Indice dei contenuti per August 2022 in Readers Digest Australia

FOR SOME OF US, counting the number of steps we take throughout the day is a wonderful motivator, encouraging extra activity to meet our daily 10,000 step target. Our phones and wearables are able to record this feat with amazing accuracy, making it even more desirable to reach the target. In ‘Just Keep Walking’ (page 144), regular contributor Helen Foster looks at the origins of the magical 10,000 daily steps goal. In doing so, she questions whether that idealised number is actually good for us, or whether it’s a bit of a health myth. What Foster reveals makes for compelling reading. The articles appearing in this month’s issue offer a wide range of topics and insights. They include investigating the reasons why the world loves pizza (‘Food For Thought: Pizza’,…

Elvis Costello is like your friendly, local mailman because he reliably delivers. Incredibly, the singer-songwriter has done this for more than four decades with a passion and intensity behind the microphone. It’s the sort of energy we all need more of in the current times. For 67-year-old Costello, his latest album, The Boy Named If, feels like a visceral journey that captures the beauty and pain of life. It’s the sort of rocking, thought-provoking listen that can only come with depth of experience. And perhaps, a pandemic, with its need for a new approach… “We were more fortunate than many other people [during enforced lockdowns] in that our jobs could be pursued as best we could from where we were [living],” says Costello, exclusively to Reader’s Digest from his home…

The worst part of having a school-aged kid is having to get dressed and pretend I wasn’t in my pyjamas all day when it’s time to pick her up. @ADULT_MOM I successfully backed into a parking spot at school pick-up so excuse me while I ride this high for the rest of the ye—. Oh, there’s a traffic cone stuck under my car. Never mind. @MICHIMAMA75 As a dad with a full-time job, I don’t get to pick up my four year old from school very often. But the times I finish early and go to surprise him are worth it when I see his little face, and he sees me, and he holds out his arms, and shouts out: “Urgh, I wanted Mummy to pick me up!” @THREETIMEDADDY [Phone…

Sometimes, everything seems to go wrong. You’re passed over for a job. Your back aches. Your zipper breaks. Your cat keeps throwing up. Faced with setbacks large and small, you feel like your life is always taking a turn for the worse. You aren’t superstitious, but you begin to wonder if you’re just an unlucky person. Why does it seem like you can never catch a break? I’ve been feeling this way lately. In hopes of improving my outlook, I turned to three experts who helped me understand why we believe in luck and how we can harness that belief to make real changes in our attitude towards life. What Is Luck? People define luck in three ways, according to Jacqueline Woolley, professor of psychology at the University of Texas…

Picture the scene: you’ve spent years working towards a specific goal. You’ve put in countless hours of work and made many sacrifices, but now you’ve got there it’s not how you imagined. Instead of celebration, elation and pride, you feel emptiness, confusion and doubt. Welcome to the anti-climax. The often-experienced but seldom-discussed downside of achieving life’s biggest milestones. Many of us work tirelessly towards our goals. We may spend our lives dreaming of the day we get married, publish our first book or purchase our first home. However, often, when we achieve these things it doesn’t feel quite as expected. In fact, the achievement of these goals feels a bit of a letdown. So why do we often experience an anti-climax when achieving big goals? “An anti-climax can be an…

Making Music Reading ‘An Unexpected Musical Journey’ (My Story, June) brought back a similar experience. In April 2001, our local choral society advertised for people interested in taking part in a production of Les Miserables. I had not seen an actual performance of the show but knew the music and loved it. At my wife’s prompting, I auditioned, was successful and got to perform a solo. JOHN PHILLIPS Broader Horizons Congratulations, Reader’s Digest, on a marvellous century of service to the public. My father was a subscriber, so there was always a Reader’s Digest in the house. When I left home to teach, Dad gave me a year’s subscription. I took over the following year and have been a subscriber ever since. I still look forward to finding the little…

Spot the dog was hailed a hero after alerting his 13-year-old companion to a man trapped in a septic tank. The 40-year-old contractor was working on a property in Sydney’s north when he became stuck. Unable to free himself and upside down in rising water, the man’s cries for help were answered by the border collie’s frantic barks. When the teen came to investigate and saw the man’s predicament, she called emergency services. After a 40-minute rescue, the man was successfully freed and taken to a nearby hospital with only minor head lacerations. “Had the dog not heard the man’s cries, it may not have been such a good ending,” said NSW Ambulance acting inspector Charnan Kurth.…

Bella And Her Butterflies VICTORIA LORREKIVOCH-MILLER One summer’s day, the bushes in our backyard began whimpering and whining and making all sorts of commotion. Or rather, our dog, Bella, was. Our 11-year-old daughter, Kaitlin, discovered her sniffing and pawing at a branch where caterpillars had munched away. My husband and I worried that our backyard – a frequent hangout for birds, squirrels and cats – wasn’t the safest environment for vulnerable caterpillars. So we got a butterfly house where the caterpillars could safely metamorphose. Each day, when we took the butterfly house to the backyard, Bella moved with it. Each night, when we brought it back inside, Bella followed, then slept under the table on which it rested. Finally, the caterpillars turned into beautiful monarch butterflies. Surprisingly, Bella didn’t seem…

Our feet are the structural foundation of our body, supporting not only our weight but also our wellbeing. Even seemingly minor foot ailments, if denied the chance to heal, can cause ongoing problems. Yet studies suggest that at least half of us undermine these anchors of our health with ill-fitting footwear. Overly tight or narrow shoes can cause callouses and bunions, bony bumps at the base of the big toe that are often accompanied by swelling and soreness, while high heels are associated with corns, blisters and ingrown toenails. If you like their style, consider saving them for special occasions and opt for a wider heel or a wedge. Shoes with pointy toe boxes or tips that crowd your feet can force your toes to curl up instead of lie…

We all have our favourites. Some lean towards a traditional Napolitano or a cheesy quattro for maggi, while others prefer ‘multicultural’ versions, such as ham and pineapple. Regardless of where your loyalty lies, there is no denying that this oven-baked flatbread topped with tomato sauce, cheese and a variety of toppings, is one of the world’s most loved foods. “Pizza is easy to love,” says Scott Wiener from scottspizzatours.com in New York. “It’s portable, inexpensive, customisable and, it tastes awesome!” says the man who turned his love of pizza into a business. Although many believe pizza originated in Italy a few hundred years ago, a form of pizza can be traced back to ancient times, according to historytoday.com. Eaten by people on the move or those who couldn’t afford…

During the pandemic, I found myself justifying all manner of what you might call non-essential purchases in the name of lockdown. I ordered a hand-knitted cotton jumper from Spain and throw cushions from Sweden, but the most delightful and unusual thing I ‘added to cart’ was a pair of Pekin ducklings. This happened in June 2020, when my husband, Joaquin, my five-year-old son, Leo, and I were in month three of lockdown. By then, I had long shuttered the charade that was our home school. If there was a playdate, I was the playmate – and I was exhausted. Even our two cats seemed increasingly oppressed by our constant presence, pining for Precedented Times, when the house was their private hotel and humans would only occasionally pop in, like housekeeping.…

1. Which Chinese festival is celebrated with rice balls and boat racing? 1 point 2. Round, waggle and sickle are all dances performed by what animal? 2 points 3. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, which American author coined the terms ‘wicked’ and ‘T-shirt’? 2 points 4. What nation made the decision in 2021 to stop all new oil and gas exploration within its territory? 2 points 5. NASA launched what project on Christmas Day 2021, to look back towards the earliest events of our universe? 2 points 6. Where can you stroll through the longest underwater tunnel in Europe? 2 points 7. Sidney Poitier won the Academy Award for Best Actor for what 1963 film? 1 point 8. The island of Borneo is administered by how many countries? 1…

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HAVING A GARDEN provides a wonderful opportunity to attract native fauna. A surprisingly wide variety of birds and animals live in our neighbourhoods. Wildlife keep our gardens healthy and, by making a few little improvements, you can support our precious wildlife populations. By providing an ecosystem that meets their basic requirements for food, water and shelter, you will encourage birds, bees, insects and small marsupials into your surrounds. Veterinarian Dr Katrina Warren shares her top ten tips on attracting wildlife to your garden. 1 Plant a range of native flowering plants and shrubs that will supply seeds, nectar and fruit. Native flowers are important for diversity and will attract a variety of birds as well as insects such as bees, and they will assist with pollination and dispersing seeds. 2 Plant…

FREQUENT EXERCISE WON’T LEAD TO KNEE ARTHRITIS It’s commonly thought that your knees will eventually pay the price if you exercise often. But a UK study – which tracked the physical activity of 5000 people for five to 12 years – found that increased intensity, frequency or time spent exercising didn’t raise a person’s odds of developing knee pain or arthritis. In fact, regular exercise and stretching can help lessen arthritis by strengthening muscles around the knee and reducing inflammation. NUTS BENEFIT BREAST CANCER SURVIVORS Studies have already shown that consuming nuts on a regular basis reduces your risk for heart disease and can help control type 2 diabetes. Now we’ve learnt that eating a handful a day also lowers a woman’s chances of breast cancer recurring by half –…

Pizza base ingredients • 2 cups (300g) strong (baker’s) flour• 7g sachet dry active yeast• 1 tsp caster sugar• 1 tsp salt• 1 tbsp olive oil Topping ingredients • 100ml tomato passata or puree• 1 garlic clove, finely chopped • 100-150g mozzarella, sliced • 2 tbsp freshly grated parmesan • 12 cherry tomatoes, halved• Basil leaves, torn• Extra virgin olive oil, to drizzle Method 1. For the pizza bases, sift flour into a large bowl and stir in yeast, sugar and salt. Make a well in the centre. Combine oil with 200ml warm water and add to dry ingredients. Bring together with your hands, then turn dough out onto a floured surface. Knead for 5 minutes by hand until the dough is smooth. 2. Lightly grease a clean bowl with…

What do you call a charismatic banana? A banana smoothie! Why couldn’t the police catch the banana? Because he split! What do you call the period of time between slipping on a banana and landing on your rear end? A bananosecond. Why did the banana go to the doctor? It wasn’t peeling well. Why did the banana go out with the prune? Because he couldn’t find a date. What did one banana say to the other banana that she just met? Yellow, nice to meet you. From the internet…

PROTECTING YOUR TEETH MIGHT ALSO PROTECT THE REST OF YOU Good dental hygiene and healthy gums go hand in hand and this matters because studies suggest that people who suffer from severe gum disease (periodontitis) might also experience worse symptoms if they do become infected with COVID-19. “The first evidence of this came from Qatar,” explains Professor Iain Chapple, who is studying the connection at the UK’s University of Birmingham. “Researchers retrospectively examined medical and dental records from 568 patients seen in hospital with a diagnosis of SARS-COV2 infection and showed the odds of ICU admission were 3.5 times higher for those with periodontitis – and risk of death was nearly nine times higher. Those are very high odds ratios.” Other studies have also suggested a potential link between gum…

The first day or so we all pointed to our countries. The third or fourth day we were pointing to our continents. By the fifth day we were only aware of one Earth.SULTAN BIN SALMAN AL-SUAD, SPACE SHUTTLE ASTRONAUT ONCE I LEARNED HOW TO READ, I WAS NEVER BORED OR LONELY AGAIN.ANYA TAYLOR-JOY, ACTRESS There is no best musician, best artist, best dancer, best actor. The arts are subjective … It’s like a song or an album is made and it almost has a radar to find the person when they need it mostJON BATISTE, MUSICIAN WHEREVER YOU GO, NO MATTER WHAT THE WEATHER, ALWAYS BRING YOUR OWN SUNSHINE. ANTHONY J. D’ANGELO, EDUCATIONALIST How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world.WILLIAM…

I work in an optometrist’s office. CUSTOMER: Hi. You do glasses repairs, right? The wire snapped. Can you repair it now? She takes off her glasses and hands them to me. She has half-frames that use something like a fishing wire to hold the lens inside the frame, and one side has snapped. Hot glue is holding the lens to the frame, but it’s clearly just a temporary fix. ME: Oh, yeah, this just needs a new wire fed through. It’s a 15-minute job. CUSTOMER: Great. She then sits down on one of the seats, apparently content to wait. ME: Uh. Ma’am, you can leave and come back? If you like, you can give me your phone number and I’ll call you when I’m done. CUSTOMER: You have my glasses.…

If you’ve ever spent a rainy day pacing around your house trying to crank out the last few thousand steps to reach 10,000, we have news. The fitness goal may be good, or it may be bad. It’s definitely interesting, as it seems reaching the elusive 10,000 steps might not be completely necessary to get results. The 10,000 steps programme didn’t start off as medical advice; it was created by the marketing team of a Japanese pedometer in the 1960s. In fact, when the first step-based research programme launched in Australia, it was actually going to be called ‘The 7000 Steps Programme’ and see people aiming for that number of steps per day. “However, then a marketing team got involved who effectively said, ‘you need something snappier’, and so it…

What’s In A Name? 1. jimmy – A: dance a jig. B: force open. C: sprinkle. 2. lea – A: wreath. B: shelter. C: pasture. 3. tad – A: small amount. B: rascal. C: tree frog. 4. derrick – A: machine for lifting. B: fortress. C: dirt bike. 5. jenny – A: weekend trip. B: female bird. C: opera singer. 6. don – A: celebrate. B: put on. C: pose as. 7. warren – A: official document. B: maze of passageways. C: criminal plot. 8. patsy – A: sidekick. B: pushover. C: homemaker. 9. chad – A: cardboard piece. B: yacht’s deck. C: underachiever. 10. barb – A: fence post. B: short haircut. C: biting remark. 11. jasper – A: poplar tree. B: billy goat. C: green quartz. 12. sally…