Simple Things, Lewis Hamilton, Walking, Hi-tech Pillow, Narcissistic Leaders

 Water

Drinking Fountain
unknown artist
Photo Credit: Tony Bennett/Art UK [CC BY-NC]

Despite costing 500 times more per glass than tap water, there is no evidence whatsoever that bottled water is any better for our health (it actually contains less calcium and magnesium, on average, than tap). And yet, unfathomably, some 8 million plastic bottles of mineral water are bought each year in the UK, many of them on the baseless and marketing driven assumption that when it comes to simple hydration, you get what you pay for. Truly, future generations will think we lost our damn minds.

Indeed, won't the future generations be right?

Washing-up liquid

A Young Woman Washing Dishes
Camille Pissarro (1830-1903)
Photo Credit: The Fitzwilliam Museum [ CC BY-NC-ND]

What is the point of poncy perfumes for plates? You're paying for either a costly but ephemeral hit of scent, or for your dinners to taste like lavender. Washing-up liquid should smell as God intended: either of pungent lemon, Original Fairy liquid, or that delicious cheap fake-apple stuff you get from a cash and carry. Paying for added peony, cedarwood or pro-vitamin B5 (you think I'm joking) is a madness. And aloe vera for a dish? It has an egg stain, not nettle rash.

(Sali Hughes, The Observer, 2020)

Lewis Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton says he will speak to Formula One bosses about the prospect of a salary cap which would dent the six-time world champion's future earnings.

In a meeting of the F1 Commission... all 10 team principals, including Hamilton's Mercedes boss Toto Wolff agreed to splitting both drivers' wages within the same team to no more than £22 million per year from 2023.

Hamilton, who is out of contract with Mercedes next month, currently earns in the region of £40 million.

(Philip Duncan, The i, 2020)

Aren't these astonishing sums of money for driving a very fast car and surely they will increase, now that he is a seven-times world champion?

Walking

Couple Walking
Georges Seurat (1859-1891)
Photo Credit: The Fitzwilliam Museum [CC BY-NC-ND]

... This year, more than ever, I crave the slow and steady rhythm of a walking pace, big skies, and cleansing wind and rain to break the domestic routines of daily life. I want to connect to my own pumping heart and the natural world around me, re-oxygenate stale lungs and feel the muscles in my legs stretch and work...

The past 50 years... have seen a global revival of interest in the idea of pilgrimage; the eternal search for spiritual and physical succour dovetailing with today's urgent calling for a holistic meaning. It satisfies our hankering for "slow" over instant gratification, and offers an alternative drug-free route to emotional and physical wellbeing...

"Sometimes when people look for a new inner direction in their lives the most sensible and simple approach is to be found in an outer direction," says Dr Guy Hayward, of the British Pilgrimage Trust. "With pilgrimage you literally walk a physical path, have a clear goal - your destination - and have a means of reaching it: walking. The simplicity of this tangible endeavour may be the secret that many need to know in order to find that inner-direction that so many of us seek."

... A 2015 study by the American National Academy of Science summarised that a 90-minute walk in nature calms the psyche, eases depression and feeds creative juices. Walking has been further proven to reduce blood pressure, lower blood sugar levels and improves concentration and energy. Unlike hiking, which is a purely a physical challenge, the activity of a ritual walk, "the thinking footfall" as writer Robert Macfarlane describes it, encourages you to savour the moment and the resonance of each place. It's finding pleasure and purpose in the act of "slow"...

(Catherine Fairweather, The Observer, 2020)

Just walk. Why all this introspective analysis which complicates the very simple and pleasurable act of putting one foot in front of the other?

High-tech Pillow

A Sleeping Girl
Albert Joseph Moore (1841-1893)
Photo Credit: Tate [CC BY-NC-ND]

... studies suggest that the blue light emitted from smartphones, tablets and laptops is a particularly powerful suppressor of melatonin, which is the signal that tells our bodies and brains that it's time to sleep...

However, with smartphones being such a huge part of our daily lives, pinging and dinging at us all day and night, it's hard to keep them separate. They're like the tech version of tiny excitable puppies gnawing at our trousers ends for attention: "Look at me! Look how much fun I am! Play with me!"

To help the screen-obsessed human race to help itself, two graduates from the Samsung Art and Design Institute in North Korea have invented a pillow that stops you using the internet in bed... the Pause Pillow, which, when it senses the weight of your head, sends out a signal to stop your Wi-Fi or phone reception from working...

Your sibling wants to talk Brexit while you're tucked up? Tempted by a scroll through Instagram to ogle what your friend had for breakfast? Checking your work emails from an overzealous client? Sorry, Pause Pillow says no...

(Kasia Delgado, The i, 2020)

Why take your phone to bed? Can't it be left downstairs or in another room? Why create another technical solution to a situation which can be so easily resolved without one?

Narcissistic Leaders

Echo and Narcissus
John William Waterhouse (1849-1917)
Photo Credit: Walker Art Gallery [CC BY-NC]

... Large numbers of educated people claim a right to their own versions of reality, heedless of evidence, in absolute contradiction of the Enlightenment values that have governed western societies, much to our advantage, since the 18th century.

A new book entitled The Upswing, written by the American academics Robert Putman and Shaylyn Romney Garrett...argues that the ugliest political phenomenon afflicting the US derive from rising economic inequality and brutal selfishness by the "haves". Only when the doctrine of "we" displaces that of "me", they urge, can divisive trends be reversed...

It is doubtful that today's populist leaders around the world, narcissists all, care a straw for any human beings save themselves. They are thus appropriate standard bearers for Putman's and Romney Garrett's "me" generation...

We should recognise the loss of respect that the two foremost Anglo-Saxon nations are suffering around the world, through our descent from historical standards we set for competence, morality, regard for law.

I am naive enough to believe that Joe Biden is a decent human being, likewise many members of the House of Commons. If, over the years ahead, our two democracies, together with others elsewhere, fail to reassert the importance of some fragment of such virtue in national leaders, then our futures threaten to be bleak indeed.

(Max Hastings, The Times, 2020)