Bramley Famli

I recently borrowed a book from a mate called ‘Born to Run’. It’s one of those rare books I haven’t been able to put down. And I’m not a runner. It’s written by Christopher McDougall, and I’d describe it as the discovery of who we’ve always been when it comes to running.

Unless you’re an executive for Nike or Adidas, reading it will certainly challenge your running paradigm and what you’ve always believed about running and most definitely running shoes.

Essentially, reading ‘Born to Run‘ will cause you to have to confront your ideas about running shoes, as evidence is presented that suggest that they quite possibly do more damage than running barefoot. You’re going to have to read past halfway to get to the data.

One of the characters in the book is Barefoot Ted. The first American to be sponsored to run ‘barefoot’. There are some interesting links from his website.

I’m one of those runners (65%-85% of all runners every year) who gets injured when they run. My knee specifically, and the answer has always been better shoes. This book suggests the opposite. Take my shoes off and learn to run barefoot. So completely counter-running-culture. But when I read of the health benefits of running, and how healthy communities who have always run are, I’m determined to at least give this ‘new’ way (back to our roots) a large shot.

The other large theme of the book to impact me was running for running sake. Because we always have. There’s one section in the book that points out that running for most of us (certainly me) is about a goal. Fitness, winning, sexy body, etc. Cultures who have always run, ran because running is worth doing because it’s who we are.

Another news item from Martin Geissler around Albino’s being hunted and killed to bring luck.

I’m not sure how to comment?

Albinos hunted for luck

On Friday I posted the first of two news stories created by a good friend of ours, Martin Geissler. He’s just got back from Somalia, and sent us two clips from his trip.

Definitely worth watching. Definitely worth spending some time reflecting on the state of our planet and the people (us) who inhabit it. And mostly on how some of us have a far better world than many of us.

Here’s the link to the video on YouTube

Kids bearing brunt of Somalian chaos

A good friend of ours (a dad of one of Jordi’s friends) works for ITV News. His name is Martin Geissler and he’s their Africa Correspondent. Martin’s recently been in Somalia and put this story (1 of 2) together this last week.

It’s easy to feel safe and comfortable in your own world and be oblivious to what’s going on, and the eventual potential to eventually impact your safe cushy world.

Certainly worth hanging around to watch.

Somalia – a safe haven for Alqaeda?

This is a great read (look) at what the world would look like if the internet disappeared today. A photo contest by the readers of Cracked.com. Some really fun stuff to think about how much the world has changed : )

While there’s a lot that’s funny, there is a reality check and reminder at how much has changed in our lives in such a short time. How much we take for granted because of the internet, and how much we wouldn’t have in our world if it never existed. Certainly we could do without some of it, but also how much we can do, how many people we’re in touch with, how many connections we have (meaningful and meaningless) because of the networked world we now live in.

It’s probably too large to think about, so for now, take a look and smile for a little while : )

And to be honest I don’t get the winner? If you could help me with that I’d be grateful…..

Thanks to our PR company (SimonSays Communications) I’m the Johannesburg Town Crier.

It’s been a fun and interesting role to get into. One day you’re a consultant around future trends and people and the next day you’re getting your head around what it means to be a Town Crier? Feels like a large responsibility. Especially in a ‘town’ as big and diverse as our ‘little Jozi’. What to post, where to find it, how to go about it, what to write, not write. how to be fun and interesting?

I even get rated by those that follow the feed on Twitter, and imagine if I don’t do a good job I get ‘voted’ right outta there. I’m certainly getting a feeling for public office in this new role : )

The people behind it are Happn.in and describe the service as ‘Twitter with a local focus’. In South Africa there’s currently a Town Crier for Jozi and the Mother City. And then there’s a scattering of Town Criers around the world.

Some stats around Happn.in:

Happn.in gives Twitter a local focus. For each Happn.in city, there is:

• A current list of Local Twitter Trends
• A Local Twitter Feed, in which locals can send and receive information to each other.
• A Local Town Crier, a person trusted by the community to tweet interesting, relevant information once a day.

There are approximately 283,492 people following Happn.in in 110 cities around the world.

There is also a general Twitter user, @happn_in, from which updates on the project will be sent.

And some background:

Happn.in began in early 2009 in response to the rapid growth of Twitter. We saw that Twitter was becoming a valuable source of information, but the interesting content was getting buried. We started Happn.in to pull some of this useful information out of the noise, specifically, the answer to the question ‘What’s going on near me?’

Happn.in was built with the long-term idea that localized communities can benefit from Twitter if they can find and talk to each other. We will continue to update the site with features that aid this goal.

Of course anyone can post info about Jozi by simply adding the hashtag (#hi_johan) and you can get the Twitter feed and follow here.

It’s been good for me to work at getting my head around a broader Jozi happn.in community in order to put as diverse a spread of stuff I possibly can. I’m only a few days in, and hopefully improving all the time? Time will tell and so will the votes : )

Got this from my mate in Durban, Duncan. Get cold shivers when I look at it….

A truck was traveling down the highway at around 1 o’clock in the morning near Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Motorcyclist was traveling at ~120mph and ran into the back of the moving semi-truck…

Truck driver said he felt the impact, and it took almost a 1/4 mile for him to pull over.

This is what he found… and apparently he survived….. wear a helmet (and shoes)

Anyone who knows me, knows that I’m really bad at managing, arranging, organising and cleaning my physical world. But my digital world is pretty darn close to amazingly perfect.

Here’s an image that freaks me out. Leish, it’s the equivalent of a messing house for you. Oh it’s sooo ugly : )

I was went this article from our friend Arlene Blackburn via e-mail. I tracked down the original article. It’s written by Georgina Guedes. She’s a columnist at News24.

I didn’t get permission to re-post her article, but figured it’s getting coverage on e-mail and Twitter, and as long as I link back to her, she’ll have happy thoughts?

It’s a great read.

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Last week, my husband and I were shopping in our local Spar, wallets comfortably filled with a recently-drawn stack of crisp, new R100s. As we meandered down the detergents aisle, we noticed a man stooped over a meagre basket of goods, carefully counting and tallying his intended purchases.

As we walked past, he glanced up at us, and I think because he saw our baby daughter, full of vitality and well-fedness, kicking happily in a sling, he approached us.

“Do you have R2 for me?” he asked, cringing. “I’m just short a little bit.”

I glanced into his basket and saw the tiniest tub of the same brand of baby bum cream that we use, and my heart (not particularly hard at the best of times) melted.

“We don’t,” I said, and he immediately retreated – obviously not a hardened beggar or hustler. “We’ve only just drawn money, but if you wait for us to finish our shopping, we’ll have change then. Come and find us and we’ll help you out.”

I’m not sure he really heard the last part, and he just said that he would count again, so we continued with our shopping. When we were done, although we couldn’t see the man, we decided to look for him. We found him at the back of the Spar, putting back a small packet of mealie meal on the shelf.

“How much do you need?” I asked.

“My wife said to keep what the baby needs,” he said, gesturing down into the basket. There was a collection of baby cereal, one pot of pureed baby food and the bum cream.

Honestly, by this point, I would have given the man all the crisp new hundreds in my wallet, but he seemed very reluctant to ask for help at all, or to put a figure to any of it. In the end, we gave him what he said he needed to buy milk and mealie meal.

“Thank you,” he said to us. And then, as we walked away, “sorry!” he called to our retreating backs.

I left the shops in tears, wailing along with my bags full of purchases, while my daughter, who will hopefully never know true hunger, cooed delightedly at the passersby.

I know that the story of the man in the Spar is not a particularly sad one in the greater scheme of things. As my husband pointed out, it was the day before payday, and hopefully he was just getting the essentials before his wages came through.

But the idea of him and his wife going without food or milk so that their baby could have the tiny pot of food and some cereal has wrenched at my heart terribly. It made all the financial worries of earning reduced rates in a recession, and finding things a bit expensive in the wake of having had a baby pale in significance when I consider that there are people who are making the choice between their full stomachs and their children’s.

I am sure that we all do our bits here and there, and that now that times are tough and traffic intersections are filled with impossible numbers of people asking for handouts, finding the spare cash to help out can be difficult. But it really is worth remembering that those of us driving around in cars who are able to buy food for our families really are privileged, and should do whatever we can to help out those who aren’t quite so fortunate.

- Georgina Guedes is a freelance writer. This Christmas she will be attempting to identify some meaningful charities to donate to. She’ll keep you posted.

Many years ago when I was in community development, some of the cutting edge thinkers were promoting the idea of less professionals and more community involvement in ensuring the growth, development, safety, etc of family. It was a simple but profound concept of building a care system less reliant on the ‘usual suspects’ (professionals) by involving people around a particular family who had an interest in them, who spent more time with them, and who, if integrated successfully could provide more useful and meaningful support.

There was a book I remember having to read while studying called ‘The other 23 hours’, that made the point in a residential child care environment. The book was written to encourage Child Care Workers, and to see the value and importance of their role. Social Workers in these setting often got all the glory and were seen to be the most important people in a child’s world. But as the book pointed out, a child may only see a Social Worker for 1 hour each day (and that’s a lot), there were another 23 hours in their day.

FastCompany has recently posted an article (The Future of Healthcare is social), and they’ve done a great job outlining similar thinking for healthcare, with technology as a large enabler. It makes sense in this arena as well. Our health is something that needs 24 hours of proactivity. We can’t afford or expect professionals to be available for all that time. But if we can assemble a community of people around us, who care about us, and who’ll get involved with us, and then enable it all with technology, we may find ourselves in a far healthier place than we currently are.

Even when we do our best to stay healthy, we still get sick. Coping with sickness in our already hectic lives can be challenging. In addition to looking out for her parents, Susan manages the health of her two kids, her husband, and herself, and she looks for ways to save time and money while still getting the care that they need. Recently, for example, Susan’s son woke up with a sore throat and a fever. She used an at-home strep test to rub a swab of her son’s throat culture onto a card. Within minutes, the test results confirmed her son had strep. Through an embedded RFID sensor within the card, the test results were wirelessly transmitted to her computer’s reader. On her computer, she was prompted to connect the incoming test results to her son’s personal health record. Next, she used her personal health network to book the earliest visit for her son within a 10-mile vicinity. Susan elected to electronically send her son’s strep results in advance of her appointment, allowing the receiving retail clinic to accelerate her visit by pre-issuing an e-prescription. Before leaving her computer, Susan selected her son’s classroom network, comprised of his teacher and the parents of other students, and sent out a message that her son had strep throat and would be home for the next several days.

It’s a longish read, but definitely worth it. If not just to see where health care might go, I’m fairly certain the thinking will at least change how you see other parts of your world.