Womankind February - April 2016

When did life become so complicated? There was a time in our childhood when life was simple, and we had the time to do all manner of things, like chasing a hula hoop down a path or noting the colours on the horizon. Adulthood, in comparison, is a series of chasing loose ends in a land of distraction. We’re in constant motion, zigzagging from one thing to the next - barely attending to one need before another jumps in our path. Over time, accustomed to distraction, we actively seek it out, deploying technology and the media to aid us in our quest to fill our lives with as many diversions as possible. We measure our success by the sheer volume of information we consume, the number of events we attend,…

Womankindmag.com is our online portal for stories, ideas, fashion, philosophy, and documentaries. Want to stock Womankind magazine in your shop? We have generous terms - so please contact us on stockist@womankindmag.com Womankind is on Facebook (womankindmag), Instagram (#womankindmag) and Twitter (@womankindmag). If you like Womankind and support our advertising free ethos, we’d be delighted if you spread the word about us.…

Antonia Case Antonia Case is the editor of Womankind and the literary editor of New Philosopher magazine. In 2014 she was awarded the AAP Media Professionals’ Award for the presentation of philosophy in the media. Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore writes for The Guardian, The Economist, Financial Times, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, New Statesman, New Internationalist, The Huffington Post and Time magazine. Shari Erickson American contemporary painter Shari Erickson first visited to West Indies in 1979. Her work, featured in the global ART in Embassies Program, has been honoured by the US Department of State. Niamh Boyce Niamh Boyce won debut novel of the year at the Irish Book Awards in 2013 for The Herbalist. An award-winning poet, Boyce was Hennessy XO New Irish Writer Of The Year…

Would a person climb Mount Everest, Earth’s highest mountain, if they couldn’t tell anyone about it? Let’s say that the adventure to the top had to be clouded in secrecy. Would a climber risk their life without being able to tell the tale? Academics Anat Keinan and Ran Kivetz were baffled by some people’s attraction to negative consumption experiences: sleeping on ice, flying solo across seas in makeshift tin planes, and so on. Would such people engage in these activities alone, without a soul watching, and without any record that it actually took place? French extreme tightrope walker Philippe Petit went down in history for padding across a thin stretch of wire connecting the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre. 400 metres off the ground, Petit adjusted his balance,…

• Sea turtles are some of the oldest creatures on Earth, dating back over 150 million years. • The largest turtle, the leatherback sea turtle, weighs some 700 kg, just under the weight of a small hatchback car. • Male turtles never leave the sea. • Female turtles return to the same beach where they were born to lay their eggs, sometimes as long as 30 years later. • Typically, only one hatchling in a thousand will make it to adulthood. • The lifespan of a sea turtle is 70 to 80 years.…

Messy desk? Isn’t that supposed to mean a cluttered mind? In a study published in Psychological Science, Kathleen Vohs positioned two groups of people into two different rooms - half of them were placed in a tidy room, and the others in a room strewn with books and papers. From these very different surroundings, participants were asked to fill out questionnaires, contribute to charity, and choose either a healthy or unhealthy snack. Vohs found that those seated in the neat room were more likely to eat healthily as well as give to charity, but when it came to creativity - coming up with unique and varied ideas - the participants in the messy room were significantly more creative. This may partly explain why artists are often truly messy individuals -…