Sad at the Happy conference

I went to the Happiness and its Causes conference on Friday afternoon. By the time I had registered and found my way in I just caught the end of Stephen Post's presentation on why giving makes us not only happy, but healthy too. He'd been on the show the day before and he'd been absolutely terrific as a guest. He heads the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, which for completely explicable reasons makes me think of this guy.

After Stephen Post had finished we had 20 minutes of Steve Biddulph. Actually it was supposed to be 20 minutes, it was more like 30 minutes. The first 12 of it was comedy. I didn't know he was funny - but he was very funny - he worked the enormous room like Robin Williams at the Met. He was brilliant. Then we had a bit on how we stuff up the under 5's and tiny bit on how we stuff up the 12-15's. Biddulph has some great lines: A 14 year-old-boy has so much testosterone that he will argue with a road sign! But we didn't hear much on adolescents because he had a fair bit to say about the SIEV-X tragedy and the memorial to it that Biddulph has been a prime mover for. There was even a short video at the end.

It's fair to say that at this point quite a few in the audience were sad at the happy conference. My own sad moment came later because I was struck at the time by how different this gathering was to say, an academic conference. For starters, there was a lot of love in the room - a huge amount of it for Steve Biddulph, but as I discovered later, a lot of love generally. A high baseline of love, you might say.

In that environment, Biddulph said one or two things that are contested. He denigrated 'controlled crying'. The audience was approving, even appreciative, of his position. Not a dissenting word was heard in that great chamber. More on this later.

Now, whatever your views on this issue, there's at least two points of view - hence the controversy. The reason it's quite a big controversy is that it's used a lot by desperate parents who can't get their babies to go to sleep any other way. Opponents of it won't like me acknowledging this technique in any way. But there you go, I've covered it enough as a journalist to know those two things: 1/ It's very controversial. 2/ Lots of people use it anyway.

After lunch, I moderated a panel entitled "Can Children be Educated to be Happy?" On it was Martin Seligman, the father of Positive Psychology; Stephen Meek, the Principal of Geelong Grammar, which is using Seligman's techniques in the school; Michael Carr-Gregg, the adolescent psychologist; and Anna Patty, who is Education Editor at the Sydney Morning Herald. My job was to be a bit like Parkinson toward the end of his show - keep the conversation moving and make sure that everyone gets to speak.

Well the audience loved a lot of what Martin Seligman had to say. It loved what Stephen Meek had to say. And it loved the vast majority of what Michael Carr-Gregg had to say. But it did not like what Anna Patty had to say at all. She's a journalist and was there to give her broader based perspective and perhaps inject a bit of scepticism into the discussion. After all, what we're talking about - trying to inculcate resilience, an engaged life and well-being into young minds at school - is still an experiment. What Seligman and Meek are doing at Geelong Grammar is hugely ambitious and could result in all schooling being reconsidered, with well-being becoming a key educational outcome. That would be amazing. But nobody's done this yet and so we don't know if it will work, how well or whether there will be unintended consequences.

Anna Patty pointed some of this out and the audience did not like it. They did not like it a bit. Some of them made clear their position in a way completely unlike the rapturous applause we heard earlier for Steve Biddulph. In her closing remarks, there were boos and some yelling. I was just wondering if I should intervene when it stopped.

That was the moment when I was sad at the happy conference.

Ouch!

Like most people I have made use of the tactical headache when I wanted to get out of something. "I'm sorry," I've said, "I can't" do/attend XYZ because of a headache. I don't do it now. I'd like to think this is because maturity has made me a better person but what it has really made me is better at saying "no."

I get perhaps three or four headaches a year. They are always related to tiredness, or stress, or being dehydrated. They can be treated with over the counter pain relief and cured with sleep, relaxation or water. After doing Friday's show, I can't tell you how lucky I feel.

Our main guest was Paula Kamen, on the line from Chicago. One day in 1991, while putting in a contact lens, she got a sharp pain that seemed to begin behind her left eye and go back into her brain. She still has it. Every single day, for the last 17 years, she's had a pig of a headache. Sometimes it's been so bad she couldn't do anything at all - so it's had a massive effect on her. Paula's tried - well, everything you can imagine short of beating her head against a wall. Despite this she is funny and insightful about not just her Headache (it's capitalized) but other people's too. A couple of years ago, she wrote a terrific book which is a mixture of memoir, black humour and science journalism.

Unsurprisingly, when I told Life Matters listeners what we were talking about, the switchboard lit up like a Christmas tree. Those who couldn't get through went to the guestbook. There's clearly a lot more to be said about pain, which as a subject of scientific inquiry is still in its infancy.

Sea Monsters & Hypertension

As a young man I loved to swim in the sea alone. You're not supposed to do this, the life savers tell us not to, but there's something about it that makes you feel amazing. At least, that's how I used to feel. Because one day, a dozen years ago, I went for a swim at Bawley Point on the south coast of NSW and something happened. I was snorkelling across the bay about a metre from the bottom when I saw something. It was a stingray, not fully grown, and it saw me at the exact same moment that I saw it - we arched upward and away from each other at the same time.

The ray was beautiful, it looked hydrodynamically perfect and moved effortlessly. But that's not what struck me as soon as I got to the surface. Instead I became horribly aware that not only was I the only person in the water, there was nobody on the beach or rocks either. I don't think I've ever swum quicker.

I don't swim alone in the ocean any more. It's not that I fear another encounter with a stingray - it's sharks that I worry about now. I don't remember worrying about them before, but these days I do - just for a moment - every time I go into the sea. I'm careful not to get too far from everyone else because I figure why narrow the odds?

The fear of sharks is one of a larger group - the fear of being eaten alive. This fear is an ancient one. It's up there in the amygdala, that part of the brain we got from reptiles, and for most of human history it's been a real asset. It's helped to ensure that my ancestors and yours survived long enough to reproduce - which has worked out well for both of us.

But these days my chances of being killed, let alone eaten, by a shark are close to zero. They're higher than being killed by a lion - Australia doesn't have lions except in zoos and I still go to the beach in summer - but they're still very, very small. I'm much more likely to drown than be attacked by a shark. And many times more likely to killed in a car crash than drown. Actually the drive to and from the beach is the riskiest part of the whole day.

However, it doesn't feel like that. Lizard brain has nothing to say about driving - but quite a bit on the subject of being attacked by a shark. Both risks are small, but one is orders of magnitude smaller than the other. Perversely, this is the one I worry about.

If I really want to worry about something that will kill me, I should lose some weight. If I lost 13.6% of what I weigh now I'd be healthier. (I'd also look amazing in the shower). My family history contains hypertension, diabetes and obesity - not a trifecta I'm keen to encounter. Diseases of affluence - caused by eating too much and moving too little - are the big killers in Australia. (They're not doing the country any good either) They're what I should be worrying about and that worry should change my behaviour.

But lizard brain is not frightened of eating too much and completely unperturbed by the idea of moving too little. It's doing me no favours.

In short, I worry unnecessarily about very unlikely events and ignore genuine dangers because it's the unlikely events that push my emotional buttons and the genuine dangers that don't.

Dan Gardner, the Canadian journalist, manages to make perfect sense of all this in his book, "Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear". I've spent the last week devouring it and interviewed him this morning. You can find it here.

This Mortal Coil

I watched a terrific movie at the weekend: Scoop, made by Woody Allen*. Confusingly, it's not the story of Evelyn Waugh's novel of the same name, (which remains a masterpiece), it's about a young journalism student who's given a tip off about a very wealthy and prominent man. I'm not going to spoil it for you by telling you what happens - except this: the tip-off comes from a dead journalist who manages to reconnect with the living world enough times to point our main character in the right direction. Sort of.

The first time the journo (Ian McShane) does this, he drops off the back of the boat being piloted by the Grim Reaper across a waterway. It's not clear what the waterway is, but it ain't the Murray and if it's the Styx, then Ian McShane is headed for a bit of unpleasantness.

There seems to be more dead in popular culture. Not death in popular culture - there's always been a lot of that - but dead in popular culture. Without thinking about it, Six Feet Under, Shaun of the Dead, even American Beauty, all leap to mind. It isn't just on screens either, a few years ago there was the remarkable The Lovely Bones, the narrator of which is dead from the first pages. More recently there's been Helen Garner's new novel and Mark Wakely's splendid non-fiction effort, Sweet Sorrow, among others.

I have to declare an interest before we go any further - Mark is a colleague and I'm fond of him, but that doesn't stop him producing something rather extraordinary: a beautifully written exploration of death. Friday's Life Matters was given over to a talkback on thinking about death and some of the calls were remarkable. You can listen here.

Today we talked about a more controversial aspect of dying - euthanasia. My guest, Dr Rodney Syme, does not like the word. He prefers 'physician assisted dying' and is upfront about his role in helping some people suffering pain, despair and fear end their lives. The book he's written (this has been a very bookish post) will upset a lot of people, in part because he is not always positive about some who work in palliative care. Hopefully it will be read rather than just ranted about.

*Woody Allen's character comes up with a great line - one that all pessimists (like me) will enjoy. He's just been accused of always seeing the glass as half-empty.
"No, you're wrong. I see the glass half full, but of poison."

Chill, Bill

Bill Clinton did not inhale. Or more accurately, he said he didn't inhale. Remember, he was trying to secure the Democrat nomination for President at the time. This was in 1992 - years before the idea of a President who had to quit cocaine and stop drinking before he could achieve anything was really imaginable.

Bill said he didn't like it and he didn't inhale, which leads to the conclusion that it was the mouth feel of the smoke that he had a problem with. Anyway he got the nomination, won the election and proceeded to squander the biggest political talent most observers had ever seen. He was, famously, distracted by one thing and another. But I digress.

Times have changed. Barack Obama has admitted he did inhale. Frequently. "That was kind of the point." Well, yes. But he hasn't won his party's nomination yet, let alone anything else.

One of these men has clearly been more honest than the other - and one is the greatest political talent...etc. But the point is both were talking about the past, their youth. Because that's when most people use cannabis. They try it when they're at high school or university and it peaks in their 20's - the decade marked by independent income and freedom from parental shackles - then it drops away markedly.

But the latest National Drug Household Survey shows that the beginners, the school-age users, are disappearing. Ten years ago, 35% of boys had recently used cannabis when surveyed. Last year it was a shade over 13%. It's the same story with girls - in 1998 about 34% had recently gotten stoned; last year it was 12.7%. Something is going on, but what?

I won't know until the morning, when I ask Jan Copeland, head of the new National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre, but there is a long journalistic tradition of guessing and I'm nothing if not a traditionalist. Firstly ecstacy use is increasing, rapidly becoming the drug of choice for younger people. Secondly, cannabis use is associated with tobacco use and smoking is trending down.

Actually I think these reasons are connected. Tobacco is not healthy, as discussed here before, and it's not seen as such a cool choice anymore. Whereas e is seen as 'healthier' - it doesn't make you cough or wheeze, it doesn't make you smell, it doesn't send you outside or offend anyone. It makes most people feel amazing and wanting to engage with the world. Cannabis doesn't do that - it's renowned for making people feel hungry, happy and sleepy. But it can also make people withdrawn, uncommunicative and paranoid. Stack all that up and it's an easy call. Sorted.

I will ask, though really most of the interview will be about cannabis and addiction. Because, yes, it turns out that if you're my age, your Dad was right after all - there is now evidence that cannabis can be a drug of addiction and also lead to real health problems.

Luckily for Bill Clinton, he'll never know.

Pack of Bankers

A few years ago there was an ad on the telly. The scene: it's summer, there are kids in the pool, a barbie is going nicely. A woman says to a man she's just met, "So, what do you do?".

"I'm a banker."

Everything freezes - all other conversation, the kids in the pool, even the dog turns to look.

Pause.

"I'm with St George."

"Oh!" the woman says - almost sighs really - and everything is back to normal.
Cue voiceover and pictures of the banker engaging in conversation just like a normal good bloke.

It was a great ad (sadly I can't find a link to it) which cast the St George Bank as different, more human, nicer than all the other banks. This approach is still very much part of the bank's brand today. But the real reason this was such a great ad was that banks were really on the nose.

Nobody, apart from a couple of radio broadcasters, had anything good to say about them. They were seen as ruthless profiteers, growing fat on the banking fees and charges paid by almost everyone.

Nine years on, I wonder how much public affection there is for banks at the moment.

Interest rates are up. Technically, this is not the banks' fault. The cost of their money has been increasing, partly because the Reserve Bank wants to get to grips with inflation and partly because since the collapse of the US sub prime market all risk is more expensive.

The banks' first responsibility is to their shareholders. Indeed, the market would punish them if it was not, so the banks have to pass on the costs of borrowing money to their customers. But most people don't care about all that, what they care about is that interest rates are going up - at a time when petrol, fruit and veg and rents are shooting up too.

That's the context. On top of that have come one or two stories that don't help the banks at all when it comes to winning hearts and minds. And now, another one, from the other side of the world about our old friend: fees and charges.

Essentially British banks have been coining it in, especially through fees for unauthorised overdrafts (where more has come out of your account than you have in it). The Office of Fair Trading estimates these fees alone are worth £3.5 billion every year. It's taking the banks to court. Now the High Court has ruled that this comes under unfair contract rules supposed to protect the public. It is going to be years before this legal process is finished but it could end up with the British banks having to pay back rather a lot of money: £9 billion (+ the half billion they've already handed over). You can hear the Brits cheering from here.

The thing is though, Australian banks are doing pretty well out of fees and charges. Choice estimates that in 2006, they raked in $4 billion from credit card and account holders who paid late, inadvertantly went over their limit, or had a cheque (that somebody else had written) bounce.

Choice, along with the Consumer Action Law Centre, is having a red hot go at the banks on this. There's a Senate Inquiry due to report in September. And Steve Fielding, the Family First Senator for Victoria, has a private member's bill that would stop banks charging more than their costs for dishonoured periodic payments, direct debits or cheques. With one thing and another, it doesn't look like being an annus mirabilis for Australian banks.

All in all then, you wouldn't be completely astonished if somewhere, somehow, the bankers were having a few words in some influential ears.

Capital Idea

I am in the middle of a few days off work and have been away, hence the lack of blogging from me.

The first thing to say is how restorative that particular combination is. Not working and going away - in my experience you have to do both - is a wonderful tonic. The perceptive Peter Martin has written about the value of not working, that is, the value of not working to a person who usually works. He could not be more spot on.

I get to not work for seven weeks a year. In Australian terms, that's rather a lot of not working. (In American terms it's an astronomical amount of not working). It tends to break down into a four-week break over summer and three one-week breaks through the year. I get up later and spend more time with the kids. There's always a child-friendly movie and an associated visit to a certain global fast food chain which the kids love and I enjoy more than I should. There's usually plenty of time out doors, though this week in Sydney it hasn't been good.

But we haven't been in Sydney. We've been in Canberra, my home town. I have lived exactly 6 and a half years in Canberra. But six of those years were 14 to 20, a pretty crucial period in most lives. Because of that, and because my mum is there, (and two of my sisters with attendant nephews and nieces) it is my home town. Years ago, I felt like a Londoner, an Australian Londoner, but it did feel like home. I like living in Sydney and it is home but it will never be my home town. Canberra, with it's distinct, proper seasons, hills, bush and family very much is. It's a city that mostly has blue skies, and true to form, it was glorious.

We stayed at my mum's house. My son and I walked up the bike track from O'Connor to the facility that most people still think of as Bruce Stadium, and we watched the Brumbies come home the stronger against the much fancied Sharks from South Africa. The next day we went to some friends' house for lunch, then on to my niece's 8th birthday party as the afternoon became evening. On Monday we went to the wonderful Questacon - there was just us and about 20-thousand kids there - then I caught up with a Canberra bloke who lives in Sydney for lunch. Another friend, down from Sydney to visit her sister-in-law, popped in for an hour, and then my sister came around for a cup of tea. It was wonderful.

Canberra is a much maligned town. It's news shorthand for the government. Everybody knows jokes about public servants. It is one of the few places in our hot country with really cold winters. But it's actually a great place to live and a fantastic place to bring up kids. It's clean and green, though not as green as everyone would like (it really needs some rain). Compared to all of the state capitals (bar Hobart) it's easy to get around, and because it's the national capital it has wonderful facilities for such a small place.

At lunch yesterday with my friend, I met a senior public servant who came from Sunshine Coast in the mid 80s. His oldest is in year 12 and other child is in year 8. He'd be about 50, so in a few years when the kids have finished school he could do the 54/11 and live anywhere he wanted. Or, he could keep working and get a transfer. Go home to the sunshine on the Sunshine Coast. He's not going anywhere.

Physicists driving cabs

Quick, what's the most ethnically diverse city in the world?

It's not New York. It's not London. It's not Melbourne (though like Melbourne it's rather flat).

It's Toronto. Allegedly. I say allegedly because I find it hard to believe that NY and London aren't ahead on that score, they're both much bigger after all. But there it is, Toronto is the world's most ethnically diverse city. Really.

Half the population wasn't born in Canada and more than 150 languages are spoken every day. But to me that's not the mind-boggling statistic. This is: 100-thousand immigrants arrive there every year. Australia's total immigration is 150-thousand a year.

Traditionally immigrant groups arrive, cop a bit of prejudice from those already there, put their heads down, work like Trojans, and send their kids to university. It's not easy, it's bloody hard, but they benefit and the countries they arrive in - Australia, Canada, USA - benefit even more. But that system is breaking down, these days everything needs to happen faster.

In Toronto, they've done the research. The region is heading for a labour market growth of zero without immigration. They have big impending and current skills shortages. Everybody needs professionals (not lawyers obviously but teachers, engineers, doctors and accountants) and Toronto is no different, but it also needs sheet metal workers, an occupation with an average age in the 50s.

So the city has 100-thousand new arrivals from outside Canada every year and genuine problems in its labour market. This means too many proverbial physicists driving cabs, and indeed there is a bit of that. Except the Torontonians have started squaring the circle - they set up an organisation aimed at getting immigrants into work. It's called TRIEC, short for Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council, and much easier to say quickly. It doesn't deliver services, it works like a broker, or convenor - essentially it gets people together. This modest approach turns out to be very effective.

TRIEC is still fairly new. It has a smallish intern program, which has an 85% success rate in getting people into work. It has a larger mentor program that generates similarly impressive results. It has a website that encourages the employment of immigrants. It has begun addressing the culture by engaging with the region's business schools and HR professionals. It has done all this in a bit over four years and it isn't really a branch of government. Instead TRIEC was created after the stakeholders of Toronto had a good, hard look at their city and the future it was likely to face.

The burghers of Toronto have been proactive, thoughtful and practical. They haven't solved their problems yet - TRIEC's ultimate aim is to go out of business - but they have made an impressive start. Good on them.

The Big Three Oh

Louise Brown will be 30 in July. Doubtless she feels as ambiguous about that as the rest of us do when confronted with a significant birthday. But her big day is being noted by the likes of me because Louise Brown is a bit special - she was the world's first 'test-tube' baby.

How quaint that phrase seems now. How long since you heard anyone say it, "test-tube baby"? Technically Louise Brown was the result of a successful in vitro fertilisation (IVF). In the 30 years since she was born, IVF has been joined by a suite of other procedures. These days they are all grouped into something called Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART).

Over the last decade or so, the use of ART has become almost commonplace. So commonplace it's easy to think it's unremarkable. That would be a mistake - these technologies are remarkable, they have brought more than a million children into the lives of people who otherwise could not have had them. But the technologies aren't perfect. They are expensive, intrusive, physically uncomfortable and emotionally confronting. They often fail and that failure rate climbs quickly when the would-be parents, especially the would-be mothers, are older.

Older is a relative term. Most of us, these days, do not think of women in their late 30s as 'older'. But in fertility terms, they are. Fertility begins to drop at around 35 in most women as egg quality declines. It's inexorable and irreversible. And, with the best will in the world and enough money to go through many 'cycles' of treatment, the result can still be no baby and heartbreak*.

Who then ought to be allowed access to ART? This is the question asked and answered in Tom Frame's Children on Demand. The head of the School of Theology at Charles Sturt University is one of Australia's most prolific public intellectuals. He's cranking out books faster than many professional footballers can read them. Dr Frame is also an adoptee and the impact this has had on him affects every word. He is completely upfront about this.

Essentially Tom Frame believes that ART should not be available to a couple in which either the man or the woman isn't contributing their DNA. He argues that women should not be able to use donor sperm from a man they do not know, or even that widows be permitted to use the sperm of a man they used to know exceedingly well - their dead husband. He also believes that gay and lesbian couples should not be granted access to ART. And he's not keen on surrogacy either.

Apart from the issue of surrogacy, his motivation is a concern for the welfare and well-being of the child that may result. But if you want to know exactly why he holds these concerns, and why the ethicist Leslie Cannold disagrees with him, you'll need to listen to the show.

*This should not imply that all fertility problems are women's problems. A bit under half are men's problems and sometimes the problem seems to belong to the couple. Worst of all, about 15% of the time the infertility cannot be explained with the investigations we have now.

Let them eat cake or something

We have two truly outstanding science communicators in Australia. One is my colleague Robyn Williams. The other is Julian Cribb. Robyn is a broadcaster, the broadcaster really. Julian works for himself these days, rather than a paper, but he remains the doyen of science writers. He is clear, fluent and explains the otherwise inexplicable. His latest effort is as scary as something that rhymes with duck.

In a nutshell, the world is running out of food. One indicator is that our reserves of grains would not last two months. It's easy, in these days of no-wheat diets, to forget what that means. Grains are the great staple foods of the world - especially rice, maize and wheat. If we run out of grains, the planet goes to hell in a handbasket.

You may have noticed that filling your handbasket (alright, trolley) at the supermarket is costing more. Australia's drought has pushed up the prices of fruit, vegetables and meat. Lately, there's been increases in the cost of bread, flour, rice and the already exhorbitant breakfast cereals. That's because wheat, rice and barley have all become more expensive.

If you live in Australia, you're not going to starve. Food will get more expensive but not impossible to come by. Actually food really is going to get rather pricier. We've been living in an era of cheap food which has lasted for decades. (Though, as one of five children in a family growing up in the 70s, I remember when chicken was "too dear"). There are lots of reasons all this cheap food was possible, and this isn't the place to go through them all, but two are fundamental: land and water.

Much of the world's best arable land is now being paved over. Cities are built on it. And golf courses. (I am conflicted about golf courses - I find them beguilingly attractive but know that in most environments they are about the most wasteful use of land and resources). Even in Sydney, where I live, the arable land is vanishing because it's becoming too valuable to be farmed. That's one reason.

Another is that the world's topsoil, that magic, fertile layer 5-20 centimetres thick, is disappearing. Wind, farming practices and rain are taking it to the sea. And speaking of water, cheap food is predicated on cheap water. Mostly the water hasn't been so much cheap as ludicrously undervalued. This is gradually changing, and it may be that that supply and demand produce a tipping point where prices increase very rapidly indeed.

But if the end of cheap food in Australia is an inconvenience, or even another source of pressure on working families, that's as nothing to the impact we're already seeing in some parts of the world. There have been riots over food in the last couple of weeks - people have died.

Food and water security have been the great drivers of conflict throughout history. We have tended to focus on the who in these disputes - which people, which ethnic groups, which nations? But the why has usually been about resources - most of the time about food and water. Cribb points out that if people can't get food where they live, they move. The UNHCR currently helps almost 33 million people, who are either refugees or have been "internally displaced". That figure is likely to rise as global warming continues to impact on crop growth in Africa and Asia.

Julian Cribb is clear-eyed about what needs to happen - he suggests 12 changes that would make a difference. Among them, a massive investment in agricultural research; speeding up the transfer of new technologies to farmers the world over; the development of "green cities", which recycle their own water and waste and grow some of their own food.

The 2020 Summit is next weekend in Canberra. I do hope someone going will mention all this.