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Unlocking the Silver Revolution: The Truth About Grey Hair and the Empowering Journey to Embrace the Grey

<p>In a recent poll by midlife connection organisation, Connected Women reveals that two-thirds of women over the age of 50 haven’t embraced their grey hair (67%). With hair starting to go grey in our 30s and 40s, that’s a long time to hide those pesky greys!</p> <p><strong>What causes grey hair? </strong></p> <p>According to Harvard Health, hair doesn’t ‘turn’ grey. Once a strand of hair is a particular colour, it will stay that way unless it is dyed. After the age of 35, hair follicles produce less colour, so when that strand of hair falls out it will be more likely to grow back grey.</p> <p><strong>Can stress cause grey hair? </strong></p> <p>There is very little evidence to indicate that this is true, however, research shows that in mice, in response to a fight or flight situation, hair follicles are impacted and the pigmentation-producing stem cells can be lost. Without stem cells available to produce pigment cells, the hair will go grey.</p> <p>So, can we now legitimately blame our grey hairs on our kids, or our husbands.</p> <p><strong>What happens when you pluck your grey hairs out? </strong></p> <p>Don’t do it! Not only will it simply grow back grey, but according to Trey Gillen, hairstylist and creative director of education at SACHAJUAN, doing so can also traumatise the follicles which could mean NO hair grows back.</p> <p><strong>When is the right time to go grey?</strong></p> <p>This is something that only you can decide. If your hair is dark brown or black, your greys will be more noticeable, so you’ll need to have regular (two to four weekly) trips to the hairdresser to cover them up. At some point you will most likely grow weary of trying to stem the tide and it will be time to just embrace the grey. You will know when you’ve had enough!</p> <p>If you have lighter hair, then your greys will be much less noticeable. Lighter hair gives you a much longer window between coloring appointments in the initial stages of going grey, and later you can use the greys as ‘herringbone highlights’ as per Sarah Jessica Parker’s beautiful mane, which is wonderful way to gracefully embrace going grey.</p> <p><img src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/2023/05/Phoebe-headshot-EDITED.jpg" alt="" width="1280" height="720" /></p> <p><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bolder; color: #212529; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif, 'Apple Color Emoji', 'Segoe UI Emoji', 'Segoe UI Symbol', 'Noto Color Emoji'; font-size: 16px; background-color: #ffffff;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: #212529;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Phoebe Adams is the founder of Connected Women, an organisation providing a community for women over 50 to connect with each other and build meaningful friendships. With a rapidly growing community in Perth, Sydney, Wollongong, and Melbourne, Connected Women provides a safe and welcoming space for women to come together and share experiences. To learn more about the organisation and how you can get involved, visit <a style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #258440; text-decoration-line: none; background-color: transparent; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;" href="https://www.connectedwomen.net/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">connectedwomen.net</a>.</em></span></span></p> <p><em><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bolder; color: #212529; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif, 'Apple Color Emoji', 'Segoe UI Emoji', 'Segoe UI Symbol', 'Noto Color Emoji'; font-size: 16px; background-color: #ffffff;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: #212529;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="color: #000000; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Open Sans', 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif; font-size: medium; font-weight: 400;">Image credits: Getty Images</span></span></span></span></em></p>

Beauty & Style

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The Whitlam government gave us no-fault divorce, women’s refuges and childcare. Australia needs another feminist revolution

<p>Australia’s history of women and political rights is, to put it mildly, chequered. It enfranchised (white) women very early, in 1902. And it was the first country to give them the vote combined with the right to stand for parliament.</p> <p>But it took 41 years for women to enter federal parliament. The first two <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-it-taking-so-long-to-achieve-gender-equality-in-parliament-117313">women federal MPs</a>, Dorothy Tangney and Enid Lyons, were just memorialised with a joint statue in the parliamentary triangle. It was unveiled this month – finally redressing the glaring absence of women in our statues.</p> <p>Australia’s record of women’s rights is still uneven. We pioneered aspects of women’s welfare, such as the <a href="https://www.naa.gov.au/learn/learning-resources/learning-resource-themes/government-and-democracy/prime-ministers-and-politicians/maternity-allowance-act-1912">1912 maternity allowance</a>that included unmarried mothers. But now, Australian women’s economic status is shameful. </p> <p>As Minister for the Environment <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-policy-aesthete-a-new-biography-of-tanya-plibersek-shows-how-governments-work-and-affect-peoples-lives-197427">Tanya Plibersek</a> notes in her foreword, Australia has plunged from the modest high point of 15th on the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap index to 43rd in 2022.</p> <h2>What Whitlam did for women</h2> <p>Federation was an exciting time for women. But the next peak didn’t arrive until the 1970s, when the Whitlam Government proved a beachhead for women’s rights. Feminism helped to swell the tide of change carrying <a href="https://theconversation.com/gough-whitlams-life-and-legacy-experts-respond-33228">Gough Whitlam</a> to power in 1972. </p> <p>But just how did Whitlam conceive his agenda for women? What were his short-lived government’s many achievements in this area? Until now, these questions haven’t been fully studied. </p> <p><a href="https://unsw.press/books/womenandwhitlam/">Women and Whitlam</a> is important not just for taking on this task, but for its stellar cast of essayists. Many of them were feminist activists in the 1970s, and their memories add rich narrative detail.</p> <p>The book is edited by Michelle Arrow, a <a href="https://www.whitlam.org/">Whitlam Institute</a>Research Fellow and an authority on women, gender and sexuality in the 1970s: not least through her prize-winning monograph, <a href="https://www.newsouthbooks.com.au/books/seventies/">The Seventies</a>.</p> <p>This excellent collection’s origins lie in <a href="https://www.whitlam.org/publications/womensrevolution">a conference</a> held at Old Parliament House in November 2019, organised by the Whitlam Institute. The book has been several years in the making, but its timing is perfect. Its month of publication, April 2023, is the 50th anniversary of Gough Whitlam’s appointment of Elizabeth Reid as his adviser on women’s affairs. This role, as an adviser to a head of government, was a world first.</p> <p>In her introduction, Arrow points out <a href="https://electionspeeches.moadoph.gov.au/speeches/1972-gough-whitlam">Whitlam’s 1972 election speech</a> only outlined three “women’s issues” as part of his program. But she also notes the late (former Senator) <a href="https://theconversation.com/vale-susan-ryan-pioneer-labor-feminist-who-showed-big-difficult-policy-changes-can-and-should-be-made-146996">Susan Ryan</a>’s excited response when she heard him begin it with the inclusive words, “Men and women of Australia” – a symbolic break from tradition. Iola Mathews, journalist and Women’s Electoral Lobby activist, captures the speed with which Whitlam acted on women’s issues, "In his first week of office he reopened the federal Equal Pay case, removed the tax on contraceptives and announced funding for birth control programs."</p> <p>Arrow summarises what else the Whitlam government did for women. It extended the minimum wage for women and funded women’s refuges, women’s health centres and community childcare. It introduced no-fault divorce and the Family Court. It introduced paid maternity leave in the public service. And it addressed discrimination against girls in schools. Women also benefited from other reforms, like making tertiary education affordable.</p> <h2>A world-first role</h2> <p>Elizabeth Reid’s chapter is especially powerful, because of the importance of her work as Whitlam’s women’s adviser and because she worked closely with him. She suggests Whitlam’s consciousness of feminism grew during his term in office. By September 1974, he understood his own policies and reforms could only go so far.</p> <p>Fundamental cultural shift was required, "We have to attack the social inequalities, the hidden and usually unarticulated assumptions which affect women not only in employment but in the whole range of their opportunities in life […] this requires a re-education of the community."</p> <p>Reid encapsulates how she forged her own novel role: travelling around Australia to listen to women of all backgrounds, holding meetings in venues ranging from factories, farms and universities to jails. Soon, she received more letters than anyone in the government, other than Whitlam himself. After listening and gathering women’s views, she learned how to approach parliamentarians and public servants in order to make and implement policies.</p> <p>Part of the power of Reid’s chapter lies in the insights she gives readers into the revolutionary nature of <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-human-being-not-just-mum-the-womens-liberationists-who-fought-for-the-rights-of-mothers-and-children-182057">women’s liberation</a>. Feminists who hit their stride in the 1970s had bold ambitions: ending patriarchal oppression, uprooting sexism as a system of male domination, taking back control of women’s bodies and sexuality, and using consciousness-raising to find alternatives to the confinement of women <a href="https://theconversation.com/suburban-living-did-turn-women-into-robots-why-feminist-horror-novel-the-stepford-wives-is-still-relevant-50-years-on-186633">as housewives</a>. </p> <p>Some in women’s liberation questioned the possibility of creating revolution from within government. But Reid’s chapter showcases her remarkable ability to take the fundamental insights of the movement and use them. She listened to Australian women and applied her insights and feminist principles to the key areas of employment and financial discrimination, education, childcare, social welfare and urban planning.</p> <h2>A dynamic movement</h2> <p>One vibrant thread connecting several chapters is the dynamism of the women’s liberation movement: not least, the Canberra group where Reid developed her feminism. Biff Ward recalls the night in early 1973 that she and other Canberra women from the women’s liberation movement attended the party held for the 18 shortlisted applicants for the women’s adviser job.</p> <p>It was a seemingly ordinary Saturday-night event in a suburban home: the prime minister was among the prominent Labor men present. Ward recalls the extraordinary atmosphere at the party, with the government luminaries aware of their own newfound power, yet “sidelined” by the women. These women knew each other from the movement and constituted “a tribe” that had the men on edge, because of the women’s shared confidence and agenda.</p> <p>The chapter on the late Pat Eatock, the Aboriginal feminist who had travelled from Sydney to Canberra in early 1972 for the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-aboriginal-tent-embassy-at-50-the-history-of-an-ongoing-protest-for-indigenous-sovereignty-in-australia-podcast-180216">Tent Embassy</a>, then stayed to move into the Women’s House (run by the Women’s Liberation group) is co-written by her daughter Cathy Eatock. In 1972 Pat Eatock became the first Indigenous woman to stand for federal parliament. Later she became a public servant, an academic and a pioneer in Aboriginal television. She was part of the Canberra women’s liberation movement, despite not feeling accepted by some members. </p> <p>On balance, Eatock believed the movement changed her life for the better. She participated in the celebrated <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/canberra/programs/sundaybrunch/the-1975-women-in-politics-conference/12708060">1975 Women and Politics Conference</a>, and was in the Australian delegation to the International Women’s Year Conference in Mexico City, where she found Australian feminist theory was “leading the world”.</p> <h2>Greater expectations</h2> <p>The book is organised into five sections, each introduced by a relevant expert. In the section on law, Elizabeth Evatt succinctly describes her path-breaking roles. She was deputy president of the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission (predecessor to the Fair Work Commission), chair of the <a href="https://pmtranscripts.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/original/00003358.pdf">Royal Commission on Human Relationships 1974-77</a> (which brought abortion, homosexuality and domestic violence into the spotlight); and first chief judge of the Family Court of Australia. The latter was created by the Family Law Act of 1975, which introduced no-fault divorce. </p> <p>In her conclusion, Evatt laments <a href="https://theconversation.com/book-extract-broken-requiem-for-the-family-court-166406">the recent merger</a> of the Family Court with the Federal Circuit Court, and hails the Family Law Act as one of Whitlam’s great legacies.</p> <p>In the health and social policy section, former Labor Senator Margaret Reynolds recalls observing the Whitlam government’s achievements from conservative Townsville, where she was a founding member of the local Women’s Electoral Lobby. As a teacher, she saw how the reforms in education benefited regional schools and children. And the Townsville CAE introduced a training program for teaching monitors from remote communities, which particularly helped Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women.</p> <p>In the section on legacies, author and former “femocrat” Sara Dowse catalogues the disastrous social consequences of <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-how-neoliberalism-became-an-insult-in-australian-politics-188291">neoliberalism</a>, which have been braided with the many real and important gains for women since the 1970s. Hope lies, she suggests, in women’s greater expectations for their own lives.</p> <p>I have focused on essays by senior feminists, but the 16 wide-ranging chapters include contributions from younger authors, too. </p> <p>From our current standpoint, the fervour of the 1970s is enviable. It’s very promising that the 2022 election brought an influx of new women MPs. But if we’re going to conquer <a href="https://theconversation.com/family-violence-is-literally-making-us-sicker-new-study-finds-abuse-increases-risk-of-chronic-illness-199669">intimate violence</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/weve-all-done-the-right-things-in-under-cover-older-women-tell-their-stories-of-becoming-homeless-188356">women’s homelessness</a> and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/australia-has-ranked-last-in-an-international-gender-pay-gap-study-here-are-3-ways-to-do-better-168848">gender pay gap</a>, we need another feminist revolution.</p> <p><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p> <p><em>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-whitlam-government-gave-us-no-fault-divorce-womens-refuges-and-childcare-australia-needs-another-feminist-revolution-202238" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>. </em></p>

Books

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We were told we’d be riding in self-driving cars by now. What happened to the promised revolution?

<p>According to <a href="https://electrek.co/2015/12/21/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-drops-prediction-full-autonomous-driving-from-3-years-to-2/">predictions</a> <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/09/lyfts-president-says-car-ownership-will-all-but-end-by-2025">made</a> nearly a decade ago, we should be riding around in self-driving vehicles today. It’s now clear the autonomous vehicle revolution was overhyped.</p> <p>Proponents woefully underestimated the technological challenges. It turns out developing a truly driverless vehicle is hard.</p> <p>The other factor driving the hype was the amount of money being invested in autonomous vehicle startups. By 2021, it was estimated more than <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/02/04/self-driving-cars-why/">US$100 billion</a> in venture capital had gone into developing the technology.</p> <p>While advances are being made, it is important to understand there are multiple levels of autonomy. Only one is truly driverless. As established by <a href="https://www.sae.org/blog/sae-j3016-update">SAE International</a>, the levels are:</p> <ul> <li> <p>level 0 — the driver has to undertake all driving tasks</p> </li> <li> <p>level 1, hands on/shared control — vehicle has basic driver-assist features such as cruise control and lane-keeping</p> </li> <li> <p>level 2, hands off – vehicle has advanced driver-assist features such as emergency braking, adaptive cruise control, auto park assist and traffic-jam assist</p> </li> <li> <p>level 3, eyes off — vehicle drives itself some of the time</p> </li> <li> <p>level 4, mind off — vehicle drives itself most of the time</p> </li> <li> <p>level 5, steering wheel option — vehicle drives itself all the time.</p> </li> </ul> <h2>Why the slow progress?</h2> <p>It’s estimated the technology to deliver safe autonomous vehicles is about <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/mar/27/how-self-driving-cars-got-stuck-in-the-slow-lane">80% developed</a>. The last 20% is increasingly difficult. It will take a lot more time to perfect.</p> <p>Challenges yet to be resolved involve unusual and rare events that can happen along any street or highway. They include weather, wildlife crossing the road, and highway construction.</p> <p>Another set of problems has emerged since <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonmainwaring/2022/08/22/cruise-ride-hailing-goes-green-and-driverless/?sh=6a7439376843">Cruise</a> and <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/19/23467784/waymo-provide-fully-driverless-rides-san-francisco-california">Waymo</a> launched their autonomous ride-hailing services in San Francisco. The US National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/16/cruises-autonomous-driving-tech-comes-under-scrutiny-from-safety-regulators/">opened an investigation</a> in December 2022, only six months after the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jun/03/california-driverless-taxi-cars-san-francisco">services were approved</a>. It cited incidents where these vehicles “may have engaged in inappropriately hard braking or became immobilized”.</p> <p>The San Francisco County Transportation Authority <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/01/technology/self-driving-taxi-san-francisco.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">stated</a>, "[I]n the months since the initial approval of autonomous taxi services in June 2022, Cruise AVs have made unplanned and unexpected stops in travel lanes, where they obstruct traffic and transit service and intrude into active emergency response scenes, including fire suppression scenes, creating additional hazardous conditions."</p> <p>In several cases, Cruise technicians had to be called to move the vehicles.</p> <h2>What’s happening now?</h2> <p>Active autonomous vehicle initiatives can be grouped into two categories: ride-hailing services (Cruise, Waymo and Uber) and sales to the public (Tesla).</p> <p>Cruise is a subsidiary of General Motors founded in 2013. As of September 2022, it operated 100 robotaxis in San Francisco and had plans to increase its fleet to 5,000. Critics said this would increase city traffic.</p> <p>Cruise also began to offer services in Chandler (a Phoenix suburb), Arizona, and Austin, Texas, in December 2022.</p> <p>Waymo, formerly the Google Self-Driving Car Project, was founded in January 2009. The company lost <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/11/23453262/waymo-av-driverless-taxi-phoenix-california-dmv-progress">US$4.8 billion in 2020 and US$5.2 billion in 2021</a>.</p> <p>Waymo One provides autonomous ride-hailing services in <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/28/23617278/waymo-self-driving-driverless-crashes-av">Phoenix as well as San Francisco</a>. It plans to expand into <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/19/23410677/waymo-los-angeles-autonomous-robotaxi-service-launch">Los Angeles</a> this year.</p> <p>Uber was a major force in autonomous vehicle development as part of its business plan was to replace human drivers. However, it ran into problems, including a crash in March 2018 when a self-driving Uber killed a woman walking her bicycle across a street in Tempe, Arizona. In 2020, Arizona Uber sold its AV research division to Aurora Innovation.</p> <p>But in October 2022 Uber got back into autonomous vehicles by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/samabuelsamid/2022/10/06/motional-and-uber-announce-10-year-deal-to-deploy-automated-vehicles-in-multiple-us-markets/?sh=44d83a84273e">signing a deal</a> with Motional, a joint venture between Hyundai and Aptiv. Motional will provide autonomous vehicles for Uber’s ride-hailing and delivery services.</p> <p>Lyft, the second-largest ride-sharing company after Uber, operates in the US and Canada. Like Uber, Lyft had a self-driving unit and in 2016, Lyft co-founder John Zimmer <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/09/lyfts-president-says-car-ownership-will-all-but-end-by-2025">predicted</a> that by 2021 the majority of rides on its network would be in such vehicles (and private car ownership would “all but end” by 2025). It didn’t happen. By 2021, Lyft had also <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/26/lyft-sells-self-driving-unit-to-toyotas-woven-planet-for-550m/">sold its self-driving vehicle unit</a>, to Toyota.</p> <p>In 2022, Zimmer <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/20/lyft-co-founder-says-autonomous-vehicles-wont-replace-drivers-for-at-least-a-decade/">said</a> the technology would not replace drivers for at least a decade. However, Lyft did partner with Motional in August 2022 to launch <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/lyft-and-motional-deliver-the-first-rides-in-motionals-new-all-electric-ioniq-5-autonomous-vehicle-301606519.html">robotaxis in Las Vegas</a> and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/lyft-motional-launch-robotaxi-service-los-angeles-2022-11-17/">Los Angeles</a>.</p> <p>Telsa is the <a href="https://www.ev-volumes.com/">world leader in sales</a> of battery electric vehicles. It also purports to sell vehicles with full automation. However, by the end of 2022, no level 3, 4 or 5 vehicles were for sale in the United States.</p> <p>What Telsa offers is a full self-driving system as a US$15,000 option. Buyers acknowledge they are buying a beta version and assume all risks. If the system malfunctions, Telsa does not accept any responsibility.</p> <p>In February 2023, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration <a href="https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/16/tesla-recall-full-self-driving-cars">found</a>, "[Fully self-driving] beta software that allows a vehicle to exceed speed limits or travel through intersections in an unlawful or unpredictable manner increases the risk of a crash."</p> <p>This led to Tesla <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/16/tesla-recall-full-self-driving-cars">recalling 362,000 vehicles</a> to update the software.</p> <p>Another setback for autonomous vehicle sales to the public was the October 2022 announcement that Ford and VW had decided to <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/26/ford-vw-backed-argo-ai-is-shutting-down/">stop funding autonomous driving technology company Argo AI</a>, resulting in its closure. Both Ford and VW decided to shift their focus from level 4 automation to levels 2 and 3.</p> <h2>So, what can we expect next?</h2> <p>Autonomous vehicle development will continue, but with less hype. It’s being recognised as more an evolutionary process than a revolutionary one. The increasing cost of capital will also make it harder for autonomous vehicle startups to get development funds.</p> <p>The areas that appear to be making the best progress are autonomous ride-hailing and heavy vehicles. Self-driving car sales to the public are <a href="https://www.drive.com.au/news/level-4-self-driving-technology-mercedes-benz/">further down the track</a>.</p> <p><em>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-were-told-wed-be-riding-in-self-driving-cars-by-now-what-happened-to-the-promised-revolution-201088" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>.</em></p> <p><em>Images: Getty</em></p>

Technology

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Fashion Revolution Week is over, but the fight continues

<p dir="ltr">We’re becoming more conscious of where our clothes come from and how workers are compensated for their labour, and people such as Carry Somers and Orsola de Castro - the founders of <a href="https://www.fashionrevolution.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Fashion Revolution</a> - have been major players in increasing awareness.</p> <p><span id="docs-internal-guid-e57fe6ef-7fff-ae09-140f-53a453222c3f"></span></p> <p dir="ltr">The pair of former fashion designers created Fashion Revolution - and the accompanying hashtag #WhoMadeMyClothes - back in 2014, almost a year after the devastating Rana Plaza Collapse in Bangladesh resulted in the deaths of 1100 people and injuries of another 2500.</p> <blockquote class="instagram-media" style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/Ccur8RlouOX/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"> </div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"> <div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style="width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"> </div> </div> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Ccur8RlouOX/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A post shared by Orsola de Castro (@orsoladecastro)</a></p> </div> </blockquote> <p dir="ltr">Since then, Somers and Castro have marked the anniversary of the disaster each year with their annual Fashion Revolution Week. This year’s theme, Money Fashion Power, shone a light on how power and wealth are disproportionately held by a few in the mainstream fashion industry who rely on the exploitation of people and natural resources for profit.</p> <p dir="ltr">“As we enter our 9th year, we will go back to our core, exposing the profound inequities and social and environmental abuses in the fashion supply chains,” de Castro said in a statement.</p> <p dir="ltr">“From the uneven distribution of profits, to overproduced, easily discarded fashion, to the imbalances of power that negate inclusion. On the other hand, inspiring new designers, thinkers and professionals all over the world are challenging the system with solutions and alternative models.</p> <p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-3e13cea4-7fff-cad9-72f6-969d3226fe98">“Fashion Revolution Week is all of this, scrutinising and celebrating fashion, globally, locally, wherever you are.”</span></p> <blockquote class="instagram-media" style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/CcArcNfMIBi/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"> </div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"> <div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style="width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"> </div> </div> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CcArcNfMIBi/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A post shared by Fashion Revolution (@fash_rev)</a></p> </div> </blockquote> <p dir="ltr">Though the week of events have come to an end for 2022, there are still some things we can do to advocate for a fairer industry - and it can be as easy as opening your wardrobe.</p> <p dir="ltr"><strong>1. Write to a policymaker or brand</strong></p> <p dir="ltr">Taking action doesn’t need to always be on a global scale, and writing to your local policymaker can be an effective way to make a difference in your area even after Fashion Revolution Week ends.</p> <p dir="ltr">Using Fashion Revolution’s handy <a href="https://www.fashionrevolution.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">template</a>, you can find the contact details of your local Australian Senator or Member <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Senators_and_Members/Guidelines_for_Contacting_Senators_and_Members">here</a>, while New Zealand MPs can be found <a href="https://www.parliament.nz/en/get-involved/have-your-say/contact-an-mp/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>.</p> <p dir="ltr">Or, you can ask your favourite brands who makes the clothes they sell via social media, using the hashtags #WhoMadeMyFabric and #WhatsInMyClothes, or using Fashion Revolution’s <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BTY3vX5ZdIelRIg4SqJvIEJFj_wA6Ey1/view" target="_blank" rel="noopener">email template</a>.</p> <p dir="ltr"><strong>2. Take a look at your wardrobe</strong></p> <p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-b3942f94-7fff-f65e-1103-d33e05eda690"></span></p> <p dir="ltr">Considering the clothes already in our wardrobes is another way we can make a difference. Caring for our clothes, repairing them when they tear or lose a button, or repurposing unrepairable clothes are some simple ways we can make them last.</p> <blockquote class="instagram-media" style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/CcK-SNwg6hC/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"> </div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"> <div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style="width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"> </div> </div> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CcK-SNwg6hC/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A post shared by Fashion Revolution (@fash_rev)</a></p> </div> </blockquote> <p dir="ltr">When we do need to add something to our wardrobes, opting for secondhand clothing and consulting the <a href="https://issuu.com/fashionrevolution/docs/fashiontransparencyindex_2021" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Fashion Transparency Index</a> before buying new clothing can help us make more informed choices and support companies making positive changes.</p> <p dir="ltr"><strong>3. Arm yourself with knowledge</strong></p> <p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-2f0491db-7fff-14a0-8f6c-d399997d61ac"></span></p> <p dir="ltr">Another way to take action is to educate yourself on the issues facing the fashion industry, and Fashion Revolution has plenty to choose from.</p> <blockquote class="instagram-media" style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/CY1l9p8KxLD/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"> </div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"> <div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style="width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"> </div> </div> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CY1l9p8KxLD/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A post shared by Fashion Revolution (@fash_rev)</a></p> </div> </blockquote> <p dir="ltr">Their series of ‘pay what you can’ <a href="https://www.fashionrevolution.org/fashion-revolution-fanzine-library/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">fanzines</a> cover everything from the industry’s relationship with the environment to the opaque nature of supply chains, and you can see what garment workers experience first-hand through the <a href="https://workerdiaries.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Garment Worker Diaries</a> website.</p> <p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-4b1d51ae-7fff-2c29-66c3-a1755b19282c"></span></p> <p dir="ltr"><em>Image: @fash_rev (Instagram)</em></p>

Beauty & Style

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Up on a roof: why New Zealand’s move towards greater urban density should see a rooftop revolution

<p>New Zealand has historically been a suburban land. Famously <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/artwork/1997/the-half-gallon-quarter-acre-pavlova-paradise">characterised</a> as a “quarter-acre pavlova paradise”, the domestic ideal has long been a single dwelling on a full section. But that is changing fast.</p> <p>With soaring house prices and homes in short supply, <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300433304/labour-national-announce-sweeping-housing-density-law-threestorey-homes-without-consent">medium-density development</a> is set to fill urban and suburban horizons. Combined with a growing awareness of ecological sustainability, it seems Kiwis may soon be looking up to those green spaces they once looked at through backyard windows.</p> <p>So, why not a rooftop revolution? Humans have made use of roof spaces since the invention of housing. Legend has it the Hanging Gardens of Babylon that greened the ancient city were created on roofs and terraces by those yearning for nature within their urban landscape.</p> <p>These days, rooftop gardens and the “green roofs” movement are trending internationally, both as domestic and commercial spaces. Once useful for solar power and collecting rainwater, roofs are now used for food production, growing mini “forests” to mitigate climate change, “wildlife gardening”, leisure and entertainment.</p> <p><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436848/original/file-20211210-68670-1hdfld1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436848/original/file-20211210-68670-1hdfld1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="" /></a> <span class="caption">Friedensreich Hundertwasser’s famous roof garden on the restrooms in Kawakawa.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></p> <h2>Rooftops of the world</h2> <p>Examples of rooftop regeneration are everywhere. Thailand’s Thammasat University, for instance, boasts urban farming on its rice terrace-influenced <a href="https://worldlandscapearchitect.com/thammasat-university-the-largest-urban-rooftop-farm-in-asia/">green roof</a>, a multipurpose organic food space, public commons, water management system, energy generator and outdoor classroom.</p> <p>The rooftop of the Paris Exhibition Centre is <a href="https://www.euronews.com/green/2020/06/28/the-world-s-largest-rooftop-garden-has-just-opened-in-paris">now a vegetable garden</a>, aimed at cutting the cost of food miles and feeding locals. With its massive, architectural “supertrees”, Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay invents a lush oasis in the densely populated city-state.</p> <p>Closer to home, the artist and architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser’s famous roof garden on the <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/7817/kawakawa-public-toilets">restrooms in Kawakawa</a> was a precursor to his remarkable Waldspirale building in Darmstadt, Germany.</p> <p>Typical of his belief in culturally diverse urban forms that co-exist with nature, the apartment complex includes a <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/waldspirale">forest on its spiral roof</a>. Even more ambitious, Whangārei’s brand-new Hundertwasser Art Centre has a <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/452692/hundertwasser-art-centre-due-to-open-in-whangarei">forest rooftop</a> that includes more than 4,000 plants.</p> <p><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436849/original/file-20211210-188518-tv3ice.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="" /> <span class="caption">Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></p> <h2>The green roof</h2> <p>Similar ideas inform the the <a href="https://www.greenroofs.com/projects/university-of-auckland-engineering-building/">green roof</a> on the University of Auckland’s engineering building. The project involves six plots containing 3,600 native and succulent plants, chosen for their ability to cope with both drought and flood conditions. Pumice, clay and bark are among the soil substitutes on trial, all part of proving a model for both commercial and domestic buildings.</p> <p>To the west, the <a href="https://greenroofs.co.nz/projects/waitakere-civic-centre/">Waitākere Civic Centre green roof</a> was designed to manage rainwater runoff, increase energy efficiency and promote biodiversity. The flat 500sqm garden contains ten types of native plant, iris and sand dune coprosma. The roof provides food and habitat for native insects and birds.</p> <p>Rooftop development also offers the opportunity to decolonise cities, showcasing local culture and ecology and creating Māori spaces. Part of a renaissance in Māori architecture, Auckland International Airport’s green roof was <a href="https://inhabitat.com/the-cloak-fearon-hay-architects-install-a-maori-inspired-green-roof-at-auckland-international-airport/">influenced by korowai</a> and made from flax fibre with geometric patterning.</p> <p>And to the south, with part of its intention being to absorb noise pollution from the airport, Remarkables Primary School in Queenstown has a green roof that blends into the landscape and can be <a href="https://greenroofs.co.nz/projects/remarkables-primary-school-queenstown-new-zealand/">used as a classroom</a>.</p> <p><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436850/original/file-20211210-188518-1pudl1g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="" /> <span class="caption">The Press Lounge rooftop bar in New York.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></p> <h2>Drinking in the view</h2> <p>If there’s a pioneer of the sky-high lifestyle it’s probably the rooftop bar and restaurant. Kensington Roof Gardens in London opened in 1938, and from 1981 to 2018 was the site of Richard Branson’s appropriately named Babylon restaurant.</p> <p>But the city rooftop bar is now a staple around the world. <a href="https://www.therooftopguide.com/rooftop-bars-in-auckland.html">Auckland</a> and <a href="https://theculturetrip.com/pacific/new-zealand/articles/the-best-rooftop-bars-in-wellington-new-zealand/">Wellington</a> boast multiple options, and post-earthquake Christchurch defies the loss of so much of the central city with two bars atop restored heritage buildings.</p> <p>For those old enough to remember, these rooftop playgrounds might make them nostalgic for the real versions from their childhoods.</p> <p>Taking their lead from the US, magical department store rooftop playgrounds thrilled generations of Kiwi children while their mothers shopped. On the Farmer’s rooftop in Auckland they could drive model cars, happily caught up in a fairground atmosphere that featured a giant toadstool.</p> <p>On the Hay’s rooftop in Christchurch there were cheap rides on spaceships and fibreglass dinosaurs to slide down. There was even a popular purpose-built crèche on top of the then new Wellington railway station between 1937 and 1941.</p> <p><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436854/original/file-20211210-25-1gja0wa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="" /> <span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></p> <h2>Embracing Babylon</h2> <p>All of this suggests we might be ready for the rooftop revolution. The question is, however, is there a political and civic commitment to greening the mass of new medium-density roof spaces now being built?</p> <p>It will likely take a shift in mindset, supportive legislation and perhaps subsidies. In bucolic “God’s Own Country”, where our mental maps are of wide open spaces rather than vertical ones, roofscapes are going to take a bit of getting used to.</p> <p>Might embracing a Kiwi Babylon mitigate our nostalgia for low-density living and let us re-imagine green spaces in exciting new ways? Let’s hope so. History tells us rooftops can combine utility with pleasure and sustainability. We just need to look up.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/172226/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/katie-pickles-547300">Katie Pickles</a>, Professor of History, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-canterbury-1004">University of Canterbury</a></em></span></p> <p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/up-on-a-roof-why-new-zealands-move-towards-greater-urban-density-should-see-a-rooftop-revolution-172226">original article</a>.</p> <p><em>Image: Shutterstock</em></p>

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The death of the open-plan office? Not exactly but a revolution is in the air

<p>“What will it take to encourage much more widespread reliance on working at home for at least part of each week?” asked Frank Schiff, the chief economist of the US Committee for Economic Development, in <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1979/09/02/working-at-home-can-save-gasoline/ffa475c7-d1a8-476e-8411-8cb53f1f3470/">The Washington Post</a> in 1979.</p> <p>Four decades on, we have the answer.</p> <p>But COVID-19 doesn’t spell the end of the centralised office predicted by futurists since at least the 1970s.</p> <p>The organisational benefits of the “propinquity effect” – the tendency to develop deeper relationships with those we see most regularly – are well-established.</p> <p>The open-plan office will have to evolve, though, finding its true purpose as a collaborative work space augmented by remote work.</p> <p>If we’re smart about it, necessity might turn out to be the mother of reinvention, giving us the best of both centralised and decentralised, collaborative and private working worlds.</p> <p><strong>Cultural resistance</strong></p> <p>Organisational culture, not technology, has long been the key force keeping us in central offices.</p> <p>“That was the case in 1974 and is still the case today,” observed the “father of telecommuting” Jack Nilles <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/12/what-telecommuting-looked-like-in-1973/418473/?sf43013774=1">in 2015</a>, three decades after he and his University of Southern California colleagues published their landmark report <a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.5555/540203">Telecommunications-Transportation Tradeoff: Options for Tomorrow</a>. “The adoption of telework is still well behind its potential.”</p> <p>Until now.</p> <p>But it has taken a pandemic to change the status quo – evidence enough of culture resistance.</p> <p>In his 1979 article, Schiff outlined three key objections to working from home:</p> <ul> <li>how to tell how well workers are doing, or if they are working at all</li> <li>employees’ need for contact with coworkers and others</li> <li>too many distractions.</li> </ul> <p>To the first objection, Schiff responded that experts agreed performance is best judged by output and the organisation’s objectives. To the third, he noted: “In many cases, the opposite is likely to be true.”</p> <p>The COVID-19 experiment so far supports him. Most <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com.au/54-percent-adults-want-mainly-work-remote-after-pandemic-study-2020-5">workers</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/working-from-home-remains-a-select-privilege-its-time-to-fix-our-national-employment-standards-139472">managers</a> are happy with remote working, believe they are performing just as well, and want to continue with it.</p> <p><strong>Personal contact</strong></p> <p>But the second argument – the need for personal contact to foster close teamwork – is harder to dismiss.</p> <p>There is evidence remote workers crave more feedback.</p> <p>As researchers Ethan Bernstein and Ben Waber note in their Harvard Business Review article <a href="https://hbr.org/2019/11/the-truth-about-open-offices">The Truth About Open Offices</a>, published in November 2019, “one of the most robust findings in sociology – proposed long before we had the technology to prove it through data – is that propinquity, or proximity, predicts social interaction”.</p> <p>Waber’s research at the MIT Media Lab demonstrated the probability that any two workers will interact – either in person or electronically – is directly proportional to the distance between their desks. In his 2013 book <a href="https://www.humanyze.com/people-analytics-book/">People Analytics</a> he includes the following results from a bank and information technology company.</p> <p><strong>Experiments in collaboration</strong></p> <p>Interest in fostering collaboration has sometimes led to disastrous workplace experiments. One was the building Frank Gehry designed for the Chiat/Day advertising agency in the late 1980s.</p> <p>Agency boss Jay Chiat envisioned his headquarters as a futuristic step into “flexible work” – but <a href="https://www.wired.com/1999/02/chiat-3/">workers hated</a> the lack of personal spaces.</p> <p>Less dystopian was the Pixar Animation Studios headquarters opened in 2000. Steve Jobs, majority shareholder and chief executive, oversaw the project. He took a keen interest in things like the <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/healthy-living/new-work-order-from-google-and-pixar-to-innocent-the-future-of-the-office-starts-here-8687379.html">placement of bathrooms</a>, accessed through the building’s central atrium. “We wanted to find a way to force people to come together,” he said, “to create a lot of arbitrary collisions of people”.</p> <p>Yet Bernstein and Waber’s research shows propinquity is also strong in “campus” buildings designed to promote “serendipitous interaction”. For increased interactions, they say, workers should be “ideally on the same floor”.</p> <p><strong>Being apart</strong></p> <p>How to balance the organisational forces pulling us together with the health forces pushing social distancing?</p> <p>We know COVID-19 spreads most easily between people in enclosed spaces for extended periods. In Britain, research by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine shows workplaces are the most common transmission path for adults aged <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/17/scientists-age-groups-covid-19-workplaces-shops-restaurants">20 to 50</a>.</p> <p>We may have to get used to wearing masks along with plenty of <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1438463918305911?via%3Dihub">hand sanitising</a> and disinfecting of high-traffic areas and shared facilities, from keyboards to kitchens. Every door knob and lift button is an issue.</p> <p>But space is the final frontier.</p> <p>It’s going to take more than vacating every second desk or imposing barriers like cubicle walls, which largely defeat the point of open-plan offices.</p> <p>An alternative vision comes from real-estate services company Cushman &amp; Wakefield. Its “6 feet office” concept includes more space between desks and lots of visual cues to remind coworkers to maintain physical distances.</p> <p>Of course, to do anything like this in most offices will require a proportion of staff working at home on any given day. It will also mean then end of the individual desk for most.</p> <p>This part may the hardest to handle. We like our personal spaces.</p> <p>We’ll need to balance the sacrifice of sharing spaces against the advantages of working away from the office while still getting to see colleagues in person. We’ll need new arrangements for storing personal items beyond the old locker, and “handover” protocols for equipment and furniture.</p> <p>Offices will also need to need more private spaces for greater use of video conferencing and the like. These sorts of collaborative tools don’t work well if you can’t insulate yourself from distractions.</p> <p>But there’s a huge potential upside with the new open office. A well-managed rotation of office days and seating arrangements could help us get to know more of those colleagues who, because they used to sit a few too many desks away, we rarely talked to.</p> <p>It might just mean the open-plan office finally finds its mojo.</p> <p><em>Written by Andrew Wallace. Republished with permission of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-death-of-the-open-plan-office-not-quite-but-a-revolution-is-in-the-air-140724">The Conversation.</a> </em></p>

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The ‘hospital in the home’ revolution has been stalled by COVID-19 – but is it still a good idea?

<p>Growing numbers of Australians are choosing to receive their hospital care at home, according to figures published today in the <a href="https://www.mja.com.au/">Medical Journal of Australia</a>. In 2017-18, more than half a million days of publicly funded hospital care were delivered at patients’ homes rather than in hospital.</p> <p>“Hospital in the home” is just what it sounds like – an acute care service that provides care in the home that would otherwise need to be received as an inpatient.</p> <p>It provides an alternative to hospital admission, or an opportunity for earlier discharge than would otherwise be possible. The research found it is also associated with a lower likelihood of readmission within 28 days (2.3% vs 3.6%) and lower rates of patient deaths (0.3% vs 1.4%), compared with being an inpatient.</p> <p>While federal government plans to boost hospital in the home have been hampered by COVID-19, home service models may be even more valuable in a post-pandemic world.</p> <p><strong>A push from government</strong></p> <p>In November last year, federal health minister Greg Hunt called for a “<a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/hospital-in-the-home-revolution-hunt-s-plan-to-shake-up-private-health-insurance-20191125-p53dy2.html">hospital in the home revolution</a>”.</p> <p>He told state and territory governments and private health insurers he wanted more care delivered in patients’ homes rather than hospitals, and pledged to make it easier for these services to qualify for funding.</p> <p>Hunt said his aim was to offer more choice and better clinical outcomes for patients, as well as better efficiency for state and territory health departments and private health funds. He explicitly linked this plan to efforts to curb the spiralling increases in private health insurance premiums, which <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/am/health-minister-greg-hunt-on-home-care,-aged-care-funding/11737874">threaten that industry’s future</a>.</p> <p>The promised revolution has inevitably been stalled by the COVID-19 pandemic. But the new research provides a timely reminder of the importance and potential of hospital in the home.</p> <p><strong>How is hospital in the home delivered?</strong></p> <p>Hospital in the home is already a widespread practice in Australia. Nationwide, more than 595,000 days of hospital in the home care were delivered in 2017-18 for public patients, accounting for <a href="https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/hospitals/admitted-patient-care-2017-18/contents/at-a-glance">more than 5% of acute-care bed days</a>.</p> <p>Yet in the private sector, <a href="https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/hospitals/admitted-patient-care-2017-18/contents/at-a-glance">fewer than 1%</a> of acute bed days were delivered at home.</p> <p>In Victoria, hospital in the home services have been funded by the <a href="https://www2.health.vic.gov.au/hospitals-and-health-services/patient-care/acute-care/hospital-in-the-home">public health system</a> since 1994, and have consistently been affirmed as being safe and appropriate for patients.</p> <p>Victoria’s hospital in the home program delivered <a href="https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/hospitals/admitted-patient-care-2017-18/contents/at-a-glance">more than 242,000 patient bed days</a> in 2017-18. Monash Health’s hospital in the home service provided care for some 14% of the whole health service’s overnight admissions in June 2019.</p> <p>There is considerable variation between states and territories, and between individual health services, in how these services are delivered.</p> <p>Generally, they are staffed by a multidisciplinary mix of nursing, medical and allied health staff. Patients admitted to the program remain under the care of their hospital doctor, and the hospital’s full resources are available to each patient should they need them.</p> <p>Some of the main activities of hospital in the home include:</p> <ul> <li>administration of intravenous antibiotics for short- and long-term infections</li> <li>administration of anticoagulants to help prevent blood clots</li> <li>post-surgical care</li> <li>complex wound care and management</li> <li>chemotherapy.</li> </ul> <p>Western Health’s hospital in the home program provides support for people with chronic conditions like heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and cancer. Monash Health provides a wide range of care throughout life, from premature babies to aged care.</p> <p><strong>Why is it a good thing?</strong></p> <p>For patients, the <a href="https://www.mja.com.au/journal/1998/170/4/research">benefits</a> include increased comfort, less noise, freedom of movement, more palatable food and, crucially, reduced exposure to hospital-acquired infections.</p> <p>Treating patients in their homes can also improve responsiveness to <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3092156/">cultural and socioeconomic needs</a>, and provide support for carers.</p> <p>Patients and carers alike appreciate the ability to choose an alternative to hospital admission and <a href="https://academic.oup.com/intqhc/article/8/3/243/1845169">feel more in control</a> when care is delivered in their own home.</p> <p>Based on international evidence, it is less clear whether discharging patients early from hospital and treating them at home actually reduces costs. A <a href="https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2012/197/9/meta-analysis-hospital-home">2012 meta-analysis</a> suggested it does, but more recent <a href="https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD007491.pub2/full?highlightAbstract=withdrawn%7Chospital%7Chospit%7Chome">Cochrane reviews</a> concluded the cost benefits are “<a href="https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD000356.pub4/full?highlightAbstract=withdrawn%7Chospital%7Chospit%7Chome">uncertain</a>”.</p> <p><strong>Hospital in the home and COVID-19</strong></p> <p>Despite having pushed hospital in the home reforms onto the back burner, COVID-19 might paradoxically provide even greater impetus for this type of care model.</p> <p>In the short term, home treatment can relieve pressure on the acute hospital system. One example is the Victorian government’s support for <a href="https://www.orygen.org.au/About/News-And-Events/2020/Orygen-welcomes-Victorian-Government%E2%80%99s-COVID-19-me">mental health care</a> delivered to young people via hospital in the home during the pandemic.</p> <p>Longer term, the rapid boost to telehealth and remote monitoring technology driven by COVID-19 will greatly benefit hospital in the home.</p> <p>Better integrated and coordinated hospital in the home care can be achieved via an e-enabled care model, supporting self-management activities, remote symptom monitoring, patient reminders and decision support. It’s likely we’ll see far less resistance to these measures following the COVID-19 pandemic.</p> <p>Patients’ and carers’ perceptions of home hospital care are also likely to have improved as a byproduct of COVID-19, as people avoid visiting hospitals in person if possible. These attitudes may last well beyond the pandemic.</p> <p>While private health insurers are currently enjoying bumper profits as COVID-19 reduces the amount of member claims, the likely economic downturn in the wake of the pandemic may put insurers and private hospitals under <a href="https://insightplus.mja.com.au/2020/17/economic-recovery-from-covid-19-we-must-not-fall-for-austerity/">great pressure</a> as members cancel their policies due to unemployment or reduced income. Hospital in the home could prove a useful tool to drive down costs.</p> <p>Hunt’s promised revolution will require big changes to the regulations that govern private health care, and to insurers’ willingness to demand change from private hospitals. But if we have learned anything from COVID-19, it’s that change can happen fast when it’s really needed.</p> <p><em>Written by Martin Hensher, Bodil Rasmussen and Maxine Duke. Republished with permission of The Conversation. </em></p>

Retirement Life

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Billions are pouring into mobility technology – will the transport revolution live up to the hype?

<p>Over the past decade almost <a href="https://files.pitchbook.com/website/files/pdf/PitchBook_Q4_2019_Emerging_Tech_Research_Mobility_Tech_Executive_Summary.pdf">US$200 billion</a> has been invested globally in mobility technology that promises to improve our ability to get around. More than US$33 billion was invested last year alone. Another measure of interest in this area is the <a href="https://travelandmobility.tech/lists/unicorns/">number of unicorns</a>, which has doubled in the past two years.</p> <p>A unicorn is a privately held startup company valued at US$1 billion or more. In early 2018 there were 22 travel and mobility unicorns. By last month the number had grown to 44.</p> <p>The top categories in the mobility area are: ride hailing, with 11 unicorns (25.0%); autonomous vehicles, with ten (22.7%); and micromobility, with three (6.8%). The remaining 20 unicorns are in the travel category (hotels, bookings and so on).</p> <p>Mobility technology is more than just autonomous vehicles, ride hailing and e-scooters and e-bikes. It also includes: electrification (electric vehicles, charging/batteries); fleet management and connectivity (connectivity, data management, cybersecurity, parking, fleet management); auto commerce (car sharing); transportation logistics (freight, last-mile delivery); and urban air mobility.</p> <p><strong>Promised solutions, emerging problems</strong></p> <p>Much of the interest in mobility technology is coming from individuals outside the transport arena. Startups are attracting investors by claiming their technology will solve many of our transport problems.</p> <p>Micromobility companies believe their e-scooters and e-bikes will solve the “<a href="https://ascelibrary.org/doi/abs/10.1061/9780784413210.007">first-mile last-mile</a>” problem by enabling people to move quickly and easily between their homes or workplaces and a bus or rail station. While this might work in theory, it depends on having <a href="https://theconversation.com/fork-in-the-road-as-danish-and-dutch-style-cycle-routes-spread-19744">safe and segregated bicycle networks</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/people-love-the-idea-of-20-minute-neighbourhoods-so-why-isnt-it-top-of-the-agenda-131193">frequent and widely accessible public transport</a> services.</p> <p>Ride-hailing services might relieve people of the need to own a car. But <a href="https://www.som.com/ideas/publications/som_thinkers_the_future_of_transportation">there is evidence</a> to suggest these services are <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-ride-hail-utopia-that-got-stuck-in-traffic-11581742802">adding to traffic congestion</a>. That’s because, unlike taxis, more of their time on the road involves travelling without any passengers.</p> <p>Navigation tools (Google Maps, Apple Maps, Waze) have <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps">been around longer</a> than most other mobility technologies and are meant make it easier to find the least-congested route for any given trip. However, <a href="https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~theophile/docs/publications/Cabannes_19_ACM.pdf">research</a> suggests these tools might not be working as intended. The <a href="https://www.som.com/ideas/publications/som_thinkers_the_future_of_transportation">backlash</a> against them is growing in some cities because traffic is being directed onto neighbourhood streets rather than arterial roads.</p> <p>Autonomous vehicles have the goal of reducing injuries and deaths from car crashes. Only a few years ago many bold predictions were being made that these self-driving vehicles would be having positive impacts by now, but this hasn’t happened. The enthusiasm for autonomous vehicles has cooled. <a href="https://www.vtpi.org/avip.pdf">Some now believe</a> we won’t see many of the social benefits for decades.</p> <p>The final mobility tech area is known as mobility as a service (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobility_as_a_service">MAAS</a>). It’s basically a platform designed to make better use of existing infrastructure and transport modes. MAAS begins with a journey planner that is linked to one-stop payment for a range of mobility services – ride-hailing, e-scooters, e-bikes, taxis, public transport, and so on.</p> <p>MAAS is the newest entrant in the mobility tech field. It has attracted US$6.8 billion to date, but is expected to grow to <a href="https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/mobility-as-a-service-market-78519888.html">over US$100 billion by 2030</a>. This idea is creating great enthusiasm, not only among private entrepreneurs, but also in the public sector. It’s too early to know whether it will improve transportation.</p> <p><strong>3 trends are driving investment</strong></p> <p>So, why do venture capitalists <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnfrazer1/2019/03/11/new-mobility-worth-billions-venture-capital-thinks-so/#198cda2247d8">continue to show so much interest</a> in mobility technology startups despite poor company performance to date? It appears they believe personal mobility will become increasingly important. <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnfrazer1/2019/03/11/new-mobility-worth-billions-venture-capital-thinks-so/#198cda2247d8">Three trends</a>support this belief.</p> <p>First, urban dwellers increasingly value the ability to move around easily. It’s thought to be a key ingredient for a liveable city. The problem is public transport is often not very good, particularly in the US and in outer suburbs in Australia.</p> <p>This is due to historically low funding relative to roads. The prospect of more funding and better public transport services in the future is not good. In part that’s because many <a href="https://www.vox.com/2015/8/10/9118199/public-transportation-subway-buses">view public transport as welfare</a> and not an essential public service. Thus, if cities want to become more liveable and competitive, they must look beyond government-funded public transport for other mobility alternatives.</p> <p>The second trend is declining vehicle ownership. Since 1986 US sales of car and light trucks per capita have dropped by <a href="https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2020/02/04/vehicle-sales-per-capita-our-latest-look-at-the-long-term-trendh">almost 30%</a>. In Australia, new car sales <a href="https://www.budgetdirect.com.au/car-insurance/research/australian-car-sales-statistics.html">remained relatively constant</a> over the past decade, but a <a href="http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/7982-new-vehicle-purchase-intention-march-2019-201905240039">decline since 2017 is expected to continue</a>. These trends are due in part to the cost of owning a vehicle, but also because of a growing view that owning a car may not be necessary.</p> <p>This brings us to the third trend, which involves demographics and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/delay-in-getting-driving-licences-opens-door-to-more-sustainable-travel-57430">post-millennial desire for access to mobility</a> services <a href="https://theconversation.com/car-ownership-is-likely-to-become-a-thing-of-the-past-and-so-could-public-transport-110550">rather than vehicle ownership</a>.</p> <p>These trends, combined with expectations of an upward trend in prices of these services, suggests there may be good times ahead for ride-hailing and micromobility companies. It also means venture capital funding for these startups will not be diminishing in the near future.</p> <p><strong>The future of transport isn’t simple</strong></p> <p>Transport systems are multifaceted. No one single app or technology will solve the challenges. And, as we are discovering, some of the purported solutions to problems might actually be making the situation worse.</p> <p>If the goal is to get people out of their cars (for <a href="https://theconversation.com/designing-suburbs-to-cut-car-use-closes-gaps-in-health-and-wealth-83961">better health and quality of life and a better environment</a>), this will require more than a technology. Better infrastructure and public policies (including better integration of land uses and transport to reduce the need for transport) will be required – <a href="https://theconversation.com/three-charts-on-why-congestion-charging-is-fairer-than-you-might-think-124894">congestion pricing</a>being one of those.</p> <p>That is not to say technological innovations are not welcome as part of the solution, but they are just that … “part” of the solution.</p> <p><em>Written by Neil G Sipe. Republished with permission of </em><a href="https://theconversation.com/billions-are-pouring-into-mobility-technology-will-the-transport-revolution-live-up-to-the-hype-131154"><em>The Conversation.</em></a></p>

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Why aren’t today’s protests leading to revolutions?

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">We live in a world of violent challenges to the status quo, from Chile and Iraq to Hong Kong, Catalonia and the Extinction Rebellion. These protests are usually presented in the media simply as expressions of rage at “the system” and are eminently suitable for TV news coverage, where they flash across our screens in 15-second splashes of colour, smoke and sometimes blood.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">These are huge rebellions. In Chile, for example, </span><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-50191746"><span style="font-weight: 400;">an estimated one million people demonstrated last month</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. By the next day, </span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/27/chile-hundreds-shot-and-beaten-street-protests"><span style="font-weight: 400;">19 people had died</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, nearly 2,500 had been injured and more than 2,800 arrested.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">How might we make sense of these upheavals? Are they revolutionary or just a series of spectacular eruptions of anger? And are they doomed to fail?</span></p> <p><strong>Key characteristics of a revolution</strong></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">As an historian of the French Revolution of 1789-99, I often ponder the similarities between the five great revolutions of the modern world – the English Revolution (1649), American Revolution (1776), French Revolution (1789), Russian Revolution (1917) and Chinese Revolution (1949).</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">A key question today is whether the rebellions we are currently witnessing are also revolutionary.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">A model of revolution drawn from the five great revolutions can tell us much about why they occur and take particular trajectories. The key characteristics are:</span></p> <ul> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">long-term causes and the popularity of a socio-political ideology at odds with the regime in power</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">short-term triggers of widespread protest</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">moments of violent confrontation the power-holders are unable to contain as sections of the armed forces defect to rebels</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">the consolidation of a broad and victorious alliance against the existing regime</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">a subsequent fracturing of the revolutionary alliance as competing factions vie for power</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">the re-establishment of a new order when a revolutionary leader succeeds in consolidating power.</span></li> </ul> <p><strong>Why today’s protests are not revolutionary</strong></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This model indicates the upheavals in our contemporary world are not revolutionary – or not yet.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The most likely to become revolutionary is in Iraq, where the regime has shown a willingness to kill its own citizens (</span><a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/09/middleeast/iraq-protest-death-toll-intl/index.html"><span style="font-weight: 400;">more than 300 in October alone</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">). This indicates that any concessions to demonstrators will inevitably be regarded as inadequate.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">We do not know how the </span><a href="https://theconversation.com/university-under-siege-a-dangerous-new-phase-for-the-hong-kong-protests-127228"><span style="font-weight: 400;">extraordinary rebellion in Hong Kong</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> will end, but it may be very telling that there does not seem to have been significant defection from the police or army to the protest movement.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">People grow angry far more often than they rebel. And rebellions rarely become revolutions.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">So, we need to distinguish between major revolutions that transform social and political structures, coups by armed elites and common forms of protest over particular issues. An example of this is the massive, violent and ultimately successful protests in Ecuador last month that </span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/14/ecuador-protests-end-after-deal-struck-with-indigenous-leaders"><span style="font-weight: 400;">forced the government to cancel an austerity package</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The protests in Hong Kong and Catalonia fall into yet another category: they have limited aims for political sovereignty rather than more general objectives.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">All successful revolutions are characterised by broad alliances at the outset as the deep-seated grievances of a range of social groups coalesce around opposition to the existing regime.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">They begin with mass support. For that reason, the Extinction Rebellion will likely only succeed with modest goals of </span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/06/how-extinction-rebellion-put-world-on-red-alert-year-since-it-was-founded"><span style="font-weight: 400;">pushing reluctant governments</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> to do more about climate change, rather than its </span><a href="https://rebellion.earth/the-truth/faqs/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">far more ambitious aspirations</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> of a national Citizen Assembly, populated by ordinary people chosen at random, to come up with a programme for change.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Mass protests also fail when they are unable to create unity around core objectives. The Arab Spring, for instance, held so much promise after blossoming in 2010, but with the possible exception of Tunisia, failed to lead to meaningful change.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Revolutionary alliances collapsed rapidly into civil war (as in Libya) or failed to neutralise the armed forces (as in Egypt and Syria).</span></p> <p><strong>Why is there so much anger?</strong></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Fundamental to an understanding of the rage so evident today is the “democratic deficit”. This refers to public anger at the way the high-water mark of democratic reform around the globe in the 1990s – accompanied by the siren song of economic globalisation – has had such uneven social outcomes.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">One expression of this anger has been the rise of fearful xenophobia expertly captured by populist politicians, most famously in the case of Donald Trump, but including many others from Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil to Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines and Victor Orbán in Hungary.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Indeed, there are some who claim that western liberalism has now failed).</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Elsewhere, the anger is popular rather than populist. In upheavals from Lebanon and Iraq to Zimbabwe and Chile, resentment is particularly focused on the evidence of widespread corruption as elites flout the basic norms of transparency and equity in siphoning government money into their pockets and those of their cronies.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The broader context of today’s upheavals also includes the uneven withdrawal of the US from international engagement, providing new opportunities for two authoritarian superpowers (Russia and China) driven by dreams of new empires.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The United Nations, meanwhile, is floundering in its attempt to provide alternative leadership through a rules-based international system.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The state of the world economy also plays a role. In places where economic growth is stagnant, minor price increases are more than just irritants. They explode into rebellions, such as the recent tax on WhatsApp in Lebanon and the metro fare rise in Chile.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">There was already deep-seated anger in both places. Chile, for example, is one of Latin America’s wealthiest countries, but has one of the worst levels of income equality among the 36 nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.</span></p> <p><strong>Rebellions with new characteristics</strong></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Of course, we do not know how these protest movements will end. While it is unlikely any of the rebellions will result in revolutionary change, we are witnessing distinctly 21st century upheavals with new characteristics.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">One of the most influential approaches to understanding the long-term history and nature of protest and insurrection has come from the American sociologist Charles Tilly.</span></p> <p><strong>Tilly’s studies of European history have identified two key characteristics.</strong></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">First, forms of protest change across time as a function of wider changes in economic and political structures. The food riots of pre-industrial society, for instance, gave way to the strikes and political demonstrations of the modern world.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">And today, the transnational reach of Extinction Rebellion is symptomatic of a new global age. There are also new protest tactics emerging, such as the flashmobs and Lennon walls in Hong Kong.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Tilly’s second theory was that collective protest, both peaceful and violent, is endemic rather than confined to years of spectacular revolutionary upheaval, such as 1789 or 1917. It is a continuing expression of conflict between “contenders” for power, including the state. It is part of the historical fabric of all societies.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Even in a stable and prosperous country like Australia in 2019, there is a deep cynicism around a commitment to the common good. This has been created by a lack of clear leadership on climate change and energy policy, self-serving corporate governance and fortress politics.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">All this suggests that Prime Minister Scott Morrison is not only whistling in the wind if he thinks that </span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/01/scott-morrison-threatens-crackdown-on-secondary-boycotts-of-mining-companies"><span style="font-weight: 400;">he can dictate the nature of and even reduce protest</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> in contemporary Australia – he is also </span><a href="https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/publications/activist-wisdom-practical-knowledge-and-creative-tension-in-socia"><span style="font-weight: 400;">ignorant of its history</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p> <p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Written by Peter McPhee. Republished with permission of </span><a href="https://theconversation.com/we-live-in-a-world-of-upheaval-so-why-arent-todays-protests-leading-to-revolutions-126505"><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Conversation.</span></a></em></p>

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The gene therapy revolution is here – but what does that mean for us?

<p>Gene therapy – for so long something that belonged to the future – has just hit the streets.</p> <p>A couple of weeks back, you might have picked up a headline alerting us to the most expensive drug in history – a one off gene therapy cure for spinal muscular atrophy. Novartis have priced the drug<span> </span><a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-25/worlds-most-expensive-drug-spinal-muscular-dystrophy/11149788">Zolgensma</a><span> </span>at A$3 million (US$2.1 million).</p> <p>Traditionally a parent of a baby with spinal muscular atrophy was told: take your baby home and love her or him. Have no false hope, the baby will die paralysed and unable to eat or talk by the age of two.</p> <p>What’s the narrative going to be now? There is a cure but it costs A$3 million.</p> <p>I think we are in for some poignant dilemmas.</p> <p><strong>'Heads up' from a mother</strong></p> <p>The person who gave me a recent “heads up” on the gene therapy revolution was not a scientist. She is the mother of two sick children.</p> <p>I met Megan Donnell last August 29th at a Melbourne startup conference called “<a href="https://www.bluechilli.com/blog/be-above-all-human/">Above All Human</a>”.</p> <p>Megan Donnell is a person who strikes you with her vibrancy and charisma. What you can’t immediately see is her life’s greatest tragedy and her life’s greatest mission.</p> <p>Both of her children suffer from the rare genetic illness<span> </span><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4664539/">Sanfilippo syndrome</a>. They lack a gene for breaking down heparin sulphate, a sugar that holds proteins in place in the matrix between cells. The high levels of the sugar poison the organs, particularly the brain. In the normal course of the disease, the children die in their teens, paralysed, unable to talk or eat.</p> <p>When Megan Donnell’s kids were diagnosed at the ages of four and two, she was told “do not have false hope”.<span> </span><a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2019/march/1551445200/elizabeth-finkel/chasing-miracle-gene-therapy">She didn’t listen</a>.</p> <p>The one time IT business manager started the<span> </span><a href="https://www.sanfilippo.org.au/">Sanfilippo Childrens’ Foundation</a>, raised a million dollars and invested in a start-up based in Ohio that was trialling gene therapy to treat the disease. Part of the deal was that the company would conduct trials in Australia as well as in the US and Spain. So far 14 children have been treated worldwide.</p> <p><strong>I'd missed a revolution</strong></p> <p>Megan Donnell’s story stunned me.</p> <p>I’d written two books about coming medical revolutions: one on stem cells, the other on genomics. But when a medical revolution actually arrived, I’d missed it. It was all the more remarkable because for six years I’d been the editor of a popular science magazine –<span> </span><a href="https://cosmosmagazine.com/">Cosmos</a>.</p> <p>We scanned the media releases for hot papers each week but gene therapy never came up on our radar.</p> <p>Probably because we’d been dazzled by<span> </span><a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-crispr-gene-editing-and-how-does-it-work-84591">CRISPR</a><span> </span>– the powerful technique that can edit the DNA of everything from mosquitoes to man. But CRISPR has barely entered clinical trials.</p> <p>Meanwhile there are already five gene therapy products on the market. And with 750 working their way through the pipeline, the US Federal Drug Administration (FDA) predicts that<span> </span><a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613576/gene-therapy-may-have-its-first-blockbuster/">by 2025 between 10-20 gene therapy treatments</a><span> </span>will be added to the market each year.</p> <p>Some of the gene therapies are having incredible effects.</p> <p>The star example is the<span> </span><a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-25/worlds-most-expensive-drug-spinal-muscular-dystrophy/11149788">Novartis treatment</a><span> </span>for spinal muscular atrophy. Untreated babies die paralysed by the age of two. But those treated with Zolgensma have now reached the age of four and some are walking and dancing.</p> <p>In 2017, the FDA approved<span> </span><a href="https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves-novel-gene-therapy-treat-patients-rare-form-inherited-vision-loss">Luxturna</a>, now marketed by Roche. This gene therapy can restore sight to children suffering from a form of retinal blindness that begins months after birth.</p> <p>For the first time I can recall, medical researchers are using a four letter word for some diseases: cure.</p> <p>These treatments appear to have fixed the underlying conditions. Especially when they are given early. Indeed spinal muscular atrophy treatment is being offered to babies a few month old – before their motor neurons have started to wither.</p> <p><strong>30 years in the making</strong></p> <p>These gene therapy treatments have been over thirty years in the making. And the saga of their journey to the clinic, I suspect, reveals some common plot lines.</p> <p>The potential of gene therapy, was obvious as soon Marshall Nirenberg cracked the genetic code back in the 1960s.</p> <p>The<span> </span><a href="https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/retrieve/Narrative/JJ/p-nid/24">New York Times opined</a>: “The science of biology has reached a new frontier”, leading to “a revolution far greater in its potential significance than the atomic or hydrogen bomb.”</p> <p>In a 1967 editorial for Science,<span> </span><a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/157/3789/633.full.pdf">Nirenberg wrote</a>:</p> <p><em>This knowledge will greatly influence man’s future, for man then will have the power to shape his own biological destiny.</em></p> <p>But if the end goal was obvious, the pitfalls were not.</p> <p>What made the dream of gene therapy possible was viruses. They’ve evolved to invade our cells and sneak their DNA in next to our own, so they can be propagated by our cellular machinery.</p> <p>Throughout the 1980s, genetic engineers learned to splice human DNA into the viruses.</p> <p>Like tiny space ships, they carried the human DNA as part of their payload.</p> <p>By 1990, researchers attempted the first gene therapy trial in a human. It was to treat two children with a dysfunctional immune system, a disease known as severe combined immunodeficiency (<a href="https://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/topic/default?id=severe-combined-immunodeficiency-scid-90-P01706">SCID</a>).</p> <p>The results were hardly miraculous but they were promising. Researchers raced to bring more potent viruses to the clinic.</p> <p><strong>Children have died</strong></p> <p>In 1999, 18 year old<span> </span><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC81135/">Jesse Gelsinger paid the price</a>.</p> <p>He had volunteered to try gene therapy for his inherited condition: ornithine transcarbamylase deficiency. It meant he couldn’t break down ammonia, a waste product of dietary protein. But his condition was largely under control through medication and watching his diet.</p> <p>Four days after his treatment at the University of Pennsylvania, Jesse was dead – a result of a massive immune reaction to the trillions of adenovirus particles introduced into his body. These are the same viruses that cause the common cold.</p> <p>Tragedy struck again in 2003. This one involved so-called “bubble boys”.</p> <p>They too carried an immune deficiency, X-SCID, which saw them confined to sterile bubble; a common cold can be fatal. This time round the gene therapy appeared far more effective. But within a few years of treatment, five of 20 boys<span> </span><a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080807175438.htm">developed leukaemia</a>. The virus (gamma retrovirus) had activated a cancer-causing gene.</p> <p>The two tragedies set the field back. Many researchers found it very hard to get funding.</p> <p>But the huge clinical potential kept others going.</p> <p>The key was to keep re-engineering the viral vectors.</p> <p>It was a project that reminds me of the evolution of powered flight. From the biplanes that the Wright brothers flew in 1903 to the epic Apollo 11 flight in 1963, took 60 years.</p> <p>The virus engineers have been a lot faster.</p> <p><strong>Use engineered viruses</strong></p> <p>Ten years after the disaster of the leukaemia-causing viruses, researchers had re-engineered so-called<span> </span><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/biochemistry-genetics-and-molecular-biology/lentiviruses">lenti viruses</a><span> </span>not to activate cancer genes. They had also found other viruses that did not provoke catastrophic immune responses.</p> <p>Instead of the adenovirus, they discovered its mild-mannered partner – known as adeno associated virus (<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5548848/">AAV</a>). There’s a whole zoo of these AAVs and some species are particularly good at targeting specific organs.</p> <p>It is this new generation of vectors that are responsible for the results we are witnessing now. The AAV 9 vector for instance can<span> </span><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5802612/">cross into the brain</a>, and that’s the one used to treat spinal muscular atrophy.</p> <p>Turning the table on viruses, and hacking into their code: this is the bit that particularly fascinates me in telling the story of gene therapy.</p> <p>But another intriguing aspect is that, contrary to long held wisdom, we are seeing big pharma galloping in to treat rare diseases.</p> <p>In the US, the spinal muscular atrophy market is probably around 400 babies per year. Luxturna might treat 2,000 cases of blindness a year.</p> <p>It’s not the sort of market size that would bring joy to investors. But clearly the companies think it’s worth their while.</p> <p>For one thing, the FDA has provided incentives for rare, so-called “<a href="https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-information-consumers/orphan-products-hope-people-rare-diseases">orphan diseases</a>” – fast-tracking their passage thought the tangled regulatory maze.</p> <p>And there is a convincing business case. If gene therapy is a one shot cure then it really may end up saving health systems money.</p> <p>That justifies, they say, some of the most extraordinary prices for a drug you’ve ever heard of.</p> <p>Of course, all this relies on the treatments being one time cures.</p> <p>And though the patients seem to be cured, whether or not the treatments last a lifetime remains to be seen.</p> <p><strong>The situation in Australia</strong></p> <p>Historically, this country has been a world leader when it comes to bargaining down exorbitantly priced cures.</p> <p>In 2013 when the drugs for curing Hepatitis C first came out, the price was around<span> </span><a href="https://theconversation.com/weekly-dose-sofosbuvir-whats-the-price-of-a-hepatitis-c-cure-63208">A$100,000 for a 12 week course</a>. But in Australia,<span> </span><a href="https://theconversation.com/australia-leads-the-world-in-hepatitis-c-treatment-whats-behind-its-success-81760">all 230,000 of those living with Hepatitis C will be treated</a><span> </span>for the lowest price in the world. Prices are<span> </span><a href="https://www.healthline.com/health/hepatitis-c/treatment-costs#1">much higher</a><span> </span>in the US.</p> <p><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/greg-dore-190651">Greg Dore</a><span> </span>at the Kirby Institute of NSW participated in Australia’s Hepatitis C pricing discussions, and believes our model will work for the new gene therapy drugs – notwithstanding their eye-popping price tags – and the fact that the patient populations for these rare genetic diseases will be tiny.</p> <p>However, the real reason companies are getting into gene therapy is not just to treat rare disease. It’s because they realise this technology will be a game changer for medicine.</p> <p>They have already entered the field of cancer with a gene therapy approved for acute lymphoblastic leukaemia – CAR-T cells. Health Minister Greg Hunt<span> </span><a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-25/peter-maccallum-cancer-centre-treatment-funding/10935308">announced this year</a>the government will pay the cost (around A$500,000 per treatment).</p> <p>But after cancer, what then?</p> <p>If you have a vector than can take a gene to the brain and cure spinal muscular atrophy, what else could you cure. Alzheimer’s disease, strokes?</p> <p>Australian researchers are jostling to be part of the gene therapy revolution.</p> <p>Paediatrician Ian Alexander<span> </span><a href="https://www.cmri.org.au/Research/Research-Units/Translational-Vectorology/Our-People">together with virologist Leszek Lisowksi</a><span> </span>are engineering the next generation of vectors in their labs at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead, Sydney. They are designing them to home efficiently to specific organs and produce therapeutic levels of proteins.</p> <p>Curiously it turns out that a major bottleneck is scaling up the production of these exquisitely engineered viruses. Who’d have thought there’d be a problem churning out the most abundant organism on the planet?</p> <p>Researcher<span> </span><a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180802102344.htm">David Parsons in Adelaide</a><span> </span>is refining methods to deliver vectors across the viscous mucus of children with cystic fibrosis.</p> <p>Scientist John Rasco in Sydney is a pioneer when it comes to<span> </span><a href="https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/doctors-find-cure-for-thalassaemia/9674634">treating patients with gene therapy</a>, having been a part of international trials treating patients with beta thalassemia.</p> <p>Medical researcher Elizabeth Rakoczy in Perth is developing a<span> </span><a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-06/florey-medal-winner-professor-rakoczy-speaks/9232318">treatment for macular degeneration</a>.</p> <p>And Alan Trounson, who spent six years at the helm of the world biggest stem cell institute, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, is<span> </span><a href="https://cartherics.com/">advancing a technology</a><span> </span>to develop off the shelf, universally compatible, CAR-T cells, to attack ovarian cancer.</p> <p>One thing is for sure: medicine is set for a major disruption from the arrival of gene therapy.</p> <p>As we enter an era, where once incurable diseases become curable; be prepared for some challenging debates about how to pay for gene therapy and the value of a human life.</p> <p><em>Written by Elizabeth Finkel. Republished with permission of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-gene-therapy-revolution-is-here-medicine-is-scrambling-to-keep-pace-118329">The Conversation</a>.</em></p>

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Are you part of the ‘Grantech’ revolution?

<p class="p3">Forget age old stereotypes, the numbers are showing those of us with a few years of experience under our belts are embracing new technology like never before. In fact, there is such a strong movement that it has been given a name …. ‘Grantech’.</p> <p class="p3">That age old generation gap is quickly closing as grandparents Australia wide are keeping up with their kids and grandkids when it comes to new technology.  </p> <p><strong>Mobiles and tablet use</strong></p> <p>A reported 96% of Australians aged 50+ own a mobile phone and a whopping 90% of those aged 70+ also own a mobile. Benefits comes in many forms with 78% saying it makes them feel safer having a mobile at hand and 72% say it makes them feel more connected to their families.</p> <p>In Australia, smartphone users in this age group have increased by 28% over the past 12 months and are clocked as the fastest growing sector. There has also been a 46% increase over the past year for those aged 65+ regarding tablet use.</p> <p>New research from nbn also reveals the ‘Grantech’ generation are fast on the heels of their grandkids. In fact, older Australian’s are officially some of the fastest growing tech users in the country.</p> <p>Forget the stereotype. We are the ones who are quickly embracing fast broadband and smart devices. The study also shows grandparents are increasingly embracing the internet and video apps to keep in touch with family and friends.</p> <p><strong>Tech savvy grandparents</strong></p> <p>It isn’t surprising that internet use is high with 76% of Aussie grandparents saying they use the internet to connect with their children, 72% staying in touch with other family members and 59% staying connected with grandchildren online.</p> <p>A massive 90% use email to stay in touch with their children, more than half are on Facebook and 35% of tech savvy grandparents use video calling apps such as FaceTime or Skype to keep in-touch with grandkids.</p> <p>This technology burst has proved to be useful with helping lots of us feel more connected and helping us stay in touch with loved ones.</p> <p>A whopping 84% of grandparents stay in touch with family and friends via the internet weekly.</p> <p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uHkg3G-0Cro" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></p> <p><strong>16.4 million Australian’s online every month</strong></p> <p>Mike Farley CEO of WYZA agrees there are a huge amount of tech savvy Australian’s over 50’s with over 100,000 subscribers on www.WYZA and monthly visitors of over 250,000. "The most active visitors are aged 50 to 71 with 24% of them aged 65+.</p> <p>Females represent 56.5% of the audience and 43.5% are male. Our readers are very engaged in everything from travel, finance, insurance, healthcare, entertainment, leisure, retirement properties and special issues for baby boomers. Every month a staggering 16.4 million Australians are online according to Nielsen online ratings and the boomers (50+) make up the largest online demographic 37.4%,” adds Farley.</p> <p class="p4"><strong>How do you use technology to stay in touch with loved ones? Join our conversation below…</strong></p> <p class="p4"><em>Republished with permission of <a href="https://www.wyza.com.au/articles/lifestyle/wyza-life/are-you-part-of-the-%E2%80%98grantech%E2%80%99-revolution.aspx">Wyza.com.au.</a></em></p>

Technology

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The new food revolution: How dining on a cruise just got better and cheaper

<p>Michelin-starred or celebrity chef-run restaurants are not hard to come by on a cruise anymore – because they’ve come to you.</p> <p>Cruising the ocean can, believe it or not, be where you find incredible food for reasonable prices. With dinner options that aren’t available on land and a range of food that will leave your wallets as well as your belly satisfied, maybe a cruise should be your next holiday destination if you’re a foodie.</p> <p>Here are some reasons why you should dine out on the seven seas, so your taste buds love you even more.</p> <p><strong>Michelin-starred choices </strong></p> <p>The exciting factors that are coming into play for cruise lines is their increasing range of food for affordable prices – and the best part is the quality is so good it’s award winning.</p> <p>At the restaurant Harmony which can be found on the Majestic Princess cruise ship, it’s one of the only restaurants off-shore that has a Michelin-starred menu and chef. In fact, Harmony, run by a former chef for Wing Lei – the first Chinese restaurant in North America that has a Michelin star – has created a list of food that appeases your cravings for Cantonese dishes as well as seafood, mouth-watering noodle dishes and soups. </p> <p><strong>Food is fun </strong></p> <p>As demands for more creative and delicious food on cruise lines increases – the more fun cruisers will see from restaurants and experimentative chefs.</p> <p>On one cruise line, dishes are presented on porcelain plates decorated with Sodamin’s Food Faces culinary pop art, produced by the French brand Bernardaud.</p> <p>This restaurant featured on Holland America’s cruise line headed by Rudi Sel De Mar and launched in 2016.</p> <p>24-hour pizza restaurants are proving popular as well for their ease and accessibility for cruise passengers.</p> <p><strong>All types of options for your cravings </strong></p> <p>One of the best factors of cruise food is there are endless options to satisfy all your cravings on board. If you’re feeling a craving for a plate of fresh sushi made to order, then carnival cruise lines have that for you. If fresh fruit with a side of yoghurt is calling your name after a great workout then head down to the breakfast bar on your cruise’s food hall level. The best part is, most of the food is free, delicious and fresh. What more could you ask for?</p> <p>What is the most memorable you’ve ever had on a cruise? Let us know in the comments below.</p>

Cruising

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