Hey all, I’m chairing next year’s Happiness & Its Causes conference 16-17 June 2011 at the Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre…the day His Holiness the Dalai Lama is speaking (he’s not speaking in Sydney this time). As a special offer I’m able to offer all you lot 15 % discount off the early bird price which closes on the 23 December.
You’ll need to call customer service on 02 8719 5118 and quote “SPEAKER” to claim the discount. The conference program, full list of speakers and brochure are available on www.happinessanditscauses.com.au
His Holiness will take part in the Science of Mind Forum with pioneering emotions researcher Dr Paul Ekman and leading mirror neurons and empathy researcher Professor Marco Iacoboni; and internationally renowned mental health researcher and Australian of the Year 2010, Professor Pat McGorry. Other speakers confirmed include renowned primatologist Dr Jane Goodall;
I was in the audience just now for the screening of Oprah’s Ultimate Australian Adventure. Phenomenal. By now you’d know about Hugh smashing his eye. And Nicole and Keith and Livvie and Russ and Hugh singing “Still call Australia Home”. I cried through a lot of it. Such a wonderful, big energy. No one – … Read more
Last week I offered the opportunity for free tuition at INN. Now the winner. I got Jo to pick the name from a hat (actually a vase). The successful person is…Debra (Deb, I’ll email you direct, too). I’m REALLY sorry to those of you who missed out!!! However, I know a few of you are … Read more
I love sharing tricks for making healthy food easier to come by. How about this one. We got sent some Pureblend mixes this week. We were given them gratis, just so you know.
They work like this: they come in a range of flavours – including Mediterranean, dukkah, satay and vindaloo. And they’re a combo of seeds and spices all in one mix. But they don’t contain anything artificial and are gluten-free. So they’re flavour hits, without the crap. You sprinkle on meat and grill it. Then you have an insta-meal but without the additives. This kind of cooking is perfect for people who live on their own (me!).
I eat this way. I eat meat with flavours with a stack of vegetables. I add flavour by:
* combining dukka and yoghurt and smearing on fish and grilling (Pureblend’s dukka and satay blends work well for this)
Some time back I mentioned I don’t wear a helmet all the time. And that I don’t support mandatory helmet laws (MHLs). Over the years these admissions have triggered heated (and, sadly, misinformed) feedback. I wrote this post to explain why I arrived at my conclusions. It’s not a vain preference; my stance is based on sound science and I encourage anyone disturbed by my position, particularly those who get a little abusive in their response, to read the below, do their own research also, and to feel free to point me to legitimate and non-vested science I might have missed.
Update: I have, yes, updated this post March 2019.
There are two separate issues when discussing this topic
…and they shouldn’t be conflated.
The first: Do helmets work?
The second: Do mandatory helmetlaws work?
I’ll stress, before you read on: I’m not anti-helmet. I’m against the the mandatory helmet laws here in Australia. In fact, my interest in the topic emerged when I started questioning why Australia and New Zealand are the only countries in the world with all-age enforced MHLs. It seemed odd.
Update: According to Freestyle Cyclists, while New Zealand still has MHLs, the level of enforcement has dropped dramatically – to neglible levels – over the past five years, with national road policing manager, Inspector Peter McKennie saying their focus is on “people not wearing seatbelts, driving while impaired by alcohol, drugs or fatigue”.
Thus, Australia remains the only country in the world bogged down in this mess.
Does the rest of the world not care about the collective noggins of its citizens? Or do they not have them for good reason? Turns out it’s the latter.
If you’d like to read the column I wrote for News Ltd on this matter click here. Note: the headline isn’t mine.
Update: The few other jurisdictions that did have partially enforced laws (most didn’t issue fines) have since repealed or reformed them, including Mexico, Israel, Bosnia-Hertzegovina and Malta.
But let’s discuss the various elements of the two aspects of the argument. Be warned: the issue requires nuanced thinking!!
There’s no conclusive proof helmets save lives or limit injuries. In fact, the opposite.
The “science” on whether helmets actually protect us on an individual basis is very inconclusive and no randomised controlled trials have been done on the safety of bike helmets. The trials that have been done, however, point to the fact they don’t actually save lives. This Canadian one, published in BMJ, is a case in point. Which is part of the reason why the rest of the world don’t have MHLs (although only part of the reason; the main one is explained below). There are so many variables entailed in how this can possibly be so:
Helmets actually cause head rotation in a large number of bike accidents.
Helmets have been shown to prevent injury from “linear speeding”. But the majority of head injuries from bike accidents occur from “angular” accidents caused when the head is rotated. Hmmm. Bill Curnow, President of the Cyclists Rights Action Group in Canberra, reviewed the scientific literature for a 2008 book, Transport Accident Analysis and Prevention. He writes, “Scientific circles had ‘widely discredited’ the theory that linear acceleration is the main cause of brain injury, yet helmet makers had made a huge investment in this theory and designed their helmets accordingly, while ignoring the role of angular acceleration in causing brain injury, due to rotation of the head.
It gets worse.
Soft-shell helmets were approved a while back; they’re more comfortable and airy than previous ones. This is what most people wear these days. But wait for this:
They were approved despite advise that they caused increased rotational forces.
These helmets are tested to impact speeds of only 19.5km/h (the speed of impact of being dropped 1.5m) and to pass they only have to not shatter. If a helmet shatters, of course, it’s failed. As Dr Paul Martin at St Vincents, Sydney: “A helmet smashing into pieces is actually a sign of the helmet failing to work as it should. The foam needs to compress significantly if any forces are to be attenuated. If it cracks or breaks before the foam compresses then it has done nothing to help you. The documents can be read in full at your local state library (the main one is AS/NZS2063 and the testing documents are AS/NZS2512).
The new helmet standards mandate that the straps now have to stretch to allow the helmet to come off after the ‘initial impact’. As Dr Paul says, “How does the helmet ‘know’ if the initial impact is going to be the ‘big one’?”
Helmets that don’t comply with the updated standard are illegal to sell but not illegal to wear (if you can follow that logic) I.e. You might have a helmet that you bought before the updated helmet laws, but you can still wear it… which makes a law forcing people to wear such helmets just a bit ridiculous).
A bicycle helmet will not protect your face…nor your cervical spine.
Which is kind of important.
Helmets make riders – and drivers – less cautious..
…therefore more likely to crash. This is a thread that comes up in a lot of studies – helmet-free riders are defensive riders.Similarly, studies show “risk compensation” kicks in for bike riders.That is,Helmet riders can be more complacent and take more risks. Ditto drivers. One study shows drivers are more considerate of riders without helmets.
We modern humans do some mighty weird stuff in our efforts to make life more endurable. Take laughter clubs. Or Reiki. Or foil-wrap body masks. Or this weird thing I saw a guy do on the beach where he dive-bombed into the sand and rolled around like a baby, over and over. A sort of new-age capoeira…definitely, weird.
My Dad likes to remind me how weird we are, proclaiming in his day he never bloody stood on his bloody head to find focus. “We just bloody got on with it.” Yeah, Dad, but in your day you didn’t make life inordinately messy and complicated for yourself. We do. Ergo, we stand on our heads to undo the damage.
Up there in the mix of mighty weird stuff is tapping. Have you seen someone tapping? It’s bonkers. It involves tapping your face and repeating out loud highly personal statements about one’s current dysfunctional state of being.
Also called EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), tapping could very easily be walloped with the Entirely Ludicrous and Self-Indulgent stamp. But I wouldn’t, now I’ve tried it. Several leading psychologists in America and Australia have recognised, through research and practise, that it is highly effective for treating stress and emotion-based issues. In short, it moves you on without the wallowing.
There’s also something very gentle and generous about the practice. It doesn’t cost big bucks – you can learn how to do it online (just Google it). And EFT practitioners seem to be a very relaxed bunch who discourage codependence. Brett Porter, the open-hearted and very committed guy who taught me, invites me to text when I feel like doing a session. Only if I feel like it. And we do the session on Skype.
So you know, Brett teaches the process around the country, but if you’re interested in trying it to deal with food cravings and over-eating you should definitely try the Food Craving and Tapping Program (CDs and DVDs) he put together with Dr Peta Stapleton at Griffith University – $149 and you can buy it online.
Tapping works a little like acupressure, but you administer it yourself by tapping a sequence of eight points on your face and torso that correspond to the endpoints of your body’s energy meridians.
I have really, really, really bad feet. No, no, no. Don’t try to compete with me on this. They are dead odd. The worst many podiatrists have ever seen. I have high insteps, high arches, bent toes and when I walk it’s a constant challenge to stay upright. My feet touch the ground at two small points – one on my heel, another on the ball. My footprint on a beach is seriously weird if you were to walk behind me one day.
I’ve written about my love of fit shoes before. My love stems from the fact they keep me upright. Mostly.
So, intriguingly, my life is split between wearing fit shoes/sneakers/no shoes. And wearing ridiculous heels for work, which make my feet swell and are slowly dislocating the joints in my toes. Totally serious medical diagnosis. (BTW, I was spotted in Syd Confidential’s “ispy” section wearing this outfit, striding through the city…but in sneakers…while carrying my heels).
But surely there’s a middle ground?!? A heel that heals?
Well. A few weeks back Sally from Children of the Revolution contacted me to chat feet. I wound up meeting her at her Rozelle store in Sydney, which stocks a hand-picked selection of the world’s best hot-but-sensible shoes that are also ethically sound (there’s also a Brisbane store). Here are some feet factoids we shared, before choosing some hot-but-sensibles:
* most people don’t need orthodics and inserts. (But if you do have to wear them…she has tips.)
* it’s important to have a “first thing in the morning shoe”... a comfy little number for schlepping around the kitchen in making porridge… so that you don’t have to go from a warm bed to a cold tile floor. The reason for that is that in Eastern philosophy, you never do anything in extremes. Which is a big deal for people who suffer from Plantar Fasciitis for whom getting out of bed can be very painful.
* it’s good to buy shoes that haven’t been chemically treated because said chemicals leach straight into the skin. Many of the styles at Children of the Revolution are clean and ethically sound. Dansko and el naturalista and Groundhogs are shoes that care and sustain and give back to the community.
* if you wear heels, go for strappy numbers. More straps, more stability, less toe clenching. Straps can look bad (create kankles where you had none). So my tip: get straps that incorporate a T-bar (a line that goes up the middle of the foot…this will elongate and counteract the kankleness).
Which is why I walked out of the shop with a pair of these by Miss Mooz:
They feature extra support/room in the ball of the foot, which, if you’ve got a wide foot like I do, is just plain heaven. Strapped in, but not scrunched.
A while back I posted about the integrative nutrition course I’ve been studying via correspondence in New York. A number of you’ve signed up and the referral cash I got went to several charities. Thank you! Well, now they’ve offered me the opportunity to give one person free tuition. See the post I wrote on … Read more
My internet is down. Regular readers of this blog would know this happens a lot with me. Not in isolation. Always along with some other outage. This time my Foxtel is down, too. And my stereo is being fixed, so no radio. Also, my phone wouldn’t text or call last night in my flat. So I’m outta contact. In the past this has freaked me out.
Now I laugh. One way or another it always happens when I’m in a space where I need to stop. Recalibrate. Listen. How friggen helpful! At least it is when I see it as such, and don’t freak.
I’m now at a cafe in Bondi working. A friend from yoga just dropped in. She’s not working right now because she’s been made redundant. Which was a good thing, she says. She hated the job, but couldn’t budge. So, the redundancy, as she puts it:
was all a fantastic astral kick up the arse.
When we get an AKUTA we freak because it hurts and we don’t know where it came from. But if we allow it to stop us, and we then take a look around, we can see it’s in keeping with where we’re at and is a bit of a punctuation mark on a downward spiral, or a messy, bored, unmotivated stage in life where we’re not making good, proactive decisions. A punctuation mark stops things. Get’s us to notice. And switch directions.
Over the past week debate has been raging about a few studies and op-eds that – sigh – tell us that women who are smart and successful don’t score blokes. What do we all think of this?
“Those who were married valued meaningful work less than single men and women did…Those who valued meaningful work when they were in high school were more likely to be single 9 years later.”
Now, as more women match or overtake men in education and the labor market, they are also turning traditional gender roles on their head, with some profound consequences for relationship dynamics.
It identifies three types of scenarios that play out for ambitious chicks
1. successful women in their 30s who have trouble finding a mate.
2. the alpha-women who end up with alpha-men but then decide to put career second when the babies come.
3. there is also a third group: a small but growing number of women who out-earn their partners, giving rise to an assortment of behavioral contortions aimed at keeping the appearance of traditional gender roles intact.
As much as I can’t stand these types of generalising stories that express a bafflement that things change when, um, we change things, it’s certainly been my experience. (Oh, and I HATE how this gender disconnect is blamed on female empowerment…!!! Isn’t it just because the world is shifting that romance has changed?).
I agree that while women now fight in wars and sit on boards, when it comes to relationships we revert to old-school roles. Women are still attracted to men who look/act like providers – so they go after men with money. Men still like women who can be good child bearers – so they like chicks with boobs and happy to stay at home (read: not so big career plans).
And men do tend to find fierce ambition in a woman unattractive. There I said it. It’s true. If it’s straight ambition, without any room for vulnerability… room for them…they run. And I say this as someone who pushes 99% of men away inadvertently. Over time I’ve worked out that men balk from smart chicks in part cos it all seems too hard. Being with a smart woman demands a man rise to the occasion.
But it’s also because it leaves little room for the man to be masculine. To be in his masculine role and feel himself.
