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"Height of selfishness": Photo at iconic beach sparks debate over etiquette

<p>A photo taken at Bronte Beach has sparked the age old debate over whether picnickers should be allowed to reserve picnic tables by dumping their stuff on them. </p> <p>The image taken at one of Sydney's most popular beaches, showed two picnic tables under the same hut with table clothes and bags on them, but there was no human in sight. </p> <p>“There were at least half a dozen of these tables ‘reserved’ for a couple of hours on Sunday morning from very early in the day,” one annoyed beachgoer wrote on Reddit. </p> <p>“We got there at 7am and left a few hours later. No one was using the tables the entire time we were there.”</p> <p>The post has received hundreds of comments from other annoyed picnickers, with one going as far as calling it "unAustralian". </p> <p>“It's not acceptable,” one person said. “You can reserve it by sitting there yourself, but not by leaving an item.”</p> <p>“Yes, you should be actually using it, not leaving your s**t on there to reserve it for later,” another added. </p> <p>“It's the height of selfishness.”</p> <p>“Move their stuff, move yourself in, and say, ‘it was like this when I got here’,” one commenter suggested. </p> <p>“All I see is a free tablecloth and free bag,” another quipped. </p> <p>However, a few others pointed out that there were other available seats, and that there are unspoken rules around reserving picnic spots. </p> <p>"In this instance, it’s probably okay,” one wrote. “The back table is free, go grab it.”</p> <p>"As long as there’s people there minding the tables, not just throwing a bunch of tablecloths down and walking off, I’m fine with it,” another added. “First come first served.”</p> <p>“If I was bringing a few things from the car I might do this,” a third commented. </p> <p> “Like dropping off the tablecloth and backpack before grabbing the esky etc. But I'd maintain line of sight. Anything else isn't justified in my opinion.”</p> <p>A spokesperson for Waverly Council have asked people to "refrain from reserving tables and always have a back up plan". </p> <p>“Waverley is the second-most densely populated local government area in Australia outside of the City of Sydney, and we attract millions of visitors every year, so our recreational spaces are at a premium," the spokesperson told <em>Yahoo News Australia</em>. </p> <p>“On weekends and at other peak times, picnic tables and barbecues do invariably fill up. So we ask people to share our spaces so that everyone can have a turn.”</p> <p><em>Images: Reddit</em></p>

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4 surprising ways your height affects your health

<p>How tall you are, to some extent, affects how you experience the world. You may always bump your head on the door frame, or get your feet trodden on in crowds or just find it hard to buy the right shoes. All these little things affect our wellbeing, but science has shown there are also larger factors at play.</p> <p>Here are four surprising ways your height affects your health.</p> <p><strong>1. Cancer risk</strong></p> <p>Cancer is caused by abnormal cells multiplying out of control, so, more cells might mean more opportunity for a cancer-causing mutation. That explanation plays out in the research on hormone-related cancers, such as breast, ovarian and prostate, which are more common among the height-gifted.</p> <p><strong>2. Heart disease and diabetes</strong></p> <p>Since greater height might allow larger, more robust blood vessels, being shorter can make you more prone to heart disease and diabetes.</p> <p><strong>3. Organ transplants</strong></p> <p>It may not be something you’ve ever had to think about, but organs are not one-size-fits-all. Research suggests that people five feet, three inches or shorter currently wait longer on organ lists and are more likely to die in the process. There have been suggestions that surgeons could potentially “downsize” available lungs to fit shorter patients.</p> <p><strong>4. Injury</strong></p> <p>This one is simple really – if a tall person falls, they have longer to go before hitting the ground than a smaller person. As a result, their injuries are often worse. Lanky people may also be crippled by slower reactions times since their nerve impulses have farther to travel. </p> <p>How have you found your height to affect your health? Let us know in the comments below.</p> <p><em>Image: Getty</em></p>

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Why are people so afraid of heights?

<p><em><strong>Rebekah Boynton is a PhD candidate and Anne Swinbourne is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at James Cook University.</strong></em></p> <p>If you’ve ever felt your heart race as you looked down from the top of a tall ladder, you’re not alone. But for some people, their distress is far more serious. Simply thinking about climbing a ladder can lead to intense fear and anxiety.</p> <p>These are the roughly <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00406-014-0548-y" target="_blank" rel="noopener">one in 15 people</a></strong></span> who have a fear of heights (<span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://psychcentral.com/encyclopedia/acrophobia/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">acrophobia</a></strong></span>) at some point in their lives.</p> <p>So, what leads some people to feel anxious even thinking about climbing the ladder? And others happily climb up onto the roof?</p> <p><strong>What is acrophobia?</strong></p> <p>About <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00415-012-6685-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">one in three people</a></strong></span> say they experience some discomfort or distress when exposed to heights. But not all of these have acrophobia. The term <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://psychcentral.com/encyclopedia/acrophobia/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">acrophobia</a></strong></span> is reserved for people with extreme, irrational and persistent fears of heights and situations associated with them.</p> <p>It’s one of the so-called <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://www.beyondblue.org.au/the-facts/anxiety/types-of-anxiety/specific-phobias" target="_blank" rel="noopener">natural environment phobias</a></strong></span>, which also include a fear of thunder and lightning (astraphobia) or water (aquaphobia).</p> <p>People with acrophobia <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://www.sydneyphobiaclinic.com.au/programmes/acrophobia/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">often avoid situations</a></strong></span> where they will be exposed to heights. However, this is not always possible.</p> <p>When faced with heights or anticipating them, their <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://backyardbrains.com/experiments/Sympathetic_Nervous_System" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sympathetic nervous system</a></strong></span> is aroused, as if preparing the body for an emergency. This arousal helps either approach or escape from a threat (commonly known as the <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/fight-or-flight-response" target="_blank" rel="noopener">fight-or-flight response</a></strong></span>).</p> <p>They may experience <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vertigo/Pages/Introduction.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noopener">vertigo</a></strong></span> (a moving or spinning sensation), increased heart rate, shortness of breath, sweating, <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0005796709000229" target="_blank" rel="noopener">anxiety</a></strong></span>, shaking or trembling, and <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-why-do-we-get-butterflies-in-our-stomachs-72232" target="_blank" rel="noopener">nausea or an upset stomach</a></strong></span>.</p> <p>A fight-or-flight response can be <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-0-387-72577-2_12" target="_blank" rel="noopener">adaptive</a></strong></span> in dangerous situations, because it can help us respond to dangerous situations.</p> <p>But in people with acrophobia, this response can occur when <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-we-panic/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">no danger is present</a></strong></span>. For instance, some people are extremely distressed when thinking about heights.</p> <p>There are <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0017759" target="_blank" rel="noopener">two main perspectives</a></strong></span> about how acrophobia develops. Broadly, fears and phobias are either innate (evolutionary perspective) or learned (behaviourist perspective).</p> <p><strong>Are we born with a fear of heights?</strong></p> <p>According to the <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/evol-psy/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">evolutionary psychology perspective</a></strong></span>, fears and phobias are innate. That is, people can experience a fear of heights <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0005796797100377" target="_blank" rel="noopener">without direct (or indirect) contact</a></strong></span> with heights. Instead, acrophobia is somehow hardwired so people have this fear before they <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/000579679390093A" target="_blank" rel="noopener">first come into contact</a></strong></span> with heights.</p> <p>Evolutionary psychologists suggest people who are afraid of heights are more likely to escape from this potentially dangerous situation or avoid it altogether. By doing this, they are then more likely to survive and later reproduce, allowing them to pass on their genes. Researchers suggest that as a result, this fear has been passed down from generation to generation.</p> <p>But this mechanism cannot account for all phobias. Innate phobias must reflect objects or situations that have presented a <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0005796701000456" target="_blank" rel="noopener">long-term threat to human survival</a></strong></span>. Avoiding the object or situation must also increase opportunities for reproduction.</p> <p>While the evolutionary perspective may explain phobias such as a fear of heights or snakes, it has difficulty explaining phobias associated with going to the dentist or public speaking.</p> <p><strong>Do we learn to be afraid of heights?</strong></p> <p>According to <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/behavior/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">behaviourists</a></strong></span>, fears and phobias are learnt, most commonly due to what’s known as <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/thoughtful-animal/what-is-classical-conditioning-and-why-does-it-matter/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">classical conditioning</a></strong></span>.</p> <p>To demonstrate how <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/014664029290010L" target="_blank" rel="noopener">classical conditioning of phobias</a></strong></span> occurs, consider the following scenario.</p> <p>Imagine you climbed a tree for the first time. What is your reaction to being up a tree? According to the behaviourist perspective, you’d be unlikely to be afraid. But if you then fell from the tree, you would likely experience distress and fear.</p> <p>A behaviourist would expect that because the experience of being up high is followed by the trauma of falling, you may then learn to associate the negative event with heights.</p> <p>Because of these learnt associations between heights and trauma, behaviourists suggest people can then be afraid of heights in future encounters.</p> <p>The behaviourist perspective also has some problems. It finds it difficult to explain why people who have never been exposed to an object or situation can report a phobia. For example there are no snakes in New Zealand, but there are people in New Zealand with <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://www.mentalhealth.org.nz/get-help/a-z/resource/24/phobias" target="_blank" rel="noopener">snake phobias</a></strong></span>.</p> <p>Behaviourists also suggest fears and phobias can also be learnt <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272735808000901" target="_blank" rel="noopener">vicariously</a></strong></span>. So behaviourists suggest it may be that some people in New Zealand may have learnt their fear of snakes by hearing stories from other people with a fear of snakes.</p> <p>In reality, the best explanation may be a mix of both behaviourist and evolutionary perspectives.</p> <p><strong>Can it be treated?</strong></p> <p>In treatment, both evolutionary and behaviourist accounts draw on <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0887618509000280" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the behaviourist perspective of how fears and phobias are learnt</a></strong></span>.</p> <p>Systematic desensitisation (or exposure therapy) is a <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2017/206/6/systematic-review-and-meta-analysis-treatments-acrophobia" target="_blank" rel="noopener">commonly used therapy</a></strong></span> for various phobias, whether the fear is innate or learnt.</p> <p>It involves <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/how-virtual-reality-spiders-are-helping-people-face-their-arachnophobia-73769" target="_blank" rel="noopener">gradual exposure</a></strong></span> to the feared object or situation in a safe and controlled environment. This is so that when coming into contact with the feared object or situation, people learn that they are not in danger and no longer experience a phobic response.</p> <p><em>Written by Rebekah Boynton and Anne Swinbourne. Republished with permission of <a href="http://theconversation.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Conversation</span>.</strong></a> </em></p> <p><em>Image: Getty</em></p>

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Celebrate Bastille Day with the height of French luxury

<p dir="ltr">As freezing winter months set in around Australia, many Aussies are trekking overseas to escape the cold and breathe in a new atmosphere after two years of stalled travel plans. </p> <p dir="ltr">A top destination for most is France, with many people’s social media pages being flooded with pictures of loved ones living their best life in Paris, Provence, Nice or Bordeaux with a glass of wine in their hand. </p> <p dir="ltr">While it's easy to be overcome with jealousy, you too can enjoy a taste of French luxury in your own way, without having to leave the comfort of your home. </p> <p dir="ltr">With the help of opulent products from L'Occitane, you can take your skin on a little French getaway with Bastille Day just around the corner. </p> <p dir="ltr">The people of France celebrate Bastille Day, or the National Day of France, on July 14th to mark the unity of the French people at the end of the revolution in the late 1700s. </p> <p dir="ltr">Just in time for this day of revolution is a series of L'Occitane products that are guaranteed to take your skin on a trip to Provence that will transport you to the lavender fields and beyond. </p> <p dir="ltr">First up is the luxurious <a href="https://au.loccitane.com/lavender-collection">Lavender Foaming Bath</a> that will leave your skin feeling soft and supple. </p> <p dir="ltr">Sit back and soak it up while enjoying the most opulent bubble bath, as the scent calms and relaxes you while the formula helps you stimulate both your mind and senses. </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-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/CCVjOeiHW0h/?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/CCVjOeiHW0h/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A post shared by L'OCCITANE en Provence (@loccitane)</a></p> </div> </blockquote> <p dir="ltr">Another must-have for the ultimate relaxation is the <a href="https://au.loccitane.com/almond-shower-scrub-29GE200A21.html">Almond Shower Scrub</a>, to help buff and scrub away dry, dull skin with this gel formula scrub. </p> <p dir="ltr">Almost as delicious as an Almond Croissant, this scrub will gently exfoliate to leave your skin smooth and even. </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-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/B-gkWebDzeF/?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/B-gkWebDzeF/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A post shared by L’Occitane en Provence | AU (@loccitaneaus)</a></p> </div> </blockquote> <p dir="ltr">For the ultimate rejuvenation, the L'Occitane <a href="https://au.loccitane.com/immortelle-divine-eye-balm-27DB015I20.html">Immortelle Divine Eye Balm</a> will have you looking like you’ve been relaxing in the south of France for a month. </p> <p dir="ltr">Apply the Immortelle Divine Eye Balm morning and night for a rich dose of nourishment under the eye area, while also fighting the visible signs of ageing. </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-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/CMd-Y9kDNLt/?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/CMd-Y9kDNLt/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A post shared by L’Occitane en Provence | AU (@loccitaneaus)</a></p> </div> </blockquote> <p dir="ltr">Lastly, for a daily dose of radiance, the <a href="https://au.loccitane.com/shea-butter-ultra-light-body-cream-01CL175K22.html">Shea Butter Ultra Light Cream</a> will help even and nourish the body with this indulgent and hydrating body moisturiser.</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-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/CcznBaMPb3Z/?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/CcznBaMPb3Z/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A post shared by L’Occitane en Provence | AU (@loccitaneaus)</a></p> </div> </blockquote> <p dir="ltr">With the help of these L'Occitane products, you’ll feel as if you have experienced the ultimate French getaway without ever having to leave your home. </p> <p dir="ltr"><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p>

Beauty & Style

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Famous Star Trek home hits the market

<p dir="ltr">The famous <em>Star Trek</em> home on Sydney's Northern Beaches has hit the market and is expected to fetch a massive eye-watering $19 million.</p> <p dir="ltr">Located at 21 Caladenia Cl, Elanora Heights, the stunning home was built by Star Trek fan and property developer Peter Chedid in 2010.</p> <p dir="ltr">The huge estate was sold only four years later for $8.39 million to a Chinese investor who has never visited the property, let alone seen the movies.</p> <p dir="ltr">It’s currently being rented out for $4000 a week but is expected to fetch up to $19 million.</p> <p dir="ltr">“Exquisitely unique, eye-catching and contemporary, this stunning property presides over five acres of high set perfection, designed for every room and every space to indulge in the panoramic district and ocean views,” the listing reads.</p> <p dir="ltr">“Affectionately known as the ‘Star Trek’ home due to its spaceship profile from the air, this is an unforgettable residence for those seeking individuality and a statement property.”</p> <p dir="ltr">The estate boasts a huge five bedrooms with every room in the house opening up to a balcony with stunning views of the water.</p> <p dir="ltr">There are high ceilings, galleries of floor-to-ceiling glass, stunning living and dining rooms and a luxe stone island kitchen with a concealed walk-in pantry.</p> <p dir="ltr">There is also a 15-seat indoor cinema, perfect when having guests over to have a movie night, or a relaxing time alone.</p> <p dir="ltr">Outside is a beautiful garden and an infinity pool.</p> <p><em>Images: Sydney Country Living</em></p>

Real Estate

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La Niña just raised sea levels in the western Pacific by up to 20cm. This height will be normal by 2050

<p><a href="https://asiapacificreport.nz/2021/12/07/tidal-damage-cuts-swathe-across-wide-area-of-pacific/">Severe coastal flooding</a> inundated islands and atolls across the western equatorial Pacific last week, with widespread damage to buildings and food crops in the Federated States of Micronesia, Marshall Islands, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands.</p> <p>On one level, very high tides are normal at this time of year in the western Pacific, and are known as “spring tides”. But why is the damage so bad this time? The primary reason is these nations are enduring a flooding trifecta: a combination of spring tides, climate change and La Niña.</p> <p><a href="http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/">La Niña</a> is a natural climate phenomenon over the Pacific Ocean known for bringing wet weather, including in eastern Australia. A less-known impact is that La Niña also raises sea levels in the western tropical Pacific.</p> <p>In a terrifying glimpse of things to come, this current La Niña is raising sea levels by 15-20 centimetres in some western Pacific regions – the same sea level rise projected to occur globally by 2050, regardless of how much we cut global emissions between now and then. So let’s look at this phenomena in more detail, and why we can expect more flooding over the summer.</p> <h2>These spring tides aren’t unusual</h2> <p>Low-lying islands in the Pacific are considered the frontline of climate change, where sea level rise poses an existential threat that could force millions of people to <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-seas-are-coming-for-us-in-kiribati-will-australia-rehome-us-172137">find new homes</a> in the coming decades.</p> <p>Last week’s tidal floods show what will be the new normal by 2050. In the Marshall Islands, for example, waves were <a href="https://asiapacificreport.nz/2021/12/07/tidal-damage-cuts-swathe-across-wide-area-of-pacific/">washing over boulder</a> barriers, causing flooding on roads half a metre deep.</p> <p>This flooding has coincided with the recent spring tides. But while there is year to year variability in the magnitude of these tides that vary from location to location, this year’s spring tides aren’t actually unusually higher than those seen in previous years.</p> <p>For instance, <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2020EF001607">tidal analysis</a> shows annual maximum <a href="http://www.bom.gov.au/oceanography/projects/spslcmp/data/index.shtml">sea levels at stations</a> in Lombrom (Manus, Papua New Guinea) and Dekehtik (Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia) are roughly 1-3cm higher than last year. Meanwhile, those at Betio (Tarawa, Kiribati) and Uliga (Majuro, Marshall Islands) are roughly 3-6cm lower.</p> <p>This means the combined impacts of sea level rise from climate change and the ongoing La Niña event are largely responsible for this year’s increased flooding.</p> <h2>A double whammy</h2> <p>The latest <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/#SPM">assessment report</a> from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change finds global average sea levels rose by about 20cm between 1901 and 2018.</p> <p>This sea level rise would, of course, lead to more coastal inundation in low-lying regions during spring tides, like those in the western tropical Pacific. However, sea level rise increases at a relatively small rate – around 3 millimetres per year. So while this can create large differences over decades and longer, year to year differences are small.</p> <p>This means while global mean sea level rise has likely contributed to last week’s floods, there is relatively small differences between this year and the previous few years.</p> <p>This is where La Niña makes a crucial difference. We know La Nina events impact the climate of nations across the Pacific, bringing an <a href="https://theconversation.com/do-la-ninas-rains-mean-boom-or-bust-for-australian-farmers-172511">increased chance of high rainfall</a> and tropical cyclone landfall in some locations.</p> <p>But the easterly trade winds, which blow across the Pacific Ocean from east to west, are stronger in La Niña years. This leads to a larger build up of warm water in the western Pacific.</p> <p>Warm water is generally thicker than cool water (due to thermal expansion), meaning the high heat in the western equatorial Pacific and Indonesian Seas during La Niña events is often accompanied by higher sea levels.</p> <p>This year is certainly no different, as can be seen in sea surface height anomaly maps <a href="https://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/data/along-track-nrt-data/?page=0&amp;per_page=3&amp;order=publish_date+desc&amp;search=&amp;fancybox=true&amp;condition_1=2021%3Ayear&amp;condition_2=11%3Amonth&amp;category=204">here</a> and <a href="https://aviso.altimetry.fr/fileadmin/images/data/Products/indic/enso/Msla_MoyMens_PacTrop_latest.png">here</a>.</p> <p>From these maps, along with <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/1999GL010485">past studies</a>, it’s clear Pacific islands west of the date line (180⁰E) and between Fiji and the Marshall Islands (15⁰N-15⁰S) are those most at risk of high sea levels during La Niña events.</p> <h2>What could the future hold?</h2> <p>We can expect to see more coastal flooding for these western Pacific islands and atolls over the coming summer months. This is because the La Niña-induced sea level rise is normally maintained throughout this period, along with more periods with high spring tides.</p> <p>Interestingly, the high sea levels related to La Niña events in the northern hemisphere tend to peak in November-December, while they do not peak in the <a href="https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/27/3/jcli-d-13-00276.1.xml">southern hemisphere</a> until the following February-March.</p> <p>This means many western Pacific locations on both sides of the equator will experience further coastal inundation in the short term. But the severity of these impacts is likely to increase in the southern hemisphere (such as the Solomon islands, Tuvalu and Samoa) and decrease in the northern hemisphere (such as the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia).</p> <p>Looking forward towards 2050, a further <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/#SPM">15-25cm of global average sea level rise is expected</a>. La Niña events typically cause sea levels in these regions to rise 10-15cm above average, though some regions can bring sea levels up to 20cm.</p> <p>Given the projected sea level rise in 2050 is similar to the La Niña-induced rise in the western Pacific, this current event provides an important insight into what will become “normal” inundation during spring tides.</p> <p>Unfortunately, climate projections show this level of sea level rise by 2050 is all but locked in, largely due to the greenhouse gas emissions we’ve already released.</p> <p>Beyond 2050, we know sea levels will continue to rise for the next several centuries, and this <em>will</em> largely depend on our future emissions. To give low-lying island nations a fighting chance at surviving the coming floods, all nations (including Australia) must drastically and urgently cut emissions.<!-- 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/173504/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/shayne-mcgregor-123851">Shayne McGregor</a>, Associate Professor, and Associate Investigator for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/monash-university-1065">Monash University</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/la-nina-just-raised-sea-levels-in-the-western-pacific-by-up-to-20cm-this-height-will-be-normal-by-2050-173504">original article</a>.</p> <p><em>Image: Shutterstock</em></p>

International Travel

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How missing feet washed up on Canadian beaches is helping solve the Melissa Caddick mystery

<p><span>The strange phenomenon of dismembered feet sweeping up on Canadian beaches may just help investigators into understanding what happened to missing Sydney businesswoman Melissa Caddick.</span><br /><br /><span>The 49-year-old’s severed foot drifted ashore Bournda Beach on the NSW south coast – hundreds of kilometres from her home in the eastern suburbs.</span><br /><br /><span>Other remains have now washed up on other south coast beaches – a holiday spot in Mollymook, at Cunjurong Point near Lake Conjola, and Warrain Beach at Culburra.</span><br /><br /><span>Forensic testing is currently being done on the remains to figure out whether they are animal or human, and if so, whether they match to Ms Caddick’s DNA.</span><br /><br /><span>A senior investigator who spoke to The Daily Telegraph revealed that the condition of the body parts that have been discovered means that she was most likely on the run for weeks before her death.</span></p> <p><img style="width: 500px; height: 281.25px;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7840095/daily.jpg" alt="" data-udi="umb://media/113aa55b8cd945fdb990a299d92e0cbf" /><br /><br /><span>However, a forensic pathologist has pointed to a bizarre phenomenon in Canada which could possibly point to an alternative theory which is that she met her death in Sydney.</span><br /><br /><span>21 disembodied feet so far have washed up along the British Columbian coast since 2007.</span><br /><br /><span>A coronial investigation that has been ongoing for over a decade, has ruled out that the feet came from people who were killed either in accidents or by suicide, and the feet detached during the normal decomposition process.</span><br /><br /><span>The feet were usually found inside of sneakers, just like Melissa Caddick’s, which the coroner believed was responsible for both keeping the feet buoyant enough to eventually wash ashore.</span><br /><br /><span>The shoes also allegedly gave the feet enough protection from decomposition.</span><br /><br /><span>Dr Matthew Orde, a forensic pathologist with the University of British Columbia, told the Sydney Morning Herald that a modern running shoe provides protection and buoyancy.</span><br /><br /><span>He revealed the decomposing feet were often found “many, many miles” from where they first entered the water.</span><br /><br /><span>“One of the theories is that those running shoes, by virtues of the air pockets in them, are quite buoyant,” Dr Orde said.</span><br /><br /><span>Police are set on searching waters near Caddick’s home in Dover Heights, follow a senior investigator’s doubts over whether her foot could have floated 400km to where it was discovered.</span><br /><br /><span>Superintendent Joe McNulty, Commander of the NSW Marine Command said he has never heard of a case where a body in water could float hundreds of kilometres down the south coast.</span><br /><br /><span>“Something in the water for that long, say a bit of flotsam or jetsam that washes on to the shore, has got green growth on it,” he told The Daily Telegraph.</span><br /><br /><span>“At first examination the shoe doesn’t appear to have been in the water for three months. The shoe needs extensive analysis to see how long it was in the water. It’s a vital clue where hopefully marine biology can provide some answers.”</span><br /><br /><span>Investigators are also exploring the possibility that Ms Caddick is still alive somewhere, without her foot.</span><br /><br /><span>Speaking to Weekend Today on Saturday, University of Newcastle Associate Professor of Criminology Dr Xanthe Mallett said that losing a foot doesn’t automatically spell out death.</span><br /><br /><span>“When it was just a foot I would caution against the possibility that somebody is deceased. You can survive without your foot,” she said.</span><br /><br /><span>Ms Caddick disappeared on November 12 od 2020 after she left her home for what her husband believed was a morning run at 5.30am.</span><br /><br /><span>She has been accused of swindling her friends and family out of millions of dollars through her finance business Maliver Pty Ltd.</span></p>

Legal

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Cystic fibrosis patient’s urgent plea for tissues as panic buying reaches new heights

<div class="post_body_wrapper"> <div class="post_body"> <div class="body_text "> <p>As coronavirus fears reach new heights, people around Australia are panic buying supplies to make sure they have what they need.</p> <p>Unfortunately, this leaves other people who are unable to buy in bulk left with nothing, as a Sydney man who suffers from cystic fibrosis discovered.</p> <p>“I’ve started a new lifesaving drug which makes me cough up a lot of mucus,” Peter Oxford told<span> </span><em><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/retail/cystic-fibrosis-patients-desperate-plea-for-tissues-amid-coronavirus-panic-buying/news-story/103f6e38d62d9d15d58f3f2373caecb6" target="_blank">news.com.au</a></em>.</p> <p>“I go through a box of tissues a day.”</p> <p>As he steadily ran out of tissues throughout the week, he was unable to find any more available in his local shops.</p> <p>He finished his last box at 3 am and begged for help by leaving a note in the lift to his apartment block.</p> <p>“Dear neighbours,” the note reads.</p> <p>“I can’t find tissues anywhere at our supermarkets, I have cystic fibrosis and need these on a daily basis.</p> <p>“I can swap you for a roll of toilet paper.</p> <p>“Is this what its (sic) come to?”</p> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"> <p dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/toiletpaper?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#toiletpaper</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/toiletpaperpanic?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#toiletpaperpanic</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/toiletpapergate?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#toiletpapergate</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/coronavirus?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#coronavirus</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/coronavirusaustralia?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#coronavirusaustralia</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/cysticfibrosis?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#cysticfibrosis</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/BradHazzard?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BradHazzard</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/tracygrimshaw?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@tracygrimshaw</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/sunriseon7?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@sunriseon7</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/9NewsAUS?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@9NewsAUS</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Studio10au?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Studio10au</a> <a href="https://t.co/pANE5AFYgu">pic.twitter.com/pANE5AFYgu</a></p> — Peter Oxford (@Peter_Oxford) <a href="https://twitter.com/Peter_Oxford/status/1236464343509696512?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 8, 2020</a></blockquote> <p>As cystic fibrosis is a life-threatening respiratory disease, Oxford is helpful that his new treatment Symdeko could be the answer. He started the treatment 10 days ago and will be needing a lot of tissues for at least two weeks as his body grows accustomed to the new drug.</p> <p>“The last three nights I’ve been up coughing, didn’t get any sleep,</p> <p>“I also feel dizzy, nauseated and extra tired from the medication,” he explained.</p> <p>As Oxford was on the hunt for tissues, he went to shops four times a day and came back empty handed each time.</p> <p>“I went to grocery stores in Roseberry, Greensquare, Waterloo and Zetland. I even went to Bunnings … Nothing.”</p> <p>“I nearly want to cry. It’s causing me so much anxiety.”</p> <p>“People with disabilities are being disadvantaged with all this toilet paper buying,” he said.</p> <p>Oxford said he was able to get one box of tissues on Saturday, but the box was being sold for an inflated amount of $3.50 for 80 tissues.</p> <p>“Usually it’s a dollar for 200 tissues,” he said.</p> <p>“I don’t have family near me, I support myself,” he said. “The coronavirus panic is costing more money for people like myself.”</p> <p>He said that “something good came out of this as well” as a neighbour delivered a box of tissues to his door.</p> <p>“A lady just knocked on my door and said ‘here’s a box of tissues.</p> <p>“Her son had cystic Fibrosis so she understood.”</p> </div> </div> </div>

Caring

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Ash Barty rises to atmospheric heights after $10 million pay day

<p>Aussie tennis legend Ash Barty is not only the top ranked player in women’s tennis but also the tour’s richest performer as she’s smashed through the $10 million prize money barrier for the season.</p> <p>The lucrative Women’s Tennis Association finals has taken Barty’s on-court earnings for the year to a shocking $10.93 million.</p> <p>This unprecedented windfall has doubled Barty’s entire career earnings in a single season. This is something that has never been seen in Australian sport.</p> <p>The winnings might not be over if she beats Petra Kvitova on Thursday night to qualify for the semi-finals as she would be guaranteed at least $1.45 million for the week if she makes it into the last four.</p> <p>If she wins the final, she could land a whopping $5.98 million on Sunday’s final.</p> <p>Don’t feel too bad for Barty if she loses though, she’ll still leave China $890,000 better off.</p> <p>All eyes are on Barty, with many thinking she’s going to beat Kvitova as she has done in their past two meetings this year.</p> <blockquote 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);" class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/B4JBjchJqtV/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="12"> <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> <p style="margin: 8px 0 0 0; padding: 0 4px;"><a style="color: #000; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;" rel="noopener" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/B4JBjchJqtV/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank">Starting strong in Shenzhen 👊🏽 #WTAFinals ✨</a></p> <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 post shared by <a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px;" rel="noopener" href="https://www.instagram.com/ashbarty/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank"> Ash Barty</a> (@ashbarty) on Oct 27, 2019 at 5:01pm PDT</p> </div> </blockquote> <p>“I’ve played Petra a number of times this year. Each match has been exceptionally tough. We’ve kind of split them a little bit,” Barty said to<span> </span><em><a rel="noopener" href="https://www.news.com.au/sport/sports-life/ash-barty-is-australias-10-million-star/news-story/54602b1159fc87c247a726b3db30ffea" target="_blank">news.com.au</a></em>. “Conditions are different here. Changes things a little bit.</p> <p>“We’ll figure out a way we’ll nullify her strengths and get it back to my patterns as much as we can.”</p> <p>If Barty beats Kvitova, she will either play titleholder Elina Svitolina, Wimbledon champion Simona Halep or Karolina Pliskova for a spot in the final.</p> <p>Best luck to Barty in China!</p>

Money & Banking

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The Greatest Drawbacks: Hugh Jackman's new heights of fame have come at a surprising cost

<p>Hugh Jackman has been one of the world’s greatest stars for years. His diverse range of talents, which include acting, dancing and singing have captured fans hearts around the globe.</p> <p>After the success of<span> </span><em>The Greatest Showman</em><span> </span>in 2017, the 50-year-old has been propelled to new heights of fame, which is something that he was surprised by.</p> <p>Jackman spoke to<span> </span><em><a rel="noopener" href="https://www.heraldsun.com.au/entertainment/hugh-jackmans-big-song-and-dance-show-reveals-untold-stories/news-story/c96c097bdd6b823d675f311a7c2a27ad" target="_blank">The Herald Sun</a><span> </span></em>about how his life has changed since playing P.T Barnum in the film.</p> <p>“It's made it difficult going to my daughter's dance classes,” Jackman explained, as the film resonated with a much younger audience.</p> <p>“I used to go every week, and nobody really cared. The dance school was not your classic Wolverine fanbase.</p> <p>“Now I go and the songs from The Greatest Showman are playing in nearly every dance class so it's a bit different.”</p> <blockquote 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);" class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/Bc1E9OfDiab/" data-instgrm-version="12"> <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> <p style="margin: 8px 0 0 0; padding: 0 4px;"><a style="color: #000; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;" rel="noopener" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Bc1E9OfDiab/" target="_blank">Showed &amp; Conquered @zacefron @greatestshowman #comalive</a></p> <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 post shared by <a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px;" rel="noopener" href="https://www.instagram.com/thehughjackman/" target="_blank"> Hugh Jackman</a> (@thehughjackman) on Dec 17, 2017 at 7:58pm PST</p> </div> </blockquote> <p>As Jackman has previously had a filmography that appeals to older audiences, it would make sense that the success of<span> </span><em>The Greatest Showman</em><span> </span>would introduce Jackman to a whole new and younger audience.</p> <p>Jackman shared with<span> </span><em><a rel="noopener" href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-46446499" target="_blank">The BBC</a><span> </span></em>and said he would be open to a sequel of the film.</p> <p>“If a genuine opportunity came up where it felt like the right thing to do, then yep, I'd get the top hat back out,” he said.</p> <p>“It's clear to me and to everyone that people love these characters. I loved this movie, I loved this character and it was one of the great joys of my life.”</p>

Movies

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The luxury pet-friendly hotels taking pampering to new heights

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Although many might not think to bring their dogs along to a luxury hotel, many of Australia’s top hotels are expanding their range to include your four-legged friend in your hotel experience.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Some hotels are offering tasting menus, room service and even mini-bar snacks.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“We know that travel looks different for each guest, and that people are now travelling with multiple generations of family, friends and even their pets,” says Harry Singh, the general manager of Elements Melbourne to </span><a href="https://thenewdaily.com.au/life/travel/2019/07/19/luxury-hotels-pets-australia/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">The New Daily</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Even with hotels charging on average about $50 to $90 to accommodate pets as well as one off cleaning fees of up to $150, this isn’t deterring people from bringing their pets along.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“The option to bring along a furry friend has been super popular,” says Daniel Meek, manager of Brisbane’s Ovolo The Valley.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“We’ve welcomed numerous puppies from the smallest of chihuahuas through to rottweilers and everything in between. We certainly don’t discriminate and have also welcomed some extra cute and cuddly felines. We haven’t had any issues at all so far with any of our pet guests.”</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Different hotels offer different experiences. At Canberra’s Mercure Hotel, you can dine with your dog in front of the fireplace whereas at Vibe Hotel at Rushcutters, there is a specialised “doggy deck” with an animal nutritionist developed “dogustation” menu that includes puppycinos. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">At Sydney’s five-star Langham, guests have included parrots, rabbits, lizards and even a teacup pig to their hotel room since the hotel opened in 2014. Langham have capitalised on this opportunity by offering Langham branded beds, collars, leashes, food and water bowls as well as balls.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">However, if you’re looking to save money, it’s probably best to leave your four-legged at home as it’s infinitely more costly. </span></p>

Family & Pets

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How Princess Diana's height stopped her from pursuing one of her biggest dreams

<p>Princess Diana will always be remembered as the fashion icon of the '80s and '90s, and one of the traits that made her look so good in her bold, creative and flattering outfits were her enviously long legs.</p> <p>At nearly 178cm (5’10), the Princess of Wales was taller than most women and it is no doubt her height left a major impression on everyone she met. However, it did mean some of her most beloved passions were quashed.</p> <p><img style="width: 0px; height: 0px;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7828696/new-project-9.jpg" alt="" data-udi="umb://media/254954e0df994e54a23c6db3c9790fb8" /></p> <p>Her impressive stature meant her childhood desire to become a professional ballerina was short-lived because of how quickly and tall she grew. A majority of female ballerinas were much shorter than Princess Diana and aside from her long legs and torso – the royal would likely have never been allowed to continue on as a professional ballerina anyway.</p> <p>Before she married into the British royal family, Princess Di had come from an aristocratic family as the daughter of an earl. As a member of the Spencer family and one of the most prominent names in British nobility, a dance career was unfortunately deemed “improper” due to her name and upbringing.</p> <p>However, the princess was still able to have a “real” job that adhered to her own love of children by becoming a nanny and later on a kindergarten aide – her last job before she become a royal member.</p> <p>Her days of dancing resurfaced in her young adulthood when she hired a dance teacher to help her reconnect with her lifetime passion for dance.</p> <p>Her ballet teacher Anne Allan spoke about Princess Di’s love of dancing in <em>Diana: In Her Own Words</em> in 2017 to mark 20 years since the royal’s tragic death in 1997.</p> <p>“When I first met her you could see that there was a huge shyness. But over time as we went through our dance class I realised just how much dance meant to her,” Allan said.</p> <p>“She had dance in her soul. I realised the pure enjoyment that it gave her. She loved the freeness of being able to move and dance. She loved it. I could see it helped to alleviate her emotional life. That was hard for her at that time.”</p> <p> <img style="width: 500px; height: 281.25px;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7828694/new-project-10.jpg" alt="" data-udi="umb://media/23a74f55d7ad4a66a9710c062b58a761" /></p> <p>While the Princess would never pursue a dancing career, she did find other ways to connect with her first love.</p> <p>She was a major supporter for the English National Ballet and often could be seen at appearances to watch and cheer on other young aspiring ballet dancers.</p> <p>The royal also famously danced with Hollywood heavyweight John Travolta at a White House event in 1985. The same year she lovingly surprised her husband at the time, Prince Charles, to a guest appearance at the Royal Opera House where she performed in a quick duet to <em>Uptown Girl</em> with dancer Wayne Sleep who described the experience as <a rel="noopener" href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/jul/14/thats-me-diana-dance-wayne-sleep" target="_blank">“surreal”</a> to <em>The Guardian</em> in 2017.</p> <p><img style="width: 500px; height: 281.25px;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7828693/new-project-11.jpg" alt="" data-udi="umb://media/d48ae400b47c494d850ba4065ede82d3" /></p> <p>“Diana loved ballet, but she also wanted to learn jazz, tap and contemporary. Sadly, I couldn't teach her, because I was away on tour so much. But she approached me again when she wanted to perform at the Royal Opera House – it was a private show for supporters and friends of the Royal Ballet. Charles was going to be in the audience and she wanted to surprise him; it was all top secret," Sleep remembered.</p> <p>“The audience gasped when Diana appeared, as if they'd all taken one huge breath. The routine had a bit of everything: jazz, ballet, even a kickline. At one point, I pirouetted and she pushed me down; then I carried her across the stage. I remember thinking, 'Don't drop the future Queen of England.'”</p> <p>It turns out Princess Diana has not been the only royal to love ballet. In 2018, it was revealed Prince George, 5, began taking ballet classes – just one more way the people's princess still holds weight in the lives of her descendants.</p>

Music

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Why Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights is a cult classic

<p>Nothing about the reception of Emily Brontë’s first and only published novel, <em>Wuthering Heights</em>, in 1847 suggested that it would grow to achieve its now-cult status. While contemporary critics often admitted its power, even unwillingly responding to the clarity of its psychological realism, the overwhelming response was one of disgust at its brutish and brooding Byronic hero, Heathcliff, and his beloved Catherine, whose rebellion against the norms of Victorian femininity neutered her of any claim to womanly attraction.</p> <p>The characters speak in tongues heavily inflected with expletives, hurling words like weapons of affliction, and indulging throughout in a gleeful schadenfreude as they attempt to exact revenge on each other. It is all rather like a relentless chess game in hell. One of its early reviewers wrote that the novel “strongly shows the brutalising influence of unchecked passion”.</p> <p>Moral philosopher Martha Nussbaum claims, however, that “we must ourselves confront the shocking in <em>Wuthering Heights</em>, or we will have no chance of understanding what Emily Brontë is setting out to do”. The reader must give herself over to the horror of Brontë’s inverted world.</p> <p>She must jump, as it were, without looking to see if there is water below. It is a Paradise Lost of a novel: its poetry Miltonic, its style hyperbolic, and its cruelty relentless. It has left readers and scholars alike stumbling to locate its seemingly Delphic meaning, as we try to make sense of the Hobbesian world it portrays.</p> <p>The author remains as elusive as her enigmatic masterpiece. As new critical appraisals emerge in this, Emily Brontë’s bicentenary year, the scant traces she left of her personal life beyond her poetry and several extant diary papers, are re-fashioned accordingly.</p> <p>Described as the “sphinx of the moors”, her obstinate mystery has lured countless pilgrims to the <a href="http://www.bronte.org.uk/the-brontes-and-haworth/haworth">Haworth home</a> in which she passed almost all of her life, and the surrounding moorlands that were the landscape of her daily walks and the inspiration for her writing. Brontë relinquished her jealous hold of the manuscript only after considerable pressure from her sister Charlotte, who insisted that it be published.</p> <p><em>Wuthering Heights</em> was released pseudonymously under the name Ellis Bell, published in an edition that included her sister Anne’s lesser known work, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/298230.Agnes_Grey?from_search=true">Agnes Grey</a>. Emily was to die just 12 months later, in December 1848.</p> <p>As Brontë biographer Juliet Barker writes, the writer stubbornly maintained the pretence of health even in the final stages of consumption, insisting on getting out of bed to take care of her much loved dog, Keeper. She resisted death with remarkable self-discipline but, “her unbending spirit finally broken”, she acquiesced to a doctor’s attendance. It was by then too late; she was just 30.</p> <p>After her sister’s death, Charlotte Brontë wrote two biographical prefaces to accompany a new edition of <em>Wuthering Heights</em>, instantiating the mythology both of her sister – “stronger than a man, simpler than a child” – and her infamous novel: “It is rustic all through. It is moorish, and wild, and knotty as the root of heath.”</p> <p><strong>A feminist icon</strong></p> <p>It is that property of wildness that has compelled artists from Sylvia Plath to Kate Bush, whose 1978 hit single,<em> Wuthering Heights</em>, was representative of the magnetic pull of Brontë’s fierce heroine, Catherine. The novel has maintained its relevance in popular culture, and its author has risen to a feminist icon.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Fk-4lXLM34g?wmode=transparent&amp;start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><span class="caption">Wuthering Heights</span><em><span class="caption"> has maintained currency in pop culture, most famously in Kate Bush’s haunting 1978 hit of the same name.</span></em></p> <p>The elusiveness of the woman and the book that now seems an extension of her subjectivity, gives both a malleability that has seen <em>Wuthering Heights</em> transformed into various mediums: several Hollywood films, theatre, a ballet and, perhaps most incongruously, a detective novel. Brontë’s name is used to sell everything from food to dry-cleaning products.</p> <p>Film versions have tended to indulge in a surfeit of romanticism, offering up visions of the lovers swooning atop windswept hills, most famously in the 1939 movie, with Laurence Olivier as a dashing Heathcliff, a heavily sanitised re-telling of what the promotional material billed as “the greatest love story of our time - or any time!” Andrea Arnold’s gritty, pared-back <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1181614/">2011 film</a> is the notable exception; bleak and darkly violent, the actors speak in an at times unintelligible dialect, scrambling across a blasted wilderness as though they are animals.</p> <p><iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kUWOCd894-Q?wmode=transparent&amp;start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></p> <p>Contrary to Charlotte Brontë’s revisioning, however, <em>Wuthering Heights</em> was not purely the product of a terrible divine inspiration, emerging partially formed from the granite rock of the Yorkshire landscape, to be hewn from Emily’s simple materials.</p> <p>Instead, it is the work of a writer looking back to past Romantic forms, specifically the German incarnation of that aesthetic, infused with folkloric taboos and primal longings. Her tale of domestic gothic is housed in an intricately complex narrative architecture that works by repetition and doubling, at the fulcrum of which stands Catherine, the supremely defiant object of Heathcliff’s obsession.</p> <p>At the novel’s core is the corrosiveness of love, with the titanic power of Shakespearean tragedy and the dialogic form of a Greek morality play. Two families, locked in internecine war and bound together by patrilineal inheritance, stage their abject conflict across the small geographical space that separates their respective households: the luxury and insipidity of the Grange, versus the shabby gentility, decay, and violence of the Heights.</p> <p><strong>A claustrophobic novel</strong></p> <p>It is a distinctly claustrophobic novel: although we read with a vague sense of the vastness of the moors that is its setting, the action unfolds, with few exceptions, in domestic interiors. Despite countless readings, I can conjure no distinct image of the Grange. But the outline of the Heights, with each room unfolding into yet another set of rooms, labyrinthine and imprisoning, has settled into my mind. The deeper you enter into the space of the Heights - the space of the text - the more bewildering the effect.</p> <p>The love between Heathcliff and Catherine exists now as a myth operative outside any substantial relationship to the novel from which the lovers spring. It is shorthand in popular culture for doomed passion. Much of this hyper-romance gathers around Catherine’s declaration of Platonic unity with her would-be lover: “I am Heathcliff – he’s always, always in my mind.” Yet their relationship is never less than brutal.</p> <p>What is it about their unearthly union, with its overtones of necrophilia and incestuous desire, that so captivates us, and why does Emily Brontë privilege this form of explicitly masochistic, irrevocable and unattainable love?</p> <p> </p> <p>Brontë’s great theme was transcendence, and I would suggest that it is the metaphysical affinity that solders these two lovers that so beguiles us. The greediness of their feeling for each other resembles nothing in reality. It is hyperreal, as Catherine and Heathcliff do not aspire so much as to be together, as to be each other. Twinned in that shared commitment and to the natural world that was the hunting-ground of their childhood play, they try, with increasing desperation, to get at each other’s souls.</p> <p>This is not a physically erotic coupling: the body is immaterial to their love. It is a very different notion of desire to that of Jane Eyre and Rochester, for instance, in Charlotte Brontë’s <em>Jane Eyre</em>, which is very fleshy indeed. Both Catherine and Heathcliff want to get under each other’s skin, quite literally, to join and become that singular body of their childhood fantasies. It is a dream, then, of total union, of an impossible return to origins. It is not heavenly in its transcendence, but decidedly earthly. “I cannot express it”, Catherine tells her nurse Nelly Dean, who is our homely, yet not so benign, narrator:</p> <blockquote> <p>But surely you and everybody have a notion that there is, or should be, an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff’s miseries … my great thought in living is himself. I all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be.</p> </blockquote> <p>This notion of the self eclipsing its selfish form seems impossible for us to conceive in an age where one’s individuality is sacred. It is, however, the essence of Catherine’s tragedy: her search for her self’s home among the men who circle her is futile. Nevertheless, Emily Brontë’s radical statement of a shared ontology grounds the eroticism between the pair so that we cannot look away; and neither it seems, can the other characters in the novel.</p> <p>The book’s structure is famously complex, with multiple narrators and a fluid style that results in one focalising voice shading into another. The story proper begins with Lockwood, a stranger to the rugged moorlands, a gentleman accustomed to urban life and its polite civilisations.</p> <p>The terrifying nightmare he endures on his first night under Heathcliff’s roof, and the gruesomely violent outcome of his fear sets in motion the central love story that pulls all else irresistibly to it. Heathcliff’s thrice-repeated invocation of Catherine’s name, which Lockwood finds written in the margins of a book and mistakenly believes to be “nothing but a name”, works as an incantation, summoning the ghost of the woman who haunts this book.</p> <p>Emily Brontë speaks of dreams, dreams that pass through the mind “like wine through water, and alter the colour” of thoughts. If the experience of reading <em>Wuthering Heights</em> feels like a suspension in a state of waking nightmare, what a richly-hued vision of the fantastical it is.<!-- 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/100748/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: http://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><em>Written by <span>Sophie Alexandra Frazer, Doctoral candidate in English, University of Sydney</span>. Republished with permission of <span><a href="https://theconversation.com/why-emily-brontes-wuthering-heights-is-a-cult-classic-100748">The Conversation</a></span>.</em></p>

Books

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All grown up! Internet goes into meltdown over Barron Trump's staggering height

<p><span>The son of US President Donald Trump and his wife Melania has appeared to have grown up overnight, after he was pictured over Thanksgiving. </span></p> <p><span>The 12-year-old, who was pictured walking into the White House alongside his parents, has grown noticeably taller and appears to tower over</span><span> his 6ft 2in (190cm) tall </span><span>dad</span><span>. </span></p> <p><span>Is it just an optical illusion created by the angle of the photo?</span><span></span></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img style="width: 500px; height: 333.203125px;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7822168/1.jpg" alt="" data-udi="umb://media/23372c578ea1453a8e90632721bda653" /></p> <p><span>Barron's sudden growth spurt has taken many by surprise, with the youngest Trump already being taller than his model mum who is 5ft 11in (180cm) tall. </span></p> <p><span>After seeing the holiday photos, one Twitter user wrote: "So handsome and TALL!"</span></p> <p><span>"I haven’t slept since I found out Barron trump is 6 ft tall," another wrote. </span></p> <p><span>For Barron's age, the average height for a boy is around 147cm, reported </span><em>Livestrong</em>. </p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img style="width: 500px; height: 355.46875px;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7822169/2.jpg" alt="" data-udi="umb://media/1759a2d2df2847ab8486729a999a5d08" /></p> <p><span>This means that Barron will be significantly taller than most of his peers at school. </span></p> <p><span>However, tall genes are very evident in the Trump family with son Don Jr coming in at 185cm and his sibling Eric towering over his dad by almost 6cm. </span></p> <p><span>Barron is the last of Trump's five children to live at home. </span></p> <p><span>Before the family transitioned into the White House, First Lady Melania explained that taking care of her son with Donald would be her first priority. </span></p> <p><span>In the President's first six months of office, Melania and Barron stayed in New York so that he could finish his school year without moving state. </span></p> <p><span>Barron is the first boy to be living in the White House since JFK was in office.</span></p>

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How your height affects your lifespan

<p><em><strong>Bradley Elliott is a lecturer in physiology and biomedical science at the University of Westminster.</strong></em></p> <p>The tallest man in Europe, 7ft 7in former basketball player turned actor <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/feb/26/neil-fingleton-game-of-thrones-star-and-uks-tallest-man-dies-aged-36" target="_blank">Neil Fingleton</a></strong></span>, who played roles in Game of Thrones, and the X-Men and Avengers films, recently died aged just 36. Such early death in the excessively tall is not uncommon. Robert Wadlow, the world’s tallest person on record <strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/tallest-man-ever" target="_blank">died at 22</a></span></strong>, and of the 10 tallest people ever recorded, the oldest died at 56. In people, height is <strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0094385" target="_blank">negatively correlated with longevity</a></span></strong>; that is, taller individuals don’t tend to live as long. It’s kind of unfortunate that I’m both a researcher into ageing and 6ft 1in tall.</p> <p>While these are extreme examples, in the general population there also is a trend of greater height leading to reduced longevity. For example, <strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/early/2013/07/25/1055-9965.EPI-13-0305" target="_blank">taller woman</a></span></strong> are more likely to suffer from cancer in later, post-menopausal life. In a study of civil servants at Whitehall, height was noted as an excellent correlate with <strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://jech.bmj.com/content/54/2/97.full" target="_blank">risk of cancer, stroke and cardiovascular disorders, and ultimately death</a></span></strong>.</p> <p>Yet it’s a noted rule of thumb in the biological sciences that <strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://jeb.biologists.org/content/jexbio/208/9/1717.full.pdf" target="_blank">bigger species of mammals live longer</a></span></strong> – for example, elephants (lifespan: 40 to 75 years) and whales (35 to 110 years) – than smaller ones – for example, mice and rats (around 12 months). So why is height not associated with longer life spans in humans?</p> <p>As a researcher into ageing, for me the important question is why does height, such a useful day-to-day feature, and arguably an evolutionary advantage for our hunter-gatherer ancestors on the savannah, seem to count against us? There are two good hypotheses here, one arguing the case for nature and the other for nurture – but it may be that they are linked.</p> <p>On the nurture, environmental factors side of the argument, there has been a lot of research conducted recently on the idea that reduced calorie intake (eating less) can correlate with greater longevity. Essentially, faced with restricted quantities of available food, animals tend to live longer.</p> <p>We have found good evidence for this in <strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC23719/" target="_blank">worms</a></span></strong>, <strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3958810" target="_blank">mice</a></span></strong>, <strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11991408" target="_blank">dogs</a></span></strong>, <strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms4557" target="_blank">monkeys</a></span></strong>, and there are even <strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15096581" target="_blank">suggestions of the same effect in humans</a></span></strong>. Indeed, children who lived through the Second World War and <strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/http:/www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/population-trends-rd/population-trends/no--145--autumn-2011/ard-pt145-golden-generation.pdf" target="_blank">rationing show a bump in longevity statistics</a></span></strong>. Why does this matter? Because these calorie restricted worms, mice, monkeys and children are also shorter than their well-feed peers. So average height across a population is a rough marker of calorie availability during childhood and development, which is a factor that decides height in adulthood.</p> <p>On the nature side of the argument, it might seem obvious but genetics dictates height as well. Even my above average height makes me the shortest member of my family, with a brother, mother and father who are all taller than me. So-called “familial height” is passed on via genes that contribute to height.</p> <p>In particular, the conveniently named and easy to remember gene Forkhead family, O subclass, type 3 gene (FOXO3), has a common variation that is associated with longevity in <strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18358814?dopt=Abstract&amp;holding=npg" target="_blank">worms</a></span></strong>, in <strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19627267?dopt=Abstract&amp;holding=npg" target="_blank">flies</a></span></strong>, and in <strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2544566/" target="_blank">human centenarians</a></span></strong>.</p> <p>This gene has many roles, contributing to stem cell activation, controlling cell death mechanisms, and altering the effectiveness of insulin and insulin-like growth factors. All of these play a role in how the body senses how much energy it has, and so how much growth it can afford over and above the nutrients and energy the body needs just to maintain itself. So variation in this FOXO3 gene may also contribute to this hypothetical connection between longevity, height and calories by directing more or less energy into growing the body.</p> <p>So while tallness is linked to shorter lifespans on average, we don’t really understand why. There’s some good research at the moment regarding both genetics and lifestyle, which may reveal that simply eating a little less over the course of your life may lead to a longer life. A simple sounding fix – but getting people to eat less has not always proven easy.</p> <p><em>Written by Bradley Elliott. First appeared on <a href="https://theconversation.com" target="_blank"><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Conversation</span></strong></a>. </em></p>

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The day I faced my fear of heights – and won

<p><em><strong>Maggie Wildblood, 75, has been writing for years and has just completed a memoir. Here, she remembers the time she faced her fear of heights – and took a leap of faith.</strong></em> </p> <p>Here am I, more than a little over fifty, overweight, hungover. Not an auspicious beginning for the adventure of my life.</p> <p>This is the final residential of a course at University of Western Sydney, Richmond, and again we students have been encouraged to attempt something new, challenging. I’ve tried many things, from performance poetry to Greek dancing, but nothing really physical. </p> <p>Some of the more adventurous have gone abseiling. They’ve come back full of adrenalin and achievement. I’d like to feel that too, but given my recently acquired fear of heights, abseiling would be unwise. Wouldn’t it?</p> <p>While I’ve been telling myself to do something like playback theatre or even bushwalking, an irritating internal voice has been urging me to face my fear of heights. Abseiling, it says, would be perfect. This is my last chance: if I don’t do it now, I never will. Abseiling will join a growing collection of things I’ll wish I’d done. </p> <p>Last night Carol, another “mature” student, and I sat in the bar with the rest of the abseilers.  Most were male, all were much younger than us. Downing white wine freely, we ignored the hands of the clock edging towards midnight, closing time. We decided Carol should doss down on the spare bed in my motel room, borrow some of my clothes for our adventure. We slept fitfully, a combination of alcohol and apprehension.  When the alarm squealed at half past three we woke unwillingly, sat on the edges of our beds groaning with regret.</p> <p>We dress after a quick shower, gulp one quick coffee: no lavatories on the mountain.</p> <p>Now we’re huddled in the car park with the rest of the group, shivering, all of us bundled up in every piece of clothing we could find. Noses peep redly from scarves, eyes peer blearily from under beanies, gloved hands nestle in armpits. Richmond is cold in July. <em>Very</em> cold at 4 am.</p> <p>We pile into a couple of cars and we’re away. Too late to back out now. </p> <p>It’s black, that deep blackness that settles just before dawn. Headlights illuminate two figures standing by a beat-up ute on the roadside: Jack, our instructor and his sidekick, Bill. Clambering into the ute, they take off up the highway, make a swift left onto a dirt track almost invisible in the night. We follow, bouncing behind their vehicle along a rutted trail, headlights bouncing too against tree trunks bearing the scars of recent bushfires. We smell those fires now, months after they roared through the National Park.</p> <p>In that intense darkness conversation becomes more and more desultory, stops.</p> <p>Parking in a clearing, we tumble out of the cars. Our breath puffs into the cold. Jack rolls the tarp back from the ute and produces ropes and more ropes, metal rings, hard hats, a billy, water, mugs, a box of bread. He distributes them among us. Arms full, we follow the light of his torch, stumbling over roots and pebbles to a large flat rock. Around us birds begin to stir. Small cheepings, chirpings, warblings. </p> <p>“Don’t go near the edge,” Jack warns. “It’s a long way down.”</p> <p>The sky lightens slowly. Distant treetops appear almost hesitantly against a pale sky that is suddenly pink, suddenly red. The sky burns without flame. A kookaburra pierces the morning with its song, is answered by another.</p> <p>We collect sticks, light a fire on the rock, our faces strained in the flames flickering. The scent of eucalyptus smoke swirls in the stillness. Jack makes tea; we burn bread for toast, butter it, eat it. No one speaks. By the time it’s fully light we’ve finished. The remaining tea is poured over the fire, then every ember, every spark, dies under Bill’s heavy boots.</p> <p>After Jack’s meditation exercise the air of apprehension lessens. Bill disappears.</p> <p>“Now you should all have a pee,” says Jack. “Once in your harnesses it’ll be too late.” </p> <p>The men stand together, backs to the clearing, trousers sagging around their bums, just like the backs of elephants. They chat companionably. We women squat separately, silently, the scallops of our buttocks white against the low shrubs. There’s the hiss, the acrid smell of urine. </p> <p>As instructed, we wrap ourselves in metres of webbing: around our shoulders, our torsos, between our legs, attach metal clips. Jack inspects us, one at a time, pulling and tugging at webbing, checking clips, making small adjustments. No room for error. No way to pee now either. We’re all wrapped up, a muddle of bulky packages.</p> <p>I’ve avoided looking over the edge of that big, flat rock. I’ve admired the sunrise, watched the eucalypts on the other side of the valley fringe with gold the moment the sunlight hit them.  Looking down is not for me just yet.</p> <p>I’ve heard of previous abseilers who’ve scraped hands, knees, elbows; who’ve swung upside down until they managed to turn themselves around; who’ve slipped coming back up the cliff. Now I’m about to jump backward over a cliff, in a hard hat and a tracksuit, hoping to land on a ledge where Bill is supposed to be waiting.</p> <p>Sometimes in a lift my stomach plunges. I have that feeling now. I watch as one by one people hitch up, walk backward, disappear over the cliff face, accompanied by cheers. I see their faces glowing on their return. Being older than all of them doesn’t mean I can’t do it, I tell myself firmly, unconvincingly. Anyway, Carol’s going first, we agreed on that.</p> <p>Her turn comes. She balks. </p> <p>“You go first, Maggie. I’m only here because you persuaded me.”</p> <p>Expectant faces turn toward me.</p> <p>“Come on Maggie, come on, you can do it!”</p> <p>I hook myself onto the descent ropes, their rough fibres somehow comforting, settle my hard hat firmly on my head, back to the edge of the rock, sneak a look. The valley floor is hundreds of metres below. Treetops peer above the morning mist, sway gently as the cold air rises. Those trees might look soft, velvety even, but they won’t cushion me if I fall. That mist, fluffy, featherlike, I’d slide through that like a beer down a thirsty bloke’s throat.</p> <p>I teeter on the edge, clutching the rope. I have to lean out at right angles to the cliff face, legs and back straight. When I edge myself over the rim, I’m persuaded to let the rope go and stand, arms outstretched, held only by the webbing and the clip, posing for a photograph. Madness! I don’t look down for the ledge I’m to land on about twenty metres below, the ledge from which all the others have returned.</p> <p>I walk my way down the cliff, concentrate on keeping my back straight, watch my feet, watch the rope snake through my hands, seeing only the spot where next I’ll put my foot. Suddenly, there‘s a large black hole. The cliff face has disappeared into a cave! What should I do?</p> <p><img width="370" height="250" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/23543/maggie-abseiling_370x250.jpg" alt="Maggie Abseiling" style="float: left;"/></p> <p>Without thinking I leap out and back, ropes flying. I land about three metres further down the rock face, below the cave. Cheering erupts above me, faces grin over the cliff top. I wave at them, overwhelmed. My impulsive leap was the right thing to do.</p> <p>“Look, look, Maggie’s been rappelling,” someone calls. If that’s what a terrified leap into the air is called, well, I’ve certainly done that. It’s easy now to continue down the cliff into the waiting arms of Bill.</p> <p>Unhooked from the descent ropes, I’m hooked now into a new set of ropes for the upward climb. I thought the descent was hard. This is much, much harder. I have to clamber, unaided, up the rough sandstone, finding finger and foot holes. Small rocks tumble from beneath my feet. Small branches bend under my anxious fingers. I clutch at tree roots, place my feet on stones, trusting they’re integral parts of the cliff itself. Pebbles slide, the soil is sandy, nothing appears solid. There’s no one cheering me on, giving me support now.</p> <p>The exhilaration I felt as I leapt out from the rock, the triumph of landing, all have vanished. I can think only of “down there”. My fear of high places returns. My arms tremble, my hands hurt, my feet slip, muscles in my legs ache. Never have I been so frightened.</p> <p>At the top, I’m panting with fear, not exertion, not exhilaration.  I crouch on my hands and knees until my trembling eases, grateful no one is looking. In a pocket I find a handkerchief, scrub my unexpected tears. </p> <p>I stand and quite suddenly I experience my own sunrise. My achievement was not going down the rock face with the encouragement of the group, nor leaping backwards to avoid the cave. It was that dogged fight to get back up to the top, unaided, alone. Overcoming my fear: that’s my victory.</p> <p>I rejoin the others, cheering on the last few, loud as the loudest.</p> <p><em><strong>If you have a story to share please get in touch at <a href="mailto:melody@oversixty.com.au">melody@oversixty.com.au</a></strong></em></p> <p><strong>Related links: </strong></p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><em><strong><a href="/health/mind/2016/06/5-steps-to-help-you-speak-your-mind/">5 steps to help you speak your mind</a></strong></em></span></p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><em><strong><a href="/health/mind/2016/05/how-to-beat-self-doubt/">How self-doubt holds you back</a></strong></em></span></p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><em><strong><a href="/health/mind/2016/06/expert-tips-to-be-happier/">6 expert tips to be happier</a></strong></em></span></p>

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