and cereals. “You ever buy a cereal that had a foil liner on the inside?” Jerry asked not long ago. “That was one of my projects.”
Continues at page 3.Maybe she had so much money she just lost track of it
It started with money, as it so often does in New York. A crisp $100 bill slipped across the smooth surface of the mid-century-inspired concierge desk at 11 Howard, the sleek new boutique hotel in Soho. Looking up, Neffatari Davis, the 25-year-old concierge, who goes by“Neff,” was surprised to see the cash had come from a young woman who seemed to be around her age. She had a heart-shaped face and pouty lips surrounded by a wild tangle of red hair, her eyes framed by incongruously chunky black glasses that Neff, an aspiring cinematographer with an eye for detail, identified as Céline. She was looking, she said in an accent that sounded European, for “the best food in Soho.”
Continues at page 4.God is in the machine
“I’ll lose my job if anyone knows about this.” There was a long silence which I didn’t dare to break. I had begged to make this meeting happen. And now the person I had long been trying to meet leaned towards me. “Someone is going to go through your book line by line,” he said, “to try to work out who I am.” He’d been a talented researcher, an academic, until his friend started a small technology company. He had joined the company and helped it to grow. It eventually became so big that the company had been acquired by one of the tech giants. And so, then, was he. He was now paid a fortune to help design the algorithms that were central to what the tech giant did. And he had signed solemn legal documents prohibiting him from speaking to me, or to anyone, about his work.
Continues at page 5.EU Directive 2009/41/EC of 6 May 2009
Read the EU Directive on the contained use of genetically modified micro-organisms. Text provided with the paralallel italian edition.
Continues at page 6.
