Billycarts at Bathurst

Once a year in springtime, a drove of rowdy young men descend on a 100 acre property in Sofala, NSW. They’ve spent the winter engineering creative carts to race in the annual Yellow Box Spring Carnival: a billycart derby. Hurtling down the kilometre-long dirt drive in their homemade hero-wagons these guys deserve the “110% stamp of commitment” inked on their foreheads.

Its all in your head ......!

Cartoon by Wilcox - Sydney morning Herald 15th September 2012

This is a long post, so bear with me.

Last week we got a new 42 inch SmartTV – a beauty. It’s a computer in its own right and it connects directly to our PC and our mobile phones. It has its own external hard drive to record and store movies for playback on demand. So far I’ve just managed to learn how to turn it on, turn it off, alter the volume level, change channels and change TV media types (Digital to Pay TV and back again,)

When my daughter’s partner drove down from Sydney to install and set it up he said that this was the last TV we will require for the rest of our lives – to spend any more money would be money wasted for little gain and he had assisted other couples to install $8,000 “Entertainment Centres” with $5,000 TVs when all they really needed was a TV like ours for under $1,000.

So – Why do we do it?

In offices, living rooms, cafes, cars and trains everywhere, smart technologies are proving us dumb. People are pressing when they should be tapping and swiping when they should be waving. They are uselessly pinching laptop screens to make the writing bigger, jabbing at stubborn desktop monitors with TV remotes, even trying to change TV channels with a mouse. Even with my Kindle I am probably not using 50% of its electronic potential - in fact the most common function, other than "search" is to enlarge the typeface font so I can read it with my aged eyesight in poor light conditions.

The cycle of anticipation, followed by annoyance then embarrassment at using the wrong gesture or movement occurs when the brain prematurely transfers a task from the frontal lobe (where it is learnt) to the more primitive basal ganglia, which handles "automatic" actions.

As the tide of digital devices gathers pace, so does the potential for disconnect between hand, eye and machine. Apart from Apple's new iPhone, new smartphones or tablet devices are imminent or just launched from Nokia, Motorola, Sony and Amazon, among others.

I guess the problem now, with all these devices, is there are just so many different types. It does put a big load on us, especially ''unnatural movements'' which, because the physical movement is disconnected from its effect, are a cognitive step beyond ''natural'' gestures like picking up a stick.

 (From: Devices weave our brains into a twist - Catherine Armitage, Sydney Morning Herald)

Many organisms, especially humans, are characterized by their capacity for intentional, goal-directed actions. However, similar behaviours often proceed automatically, as habitual responses to antecedent stimuli. How are goal-directed actions transformed into habitual responses? Recent work combining modern behavioural assays and neurobiological analysis of the basal ganglia has begun to yield insights into the neural basis of habit formation.

When you flip on a light switch, your behaviour could be a result of the desire for a state of illumination coupled with the belief that a certain movement will lead to it.

Sometimes, however, you just turn on the light habitually, without anticipating the consequences — the very context of having arrived home in a dark room automatically triggers your reaching for the light switch. Although to the observer these two cases might appear to be similar, they differ in the extent to which they are controlled by outcome expectancy. When the light switch is known to be broken, the habit might still persist whereas the goal-directed action might not.

Intuitively, then, goal-directed actions are controlled by their consequences, habits by antecedent stimuli.

The basal ganglia (or basal nuclei) act as a cohesive functional unit. They are situated at the base of the forebrain and are strongly connected with the cerebral cortex, thalamus and other brain areas. The basal ganglia are associated with a variety of functions, including voluntary motor control, procedural learning relating to routine behaviors or "habits" such as bruxism, eye movements, and cognitive, emotional functions. Currently popular theories implicate the basal ganglia primarily in action selection, that is, the decision of which of several possible behaviors to execute at a given time. Experimental studies show that the basal ganglia exert an inhibitory influence on a number of motor systems, and that a release of this inhibition permits a motor system to become active. The "behavior switching" that takes place within the basal ganglia is influenced by signals from many parts of the brain, including the prefrontal cortex, which plays a key role in executive functions.

So, first we ‘practice’ the moves and learn them like ‘rote learning’ until we reach a point that our pre-frontal cortex assesses that we have gained competency. Those movements are then switched into and stored in the basal ganglia at the base of the forebrain where our skills are honed and developed.

Problem is, as we mature and with the onset of advanced ageing, the frontal cortex and associated areas of ‘higher learning’ are amongst the first to deteriorate and are associated with brain conditions known as hyperkinetic disorders – tremors, tics, dystonia, chorea, ataxia – which when present, even in their mildest age-related form, make learning new motor skills extremely difficult, if not impossible,

What do we do in this  age of rapidly expanding modern, tactile, technology? My advice is to not try to compete for the sake of competing. So keep getting your grandkids to re-set the DVD player, to tune your television or do not become frustrated when they bewilder you with their rapid hand, eye and finger movements as they text the St James bible to a friend across town in a matter of seconds. Pick electronic devices that are suited to your skill levels and meet your needs. Don’t give yourself a technological uppercut – apply the K.I.S.S. principle - Keep It Simple Silly!

The "Drone Wars" against privacy

Australian Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim has warned it may be impossible to use privacy law to prevent someone being filmed secretly in their own home by a drone. He says he is confident the Federal Privacy Act would control the actions of government agencies or businesses operating a drone for surveillance. However, Commissioner Pilgrim has told Radio National's Background Briefing program the act does not apply to individuals.

"Perhaps one of your neighbours buys one of these things and starts flying it around your local street," he said. "What I am not sure about is whether we have sufficient laws to cover the activities of those individuals. For example the Federal Privacy Act doesn't cover the activities of individuals and so in the context of the use of drones, the act I administer wouldn't come into play."

"A (Canberra) court has been asked to decide whether a man trying to find his allegedly stolen iPad was acting unlawfully when he tracked it down to a north Canberra townhouse using Apple's anti-theft app and a GPS. Police, acting on the man's information, allegedly discovered the iPad and a cache of stolen items at the Forde house where 49-year-old Alden Harder lived.

Mr Harder's lawyer has argued the man physically trespassed on his client's property while searching for the iPad and had also committed ''trespass via radio wave'' when he activated an alarm on the device while it was inside Mr Harder's house. But the prosecution has dismissed the claim as absurd.  

Mr Harder has not been charged with any offence.  

On Monday, police applied to the ACT Magistrates Court for a forensic procedures order, asking for the man to submit to fingerprinting. Mr Harder is fighting the order."

Commissioner Pilgrim has called on governments to review their privacy and surveillance legislation to ensure it covers the use of drone technology.

He says there are inconsistencies between state and territory surveillance legislation which might apply to the remote-controlled technology.

"I think what is necessary would be for governments at all levels to have a look at those existing laws," he said. "To see whether they do deal with this rapidly changing technology and are able to keep up with it and meet the needs and the expectations of the community in this area," he said.

A view of the future ... researcher from the University of Tasmania trialling a drone.

A drone 'spying' on a surfer at the beach

There's no 3G in heaven

Lifeline funding crisis going unanswered

Lifeline funding

Teenage suicide is rapidly increasing!

Calls to Lifeline go unanswered as not enough operators try to cope with the calls.!

"One suicide is a tragedy. But what happens when a community is rocked by a series of suicides, one after another, all of them young people? Do the families mourn in private, fearful that expressing their grief publicly could result in more deaths? Or does the community come together, so that individual families can tell their stories and in turn do something to combat the insidious face of depression and its consequences?

Until now the accepted wisdom has been to publicly downplay suicide but in speaking to families who've lost children, reporter Liz Jackson found that young people are in fact talking about suicide all the time on facebook. Social media has the potential to influence behaviour, for better or worse, and it's now accepted that suicide prevention strategies need to deal with this. As one parent explains, it was only after the death of her child that she realised her daughter had been discussing her depression and suicidal thoughts on facebook. When calls and messages kept coming addressed to her deceased daughter the mother was forced to write:

"Can everyone please stop calling and messaging (my daughter). She doesn't have her phone. I do. And by the way there is no 3G in heaven."

Four Corners tells the story of one community in a major Australian city where the threat of repeated suicides amongst young people became so overwhelming that families and community leaders, backed by mental health experts, held an old fashioned public meeting to allow the families and friends of the victims to tell their stories. It was a bold and controversial step but it was the only way they felt they could deal with the situation. In doing so the community hoped they could break the terrible silence and find a way to confront this silent enemy. You will be shocked by what you see.

"There is No 3G in Heaven", reported by Liz Jackson and presented by Kerry O'Brien, goes to air on Monday 10th September at 8.30pm on ABC1. It is replayed on Tuesday 11th September at 11.35 pm. It can also be seen at 8pm on Saturday on ABC News 24, on ABC iview and at 4 Corners."

Sydney's Festival of the Winds

Sydney's most colourful spring festival, The Festival of the Winds kite flying festival which always promises to be a great day out for the whole family. Colourful cartoon characters, giant animals and flowers, fighter kites, box kites, delta kites and more made the skies come alive over Sydney's most famous beach!  Australian and international kite flyers displayed their great flying skills and wonderful hand-made creations. The public were encouraged to join in and fly their own kites on the beach or make your own wonderful creation at one of the kite making workshops on offer throughout the day!  

My daughter took our grandsons out to Bondi to Bondi Beach Park and the Bondi Pavilion for the Festival of the Winds and the boys had a great time.

Quick hot breakfast

Please feel free to copy this recipe and pass it on to others.

TOASTED FRENCH SANDWICH

INGREDIENTS

                                                                                                  

4 slices of whole grain bread (I use a 9 grain bread but you can use wholemeal bread instead)

3 eggs

½ cup milk

2 rashers of bacon sliced into halves

¼  cup of grated mozzarella

Tablespoon of maple syrup

Salt and pepper

Butter for frying bread

METHOD

Mix together the eggs and milk and stir through the salt and pepper.

Place the bacon on an oven tray and bake at 200^oC until just crispy.

Soak each slice of bread in the “eggy” mixture, then fry in a warm pan with a knob of butter until golden brown on each side.

Serve a slice of French toast with 2 slices of bacon, a sprinkle of Mozzarella cheese and a drizzle of maple syrup and top off with another slice of French toast to form a sandwich.

Decadence to the Island of Saints and Scholars

Move over Notre Dame and get ready Dublin, the Lingerie Football League is coming your way.

The Daily Edge reports that the Lingerie Football League (LFL), a uniquely American invention by millionaire Mitch Mortaza, is set to branch out into Europe in 2014. Cities that will welcome the LFL include Dublin, Barcelona, Frankfurt, Rhein, and Manchester.

Read more: http://www.irishcentral.com/news/American-football-played-by-women-in-their-underwear-set-for-Dublin---VIDEO-166385256.html#ixzz25k0bzHUg