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Saturday, June 18, 2022

Andrew Olle: Drinking coffee may help protect kidneys

 The problem with book reviewing isn’t a surfeit of positivity or negativity — it’s the insidery-ness ... books  


The First Authoritarian: Popper’s Plato The Hedgehog Review 


Why you’re happier if you make friends at work

MICROBIOME NEWS:  IgG antibodies in breast milk help shape infants’ gut bacteria and immunity.


The race to find a treatment for dementia | Four Corners


IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? Drinking coffee may help protect kidneys. “The researchers found that people who drank any quantity of coffee every day had a 15% lower risk of acute kidney injury, and those who drank two to three cups a day had a 22% to 23% lower risk.”

Plus: “We already know that drinking coffee on a regular basis has been associated with the prevention of chronic and degenerative diseases including Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and liver disease.”


SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE:  Want to reduce stroke risk? Sit less. Move more. Do chores.


WELL, GOOD:  Weight Loss Surgery Can Lower Some of Your Cancer Risk Too, Study Finds.



FASTER, PLEASE:  Transcranial stimulation lowers blood pressure in patients with resistant hypertension, study shows.


Four-Ingredient Peanut Butter Ice Cream, without a Machine 


 This easy vegan treat from Melissa Clark is ready to be the star of your summer or winter 



AS TIME PASSES, THESE NUMBERS KEEP GOING UP:  Antibodies from COVID-19 can circulate in blood for 500 days

A New Way To Pick New Books?

How to reproduce online the serendipity of walking into a bookstore and discovering new books and authors. A new app, Tertulia, launched this week, is trying a different approach, by measuring and distilling the online chatter about books to point readers to the ones that are driving discussions. 


       The Dogs borrowings 

       Anna Katharine Verney's exposé in The Guardian has a hell of a summing-up headline: Miles Franklin-nominated novelist apologises for plagiarising Nobel laureate ‘without realising’
       Plagiarism is a bad idea in general; plagiarizing a Nobel laureate seems downright foolish. And I wish authors would start coming up with more creative excuses when they get caught at it. 
       The book in question is John Hughes' The Dogs -- see the Upswell publicity page (which does not yet note that the novel in ... not entirely original) -- and the book it 'borrows' from is Svetlana Alexievich's The Unwomanly Face of War. See also the Books + Publishing report
       And it's a safe bet that The Dogs will not be taking this or any prize anytime soon. 

       (Updated - 11 June): Unsurprisingly, The Guardian now reports that the Miles Franklin Prize has now removed The Dogs from the longlist. 


This is an edited version of the 25th annual Andrew Olle Media Lecture delivered by ABC Chair Ita Buttrose, in Sydney, on Friday, June 17. 


Australian media’s ‘other’ night of nights didn’t disappoint, despite naysayers

The Andrew Olle speech is often a 45-minute interruption to the night’s true purpose — the reminiscing, networking, yarning and bitching. Oh, and the drinking.


Ita opened her speech with a ‘Shout out’ to Vladimir Putin and Russia for sanctioning her and other ABC journalists for coverage of the war in Ukraine.

Lecture host Richard Glover warned, “Vlad, don’t take her on!”


Over the years, I've seen a lot of changes in journalism and the media more broadly. But, no matter how great the changes, fundamental things still apply. 

Good journalists always will be society's fact-seekers and truth-tellers. The job takes courage. We are reminded of this today as journalists risk their lives to report on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It always takes determination.

It is never about lecturing the public on what they should think. Good journalism is about reporting, just the facts — not opinion. It is about listening to community concerns and fashioning them into powerful stories that inform and illuminate; stories that are backed by evidence and take a fair and impartial point of view. 

Black and white photo of Olle holding script with television monitors in background.
Broadcaster and journalist Andrew Olle was respected for his fairness, quiet scepticism, gentle humour and lack of hubris.

Whatever the ownership structure of the organisations they work for, journalists must be prepared to defend the integrity of their output, and the reputation of their profession. 

Andrew Olle lecture: Without stronger press freedoms and protections for public-interest journalism, democracy is at risk