Musings, mutterings and bright lights

My stepping up regime. 18.600 steps per day.  Amazefit GTR Taking steps rules my day and I set out to exceed 18.600 steps per day or well over the 10.000 steps considered a mark of fitness and well being. My target is 12000 steps but I exceed it by far sometimes doing up to 25000 steps when I'm out somewhere. In fact, I plan my day around these targets and 18.600 is like a magical figure. Walkers have their superstitions but I'm sure my toes won't fall off if I go another number of steps. But there are variations depending on factors such as rain, heat, indoor steps when watching or listening to something of interest, eg music, podcast, football game, YouTube video and so on. When it’s warm inside I turn on the air-conditioning to keep cool. Cool’s the rule and I avoid sweat at all costs. I don't like being a sweaty guy. So perhaps most of my steps are indoor jogging of sorts which can annoy Cathy who fears it’s damaging our flooring. It certainly puts h...

My Nocturnal Habits The retirement Blues Perhaps people my age, and retired, have the same struggles every night 1) to get to sleep and 2) to remain asleep without the aid of sleeping pills. After all, we don’t have to front up to work the following day, and perhaps our partner also sleeps badly and sets back the Arcadian cycles in our lives. Are the retirement blues a nightly challenge?  Can catnapping restore energy to the day? From a historical perspective, and I’ve read this in multiple articles, in times past, particularly medieval times, serfs and others, or most people labored hard in the day and after an evening meal and tired would have their first sleep of the evening. Three or 4 hours later they would wake and be active for a while before resuming sleep, that is have their 2 nd stage of sleep. Sounds credible to me. “ Sleep no more, Macbeth does murder sleep ”. Are you like MacBeth? Of course, insomnia is widespread these days with many many pe...

Written 6/3/2017    Mark Colvin died on 11 May 2017 and Thomas announced his death on The World Today. Dear Mark I greatly enjoyed reading your book, Light and Shadow, a requested Christmas gift from my son Thomas. Like you I am an avid reader and Light and Shadow was the last of many books I read in 2016, and arguably the pick of the year. I particularly liked the blending of the personal and historical, as I lived through many of those years, as a constant ABC viewer, listener and news junkie in general. I noted with amusement Lee Duffield “covering the mouth” of a colleague at a JJ meeting in the 70s. I have known Lee and his ex-wife, and colleague, for many years. Indeed Di visited us just before their departure for Belgium and Lee’s European posting. As luck would have it we had friends in Brussels able to accommodate the Duffields upon their arrival. Early this year we had a family reunion and the subject of books came up, as it often does, and I recom...

Getting the Truth out there The world is awash with misinformation from the Murdoch media et al, especially about Donald Trump and climate change. One can’t sit idly by and watch as idiocy and corruption has its way.  To quote Bertolt Brecht: “What kind of times are these, when To talk about trees is almost a crime Because it implies silence about so many horrors?” I continue to learn more about the natural world and climate change even though trying to convince deniers is a lost cause. Mark Twain summed it up when he said: “All the evidence in the world will not convince an idiot.” Think about the deplorables in Trump’s base who deny all evidence of his impeachable corruption and crimes.  Indeed they jump through hoop after hoop after hoop. Climate change deniers are followers getting their ideas and opinions from their “leaders” like right-wing shock jocks, columnists and head-in-the-sand politicians. Studies have shown that climate change deniers are onl...

Lost in Translation I was asked recently to write about the Australian bushfires for an Italian website which I did twice, but to my dismay, a lot was lost in translation, as were nuances, and in cases what survived was quite wrong with important bits edited out. My English was translated into Italian, by humans, I presume, and then back into an English that made me cringe. I hoped that friends would never see it as I had it checked by friends and take pride in my accurate English. I also have many years as an English teacher to fall back on.  The fires were ongoing so I proposed a 3 rd article but on the condition that I am provided an email to send corrections, or it would all be a blog and nothing more. This request was via an old friend with a lifetime in journalism. He replied that there were too many stories on Australia and they would hold until further notice, which was fine by me. I believed and trust him. Now with 3 journalists in my family and a lot of writ...

Optimism v Pessimism I fluctuate between alarming pessimism to grasping optimism: perhaps everyone does to some degree, and that this swinging state is the pendulum of life. Online I eagerly share positive developments, intermixed with alarming trends both politically and environmentally. It’s becoming known as eco-grief when dangers are exposed and the death toll of flora and fauna is brought to light. Ditto the rise of oceans and rise of summer heat, fires, and other calamities. The question is can we reverse this decline and downward slide of climate change and its dangerous consequences or are the forces of denial unconquerable? Let’s call this the transition blues. The speed of technical change gives one hope, from digital photography, music and smart phones to the departure of phone booths and the ongoing arrival of smart electric cars.   Chips in and chips out with never ending upgrades the new norm, and more features in the latest model. I remember remar...

Facebook, good or bad?  Facebook has rightly come under a ton of criticism, most notably from Sasha Baron Cohen, for refusing to call out fake news posts. I agree with that criticism although I really don’t think Mark Zuckerberg would personally vote for Donald Trump. It’s Facebook's warped business model and their idea that they can’t censor any posts, although they can and do when it is demanded or required, eg live posts of massacres like that in Christchurch. There are vast amounts of information and it’s extremely hard to monitor it all. And there are technical issues as to whether they can rein things in a bit.  I use FB a lot and consider myself an eco-warrior battling against bullshit media such as News Corp, Fox News etc, and the plain facts remain that social media, eg FB, gives me a platform to fight back against the might of Murdoch. FB presents a lot of good information from reliable sources that highlight positive developments and ongoing threats to shar...

The annual WEF gathering in Davos Switzerland is often criticised as a meeting place for the rich and powerful flying in on their private jets, and that there’s a lot of talk but little action afterwards. There may be some truth in this but I’ve long read WEF posts on Facebook and must say how good and informative they are. They bring together information on positive developments that we may otherwise not be aware of. They are enlightening and progressive and I find myself sharing this information again and again.  Indeed the WEF post my favourite positive information that truly shows a commitment to improving the state of the world.  The keynote speakers are also noteworthy, whether it be Prince Charles and his wise words on the climate emergency, Greta Thunberg, Bill Gates and others such as history Professor Yuval Harari who is always stimulating to listen to. I took his Short History of Mankind MOOC and I was hooked. Highly recommended.  I know someon...

Diabetes Report Card Yes I’ve been eating too much fruit, hence sugar, and going my merry way with blood sugar on the rise and health risk at a critical high. I feel this in my feet daily and particularly at night, although it hasn’t interfered that much in my sleep. It’s time to act now. The Australian of the Year 2020, Dr James Muecke,  works with people with diabetes, many of whom lose their sight. He has called for a sugar tax and is certainly not the first to do so. If nothing else a sugar tax will raise funds for education and the medical costs incurred by the community in treating diabetes cases. Pru Goward, not my favourite politician, said in a TV interview recently that she’d decided “not to live like that” and turned successfully to diet to control her diabetes.  I’ve decided to do the same. No more procrastinating. Get a grip. Most of the sugar in my body comes from my addiction to fruit which I eat in large quantities. My endocrinologist, Dr Kuo, ha...