7WAYS

TO

OUTWIT

APPETITE
PROVEN TACTICS TO
POWER UP YOUR DIET

Q
4-LEGGED HEROES
ANIMAL LIFESAVERS
REAL-LIFE CRIME

A FAMILY OF
BANK ROBBERS
THE GOOD PIT BULL
n HOURS OF
GREAT READING
n PAGES OF
GREAT JOKES

PLUS
TANGLE IN THE JUNGLE

BRYCE COURTENAY
ON WHAT WORDS CAN DO

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Contents
FEBRUARY 2015

32

Food and Diet

7 WAYS TO OUTWIT YOUR APPETITE

Would Batman eat hot chips for dinner? Youll be
surprised how easy it is to curb cravings when
you think like a superhero.
B R I A N WA N S I N K F R O M S L I M BY D E S I G N

40

Extraordinary True Tales

AMAZING ANIMALS
Whether youre fending off blubbery bullies
orenraged bovines, help is at hand.
J E N N I F E R S . H O L L A N D F R O M U N L I K E LY H E R O E S

48

Hero Pets

THE GOOD PIT BULL

As her owner faces a deadly situation, Lilly
the pit bull rewrites the story for her breed.
A N I TA B A R T H O L E M E W

54

P.

48

Living Language

WORDS
Much-loved Australian novelist Bryce Courtenay
on his love of language. F R O M S I LV E R M O O N :
R E F L E C T I O N S O N L I F E , D E AT H A N D W R I T I N G

What Its Like

LOVE REIMAGINED
Jane Whitehead found love again with themost
unlikely suitor.
AS TO L D TO E M I LY C U N N I N G H A M F R O M T H E G UA R D I A N

64

First Person

THE TERRORISTS SON

His father chose a path of bigotry and hate. This
son followed his mother and chose peace.
Z A K E B R A H I M F R O M T H E T E R R O R I ST S SO N

wo
nursrds that
e the

ego and
heal
the

he
ar
t

60

P.

54

February2015

Contents
FEBRUARY 2015

74

Cheat Sheet

INSTANT ANSWERS: EBOLA

The latest outbreak of this deadly virus has
spurred anxiety and confusion. Heres what
youneed to know. H A Z E L F LY N N

76

RD Interview

SIR WORLD WIDE WEB

When he created the web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee
hadno inkling of its impact. M O H A N S I VA N A N D

82

P.

82

Drama In Real Life

LOST ON THE VOLCANO

Far from the surfing beaches and hula girls,
anexperienced hiker discovers Hawaii is full of
surprises. A L B E R T SA M A H A FROM THE VILLAGE VOICE

90

Who Made That?

NIGERIAN SCAM
The lure of a fortune has been around for a very
long time. DA N I E L E N G B E R FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES

P.

104

92

Against the Odds

THE GIRL WHO WOULDNT BREAK

Not even a rare genetic disorder can stop Jessica
Bernstein from following her dreams.
A N I TA B A R T H O L E M E W

98

Environment

TANGLE IN THE JUNGLE

Climbing plants are choking tropical forests
andthe outcome could be disastrous.
W I L L I A M L AU R A N C E FROM THE NEW SCIENTIST

104

True Crime

THE FAMILY THAT ROBBED BANKS

Getting involved in the family business has
itspros and cons. Some more than others.
S K I P H O L L A N D SWO R T H FROM TEXAS MONTHLY

February2015

SUBSCRIBER

BONUS
EXTRA
32PAGES

?
ON !
I
T
SEC TION

S
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NU T ED
O
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THIS
U
P
K O THE
C
Sheepish Travel Encounters
NLO TO

U
TO NOW
T
N
E
WA CRIB

BS
S|U108

The Forgotten Felon

Medical Pros on the Road
Can Meditation Slow Ageing?
Test of Love

P.

REGULARS
4
7
8
10
12
14
63
81
114
122

Letters
Editors Note
Staff Pick
My Story
Kindness of Strangers
Unbelievable
Thats Outrageous
Quotable Quotes
Smart Animals
Puzzles, Trivia & Word Power

CONTESTS
4 Caption Competition
6 Jokes and Stories

HUMOUR
38 Laughter, the Best Medicine
58 Lifes Like That
72 All in a Days Work

THE DIGEST
16
22
24
26
28
30
116

Health
Food
Home
Work
Travel
Etc
Movies & Books

February2015

Letters

READERS COMMENTS AND OPINIONS

Lessons from the Playground

Let Kids Take Risks (December)

should be translated into every
language and a copy given to all
parents on the birth of a child. Only
then will we manage to get the
message across.
I was fortunate in growing up:
there was a surf beach at my front door, mountains at my back door
and a free-flowing creek to the side. From about age three, I spent
many hours playing in all areas. I recall being very scared while climbing
over large rocks in the creek but pushed on and learnt a safer route the
next time. Kids need to make a lot of decisions for themselves in order
to make sensible decisions later in life.
ROSS TAYLOR

I completely agree with the author

of Let Kids Take Risks. How blessed
my siblings and I were to be raised
in the 40s and 50s, before the
madness of protection became the
norm.
JOAN SMITH
I was very unsettled by Hanna
Rosins assertions. This article left
me feeling like I was doing my
children a disservice by taking care
of them.
BETH HEADLEY

Classics Collection
Thank you so much for this special
collection (RD Classic Reads,
December). I have been receiving the
4

February2015

Readers Digest since 1966 and

although Ive moved house seven
times I have taken all my Readers
Digests with me. I even remember
some of these stories! MARIANNE FRASER
The Little Boat That Sailed Through
Time (RD Classic Reads) has real

WRITE TO US
If you are moved or
provoked by any item in
the magazine, write to us.
Refer to page 6 for the
editorial contact details
inyour region.

lessons. By being self-dependent, we

can enjoy lifes blessings without
being held back by the tears it also
thrusts in our eyes. Imade both my
children read the story so that they
could absorb the resilience of the
little boat.
B. JINDAL

A Pope For Our Time

I recently had the pleasure of
meeting Pope Francis (The Pope
Who Burns With Joy, December). It
is an experience I will never forget.
He greeted all the disabled (myself
included) individually and asked us
to pray for him. He is the Pope the
church has needed.
LAURA GALBO

Scary Summer Days

Halfway through Terror at the
Beach (November), I was almost
afraid to continue reading for fear of
the next scare!
SARA BALIGH

Caption Contest
WE ASKED YOU TO THINK UP A FUNNY
CAPTION FOR THIS PHOTO.

Christmas at the Cheapskates.

CAROLINE ANNE KELLY

The Halitosis Anonymous year-end

function.
MICHAEL GOATHAM
Who has the sports page?
SIVALINGUM THAVER

The Feast of the Last Letters.

PIERRE DU PLESSIS

I think something was lost in

translation: I said, The service sucks,
not, Suck the serviettes.
ROBIN PALMER

Yeah, I tried Atkins, but the Napkins

Diet really works.
SARA CALMAN

P HOTOS: THINKSTOCK

WIN!
CAPTION CONTEST
Come up with the funniest
caption for the above photo and
you could win cash. To enter, see
details on page 6.

Mmmm... a bit bland if you ask me.

BRAYDEN EVA

Where is that dog when you need

him? How much more homework is
there?!
SCOTT CRUMLIN
Congratulations to Sara Calman.

February2015

Vol. 188
No. 1115
February 2015

EDITORIAL Editor-in-Chief Sue Carney

Editor RD Asia Siti Rohani Design Director
JohnYates Managing Editor Louise Waterson
Chief Subeditor& Production Editor Donyale
Harrison Deputy Chief Subeditor Melanie Egan
Designer Luke Temby Photo Editor Judith Love
Digital Editor & Humour Editor Greg Barton
Subeditor Hannah Hempenstall Editorial
Coordinator Sally McMullen Contributing
Editors Hazel Flynn; Helen Signy
PRODUCTION & MARKETING
Production Manager Balaji Parthsarathy
Marketing Director Jason Workman
Marketing Manager Gala Mechkauskayte
ADVERTISING Group Advertising Director,
Asia Pacific Sheron White Advertising Sales
Manager Darlene Delaney
REGIONAL ADVERTISING CONTACTS
Asia Kahchi Liew, liew.kahchi@rd.com
Australia Darlene Delaney,
darlene.delaney@rd.com
New Zealand Debbie Bishop,
debbie@hawkhurst.co.nz
South Africa Michle de Chastelain,
michele@iafrica.com
PUBLISHED BY READERS DIGEST
(AUSTRALIA) PTY LTD
Managing Director/Publisher
Walter Beyleveldt
Director Lance Christie
READERS DIGEST ASSOCIATION, INC (USA)
President and Chief Executive Officer
Bonnie Kintzer
Vice President, Chief Operating Officer,
International Brian Kennedy
Editor-in-Chief, International Magazines
Raimo Moysa
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THROUGHOUT THE
WORLD. REPRODUCTION IN ANY MANNER IN
WHOLE OR PART IN ENGLISH OR OTHER
LANGUAGES PROHIBITED
6

February2015

CONTRIBUTE

FOR DIGITAL EXTRAS AND

SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS, SEE PAGE 17.

Anecdotes and jokes

Send in your real-life laugh for

Lifes Like That or All in a Days
Work. Got a joke? Send it in for
Laughter is the Best Medicine!

Smart Animals

Share antics ofunique pets or

wildlife in up to 300words.

Kindness of Strangers

Share your moments of

generosity in 100500 words.

My Story

Do you have an inspiring or

life-changing tale to tell?
Submissions must be true,
unpublished, original and
8001000 words see website
formore information.

Letters to the editor, caption

competition and other
reader submissions

Online

Follow the Contribute link at the

Readers Digest website in your region.

Email
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and conditions.
TO SERVE YOU BETTER
OUR PRIVACY STATEMENT

Readers Digest collects your information to provide

our products and services and may also use your
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privacy complaints process.

Editors Note

PHOTOGRAPHED BY TIM BAUER

Making a Choice
I FIRST HEARD OF ZAK EBRAHIM last March when he stood on stage
at a TED conference in Vancouver. Also talking at the sessions were such
luminaries as Bill and Melinda Gates and Sting. Yet the audience of 1900
or so watching live, and the more than two million people who have since
downloaded Zaks talk via ted.com or the TED app, were awed by a gently
courageous individual who could so easily have chosen not to step up
into the spotlight. This issue we are pleased to bring you an extract from
Zak Ebrahims book, The Terrorists Son (page 64).
When Zak was seven his father shot and killed a rabbi in New York
City. Then from his prison cell, the extremist helped organise the 1993
bombing of the World Trade Center that killed six people. Eventually
Zaks mother demanded a divorce, she changed the familys last name,
moved, and mother and children carved out a new life.
But Zak cant ignore the truth that he
has his fathers blood in his veins. Zak
spent years coming to terms with what
that means. He admits wrestling with
anger, fear and self loathing. Now
through his unique perspective, he has
decided that although he cant choose
what he is a terrorists son he can
choose who he wants to be. And that is
someone who speaks out against bigotry,
zealotry and violence. Zak Ebrahim is a
force for peace. Dont miss his story.

February2015

STAFF PICK

The Best Story Is...

One of the great things about putting together the

magazine is that the staff get to read all the stories first.
Needless to say, animals featured high in our favourites
I had so much fun working
on the Amazing Animals
piece (page 40). All
animals are amazing in
their own ways, but some
of these stories are truly
extraordinary. My
personal preference would
have to be the inspiring
tale of Alyna, the real-life
Energiser bunny!
SALLY MCMULLEN, editorial coordinator

Love Reimagined (page

60) is my fave for this
month - a beautiful love
story told by a lovely,
patient, compassionate
human being.
JUDITH LOVE, photo editor

February2015

Gimpy the seal won our admiration, too

My favourite story in February is The

Good Pit Bull (page 48). I love that
animals can sense when a human is in
danger and that they go out of their
way to help them. Lilly is the epitome
of a selfless, loyal dog who puts her life
on the line to save her owner. Makes
my heart melt.
HANNAH HEMPENSTALL, subeditor

I really enjoyed Sheepish Travel

Encounters (Subscriber Bonus, print
edition). I love all kinds of animals but
sheep have to be one of my favourites.
Maybe thats because my Mum has a
small flock of her own on her farm.
They are surprisingly intelligent,
LUKE TEMBY, designer
friendly animals!
It isnt easy to write about
losing a loved one, but this
months My Story (page 10)
tackles this subject
beautifully. With delicate
insight, the author portrays
his own loss by drawing on
the story of a pair of birds
hed come to observe and
whose calls hed enjoyed
hearing. Its magical.

PHOTO: THI NKSTOCK

LOUISE WATERSON, managing editor

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the

world wide web (page 76), recognised the
potential of sharing the power of millions
of computers. Eschewing material gain,
instead he made a commitment to
improve peoples lives and maintain
anopen, free web accessible to all. As he
says, I think everybody whos been
involved in it has a large responsibility to
make sure that the web really does serve
the needs of humanity.
MELANIE EGAN, deputy chief subeditor

As a keen walker, I found Lost on the

Volcano (page 82) to be terrifying and
inspiring in equal parts. It was
frightening to see just how easy it is for
even well-known territory to become
unrecognisable as bad weather rolls in.
My only comfort was the professionalism
and dedication of the rescue teams who
tried to find the lost walker.
DONYALE HARRISON, chief subeditor

My favourite story this month

is 7 Ways to Outwit Your
Appetite (page 32). I found
myself nodding a lot when
reading the article and Im
starting to put some tips into
action, specifically the one
that says you should rearrange
your fridge to make sure that
the first visible foods are best
for you. So Im banishing
snacks to hard-to-reach
SITI ROHANI, Asia editor
places!
February2015

MY STORY

A husband learns some valuable lessons about life, love

and loss from a pair of songbirds

Birds of Paradise
ERIC PROVIS ,
90, lives in
Inverell, NSW,
and has
astrong
appreciation
for wildlife.

10

IN MANY WAYS, some bird species are like human beings.

They mate for life and they miss their partner when tragedy
strikes. Asa boy living on a farm near the township of Tumby
Bay, on the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia, I was
privileged to see avariety of birds in their natural habitat.
Isoon became familiar with their various calls of danger,
songs of happiness and laments to their loves. I stayed on
thefarm until I married my wife Colleen in 1949 and moved
to a smaller farm in the same district.
When my son Ross left school and showed an interest in
farming, I sold our farm and bought a larger property for the
two of us to work on. At the same time, I leased another
property close by which became home to Colleen and myself.
Close to the homestead was a patch of bushland that was
inhabited by many species of birds, including a beautiful pair
ofwestern thrush. The males joyous song could be heard
throughout the day and I always thought it was a proclamation
of the happiness he felt with his partner by his side. One day,
Inoticed the female fly out from the pine near the garage.
Curiosity got the better of me and, on inspection of the tree,
Ifound a nest with four tiny eggs in it. No wonder the male kept
singing his happy song as he was to become a father.
Several days after I found the nest we experienced an
extremely windy day. This was unusual for that time of year in
early October, when the weather is usually very pleasant.
A few days after this windstorm, Irealised the male had

February2015

PHOTO: TO COM E

BY E RIC P R OV I S

He must have missed

her because in the
following days, the
male thrush continued
to call pleadingly for
her. Eventually, there
was silence.
I NEVER HEARD the
thrush again. Did he
leave that area of the
bush to seek another
mate, or did grief
overcome him to the
stage that he could not
sing anymore? I will
never know, but I do
know that area of
bushland was never
Western thrush
the same without his
generally remain
joyful song.
together for life
Recently, I lost
Colleen, my dear wife
and loving partner for over 60 years.
stopped singing his cheerful song
And though more than 30 years have
and was now producing a more
passed since that little bird lost his
distressed call for his mate. He kept
loved one, during my time of grief, my
calling for her over the next few
thoughts often turn to him. Like him,
days and I decided to check the nest.
I also feel the loss of the one I cherish
To my distress, Ifound the female
most. I would like to believe that
thrush dead in the nest with her
Paradise has a place for birds and that
wings outstretched covering her
the pair of western thrush will one
newborn chicks in an attempt to
day be reunited, and once again we
shield them from the heat and wind.
Unfortunately, her effort was in vain.
may hear his joyful song.
Saddened, I left it as I found it. I
Do you have a tale to tell?
couldnt help but ponder that she
Well pay cash for any original
could have abandoned the nest to
and unpublished story we print.
seek protection in the bush, but
See page 6 for details on how
realised a mothers love is too great.
to contribute.
February2015

11

THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

Two very different people who reached out to help

feed those less fortunate in very different ways

Pay It Forward

AS RYAN LEE COX was waiting to pay

for his coffee order at an Indiana, US
fast food drive-through, he decided to
try something hed seen on a TV news
show he paid for the coffee order of
the driver in the car behind. The
small gesture made the young
Indianapolis entrepreneur feel great,
sohe shared his experience on
Facebook. An old friend suggested
that rather than paying for peoples
coffee, Ryan put that money towards

An Indianapolis mans paying

it forward organisation is
helping kids in need enjoy their
school lunches

12

February2015

helping school students pay off their

delinquent school lunch accounts.
Sometimes because of economic
hardship, the accounts fall into
negative balance and the kids suffer.
She got the idea after hearing that a
Utah student was denied lunch.
So the following week Ryan visited
his nephews school cafeteria and
asked if he could pay off some
accounts, and handed over $100.
Overwhelmed by his generosity, the
supervisor began paying off fines
before Ryan asked what the entire
schools balance for lunches was. It
was $1261.98. Ill see you next
Friday, he told the supervisor.
When he got home, Ryan shared
what he had done on social media,
and that he intended to help Lakeside
Elementary have no lunch accounts
in the negative. He set up a PayPal
account and encouraged people to
donate. Their target was reached in a
matter of days. With more than
enough money to pay off Lakeside,

PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES; THIN KSTOCK

BY SA L LY M C M U L L E N

Ryan contacted another school.

Within two weeks they had raised
$4142.82 and were able to help four
schools. Inspired by peoples
enthusiasm, Ryan organised a nonprofit called Feed The Kids, Inc., which
offers a website, www.kidslunches.org,
for people to start campaigns for
specific schools orto set up recurring
payments to sponsor a student. Today,
this payingit forward organisation is
onto its fifth school.

The Midnight Run

BY K R I STO P H E R E VA N S

CANBERRA WINTERS are notoriously

cold, and 2014 brought some of our
coldest days, with minimums often
at-5C or below. Ahabitual
procrastinator, one weekday night
Ifound myself trudging off to the
local supermarket before it closed
atmidnight.
As I approached, I noticed a group
of six or seven people sitting by the
supermarket entrance. Aware of
thedangers of late-night walking,
Imade sure I paid attention. The scene
ahead looked unusual.
And unusual it was. Expecting to see
a group of potential troublemakers, I
found a frail, well-dressed oldman
distributing items of food to a group of
homeless people. Rather than just
feeding them, he was also engaging
them in a circle of warm discussion,
gesticulating broadly and flashing a
wise, friendly smile.
Compared to him, his conversation

partners were rough-looking and

shabbily dressed, with bushy facial hair
and faces etched with hardship. But
they listened to the man with rapt
attention, not just obligatory gratitude
for the food they had been given. With
no charity van in sight, this old man
was only representing himself and
sharing his midnight zest with those far
less fortunate.
After I finished shopping, the group
was still there, food consumed, but all
laughing. If a frail old man can give
toothers in the freezing cold at
midnight, what excuse do we have?
Kristopher Evans lives in the Australian
Capital Territory and has a passion for
European travel, writing, politics and
philosophy.

Share your story about the kindness

of strangers and win cash. Turn to
page 6 for details on how to
contribute to the magazine.
February2015

13

Unbelievable

The Importance of
Overreacting

More is definitely more, according to Nury Vittachi

A COLLEAGUE ACCUSED me
ofhaving a tendency to overreact.
Iimmediately threatened to burn
down his house and curse his family
for seven generations.
I know many people think
overreacting is a bad thing, but Im
14

February2015

not convinced. I learned the

importance of overreacting from a
former boss, who is now a very
successful man. He used to yell this at
least once a day: Some moron has
moved my [object] and when I find
out who did it, God help me, I am

ILLUSTRATION: AN DREW JOYN ER

TRUE TALES TOLD TALL

going to TEAR that person limb from

sodium polyacrylate complained
limb with my bare oh, there it is.
about his class? A: You guys always
After much research (read: scanning
overreact. OK, but I prefer jokes that
work without the listener having to
news stories sent in by readers), I
found that were in good company
take a quick science degree between
because the police have a tendency to
set-up and punch line.
overreact, too. A reader sent me a
In the interest of balance, I must
video of a dramatic police chase in
also state that there are instances
Michigan, US, where a man on
where overreacting is not advisable.
amoped was pursued by
Over in Norway, residents
at least ten patrol cars. For
of a building called the
those who dont know, a
police when they heard
Residents called loud screaming coming
moped is a motorbike
the police when from an apartment. When
powered by an electric
toothbrush. I had one
they heard loud police officers responded
once, but gave it up when
screaming it to the call, they expected
I realised it was faster for
to find a gruesome scene.
turned out to be What they found was
me to walk.
screams from a much worse. The
Within days, the USs
northern neighbours had man who had lost screaming came from a
got in on the action.
a game of chess man who was unusually
Heavily armed tactical
angry at his computer for
officers were sent to a
constantly beating him at
block of flats in Ontario, after residents chess. I dont blame him. I hate it
complained of loud noises that
when inanimate objects are better
sounded like gunshots. It turned out to than me at things.
be a resident who was repeatedly
However, I still intend to follow the
slamming his heavy door. Canadians
example of my former boss, so this is
are so mild-mannered that the sudden aimed at my subeditors: you changed
noise caused residents to call the
a word in my column. I will now have
police, not knowing whether it was a
to hurt you and scatter the cubed
door slamming, a gun being fired, or
pieces of your corpse over a wide
somebody hitting something with
areaof remote scrubland. Success,
something else, such as a portion of
here I come!
poutine [hot chips with gravy and
[Careful, Nury, our hobbies include archery and
cheese curds].
random adjective deletion. Love, the subeditors]
One reader helpfully contributed a
joke on the topic. Q: What did the
Nury Vittachi is a Hong Kong-based
author. Read his blog at Mrjam.org
chemistry lecturer say when H2O and
February2015

15

THE DIGEST
HEALTH

HOT TOPIC

Q: ADHD - Should We Be
Medicating Our Kids?

With the continuing negative publicity about using drugs to treat kids with

WHAT IS IT? ADHD is a behavioural

disorder that removes the ability

to concentrate or control
impulses.
THE CASE AGAINST

Although stimulant
medications, such
as Ritalin and
amphetamines,
have been used
to treat ADHD
since the 80s, we
still do not know
much about
their long-term
side effects. In
the short term,
they can cause
decreased
16

February 2015

appetite and weight loss, insomnia,

stomach problems and irritability,
depression and anxiety. In
extreme cases, side effects
caninclude hallucinations
and psychosis.
Theres also concern
that children are kept
on the drugs for too
long, and that some
doctors rely too
heavily on medication,
instead of suggesting
psychological
or behaviourmanagement
counselling.
Much of the
anti-ADHD
medication

PHOTO: THINKSTOCK

ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), making a decision about

medication can be difficult for families. Here are some facts:

SHARE THE STORY

Talk About It

CONNECT WITH RD ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Every month we
hear from readers
about stories you
love, questions you
want followed up and
topics youd like to
hear more about.
Now the conversation
has grown outside the
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January2015

17

HEALTH

hype is centred on their over-use,

especially in pre-schoolers (threetofive-year-olds). In the US, there
are reports that drugs like Ritalin
and Adderall are given to about three
million children a year.
THE CASE FOR A few doctors in

countries such as Australia, New

Zealand and South Africa believe
that ADHD is under-diagnosed and
under-treated. Medication often
in combination with counselling
and coaching may be the only
way some children with ADHD can
develop into productive, confident
and happy adults. The key is to get
the right dose and to have regular

reviews. The debate on whether

medication is good or bad is
unhelpful, says Associate Professor
Michael McDowell, a Queensland
paediatrician. The more important
question is how best to use
medications, when they are necessary,
to assist children towards achieving
personal best development and
wellbeing.
CONCLUSION A management plan

for children with ADHD should

include coaching to help manage
symptoms, a coordinated approach by
parents and schools to set structure,
routines and clear boundaries and,
ifnecessary, trialling medications.

GOOD HABITS

SIMPLE WAYS TO INCREASE YOUR LUNG POWER

1. Breathe from your abdomen at
least five minutes a day. This is
diaphragmatic breathing, which
involves training and strengthening
your diaphragm so that it requires
less effort to take in each breath.
2. Eat apples A study found that
people who crunched into more than
five a week had improved lung
function, less wheeziness and fewer
asthma-like symptoms.
3. Look on the bright side of life
Harvard researchers followed 670
men with an average age of 63. After

18

February 2015

eight years, the optimists had much

better lung function and a slower rate
of lung-function decline than their
pessimistic peers.
4. Read the small print on household
cleaners Some products, such as
oven cleaner, can be toxic if inhaled.
Ifthe instructions say open a window,
be sure to follow them.
5. Have a glass of white Wine
particularly white wine seems to
help your lungs, possibly because of
high antioxidant levels. But you cant
substitute other tipples.

DIY CHECK

3 Ways to Keep Tabs

on Your Weight
WAIST-TO-HIP RATIO Measuring

WAIST MEASUREMENTS. Your

your waist-to-hip ratio is an accurate

way of monitoring changes to your
body shape. How do you do it? Grab
a tape measure and wrap it around
your middle, where your belly button
sits. Then do the same around your
hips widest point. Then divide the
waist measurement by the hips
measurement. A ratio of above 0.8
indicates you could be carrying an
unhealthy amount of abdominal fat.

essential organs liver, spleen, heart,

kidneys and lungs are located just
above the waist region. Carrying any
extra weight around your waist brings
additional burden to these organs,
making it harder for them to work
efficiently. How big is too big? For
men, try to stay under 94cm and for
women 80cm.

PHOTO: THI NKSTOCK

BODY MASS INDEX (BMI) Its

thrown around a lot these days

but your BMI is a number
that indicates your weight
in relation to your height. A
healthy BMI is between 18.5
and 25. A BMI above this can
mean an increased risk of heart
disease and type 2 diabetes, both
common weight-related conditions.
Whats your BMI? Simply divide your
weight in kilograms by your height in
metres squared. Easier still, Google
BMI Calculator and enter your
measurements.
February 2015

19

HEALTH

NEWS FROM THE

World of Medicine
Patients commonly believe weather
affects back pain, but a study
conducted by researchers at the
University of Sydney and published
in Arthritis Care & Research found
otherwise. Over a one-year period,
993 patients who consulted a GP were
asked to report any instances when
they experienced sudden, acute back
pain. Researchers then matched
patient reports to weather conditions
for aweek and a month before the
onset of pain. They found no link to
changes in weather conditions, such
as temperature, humidity or rainfall.

When Optimism
Backfires
People with low selfesteem dont want a pep
talk during hard times,
according to researchers
at the University of
Waterloo, Canada.
Researchers discovered
that young adults with
low self-esteem did not
find encouragement
to see the glass as half
full helpful. Rather,
participants with low
20

February 2015

self-esteem preferred supports who

acknowledged their situation was
difficult. If your attempt to point out
the silver lining is met with a sullen
reminder of the prevailing dark cloud,
you might do best to just acknowledge
the cloud and sympathise, said lead
author Professor Denise Marigold.

Music Can Make You Strong

A study conducted by Northwestern
and Columbia Universities in
the US investigated the effect of
power-related music on our psyche.
Participants who listened to bassheavy music reported feeling more
powerful than those who listened
to the same tunes with
a reduced bass. The
bass-heavy listeners
also selected more
power-related words in
a word-completion task
Empowering music
might be used strategically
to get us in the right frame
of mind, says study leader
Derek Rucker. Previous
research found that
feelings of power lead to
better performance in
interview situations.

PHOTO: ADAM VOORHES

Back Pain Myth

TRENDING

Coconut Oil and

the Heart: Is It Hype
Or Healthy?
BY HE L E N S I G N Y

COCONUT OIL is the new heart-

healthy fat, claiming to make you

slimmer, stop sugar cravings and
even reduce fine lines. Too good to be
true? Possibly. With the popularity of
coconut oil surging, the New Zealand
Heart Foundation carefully analysed
the scientific literature.

PHOTO: THI NKSTOCK

THE HYPE Coconut oil is marketed

as a healthier fat because it contains
medium-chain triglycerides (MCT),
which are not as bad for you as
transfats and are metabolised quickly
to make energy, rather than being
stored in the body as fat. Its claimed
that adding a few teaspoons to your
daily diet will help with weight loss
as well as staving off diabetes and
reducing sugar cravings.
WHAT DOES THE SCIENTIFIC
LITERATURE SHOW?

An academic paper commissioned for

the New Zealand Heart Foundation
by Dr Laurence Eyres, says all the
research shows that coconut oil is not
as good for you as unsaturated plant

oils. Like other saturated fats, coconut

oil raises cholesterol (though not by
as much as butter). He says switching
to coconut oil is likely to lead to less
favourable lipid profiles and potential
increased risk of coronary heart
disease. Research often quoted to
support the use of coconut oil was
largely based on animal studies or
interpreted from research on MCT
oils. But the triglycerides in coconut
oil could not be classed as MCTs,
meaning the research quoted was not
relevant, he says.
SO WHATS THE BEST ADVICE?

While the occasional use of coconut

oil is fine, if youre using it a lot
because you believe it to be healthy,
you should either cut back or blend
in some unsaturated cold-pressed
oil such as olive, avocado or canola.
Traditionally, coconut oil hasnt been
recommended because it is extremely
high in saturated fat. This advice
remains, despite the large number
of marketing claims to the contrary,
says Eyres.
February 2015

21

FOOD

Packed with antioxidants, fibre, vitamins and no hype

Everyday Superfruits
Every so often little-known fruits
are plucked from obscurity to be
acclaimed as the latest nutritional
miracle. Think acai berry and goji
berry. Studies suggest that more
readily available fruits have equal or
superior powers. Here are some:
Apples: French research reveals

that two substances found in

apples boron and a flavonoid
called phloridzin may increase
bone density and protect against
osteoporosis. Other studies suggest
that eating apples may greatly reduce
the risk of developing cancers of the
lung, colon, liver and breast.

Blueberries: One cup (150g) of

blueberries supplies 24% of your
daily vitamin C needs and about 14%
of your fibre needs. It also contains
vitamin K and the trace mineral,
manganese all for only 250kJ.
Blueberries also contain a diverse
group of phytochemicals that help
decrease inflammation that leads
to chronic diseases. Research has
linked them to heart, cognitive and
eye health benefits. Raspberries,
blackberries and strawberries also
qualify for superfood status.
Citrus Fruits: All these fruits are

low in kilojoules and packed with

helpful nutrients. UK research in 2011
suggested that the flavanones in citrus
fruit may protect against stroke and
heart disease. Studies also show that a
high intake of citrus fruits can reduce
the risk of stomach cancer by 28%.
Kiwifruit: This is one of the most
nutritionally powerful fruits. A single
large kiwifruit contains a days worth
of vitamin C, and is one of the few
fruits to contain vitamin E. Kiwifruit
also offers fibre and potassium.

22

January2015

Food-Storage Tricks the

Package Wont Tell You
BROWN SUGAR Store the sweet

crystals with friends to prevent

hardening. Transfer to an airtight
plastic container and include items
like marshmallows, a slice of bread, or
apple slices; the sugar will soak up the
moisture and stay soft. Or, invest in a
Brown Sugar Bear. Soak the reusable
terracotta teddy in water for 20
minutes and store with your sugar to
prevent hardening or to soften
sugar thats become a brick.

PHOTOS: THIN KSTOC K

FLOUR Keep whole-wheat

flour chilled. High oil levels

in the wheat germ can
make this baking staple
go rancid if kept in the
pantry too long. If you
use it frequently, store in
an air-tight container in
the fridge, where it can
last two to six months.
Sniff to check freshness
it should be almost
completely odourless.
Toss it if it smells sharp or
bitter. Regular white flour
can last about a year in
the pantry in an airtight
container.
CHEESE Let it breathe.
Wrap cheese in porous

material. If you dont have cheese

paper, parchment will also work.
Avoid tinfoil and tight plastic wrap.
Failing to expose cheese to enough
oxygen will cause it to dry out
quickly.
BUTTER You can freeze bars you

dont plan to use quickly. In the

fridge, unopened butter should last
about four months. It can stay in
the freezer for about a year. Leave
in the wrapping, then enclose in
double plastic freezer bags.
RED SPICES Stash red spices in

the fridge. Paprika, cayenne

powder, and chilli powder will
stay fresher and keep their
colour which can be dulled
by light and heat longer.
OLIVE OIL Stick to small
bottles unless youre heavyhanded. Once opened,
olive oil can go rancid in as
little as three months (even
though the bottle might say
it will last longer). Fresh
olive oil smells like green,
ripe olives and has a bright,
peppery taste with a kick; be
wary of a putty-like odour,
which indicates spoilage.
February2015

23

HOME

Cut Kitchen
Cleaning
Time in Half
Save time with these tips on cleaning

common kitchen items:

BLENDER Fill it one-third full with

warm water and a few drops of

dishwashing liquid. Run it for ten
seconds. Rinse and dry.

DISHWASHER Load small things in

the dishwasher first. If the big things
like pots dont fit, its easier to handwash a few of them than loads of
small ones.
EGG, MILK AND CHEESE RESIDUE

Rinse dishes with cold water first;

then wash with hot water. Hot water
can cook foods onto surfaces,
making them harder to scrub.
BOX GRATER Clean soft cheese from
a grater by rubbing a raw potato or
cut lemon over the grater openings.

solution of 4 tablespoons bicarbonate

of soda to 250ml warm water to
remove oil stains. Rinse and dry.
GREASY DISHES Add a couple of
tablespoons of white vinegar to the
rinse water to make dishes sparkle.
24

February2015

PHOTOS: THIN KSTOC K

PLASTIC CONTAINERS Wash with a

Extend the life of your soft furnishings

How to Keep Upholstered

Furniture Looking Good
REMOVING STAINS FROM
UPHOLSTERY

n Remove residue and vacuum any

spills at once. Remove stains by
working from the outside towards the
middle to avoid leaving an outline.
n Sprinkle fresh grease and oil stains
with talcum powder or cornflour.
Leave it to set and absorb the grease,
and then brush it off.
n Dab older grease stains with an
ammonia solution or cologne, then
carefully rub with water.
n Treat milk spots immediately with
cold water or moisturising soap and
lukewarm water. To finish, pat dry.
n Clean washable leather with a soap
solution (1 teaspoon liquid soap in
1litre of water). Wring out the cloth

thoroughly before wiping the leather.

Allow the furniture to dry, then buff.
MAINTAINING UPHOLSTERY

n Clean upholstered furniture

regularly with the vacuum cleaner,
but reduce the suction to avoid
damaging the under padding.
n Clean synthetic covers by dipping
a cloth dampened with water in a
little bicarbonate of soda and gently
rubbing the cushion with it. Go over
it again with a water and soap
solution. Test this on the reverse side
(or a corner) first.
n Remove water-soluble stains from
leather upholstery with a damp cloth
and moisturising soap foam; wipe
with warm water.

February2015

25

WORK

Turn a negative review into positive results

How to Survive a Bad

Performance Review
Getting a negative review from your boss is never pleasant. Heres how to

react to the bad news so you can move onwards and upwards.
TAKE A DEEP BREATH Maintain
your composure, at least until the
review is over and you are outside the
office. You can let your boss know you
are surprised or disappointed, but
dont get emotional or defensive.
ASK FOR SPECIFIC WAYS YOU CAN
IMPROVE Dont only ask what can

Ido to improve my performance?

Instead, focus on specific examples to
get as many useful tips as possible.

reveals more than their choice of

words. Take their mood as much as
the content of the review into account.
SAY THANK YOU. YES, REALLY

It is always important to thank your

boss for their feedback. If you dont
agree with their assessment, you can
say, Thanks so much for taking the
time to speak with me. I really
appreciate your feedback.

Before you leave, say something like

Youve given me a lot to think
about, and Id like to continue with
the conversation after I have some
time to reflect on this.
MAKE NEW GOALS Determine both

a long-term objective and short-term

goals. If you have a clear idea of what
you want to accomplish in a month
and how you want to get there, youll
have a greater sense of focus when
trying to improve your performance.
26

February2015

ILLUSTRATION: JOHN KACHIK

ASK TO REVISIT THE SITUATION

LISTEN FOR FEELINGS, NOT JUST
WORDS Often a persons emotions

Five steps to making meetings better

How to Run a Meeting

If you had to identify, in one word, the reason the human race has not

achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be
meetings. These are the words of humorist Dave Barry, with which many of us
would agree. But it doesnt have to be this way. Some tips for having a good one:

P HOTO: THI NKSTOCK

1. Start and end strongly. Running

productive meetings boils down to

opening with an objective, sticking to
a purpose and closing with a plan for
what happens next.
2. Pick a leader. Assign someone to
lead. The worst thing you can do is
go into a meeting with no-one in
charge, says top executive Charles
Hyle. It turns into a shouting match.
3. Think small. Be realistic about
what you can accomplish. By the
same token, keep the number of
attendees manageable to stimulate
discussion.
4. Direct, dont dominate. People
hate it when they cant get their work
done because they have to go to
somebody elses meeting, says
Columbia Business School professor
Michael Feiner. So encourage others
to speak up and get involved.
5. Lay down the rules of
engagement. Everyone should

understand who will take notes and

how decisions will be made.
Remember that consensus is typically

a bad thing. It means there isnt

enough dialogue or debate, says
Feiner. Thats the lifeblood of any
innovative organisation. Jon Petz, the
author of Boring Meetings Suck,
suggests assigning follow-up tasks
during the final five to ten minutes,
then reiterating them later in a group
email so theres no confusion.
February2015

27

TRAVEL

Its time for an upgrade

How to Travel Five-Star on

a Three-Star Budget

Youve been backpacking, stayed in hostels and bunked on the sofa of some
distant relatives. Now its time to travel in style. Sally McMullen suggests

different things you can do to ensure you have the holiday of your dreams
BECOME A HIGH-FLIER The best way

to get a flight upgrade is to earn status

credits, as opposed to frequent flyer
points. For example, Qantas has five
levels of status (Bronze, Silver, Gold,
Platinum and Platinum One) and you
get credits every time you fly. The
higher the status, the more chance
youll be upgraded. If you havent
earned a high enough status, theres
no harm in asking for an upgrade
when checking in.
TRAVEL IN THE OFF-SEASON Avoid
school holidays and public holidays.
Youll have a better chance of scoring
reduced rates at luxury properties in
Thailand during winter or Bali during
the wet season, and try May or
September when travelling to Europe.
GET SOCIAL Follow your favourite
travel companies and airlines on
social media and wait as great deals
land on your Facebook feed.

28

February2015

PHOTO: GETTY IM AGES

ASK ABOUT HOTEL UPGRADES If

you want something, ask for it! When
you arrive at your hotel, ask the front
desk what the price would be for a
better room. You can often get an
upgrade at a heavily reduced price if
there are nicer rooms sitting empty.
When booking, ask for inclusions at
the resort, such as credits at the hotel
spa or drinks at the bar. This works
especially well during the off-season,
when even premium resorts are
fighting for your stay.

Common Travel Booking

Mistakes

Mistakes can easily happen and often end up costing you the money youve
saved by booking online. According to a recent survey of almost 10,000
Australians, it was revealed that one in four have made massive blunders
when booking online. Most of the top five errors were innocent mistakes:

1. Not reading the fine print After

surfing the web for hours to find that
perfect holiday deal, reading the fine
print is probably the last thing you
want to do. However, it could be the
difference between a stress-free
holiday and a complete disaster.
2. Booking the wrong dates Make
sure to always have a calendar at
hand when booking your flights and
hotels. If youre travelling between
different time zones, make sure to
double check your arrival date with
the airline before booking your hotel
stay, says Adam Schwab, CEO of
www.LuxuryEscapes.com.

P HOTO: THI NKSTOCK

3. Not checking validity periods,

surcharges and black-out periods

In order to evade unexpected costs, it

is important to pay special attention
to double-check these three things.
Pay extra attention to validity
periods, extra person surcharges, kids
policies, transfers costs as well as
cancellation and amendment policy,
says Schwab.

4. Entering the wrong name You may

laugh, but this is a common mistake
many online travellers make. If you
know you experience butter fingers
while typing, its best to re-read every
detail a few times before confirming
to avoid embarrassing phone calls to
rectify the mistake.
5. Working solo Its easy to become

overwhelmed by all the dates and fine

print so before you confirm your trip
have your partner or friend read
through all the travel details before
booking and paying, suggests Schwab.
Chances are, theyll pick up anything
you may have missed.
February2015

29

ETC

We wear some weird and wonderful labels, heres why

How Your Favourite

Sneakers Got Their Names
BY SA L LY M C M U L L E N

When Converse had modest sales

with the All Star sneaker in 1917,

thecompany employed Chuck Taylor,
a former basketball star to revamp
thedesign. After adding a patch to
support the ankle, the CONVERSE
CHUCK TAYLOR ALL STAR became
uber-popular. Taylor didnt receive a
bonus or commission he just spent
40 years working with Converse.

antelope that was the perfect

inspiration for their company. Turns
out Foster had won a South African
dictionary, so they went with the
Afrikaans spelling of reebok.
Global sales 2013: US$1.9 billion
ADIDAS is a combination of Adi and

Dassler, the German businessman

who started the company in 1949.

Global sales 2013: US$1.45 billion

Global sales 2013: US$22.76 billion

REEBOK In 1958, J.W. Foster & Sons

decided to create an athletic shoe
company. Searching through a
dictionary that Joe Foster had won in
arunning race as a boy, they came
across the rhebok, a speedy African

ASICS In 1977, Onitsuka Co. merged

with two other sports shoe makers to

form ASICS, an acronym for the Latin
phrase anima sana in corpore sano,
or healthy soul in a healthy body.
Global sales 2013: US$21 billion

Sneakers was the name given by advertising guru Henry Nelson McKinney to
rubber-soled shoes sold by Keds in 1917. The shoes made it possible for
people to sneak up on unsuspecting friends and family.

30

February2015

Explore, Interact, Inspire

Available now, everywhere

LY

IFICAL

SCIENT

P R OV

EN

WAYS TO
OUTWITYOUR

APPETITE
32

| February2015

FOOD AND DIET

Renowned food psychologist Brian Wansink

has spent 25 years researching offbeat and
innovative ways to help us eat healthier. Here
are seven of his most revealing insights

PHOTOS: THIN KSTOC K; (A PPLE) LEVI BROWN; (AP P LE) FOOD STYLI ST: MATT VOHR
FOR HALLEY RESOURCES; P ROP STY LIST: ANGELA C AM P OS FOR STOCKLAND MARTE L

F ROM THE B OOK SLIM B Y DE S I GN

MOST NUTRITION education isnt very effective. People know that

an apple is better than a chocolate bar, but they often eat the chocolate
bar anyway. After conducting hundreds of studies on the psychology of
how and why we eat, Ive seen that its good to understand nutrition, but
its much better to change your eating environment. Doing so can help you make
better choices without even thinking about it.

What Would
Batman Eat?

Millions of parents take their

happy kids to fast-food restaurants
every day. Most of us dont even try
to get our kids to order the apple
slices instead of the French fries or
the milk instead of the juice. Were
there because we dont have the time,
energy or motivation to cook or to
argue with our kids.
We all know children can be stubbornly habitual in what they want to
eat. If kids had fries yesterday, they
want them again today. We came up
with a simple way to interrupt this
default. Instead of asking kids what
they want, what if we ask them about
someone they admire?
To study this, we treated 22 primary
school-aged children to apple slices

or fries at a fast-food restaurant. The

first week, 20 of them ordered fries,
and two ordered apple slices. But the
next week, we asked, What would
Batman eat: apple slices or fries? After
they answered for Batman, we asked
them what they wanted. This time,
the number of kids who ordered apple
slices jumped from two to ten almost
half of them.
Weve done this in different ways, and heres whats
crazy. It doesnt matter who
you say: Batman,
Joker, the kids
teacher, or their
best friend.
Simply having
to answer for
anyone makes
them think twice
February2015

33

SLEEPLESS IN SEVILLE

The Duct-Taped
Shopping Trolley

Whats the right amount of

fruits and vegetables to put into a
shopping trolley? We dont really know.
When most of us grocery shop, fruits
and vegetables take up 24% of our
trolley. But suppose your grocery store
divided each trolley in half by putting

34

| February2015

Groceries and Gum

Most of us know its bad to go

food shopping on an empty
stomach. We think its because we buy
more food when were hungry, but
in our studies, starving shoppers buy
the exact same amount of food as full

PHOTOS: THIN KSTOC K

and often upgrade their order. It also

doesnt matter what they answer. They
could precociously say that Batman or
their teacher would eat French fries,
but theyll still order apple slices half
the time.
OUTSIDE THE LAB: If you ask yourself
before deciding between the salad
and the cheesy bacon fries, What
would my role model choose? youll
be a lot less tempted. Thinking about
what a well-liked person would do
makes us less indulgent.

a piece of yellow duct tape across the

middle interior. And suppose a sign on
the trolley recommended that you put
all the fruits and vegetables in front of
the tape and all the other foods in back.
This dividing line doesnt moralise or
lecture. It just encourages shoppers
to ask themselves whether the food in
their hands goes in the front or back
theyre simply sorting their food.
We made a few dozen of these
divided trolleys to test and found that
shoppers who used the trolleys bought
23% more fruits and vegetables than
those who didnt. They spent twice as
much on produce and also spent about
25% more time at the store. Not only
did this fruit-and-vegetable divider
make them think twice about what
they bought, but it also made them
think that buying more fruits and vegetables was normal.
OUTSIDE THE LAB: Put something
down the middle of your trolley a
bag, a scarf, a coat. Claim the front
half for whatever you want to purchase more of (eg, a shopper with high
blood pressure might want more lowsodium food). If that target space isnt
full, youll tend to buy more to balance
things out.

READERS DIGEST

shoppers. They dont buy more, but

they buy worse. When were hungry,
we buy things that are convenient to
eat right away and stop our cravings,
such as biscuits, chips or sweet things.
Our imagination is the problem.
Hunger leads us to dream about what
a food would feel like in our mouth
if we were eating it. So we tested
whether chewing gum could interrupt
these cravings, making it too hard to
imagine the sensory details of crunchy
chips or creamy ice-cream.
A colleague and I gave gum to food
shoppers at the start of their shopping
trips; at the end, they rated themselves as less hungry and tempted
by food. In another study, shoppers
bought 7% less junk food than those
who werent chewing gum.
OUTSIDE THE LAB: If you shop for
groceries when youre hungry, make
sure the first thing you buy is gum.
Our early findings show that sugarless
gum or mint might work best.

Chinese Buffet
Confidential

Some people say there is only

one way not to overeat at a buffet: dont
go. Yet heres whats strange visit any
buffet restaurant, and youll see a lot of
slim people. What do they do at buffets that heavy people dont? When we
ask, they almost all say, I dont know.
Most people eat the way they eat with
very little conscious thought. You can
find out their habits only by carefully watching them. So researchers

in my lab did at 11 Chinese buffet

restaurants.
Heres the first thing we discovered:
71% of slim diners scouted out the
buffet before they picked up a plate
they scanned the salad bar, the steam
trays holding 14 seemingly identical chicken dishes, the sushi station,
and the dessert bar. Only after they
had figured out the lay of the land
did they grab their plates and start
cherry-picking.
Heavier diners, on the other hand,
were twice as likely to charge ahead
to the nearest stack of plates and start
filling up. They also sat at tables that
were on average 4.8m closer to the
buffet and were three times more
likely to sit facing the food, which
could remind them to take second
and third helpings.
OUTSIDE THE LAB: Our researchers
have a saying: If you want
to be s k i n ny, do w hat
sk i n ny people do. I n
our study, slim people
also were more likely
to use chopsticks and
smaller plates, and
chew each bite
more than
heavy people
did. Survey
the spread
before filling
your plate. Sit
as far away from
the food as
possible.
February2015

35

7 W AY S T O O U T W I T Y O U R A P P E T I T E

Why are restaurant portions so

huge? Restaurants think that the more
food they give, the more likely well eat
there and not across the street. But this
can backfire. When burritos become
as big as their head, reasonable people
either split one or they dont buy any
side dishes or desserts.
We did a test at a Minnesota highway truck stop. We suggested they
offer half-size portions of popular
dishes. They did it, but instead of
losing money, they made more. Heres
how. Whereas a couple named Lester
and Grace would regularly visit the
restaurant and split a $10 chicken
breast main course because it was
big enough for two, they now each
ordered their own half-size main
course. And they still had room to
order a starter or side salad. Within
three months, more people went to

36

| February2015

the restaurant, and more total main

courses (including half-size options)
were sold. They also sold 435 more
side orders of salad per month than
they had before.
OUTSIDE THE LAB: Ask for a half
portion for a reduced price, so Ill have
room for a starter or a drink. Its surprising how often this works even at
big chain restaurants. If this isnt possible, you can always have them pack
up half the main course in a takeaway
container (before it arrives) and order
a side salad.

The Warm
Can Solution

A man was referred to our lab

once for advice on how to break what
his doctor called a Pepsi addiction
12-plus cans a day. He was on the
express train to diabetes. He even had
one of those mini refrigerators in his
office fully stocked. Telling him to
get rid of his refrigerator and go cold
turkey, or even just to drink half as
many, wouldnt work. He would have
resisted, cheated or obsessed about
how many he had left in his stash.
Instead, we told him he could drink
all the Pepsi he wanted if he agreed
to one thing: he could keep only one
can in the refrigerator at a time. When
we made him decide how badly he
wanted to drink a warm Pepsi, he
trimmed his consumption down to
about four or five a day. Without much
thinking or self-denial, he sliced his
addiction by almost two-thirds.

PHOTOS: LEVI BROWN; THI NKSTOCK

The Case for

Half-Size Portions

READERS DIGEST

OUTSIDE THE LAB: Make your trigger

foods as inconvenient and unattractive
as warm Pepsi. An ice cream container
mummified in aluminium foil looks a
lot less tantalising than when it radiates chocolate fudge goodness. Its a
third less likely to be eaten within the
first week of being wrapped up.

The Slim
Persons Kitchen

If we knew what a skinny persons kitchen looked like, we could set

up our own kitchens in a similar way.
We chose the US demographically representative city of Syracuse, New York,
for our study. (Its commonly used as
a test city for billion-dollar companies with huge markets at stake.) Once
we got into peoples homes, we took
pictures of everything: their dishes,
sinks, refrigerator shelves, benchtops,
snacks, pet-food dishes, tables, lighting even random items held up by
magnets on their refrigerators. Nothing
went unsnapped. Then we spent eight
months coding these kitchens to see
what thin people do differently.
We wondered if big kitchens turn
us into big people. But it turns out
that kitchen size isnt the problem. Its
what you see in the kitchen. The average woman who kept potato chips on
the benchtop weighed 3.6kg more than
her neighbour who didnt. Those who
had even one box of breakfast cereal
that was visible weighed 9.5kg more

than their neighbours who didnt. In

sight, in stomach. We eat what we see,
not what we dont.
OUTSIDE THE LAB: Rearrange your
cupboard, pantry and refrigerator so
the first visible foods are best for you.
Youre three times more likely to eat
the first food you see in the cupboard
than the fifth one. In another study, we
asked people to move all their fruits
and vegetables from the crisper bin to
the top shelf and put less-healthy foods
in the crisper. After one week, they
reported eating nearly three times as
many fruits and vegetables as the week
before. (Produce might keep longer in
the crisper, but the goal is to eat it not
to end up composting it.)

SLIM BY DESIGN 2014 BY BRIAN WANSINK, IS PUBLISHED BY WILLIAM MORROW,

AN IMPRINT OF HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS, WWW. HARPERCOLLINS.COM.

February2015

37

Laughter
THE BEST MEDICINE

MESSAGE RECEIVED
A man and his wife were having some problems at home and were giving each
other the silent treatment. After a week of silence, the man realised hed need his
wife to wake him at 5am for an early morning business flight.
Not wanting to be the first to break the silence, he wrote
on a piece of paper, Please wake me at 5am.
The next morning the man woke up, only to discover that it
was 9am and hed missed his flight. Furious, he was about
to go and see why his wife hadnt woken him when he
noticed a piece of paper by the bed.
It said: Its 5am. Wake up.
Source: cheergiver.com
PUSHOVER

A loud knocking on the door wakes

aman and his wife in the middle of
astormy night. The man opens the
door to a stranger, who asks him for
apush. No way! says the husband,
slamming the door shut in the
strangers face.
Who was that? calls his wife.
Just some drunk asking for a
push, he answers. Its 3am and
pouring with rain out there!
You should be ashamed, his wife
replies. Dont you remember that
time we broke down and those two
guys helped us out? You should go
and help him. Sighing, the man does
as hes told, pulls on his coat and
heads out into the pouring rain.
Hello? he calls out in the
dark. Do you still need a
push?
38

February2015

Yes, please, comes

the reply.
Where are you? the husband
callsout.
Over here, the drunk replies.
Onthe swing.
SUBMITTED BY TRACY DAVIDSON

BREAKING NEWS

Accordian to a recent survey,

replacing words with the names of
musical instruments in a sentence
often goes undetected. Source: reddit.com
THIRSTY WORK

Max the baby camel walks into his

parents room at 3am and asks for
a glass of water.
Another one? says his
dad. Thats the second glass
this month.
Seen on the internet

A hotel minibar allows you

to see into the future and
find out what a can of Pepsi
will cost in 2020.
COMEDIAN RICH HALL

VOICE PROFILING

Men are attracted to women with

araspy voice. We think: Hey, maybe
shes all done yelling.
COMEDIAN MOODY MCCARTHY

CRIMINALLY INCLINED

A policeman pulled me over last

night. He said, Youve got a
headlight out, your rear tyre is
completely flat, youve got an open
drink in your hand and youre not
wearing a seat belt!
I said, Ill see you
tomorrow then.
Whats that
supposed to mean,
hedemanded.
I said, Hang on
aminute, pal. Im on
thephone. Seen on the internet

than he thought so
he runs off.
Up in a tree,
amonkey had
seenthe whole
thing and decides
totellthe lion what
happened. Themonkey perches on
the lions shoulder and leads him
back to thedog.
As he sees the two heading
towards him, the dog has another
idea. Youre late, monkey! he
shouts. I told you to bring me
another lion hours ago!
SUBMITTED BY HANNAH WILKINS

COLD CALLER

A market researcher phoned and

said, Can I ask you ten questions?
I said, Go on then.
She said, Question number
one: have you ever experienced
a blackout?
I said, No.
She said, And finally, question
number ten.
COMEDIAN LEE MACK
THINK BEFORE YOU ANSWER

KING OF THE JUNGLE

A lion stalking through the jungle

spots a lost dog and thinks hell be
easy prey. When the dog sees the
lion he starts to run, but suddenly
has an idea. He stops near some
bones and says loudly, Mmm, that
was a tasty lion.
Stopping in his tracks, the lion
realises this dog is a lot tougher

I love to go to bookstores and say,

Hello, Im looking for a book called
Rejection Without Killing. Do you
have it?
COMEDIAN STEWART FRANCIS

Sometimes I crouch on
the floor, tuck my head in
and lean forward. Thats
Seen on the internet
just how I roll.
February2015

39

EXTRAORDINARY TRUE TALES

From a seal with attitude to a bunny who helps sick

children, its time to acknowledge our love for

Amazing

ANIMALS
F R OM T H E BO O K UNLIKELY HEROES

The Elephant Seal Who Battled Bullies

Although they may appear cute, elephant seal cubs can be very aggressive.
Hugh Ryono experienced this first-hand while working as a volunteer at the
Marine Mammal Care Center at Fort MacArthur in San Pedro, California.
A year earlier, Hugh had spent a lot of time helping a newcomer named
Gimpy. She was suffering from head trauma that paralysed her left side and
caused partial blindness. Although unlikely to ever recover completely, she
had managed to heal somewhat and had developed a liking for Hugh.
One day, Hugh entered the seal pen to clean up after six very
rambunctious one-year-old pups. Without warning, he slipped on a
sardine. As soon as he fell, three angry pups lunged for him, eager to try out
their new canine teeth. Out of the corner of his eye, Hugh glimpsed another
mass of blubber, a particularly big one, coming to his rescue. It was Gimpy.
After putting herself between Hugh and the feisty adolescents, Gimpy gave
them a silent, open-mouthed warning, with her head bobbing up and down
and teeth prominently displayed. This ended the pups charge. Threatened
by the bigger animal (Gimpy outweighed each of them by about 90kg), they
began to back off and Hugh was able to scramble to safety.
40

| February2015

P HOTO: F ROM UNLIK ELY HE RO ES, WORKMAN PUBLI SHI NG, HUGH RYONO

BY JE NNIFER S . H O LLAND

Gimpy in her
early days at
the centre.
A year later
she weighed
about 140kg

November2014

41

Koshka the cat

was a friend
indeed for Jesse
Knott
42

| February2015

PHOTO/ILLUSTRATION CREDIT

A LMEAEZPI LNEGS S
S
AN
IN
I MSAELVSI L L E

READERS DIGEST

P HOTO: FROM UN LIK ELY HEROES, WORKMAN PUBLI SHI NG, JESS E KN OTT

The Infantry Kitty

During wartime, the littlest forms of pleasure are true gifts.

ForJesse Knott, who joined the US army in 2006, his gift was a
scrappy kitten he befriended in Afghanistan. When he first arrived
at his outpost near Maywan in 2010, Jesse noticed a few feral
cats in the area and was immediately taken by a green-eyed tiger
kitten that would soon be known affectionately as Koshka (or cat
in Russian). Someone had been mistreating him and Jesse noticed
sore spots where the cat had been nicked by a razor. While keeping
an eye out for the culprit, he took the cat in to care for it himself.
The kitten proved to be a delightful distraction for the soldiers,
although he would have an even greater impact on Jesse. That
December, a suicide bomber killed two of Jesses friends. I felt...
done. I couldnt handle it and truly wanted to check out I wanted
to die, says Jesse. As Jesses emotions took hold of him, Koshka
sensed his friends distress and seemed to know what to do. He
kept coming up and head-bonking me he wouldnt leave me
alone, Jesse recalls. And he was purring. Id never heard him do
that before. He kept patting my face with his paw, swiping me with
his tail, and then he curled up in my lap, rumbling away. This was
enough to pull Jesse back to his senses. He realised that he had
other responsibilities and needed to pull it together. He saved my
life that night, Jesse says. And after that, it became my mission to
get him out of that country, no matter what.
After endless calls, Jesse found an interpreter who was taking
adog to Kabul and agreed to carry Koshka, too. It was a long
journey on buses and planes, but finally Koshka made it to Kabul,
and then to New York, and lastly to Jesses parents home in
Oregon. After everything Koshka had done for him, nothing made
Jesse happier than seeing the kitten bond with his family and get
the home he truly deserved.
February2015

43

AMAZING ANIMALS

44

| February2015

PHOTO/ILLUSTRATION CREDIT

Although Fiona Boyd has a life-long fondness of horses, there is

one mare that will always have a special place in her heart. On a
summer afternoon in 2007, one of the cows on her dairy farm had
recently given birth and Fiona needed to move mother and baby to
a building where calves are kept during their first days. There were
six cows in the field, plus the calf. Ignoring the adults, Fiona went
straight to the young animal, prodding it to move toward the farm
buildings. And thats when the trouble began.
The calf started bellowing for its mother, Fiona says, which
encouraged all the animals to come over and investigate.
Although cows are usually quite passive, they can become
aggressive, especially when defending their young. One minute
Fiona was walking beside the calf, the next she was being headbutted in the side by a very unhappy mother. The animal hit her
hard, knocking her to the ground, kicking and butting her. Fiona
could see the electric fence, and she knew she had to get behind it
to be safe. But getting away wouldnt be easy. The angry cow stood
directly over her, straddling her body, ready and able to crush her
with its full weight. I curled into a small ball, waiting for it to be
over, Fiona recalls.
And then Fionas saviour, her favourite chestnut Arab mare named
Kerry, burst onto the scene. When Fiona heard the animal neighing
and snorting nearby, she felt a shiver of hope. The next thing I know,
there she is, and shes lashing out at the cow with
her legs!
Fiona was amazed. The 15-year-old mare kept
at it until the cow ran away, then she stayed
with me as I crawled a few metres to get behind
that fence. Once Fiona was safe, the horse went
back to munching on grass as if she hadnt just
saved a human life.
Fiona doesnt blame the cow for her actions, but
FEATURE EXTRACTED
after the attack, whenever she or her sons went
FROM UNLIKELY
HEROES 2014
into that field, Kerry would canter over and walk
BY JENNIFER S.
HOLLAND. PUBLISHED
beside them like a bodyguard. Fiona had always
BY WORKMAN
PUBLISHING, NEW
believed that ifyou love and treat your animals
YORK AND HARDIE
GRANT BOOKS,
well, they will love and protect youin return. Id
AUSTRALIA
say Kerry proved me right.

PHOTO: FROM UNLIKELY H EROES , WORKM AN PUBLI SHI NG, MURDO MACL E OD

The Mare Who Stopped an Angry Cow

Kerry, Fionas
Arab mare,
viewed herself
asher owners
bodyguard

READERS DIGEST

February2015

45

AMAZING ANIMALS

When Riki Yahalom Arbel began her career as an animal-assisted

therapist in Jerusalem, she wanted to help broken kids to feel
whole. And along the way, she found an unlikely partner. Alyna
was the tiniest rabbit in a litter of nine at a petting zoo. Riki noticed
that Alyna was dragging her back legs and soon realised that they
were paralysed. This didnt stop the bunny though. She was so
motivated, right from the start, Riki says. She would run around
the cage despite her legs. She was quick and so tough!
But all the dragging created wounds on Alynas rear legs and Riki
was worried about infection. With help from the lab head at ALYN
childrens hospital, a paediatric and adolescent rehab facility in
Israel where she worked, Riki designed a special wheeled mobility
frame to help Alyna move. Although she struggled at first and
wasnt thrilled at being strapped into the scooter, Alyna was soon
rolling around at top speed. She seemed really happy, says Riki.
Thats when Riki had a fantastic idea. Alyna, in her scooter, could
provide a special service to the hospital in return for the help shed
received there. Alyna soon became part of the everyday world of the
hospital, zooming down the halls, accepting treats and pats, helping
patients to forget their pain and why they were there. When Alyna
was around, Riki says, There was a lot of laughing and giggling.
Most importantly, as the kids struggled with their therapies,
hospital staff would remind them that Alyna didnt like her therapy
either but she got better with practice, and it was clear to all how
much her life improved with her new mobility. So the young patients
worked harder, to be more like Alyna. Talking to them about Alynas
struggles seemed to help the kids feel less afraid and less frustrated.
They really felt that Alyna understood them.
Over the years, Alyna has inspired hundreds of children, showing
them how strong they could be; making their rocky paths seem a bit
less daunting. After all, there was a little bunny on the same road,
wheeling along beside them.
Do you have a tale to tell about a farm animal, pet or zoo creature
that has done something unusual or brave? Wed love to hear from
you. Send your stories to Smart Animals. See page 6 for details.

46

| February2015

P HOTO: FROM UN LIK ELY HEROES, WORKM AN P UBLISHIN G, ALY N H OSPITAL

The Real Energiser Bunny

Despite her
small size, Alyna
made a big
impression
working at the
childrens
hospital in
Israel

READERS DIGEST

February2015

47

HERO PET

The soft-eyed brown pit bull tugged atDavids

heart and set off a life-changing chain of events

Good
The

Pit Bull

BY ANITA BARTH O LO M E W

AVID LANTEIGNE NEVER INTENDED to adopt another pet

when he visited an Animal Rescue League in March 2009.
His golden retriever Penny was as much as he could manage in his cosy East Boston apartment. But, he figured, he
could still volunteer to walk the shelter dogs, and make
them feel cared for.
Touring the facility, the then 25-year-old Boston police officer spied a
sweet brown five-year-old pit bull named Lilly in a kennel at the back, and
knelt down to say hi. She had the prettiest eyes, he recalls. As he reached
in to pet her, she pushed her neck up to the grate. He noticed some scars
on her head had she been abused? She so craved the little bit of warmth
and affection he could offer through the cage door. Something about her
48

February2015

Gentle and friendly,

Lilly caught Davids
attention through the
bars of her kennel

November2014

49

THE GOOD PIT BULL

tugged at his heart. He hated having to

leave her there.
He thought of his mother, Christine Spain, who, in her own way, was
as trapped by forces beyond her control as Lilly and in as much need of
someone to love. Christine had battled alcoholism and mental illness all
her adult life. Shed lost everything
as a result even her children. David
and his sister were sent to live with
their grandparents when he was just
six years old. He never gave up on his
mother though. Hed ride his bike the
8km to visit her in the next town. And
it was so wonderful to share loving
moments with her, he could forget the
times he found her unconscious on a
floor scattered with empty beer cans.
But that was the past. He felt a
mixture of pride and relief knowing
shed given up drinking more than
two years before. Still, anxiety and
depression kept her from going out,
meeting new people.
Having a dog to care for would give
her a reason to get out and socialise.
And his mother would be a lifesaver
for Lilly.
He brought Christine to meet Lilly
the following week, and she was just
as taken with the dog as her son had
been. So Lilly joined the family. On
Davids days off, Lilly would stay with
him and Penny, her new best friend.
But mostly, she lived with Christine in
the rambling white house across from
the train station in the New England
town of Shirley, Massachusetts.
50

February2015

And David was right : they were

good for each other. Devoted to her
care, Christine took Lilly everywhere,
cooked her special meals, cuddled
beside her at night. She even came out
of her shell a bit, chatting with people
she and Lilly met on their walks. All
seemed well at last.

n May 3, 2012, David started

his shift at midnight, walking
a beat in the rough and tumble
Boston neighbourhood of Mattapan. In
his six years on the force, hed seen it
all. Nothing, he thought, could shake
him until a text came in from a friend
who worked as a paramedic in Shirley,
80km away.
Your mother almost got hit by a
train, reported the friend. Shes unhurt, but the dog with her wasnt so
lucky. Seems it lost a paw.
A quick call to the local police
gave him the details. A freight train
was steaming past the Shirley station
when the engineer spied a woman
up ahead, passed out on the tracks,
a brown dog by her side. The dog
pushed and pulled, frantically trying
to move her. The massive engines
brakes screeched. Just before the train
stopped, the engineer felt a thump.
Racing back on foot, he expected to see
two dead bodies.
But Lilly had somehow pulled
Christine off the track just in time.
Still incoherent from drink, Christine had been arrested. Lilly had been
taken to an emergency veterinarian.

P HOTOS: PREVIOUS SP READ AND THI S PAGE: BETH ORAM P HOTOGRAP HY

READERS DIGEST

David left his shift and sped

west to Shirley, choking back
sobs, furious at his mother for
putting herself in danger, and
tormenting himself about letting
her adopt Lilly.
David arrived to find Lilly still
in the animal control officers
car. Though battered and bloody,
when she saw him, her tail began
to wag. As he picked her up, a
makeshift bandage fell from her
mangled leg. David gently placed
Lilly in the back of his SUV, then
raced back the way he came.
At the Angell Animal Medical Center in Boston, doctors David immediately fell for Lilly. He also knew
told him Lillys right front paw she would be good for his mother
had been degloved the skin,
muscle and connective tissue sheered start earning the extra money hed
away. But there was a possibility that need to pay the vet bills.
her leg could be saved the docNo more than an hour into his
tors wouldnt know for sure until the shift, the hospital called. Lillys front
X-rays were completed.
right leg could not be saved. Of more
As Lilly was wheeled into intensive concern were her hindquarters. She
care, David applied for a US$4000 had multiple fractures of her left hip
loan the estimated cost of the am- and pelvis. Shed need major surgery
putation, if it had to be done. At last, to repair the damage.
done with the paperwork, he was able
First, Lilly had to survive the amputo visit her. She had a multitude of tation, the doctor explained. If she did,
tubes and IVs in her. She whimpered theyd wait a day or two, operate on her
despite the pain medication. But she hindquarters, and insert a steel plate to
was stable. And she seemed to take help her support her weight.
comfort in his presence.
Davids spirits sank as he absorbed
Too soon, as the city stirred awake the news. If she lived, he asked, would
to another morning, he had to leave she be able to walk? The doctor
her. Hustling home, he had just couldnt guarantee it.
enough time to shower before reportWould it be fair to put her through
ing for an overtime shift so he could more pain, only to have her die on the
February2015

51

But shed made it through.

Now, there was one big test
left: would she walk again?
Word spread around Angell Animal Medical Center
about the hero dog whod
rescued her owner from the
train tracks. Rob Halpin, Angells public relations director,
asked David if hed be willing
to share Lillys story with the
media. It would, Halpin told
him, help counter the unfair
stigma pit bulls face that often
prevented them from being
adopted.
David agreed. At first, he
sat down with local interviewers but once the news
of Lillys heroism spread, AnToday, Christine is ever more dedicated
gell started getting calls from
to Lilly and to her own health
reporters around the world.
operating table? What if she was left Halpin set up a fund for Lillys care.
Within four days about US$76,000
with just one good leg out of four?
He didnt want Lilly to suffer any had been donated, more than enough
more, but shed made it this far. It to cover Lillys hospital bills as well as
shouldnt be for nothing. Lilly had her the extensive physical therapy shed
right front leg, including the shoulder, need. Angell would set aside the
balance of donations to help other
amputated the following morning.
Through the steel grate of her cinder animals whose owners could not
block kennel after the surgery, David otherwise afford their care.
saw a shaved, bruised dog, tubes and
needles everywhere, and stitches
inally, a little more than a week
where her leg had been. She looked
after the accident, Angells
like Frankenstein.
doctors decided she could go
On Saturday, May 5, surgeons home. She couldnt yet stand, but she
operated on her hip and pelvis. So had started to move her back legs. It
damaged was the top of the hip joint, seemed a good sign.
At home, completely helpless,
it had to be cut away.

52

February2015

PHOTO: LDA NCY DES IGN

THE GOOD PIT BULL

READERS DIGEST

Lilly needed round-the-clock care.

Christine moved into her sons apartment and committed herself to Lillys
recovery. She cooked her special
meals of boiled chicken, sweet potatoes, and rice. Lilly needed a multitude of pills antibiotics, painkillers,
anti-inflammatories which Christine
conscientiously administered. Lilly
couldnt move by herself, and Christine didnt want her to have to sleep
alone. She snuggled in with the dog at
night on the hardwood floor.
Though they never spoke about
what happened that night on the railroad tracks, David overheard Christine call Lilly, my little lifesaver, and
her dedication to the dog said more
than words.
And yet, it would all be for nothing
if physical therapy couldnt get Lilly
back on her feet again.
Several days after her discharge
from Angell, David carried Lilly into
the Paws in Motion rehabilitation
centre, and gently placed her on the
floor. The most physical therapist
Dr Suzanne Starr could do with Lilly
that first day was to massage, flex and
extend her legs.
At her next session, Starr placed Lilly
onto the underwater treadmill. And,
for a few brief moments, the buoyancy of the water allowed the pit bull
to stand and walk upright on her own
without falling. But outside the water,
Lilly was as immobile as before, unable
to bear her own weight on her remaining three legs.

Christine diligently helped Lilly do

the stretching exercises prescribed
by Starr. Together, mother and son
learned how to walk her. With one
person at Lillys front and the other at
her back, they carried her in a specially
designed dual harness.
One sunny June afternoon, David
brought the two dogs to a park in
downtown Boston. Lilly was lounging in the grass in her harness, Penny
nearby, when a woman stopped on
the sidewalk and stared, evidently
recognising them, thanks to all the
media attention Lilly had gotten.
The woman began walking towards
them, beaming a warm, inviting smile,
then opened her arms wide and called
out: Lilly!
Lillys face lit up as it always did.
But as David watched, stunned, Lilly
pushed herself up and, wobbly as can
be, took half a dozen steps on her three
remaining legs to greet the woman.
Reacting quickly, he reached out to
support the dog, frightened that shed
collapse. And just as quickly, joy swept
away the fear.
Everything was going to be all right.
Lilly was going to make it. She would
walk again.
Lilly still divides her time between her two
homes in Shirley and East Boston, happily
getting around on her three legs. She also
makes appearances for a charity, Lilly The
Hero Pit Bull, that advocates on behalf of
pit bulls, raises money for their medical
expenses, and helps them find new homes.
Christine is again sober and doing well.

February2015

53

LIVING LANGUAGE

words that
nurs
e the
ego and
he
ar
t

heal
the

54

December2014

In the last few months of his life,

one of Australias best-loved
authors reflected on his passion for
the simple things, including

Words
BY BRYCE CO URTE NAY

I GUESS AS A WRITER I care about words more than most and

while its natural that the new technology such as Facebook and
Twitter and the by now almost universally used email encourages us to use a bunch of words that are colourless and often cut
to verbal ribbons How R U, Luv U or similar it seems to be
a process that is squeezing the life out of language.
I am aware that language is a constantly changing medium
new words and forms arrive, old ones die out. Like life, a great
many common words have a brief lifespan before passing away.
But English is a beautiful and expressive language that more than

February2015

55

LIVING LANGUAGE

most languages can explain through

idiom our society to ourselves.
Truncating words into small,
common, lifeless little objects,
meaningless phrases as if what we
have to say and therefore we ourselves
are unimportant and worthless seems
to me to be a tragic transgression into
nowhere. Someone once said we are
known by the words we use.
Allow me to talk a little about words,
those lovely, jumping, laughing, eager
little marks we make on paper or tap
onto a screen.
Words gather around a proposition
or an idea or story willingly. Some wag
their tails, others stand back a little shy,
but theyve come to work, some shuffle
as they stand in line, others stand to
rigid attention while you can almost
hear some of them tap dancing. But
the big ones and the small ones, the
extroverted words and the shy words
all want to be part of the action, part
of your narrative. They all want to get
into the act, all are anxious to make
your writing just the very best it can be.
If you love words they force you
to use them intelligently, they dont
merely want to show off in fact, they
love working hard. Nothing echoes
more loudly than a hollow word or
lacks meaning as does a lazy one.
Some words run softly, on tippytoe, almost soundless, others clump
around like an under-14 football
team milling around on the cement
floor of the dressing shed. Some
soothe like cold cream on sunburn
56

February2015

while others can set your blood

pounding. Expletives are a part of
our language and they too can be
used well or simply wasted, thrown
together in a sentence to denote little
but an inability to think or pause
meaningfully in an attempt to find an
appropriate adjective.
There are words so rounded at
the edges and softened by wear
that they are no longer words at all
but the sounds that people make
for confusion, despair, joy or anger.
There are words that are randy (oldfashioned word) or sexy but not dirty
or foul. And sacred words that have
become expletives, their meanings
soiled with improper unthinking and
careless use.
Some words stick like burrs and
punish at a touch. They are words we
never forget, insults and denigrating
words that destroy our egos and
sometimes even our lives.
But then there are also words that
nurse the ego and heal the heart.
There are words joined together in
common phrases we barely notice as
we employ them in everyday use, yet
if you pause a moment to think, they
are so beautiful that they elevate the
human race. For instance, here is a
phrase so common we use it without
a moments thought, yet it is a miracle
of invention. How it ever came into
being is a marvel and a mystery. Who
was it to first use our language with
such finesse? The phrase: Beyond
a shadow of a doubt. Just pause for

READERS DIGEST

a moment. Beyond meaning a way invented. It means you can possess

ahead, a shadow a dark area covering an opinion that can reach around
light, a doubt, a hesitancy in belief. the world without the media or the
How blithely we employ this phrase, government putting a spin to it.
yet how exquisitely beautiful it is in its Your opinion coupled with countless
thought and structure. Our language others can stop wars and destroy
contains hundreds,
tyrants. Use it, and if you
perhaps thousands
choose the right
of similar miracles
words, inequity
of expression that
a n d h a rd s h i p
lead to deeper
even poverty
There are some
understanding
can be solved
words that remain
or emphasis.
forever.
forever unspoken,
Though there
The choice
clamped in a
are also phrases
is ours, words
that clunk, or do
s p o ke n , o n t h e
throat that aches
for me. Here is one,
screen, recorded,
to let them out
I mean this from the
written, lyrics. If we
bottom of my heart.
use them well and care
In my minds eye I see a
how we put them together,
heart with a large bottom and
if we think before we open
anything, even a sentiment,
our mouths, tap the computer
coming from it is not to be trusted.
keys or unclip a pen or compose a
Any person heart-bottoming me is lyric or write a poem or even a note
suspect.
to the supermarket, we will do more
There are also phrases that smack than simply rescue language, we will
you in the mouth. He was found stone begin to communicate meaningfully
cold dead. Whack!
with each other as a collective force
There are even some words that that cant be stopped. When we talk
remain forever unspoken, clamped in with purpose and pleasure to each
a throat that aches to let them out other in this marvellous language we
and often they are the most meaningful have been given as our birthright then
words of all.
anything is possible and most of it will
Words are the most of what we be very good.
have to solve just about everything.
You are a person with a point of view
The new social media is the most that counts use it! Find the right
powerful medium for words ever words and change the world.
EDITED EXTRACT FROM SILVER MOON: REFLECTIONS ON LIFE, DEATH AND WRITING BY BRYCE COURTENAY.
2014. PUBLISHED BY VIKING AUSTRALIA. RRP A$24.99 OR AS AN EBOOK RRP A$9.99

February2015

57

Lifes Like That

SEEING THE FUNNY SIDE

From the Archives

A special treat for our February 2015

readers: this charming letter from
58years ago is also accompanied by
the original February 1957
illustration.
There was a loud crash, and when I
rushed outside I saw that a woman
had banged into a mans car ahead
of her. Unhurt, she jumped out and
inspected the damage to her own
car. Then she ran up to the man
and started beating him on the

chest, sobbing, Ill make you pay

for this!
After the dramatics had calmed
down I went my way and forgot
about the whole thing. About a
month later I saw a picture in the
paper of this same man and woman.
The caption read, Newlywed
Couple Enjoying Seaside
Honeymoon.
I couldnt help thinking she had
made him pay plenty!
SUBMITTED BY BERNARD J. SMITH

NOT AS ADVERTISED

SPITTING IMAGE

My husband and I were relaxing

onlounge chairs on a Jamaica
beach, half listening to a couple
walking ankle deep in the clear
water. The woman was extolling the
beauty of the island when suddenly
she let out a scream.
Oh! she shrieked. There are fish
in here!
SUBMITTED BY JANET DAVIS

I was showing off my

drawing skills to my fouryear-old one day. I would
sketch different things and
then ask him to recognise them. My
boy was doing really well until I drew
an angry face and he shouted, Its
Mummy! My wife was not amused.

58

February2015

SUBMITTED BY ABHISHEK VERMA

DEFACED LEGS

My five-year-old nephew
visited his grandma with me
one warm summers day. As
it was so balmy, she wasnt
wearing her normal thick
stockings. The little boy was wideeyed as he carefully examined the
varicose veins threaded along her
legs.
Looking concerned, he leaned
forward and whispered, Youve been
really naughty, Nana. Mummy will go
mad when she sees what youve done
with that felt-tip pen.
SUBMITTED BY MARGARET FIELDER

RETURN TO SENDER

Spotting an enormous
snail feasting on one
of my plants,
Iaccidentally lobbed
it towards my neighbours
garden. It sailed through the air
closely followed by my pretty bracelet
that became detached from my wrist.
With my tail between my legs, I was
forced to go and confess to the
neighbours, stressing that Id only
thrown the snail towards, not at,
their garden.
We went into their garden to search
for the bracelet, but had no success.
However, two days later my
neighbour called over the fence:
Guess what? he said. We didnt
find your bracelet, but we found your
snail so weve thrown that back!
SUBMITTED BY DIANE TURNER

The Great Tweet-off:

Wisdom Edition
Time to check in with teenage
wunder-tweeter @SixthFormPoet.
His musings have been enjoyed by
millions since he joined Twitter in
February 2011, and he now has a
book, The Sixth Form Poet: Deep
Thoughts and Wise Words. Enjoy.
l Clapping

between push-ups
is a cool way to
applaud yourself
for managing
something
asthmatic tenyear-olds can do
with minimal effort.

My bed is half full.

Lonely optimist

l Just so you know, kissing

someone mid-sentence works

better in films than when a bus
conductor is asking why you dont
have a valid ticket.
l Just found the worst page in the

entire dictionary. What I saw was

disgraceful, disgusting, dishonest
and disingenuous.
l Life is a gift. You never get the

one you really wanted.

l Its odd that Thelma and Louise

spend an entire film challenging

sexist stereotypes, then die at the
end because of their terrible driving.
February2015

59

WHAT ITS LIKE ...

An old boyfriend rang and said he had

afavour to ask. Jane Whitehead found it
hard to believe what he said next

Love

Reimagined
AS TOL D TO E M I LY C U N NINGH AM FR O M T H E GU AR DI AN

WHEN THE PHONE RANG and it

was my childhood sweetheart on the
other end, my first reaction was suspicion. Why was Kevin ringing me? He
had dumped me unceremoniously
eight years earlier, preferring to play
football with his mates than spend
time with me.
We were 14 when we met, and
although it was just a light-hearted
teenage relationship, I was heartbroken when Kevin finished with me over
the phone after six weeks. I cried for
60

February2015

days and would walk past his house

hoping to catch a glimpse of him. But
I didnt see him and had no choice
but to get on with my life.
So when he rang I wasnt bowled
over to hear from him. Something else
unnerved me, too Kevin sounded
completely different. Older, yes, but
also hesitant and unsure of himself,
not like him at all. He explained that
he was ringing because he had had
a brain injury and lost his memory.
His therapist had encouraged him to

PHOTO: MARK CHILVERS

Jane Whitehead: a leap

of faith changed her
whole future

contact childhood friends who might

help him patch together his past. My
name stuck out when he was browsing
through Friends Reunited. He thought
we might have known each other.
Known each other? Was this
awind-up? I found it hard to believe
Kevins story and I was more than
a little wary. I got a friend to ring
his mother to confirm it and, yes,
he had been knocked off his motorbike by a lorry and been thrown in
the air, landing on his head. When

he came out of a two-day coma, he

couldnt recognise anyone not even
his mother and he had spent eight
weeks in hospital having to relearn
even simple day-to-day tasks such
as using a knife and fork. Gradually,
his memory was returning, but there
were still massive gaps that he hoped
I could help him fill.
My feelings towards him softened.
I didnt feel attracted to this anxious,
vulnerable person, but I wanted to
help him, so we began to email and
February2015

61

LOVE REIMAGINED

talk on the phone. He found that talk- him of that. When he asked to kiss me
ing about one recollection triggered again, I was delighted.
others and he was gradually piecing
I was due to go on holiday with
together the jigsaw.
friends, and before I left Kevin asked if
After a few weeks we met up. I would be his girlfriend. The formalThe boy Id known with surfer-style ity of the question made me laugh, but
hair was long gone the man who I agreed and our relationship began
answered the door was stocky, with for the second time in a decade. At
times it was very hard
a shaved head. During
for both of us: Kevin
our meal out, he was
str uggled w ith dark
quiet and withdrawn,
The awkward
moods and would cry
and we were both reoften. He questioned
lieved when I dropped
silences werent
why I would want to be
him off afterwards. I
due to social
with him and said he
later discovered that it
tensions, but
would understand if I
had been his first night
because he was
broke it off, but I could
out in months.
The brain injury had
trying to control never do that to him.
Before the accident he
shattered his confia panic attack
had been about to move
dence, almost literally.
to Spain he had his
During the accident,
Kevins brain was knocked violently whole future mapped out, but it had
against his skull, leaving a deep gouge come crashing down. I knew I was
on the area that controls emotion. one of the few things that buoyed him
Kevins personality had been radi- up during this time.
As the months passed, Kevins
cally affected and as his brain slowly
rewired itself, he struggled with his mood stabilised. He didnt need my
feelings. So the awkward silences support so much and our relationship
wed had werent due to simple became one of equals. We married in
social tensions, but because he was 2007 and we had our twins, Louis and
Olivia, in 2010. Kevins memory is
struggling to control a panic attack.
We continued to email and phone, back to normal; if he forgets someand took to driving to old haunts. As thing, like everyone does, we laugh
I grew to understand him, my feel- that he cant blame the accident, just
ings changed. How could I not warm old age. I would never say I was glad
to this sensitive, kind man? Once we Kevin had his accident, but I am so
visited the place where we had first happy to be with the man he became
kissed as teenagers, and I reminded because of it.
THE GUARDIAN (22 JUNE 2013), 2013 GUARDIAN NEWS AND MEDIA LIMITED

62

February2015

Thats Outrageous!
ITS A NUMBERS GAME

700 The number

of church-bell tolls
a Rhode Island man
had to endure in one
week, which put him in
a bad mood and
contributed to the
demise of his marriage,
according to his lawsuit
against said church in
Florida, US. Source: The Week

ILLUSTRATION: NI SHANT CHOKSI

24 The number of
puppies in the largest litter ever
recorded. They were born by caesarean
section on 29 November, 2004, in the
UK and their mother, Tia, was a
Neopolitan mastiff. The litter consisted
of 9 female pups and 15 males: 21 of
them survived. Source: guinnessworldrecords.com
1,079,952 The amount in dollars
lost when a member of the cleaning
staff at a German museum mistook
a piece of art for garbage and threw
it out.
Source: The Guardian
73 The percentage of the vote that the
government of Azerbaijan stated the
president had received during the past
election. Note: the results were
accidentally leaked a day before
anyone voted.
Source: huffingtonpost.com

419.99 The mile

marker Colorado put
on Interstate 70 after
the old one 420, which
is linked to marijuana
kept being stolen.
Source: newser.com

78 The number of antiriot vehicles bought by

German police. During
a public exhibition, one
of the 33-tonne vehicles
which was advertised as withstanding
missiles such as bricks, stones and
Molotov cocktails was damaged by
tennis balls, eggs and plastic bottles
filled with water.
Source: The Daily Mail
3600 The approximate total number
of spider species that youll find in the
Amazon. The largest of these is the
Goliath bird eater, which can live for
almost 30 years.
Source: thinkjungle.com
911 The number called by a Texas
woman requesting that someone
bring her cigarettes.
Source: nbcdfw.com
4,800,000,000 The divorce
judgment in dollars against Russian
billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev.
Source: The New York Daily News

February2015

63

FIRST PERSON

Son

Terrorists

BY ZAK E B R A H I M F R OM T H E BO O K T H E T E R RO R I ST S SON

November 5, 1990

CLIFFSIDE PARK, NEW JERSEY

M
ZAK EBRAHIM is
an advocate for
nonviolence,
tolerance and
empathy.

64

| February2015

y mother shakes me awake in my bed: Theres

been an accident, she says.
I am seven years old, a chubby kid in Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles pyjamas. Im accustomed to being
roused before dawn, but only by my father and only to pray
on my little rug with the minarets. Never by my mother.
Its 11 at night. My father is not home. Lately, he has been
staying at the mosque in Jersey City deeper and deeper into
the night. But he is still Baba to me funny, loving, warm.
Just this morning, he tried to teach me, yet again, how to
tie my shoes. Has he been in an accident? Is he hurt? Is he
dead? I cant get the questions out, because Im too scared.
My mother flings open a white sheet it mushrooms
briefly, like a cloud then leans down to spread it on the

ILLUSTRATION BY JOE MCKEN DRY; PH OTO COURTESY Z AK EBRAHI M

The

Scarred by the hatred and violence of his

father, a boy becomes a force for peace

Zak visited his father at

the Attica Correctional
Facility in 1994. The house
in the background is
where the family stayed
for a weekend on the
prison grounds
November2014

65

THE TERRORISTS SON

floor. Look into my eyes, Z, she says,

her face so knotted with worry that I
hardly recognise her. You need to
get dressed as quick as you can. And
then you need to put your things onto
this sheet and wrap it up tight. OK?
Your sister will help you. She moves
towards the door.
Wait, I say. Its the first word Ive
managed to utter. What should I put
in the sheet?

mosque, desperate to reach him. Hes

not here, my mother says.
The phone rings again.
This time, I cant figure out whos
calling. My mother says, Really?
Asking about us? The police?
A little later, I wake up on a blanket
on the living room floor. Somehow, in
the midst of the chaos, Ive nodded off.
Everything we could possibly carry is
piled by the door. My mother paces

My mother saw footage of the Arab gunman, and

her heart nearly stopped: it was my father
Im a good kid. Shy. Obedient.
My mother stops to look at me.
Whatever will fit, she says. I dont
know if were coming back.
She turns, and shes gone.
Once weve packed, my sister,
brother, and I pad down to the living
room. My mother has called my
fathers cousin in Brooklyn we call
him Uncle Ibrahim, or just Ammu
and shes talking to him heatedly,
clutching the phone with her left
hand and, with her right, nervously
adjusting her hijab. The TV plays
in the background. Breaking news.
My mother catches us watching and
hurries to turn it off.
She talks to Ammu Ibrahim for a
while longer, her back to us. When she
hangs up, the phone begins ringing.
It is one of Babas friends from the
66

| February2015

around, checking and rechecking her

purse. She has all our birth certificates:
proof, if anyone demands it, that she
is our mother. My father, El-Sayyid
Nosair, was born in Egypt. But my
mother was born in Pittsburgh. Before
she became a Muslim before she took
the name Khadija Nosair she went by
Karen Mills.
Your uncle Ibrahim is coming for
us, she tells me when she sees me
sitting up and rubbing my eyes.
Here is what my mother is not
saying: Meir Kahane, a militant
rabbi and the founder of the Jewish
Defense League, has been shot by an
Arab gunman after a speech in a ballroom at a Marriott hotel in New York.
The gunman fled the scene, shooting
an elderly man in the leg in the process. He rushed into a cab that was

READERS DIGEST

waiting in front of the hotel but then

bolted out and began running down
the street, gun in hand. A law enforcement officer from the US Postal
Service, who happened to be passing by, exchanged fire with him. The
gunman collapsed on the street. The
newscasters couldnt help noting a
gruesome detail: both Rabbi Kahane
and the assassin had been shot in the
neck. Neither was expected to live.
Now the TV stations are updating
the story constantly. An hour ago,
while my sister, brother, and I slept
away our last seconds of anything
remotely resembling a childhood,
my mother overheard the name Meir
Kahane and looked up at the screen.
The first thing she saw was footage
of the Arab gunman, and her heart
nearly stopped: it was my father.

Nosair survived his injuries, while

Kahane did not. Awaiting trial in
prison at Attica State Prison in New
York, Nosair insisted on his innocence,
and his wife and children desperately
wanted to believe him. During this
time, US federal agents raided the familys home, but it would be years before
they translated all his papers. Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden, unknown
to most of the world at that time, was
among those contributing to Nosairs
legal fees. In 1991, a jury found Nosair
not guilty of murder. He was sentenced
instead to seven to 22 years for criminal possession of a weapon and other

charges. The family endured years of

death threats, nomadic living, and
poverty. Tragically, Nosairs career as a
terrorist was not over yet.

February 26, 1993

JERSEY CITY, NEW JERSEY

m about to turn ten, and Ive

been bullied at school for years. I
cant pretend its just because of
who my father is. For reasons I will
probably spend my whole life trying
to unravel, I seem to be a magnet
for abuse. The bullies latest trick is
to wait until Ive turned to open my
locker and then slam my head against
it and run. Whenever this happens,
the principal says he wants to be fair
to all parties, so I usually get sent to
detention along with the bullies. The
anger and dread have made a permanent nest in my stomach. Todays a
Friday, and my mother has let me stay
home from school to recover from
what we agree to call a stomach bug.
Im camped out on t he couch,
watching Harry and the Hendersons,
a movie about a family whos hiding
a Bigfoot-t y pe creature from t he
police because the police wont understand how kind and gentle he is.
In the middle of the movie, theres
breaking news: an explosion beneath
the North Tower of the World Trade
Center (W TC). Law enforcement
agencies are on the scene, the early
theory being that a transformer has
exploded. The wreckage is horrific.
Later, hundreds of FBI agents comb
February2015

67

THE TERRORISTS SON

through the rubble. They abandon the

theory about the transformer when
they discover remnants of the rental
van that carried the explosives. The
FBI traces the van back to Mohammed Salameh the deliver y man
whod promised to marry my sister
when she came of age and arrests
him on March 4, when he returns to
the rental company to report the van
stolen and demand that he get his

the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, the

George Washington Bridge and a federal building housing the FBI in New
York.
For practical purposes, though,
the WTC operation was run by the
Kuwaiti-born Ramzi Yousef. He had
studied electrical engineering in Wales
and bomb making at a terrorist training camp in Pakistan. He entered the
United States using a fake Iraqi pass-

My mother barely has the money to pay for my fathers

collect calls. I dont want to talk to him anyway
$400 deposit back. In the months that
follow, America shivers at the previously incomprehensible thought of
terrorism at home, as well as at the
fact that its government agencies had
been caught unawares.

STARTLING FACT EMERGES:

my f a t h e r h e l p e d s t ra tegise the attack from his

cell at Attica, using visitors as gobetweens to associates back home.
One of those associates was his old
mentor, the Blind Sheikh [Sheik
Omar Abdel-Rahman], who not only
encouraged the WTC plot, according
to the government, but also signed
off on a plan that would have been
far more deadly, had it come to pass:
five more bombs detonated within
ten minutes at the United Nations,
68

| February2015

port and, upon being detained, played

a get-out-of-jail-free card by requesting
asylum. A court date was set.
And because holding cells were full,
Yousef was released on his own recognizance in New Jersey, whereupon he
and his team began collecting the
ingredients for the bomb. Just hours
after the attack, Yousef left the country.
I wish I could do more to honour
the six victims than just repeat their
names, but Id be ashamed if I didnt
do at least that much. Robert Kirkpatrick, William Macko and Stephen
Knapp were all maintenance supervisors at the WTC. They were eating
lunch together when the bomb went
off. Monica Rodriguez Smith was a
secretary. She was seven months pregnant and doing clerical work when she
was killed. Wilfredo Mercado worked

READERS DIGEST

for the restaurant Windows on the

World. He was checking in deliveries.
And John DiGiovanni was a salesman
who specialised in dental products
he was just parking his car.

Y THE AUTUMN OF 1995 , the

government, having finally
translated the contents of the
47 boxes taken from our home after
Kahanes assassination, determines
that the killing was part of a conspiracy
and retries my father for the murder as
well as for his part in the World Trade
Center bombing.
My father still insists that he is innocent of everything. I believe him
because well, because I am 12 years
old. My mother has doubts. My father
rants to her about the conspiracy
against him, and he barks orders:
write to the judge! Call Pakistan! Go to
the Egyptian embassy! Are you writing
all of this down?! My mother yesses
him quietly.
On October 1, my father, along with
the Blind Sheikh and eight others,
is convicted of 48 out of 50 charges,
and later he is sentenced to life plus
15 years without parole. The murder
of Monica Rodriguez Smiths unborn
child is considered in the sentencing.
After the new round of convictions, we see my father once at the
Metropolitan Correctional Center
(MCC) in New York. My mother is
terrified about what will become of
her and her children. Even now, my
father will not admit guilt. When he

goes to hug my mother, she pulls

away for the first time, so repulsed
that she thinks shes going to vomit.
For many years, she will try to console us by saying that we have a father
who loves us. But she will always remember the visit to the MCC as the
day that her own heart finally gave up.
My father is shipped off to a series
of maximum-security prisons around
the country. We can no longer afford
to visit, even if we wanted to. My
mother barely has the money to pay
for my fathers collect calls. I dont
want to talk to him anyway. All he
ever says is, Are you making your
prayers? Are you being good to your
mother? And all I want to say is, Are
you being good to my mother, Baba?
Do you know that shes crying all the
time? But, of course, Im too scared
to say any of this. So my father and I
keep having the same pointless conversations, and I twist the phone cord
tighter and tighter around my hand
because I just want it to stop.
My mother wants it to stop too. She
demands a divorce, and we all change
our last name.
Weve seen my father for the last time.

After years of moving around the country and even living briefly in Egypt,
the family moved to Tampa, Florida.
Zak got a job at Busch Gardens, a
theme park, when he was 18. There he
made friends and came to appreciate
people from all different backgrounds.
February2015

69

THE TERRORISTS SON

VE SPENT MY LIFE trying to

understand what drew my father

to terrorism and struggled with the
knowledge that I have his blood in my
veins. It was many years before I internalised the full horror of what he did.
I carried fear, anger, and self-loathing
in my gut but couldnt even begin to
process them.
I now understand that theres a
reason that murderous hatred has to

based on what they were Muslim,

Jewish, Christian, gay, straight and
that starting right then and there, I
was going to judge them based only
on who they were. She listened, she
nodded, and she had the wisdom
to speak the six most empowering
words I have ever heard: Im so tired
of hating people.
Everyone has a choice. Even if
youre trained to hate, you can choose

Everyone has a choice. Even if youre trained to hate,

you can choose tolerance. You can choose empathy
be taught and not just taught but
forcibly implanted. Its not a naturally
occurring phenomenon. It is a lie. It is
a lie told over and over again often
to people who have no resources and
who are denied alternative views of the
world. Its a lie my father believed, and
one he hoped to pass on to me. But he
could not fill me with hate from jail.
And he could not stop me from coming
into contact with the sorts of people he
demonised and discovering that they
were human beings people I could
care about and who could care about
me. Bigotry cannot survive experience.
My body rejected it.
My mothers faith in Islam never
wavered, but she, l i ke t he vast
majorit y of Muslims, is any thing
but a zealot. When I was 18, I told
her I could no longer judge people
70

| February2015

tolerance. You can choose empathy.

To be honest, I still feel something for my father, something that
I havent been able to eradicate
some strand of pity and guilt, I guess,
though its as thin as spiders silk.
Its hard to think of the man I once
called Baba living in a cell, knowing
that we have all changed our names
out of terror and shame.
Every so often, Ill get an e-mail from
the federal penitentiary in Marion,
Illinois, saying that my father would
like to initiate correspondence. But Ive
learned that leads nowhere good.
Rabbi Kahanes assassination was
not just hateful but a failure as anything other than simple murder. My
father intended to shut the rabbi up
and to bring glory unto Allah. What he
actually did was to bring shame and

READERS DIGEST

suspicion unto all Muslims and to inspire more pointless and cowardly acts
of violence.
One of the upsides to not speaking to my father anymore is that Ive
never had to listen to him pontificate about the vile events that took
place on September 11. He must
have regarded the destruction of the
Twin Towers as a great victory for
Islam maybe even as the culmination
of the work he and the Blind Sheikh
and Ramzi Yousef had begun years
earlier.
In April 2012, I had the surreal
experience of giving a speech to a
couple of hundred federal agents.
The Bureau wanted to build a better
rapport with the Muslim community,
and the agent in charge of the campaign had heard me advocate for
peace at his sons school, so there I
was feeling honoured but nervous. I
proceeded to tell my story and to offer
myself up as proof that it is possible to

shut ones ears to hatred and violence

and simply choose peace.
After my talk, a handful of agents
formed a line to shake my hand.
The first few agents offered polite
words and firm grips. The third one,
a woman, had been crying.
You probably dont remember me,
she said. But I was one of the agents
who worked on your fathers case. She
paused awkwardly, which made my
heart go out to her. I always wondered
what happened to the children of ElSayyid Nosair, she continued. I was
afraid that youd followed in his path.
Im proud of the path that Ive
chosen. And I think I speak for my
brother and sister when I say that
rejecting our fathers extremism both
saved our lives and made our lives
worth living.
To answer the agents question,
here is what happened to the children
of El-Sayyid Nosair:
We are not his children anymore.

THE TERRORISTS SON, BY ZAK EBRAHIM WITH JEFF GILES, 2014 BY ZAK EBRAHIM, IS A TED BOOK
AND PUBLISHED BY SIMON & SCHUSTER, INC. WWW.SIMONANDSCHUSTER.COM.

OVERLY HONEST OUT-OF-OFFICE REPLIES

l

Im away from my computer but still available to chat if its not

about work.
Ill be checking email sporadically in between cycling through
all these tabs I have open to compare shoe prices.

l If youd like to contact me, please post your email directly to my

Facebook page, where I will be spending the remainder of the day.
SOMEECARDS.COM

February2015

71

All in a Days Work

HUMOUR ON THE JOB

DEADLY DIET

At a conference I attended recently, a doctor was addressing

alarge audience. The material we put into our stomachs should
have killed most of us sitting here years ago, he said. Red
meat is full of steroids and dye. Soft drinks corrode your
stomach lining. Fast food is loaded with additives. High transfats diets can be disastrous, and none of us realises the longterm harm caused by germs in our drinking water.
But theres one thing thats the most dangerous of all, and
most of us has, or will, eat it. Can anyone here tell me what
food it is that causes the most grief and suffering for years
after eating it?
After several seconds of quiet, an elderly man in the front
row raised his hand and softly said, Wedding cake?
SUBMITTED BY ROBERT THOMPSON

When I worked in the post office,

alady barged in and started
complaining that shed got home
tofind a note from the postman
hed tried to deliver a package but
nobody was in.
My husband was home all day!
she fumed.
After I gave her the package, she
said, Oh, Im so excited its my
husbands new hearing aids!
SUBMITTED BY LUCY BRYN

BACK PEDDLER

I was listening to my son and his

friend discussing what their parents
did for a living, when I had to quickly
72

| February2015

rush over and explain in case his

friend went home and told his parents
what hed been told.
I do not sell drugs, I assured him,
but I do work in a pharmacy!
SUBMITTED BY AMELIA BARNES

AFTER-DINNER DRINKS

We recently ate at a restaurant and as

we paid our bill the waitress asked our
small son what we
were going to do
next. Excitedly,
Jamie said, We
have whisky in
the car, you
know.
The waitress

P HOTO: (COUP LE) THIN KSTOCK

KNOCK KNOCK

BE VERY AFRAID
SCENE: A second-hand DVD shop
ME: Do you have the DVD of Sharknado?
SHOP ASSISTANT: Is that a documentary?
SUBMITTED BY LYNETTE COMBS

glared at me and walked off before

Icould explain to her that our dog
Whisky was indeed waiting for us to
return to the parking lot.
SUBMITTED BY JOANNE AITCH

THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS

(HALF) RIGHT

I was really pleased with my purchase

of a new pair of shoes from a major
retailer. About a week later, on a rainy
day, I was in a rush and quickly
grabbed my shoes from the rack and
made my way into town. To my horror,
I felt a wet sensation
inside my right shoe
it was leaking.
I returned to the
shop to complain
about the leaking
right shoe. At
customer service, the
assistant looked at both
shoes and said, Yes, sir,
youre correct the right shoe leaks,
but unfortunately only the left shoe
was bought from this store.
My apology was as swift as my
departure.
SUBMITTED BY PHILIP CARROLL

INGRATE

I recently visited a local restaurant

for a spot of lunch. I ordered a ham
salad, and the waiter soon arrived
with my meal.
Do you know what kind of cheese
this is? I asked him, pointing at my
plate. Off he went into the kitchen to
find out from the chef, and a few
moments later he returned.
Its grated cheese, sir, he replied.
SUBMITTED BY KENNETH ROBERTS

FLAMEOUT

I was assisting a teacher

who was tutoring a class of
14-year-olds whod recently
been on a trip to Italy.
When the teacher asked for
any questions relating to their trip, one
pupil raised his hand and asked, Sir,
why are the underground stations
called Fumare Vieto?
After a silence, the teacher replied,
The translation is No Smoking.
SUBMITTED BY ROCHELLE COHEN

Got a good joke, anecdote or real-life

gem to share? Send it in and you could win
cash! See page 6 for details on how to
contribute.
February2015

73

CHEAT SHEET

I N ST
A N SWA N T
ERS

EBOLA

BY HA ZEL FLYN N

Not everyone who catches Ebola virus disease

will die, but it kills at a far higher rate than many
other diseases. Africa is currently
experiencing a headline-making outbreak
of the disease, which is spread by
person-to-person transmission. In
WHAT ARE ITS
previous epidemics, 50% of affected
ORIGINS?
The first
people died but without medical
outbreak of 602 recorded
treatment this can rise as high as
cases was in 1976 in Sudan
90%. The WHO has reported
and in the Democratic Republic
afatality rate during
of Congo (formerly Zaire), near
the current
the Ebola River. It may have
epidemic in
been initially spread as a
West Africa
result of handling bushmeat
of about
(wild animals hunted for
72%. This
food) or contact with
SUDAN
drops to
infected bats. The
60% for
current Ebola
patients in GUINEA
SIERRA
outbreak, mainly
hospital.
LEONE
in the West
LIBERIA
African countries
As we
of Guinea, Liberia
work to help the
DEMOCRATIC
and Sierra Leone,
REPUBLIC
OF CONGO
began in March 2014 and
communities affected
is the worst so far. By
by this virus, we must not
December, there were
let our fear outweigh our
more than 17,000
people infected and
compassion
more than 6000 deaths
Dr Tom Frieden, Director of US Centers
recorded.
forDisease Control and Prevention (CDC)
74

February2015

ILLUSTRATIONS : THINKSTOCK; GETTY I M AGES

START AT THE BEGINNING:

TELL ME MORE: Symptoms appear anywhere from 2-21 days after

exposure, but most commonly show up in 8-10 days. Unlike, say, chickenpox,
aperson with Ebola cannot spread the disease before their symptoms appear.
The virus passes from one person to another only by direct contact with blood
and bodily fluids, which may enter the body through mucous membranes or
breaks in the skin. It is not spread through the air. People caring for the sick or
handling the bodies of people infected with Ebola are particularly exposed.
At first, Ebola seems much like the flu, causing headaches, pains and fever.
Vomiting and diarrhoea and sometimes a rash follows. More than two-thirds of
sufferers will then experience a severe decline as the virus
causes them to haemorrhage; they may pass blood
in urine or vomit, or from the eyes or mouth. Death
is usually caused by organ
failure and septic shock
following the drastic loss
of blood pressure when
blood vessels leak fluid.

6070:

IS THERE ANY
GOOD NEWS?

Yes. Ebola is not nearly

as contagious as you might
fear. Each person with Ebola
passes it to 1.5 to 2 others. In
comparison, measles is far
more easily transmittable (an
average of 18 contagions),
but does not have the same
high mortality rate. Also,
hospital healthcare measures
such as fluid management
and blood transfusions can
greatly increase survival
rates. Finally, several potential
vaccines are now in active
development.

Deaths in the first nine months

of the current outbreak
Source: WHO, December 3, 2014

Ebola is a filovirus, with a

threadlike structure. Its spiky
surface helps viral particles
attach to cells and proceed to
enter them and replicate

US$1.3m:

Cost of two Ebola patients at Nebraska

Medical Center, US. A 70-bed purposebuilt Ebola unit in Bong, Liberia, costs
$1m/month to run and an average
Liberian centre spends $1200/patient.
Sources: Washington Post; Forbes.com; Samaritans Purse

February2015

75

Sir Tim Berners-Lee,

59, invented the web
26 years ago

SIR
WORLD
76

| February
012015 2015

WIDE
WEB

THE RD INTERVIEW

PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES

Mohan Sivanand speaks to the gallant knight who

made it possible for anyone to share information with
anyone else, anywhere
OVER LONG YEARS, it took innumerable people to develop the internet,
which for decades was used only by
professional boffins and highly skilled
geeks not you and I. But the world
wide web (W W W), created for the
internet in 1989-90 by one man, Tim
Berners-Lee, changed everything.
Growing up in England, Tim and
his two schoolmates Nicholas Barton
and Chris Butler who also became
scientists spent time in the playground just talking about science
or making electrical gadgets. While
he was studying physics at Oxford,
Tim built his own computer terminal with a broken-down television
set for the screen and a discarded
adding machine for the keyboard.
Using an early microprocessor chip
for his terminal to work, he took it
into the college physics laboratory to
test it out.
The lab technician, Berners-Lee
recalls, was so suspicious of it, he
didnt want to connect my electronics
to his computer in case his computer blew up. So I built an optical
isolating device, where the signal is

transmitted by light bet ween the

two, so there was no actual [wired]
connection, and I could try out my
terminal.
BY 1980, BERNERS-LEE was a 25-yearold computer consultant posted at
the giant European organisation for
nuclear research known as CERN,
where he went on to develop software
to archive and link his own notes and
documents, calling it Enquire. He
was also confronted with a battalion
of CERN physicists and their documents. Berners-Lee expanded on
Enquire for a solution, using random
links to easily access all information
stored in CERNs computers. His next
step, in 1989, was to link information
on computers across the world by creating a virtual mesh. It was the killer
app the internet badly needed.
So why didnt he call it The Mesh?
It sounded much like mess. He even
considered TIM, short for The Information Mine. But TIM seemed too
self-important for the soft- spoken,
unassuming Tim. It was finally christened the world wide web. In 1990, he
February2015

77

SIR WORLD WIDE WEB

came up with the first WorldWide- When you put that first website online,
Web browser and the first ever web- how many people did you imagine
site (info.cern.ch/hypertext/ WWW/ would use the internet one day?
TheProject.html, which is still out Oh, there was no time for science
there amid some 985 million others). fiction. I just spent a lot of time trying
The WWW took off despite the to make sure the system didnt break.
sceptics, partly because its inventor I wanted to get people involved.
never sought any patent rights or Id written a web browser editor,
which ran on the NeXT
royalty, in order to
ensure its free expanmachine, a black magnesium-alloy machine
sion something hes
Everybody
made by Steve Jobs,
still striving to achieve
which was very cool
through the World Wide
involved has a
not many people
Web Foundation he
responsibility to but
had them. So I needed
launched in 2009. The
make sure that
to persuade people to
foundations website
write them for other
(www.webfoundation.
the web really
computers. I had to
org) has also become a
does serve the
persuade people to
forum for human rights,
put information on the
online privacy issues
needs of
web, so I had to go to
and for the openness
humanity
conferences, I had to
and neutrality of the
write documentation,
internet.
teach people about how to use it, and
CONSIDERED TECH ROYALT Y, Sir write software.
Tim Berners-Lee, knighted by the
Queen in 2004, answered Readers When you see Facebook or Wikipedia
Digests questions about the present, today, what do you think?
past and future of his cyber creation. To a certain extent, the original [idea]
I had for the web was that it would
be a very read-write medium [like
What made you create the web?
I needed it. The internet had been Facebook or Wikipedia]. Imagine
there for 20 years, so computers were you are in a working group designconnected to each other. Many docu- ing something, whether its a bridge
ments on disks were going round and or writing a book, or an article, that
round between computers, which you could share all your ideas in
were connected to the internet, but
it was impossible to get at them. I put * Text stored in a computer system that
contains links to other texts, documents, etc.
these things together.
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| February2015

READERS DIGEST

PHOTO: Z UMA PRESS/ALAM Y

a web of hyper text*,

which is read-write. So
whenever you think, Oh,
this connects that, you
can make a link. The
original browser I wrote
allowed you to edit. I
thought that it was very
important that everybody could edit. But for
many years before the
Wikis were invented,
most browsers did not
allow you to edit.
But why?
The old NeXT computer used by Berners-Lee at CERN
I think that was partly
because the initial
Isnt that quite a lot?
growth of the web was fuelled by the Its quite a lot, but it raises the question,
adaptation of lots of existing docu- What about the other two-thirds? It
mentation systems. They were read- means that the gap between the rich
only, so most people imagined thats and the poor has now been increased
what the web should be.
to include the gap between the information-rich and the information-poor.
Now that people use the web everywhere, what do you have to say?
How exactly will your foundations
I think everybody whos been involved work help people?
in it has a large responsibility to make Ive been pushing for people and
sure that the web really does serve governments to put data on the web.
the needs of humanity. The web is When the Indian government, for
becoming crucial to humanity. But example, puts its data on the web,
it being an artificial system, we can people in India and outside can see
change it. If we think it can do better, the state of India. They can see where
we can design it better. So I think we the buses run, they can see whats
have a strong responsibility to make the state of the roads, the state of its
sure that the web is optimal, as good education, and so on.
as it can be in terms of its design.
Having data out there is important
Though just one-third of humanity for disaster preparedness. When the
[2010] Haiti earthquake struck, there
actually uses the web.
February2015

79

SIR WORLD WIDE WEB

werent really any good online maps

about [the capital] Port-au-Prince,
but then something very interesting happened. A satellite company
released high-resolution photographs
and amateur mapmakers all over the
world went to www.openstreetmap.org,
which is like Wikipedia for maps, where
anybody can go and edit a map. They
just flocked to the map of Haiti and its
amazing how they filled in the roads,
they filled in the earthquake damage,
they marked blocked roads, hospitals
and refugee camps, even a floating hospital which had been brought in.
So, within a very short time there
was a very reliable map and there
was a testimonial from some member
of the Red Cross saying that when he
downloaded it on to his GPS device, it
was invaluable for getting around the
damaged city.
S o y o u r f o u n d ati o n w a n t s t o
promote this kind of work?
While not specifically into crisis
management, the foundation wants
to get involved in trying to accelerate peoples getting on the web. For
example, most of the web started
off in English. Now there is a lot of
Chinese but what if somebody in a

rural village, who only speaks the

local dialect, needs to use the web
to try to understand why their crops
have got a disease, for example? So
we have a duty to make sure that we
include people who at the moment
speak languages that are not very
well represented or may not be represented on the web. We want to make
sure that the web actually extends to
people in rural communities, even
to urban poor communities. At the
moment, because the web is very
much text-based, the foundation is
looking at what we can do to involve
people who are illiterate and also
help with their literacy.
The web you created has changed
the world. But its also brought
about access to pornography, hacking, internet scams and whatnot.
Does that trouble you?
If you look at the web what you see
is humanity connected. When you
look at humanity, you see good and
bad, you see all kinds. You see ups
and dow ns, you see wonder ful
things and boring things. Humanity
is very rich and very diverse. But for
me today, when it comes to humanity, Im an optimist.

WORDPLAY
I saw a guy spill Scrabble letters on the road, I asked him; Whats
the word on the street?
REDDIT.COM

80

| February2015

Quotable Quotes
HOWS ANYONE EVER GOING TO COME UP WITH A BOOK
OR A PAINTING OR A SYMPHONY OR A SCULPTURE THAT
CAN COMPETE WITH A GREAT CITY? YOU CANT. WHEN
YOU LOOK AROUND, EVERY STREET, EVERY BOULEVARD
ISITS OWN SPECIAL ART FORM.
G i l P e n d e r, a n o s t a l g i c s c r e e n w r i t e r p l a y e d b y OW E N W I L S O N
i n M i d n i g h t i n P a r i s (2 011)

HOW DO YOU SPELL

LOVE? - PIGLET
YOU DONT SPELL IT...
YOU FEEL IT. - POOH
A . A . M I LN E
I N WI N N I E -TH E - P O O H

CHILDREN IN A FAMILY ARE

LIKE FLOWERS IN A
BOUQUET: THERES ALWAYS
ONE DETERMINED TO FACE IN
AN OPPOSITE DIRECTION
FROM THE WAY THE
ARRANGER DESIRES.
M A R C E L E N E COX , h u m o u r i s t

I never knew anybody ... who found life simple. I think a

life or a time looks simple when you leave out the details.
URSULA K . LE GUIN, a uth o r

The most
wasted of all
days is one
without
laughter.
P HOTOS: GETTY IM AGES

E .E . CUMMINGS, poet

AND IN THE
END, THE LOVE
YOU TAKE IS
EQUAL TO THE
LOVE YOU MAKE.
J O H N LE N N O N A N D PAU L M CC A R TN E Y

I believe that the best measure of whether

a nation is going to be successful is whether they
are tapping the talents of their women. BA R AC K O BA M A
February2015

81

DRAMA IN REAL LIFE

LOST ON THE
82

| February2015

Hiker Alex Sverdlov

trusted his experience
and fitness to keep
him safe, until a surprise
snowstorm stranded
him on Mauna Loa

VOLCANO
B Y A L B ER T S A M AHA

F R OM T HE V I L L A G E V O I C E
WITH A D D I T I O N S BY
TH E AU T H O R

February2015

83

LOST ON THE VOLCANO

AT 7AM ALEX SVERDLOV PARKED his rented white Ford Focus

near the start of the trail on Mauna Loa. The January sky was
bright blue, the sun mellow, and he felt grateful to be on the
island of Hawaii instead of home in New York, where the
forecast predicted snow. Hed landed in Hawaii the previous
day and immediately signed up with the National Park
Service for a permit to hike and stay overnight in the remote
Mauna Loa area, starting today, Sunday, through to Wednesday.

84

| February2015

in, at 3000m. The incline increased. At

the top of the slope, the trail opened
onto a reddish plain. At the base of a
hill sat a wooden cabin with an orange
roof, Red Hill Cabin, where he spent
the night.
M O N D A Y. Sverd lov h it t he t ra i l
around sunrise. The terrain changed
often at this altitude: wav y, light
brown dried lava, brick-red stone
fields, charcoal-grey volcanic rock.
It was a landscape shaped by countless eruptions, the last of which had
occurred in 1984. The trail curved
around depressions and cracks in the
ground more than 3m deep. Every
100m or so, rocks stacked into hiphigh towers delineated the trail.
The trail veered away from the
summit to Mauna Loa Summit cabin,
where Sverdlov stopped for the night.
Tomorrow hed hike the 8km to the
summit, then trek directly down to
Red Hill by nightfall. Hed be back on
Wednesday in time to meet friends
for dinner. His hiking trip was going
perfectly.

(P REVIOUS PAGE) PHOTO-ILLUSTRATI ON BY JOHN RITTER;

(THIS PAGE) COURTESY OF ALEX SVERDLOV

The hike to the summit of Mauna Loa,

or Long Mountain, is about 40km.
The biggest active volcano on Earth, it
rises gradually from the sea to 4169m,
but its flat terrain and gentle slopes
can deceive. The climate at the top is
fickle and the weather is unpredictable, but the forecast for the area called
for mostly sunny days.
Sverdlov strapped on his backpack,
which held his sleeping bag, food,
extra-thick down jacket and other
supplies, and walked towards the trail,
pausing at a tall warning sign: Freezing conditions may occur at any time
of year Beware of deep earthcracks,
loose rocks, and thin lava crusts.
But the 36-year-old hiker knew
what to expect he had climbed the
volcano alone a year ago. The threeand-a-half-day hike was peaceful
and not steep, but it was challenging
enough that he decided to summit the
volcano again. Strenuous adventures
appealed to him.
The ground was rocky and dusty at
the start of the trail, 2000m above sea
level. By early afternoon he was 11km

The rocky trail to

the summit
before the snows

PHOTO: I MAGEBROKER/ALAMY

READERS DIGEST

TUESDAY. Clouds had rolled in overnight, dropping thick fog and, unexpectedly, a light speckle of snow.
Sverdlov wasnt concerned; the walk
to the summit had taken him only
three hours last time. He pulled on
sweatpants, a face mask that covered
his mouth and nose, a skullcap, a wool
undershirt, a fleece layer and a windbreaker.
Halfway to the summit, he stopped
at Jaggars Cave to stow his heavy
backpack. For this final stretch, hed
need only a water bottle, two granola
bars, and his camera.
It started to drizzle, then 800m from
the summit, the rain turned to snow.
Sverdlov considered turning back, but
the snow was light and the scene was
beautiful.
When he reached the summit at
about noon, a white curtain of fog
shrouded the vista. Hed planned
to stay an hour, but he knew the
snow would slow him down. A minute or two after he began his descent, it started snowing harder. The

wind blasted the flakes into his face,

partially blinding him.
Before long the snow was up to his
shins. Should have brought snowshoes,
Sverdlov chided himself. Just then, his
hiking boot punched through a thin
crust of dried lava beneath the snow
and he tumbled onto his back. His
right knee hurt, but he felt lucky: the
fall should have broken his leg.
He marched on. Snow continued to
fall and the wind gusts blew stronger.
But his legs were strong and his confidence stronger. What an adventure,
he thought. He stopped to take a drink
only to find the water in his bottle had
frozen. Despite his thirst, he knew
better than to eat snow, which would
lower his body temperature and hasten dehydration.
At dusk, Sverdlov passed a wooden
sign that showed hed descended 3km
from the summit: another 800m to
Jaggars Cave, then 16km to Red Hill
Cabin. But the world had turned grey.
Snow and sky were indistinguishable.
His phone was useless, so he turned
February2015

85

LOST ON THE VOLCANO

it off. The trail markers were hard to

make out as his surroundings faded
into blackness.
Where was the trail marker? Sverdlov
looked around, but it was nearly pitch
black. For the first time, it occurred to
him that he would not make it back to
the cave tonight. He was exhausted.
The thought of rest consumed his
mind.
His watch said 9pm. He sat down,
hugging his legs and tucking one
fleece sleeve into the other to keep
his hands from freezing. He coughed
violently and it hurt to swallow.
In the thin air, less oxygen reached
his brain. This, combined with the
lack of water, made him dizzy, lightheaded, his thoughts in a fog. With
his body no longer in motion, his core
temperature began to drop.
Sverdlov had never been in this
much trouble on a hike, and hed
gone on scores of them. Growing up
the only child in a single-parent family in New York, Sverdlov often went
hiking in the Catskill Mountains.
After graduating from Brooklyn College, he got a job there as a computerscience professor and consulted on
the side. In his free time he went on
a dozen long hikes a year. Hawaii
was an annual destination. Hed conquered Mauna Kea in 2012, Mauna
Loa the following January. And now
here he was back for a rematch, and
the mountain was killing him.
As the hours passed, he felt
enveloped by warmth and comfort.
86

| February2015

He was no longer on the mountain.

He was floating. It felt good. He dazed
in and out of hallucinations. Then he
snapped back to reality.
Im still here, damn it! he shouted.
At some point he fell asleep.
JOHN BROWARD, Hawaii Volcanoes
National Parks search-and-rescue coordinator, arrived at the Visitor Emergency Operations Center near Mauna
Loas southern base at about 8am.
Tuesday. He picked up an advisory
from the National Weather Service.
A storm was on the way that would
hit the summit with 30cm of snow,
temperatures to 6C, and wind gusts
up to 80km/h. A check of the park
permits showed that Alex Sverdlov
would be at or near the summit.
Broward had handled more than
150 searches in his career, which included parks in Oregon and Florida.
To date, Browards team had found
all but one hiker alive. Only once had
a hiker gone missing in the snow,
though, and he was found safe.
When lost hikers are caught in a
snowstorm, Broward thought, some
curl up on the ground, some keep
marching. Some hide in caves. The
mountain encompassed more than
5000km; if Sverdlov hunkered down in
one of Mauna Loas many caves, they
might not find him for years. The body
of the last person to die on Mauna Loa,
a park employee about 20 years back,
was never found.
Broward filed an affidavit with

READERS DIGEST

Sverdlovs phone-service provider.

Even when a phone has no bars, it
emits a faint signal, and the company
can triangulate its location. Of course,
the phone must be switched on.
A search-and-rescue mission could
begin only after a hiker was overdue.
Sverdlov wouldnt be officially missing
until his scheduled return on Wednesday night. For now he was on his own.
WEDNESDAY. When Sverdlov awoke,
he was relieved to have survived

His pace slowed.

Cracks in the ground
tripped him,
snowdrifts
swallowed him to the
shoulders
the night. It had been cold but not
much below freezing. The storm had
calmed enough for him to see a desert
of white powder at least 30cm deep,
even deeper in the drifts.
His confidence returned. The trail
couldnt be far. He was sure he would
reach Red Hill today. If he made it
early enough, hed keep going and
reach the bottom of the mountain in
time to meet his friends for dinner.
Sverdlov came to a tower of stones
cloaked in snow. Guessing the trails
path, he soon passed another tower.

Late in the morning, he spotted three

trail markers clustered in the distance.
His backpack!
He pulled the backpack out of the
snow, set up the stove and scooped
snow into the pot. He hadnt had a
drink of water in nearly 24 hours, but
the snow boiled down to less than a
cup of water and cost much of his fuel.
After eating a trail-mix bar, he tugged
out a down jacket and thick mittens,
and strapped on the headlamp.
Now equipped for the cold and
darkness, Sverdlov started for Red Hill
Cabin shortly before noon. The snow
was deeper than yesterday, almost
knee high in some stretches. His pace
slowed. Cracks in the ground tripped
him, snowdrifts swallowed him to the
shoulders. He focused his mind and
energy on each step, methodical and
cautious.
When night fell, the headlamp was
not powerful enough to illuminate
trail markers in the distance, but at
least he could see more than shadows. Then he saw three or four tents
at the edge of the headlamps beam.
And people! Then he blinked and they
disappeared and only snow lay ahead.
The night went on the same way.
To his eyes, he was walking through a
white-walled tunnel. When the hallucinations came, he felt as if his mind had
split in two, one looking through the
tunnel, one drifting into the abstract.
Sometime past 11pm, he approached
another trail marker. Coming closer,
he noticed that it was not a tower of
February2015

87

LOST ON THE VOLCANO

stones but a rock protruding from

the ground. How many snow-covered
rocks had he mistaken for markers?
As he retraced his footprints, he
coughed. Hed been coughing at a
steady rate for two days now. The thin
air and nonstop marching had worn
on his lungs. He hadnt had water
since morning, and his mouth was
dry and his throat aching. His face
burned. He was very tired.

A F T E R T H E snow stopped falling

on Wednesday, John Broward sent
a ranger up the Mauna Loa trail.
Another left a note on Sverdlovs car.
If Sverdlov didnt turn up by nightfall, the search would begin. Broward
gathered his half-dozen staff in the
dispatch centre and laid out the plan
for the next day: several rangers would
fan out from the start of the trail and
work up the mountain; Broward
would search from a helicopter.

He had made it this

far without a serious
injury, but it was
only a matter of time
before the elements
defeated him

THURSDAY. Unlike on Tuesday and

Wednesday, Sverdlov didnt awaken
with the confidence that hed reach
Red Hill Cabin on this day. His legs
were sore, his head hurting, his whole
body exhausted.
He found the trail shortly after sunrise. He trudged forward more slowly
than before. The wind had calmed.
By now he was almost used to falling through snowdrifts. Sometimes
the snow was hard and supported his
weight, sometimes it held for a second
before giving way.
He felt the powder and crumbled
it through his fingers. Scooping up
a handful, he patted it into a melonsize ball and gently placed it on the
ground. He sculpted two more balls,
plunked them on top, and took a few
moments to stare at his snowman
before continuing on.

Around midnight, unable to find

the trail, he unrolled his sleeping bag,
slid inside, and zipped it. He turned
on his phone to check the signal.
Nothing. He turned it off.
Two days of struggle, and Sverdlov
was barely 5km from the summit of
Mauna Loa. At least 14km to Red Hill.
Perhaps this situation was beyond
him, he thought. He had trusted that
his hiking experience would get him
through, but he still was far from the
cabin. He had made it this far without a serious injury, but it was only
a matter of time before the elements
defeated him.
88

| February2015

I T WA S T H E T H R I L L of the rescue that had drawn Broward to the

job when he was at Florida State

READERS DIGEST

University in the early 1980s: the idea

of spending days enjoying natures
beauty and protecting people from its
cruelty jumping out of helicopters,
fighting fires, rappelling down ravines.
But Broward felt no thrill on Thursday morning, just nerves. The helicopter lifted off at 8.30. He looked out
the window to the right. The pilot, a
private contractor whod flown more
than 70 rescue missions with him in
Hawaii, looked out the left side and
ahead. The helicopter hovered above
the trail. An experienced hiker might
locate the snow-covered path, Broward
thought. The helicopter soared past
the volcanos 3350m marker.
It moved slowly enough for the two
men to scan for clues: footprints, an
object, or movement. To Broward, the
snow was now a blessing. The uninterrupted white landscape that made
it easy for a hiker to get lost also made
a lost hiker easier to spot. The farther
up the mountain they flew, the more
barren and uniformly white it got.
Past 3700m. Still nothing. Not a glove
or a hat or a hiking pole. This was a
massive mountain plenty of space

for a lost hiker to wander into. Broward

saw nothing but unbroken snow.
Hes right there! the pilot said
suddenly.
Where? I dont see him.
Right in front of us. Twelve oclock.
Catching sight of Sverdlov, Broward
felt the tension leave his body for the
first time in two days.
S V E R D L O V heard a faint buzzing
noise before he spotted a grey speck
moving across the sky. A helicopter!
He waved his arms, as if the people
in the helicopter might not see him.
Then he realised: theyre here for me!
The chopper landed and a man in a
green jacket and white helmet hopped
out. They met halfway.
Are you search and rescue? Alex
asked.
Yes.
Sverdlov hugged him. Aboard the
helicopter, sitting in the back row, he
noticed the red letters on the back of
his rescuers helmet: BROWARD. It
was then Sverdlov realised that he had
just experienced the happiest moment
of his life.

THE VILLAGE VOICE (MARCH 11, 2014), 2014 BY VOICE MEDIA GROUP, INC., BLOGS.VILLAGEVOICE.COM

FOOTBALL PUNDITRY AT ITS MOST INCISIVE

[Everton are] a team of men.
JAMIE REDKNAPP, SKY SPORTS

I think one of these teams could win this.

COMMENTATOR ANDY TOWNSEND, BEFORE THE UEFA SUPER CUP FOOTBALL FINAL

February2015

89

WHO MADE THAT?

illo
approx
124 mm wide
x
84 mm high
+3 mm bleed

Nigerian Scam

Money transfer fraud has been around longer than email

F R O M T H E N E W YO R K T I ME S

THE NIGERIAN SCAM may seem like

a scourge of the internet age, but it
predates email. Before we started getting all-caps proposals in our inboxes,
con men in West Africa plied their
trade by fax and paper letter. Some
of the first scams to make their way
to Western Europe arrived by telex in
1989 and 1990, when British businessmen started hearing that a wayward
tanker of Nigerian crude could have
its cargo claimed for bargain prices
in exchange, of course, for some
cash upfront. Before then, Nigerian
90

| February2015

fraudsters aimed their grifts at locals.

One scheme was the wash-wash, a
literal money-laundering in which the
mark is shown a suitcase of supposed
bills blackened with Vaseline and
iodine and promised a cut if he pays
for an expensive cleaning agent.
Advance-fee or 419 scams, known
by the section of the Nigerian criminal code that outlaws fraud, took on
a global character when oil prices
crashed along with the national economy. A newly installed military ruler,
Ibrahim Babangida, cut salaries for

ILLUSTRATI ON: MATT C HAS E

BY DA N I E L E N G B E R

civil servants and the military and

ended currency price supports. The
English-speaking, entrepreneurial
class found itself with little buying
power and in need of foreign money.
Some guys started perpetrating fraud,
says Andrew Apter, an Africa historian
at the University of California in Los
Angeles. They used the language,
insignias and letterhead of financial
offices to lure people in.
Apter has traced this sort of misuse
of official iconography as far back as a
century. When Nigeria was established
as a British colony in 1914, its first governor cracked down on scammers in
fake uniforms who claimed to be collecting taxes on behalf of the empire.

The advance-fee scam itself whereby

payments are extracted from a sucker
who hopes to gain a treasure seems
to have originated elsewhere. According to historian Robert Whitaker at the
University of Texas, an earlier version of
the con, known as the Spanish Swindle
or the Spanish Prisoner trick, plagued
Britain during the 19th century.
These days, a Nigerian address may
even aid some scammers. In 2012, a
researcher with Microsoft tried to
model the con artists behaviour and
concluded that a clear tip-off an
email address in Nigeria, for example
could, by scaring off the web-savvy or
more suspicious sorts, enable them to
focus on the most gullible victims.

THE NEW YORK TIMES (JANUARY 3, 2014) 2014 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES CO., NEW YORK

SCAMMING THE SCAMMERS

In 2003, Mike Berry was a computer engineer in Manchester when he started
replying to and baiting Nigerian scammers over email for fun. His website,
www.419eater.com, is a forum and archives funny scambaiting stories.
RD: It sounds like a
full-time job.
MB: Its not really that
tricky. A lot of
scammers will twig
straightaway. You may
only get ten per cent
who will stick with you.
RD: Your success rate
is ten per cent?
MB: Thats for a decent

success, either a long

time keeping the guy
busy, or a trophy like
afunny picture.
RD: It sounds as if
youre even better at
this than they are.
MB: I do remember I
sent a scammer a fake
passport, and it was
such a good fake that

at the end of the scambait, when he realised

what had happened,
he offered to pay me
US$12,000 a month for
ten passports. Youve
got to think of what
this guy must have
been earning to offer
me that kind of
money!

February2015

91

AGAINST THE ODDS

Girl
The

Wouldnt

Break

Jessicas bones might be fragile

but her spirit was fighting fit and
her body responded
BY ANITA BARTH O LO M EW

92

February 2015

PHOTOGRA PHED BY ERIN PATRICE OBRIEN

Who

November2014

93

THE GIRL WHO WOULDNT BREAK

ESSICA BERNSTEINS PARENTS LIFTED HER from her

wheelchair and hustled her into her mothers deep blue
Honda SUV for the trip to the hospital. Distraught, the
elfin 15-year-old begged them: Dont take me. Please, I
dont want to go.
Shed had more surgeries than birthdays; spent more
time racked with pain, recovering from fractures and
operations, than shed spent just being a kid. She
couldnt do it any more. Yet, even as she pleaded to be left alone, she
knew she had no choice.

A few months earlier, in the winter of

2009, Dr Jenny Frances, her surgeon at
the Childrens Center at Manhattans
Hospital for Joint Diseases in New
York, had given her a reprieve. One
of the supporting metal rods inside
Jessicas leg bones had shifted position.
But when she begged off getting it corrected, Dr Frances agreed to wait until
Jessica felt ready.
But now sharp pains in Jessicas right
leg told her something was very wrong.
Treatment could wait no longer.
Jessica had been born with osteogenesis imperfecta (OI), a rare genetic
disorder also known as brittle bone
disease. So fragile was her skeleton
that both her legs had broken and
healed again before she was even
born. Countless more fractures followed, almost always to her legs.
As a tot, Jessica wanted to do everything her older sister Marisa did. When
other kids were toddling, she pulled
herself along on her bottom. Fearing the pressure would fracture her
94

February 2015

arms, her grandfather built a scooter

to place under her belly so she could
zip around the house.
In second grade, Jessica was fitted
with leg braces that extended from
her hips to her ankles. Thrilled to be
walking on her own for the first time in
her young life, she wore them 24 hours
a day. But the following year, as she
walked through a doorway at school,
Jessicas foot caught on the threshold.
That slight misstep she didnt fall
was enough to break both her legs.
Three surgeries and 18 months later,
something had changed in the spunky
little girl. Until then, Jessica had always
been determined to push herself
beyond expectations. But now, she sat
in her wheelchair, reluctant to do the
gruelling post-surgery physical therapy that could help her get onto her
crutches and back to school. She loved
that her friends came often to hang
out with her, but she envied them, too.
They were free to play outside and do
all the things that everyone else could

READERS DIGEST

do. She wanted to be just a regular kid,

but even more than that, she wanted to
be safe from more pain.
By the time she returned to school
in the fourth grade, she cautiously
got back to using two crutches, but
decided not to even try to get around
on just one, as shed done in the past.
She didnt want to fall again. As a little
girl, shed braved the frequent blood
tests her condition required. Now she
cried and begged the nurses to leave

BACK IN HOSPITAL, the 15-year old

imagined her efforts had been for nothing. From experience, she knew postsurgical recovery would be long six
months or more and painful.
But she had a pleasant surprise. This
current operation would be somewhat
simpler than earlier ones, Frances
explained, as they reviewed her X-rays.
Because the bone had broken at the top
only, they could use a smaller incision
to pull out the old rod and insert a new

THRILLED AT HOW MUCH BETTER SHE FELT

AFTER SURGERY, SHE STARTED TO GET
BACK SOME OF HER OLD DETERMINATION
her be. No more surgeries. No more
blood tests. No more period. Shed
had enough of it all for a lifetime.
By the time she was 14, shed reached
what doctors expected to be close to
her full height: just 1.07m. But without much physical activity, her weight
had ballooned. She wanted to wear the
sparkly tops and flowery dresses that
all her friends wore. It was especially
important to look her best now that
boys were suddenly on her radar. So,
she challenged herself to lose weight
and started to exercise more.
The excess weight dropped away
and she felt better about herself than
she had in years. Then came the pain in
her right leg. Something was seriously
wrong.

one, instead of making the usual long

incision from the top to the bottom of
the leg.
A few days after the operation,
Jessica was surprised to find herself
able to sit up in a wheelchair. By the
end of her nine-day hospital stay, she
tentatively hefted herself onto her
crutches an even bigger undertaking
being careful to keep the wounded
leg from touching the floor. Thrilled at
how much better she felt than she had
anticipated, she started getting back
some of her old determination.
Early stage physical therapy usually
involved very little movement. But
I realised I could do a lot more, says
Jessica. Experimenting with new exercises, relying on her own sense of how
February 2015

95

THE GIRL WHO WOULDNT BREAK

far her body could go, I kind of just

made it up on my own.
Using her walker for support, she
practised lifting her body up with her
arms, and swinging her legs back and
forth. Within six weeks, she could bend
her knee. That, too, was the soonest
ever. To ensure she didnt lose muscle
in the leg, with Francess blessing she
wrapped a small weight around her ankle and did leg lifts. She taught herself

friends as they began their first year of

high school together.
But Jessica had a dream.
Her family lived just four houses
from an idyllic beach on the Rockaway peninsulas Atlantic shore. Jessica
longed to stroll the boardwalk like her
neighbours but had never been nimble enough on her crutches, or sticks,
as she called them, to navigate the
wooden slats. She decided it was time

THE CLACK OF HER STICKS ON THE

BOARDWALK WAS THE SOUND OF
INDEPENDENCE. LIFE SUDDENLY FELT RICHER
yoga poses. It helped. I wouldnt get so
stiff. She spun on an indoor exercise
bike, each day getting stronger and
more confident. Frances was stunned,
but pleased, that a teenager with OI
could become an exercise fanatic.
Her 15-year-old body cooperated, up
to a point. But soon it was clear that her
calf wasnt healing properly. Doctors
would have to go back in to do another
repair. And Jessica would start from the
beginning again.
But now, she knew something she
hadnt before. Her bones might be fragile but her body was capable of more.
And her spirit was fighting fit as well.
It was getting easier every time to
get back to where she was before the
operation.
Shed healed well enough to join her
96

February 2015

to try. Trekking to the end of the street,

she took the ramp up to the wooden
walkway, delighting in the scent of the
sea and the call of the gulls. The clack
of her sticks on the boardwalk was the
sound of independence.
Life suddenly felt richer, more complete. The boardwalk stroll became
part of her daily routine.
Then in late October 2012, Hurricane
Sandy struck and the massive waves it
caused ripped the boardwalk from its
moorings. With the boardwalk gone,
Jessica couldnt stroll along the beach.
Her crutches would be useless on the
soft sand. The thought saddened her
until she realised this setback didnt
have to stop her. She had an idea: what
if I could walk without sticks?
With renewed resolve, hanging onto

READERS DIGEST

When Jessica first

walked on the
sand, it was an
amazing feeling
of freedom

furniture for balance, Jessica practised

getting around the house with a single
crutch. It was less difficult than shed
imagined. So, then, I started to do it
quicker. Soon, single stick under her
arm, she was walking around the yard.
After a few weeks, she was able to walk
around the house with no crutch at
all, holding onto anything that could
stabilise her.

One February afternoon, when the

sun was low in the sky and the winds
calm, Jessica dressed in her workout
clothes pink sneakers, grey sweatshirt and leggings and left the house,
single crutch under her arm. Neighbours ambled along the beach, some
walking their dogs.
She headed in their direction, stepping for the first time beyond where
the pavement ended. Her stick, more
impediment than help, sank in the
sand. Stopping a moment, she lifted
the crutch until it rested across her
arms. She took another step. The sand
didnt feel the way shed imagined, but
it was wonderful: soft and yielding, yet
demanding. She adjusted her stance to
find her balance, then coaxed herself
along, watching all the other people
who took this simple act for granted.
To walk freely they had no idea how
amazing it all was.
I felt so proud, she says. It was like
Id given birth to the sand.
Jessica recently began classes at a
nearby college. She loves to bake and
although it means long hours of standing
something she might not have dreamed
she could do a few years before shes
decided to follow her heart and study
the culinary arts.

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February 2015

97

ENVIRONMENT

Vigorous woody vines

called lianas can
smother mature trees
and cause their death
98

| February2015

Tangle
Jungle
in the

Giant vines are beginning to

strangle Earths tropical forests.
Its a down-and-dirty war
BY WILLIAM LAURANC E
FR O M N E W S C I E N T I S T

November2014

99

TA N G L E I N T H E J U N G L E

BIOLOGISTS like myself who study instead taking advantage of the trees
these jungle ecosystems are now investments to scramble up to the top
seeing a shift in this war. Until a decade of the forest and produce great flushes
or so ago the two adversaries were of leaves that bask brazenly in the sun.
Francis Putz, professor of biology
evenly matched, but vines now seem to
be on the march. If that continues, the at the University of Florida, highface of our forests and of our planet lighted this fraught relationship in a
could be changed irrevocably. We 1980 paper entitled Lianas vs Trees.
are left scrabbling to unearth the root Lianas, or woody vines, can grow to
be hundreds of metres long, with
cause.
stems over half a metre
If the forest were a
across. Trees pay a high
financial system, trees
price for their presence.
would be its old money.
Trees bearing
Lianas can strangle and
Deeply rooted, they grow
slowly, investing heavlianas usually deform a trees branches,
their dense foliage robs
ily over time in woody
grow more
trees of life-giving suntrunks and branches
slowly,
light, and their roots
to support their leaves,
and providing homes
reproduce less scarf up vital nutrients
and water. Trees bearfor a zoo of other speand die sooner ing lianas usually grow
cies. Vines, on the other
more slowly, reproduce
hand, would be the
than those
less and die sooner than
flashy junk-bond tradwithout
those without.
ers. Representing up to
Once lianas reach the
half of the plant species
in a typical rainforest and producing canopy, they often climb laterally, efup to 40% of all leaves, they are down- fectively roping trees together so that,
and-dirty competitors. They invest when one falls, it can drag down others.
almost nothing in supportive tissue, This is why loggers hate them: if they
100

| February2015

PHOTOS: (PREVI OUS SPREAD) CORBIS ; GETTY IMAGES

aze out over a tropical rainforest and the scene

looks idyllic a kaleidoscope of trees festooned
with colourful vines, orchids, ferns and lichens.
Dont be fooled. Myriad ecological battles are
being fought beneath this tranquil surface.
None is more embittered than that between trees and their
ancient enemies, the vines.

READERS DIGEST

dont cut every liana

linked to a tree before
felling it, another may
be yanked down on top
of them. Loggers call
them widow-makers,
says Putz.
There are obvious
re a s o n s w hy s o m e
vines are becoming more prevalent.
Humans have introduced invasive species, such as the rubber
vine to Northern Australia and kudzu to
the south-eastern US,
that smother native
forests, grasslands and
waterways. Most vines
are light-loving, and
increase rapidly in
forests that have been
fragmented by agriculture or selectively
logged. Small, regenerating trees on the edge
of disturbed forests
provide ideal trellises
for climbing quickly into the canopy.
A decade ago, my colleagues and I
revealed much higher liana abundances in fragmented than in intact
William Laurance is a distinguished
research professor and Australian Laureate
at James Cook University in Cairns,
Australia. He holds the Prince Bernhard
Chair in International Nature Conservation
at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

Vines climb, scramble, reach and

drape: linking different forest layers

Amazonian forests. Trees in these

areas are beleaguered, dying two to
three times as fast as normal.

Dynamic Drivers

But vines are also proliferating in

undisturbed forests. Oliver Phillips of
the University of Leeds in the UK and
February2015

101

TA N G L E I N T H E J U N G L E

the affected areas, yet

his colleagues revealed
in 2002 that lianas had
Several studies there is little evidence
for such an effect.
increased sharply at the
suggest that
Instead, a more subtle
expense of trees at sites
driver seems to be at
across western Amazovines, with
play: rapidly rising levels
nia. Something similar
higher photoof atmospheric carbon
has been seen in nearly
synthetic rates, dioxide. CO2 fuels photoa dozen other intact
synthesis, and the more
forests in Central and
are poised to
there is, the faster plants
South America. It was
take advantage grow. Faster growth
controversial at first,
says Phillips, but few
creates more compeof rising CO2
doubt it now.
tition among plants
Whats happening?
for light, space and
A likely cause is that tropical forests nutrients, which in turn drives higher
around the globe are becoming more rates of tree death and regeneration.
dynamic, with trees dying and regen- Rising CO 2 could also favour vines
erating more rapidly conditions that directly. Several studies over the past
strongly favour vines. It is possible few years suggest that vines, with high
that global warming is intensifying photosynthetic rates, an abundance
windstorms that increase tree fall in of energy-producing leaves and little
costly supportive tissue, are primed to
take advantage of rising CO2.
Vines attach

102

| February2015

Diversity destroyers

This isnt to imply we know everything

about the onslaught of vines. So far the
trend has been spotted in undisturbed
forests only in the Americas. Longterm studies are needed elsewhere
to ensure this isnt a coincidence of
geography. I wonder, too, about the
fate of remote forests I have studied
in the Congo basin. Vines there are
naturally abundant because of disturbance by forest elephants. Yet elephant
populations are collapsing from overhunting. Might vine numbers in these
forests actually begin to decline?

PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES

themselves to
their supports
using loops, fine
aerial roots or
adhesive pads

READERS DIGEST

Most evidence, however, suggests

that Earth is heading for a viney
future. This worries ecologists like
Stefan Schnitzer at the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Vines can
change forests in a lot of ways, he
says. They hit big, slow-growing
trees far harder than smaller, fastergrowing species, meaning they can
probably change the entire composition of the forest.
Its not just trees that are at risk.
Ainhoa Magrach, a postdoctoral colleague of mine at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia, has found
that plants that live on trees, such as
ferns, tend to be excluded in regions
where vines are dense. These ferns are
little islands of biodiversity, sustaining

many animals in the rainforest canopy.

A few species have mutualisms with
aggressive ants that attack encroaching
vines, but most are not so lucky.
The biggest worry is that proliferating vines could reduce carbon storage.
Forests lock up billions of tonnes of
carbon in woody tissue, and when
vines kill or suppress trees some of
that carbon is released into the atmosphere. Studies in Panama and Amazonia suggest rampaging vines replace
just a small fraction of the carbon they
cause trees to release. That could
induce a positive feedback, with still
more greenhouse gases and a warmer
future for us all. If that goes too far, we
really could be heading for a planet of
the vines.

NEW SCIENTIST (OCTOBER 2, 2013) 2013 REED BUSINESS INFORMATION, UK

FAST FACTS ABOUT VINES

l Most vine species have evolved to fill an evolutionary niche. They climb by
using other plants for support, which allows them to reach the forest canopy
with comparative ease. In a stable ecosystem, they help animals move from tree
to tree, keeping them safe from predators. Lianas are simply woody vines.
l Even native vines can kill trees through strangulation, excessive weight,
damaging the trees bark and out-competing the tree for resources.
l Introduced vines can have devastating effects on forests. Kudzu is native to
Eastern Asia. It is an edible legume and farmers planted it to increase soil fertility
and stop erosion. Unfortunately, it is now a serious problem in the US, Vanuatu,
Fiji and Northern Australia. Rubber vine is native to Madagascar, but became
popular as an ornamental plant and is now naturalised from Indonesia to Latin
America. It is a widespread weed in Northern Australia.
l The Amazon and other major old-growth tropical forests are vital carbon
storage systems that help mitigate the effects of climate change, despite current
concentrations of atmospheric carbon having reached about 400 parts per
million. With the rapid increase in lianas, the tropical terrestrial carbon sink may
shut down much sooner than current scientific models predict.

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Neighbours said
the Catts were
regular, everyday
people. What
happened?

CRIME
TRUETRUE
CRIME
SUBSCRIBER

BONUS

The

Family
That Robbed
Banks
Widower Scott Catt had a
secret life as a bank robber.
But when he wanted
accomplices, he turned to
the two people he trusted
most in the world: his kids
BY S KIP H O LLANDSWOR TH
FR O M T E X AS MO NT H L Y

PHOTOS: JOHNNY MILLER

November2014

105

T H E F A M I LY T H A T R O B B E D B A N K S

Abby and Hayden nodded. The

family headed out the door and
walked towards Abbys 1999 green
Volkswagen Jetta. Scott was big, 1.92m
and 108kg, and he squeezed himself
into the passenger seat. Hayden,
1.87m and 91kg, crammed into the
backseat.
Abby started the car, and five minutes later, she pulled into a shopping
centre and parked about 45m from a
Comerica Bank.
Scott grabbed a black garbage bag
from the floorboard and took out two
pairs of white painters coveralls, two
painters masks, two pairs of latex
gloves, and two Airsoft pistols (which
look like real guns but shoot plastic
pellets). He and Hayden put on their
disguises in the Jetta. Scott clipped
a walkie-talkie to his coveralls and
handed another to Abby.
It was 9.30. They sat for the next 30
minutes, until Scott said it was time to
make their move. Abby dropped them
off a few stores from the bank and
106

February2015

drove to the alley behind it. Minutes

later, her dads voice crackled through
her walkie-talkie.
Were going in, he said.

OBBING A BANK is the most

traditional of crimes. Its a
simple act with an immediate
payoff. All sorts of criminals have tried
it. If youre in law enforcement long
enough, youll eventually come across
bank robbers of every shape and size,
said Troy Nehls, sheriff of Fort Bend
County, which includes part of the
Katy area. But Im not sure there has
ever been a bank-robbing family.
The Catts were as unlikely a set of
robbers as one could imagine. They
had no pressing financial issues and
no obvious personal problems. Scott,
a widower, worked for an energy
company. Abby was a sales assistant
at Victorias Secret, and Hayden was
hoping to be a hotel concierge.
Around their apartment complex, the Catts were regarded as

PHOTOS: (PREVI OUS SPREAD) COURTESY S HERI FF S OF F ICE, FORT BEND COU NTY, TE XAS

UST AFTER SUNRISE ON AUGUST 9, 2012, in the

Houston suburb of Katy, Scott Catt, a 50-year-old
structural engineer, was awakened by his alarm clock
in the apartment he shared with his 20-year-old son,
Hayden, and his 18-year-old daughter, Abby.
Scott took a shower, dried off, got dressed, and
walked into the living room. Abby and Hayden were
waiting for him on the couch.
OK, kids, Scott said. You ready?

READERS DIGEST

regular, everyday people, one of their a breath and blew it out. I did it for
neighbours said. Yet when it came to the family, he said. I swear to you, I
robbing banks, said Nehls, they were would rob banks only for my family.
very bold, very daring, and very risky.
Theyre lucky they didnt get caught
HE STORY BEGINS in
up in a shoot-out.
McMinnville, Oregon, southThe Catts pulled off two robberwest of Portland, where Scott
ies: the first being the Comerica heist was born and raised. His father was
and the second being the robbery of a a loan officer at First Federal Savings
credit union, two months later. They and Loan. At McMinnville High
were getting ready for a third when School, Scott played football and fell
they were arrested in November 2012. in love with Beth Worral, a star of
Reporters tried to find out why a the swim team. They married after
father and his two children would graduation. After Beth had Hayden
turn to bank robbery,
and Abby, the Catts
but the Catts werent
built a house in
talking. Then, late last
Dundee our dream
I didnt feel
year, the three agreed
hous e, S cott told
like a criminal.
to plea deals, and they
me. But in 1995, Beth
consented to let me
was diagnosed with
I didnt load my
interview them.
breast cancer, and she
pistol. Who was
I was allowed to
died two years later.
speak to only one Catt
Hayden was five, and
being hurt?
at a time. Abby was the
Abby was two.
said Scott Catt
first to be escorted to
At that point, Scott
the visiting room. She
told me, life sort of
sat on a chair, ducked
came to a halt. He
her head, and said after a silence, began drinking heavily. He had a brief
Sometimes I feel so embarrassed second marriage. He went to rehab.
about whats happened that I just want He fell behind on house payments,
to disappear.
and the family moved in with Scotts
Hayden came next. Every night I mother. He went through a couple of
stare at the ceiling, and I ask myself, jobs. His car was repossessed.
Between 2000 and 2002, he began
What were we thinking? he said.
Then Scott walked in. He gave me thinking about how to make extra
a firm handshake, sat down, and money. He remembered one day his
pushed his fingertips together. All I father had come home and said First
can tell you is that I thought it would Federal had been robbed. When Scott
help us as a family, he said. He took asked why no-one had stopped the

PROP STYLI ST: SARAH CAVE FOR EH MANAGEM ENT

February2015

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T H E F A M I LY T H A T R O B B E D B A N K S

thief, his father replied that the tellers Oregon.) I didnt feel like a criminal,
were trained to comply with robbers he told me. I didnt load my pistol. I
because the money was insured, the knew I wasnt going to shoot anybody.
bank would get it back.
And I kept telling myself that whatever
One morning, after dropping off the money I got was insured, so who was
kids at school, Scott drove to a branch really being hurt?
of his dads old bank. He strode in
wearing a baseball cap, black trackE A N W H I L E , S C O T T was
suit pants, a white painters mask, and
a devoted single father. He
sunglasses. He was carrying a trash
cooked dinner for his kids
bag and an antique pistol unloaded. almost every night and took them on
He went up to a window, demanded vacations. When they got interested
the tellers money, and ordered her in competitive swimming, Scott drove
not to add bait bills or dye packs. She them to training every day.
dumped around $2500 into his bag.
Abby and Hayden never once susScott walked back to his truck, drove pected that their father had a secret
around for a while to see if he was life. Hed be up and gone to work
being followed, and went home.
by 4.30 or 5 in the morning, Hayden
A couple of days later, the local said. He didnt make great money,
paper published a
but we always apg ra i n y b l a c k- a n d preciated how hard
white frame from a
he worked to keep us
There was no
afloat.
video showing the
accomplice
Dad was a great
robber. My mother
motivator, Abby told
said the man looked
Scott could trust
me. At the begina little like me, and I
to stay quiet
ning of each [swim]
just laughed, Scott
except his
season, he pushed
said. And that was it.
me to work hard and
Scott did his next
children
set goals. He told me
h e i s t a y e a r l at e r
I could be somebody.
after falling behind
The night before every
on bills, and he got
$1500 from another small bank. Then swim meet, he would cook us pork
he landed a full-time job with an en- chops, noodles, applesauce, and a
gineering company, earning $25 an protein shake. I loved it.
One time, Hayden qualified for the
hour. Still, once a year hed pull off
a robbery, hauling in between $5000 state meet, and there was talk about a
and $10,000. (Authorities believe college scholarship. But by the age of
that he robbed at least five banks in 17, he said, he was drinking too much

108

February2015

READERS DIGEST

and quit swimming. Abby lost interest in the sport when she was 15. She
started running with what she called
the drinking, partying crowd, and
she ended up in an alternative school.
After graduation, Hayden found work
as a hotel bellman and as a weekend
tour guide, and he was still drinking
too much. And Scott was again falling

behind financially.
By 2010, it was time
for another robbery.
Scott knew that
if he had accomplices, he could get
cash from several
tellers drawers and
perhaps even get to
the banks vault. But
there was no-one he
could trust to stay
quiet except his
children. Maybe he
should talk to them
about joining him.
He rationalised
the idea. As long as
they did what he
said, they wouldnt
get caught. And
he would use the
money to start a
small business they
could run. They
were floundering,
he told me. I could
see the despair
in Hayden, and I
thought he could
use I dont know some inspiration,
some excitement. Same with Abby. All
I can tell you is that I thought doing
it would give us all a little boost in
our lives that it would help us as a
family.
He approached his son. We were
sitting at the kitchen table, Hayden
recalled. He said he had something
February2015

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T H E F A M I LY T H A T R O B B E D B A N K S

important to tell me. He said he had a

second job as a part-time bank robber.
The way he looked at me, I knew he
wasnt kidding.
Scott said he would be the muscle,
leading the way in and scaring the employees and customers, and Hayden
would be the bag man, ordering
tellers to put money into his bag.
Theyd wear disguises, go to the bank
early in the morning before there were
many customers, and be out within
three minutes. Scott told his son they
could easily grab $40,000 or more.
On the morning of the robbery,
Hayden was scared. Scott did the
robbery by himself, getting a few
thousand dollars, and came home
before lunch. He did it so quickly
and so easily that it planted a seed,
Hayden told me. I thought, My dad
really does know what hes doing.
Then Scott was laid off. By January

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February2015

2012, hed found work in Houston

and relocated there. Abby moved in
with her grandmother in Oregon, and
Hayden went to Hawaii and got a job
at a hotel. It seemed like a new era.
Scotts job paid well, and he hoped
hed quit thinking about banks. But
there were just so many in Texas.

Y M A RC H, S C O T T had persuaded Abby to move to Texas.

She landed a job at Victorias
Secret. (She proudly announced on
her Facebook page that she was a
Victorias Secret Pink Girl.) A few
months later, Hayden joined them,
and it wasnt long before he began talking to his father about a bank robbery.
He wanted money for college.
Scott picked out a nearby Comerica.
He began walking past it in the mornings with the familys yellow Labrador,
Bella, to see when it got busy, and he
had his son go in
to learn the layout
of the lobby. But
they needed a getaway driver and
there was only one
person who came
to mind.
Hayden spoke to
Abby. I need to tell
you something, he
said. Dads a bank
robber; Im going
to become one, too,
and we want you to
join us.

READERS DIGEST

The next day, Scott talked to Abby, out. Scott took a ride on his motorcypromising her that all shed have to cle, Hayden went shopping, and Abby
do was drop them off, wait for them got a manicure. That night Abby was
to return, and drive home at a normal still nervous I kept looking at the
speed. She agreed to participate. This door, waiting for the police to walk in,
was something I felt like I had to do, she said but Hayden was overjoyed.
to protect them, to make sure they got I felt exhilaration, the most intense
out of the bank and didnt get shot high Ive ever experienced, he said. It
or something, she told me. I didnt changed my life. Ill be truthful about
want to let Dad down.
that.
In the apartment, Hayden and Scott
Scott paid off his bills. He bought
practised bursting into a bank and a second motorcycle and a $17,000
yelling at everyone to get their hands Tahoe for Hayden and a $12,600 Ford
u p. Th e y s c h e dFocus for Abby (the
uled the robbery for
Jetta had engine trouAugust 9, when Abby
ble). He and the kids
At home, the
had a day off from
split the remainder,
family stared
Victorias Secret. The
but by late Septemnight before, Scott
ber, all the money was
wide-eyed at the
had the kids steal lispent.
money, close to
cence plates from a
car at another comCOTT AND
$70,000 a
plex and put them
Hayden destunning haul
over the Jettas plates.
cided to rob
The robbery went
the First Commu off as planned. Outnity Credit Union.
side, Abby gave them time updates Because there was a construction crew
over the walkie-talkie. At the three- working nearby, Scott sent Hayden
minute mark, Scott and Hayden or- and Abby to Home Depot to buy
dered the manager to unlock the back two orange safety vests for disguises.
door, and they jumped into the Jetta. Hayden also went to a costume shop
Abby drove to another neighbour- to buy a fake moustache.
hood, and Hayden and Scott threw
On October 1, Abby took the day
their disguises, pistols, stolen plates, off from work and drove Hayden and
and gloves into a dumpster. In their Scott to the credit union. The men
apartment, they stared wide-eyed at entered at about 1.50pm. Their size
the money, close to $70,000 a stun- and guns terrified everyone, and they
ning haul from a little branch bank.
were in and out so fast that no-one got
They heard sirens and decided to go a good look at them. As Abby drove

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T H E F A M I LY T H A T R O B B E D B A N K S

them home, police cars came scream- from where theyd been folded. He
ing from the opposite direction. Not found that Home Depot sold that style
one officer gave her a second look. All of vest and got a subpoena to review
they heard over the radio was that two purchases at area Home Depots. Just
tall men had committed a robbery.
before the robbery, two vests had been
The Catts got $29,953, a decent sum. purchased in Katy with a debit card beA few days later, Abby told her father longing to Scott Catt. Security footage
she couldnt handle the stress. She showed a young man and a blonde
wanted to take her cut and move into teenage girl buying them. After doing a
her own place. Scott promised her an check on Scott, Martin learned he had
apartment but begged
two children, Hayden
her to remain their
and Abby, whose
wheelman. He had
photos matched the
My dad should
decided to quit his job
customers.
and make a living as a
Ma r t i n d e d u c e d
have protected
full-time bank robber,
that Scott and Hayden
me instead of
and Hayden would
were the robbers, and
the other way
join him.
Abby was the one
Th e g re e d ha d
whom tellers heard
around, said
s n o w b a l l e d , r e counting time over
Abby Catt
called Hayden. I had
a walkie-talkie. His
become consumed
case was bolstered by
with money: spendvideo of Abby applying it, getting more. It was all I thought ing for an account at the credit union
about, like an addiction.
a few days before. (Scott had sent her
On November 8, Abby drove them to scope the layout.) He had the Catts
to another bank, but there was too arrested and placed in separate intermuch foot traffic, so they called it rogation rooms.
off. The next morning, as Scott and
Martin decided to first talk to Scott.
Hayden prepared to try again, the He assumed that he would declare his
police came knocking.
innocence, claiming a case of mistaken identity. But Scott confessed all,
HILE STUDYING VIDEO even talking about his Oregon robberof the credit union rob- ies, which Martin knew nothing about.
bery, veteran detective Jeff The detective was dumbfounded, and
Martin had noticed that the safety vests he was equally dumbfounded when
worn by the robbers werent tattered or Hayden and Abby confessed.
A l thoug h th e g et away dr i ver
dirty at all. He could even see creases

TEXAS MONTHLY (JUNE 2014), 2014 BY TEXAS MONTHLY, TEXASMONTHLY.COM.

112

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READERS DIGEST

me, instead of the other way around,

having me protect him, Abby said. A
few minutes later, she mentioned that
she had run into her father a day or so
earlier in the infirmary. He told me
he loved me, to be strong, and to be
patient. And then he said he was so
sorry. I broke down and started crying.
I mean, like Ive said, he is my dad.
Abby plans to become a nurse
when shes released. Hayden wants
to get a degree in advertising,
architecture, or engineering thats
right, engineering, like my dad, he
said, smiling.
Scott told me his one hope is that
his kids will visit him after theyre
free. Hell be 62 when hes eligible for
parole. If I get out, I want to have a
homecoming dinner that night, me
and the kids, he said. Well go to a
good restaurant, tell stories about the
old days. He paused. About the days
when we were a family.

in a bank robbery is liable under

Texas law for the same punishment
as the bank robbers, the police
and prosecutors felt sympathy for
Abby and gave her a mild five-year
sentence. (Shell be eligible for parole
in seven months.) Hayden received
a ten-year sentence (his parole will
come up in about four years), but
Scott was hit with a 24-year sentence.

HEN I TALKED to Scott,

hed lost 31kg since his
arrest, which he attributed mostly to a lot of remorse
for what hed done to his children.
When I look back on what I did,
what led to this place, I would have
been better off we all would have
been better off if I had gone on welfare and been a stay-at-home dad.
Abby and Hayden didnt seem to
know what to think of their father.
He should have been protecting

Puzzles

See page 122

Blockbuster

Pick a Card, Any Card

K Q

Number Cruncher

There are multiple solutions.

One straightforward solution is
(25 x (9 + 7 + 5)) + 3 - 1 = 527

60
35 25
20 15 10
7
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

13

S
E
I
S
M
O
L
O
G
Y

T
D
G
I
A
R
I
R
E
E

A
I
N
L
T
I
A
D
N
A

R
T
O
V
U
G
B
E
I
R

V
O
R
E
R
I
L
A
A
L

E
R
E
R
E
N
E
L
L
Y

Dicing with Words

Hidden Meaning

A. Foreign language
B. Look out below
C. Abandon ship

February2015

113

Smart Animals

Kelly the Hero

LORNA BOYD

The daily boundary walk to check

the fence of our property had Kelly,
our five-year-old kelpie-heeler cross,
and I on a narrow track, with our
neighbours fence on one side, and
one very steep 10m drop to the creek
on the other side.
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February2015

Kelly always walks in front, but

that day she suddenly stopped and
whined with a worried look.
As I started to ask her, Whats
wrong? a massive tree branch
snapped. It crashed and plummeted
heavily to the ground onto the track
just in front of us.
Then, further along another

ILLUSTRATION: BEN SANDERS

Some animals are better at sensing certain things than humans;

others are just plain observant

boundary walk she again stopped

used at our holiday house, and
suddenly, this time staring slightly
dropped it on the lawn next to her.
ahead into the dry grass. After
While Sue readily admits that
inspecting what the hold-up was,
Elke was highly intelligent, she was
Icould see a not-sostill in a state of
friendly brown snake.
disbelief as she related
My dog is truly my
the story of the
If it wasnt for
lifesaver and best
flowerpots to me.
friend.
Bonnie, Id hate

Potted Wisdom
GRAEME PERRYMAN

to think what
could have
happened to
them both. Shes
one smart
Doberman

My daughter Jenny
owned a beautiful
German shepherd
called Elke. As my wife
Sue and I have a
holiday house on two
hectares of land, we
often took Elke along for short
breaks so she could exercise in the
extra space and enjoy the change of
environment. Shealso liked to be
with us and particularly liked to walk
us around the firebreaks each day.
A couple of years ago, Sue was
weeding the back lawn at the holiday
house and placing the weeds in an
old plastic flowerpot. As is usually
the case, the dog was following her
around the lawn and watching her
carry out her weeding.
A couple of weeks later, Elke was
back home in her city setting when
my wife noticed some weeds in the
lawn. So she got out her weeding
fork and commenced work. The dog
disappeared and returned with an
old flowerpot similar to the one Sue

Wired For Smell

BARBARA HOFF

While visiting my
daughter Dianna,
Inoticed Bonnie,
hertwo-year-old
Doberman, pacing
around the lounge room
back and forth in front
of a power point. Then,
all ofasudden, she started to bark
incessantly at it.
You had better check that power
point, I said to my daughter.
Something is not right. Dianna
switched off all the power and undid
the power point and found that the
wiring was smouldering.
We immediately called an
electrician to not only fix the power
point, but also to check the wiring
in the rest of the house. If it wasnt
for Bonnie, Id hate to think what
could have happened to them both.
Shes one smart Doberman.
You could earn cash by telling us about
the antics of unique pets or wildlife. Turn
to page 6 for details on how to contribute
to the magazine.
February2015

115

MOVIE DIGEST

JUPITER ASCENDING Sci-Fi

Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis, pictured above) was born under a night sky, with signs
predicting that she was destined for great things. Now grown and living in a
universe where human beings are placed at the bottom of the evolutionary
ladder, Jupiter dreams of the stars but wakes up to the reality of a job cleaning
toilets and a life of endless bad luck. Only when Caine (Channing Tatum, above),
a genetically engineered ex-military hunter, arrives on Earth to track her down
does Jupiter begin to glimpse the fate that has been waiting for her all along.
From the creator of The Matrix trilogy, Jupiter Ascending promises to be one of
the biggest sci-fi movies of the year.

BIG EYES Biographical Drama

Forgotten artist:
Imagine your lifes work received international praise, but no-one
knew you were behind it. Thats what happened to Margaret Keane Amy Adams as
(Amy Adams), whose artwork became phenomenally successful in Margaret Keane
the 1950s. In a time when women artists were
rarely celebrated, Keanes husband Walter
(Christoph Waltz) added his signature to the
bottom, then received international fame for the
works. The film tells the story of their divorce
during which Margaret accused Walter of
stealing her paintings. Directed by Tim Burton,
the film is both visually and mentally stimulating.
116

February2015

THE SECOND BEST EXOTIC

MARIGOLD HOTEL Comedy Drama
Its time to join in more adventures at the
infamous Indian retirement resort. A sequel to
the acclaimed The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
(2012), the film follows ambitious hotel ownermanager Sonny Kapoors (Dev Patel)
expansionist dream to open The Second Best
Marigold Hotel for the Elderly and Beautiful.
Joining the existing residents Muriel (Maggie
Smith), Evelyn (Judi Dench) and Douglas (Bill
Nighy) are newcomers Guy (Richard Gere)
and Lavinia (Tamsin Greig). A wedding and
more of the laughs that made you fall in love
with the first instalment makes Second Best
Exotic Marigold Hotel a great feel-good film.

Evelyn (Dench)
and Douglas
(Nighy) dance
the night away

Did you know?

In the The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Evelyn (Judi Dench) claims Muriel
(Maggie Smith) is only 19 days older than her. In real life, Maggie Smith
(28/12/34) is in fact exactly 19 days younger than Judi Dench (9/12/34).

WHAT WE DID ON OUR HOLIDAY

Comedy
The McLeod family are on an epic road trip to
the Scottish Highlands for sick grandfather
Gordys (Billy Connolly) 75th birthday. Recently
separated, Doug McLeod (David Tennant) and
Abi (Rosamund Pike) decide to keep up a
charade of married bliss to avoid upsetting
Gordy. Naturally, with three demanding and
outspoken young children in tow, plans go
awry. From the writers of the hit BBC-TV
comedy Outnumbered, this has the same sharp
British wit, crafted through partially improvised
dialogue, inspired casting and an off-beat plot.

Q:

What is the name of the Austrian family

featured in the musical The Sound of Music?

MOVIES

LAND OF THE
BEARS DVD
Filmed over 12 months in the
rugged and remote terrain
of Russias Kamchatka
Peninsula famed home to
brown bears this 3D film
follows the stories of anumber of bears,
each at a unique stage in their lives.
Using technology supplied by coproducer James Cameron (Titanic,

Avatar), it is one of the first nature

documentaries shot using 3D cameras.
Entertainingly educational, it follows the
cycle of the bears year as they struggle
to survive and thrive.

Expensive Movie Threads

Film costumes can be as memorable as the actors who wear them.

We found some iconic outfits that have proven to be almost as
lucrative as the films they appeared in:

A:

The
von Trapp
family.

Cleopatra (1963): Cleopatra Wig

Made from real human hair, the wig worn by Elizabeth Taylor is valued at
US$16,000.

The Wizard of Oz (1939): Dorothys Dress and Ruby Slippers

Judy Garlands blue-and-white dress sold at US$480,000 in 2012.
But the ruby-red slippers are real gems: of the five known
surviving pairs, one sold at US$660,000 in 2000, another at
US$510,000 in 2011 and a third is valued at US$2 million.
The Seven Year Itch (1955): White Subway Dress
The white dress from the subway scene in The
Seven Year Itch is currently worth US$5.6
million and sets the record for the highest
priced Marilyn outfit. The earlier record
for a Monroe dress was US$1.26 million in
1999 for the dress she wore in May 1962,
when she sang Happy Birthday to
President John F. Kennedy.
118

February2015

PHOTO: (S HOES) GETTY IM AGES

My Fair Lady (1964): Ascot Dress and Hat

Designed by Cecil Beaton, the outfit worn by Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady
was originally bought for a cool US$100,000. This ensemble has really retained
bangfor its buck it was sold in 2011 for a cool US$3.7 million.

BOOK DIGEST

More than six decades and more

thanten million vehicles after the first
model rolled off a production line, Susan
Redman celebrates MY DREAM KOMBI
(HarperCollins): Whether hippie love bus,
surfers dream machine or family wagon for
happy campers, the iconic Kombi is a vehicle
that has always enjoyed universal appeal. From
Britain to Brazil, Australia to America, Turkey to Thailand, this classic German
auto embodies a freewheeling spirit and retro romanticism. If the Volkswagen
Beetle was the car for the people, the Volkswagen Kombi was the van for the
people. Kombis not short for Kombinationskraftwagen (German for
combined-use vehicle) for nothing!
February2015

119

BOOKS

Cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar,

thebatsman with the most runs in test
cricket (and in one-dayers) than any
other player, says in PLAYING IT MY
WAY (Hodder and Stoughton):
People have often commented on
my grip, which is very low down on the
handle. It all goes back to when I
started playing cricket when I was 11
with my brother Ajit, who is ten years
older. As Ididnt have a bat of my own,
I had to use Ajits full-size bat and the

only way Icould cope

with the weight at
that age was to hold
[it] right at the
bottom of the handle. Some coaches
suggested changing my grip, and I did
experiment, but it never felt right. I had
got used to feeling the end of the
handle pressing against the inside of
my forearm and if I gripped the bat
further up I didnt have that, and
batting just didnt feel natural.

In EXTREME FOOD (Bantam Press), survivalist and TV

personality Bear Grylls describes what you can eat when
yourlife absolutely depends on it:
Termites have a bad name in built-up areas because of their
tendency to consume and destroy wooden structures. But for
the survivor, termites are awesome. ... Pound for pound theyre
more nutritious than vegetables and have
a higher protein and fat content than
beef or fish. ... Because termites have
such a high fat content, you can put them in a dry
pan and fry them in their own fat. If you have
winged termites, youll want to remove the wings
before adding them to the pan, then fry them
gently over your fire until theyre brown and crispy.

120

February2015

P HOTOS : GETTY IM AGES; THI NKSTOCK: EXTRACTS M AY BE EDI TED FOR SPACE AND CL ARITY

Media scientist Dr Karl

Kruszelnicki in HOUSE OF
KARLS (Pan
Macmillan):
Cursing is
universal.
Profanities
exist in every
single
language ever
studied. Every
language,
dialect or
patois had
forbidden or bad words. ... Swear
words do have power. Merely
hearing profanities will change the
electrical conductance of your skin.
Your pulse will quicken, the hairs on
your arms will rise and your
breathing will become shallow. But
languages evolve. So the power of
swear words can change over time.
Nobody today would be bothered
by the word golly. However,
originally, that word was a very
obscene and profane contraction of
the phrase Gods body.
Sometimes it goes the other way.
Neutral words can become
uncomfortable to use. For example,
the word coffin originally meant a
box. But once it
became linked to
the concept of
death, people
stopped saying
lets see if theres
anything to eat in
the bread coffin.
Ithink thats a gosh
darn shame.

Music industry maverick

Amanda Palmer in
THE ART OF ASKING (Piatkus)
writes about her early career as a
living statue street performer:
What I hadnt anticipated was
the sudden, powerful encounters
with people especially lonely
people who looked like they hadnt
connected with anyone in ages.
Iwas amazed by the intimate
moments of prolonged eye contact
happening on the busy city sidewalk
as traffic whizzed by, as sirens
blared, as street vendors hawked
their wares and activists thrust flyers
at every passerby, as bedraggled
transients tried to sell the local
homeless community newspaper to
rushing commuters where more
than a second or two of a direct
silent gaze between strangers is
usually verboten.
My eyes would say:

Thank you.
Isee you.

And their eyes

would say:

Nobody
ever sees
me.
Thank you.

BRAIN POWER
TEST YOUR MENTAL PROWESS

Puzzles

Challenge yourself by solving these puzzles and mind stretchers,

then check your answers on page 113

J
Q

Pick a Card, Any Card

Can you place the remaining
12 court cards (Jacks,
Queens, Kings and Aces) so
that every row, column or
main diagonal contains
exactly one card of every
denomination and suit? We
have popped in the first four
court cards to help you.

1
3
9

122

February2015

5
25

Number Cruncher

Blockbuster
Each block is equal
to the sum of the
two numbers
beneath it. Find all
the missing
numbers.

60
20

10
2

Make a calculation that

equals 527 using some or
all of the numbers in the
circle and any of the four
standard mathematical
operations: +,-,x and .

...................... = 527

PUZZLES
1

V
L

B
E

S
8

D
5

Identify the common

words or phrases above.

Hidden Meaning

U
9

A
G

LANNNNGUAGE

N
10

R
Y

Dicing with Words

The dice blocks each have a six-letter word written
on them, but, unfortunately, you can only see three
sides. When you have solved the clues, the first
column will reveal a word or phrase.
CLUES
1. Go hungry
2. Magazine boss
3. Disregard
4. Valuable metal
5. Grow up

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

6. Source
7. Inclined
8. Trying experience
9. Friendly
10. Annually

LOOK

BAND
SHIP
A

February2015

123

BRAIN POWER
TEST YOUR GENERAL KNOWLEDGE

Trivia

2. Known to locals as Chomolungma

10. What

nationality was
the inventor of
Lego? 1 point

or Sagarmatha, what is the English

name of this landmark? 1 point

11. This month

3. This year marks 40 years since the

marks:

first Cricket World Cup. Which team

has played in every cup and reached
the final three times but never won?

l 30 years since the

first broadcast of
what British soap?
l 50 years since the
assassination of
which black Muslim
leader?
l 85 years since the
discovery of what
space object by Clyde Tombaugh?

1 point
4. What country is the farthest north
that penguins live? 1 point
5. What four things did Dorothy and
her friends want from the Wizard of
Oz? 2 points
6. Name the three alliterative island
nations in the Indian Ocean. 3 points
7. What colours are the two circles that

make up the logo of Mastercard?

2 points
8. Frontal, occipital, parietal and

temporal are all parts of

what organ? 1 point
9. What countrys

silhouette is
this? 1 point
16-20 Gold medal

11-15 Silver medal

3 points
12. Frames, spares and turkeys are all
terms used in which competitive
recreation? 1 point
13. Bristlecone pines growing in the
US have been dated at 5064 years old.
Were they alive when Tutankhamun
was born? 1 point
14. Whats the third largest species of
cat in the world, after tiger and lion?
1 point
6-10 Bronze medal

0-5 Wooden spoon

ANSWERS: 1. A. 2. Mount Everest. 3. England. 4. Ecuador (The Galapagos Islands, on the equator). 5. A brain,
a heart, courage and to go home. 6. Mauritius, Maldives, Madagascar. 7. Red and yellow. 8. Brain. 9. Mexico.
10. Danish. 11. Eastenders; Malcolm X; Pluto. 12. Ten-pin bowling. 13. Yes (born 1341BC). 14. Jaguar.

124

February2015

COM P ILED BY GAIL MACC ALLUM

1. Whats the only vowel not on the top

row of a standard keyboard? 1 point

BRAIN POWER
IT PAYS TO INCREASE YOUR

Word Power
A-List The letter A is so much more than the

alphabets leader: music note, blood type, Nathaniel

Hawthorne favourite, mark of excellence, and even
stardom vehicle for Mr. T. In its honour, a quiz
devoted to words whose only vowel is A. Answers
on the next page.
B: black olive. C: boat with two hulls.
11. balaclava n. A: knit cap.

BY EM ILY COX & HENRY RATHVON; ILLUSTRATION S BY JILL CA LDER

1. banal adj. A: disallowed.

B: uptight. C: trite.
2. annals n. A: catacombs.
B: chronicles. C: long johns.
3. arcana n. A: mysterious or
specialised knowledge. B: travel
journal. C: rainbow.
4. masala n. A: Chilean wine.
B: Indian spice blend. C: Italian
antipasto.
5. lama n. A: an alpaca or vicua.
B: heroic escape. C: priest or monk.
6. bazaar n. A: weird event.
B: marketplace. C: wailing siren.
7. paschal adj. A: of computer
languages. B: in a Gothic style.
C: relating to Easter.
8. amalgam n. A: mixture.
B: volcanic rock. C: back of the throat.
9. plantar adj. A: vegetative.
B: paved with asphalt. C: of the sole of
the foot.
10. catamaran n. A: Bengal tiger.

B: Greek pastry. C: Russian mandolin.

12. avatar n. A: mythological
sibling. B: incarnation of a god.
C: computer language.
13. spartan adj. A: desertlike.
B: marked by simplicity and lack of
luxury. C: of classical theatre.
14. allay v. A: refuse. B: take sides.
C: calm.
15. lambda n. A: Greek letter.
B: Brazilian dance. C: college degree.
THEY MADE THAT A WORD?!
Speaking of all things A, MerriamWebster recently added to its
Collegiate Dictionary the term aha
moment an instance of sudden
realisation made popular by
Oprah Winfrey. Other modern lingo
added to the latest iteration: man
cave (a room designed according
to a mans tastes) and earworm (a
song that keeps repeating in ones
mind especially annoying ones
like Gangnam Style).

February2015

125

WORD POWER

Answers
1. banal [C] trite. Whenever

the teacher says something too

banal, Dorothy cant help but
roll her eyes.
2. annals [B] chronicles. In
the annals of sports idiocy, that
was the most bungling sequence
of passes Ive ever seen!
3. arcana [A] mysterious or
specialised knowledge. Id
rather not know all the deep
arcana of your arachnid research.
4. masala [B] Indian spice blend.

Easy on the masala Sarah doesnt

have the stomach for spicy dishes.
5. lama [C] priest or monk. Yes,

even the Dalai Lama has a website,

Facebook page, Twitter feed, and
YouTube channel.
6. bazaar [B] marketplace. During

her hunt at the bazaar, Sally found a

turn-of-the-century compass that
used to belong to her greatgrandfather.
7. paschal [C] relating to Easter.

Terri spent hours on her paschal

bonnet it started as a flowerpot!
8. amalgam [A] mixture. Our team
is a strong amalgam of raw youth and
seasoned leadership.
9. plantar [C] of the sole of the foot.
I treasure the plantar prints from
when Billy was a baby.
10. catamaran [C] boat with two
hulls. Jack thinks hes Admiral
126

February2015

Nelson now that he has won the

marinas annual catamaran race.
11. balaclava [A] knit cap. Hang

your balaclava in the foyer and grab

some stew.
12. avatar [B] incarnation of a god.

In Hindu mythology, Rama is the

seventh avatar of the god Vishnu.
(And yes, James Cameron, an avatar is
also a being representing and
controlled by a human.)
13. spartan [B] marked by

simplicity and lack of luxury. We

didnt expect such spartan conditions
in the honeymoon suite.
14. allay [C] calm. Yesterdays

board meeting did more than allay our

fears it gave us a sense of hope!
15. lambda [A] Greek letter. Invert

a V, and youve got a Greek lambda

or Bobs moustache.
VOCABULARY RATINGS

5 & below: An ambitious attempt

610: Amazing achievement
1112: A Plus!
13-15: Word Power wizard

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