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Cure Your Skin Today: The Best Adult Acne Home Remedies

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When your face is breaking out, you just want to crawl into bed and not come out all day long. And as you feel embarrassed, you can’t help but wonder: Wasn’t acne supposed to be left behind in your teenage years?

Adult acne is frustrating, embarrassing and difficult to deal with once it develops. Its causes are far more complex than teenage acne which makes it even harder to eliminate.

Fortunately, there are a few great natural remedies for adult acne that you can use to lessen the severity and duration of your acne breakouts. From kitchen herbs to common vegetables, you can help your skin glow again by mixing up a few things at home.

Choose one of these common at-home remedies to improve your skin’s condition!

Crushed Peppermint

crushed peppermint

One great way to treat your skin’s acne is to apply a peppermint paste on the acne-prone areas of your skin. Peppermint is known to have naturally occurring anti-inflammatory and antiseptic properties.

You can find peppermint leaves at your local store or you can even grow your own!

To make a peppermint paste:

Crush up 3 or 4 peppermint leaves.
Rub the paste on affected or acne-prone areas of your face.
Allow the paste to sit on your skin for about 10 minutes.
Rinse your face with cool or lukewarm water.

Always test this paste on a small section of your skin before using it regularly. Peppermint can be irritating to some skin types!

Zinc Supplements

zinc supplements
Via ods.od.nih.gov

Zinc is often used to naturally help regulate hormones. You see, one of the most common causes of adult acne is unbalanced hormones.

By regularly taking zinc supplements, you may be able to calm down some hormone fluctuations that can be causing your acne problem. Simply put, zinc supplements can help treat acne!

Oatmeal and Honey Paste

oatmeal honey paste
Via jewelpie

Oatmeal and honey are two great ingredients that can do wonders when it comes to treating acne.

As you know, oatmeal can absorb liquids. And just as it can absorb water, it can help absorb oil from your skin, too. Honey, on the other hand, can work to tone your skin. It has antiseptic properties, too.

Here are the ingredients you need to make a simple oatmeal and honey paste:

⅛ cup honey
½ cup cooked oatmeal

Mix these two ingredients together and allow them to cool to room temperature. Then, liberally apply to oily skin for 15 minutes. Rinse off with warm water.

Repeating this technique one or two times a week can help boost your skin’s oil control. This, in turn, can reduce the number of acne breakouts you get.

See Also: 10 Best Skin Foods For Healthy Glowing Skin

Tea Tree Oil

tea tree oil
Via keeperofthehome

Tea tree oil is a very popular and effective way of treating acne spots as soon as they appear.

Tea tree oil is an antiseptic and antifungal. This means that it can keep your skin very, very clear of any bacteria!

Before using tea tree oil on your skin, however, you need to dilute it. Using undiluted tea tree oil on your skin can actually worsen inflammation, so you should use a 5% solution instead.

It’s super easy to use. All you have to do is apply a small amount of tea tree oil directly to the problem spots and leave it on overnight.

This home remedy can help reduce the severity of mild to moderate acne breakouts.

Apple Cider Vinegar

apple cider vinegar

Apple cider vinegar has been praised as a miracle acne solution for years now, and there is a good reason for that. This miracle worker is packed with magnesium, acetic acid, and potassium – all of which can help kill bacteria on the skin!

This type of vinegar has many acne fighting properties. It can:

  • Clear up excess oil
  • Balance the pH level of the skin
  • Work against bad bacteria

Thanks to these three properties, apple cider vinegar can provide you with some relief from adult acne.

There are two great ways to use apple cider vinegar.

For one, you can use cotton swabs to apply it directly to the affected areas. Secondly, you can boil one cup of apple cider vinegar with water and use its steam to treat your skin.

Yogurt & Honey Mask

yogurt honey mask

Another great way to make use of the acne-fighting power of honey is to combine it with a great skin hydrator, like yogurt. A simple combination of these two ingredients can do wonders for your acne-prone skin.

When you have acne prone skin, it can actually be exacerbated if your skin becomes dehydrated. Whether you realize it or not, dehydrated skin causes your face to overproduce oil and that puts you at more risk of acne.

Hydrating your skin is simple with this yogurt honey mask. All you need is:

One tablespoon raw, organic honey
One tablespoon of yogurt (preferably organic, but not required)

Mix these two ingredients together and then apply it to the problem areas of your face, paying close attention to where you break out most often. Leave it on for 10 to 15 minutes before gently removing the mixture using a damp rag.

See Also: 6 Vitamin-Packed Smoothie Recipes for Glowing Skin

Say Goodbye To Adult Acne

Don’t spend any more days hiding at home or piling on makeup just to hide those frustrating breakouts. There is no need to hide if you take advantage of these natural remedies for adult acne.

It’s very simple to work with the antiseptic and hydrating ingredients that we already have in our kitchens. In fact, there are many fantastic herbs that can fight acne. You just need to know exactly how you can use them for your skin’s needs.

Whether you choose to combine oatmeal and honey or work with crushed peppermint instead, your skin will surely say “Thank you” for trying these solutions at home! Get glowing, clear skin with these easy at-home remedies!

The post Cure Your Skin Today: The Best Adult Acne Home Remedies appeared first on Dumb Little Man.

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Borne

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In a recent stimulating dialogue with Cory Doctorow, Jeff VanderMeer lays out the raison d’être or motivating impulse behind his new novel, Borne, in crystalline, rational fashion: “I’m definitely thinking in terms of fabulist fiction this time around, but I’m also interested in the moral/ethical questions involved with biotech, against a backdrop of a scarcity scenario. I think that’s what’s beginning to play out now in the world, and I wanted to approach the present through the future in a more direct way than I was able to in the Southern Reach books.”

Summaries like this work well as signposts to the author’s intent in the most abstract way, but in the case of a work like Borne, the reader is advised that a guidebook is not a safari. It’s true that Borne addresses all of those issues and more — but they are all exceeded by the organic wonders and mysteries and assorted oddities of this novel as a living, breathing work of art, one whose chief function is to deliver a sense of awe at the strange, terrible grandeur of the human imagination. In Borne, sociopolitical themes and ideas about the future give way to positively mythic dimensions.

Our first-person narrative, a tale delivered in the voice of a woman named Rachel, opens in a nameless day-after-tomorrow city, sparsely populated and composed of wreckage, detritus, abominations, and mortal danger. Rachel is a scavenger, talented, resourceful and wily, prowling the urban ruins to bring back food and barterable goods and raw biotech materials to support her and her partner, Wick, in their makeshift fortress, dubbed Balcony Cliffs. Their city is insanely ruled over — or terrorized — by an improbable creature: a building-sized implacable killer ursine named Mord — who can fly, or levitate, if you will. But from time to time, Mord comes to ground for a rest and falls asleep. At such moments, Rachel is determined to comb through the thick fur of his hill-sized flanks for any stray goodies the bear might have picked up in his depredations.

On the day in question, Rachel finds a unique treasure, like infant Moses among the reeds: the entity who will come to be known as Borne:

[A] hybrid of sea anemone and squid: a sleek vase with rippling colors that strayed from purple toward deep blues and sea greens. Four vertical ridges slid up the sides of its warm and pulsating skin. The texture was as smooth as waterworn stone, if a bit rubbery. It smelled of beach reeds on lazy summer afternoons and, beneath the sea salt, of passionflowers. Much later, I realized it would have smelled different to someone else, might even have appeared in a different form.

Taking the small, seemingly innocent creature (for which she feels an inexplicable attraction) with her back to Balcony Cliffs — where Wick views it with instant suspicion — Rachel begins a long odyssey that will take her and Wick and Borne through harrowing events, culminating in a kind of apotheosis, a Clash of the Titans, and a theurgic climax, the details of which should be reserved for the reader’s full reward.

As we follow Rachel and Wick through their everyday routines, the reader derives the jumbled, incomplete, and enigmatic back-story of their world in snatches that eventually cohere into a solid timeline. First came the Company, a massive biotech concern whose myriad creations were unleashed — either inadvertently or deliberately, or in a mix of both — without much regard for the destruction they would bring in their wake. Wick was a scientist for the Company, until they contentiously parted ways. A surviving woman now known only as the Magician was another. The Company itself is defunct. The Magician and Wick remain rivals, with the Magician ruling a different part of the city and seeking Wick’s cooperation or demise.

Rachel’s back-story is antithetical to the privileged stratum that held Wick and the Magician. An orphan of climate-change-refugee parents, she braced the Darwinian environment head-on and flourished, eventually joining forces with the older Wick. The two are currently lovers, though often bristling because of differing philosophies and goals.

Borne soon becomes the third point of their love triangle. The creature proves able to assimilate nearly anything of an organic nature, and it begins to grow and change — and to exhibit increasing intelligence. It falls to Rachel to educate her adopted child, for whom she experiences a kind of tender affection, a luxury in this savage landscape. Wick, however, remains leery of the creature — “Borne is not your friend,” he insists — suspecting it to be unknown Company tech. And as Borne grows it exhibits new capabilities, not all of them savory, Rachel is forced into a choice of allegiance that will have consequences for not only the three of them but for the fragmented world around them.

From the very first pages, VanderMeer indicates that his book is going to operate along several fruitfully interlooping axes. Mord is an impossible, surreal object in the vein of Ballard’s “The Drowned Giant.” At the same time, Mord is totally in the kaiju line, stomping across the city like Godzilla. But then, as in Richard Adams’s Shardik, VanderMeer manages to infuse Mord with the totemic power that bears have always exhibited in fable and legend. This multivalent approach — postmodern, pop-cultural, and archetypical — is sustained throughout the whole book, rendering it much richer than a text with only a univalent approach.

Borne himself harks back to the tradition of horror and body horror, from the campiness of the Blob to more shuddery modern creations. He is a kind of Lovecraftian shoggoth monster: his many eyes, studded over his amorphous body, testify to that kinship.

As for the hardcore science-fictional tropes that VanderMeer chooses deftly to employ, the lineages go deep and broad. In terms of a world shattered by Faustian biotech, one need only look to Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake cycle, or Kathleen Ann Goonan’s Nanotech Quartet for resonant futures. And Rachel resembles Jack Kirby’s Kamandi as a beacon of normality in a world where normal is the minority status. The surreal aspects of the organic tech — healer worms, memory-altering earwigs — call to mind classic examples like Jeff Noon’s Vurt and China Miéville’s Bas-Lag universe. Besides the other literary ancestors cited for Borne’s makeup, one might adduce the great SF story by Damon Knight, “Four in One,” in which humans ingested by an alien continue to experience a new way of life, and Greg Bear’s Blood Music, in which a totipotent variety of protoplasm conquers all. When at one point Rachel is entirely surrounded by a protective Borne (without being assimilated), I hear a riff on the living sentient space suit symbiotes found in John Varley’s Eight Worlds cycle.

But beneath this hybrid of postmodern and hard SF narrative lies a foundation of eternal human concerns, most vibrantly the motif of family and parenting. Rachel admits that Borne is like a child to her, and she experiences all the frustrations and rewards that parenting has always brought. The rift that Borne engenders between Rachel and Wick is typical of the way marriages change when the first child is introduced. These aspects of the tale rival in magnitude any of the professed and accurate intellectual concerns that VanderMeer puts upfront in his interview.

There are other dichotomies that are richly laid out. The role of mentor (Wick the Magician) versus the role of student or protégé (Rachel, Borne). Natural versus artificial; civilization versus savagery; altruism versus selfishness; introversion versus exploratory tendencies; elder wisdom versus youthful naiveté. VanderMeer juggles these essential oppositions throughout with great zeal and flair, often using taut dialogue to make his arguments. Borne’s unique thought processes and way of speaking are a great feature of the novel.

As for the setting, VanderMeer conjures up a kind of Ballardian landscape where the tangible debris comes to represent psychical states. As a lover of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast, VanderMeer envisions a similar vast redoubt — albeit underpopulated by contrast — in the form of Balcony Cliffs. More to the point might be a comparison to an overlooked cult novel publicly admired by the author: Edward Carey’s Observatory Mansions, about an allied urban structure of menace and decay.

And all of this is conveyed in language that at times evokes a fairytale ambiance.

In the middle distance, the dead plain and across it, the bear closing in and then the living blot marks of bobbing, lumbering bears that had been drawn to Borne, stragglers who were still behind him in his disguise, but not very far. Some would succumb to the last of the buried biotech that had risen; those defenses appeared like smoke, like emerald-and-azure dust with purpose. Shimmering displays that disappeared into the wind at a thin angle, then reappeared as sheets of undulating microorganisms. We had seen a bear caught in that net buckle and fall, spasmodic, jaws spread wide, as if it could not breathe. But then the net broke, the bear rose, the old defenses revealed as ghosts, the Company without dominion.

In this emotional, primal, monitory fable, which demands visual accompaniment from an artist like Jim Woodring, Jeff VanderMeer has succeeded in creating a kind of love story-cum-odyssey that shows us the power of parental love and spousal commitment when all else has come undone.

 

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Blinder: Why, After 200 Years, Can’t Economists Sell Free Trade? (Video)

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What Gets Called ‘Civil War’?

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Tracing some of the histories of the idea of civil war, and showing how definitions and understandings of this mode of conflict have always been volatile and contested, is the purpose of this latest book by David Armitage. Like all his work, Civil Wars: A History in Ideas is concise, wonderfully lucid, highly intelligent, and based on a confident command of a wide range of printed sources. It is also ambitious. But as he admits, it is hardly comprehensive. This is not simply because of the scale of his subject matter, but also because of his chosen methodologies.

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How To Allow Yourself To Be Vulnerable Even If The Thought Scares You

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It’s extremely uncomfortable for anyone to open up to others.

Every time the people around you talk about their true feelings, there is a sense of dread and wishing it would be over.

So, you push them away. Or never let the relationship evolve naturally because you refuse to take it to the next level.

This takes a toll on you because you know you’re being dishonest and treating yourself unfairly. It eats you up inside and you’re unhappy.

Maybe, you have been burnt before and swore to never open yourself up again because everyone else is like the same person who betrayed you.

Makes sense, right?

But, think about how that’s serving you. The only person suffering is yourself. It’s not the other person’s loss if you hold back. In fact, he doesn’t even know what goes on in your head and heart anyway.

Your thoughts and feelings are yours and yours alone and by detaching to others, you’re doing yourself a great disservice by hindering your self-expression.

Fortunately, right now you’ve decided to have enough of that. It might be terrifying at first, but you’re determined to start living in honesty.

Slowly but surely, here are ways to guide you:

Love yourself and know that you are worthy

love yourself

Fear of vulnerability comes from being unable to love ourselves fully.

Learn to embrace your flaws because everybody has them. No one is perfect.

It took a long time for this to sink in for me because I was constantly surrounded by “seemingly perfect” friends, classmates and acquaintances. They looked like they had it all. Good grades, physical appearance, intelligence, talent and they were even kind people.

I found myself constantly comparing their qualities and looks versus my own. However, unlike me, they were aware of their flaws and accepted them. They knew their strengths and weaknesses and they know how to leverage their strengths.

I will never forget what one of the honor students in my high school said and it has stuck with me ever since.

“Instead of competing with others, we should compete with ourselves.”

If we constantly look at others, not to congratulate them but to compare, it will eventually breed resentment.

We have our own traits and nobody in the world is like us. We are unique in our own way and, for that reason, we should know that we are worthy.

Practice positive affirmations every day until you truly believe it. Let love, happiness, warmth and other emotions flow naturally. Knowing how to be vulnerable starts with touching base with yourself.

See Also: Yoga Helps You Love Yourself

Don’t be afraid to expose your mistakes

I’m not saying you should go out and parade your mistakes. What I’m saying is that you don’t have to feel too ashamed of them.

It’s part of being human and part of the learning process. Everybody experiences mistakes, so don’t overthink it. Besides, what matters is that we learn from them.

By admitting our mistakes, we are acknowledging our wrongdoings and this gives us the incentive to move forward.

When I used to struggle with my pride, it was difficult for me to admit anything. I didn’t want to tell people that I was wrong because it would only intensify and validate my insecurities.

If I didn’t do well in a particular test, I would automatically assume that I was dumb. Worse, when my friends started to ask each other their scores and I had to lie about mine.

And I hated myself for lying.

As I grew older and wiser, I learned that it was better to be open about what I didn’t know.

The more we cover up for something, the bigger the chances of a problem arising out of it. The more we’ll feel the need to lie until it becomes too big and everything just explodes.

It’s so much better to improve now than hide and suffer later.

Breathe and let yourself feel

breathing feeling

Resist holding back any of your feelings. If you suppress any of those feelings, you might find yourself doing something destructive and irreversible one day.

You won’t be able to thrive and grow because you’re stopping a part of you from participating wholly in life.

So, breathe. Let the feelings come and go. Just be you and embrace it.

In relationships, I knew I was the jealous type. I would lash out when I couldn’t take it anymore. Despite that, I was still unable to admit that I was jealous. This caused wounds towards the people I was dealing with and to myself because whatever I said and did, I can never take back.

Applying the lesson that I’ve learned because of those mistakes, I now try to politely inform people that I do get jealous.

We can’t control how they’ll respond, but taking initiative results to more transparent relationships and a healthier way of communication.

Letting myself feel has had multiple benefits for me and I count it as one of the reasons why I am able to do what I want today.

There’s no point in living a life where something is holding us back.

While it’s true that vulnerability opens you to the possibility of getting hurt, it also allows you to be authentic. You start to attract people who you know love you for the real you and might actually be inspired by your courage.

Through embracing our vulnerability, we are able to establish a deeper connection and have more meaningful relationships with others and ourselves. So, from this day forward, make a commitment to allow yourself to be vulnerable.

How can you enjoy life if you are not living it as yourself?

The post How To Allow Yourself To Be Vulnerable Even If The Thought Scares You appeared first on Dumb Little Man.

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The Pleasures of Pessimism

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Modern society, as a whole, tends toward a sort of institutional optimism, espousing Hegelian notions of history as progress and encouraging us to believe happiness is at least potentially available for all, if only we would pull together in a reasonable manner. Hence the kind of truth pessimists tell us will always be a subversive truth.

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Hector Elizondo: Caregiver – The Toughest Role I’ve Ever Had To Play

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During my 50+ years as an actor, I’ve played the head of a hospital in Chicago Hope, a wise hotel manager in Pretty Woman, head of security in The Princess Diaries and a fierce boss in ABC’s Last Man Standing. But, the toughest and most rewarding role I ever had to play was that of being a caregiver for my parents.

It was my mother who first needed care. She developed Alzheimer’s disease and my father stepped up to care for her. He even took her to work with him so he could make sure she was safe during the day. Eventually, my father felt overwhelmed and left his job to devote himself completely to her care. He was there for her every minute of every day, without a break to focus on himself and his own needs.

As a loving husband, my father never hesitated to take on this responsibility and he never complained. But, he also never reached out to the rest of the family to let us know that it was getting too much. We checked in with him every day but we didn’t realize the toll it was taking on his health. So, it came as a shock when he suffered a nervous breakdown and his immune system collapsed. Suddenly, it was not only my mother who needed a caregiver but my father as well.

I stepped in to give him more support. It started with simple tasks, like scheduling doctor’s visits or helping with daily errands. Gradually, over time, my role expanded. Before I knew it, my whole life had changed and my world was revolving around my parents’ care.

Now, I look back and wonder how I did it all.

At that time, I was starring on Broadway and was young and healthy. I didn’t recognize how exhausted I was. Caregivers often risk compromising their own health, like my father did, because they focus so much of their attention on another person.

In honor of my parents, I’m spreading the word about a national campaign from AARP and the Ad Council to help the 40 million unpaid family caregivers in the U.S. get the support they need to care for themselves and their loved ones.

Many caregivers, especially men, don’t think of themselves as caregivers. They see themselves as sons, daughters, spouses and friends just doing what families do for each other. Like my father, they may not reach out for help until they exhaust themselves. They may not even know that there are resources available that can help.

AARP’s Caregiving Resource Center at aarp.org/caregiving offers practical tools and tips, such as Care Guides tailored to specific topics and challenges. It includes guides on how to care for a loved one with Alzheimer’s. There’s also information about local caregiving resources and an online community for sharing advice with other caregivers.

I wish my father and I would have known about resources like this years ago. Caregiving can be tough, but it can be a lot easier if you don’t to face it alone.

Author’s Bio

Hector Elizondo is an American film and TV actor who has been Golden Globe-nominated for his performance in Pretty Woman. He has written this post to help spread awareness of caregiver strain and burden and how help is available.

The post Hector Elizondo: Caregiver – The Toughest Role I’ve Ever Had To Play appeared first on Dumb Little Man.

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Val Emmich on the Books that Strike the Balance

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“My favorite novels blend comedy and tragedy. That was my goal for The Reminders — to write a book that was fun and playful but also weighty and introspective. Not all of the books listed below strike that balance, but each informed how I ultimately settled on the right emotional timbre for my novel.” — Val Emmich

 

 

 

The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet
By Reif Larsen

“Beautifully intricate illustrations fill the margins of nearly every page of this one-of-a-kind novel about a twelve-year-old cartographer on his way to claim an award from the Smithsonian Institution. Larsen’s ambition is only slightly less impressive than his execution. For all its whimsy, the book has real heart. Stephen King called it a ‘treasure.’”

A Single Man
By Christopher Isherwood

“Lyrical and heartrending. Isherwood masterfully captures the zombie-like existence that is life after loss. The memories arriving unbidden. The effort required to seem okay for the benefit of others. The daily shock upon waking to find that the person you built your life around is truly gone and the path ahead is no longer certain, ‘as though the track had disappeared down a landslide.’”

This Is Where I Leave You
By Jonathan Tropper

“Tropper’s novel begins with the line ‘Dad’s dead.’ The first line in my book is ‘Dad forgot me.’ That was an accident. Or was it? This book is a joy to read, and a joyful reading experience is something I cherish more and more as I get older. Hanging with the Foxmans is like spending time with my own dysfunctional family — only here, after all the laughs, I get to walk away with no hard feelings.”

All the Birds, Singing
By Evie Wyld

“I remember turning to my wife while reading this book and saying, ‘This is insane.’ I was referring both to the story on the page and the achievement of writing it. It has the energy and drama of a thriller, but it’s more nuanced than that, and ultimately more devastating. Wyld brings her protagonist Jake’s past to life in a way that makes us truly believe she can’t get out from under it.”

About a Boy
By Nick Hornby

“I learned a lot watching how Hornby juggled this dual narrative of an adult and a child. Two drastically different characters come together with hysterically awkward results. But then we realize, Oh, this guy and this kid aren’t that different after all. Actually, we can’t even tell which one is the grown-up and which is the boy. Hornby makes all of this look easy. It’s not.”

Giovanni’s Room
By James Baldwin

“Reading this book while writing mine was probably a mistake. I can never hope to write half as movingly as Baldwin does here (or anywhere). But it was something to aspire to. Particularly how Baldwin viscerally captures feelings of longing, regret, and desire. As everyone already knows, this novel is a classic.”

 

Where’d You Go, Bernadette
By Maria Semple

“For all the attention Where’d You Go, Bernadette gets for its hilarity (and it really is hilarious; one of the rare times ‘laugh-out-loud’ holds true), the book is unexpectedly moving. Part of that has to with its inspired formatting (told through emails, faxes, hospital reports, live-blog transcripts). By sorting through the modern detritus they’ve left behind, we somehow know these characters more intimately than we could even if allowed inside their minds.”

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
By Jonathan Safran Foer

“This is the best example on the list of a novel that can do both: make you laugh and cry. It’s also a detective story and a moving exploration of grief. I admire Foer’s bravery and audacity as a writer. With all its typographical quirks (photographs, full-color pages, text that keeps decreasing in size until it’s too tiny to read), this is a book you want to own a physical copy of. And don’t watch the movie.”

The Barnes & Noble Review http://ift.tt/2rZ5oFR

More women are being put behind bars. Fewer should be

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ONE of Mexico’s newest prisons allows inmates to receive a conjugal visit every week. The rooms set aside for these visits at Coatlán del Río have clean beds, showers and toilets. Any married inmate can use them, as can same-sex couples, if they tied the knot in a Mexican state where gay marriage is allowed.

Alas, the conjugal rooms are barely used. This is a women’s prison and their menfolk are a bit unreliable. “Women in prison are often abandoned,” says an experienced guard at the prison. Of the 1,400 inmates, how many receive regular conjugal visits? “Only one,” she sighs. Another inmate was sentenced for smuggling drugs to her husband in a different jail. He was released and promptly found another woman, says the guard.

Serious criminals are nearly all male, which is why less than 10% of the world’s prisoners are women. But the number of female prisoners has soared by 50% since 2000. This is worrying. Women in prison are far less likely than men to…

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Too many prisons make bad people worse. There is a better way

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“DO YOU want a coffee?” It is a chilly morning on the ferry to Bastoy, an island prison in Norway. Two burly ferrymen greet a visiting journalist with a hot drink. Asked if they work for a local ferry company, they reply: “No, we are prisoners.” One is serving 14 years for attempted murder. The other, nine years for “drugs and violence”. The ferry is moored and there is no one around. Either man could easily make a run for it. But neither does. Hardly anyone tries to escape from Bastoy.

It has been called the “world’s nicest prison”, but this misses the point. The rooms are pleasant enough. The inmates can wander where they like on the island, go cross-country skiing in the winter and fish in the summer. So long as they keep it tidy they can enjoy the beach (see picture). Yet what is most unusual about Bastoy is not that it treats prisoners like human beings, but that it treats them like adults.

Prisons in other parts of the world try to stop inmates from laying hands…

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