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Natalie Barr and David Koch taken to task over interview

<p dir="ltr"><em>Sunrise </em>hosts David ‘Kochie’ Koch and Natalie Barr have been slammed for allowing a controversial critic to go on their show in the wake of the Amber Heard and Johnny Depp trial.</p> <p dir="ltr">US commentator and critic Cooper Lawrence appeared on the breakfast show on Wednesday slamming Heard following her loss against ex-husband Depp. </p> <p dir="ltr">She said that the <em>Aquaman 2</em> actress was still trying to “continue the toxic relationship” with Depp despite filing for divorce herself in 2016. </p> <p dir="ltr">“Remember they had divorced in 2017, things were over, she said I want him to move on, I want to move on, but then she wrote this article and she’s been poking the bear ever since because she still wants him in her life even if it’s in a negative way … They do have a toxic relationship and she clearly wants to continue it,” Lawrence told the hosts. </p> <p dir="ltr">“I was kinda looking for her to be more likeable and more honest here and to say all the things we’ve been hoping she’d say all along which she does for like two seconds, but then she goes back to her whole, ‘Johnny’s an abuser, he’s a liar, etc’ … it’s weird.”</p> <p dir="ltr">The 36-year-old lost the defamation case in which Depp argued that she had defamed him by referring to herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse” in an op-ed for The Washington Post in 2018. </p> <p dir="ltr">Depp was awarded $14.4 million (AUD) in damages after the jury ruled his side. </p> <p dir="ltr">Heard has an interview coming up in which she admits to having “so much regret” with her marriage to Depp.</p> <p dir="ltr">Lawrence accused the actress of “lying again” and that she just wanted the attention on herself. </p> <p dir="ltr">“I think she’s on the ‘you need to listen to me tour’,” Lawrence said. </p> <p dir="ltr">“Yet she has these awkward moments that she had during the trial where you’re kind of like ‘Wait, are you lying again?’ It’s like she can’t get her own story straight that she memorised for this interview, and she’s not even under oath.”</p> <p dir="ltr">Australian feminist writer Clementine Ford called out the program for allowing Lawrence on the show, particularly when Heard in fact won the case in the UK.</p> <p dir="ltr">“Why is @sunriseon7 so invested in wheeling out people to continually pile on to a woman who has already had 12 out of 14 allegations of domestic abuse against her agreed with in a UK court? Why is it so important to them that their viewers be fed the villainous woman fiction?” she tweeted. </p> <p dir="ltr">Others agreed with Ford but there is still strong support for Depp after he won the case. </p> <p dir="ltr"><em>Images: Sunrise</em></p>

TV

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Police begin heart-wrenching task at Hillcrest Primary

<p>Just four days after the tragedy at Hillcrest Primary School that claimed the lives of six children, speciality police have arrived in Tasmania to help the investigation. </p> <p>After being flown down from New South Wales, the specialty officers will help interview many of the young witnesses of the jumping castle incident, in the hopes to piece together what caused the tragedy to occur. </p> <p><span>Tasmania Police Assistant Commissioner Jonathan Higgins said extra resources were needed given the large number of young and vulnerable witnesses.</span></p> <p><span>Approximately 40 students had attended the end of year celebrations, when a strong gust of wind sent a jumping castle flying 10 metres into the air.</span></p> <p><span>Police officers, along with WorkSafe Tasmania, are investigating the cause of the incident and will </span>report directly to the coroner. </p> <p><span>“The ongoing coronial investigation is not something we can comment on,” Mr Higgins told reporters.</span></p> <p><span>“We’ll methodically work through the circumstances of it. The lead-up, what happened at the time and afterwards.”</span></p> <p><span>As well as the additional police officers, the federal government announced $800,000 will be made available to fund trauma counselling for the community and first responders.</span></p> <p><span>The news of reinforcement comes just days after a sixth child died in hospital from injuries he sustained during the heart-breaking incident. </span></p> <p><span>Chace Harrison, 11, died in hospital on Sunday, as two other children remain in critical condition in Royal Hobart Hospital. </span></p> <p><span>Tributes have flown for Chace online, with his basketball club, the Devonport Warriors, sharing how much Chace meant to the community.</span></p> <p><iframe src="https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FBasketballAustralia%2Fposts%2F462641058555992&amp;show_text=true&amp;width=500" width="500" height="649" style="border: none; overflow: hidden;" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true" allow="autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; picture-in-picture; web-share"></iframe></p> <p><span>“It is with the heaviest of hearts that we say goodbye to our little Warrior, Chace,” his club posted on Facebook.</span></p> <p class="css-1316j2p-StyledParagraph e4e0a020">“(To) all your extended family we wrap you in our hearts and offer you our support in these most heart shattering of times. To all who have been affected by this tragedy, we walk with you in your sorrow.</p> <p class="css-1316j2p-StyledParagraph e4e0a020">“Chace, seek out a basketball court, lit up by the stars and keep shooting those hoops!”</p> <p class="css-1316j2p-StyledParagraph e4e0a020"><em>Image credits: Twitter @MonteBovill - ABC News Tasmania</em></p>

Legal

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Outsourcing unpleasant tasks makes you happier

<div> <div class="copy"> <p>Paying someone to help out with odd jobs is on the rise through apps like AirTasker, and new research suggests this behaviour could lead to a happier life.</p> <p>A research team from Canada, the UK and the Netherlands conducted a global study of more than 6000 people, and found a correlation between happiness and procuring paid help with their least favourite daily jobs, such as cleaning and cooking.</p> <p>“Around the world, increases in wealth have produced an unintended consequence: a rising sense of time scarcity,” the researchers write in their paper, <a href="http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1706541114">published in the journal </a><a href="http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1706541114">PNAS</a>.</p> <p>“We provide evidence that using money to buy time can provide a buffer against this time famine, thereby promoting happiness.”</p> <p>The research team, led by Ashley Whillans at Harvard University, focused on increasing levels of time stress in developed countries.</p> <p>Research says time scarcity, which is on the rise in many countries, can be linked to higher anxiety, reduced happiness, insomnia and even obesity in individuals. </p> <p>The team wanted to investigate whether using a portion of income to “buy free time” – for example, paying someone to do household chores like cooking, cleaning and shopping – could potentially decrease the effects of these feelings of “time famine”.</p> <p>The surveyed participants included a mix of everyday workers and millionaires living in the USA, Denmark, Canada and the Netherlands.</p> <p>The survey recorded how much money each participant spent each month on delegating unenjoyable everyday tasks, as well as reporting on each individual’s overall life satisfaction.</p> <p>Across all four countries, and across a range of demographics and income brackets, buying time was linked to greater life satisfaction.</p> <p>The researchers suggest the link could point to a greater sense of perceived control, however spending too much money on services and tasks could have the reverse effect, giving an individual the sense they can’t manage their own life tasks, and therefore reducing their happiness.</p> <p>These results are particularly relevant in discussions of gender-based labour division in the home, the researchers say.</p> <p>“Within many cultures, women may feel obligated to complete household tasks themselves, working a ‘second-shift’ at home, even when they can afford to pay someone to help.</p> <p>“In recent decades, women have made gains, such as improved access to education, but their life satisfaction has declined; increasing uptake of timesaving services may provide a pathway toward reducing the harmful effects of women’s second-shift.”</p> <p><em>Image credit: Shutterstock</em></p> <em><img id="cosmos-post-tracker" style="opacity: 0; height: 1px!important; width: 1px!important; border: 0!important; position: absolute!important; z-index: -1!important;" src="https://syndication.cosmosmagazine.com/?id=17061&amp;title=Outsourcing+unpleasant+tasks+makes+you+happier" alt="" width="1" height="1" /></em></div> <div id="contributors"> <p><em>This article was originally published on <a rel="noopener" href="https://cosmosmagazine.com/people/society/outsourcing-unpleasant-tasks-scientifically-proven-to-make-you-happier/" target="_blank">cosmosmagazine.com</a> and was written by Amy Middleton.</em></p> </div> </div>

Money & Banking

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Your brain approaches tricky tasks in a surprisingly simple way

<p>Have you ever sat down to complete your morning crossword or Sudoku and wondered about what’s happening in your brain? Somewhere in the activity of the billions of neurons in your brain lies the code that lets you remember a key word, or apply the logic required to complete the puzzle.</p> <p>Given the brain’s intricacy, you might assume that these patterns are incredibly complex and unique to each task. But <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-018-0312-0">recent research</a> suggests things are actually more straightforward than that.</p> <p>It turns out that many structures in your brain work together in precise ways to coordinate their activity, shaping their actions to the requirements of whatever it is that you’re trying to achieve.</p> <p>We call these coordinated patterns the “low-dimensional manifold”, which you can think of as analogous to the major roadways that you use to commute to and from work. The majority of the traffic flows along these major highways, which represent an efficient and effective way to get from A to B.</p> <p>We have found evidence that most brain activity follows these types of patterns. In very simple terms, this saves your brain from needing to work everything out from scratch when performing a task. If someone throws you a ball, for instance, the low-dimensional manifold allows your brain to swiftly coordinate the muscle movements needed to catch the ball, rather than your brain needing to learn how to catch a ball afresh each time.</p> <p>In a study <a href="https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(19)30775-5">published today in the journal Neuron</a>, my colleagues and I investigated these patterns further. Specifically, we wanted to find out whether they play a role in shaping brain activity during really challenging cognitive tasks that require lots of concentration.</p> <p>We scanned people’s brains with high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they performed a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_square">Latin squares task</a>, which is similar to a Sudoku puzzle but uses shapes instead of numbers. Anyone who has played Sudoku before their morning coffee knows how much focus and concentration is required to solve it.</p> <p>The idea behind the Latin squares task is to identify the missing shape in a particular location in a grid, given that each shape can only show up once in each row and column. We created three different levels of difficulty, defined by how many different rows and columns needed to be inspected to arrive at the correct answer.</p> <p><strong>Directing traffic</strong></p> <p>Our prediction was that performing the more difficult versions of the task would lead to a reconfiguration of the low-dimensional manifold. To return to the highway analogy, a tricky task might pull some brain activity off the highway and onto the back streets to help get around the congestion.</p> <p>Our results confirmed our predictions. More difficult trials showed different patterns of brain activation to easy ones, as if the brain’s traffic was being rerouted along different roads. The trickier the task, the more the patterns changed.</p> <p>What’s more, we also found a link between these changed brain activation patterns and the increased likelihood of making a mistake on the harder version of the Latin Squares test.</p> <p>In a way, attempting a difficult task is like trying out a new rat run on your morning commute – you might succeed, but in your haste and stress you might also be more likely to take a wrong turn.</p> <p>Overall, these results suggests that our brain activity perhaps isn’t as complicated as we once thought. Most of the time, our brain is directing traffic along pretty well-established routes, and even when it needs to get creative it is still trying to send the traffic to the same ultimate destination.</p> <p>This leaves us with an important question: how does the brain achieve this level of coordination?</p> <p>One possibility is that this function is fulfilled by the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/thalamus">thalamus</a>, a structure that lies deep in the brain but is connected to almost the entire rest of the brain.</p> <p>Importantly, the circuitry of the thalamus is such that it can act as a filter for ongoing activity in the cerebral cortex, the brain’s main information processing centre, and therefore could exert the kind of influence we were looking for.</p> <p><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298044/original/file-20191022-28112-nv7utl.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/298044/original/file-20191022-28112-nv7utl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="" /></a> <em><span class="caption">Positions of the thalamus and the cerebral cortex within the brain.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pikovit/Shutterstock</span></span></em></p> <p>Patterns of activity in the thalamus are hard to decipher in traditional neuroimaging experiments. But fortunately, the <a href="https://cai.centre.uq.edu.au/facilities/human-imaging/7t-magnetom">high-resolution MRI scanner used in our study</a> collected by my colleagues Luca Cocchi and Luke Hearne allowed us to observe them in detail.</p> <p> </p> <p>Sure enough, we saw a clear link between activity in the thalamus and the flow of activity in the low-dimensional manifold. This suggests that when performing particular tasks, the thalamus helps to shape and constrain the activity in the cortex, a bit like a police officer directing busy traffic.</p> <p>So next time you sit down to play Sudoku, spare a thought for your thalamus, and the low-dimensional manifold that it helps to create. Together, they’re shaping the brain activity that will ultimately help you solve the puzzle.<!-- 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/124891/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/james-shine-730758">James Shine</a>, Robinson Fellow, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-sydney-841">University of Sydney</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/your-brain-approaches-tricky-tasks-in-a-surprisingly-simple-way-124891">original article</a>.</p>

Mind

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"You need to be quiet": MP with fringe COVID views taken to task

<p><span>Government backbencher Craig Kelly has come under fire after being told to be quiet on national television in an interview with <em>Today</em>.</span><br /><br /><span>Pressure is mounting on the government to rein in the MP for undermining the country’s pandemic response.</span><br /><br /><span>Mr Kelly has been accused of promoting debunked coronavirus remedies, and questioning the need for a vaccine.</span><br /><br /><span>He’s also been slammed for spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories about Covid-19.</span><br /><br /><span>Labor has fiercely gone after the Liberal MP for his controversial words.</span><br /><br /><span>Appearing on <em>Today</em> on Wednesday morning, Mr Kelly said he was “very disappointed about the Labor party making this a partisan issue”.</span><br /><br /><span>He went on to defend his numerous posts on social media that he claims were peer reviewed studies pushed by “experts”.</span><br /><br /><span><em>Today</em> host Allison Langdon was quick to refute the broad claim.</span><br /><br /><span>“That’s not true, Craig,” she said. “I spent some time online last night and I managed to debunk every one of your theories. They’re not peer reviewed.</span><br /><br /><span>“Don’t you need to pull your head in?” she asked the Liberal member.</span></p> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"> <p dir="ltr">"You need to be quiet." <br /><br />Allison Langdon SLAMS Liberal MP Craig Kelly over his unfounded and inaccurate comments about COVID-19. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/9Today?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#9Today</a> <a href="https://t.co/Vudxqcqzw8">pic.twitter.com/Vudxqcqzw8</a></p> — The Today Show (@TheTodayShow) <a href="https://twitter.com/TheTodayShow/status/1356718211081904134?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 2, 2021</a></blockquote> <p><br /><span>Mr Kelly’s main theories claim the use of hydroxychloroquine and another drug ivermectin to treat Covid-19 – one of his only causes that has had minor support in the medical community.</span><br /><br /><span>He referred to Emeritus Professor Robert Clancy of the University of Newcastle on the issue, and claimed the drug combination could be used in conjunction with a vaccine.</span><br /><br /><span>Australia’s Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly has previously said however that there is “no evidence” the drugs should be used in Australia.</span><br /><br /><span>He also suggested the MP’s views in general were “not scientifically based”.</span><br /><br /><span>The interview between Langdon and Kelly quickly turned into a shouting match after Kelly promoted a Covid study pushed by a Bangladeshi plastic surgeon.</span><br /><br /><span>Kelly defended his position that enforcing children to wear face masks is tantamount to child abuse.</span><br /><br /><span>“When you read the science, it says it causes them harm,” he said.</span><br /><br /><span>Langdon fierily shot back: “Craig, we have seen deaths from Covid, we've seen sickness. We've seen mass job losses, hundreds of billions of dollars spent in government stimulus, all our hopes are riding on a vaccine,” she said.</span><br /><br /><span>“You need to be quiet.”</span></p>

News

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Mammoth task: the Russian family on a resurrection quest to tackle the climate crisis

<p>On the banks of the River Kolyma, deep into the Arctic circle in north-east Siberia, lies a gently rusting Soviet-era tank. It doesn’t look out of place here. After all, just down the river is the hull of a half-sunken ship and the remains of an Aeroflot aeroplane fuselage that met an unfortunate end.</p> <p>The tank isn’t working at the moment – it’s hard to find parts – but until recently, it was driven by a bearded Russian wearing a beret, a cigarette clamped permanently between his jaws, taking a sort of macabre delight in destroying trees and churning up soil.</p> <p>This is Sergey Zimov who, together with his son Nikita, is carrying out an experiment on this scrubby patch of Arctic tundra: they want to restore the prehistoric “mammoth steppe” ecosystem and see if it proves their hypothesis that a grassland grazed by large herbivores has an effect on slowing down – or even reversing – the thawing permafrost.</p> <p>Currently the landscape is mostly larch forest with very low biodiversity. There are no animals, save for the odd moose and millions of mosquitoes. Meanwhile, Arctic temperatures are increasing <a href="https://www.npr.org/2014/12/18/371438087/arctic-is-warming-twice-as-fast-as-world-average">twice as quickly</a> as those in the rest of the planet, and the permafrost that covers 65% of Russia <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0592-8?fbclid=IwAR1GLrQiGpH_25nIjqH_ih4zp24YpbtvhF2nec3bUK8e9Hi8zYaD151Irws">is thawing</a>. Fast. Many of the buildings in the town of Chersky – where the Zimov experiment is based – sport deep cracks (some have collapsed altogether), roads are buckled and the ground is humped and hollowed.</p> <p>The clue to what counts as permafrost is in the name – permanently frozen ground. As with anything frozen, it is liable to thaw if temperatures get too hot. That is precisely what is happening all across the Arctic.</p> <p>Permafrost is difficult to define. It covers almost a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere and sequesters <a href="https://arctic.noaa.gov/Report-Card/Report-Card-2019/ArtMID/7916/ArticleID/844/Permafrost-and-the-Global-Carbon-Cycle">double</a> the carbon found in the atmosphere today. When frozen, the microbes that feed on the organic material found in permafrost are “asleep”. When it thaws, they wake up and the anaerobic respiration produced releases greenhouse gases.</p> <p>Officially, it’s soil that has been frozen for two years or more, with an “active layer” that thaws seasonally. But thanks to global warming, permafrost has been thawing with increasing magnitude, with all sorts of disruptive effects. A process called a “<a href="https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/31461/">thermokarst megaslump</a>” has opened up huge holes across the tundra and the bodies of mammoths are being found with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/04/world/europe/russia-siberia-yakutia-permafrost-global-warming.html">greater frequency</a>, their flesh decomposing in the Arctic sun. Strange things are awakening. A couple of years ago, a team of Russian scientists reportedly found <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ancient-roundworms-allegedly-resurrected-russian-permafrost-180969782/">30,000-year-old worms</a> in the permafrost which, upon being warmed up gently in a Moscow laboratory, began to wriggle around.</p> <p>Almost ironically, the mammoths exposed by the thawing of permafrost are what sparked Sergey Zimov’s hypothesis: that large herbivores are necessary to maintain the integrity of permafrost. The Zimovs use their tank to mimic the tread and destructiveness of the woolly mammoth in a 144km² fenced off area they call “<a href="https://pleistocenepark.ru/">Pleistocene Park</a>”.</p> <p>Recreating the mammoth’s former ecosystem might seem like an impossible task given the creature has been extinct for 4,000 years, but for the Zimovs this is a minor detail. They are concerned with ecological processes – the web of connection that produces a functioning ecosystem. The tank will do just fine as a mammoth-stand in, destroying trees and stimulating grass growth in its wake.</p> <p>There are animals in the park that play a similar role. Yakutian horses and reindeer have been purchased from local indigenous herders, and other creatures that haven’t lived in the region for a long time (yak, sheep, Kalmykian cow, musk ox, bison) have come from much further afield. There are around 120 animals in total, although deaths and births happen with regularity. Last summer, Nikita Zimov undertook a perilous journey by truck to transport 12 baby bison all the way from Denmark. The roads are dreadful for most of Northern Siberia, and then they disappear completely. Travelling by barge along the Kolyma is the only way in.</p> <p>A few seasons before that, an expedition to Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean to find musk oxen almost ended in disaster after their boat hit a storm. The discovery on return that all the oxen were males was a particularly frustrating one. The animals in the park roam where they please, encouraged to breed and forage so their behaviours <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/285824">have an effect</a> on the permafrost: trampling compacts ground and keeps it frozen, while grassland reflects solar radiation.</p> <p>Even though the tank remains out of commission, the Zimovs are hoping that soon they won’t need it at all. They’re hoping that one day a mammoth will return to the Arctic.</p> <p><strong>Resurrecting the dead</strong></p> <p>Sometime in the early 2000s, rumblings began in the scientific community of a new form of conservation that would potentially fix a growing problem. What if, instead of fighting what seemed to be an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/10/earths-sixth-mass-extinction-event-already-underway-scientists-warn">increasingly losing battle</a> against extinction, you could potentially resurrect an extinct creature through cloning methods?</p> <p>Still reeling from the implications of Dolly the sheep in 1997, in 2003 a team of scientists in Zaragoza, Spain, managed to <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/03/the-10-minutes-when-scientists-brought-a-species-back-from-extinction/274118/">successfully produce</a> a clone of the extinct Pyrenean ibex, having previously collected genetic material from the last remaining individual of the species. Although the cloned calf only lived for ten minutes, the genie was out of the bottle: extinction didn’t have to be forever.</p> <p>Advances in genetic technology saw the arrival of CRISPR, a type of gene editing software that allowed for swift and cheap splicing of genomes. Now it didn’t matter if you didn’t have a viable cell for cloning – you could simply create a complete genome in a laboratory. This is what happened with <a href="https://reviverestore.org/projects/woolly-mammoth/progress/">the mammoth</a>, whose genome was sequenced in 2015, becoming the first extinct creature to be catalogued.</p> <p>While preserved mammoth bodies are common finds in Siberia, their flesh prevented from decomposition by permafrost, living cells begin to degrade at the point of death so a certain amount of cell degradation is inevitable. But by using CRISPR, a scientist is able to plug, say, the genome of an Asian elephant with the genes that make the physical traits of a mammoth (cold adapted blood, thick hair, small ears). Theoretically, if that genome was implanted into an egg and then fertilised, the Asian elephant in question would give birth to a mammoth, albeit one that is genetically a hybrid.</p> <p>De-extincting the mammoth in the future is a possibility, but the follow up question must surely be: what does one do with such a creature? Enter the Pleistocene Park. The vast expanse of tundra and cold temperatures, not to mention the ready-made connotations with a similar de-extinction “project”, Jurassic Park, mean it is the obvious place for any newly “resurrected” (hybridised, to be exact) mammoth to go.</p> <p>All this talk of restoration, rebirth and resurrection raises further questions: one of them being the ethical implications of “playing God”. But the other, larger question regards the role of humanity on the planet. We are now <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01641-5">unofficially</a> living in the Anthropocene – a new epoch that designates humans as top geological agents, leaving our mark in the rock and influencing just about every planetary process. Most of our actions are not positive ones, evidenced by the tide of environmental destruction, global warming and explosive levels of extinction left in our wake.</p> <p>Would resurrecting the mammoth be a way for humans to right past wrongs, or would it be an extension of the power and control we wield over a ravaged planet?</p> <p><strong>‘We are as gods’</strong></p> <p>I visited the Pleistocene Park in the summer of 2018 to attempt to answer this question. The mammoth is a bit of a thorny conversation topic to the Zimovs. Yes, Sergey Zimov strides around the tundra wearing a t-shirt sporting a stylised cartoon of the massive hairy elephant, but his son is quick to shoot me down when I ask about their level of involvement in de-extinction.</p> <p>“You have a lot of people believing in God,” he says. “And they don’t like this mammoth return. So I try and use it to bring attention to the park, but I don’t want any of the criticism!” But the relationship between de-extinction scientists and the park is difficult to ignore. A few weeks after I leave the park, the Zimovs are visited by the geneticist <a href="https://wyss.harvard.edu/team/core-faculty/george-church/">George Church</a>, probably the biggest proponent of mammoth de-extinction, and <a href="http://sb.longnow.org/SB_homepage/Home.html">Stewart Brand</a>, lifelong environmentalist and now supporter of what is termed a “good Anthropocene” (the idea that humans should use their power to benevolently steward the planet). “We are as gods,” Brand <a href="https://www.edge.org/conversation/stewart_brand-we-are-as-gods-and-have-to-get-good-at-it#:%7E:text=Stewart%20Brand%20Talks%20About%20His%20Ecopragmatist%20Manifesto&amp;text=Forty%20years%20ago%2C%20I%20could,to%20get%20good%20at%20it">famously quipped</a>: “And we have to get good at it.”</p> <p>I’m sceptical of this viewpoint. The Anthropocene concept is a <a href="https://theconversation.com/anthropocene-doesnt-exist-and-species-of-the-future-will-not-recognise-it-111762">flattening one</a>: it categorises all humans as the same, separated from nature, wreaking havoc on a lifeless Earth. It distributes blame equally, rather than directed towards the worst polluters. It ignores the uneven and ongoing effects of climate change on different parts of the globe. Planetary stewardship – no matter how benevolent – reinforces this idea. It suggests things can, and should, be controlled.</p> <p>But I don’t see much evidence of this control during my time at the park. The first day I’m taken there (it’s a 30 minute boat ride away from the science station that houses visitors) Nikita Zimov is informed by his rangers that the herd of musk oxen hasn’t been seen for days so he heads into the undergrowth to find the animals. I’m left alone, surrounded by flooded plains, no animals to be seen save for a blind yak.</p> <p>A few days later, the permafrost tunnel floods. A sort of underground laboratory dug to house permafrost cores, scientific equipment and frozen fish, it was supposedly placed at a high enough level that the annual floodwaters of the Kolyma would never reach the entrance - until they did. We spend a day pumping the water out and dislodging the items that had stuck fast to the frozen ceiling. A little way down the river, the expensive scientific equipment owned by a well-funded contingent of German permafrost scientists is submerged under water.</p> <p>Meanwhile, the Zimovs are furious about the 12 baby bison they have purchased from an Alaskan herder, still stuck in their pen. They’re unable to find a pilot willing to fly them over in the creaky, old DC-4 plane they have found. Everything that seemingly can go wrong, does go wrong. The Pleistocene Park is showing encouraging signs of becoming a grassland ecosystem, and <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-60938-y?sf232308455=1">initial tests</a> show the permafrost is thawing less within the park’s boundaries.</p> <p>But on the summer solstice (a swelteringly hot June day in the Arctic) we take a drill and some thaw depth probes to do some readings outside of the park, and the prognosis for the permafrost is not good. “We are fighting global warming,” Nikita Zimov says. “But global warming is fighting back.”</p> <p><strong>Tusk hunts</strong></p> <p>When permafrost makes the news, it’s never good. In early June, a fuel tank at the Norilsk power plant in Siberia <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-52977740">collapsed</a> because of thawing permafrost and 17,500 tonnes of diesel spilled into the river. A lot of people live and work on top of permafrost in Russia, and at the time of the Soviet Union, thousands of people were lured to the Arctic on the promise of highly paid jobs and cheap houses as part of a plan to “master the North”. Now the Soviet Union is long gone, along with all the perks, and thawing permafrost is making Arctic life very difficult.</p> <p>A sort of black-market industry has emerged, with groups of men heading out onto the tundra for months at a time to look for mammoth bodies that thawing permafrost has exposed. <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2013/04/tracking-mammoths1/">They’re after the tusks</a> that can be sold for a hefty profit to China, by far the world’s top market for ivory goods. These tusk hunts are often dangerous, with the men using illegal high-powered water cannons to blast holes and tunnels in permafrost, hundreds of miles away from towns or hospitals. Those who find a tusk have struck white gold, but those that don’t (most of them) will lose money.</p> <p>There’s another tension too. To many Siberian indigenous groups, the mammoth is a sacred beast and mustn’t be disturbed – to do so could mean death. Tusk hunters face an often-agonising decision: to betray their belief system or to feed their family.</p> <p>I became aware of an uneasy relationship between tusk hunters and scientists when I visited the Mammoth Museum in Yakutsk, where I spent the winter in 2018. Yakutsk is the world’s coldest and largest city built on permafrost, and it has no roads in or out – in the summer you take the plane, in the winter the frozen rivers become ice roads and a thriving trucking network ferries supplies to and from the Arctic towns.</p> <p>The Mammoth Museum and the Melnikov Permafrost Institute are institutions dedicated to understanding permafrost and tundra flora and fauna. This includes the mammoth. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the funding for these institutions has dried up. The scientists at the permafrost institute can only wait for international researchers with big grants to show up.</p> <p>The museum has struck up an awkward partnership with a biotechnology company in Seoul, South Korea. Sooam Biotech is known for <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2018/08/dog-cloning-animal-sooam-hwang">cloning pets</a> (most famously, Barbara Streisand’s dog) and has made no secret of its desire to clone a mammoth. The Mammoth Museum is informed of any mammoth finds by tusk hunters and Sooam Biotech is offered first dibs on collecting genetic material from the body. In exchange, Sooam Biotech has financed a state-of-the-art laboratory and equipment for the museum.</p> <p>Meanwhile, the Yakutian government has recently passed <a href="https://phys.org/news/2018-12-siberian-region-permafrost-planet.html">a law that protects permafrost</a>, enshrining the rights of Yakuts to live on top of solid ground. This law is mostly symbolic. Permafrost thaw is a result of global warming, yet it is Arctic Siberia that bears the brunt.</p> <p>These smaller, messier permafrost interactions say something important. The Pleistocene Park and the designs of scientists wanting to resurrect the mammoth work very much within a global narrative. The <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/907484977/pleistocene-park-an-ice-age-ecosystem-to-save-the">promotional material</a> for the park involve references to “the world’s best plan” and “saving the world”. Similarly to the way the Anthropocene concept flattens humanity, constructing the Earth on a purely global scale produces a potential future catastrophe that hasn’t happened yet. Think about any Hollywood disaster movie – we must do something to prevent it.</p> <p>Curating apocalypse in this way means the more local catastrophic events become seen as harbingers of a threat to come, rather than catastrophes in their own right. Permafrost makes the news as a “<a href="https://eos.org/articles/the-ticking-time-bomb-of-arctic-permafrost#:%7E:text=An%20Arctic%20ecosystem%20is%20in,than%20a%20decade%20to%20recover.">ticking time bomb</a>”, something that will blow up unless we do something about it. Yet the people who live in the Arctic, particularly indigenous groups and fragile communities like Chersky, are already dealing with an apocalypse and have been for some time.</p> <p>The unpredictability of permafrost – now very much impermanent – challenges those proponents of a good Anthropocene who believe we can control the planet.</p> <p><strong>Putting life on ice</strong></p> <p>Freezing, being frozen, staying frozen – they all suggest a period of stasis, of suspension. Permafrost itself indicates permanence, but that can no longer be said to be true. What to do, when the planet is warming and the Arctic is warming even faster? Build freezers, that’s what.</p> <p>Cryobanks have emerged in the past decade, often attached to museums, as a response to the rapid rise in species extinction. They offer a way to put “life on ice”, stored safely away until something can be done, be that captive breeding or de-extinction. Many of these projects have eschatological overtones – the <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/technology/the-lazarus-project-scientists-quest-for-deextinction-20150417-1mng6g.html">Lazarus Project</a>, <a href="https://www.frozenark.org/">The Frozen Ark</a> – and suggest that control can somehow be regained by turning the temperature down.</p> <p>The 42,000-year-old horse lying in Yakutsk’s Mammoth Museum is dead. I can smell it. Its body had been found a few months earlier in a permafrost bank, and had been frozen in the museum’s freezer ever since. The horse has been so well preserved, it looks like it’s merely sleeping. A delegation from the pet cloning company Sooam Biotech is visiting Yakutsk to take samples, and I’ve been invited along to view the autopsy.</p> <p>The head of the delegation, and CEO of the company, is Hwang Woo-Suk – a once disgraced South Korean veterinary scientist who made <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1892198/">headlines in 2005</a> when he claimed he had cloned human cells. He hadn’t, and went from the pride of South Korea to a laughing stock overnight while claiming he had been deceived by a former colleague in the process. A few years later he began showing up in Yakutsk looking for mammoths and other prehistoric creatures. His pet cloning company makes him rich, but cloning a mammoth would bring global fame again.</p> <p>The Anthropocene may be the time of the human, but really it is the time of certain humans, or certain actions. Actions have consequences. The warming of the Arctic and the thawing of permafrost is but one of these consequences. The reaction to this, to attempt to regain control of planetary processes, whether this be through resurrecting the mammoth or restoring its habitat, is indicative of a commitment to a good Anthropocene that aims to continue human dominance on the Earth.</p> <p>Having lived on top of permafrost, felt my feet sink into the mushy ground and rolled a ball of it between my fingers like putty, I remain doubtful any of this will work. What impact the Pleistocene Park may have on the permafrost around it is negated thousands of miles away by yet another thermokarst megaslump or another Arctic wildfire. While Nikita Zimov is philosophical about this, saying “it’s better to walk rather than to sit and wait for death”, it’s difficult to imagine the park ever reaching a point where it can mitigate permafrost thaw across the world. The mammoth, should it ever be resurrected, would surely exist as a curio rather than a thriving species, a monument to the hubris of playing God.</p> <p>Those advocating a good Anthropocene mean well, but a much deeper state change is needed. The continuous layer of permafrost in Arctic Siberia is showing signs of <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/environment/2018/08/exclusive-some-arctic-ground-no-longer-freezing-even-winter">becoming discontinuous</a> through thaw. Discontinuity, I think, must also be our path. We need to halt and refuse the destructive practices that have underpinned the last century and beyond if there’s to be any hope of doing better in the future.</p> <p>Discontinuity isn’t just a state of being, it is also a state of mind. The warming of the Arctic and the thawing of permafrost are huge concerns, yes, but attempts to force control of an increasingly out of control situation might well produce terrible gods rather than benevolent ones. Resurrecting mammoths – playing god – speaks to a doubling down of the mastery implied by the Anthropocene moniker.</p> <p>Discontinuity, conversely, allows for the creativity in thinking of futures that relinquish destructive human dominance. The Pleistocene Park may be one of these futures, or it may not be. The point is, by becoming discontinuous, we become attuned to a radical openness that allows for thinking differently – ethically, collectively, progressively – about our role as humans on a discontinuous Earth.</p> <p><em>Written by Charlotte Wrigley. Republished with permission of <a href="https://theconversation.com/mammoth-task-the-russian-family-on-a-resurrection-quest-to-tackle-the-climate-crisis-138142">The Conversation.</a> </em></p> <p><em> </em></p>

Cruising

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"Gobsmacked:" Deputy PM Michael McCormack taken to task on Q&A

<div class="body_text "> <p>ABC's Q&amp;A episode on Monday night quickly dissolved into chaos as the Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack brought up Melbourne's Black Lives Matter protests as a reason for a spike in coronavirus cases.</p> <p>The subject came out of nowhere for host Hamish Macdonald, who asked whether or not the rest of Australia could trust Victoria's contact tracing system.</p> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"> <p dir="ltr">Why isn’t there a system in place to ensure the people allowed to leave on compassionate grounds can return home again? <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/QandA?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#QandA</a> <a href="https://t.co/t1rAboArO4">pic.twitter.com/t1rAboArO4</a></p> — QandA (@QandA) <a href="https://twitter.com/QandA/status/1302936409301417984?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 7, 2020</a></blockquote> <p>“Well let’s wait and see. At the moment we haven’t been able to do that,” said Mr McCormack, who is the leader of the National Party.</p> <p>“The public health officials have to do that tracking and tracing. That is the key.”</p> <p>“That isn’t my question. Can we trust-” Macdonald interjected.</p> <p>“We haven’t been able to so far,” said McCormack.</p> <p>“We have had that outbreak because of the security guards, who did the wrong thing. We had that outbreak because of a family who gathered in too large a number. We had the outbreak in Victoria because of a protest rally.”</p> <p>Macdonald was quick to interject, saying “Sorry, what’s the evidence of the protest rally leading to the outbreak?”</p> <p>“Well there were three confirmed cases from one of those protest rallies," McCormack explained.</p> <p>“Are you saying that’s led to the outbreak?” Macdonald asked.</p> <p>“It didn’t help the situation,” said McCormack.</p> <p>It was at this point that Macdonald corrected the statement.</p> <p>“Sorry, you’re drawing a link that I’m not sure is substantiated in fact.”<br />McCormack didn't back down. </p> <p>“When the second wave occurred, they were the three reasons that were given. It was the security failure, it was the family that gathered in too large numbers-”</p> <p>“I’m not sure there is any actual evidence that the Black Lives Matter protest led to this outbreak,” Macdonald quickly interjected.</p> <p>The other guests on the panel watched on, including Dr Omar Khorshid, President of the Australian Medical Association.</p> <p>MacDonald called on Dr Khorshid to give his opinion.</p> <p>“With respect, Deputy Prime Minister, we do know what happened in Victoria. We know that the processes around hotel quarantine failed, the virus was able to get into some community groups,” Dr Khorshid said.</p> <p>“And then the contact tracing and the public health response was too slow. The lockdowns and restrictions were too slow.”</p> <p>“Omar, is there any evidence that the Black Lives Matter protest led to the outbreak?” Macdonald asked.</p> <p>“No. I’m certainly not aware of any evidence that the Black Lives Matter protest resulted in the outbreak in Victoria,” said Dr Khorshid.</p> <p>“But I would agree that congregating in large numbers at the moment does not make sense. But we shouldn’t be hiding from the real causes of the outbreak.”</p> <p>Labor’s Shadow Home Affairs Minister, Kristina Keneally was also on the panel and gave her opinion about what the Deputy Prime Minister had said.</p> <p>“I’m gobsmacked by what I heard from the Deputy Prime Minister,” she said.</p> <p>“Trying to assert that this second wave in Victoria is linked directly to the Black Lives Matter protest. I mean, that is an alternative fact, Trumpism, make up your own reality.”</p> </div>

News

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Oprah reveals chores she doesn't know how to do

<p>Yes, she might be one of the world’s wealthiest women and can pay people to do the most tedious tasks for her, but does that excuse Oprah Winfrey for not knowing how to do even the most basic chores?</p> <p>Whilst promoting her upcoming moving <em>A Wrinkle in Time</em>, Oprah sat down with <a href="http://www.eonline.com/news/916466/watch-oprah-winfrey-hilariously-reveal-that-she-doesn-t-pump-her-own-gas-i-wouldn-t-know-what-to-do">E! News</a>, along with her co-stars Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling, and confessed some of the everyday chores the star doesn’t know how to do.</p> <p>When the actresses were asked if they still fill up their own cars at the petrol station, Oprah confessed, “I don’t. I gotta just say, I wouldn’t know what to do.”</p> <p>As Reese and Mindy giggled, Oprah shared another insight into her life, showing how out of touch she is with the average person.</p> <p>“I actually took someone to the airport recently and I said, ‘Make sure you have your ticket,’ and they were like, ‘What?’ And I said, ‘They don’t have tickets anymore?’”</p> <p>The former talk show queen’s petrol station revelation comes just days after she made an appearance on <em>Jimmy Kimmel Live!</em> and admitted she doesn’t answer her own phone at home either.</p> <p>“I actually have security,” Oprah told Jimmy.</p> <p>“Somebody does answer the phone and they’ll say, ‘Mr Kimmel is on line two.’”</p> <p><img width="499" height="380" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7815781/oprah-embed-image_499x380.jpg" alt="Oprah Embed Image"/></p> <p>And then there’s Oprah’s first bank visit since 1988! During a chat with friend Ellen DeGeneres on her TV show last year, Oprah revealed that she’d only recently been to the bank in the first time in almost 20 years.</p> <p>“What did you go to the bank for?” Ellen asked.</p> <p>“To deposit a million dollars,” Oprah admitted.</p> <p>“I just wanted to go there just to do it. I stood in line, just to do it. It felt fantastic,” she added, laughing, before remembering, “Actually, it was $2 million!”</p> <p>With Forbes estimating Oprah’s worth at $3.5 billion, $2 million sounds like it would have been small change for the star!</p> <p>What do you think about Oprah’s candid confessions about regular chores she doesn’t know how to do? Tell us in the comments below.</p>

Retirement Income

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This one simple task that could save you hundreds

<p>Saving hundreds of dollars per annum can be as easy as asking one simple question. Seriously.</p> <p>Most of us have insurance, whether for our home or cars, and pay for it on a yearly basis. When this 12 months’ coverage comes to an end, our brokers send us an email or letter asking us if we want to renew it.</p> <p>The new quoted price is quite often higher than we’ve paid in the last year, but most of us don’t bother to check the numbers comparably.</p> <p>Saving hundreds of dollars can be as easy as comparing the new price to the old one, calling your broker to ask why, and requesting a discount. If they refuse a discount, threaten to take your money elsewhere.</p> <p>If your insurer doesn’t comply with your request, you can make good on your threat. Many insurance brokers offer new member discounts that could save you hundreds of dollars.</p> <p>The CALC is attempting to get insurers to display this information readily: your new price, old price, and the reason for the raise. Until this change occurs, simply picking up your phone and asking could be the means to saving hundreds of dollars every year.</p> <p><strong>Related links:</strong></p> <p><a href="/finance/money/2015/05/hidden-cost-of-things/"><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>7 things with hidden costs</strong></span></em></a></p> <p><a href="/finance/money/2015/06/where-you-can-ask-for-discounts/"><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>Places where you SHOULD ask for a discount</strong></span></em></a></p> <p><a href="/finance/money/2015/05/teach-your-grandchildren-value-of-money/"><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>7 ways to teach your grandchildren the value of money</strong></span></em></a></p>

Money & Banking

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