Features

Among the countless novelties we see every day in the world of Information Technology, including entertaining gadgets and more serious devices, there are three of them that deserve particular attention in this end-of-year. This despite the fact that one of them is not yet available to buy, though it should not be long.

These are Microsoft Office 2019, the very latest version of the company celebrated software suite, Cujo’s incredibly smart and affordable firewall and Samsung’s upcoming high-end smartphones, two of them with esoteric foldable screens and one of them “regular”.

MS-Office is largely considered as an indispensable software tool, used by hundreds of millions. It is considered a mature, very stable product by now, and of course a highly efficient one, covering a huge range of needs for computer users, however advanced they may be. Since version 2010 and the ensuing 2013 and 2016, all new versions have brought improvements that range from minor to significant.

The new version 2019, released a couple of months ago, and as explained by Microsoft, has better visual impact, faster translation between languages, “inking” capability, more charting options and nice audio cues to guide you while working.

However, the extra features are not the most interesting aspect of the suite. It is rather the competitive situation between Office 2019 and the company’s online version, Office 365, a situation entirely created by Microsoft itself, of course. The company is strongly pushing Office 365 for it is available based on subscriptions, a system that has proven more lucrative than selling straightforward offline licences. To entice users to go for Office 365 Microsoft is making Office 2019 rather expensive, about $450 for the Pro version. 

In comparison, Office 365 regular annual subscription is $80, plus the advantage of always having the very latest version of Office and a good amount of cloud storage on the way. Whether to buy a regular Office license like 2019 or an Office 365 subscription is a matter of personal choice.

Cujo’s firewall is a very smart little device that can prove very efficient to protect your network at home and therefore all machines connected to it. Firewalls are nothing new. You set up their parameters to allow or deny access, and they protect you from hacking, malware and intrusions. They perfectly complement antivirus software.

The difficulty insofar has been the price and then the complexity of setting firewalls parameters, the latter requiring the intervention of an IT professional. Firewalls made by famous companies like for instance Cisco RE in the $1,000 to $3,000 at initial purchase, plus a yearly subscription costing about $500.

Cujo’s device comes at a humble $100 and is a breeze to set up. It is a huge relief for households and small offices who need a good physical firewall, but were reluctant to buy one because of the price and the difficulty to do the set up. 

Last but not least is the never-ending story of always “new and improved” smartphones. Samsung is cooking its next flagship model Galaxy S10 due in about four months from now. We know little of it, except that it will feature the upcoming ultrafast 5G wireless Internet connectivity. It is not, however, the S10 that is the real novelty but the Galaxy F and the Galaxy X.

These two models are expected to create the revolution everybody has been expecting for a few years now by featuring foldable screens. It is the only way to give the consumer a very large display area without making phones that would not fit in a shirt’s pocket or a lady’s purse anymore. Despite the need for smartphones with very large screens, few people are willing to carry units larger than the current six inch (diagonal) standard.

Carrying phones the size of a tablet or phablet is not doable and folding screens are the only solution. Though there is a lot of information and countless discussions on the web about the Galaxy F and X, no date has yet been set for their actual commercial release, though many expect at least one of these two models to be available in 2019.

A substantial proportion of parents confessed to giving their children antibiotics that had been prescribed for someone else, according to survey results presented by US researchers at the American Academy of Paediatrics conference in Orlando, Florida. 

The practice promotes antibiotic resistance and risks exposing children to dangerous dosages, expired drugs with harmful products of degradation and potential allergens, study leader Tamara Kahan of Northwell Health in Lake Success, New York, told Reuters Health by e-mail. 

“Physicians should emphasise the importance of finishing the entire course of antibiotics so that there are no leftovers, disposing of leftover antibiotics when relevant, and the risks of sharing any type of medication with people for whom it is not prescribed,” Kahan said. 

Kahan and colleagues recruited parents nationwide through Amazon Mechanical Turk, a crowdsourcing online marketplace. Ultimately they evaluated the responses of 496 parents who met their inclusion criteria. Participants were 61 per cent female and 69 per cent white, with an average age of 34.

Overall, 454 parents, or 92 per cent, said they’d had leftover antibiotics in the house. More than one third of those parents (159 or 35 per cent) said they had redistributed the leftovers to others, including children and adults. Antibiotic diversion, as the tactic is called, was more common with drops and liquids than with creams and pills.

Parents sometimes put other family members on the same dosage prescribed to the child who received the prescription. Or they estimated a new dosage according to the age of the family member.

As many as 16 per cent of the survey takers said they gave their children adult medications. 

It is unknown precisely how harmful the practice may be, either to people or through the promotion of antibiotic resistance. Those questions will be studied in the future, Kahan says. 

“The study provides interesting insight into a common problem of ‘leftover’ antibiotics,” said Dr Jordan Taylor, a paediatric surgeon at Stanford University School of Medicine in California who was not involved in the research. 

“The researchers found that liquid or solution-based medications are more frequently stored and diverted; liquid or solution medications are used almost exclusively in paediatric patients as most cannot swallow pills. It would appear that more teaching needs to be provided by the providers or pharmacists on how to handle liquid medications once the prescription is complete,” Dr Taylor said.

A limitation of the study is the researchers’ use of Mechanical Turk to recruit study participants. Dr Taylor believes that a study of people recruited in this manner might not generate findings that apply to the general public.

Also, Taylor said, “It would have been interesting to ask the respondents why they kept the medications or if they had discussed what to do with extra medication with their provider.”

LISBON — The inventor of the worldwide web on Monday called for a “contract” to make Internet safe and accessible for everyone as Europe’s largest tech event began in Lisbon amid a backlash over its role in spreading “fake news”.

Some 70,000 people are expected to take part in the four-day Web Summit, dubbed “the Davos for geeks”, including speakers from leading global tech companies, politicians and startups hoping to attract attention from the over 1,500 investors who are scheduled to attend.

Tech firms now find themselves on the defensive, with critics accusing them of not doing enough to curb the spread of “fake news” which has helped polarise election campaigns around the world and of maximising profits by harvesting data on consumers’ browsing habits.

British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee, who in 1989 invented the worldwide web as a way to exchange information, said the Internet had deviated from the goals its founders had envisaged.

“All kinds of things have things have gone wrong. We have fake news, we have problems with privacy, we have people being profiled and manipulated,” he said in an opening address.

Berners-Lee, 63, called on governments, companies and citizens to iron out a “complete contract” for the web that will make the Internet “safe and accessible” for all by May 2019, the date by which 50 per cent of the world will be online for the first time.

‘Going through a funk’

He has just launched Inrupt, a startup which is building an open source platform called “Solid” which will decentralise the web and allow users to choose where their data is kept, along with who can see and access it.

Solid intends to allow users to bypass tech giants such as Google and Facebook. The two tech giants now have direct influence over nearly three-quarters of all internet traffic thanks to the vast amounts of apps and services they own such as YouTube, WhatsApp and Instagram.

Employees of Google, Facebook and other tech giants have in recent months gone public with their regrets, calling the products they helped build harmful to society and overly addictive.

Tech giants are also under fire for having built up virtual monopolies in their areas. 

Amazon accounts for 93 per cent of all e-book sales while Google swallows up 92 per cent of all European internet-search ad spending.

“I think technology is going through a funk... it’s a period of reflection,” Web Summit founder and CEO Paddy Cosgrave told AFP.

“With every new technology you go through these cycles. The initial excitement of the printed press was replaced in time by a great fear that it was actually a bad thing. Over time it has actually worked out OK.”

Violent voices magnified

Among those scheduled to speak at the event is Christopher Wylie, a whistleblower who earlier this year said users’ data from Facebook was used by British political consultancy Cambridge Analytica to help elect US President Donald Trump — a claim denied by the company.

Another tech veteran who has become critical of the sector, Twitter co-founder Ev Williams, will on Thursday deliver the closing address.

He left Twitter in 2011 and went on to co-found online publishing platform Mash, which is subscription based and unlike Twitter favours in-depth writing about issues.

The problem with the current Internet model is that negative content gets more attention online, and thus gain more advertisers, according to Mitchell Baker, the president of the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organisation which promotes Internet innovation.

“Today everyone has a voice but the problem is... the loudest and often most violent voices get magnified because the most negative, scariest things attract our attention,” she told AFP in a recent interview.

The Web Summit was launched in Dublin in 2010 and moved to Lisbon six years later. The Portuguese government estimates the event will generate 300 million euros ($347 million) for Lisbon in hotel and other revenues.

People are holding on to their aging smartphones longer, squeezing out a few more months of use before trading them in, a report indicates.

In the United States, iPhones traded in between July 1 and September 30 were 2.92 years old on average, up from 2.37 years old the comparable period two years earlier, according to data from Hyla Mobile Inc.

Android users swapped their phones a little faster. At the time of trade-in, the average Android phone was 2.66 years old, up from 2.44 years old in the comparable period in 2016, Hyla said. Hyla, a company that focuses on the secondary-use market for smartphones, provides analytics and device trade-in programmes for businesses.

Analysts said the rising cost of new smartphones might give US consumers pause when they’re deciding whether to upgrade. The iPhone XS, for example, starts at $999. The Samsung Galaxy S9 starts at $720. When the iPhone 7 debuted in 2016, it started at $649. That year, the Samsung Galaxy S7 was released and sold for about $700 without a contract, though carriers offered discounts.

Because of rising costs, carriers have eliminated previous deals that gave customers a subsidised phone upon signing a two-year contract. That was financially viable for carriers when phones cost $300 or $400, but not when they cost $800 to $1,200, said Biju Nair, chief executive of Hyla Mobile.

Instead, carriers now offer payment plans under which the buyer of a phone can pay a monthly fee for a certain period of time — say, two years — and then own it outright. Some people aren’t eager to take on monthly fees for a new phone right after they’ve paid off the last one.

“When your payments are done… all of a sudden, you don’t have to pay that additional fee,” said Brad Akyuz, research director for NPD Group’s connected intelligence research practice. “[There’s a] psychological impact there.”

And from a tech standpoint, the industry recently “hasn’t seen a major innovation out there that would foster users to immediately change their devices”, he said.

Upgrades to phone features and specifications are often minimal between generations of the same device, and better software updates from Apple and Android have done a good job of enabling older devices to access some of the same features and security patches as newer phones, said Anthony Scarsella, mobile phones research manager at market intelligence firm IDC.

Repair services have also sprouted up to keep older phones working longer, he said. That might become an even bigger factor in the future: This week, a rule change took effect that makes it easier for people to fix their own phones (or get a repair shop to do it) without breaking copyright law.

“When the average consumer is looking at these prices and looking at these features coming out of these new phones, they’re kind of perceiving, ‘Well, is there really that much difference?’” Nair said. “The general sense is, ‘Well, my phone is currently good enough.’”

Analysts said they expect this trend to continue, at least until there is a major technological breakthrough. That might happen next year when more 5G devices are introduced to the market, Akyuz said.

“If and when carriers can come up with a really solid value play for 5G to have users understand why they should be paying extra… we might be seeing users go off their regular upgrade cycle,” he said.

Diwali, the festival of lights, is celebrated in Mauritius with a lot of pomp and show. It is such an important event that the whole country observes a national holiday on the occasion. Schools, colleges, government institutions and other offices — everything is shut down as most people get busy in cleaning up their homes and making delicious sweetmeats. 

Incidentally, there is no meat in sweetmeat, not even a pinch of it, so if you are wondering why a sweetened piece of dessert is named sweetmeat let me explain. In the past, any sugary delicacy like candy, a slice of fruit coated with sugar and so on — was labelled sweetmeat. The word “mete”, from which “meat” is derived, meant “food” and all items of nourishment, both vegetarian and non-vegetarian, were referred to as “meat”. The original meaning of “sweetmeat” was “sweet food”.

But Mauritians go a step further, and club it all under the umbrella of cake! Unlike the rest of us who define “cake” as a baked dish made from a mixture of white flour, butter, eggs, sugar and dry fruits, which is often topped with frosting and decorations, here, every sweetened dish, whether it is fried, roasted, boiled or poached, is called “gateau” or “cake”. So, in nearly all the vast majority of temples that are scattered throughout this paradise island, the intricately carved idols of the Hindu gods and goddesses are served cake as an offering. During each sacred ceremony, that is. 

I was shocked initially, when I heard of this custom, because cake, as I understood it, had eggs as one of its chief ingredients. Besides, even though Hinduism as a religion was pretty flexible, and there were no stringent rules in following it as such, people usually did not carry non-vegetarian food to the houses of worship. I mean, the sensibilities of celestial beings could be offended by such an act and who knew what kind of divine retribution that might lead to? But locally, no one cared too much about ruining their heavenly relations and therefore cakes and pastries were granted easy access in temples. 

Soon I discovered that their cake was not our cake at all, even though their gods were the same as ours. When Mauritians gifted you cake, you could expect anything — from the Turkish baklava, Indian laddoo, barfi or rasgulla, Jordanian knafeh or halva, Italian zeppole or French lemon tarts — to appear in the brightly decorated boxes. Only thing missing was what everybody ordered during birthdays and on which candles were placed, lit and blown-out, by the one person whose special day it was. In other words, it can be said that Mauritians were the connoisseurs of eating cake without having it, so to speak. 

“Let them eat cake!” is another infamous saying that has been historically attributed to Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France. During the French Revolution people were starving because of a poor harvest that led to an enormous shortage of food. Upon hearing this news, the queen declared that if there was no bread, the peasants should eat cake. 

“She had said brioche,” my Mauritian friend explained.

“Which is sweet bread in French,” she continued. 

“Was she put to the guillotine in 1793?” I asked. 

“Yes, Mauritius was a French colony then,” she stated. 

“Aha! So it is your country’s fault,” I accused. 

“How did you figure that out?” she questioned. 

“Anything sweet? A piece of cake,” I answered.

The latest in the long-standing debate over violent video games: They do cause players to become more physically aggressive.

An international study looking at more than 17,000 adolescents, ages nine to 19, from 2010 to 2017, found playing violent video games led to increased physical aggression over time.

The analysis of 24 studies from countries including the US, Canada, Germany and Japan found those who played violent games such as “Grand Theft Auto”, “Call of Duty” and “Manhunt” were more likely to exhibit behaviour such as being sent to the principal’s office for fighting or hitting a non-family member.

“Although no single research project is definitive, our research aims to provide the most current and compelling responses to key criticisms on this topic,” said Jay Hull, lead author of the study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Based on our findings, we feel it is clear that violent video game play is associated with subsequent increases in physical aggression,” said Hull, associate dean of faculty for the social sciences at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, and the Dartmouth professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences.

Video game violence has been a hot-button issue for more than a decade. Interest in research on video games’ potential for violence increased after it was learned Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the two teenagers who committed the Columbine High School shooting, played the first-person shooting computer game “Doom”.

But in a 2011 Supreme Court decision overturning California’s ban on the sale of violent video games to minors, the late Justice Antonin Scalia dismissed a link between the games and aggression. 

“These studies have been rejected by every court to consider them, and with good reason: They do not prove that violent video games cause minors to act aggressively,” he wrote in the majority opinion.

Since then, an American Psychological Association task force report in 2015 found a link between violent video games and increased aggression in players but insufficient evidence that violent games lead to criminal violence.

Earlier this year, President Donald Trump convened a video game summit a month after the February shooting that killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. Prior to that meeting, Trump said: “I’m hearing more and more people say the level of violence on video games is really shaping young people’s thoughts.”

The Dartmouth researchers sought to reduce confusion about research findings — including disputes about the association between violent games and aggression — with a finely structured meta-analysis.

Those in the study who played violent games, whether frequently or infrequently, had an increase risk of aggressive behaviour. The new research echoes Hull’s previous finding that playing violent games equates to about twice the risk of being sent to the principal’s office for fighting during an eight-month period, he said. A separate 2014 study he oversaw of violent video games in 2,000 families is one of the 24 included in the meta-analysis.

“The effect is relatively small, but statistically reliable. The effect does exist,” Hull said.

While there is not research suggesting violent video games lead to criminal behaviour, Hull’s previous research suggests players may practice riskier behaviours such as reckless driving, binge drinking, smoking and unsafe sex.

“A lot of people ask, do these games really cause these kids to behave aggressively? I would say that is one possibility,” he said. “The other possibility is that it’s a really bad sign. If your kids are playing these games, either these games are having a warping effect on right and wrong or they have a warped sense of right or wrong and that’s why they are attracted to these games. Either way you should be concerned about it.”

In the research paper, Hull and the co-authors say they hope the findings will help research move “past the question of whether violent video games increase aggressive behaviour, and toward questions regarding why, when, and for whom they have such effects”.

LOS ANGELES — If you find it hard to predict which songs are destined for pop-chart success and which will flop, try asking a computer.

After analysing the attributes of more than half a million songs released over a period of 30 years, a computer algorithm was able to sort the successful songs from also-rans with an accuracy of up to 86 per cent.

A team of mathematicians from UC Irvine described how — and why — it accomplished this feat in a study published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

“There is something magical about music,” wrote the team, which was led by students Myra Interiano, Kamyar Kazemi and Lijia Wang. “Scientists have been trying to disentangle the magic and explain what it is that makes us love some music, hate other music and just listen to music.”

For the purposes of the study, the UCI team considered a song a “success” if it made it onto the Top 100 Singles Chart in the United Kingdom between January 1985 and July 2015. They compared these successes with all other songs that were released in the UK during that time period.

To quantify the acoustic properties of these 500,000 or so songs, Interiano and her colleagues relied on crowd-sourced data from two projects of the MetaBrainz Foundation — MusicBrainz and AcousticBrainz.

This data classified songs according to 12 acoustic properties, including whether they are sung by a man or woman, are happy or sad, and are acoustic or electronic, among other attributes. Songs are also categorised according to their mood and genre, such as hip-hop, blues, country and house music.

Less than 4 per cent of songs in the entire sample found their way onto the Top 100 Singles Chart. To see what set these songs apart, they employed a machine learning method known as the “random forest” algorithm to crunch through all the data.

Sure enough, some noteworthy patterns emerged.

“Successful songs are happier, brighter, more party-like, more danceable and less sad than most songs,” the team wrote.

That may sound like an obvious recipe for pop-music success. But it actually went against the dominant musical trends.

Over the decades, songs exhibited “a clear downward trend in ‘happiness’ and ‘brightness,’ as well as a slight upward trend in ‘sadness’”, the study authors reported. “The public seems to prefer happier songs, even though more and more unhappy songs are being released each year.”

That observation matched up with previous studies of song lyrics that found they contained fewer “positive emotions” and made more references to loneliness and social isolation as the years went by.

“It is interesting that, in this particular instance, acoustic characteristics of songs indicate similar patterns to those uncovered in lyrics,” the researchers wrote.

In addition, the successful songs in a given year tended to be less “male” than other songs released at the same time, according to the study.

To test the strength of their algorithm, they asked it to assess 1,052 songs that were released in 2014 and predict which of them charted and which of them were also-rans.

When the algorithm used song data from 2009 to 2013 as a guide, it was able to make the correct guess 75 per cent of the time, the researchers reported.

The accuracy got even better when the researchers included a non-acoustic variable — the “superstar” factor.

An artist was deemed a superstar if he or she had a song on the charts in the previous five years. In a given year, somewhere between one-half and two-thirds of successful songs were from superstar artists. That compared with no more than 2 per cent of songs in the larger pool that did not make the charts.

When the purely acoustic data were combined with the superstar data, the algorithm correctly identified successful songs 85 per cent of the time. The accuracy improved to 86 per cent when the algorithm trained itself on songs going back to 2004.

Even with this success rate, there are still limits on what computers can do, the team cautioned.

“We can see that, in general, successful songs are, for example, ‘happier,’ more ‘party-like,’ less ‘relaxed’ and more ‘female’ than most,” they concluded. But, “This does not necessarily allow us to naively predict that a particular ‘happy, party-like, not relaxed’ song sung by a female is going to succeed.”

AMMAN — Introducing an assertive new design language and face for Ingolstadt’s SUVs, the Audi Q8 also marks the four-ring brand’s expansion into the coupe-like end of the SUV segment. Launched globally earlier in the year and weeks ago in the Middle East, the chunky and luxurious Q8 is practical and reassuringly committed on the road. 

Built on a shared platform as other Volkswagen-Audi group SUVs like the Lamborghini Urus and Bentley Bentayga, the Q8 employs much of the high tech systems first introduced last year for the A8 flagship luxury saloon, including its standard 48-volt mild hybrid system and sublime optional four-wheel-steering.

Competing in a segment in which the BMW X6 and Mercedes GLE Coupe have virtually had a free run so far, the Q8 seems set to make quite the impact as Audi’s take on the so-called “four-door-coupe” SUV. With sculpted surfacing and pronounced ridges, the Q8’s design has a more solid and focused sensibility. Avoiding its competitor’s rakishly rising waistline and impractically descending roofline angles, the Q8 has a more grounded and hunkered down aesthetic, and more importantly, offers comparatively generous rear passenger space and driver sightlines. Mature, confident and imposing in appearance, the Q8’s focal design element is its new octagonal grille.

New look, new segment

Dominating its visage, the Q8’s snouty eight-sided single-frame grille is set to adorn all future Audi SUVs, and was first seen on the 2015 Audi E-Tron Quattro Concept. While much of its design cues can be traced to the futuristic (and soon to be launched) E-Tron, the Q8 pays homage to its past. Discretely referencing the seminal and now classic 1980s Audi Quattro coupe, the Q8 features a thick grille frame flanked by heavily browed and moody headlights, blacked out section between its rear lights, and a similar C-pillar angle. But most pointedly, it features muscularly blistered wheel-arches in homage to the original Quattro.

Built using mixed materials including high strength steels for strength, rigidity and safety, the Q8’s extensive use of aluminium meanwhile reduces weight for the sake of dynamics, performance and efficiency. Offered with a single direct injection twin-turbo 3-litre V6 petrol engine and launch, and with more powerful and high performance V8s expected in the near future, the driven entry-level Q8 55 TFSI model proved confident and quick even on steep inclines and altitudes up to 2,000 metres above sea level, as driven on Oman’s Jebal Al Akhdar, and with a healthy 369lb/ft torque throughout a broad and accessibly versatile 1,370-4,500rpm at its disposal.

Seamless delivery

Responsive from idle owing to quick-spooling turbos evidenced by a distinctive turbo whistle with its frameless windows down, the Q8 pulls hard and consistent from tick-over to redline. And with 335BHP available at a 5,000-6,400rpm plateau, returns a brisk 6.2-second 0-100km/h time and 250km/h top speed.

Refined, smooth and quiet in delivery, the Q8’s mid-range versatility is aided by a smooth 8-speed automatic gearbox to best utilise output for performance and efficiency, and which becomes snappier, more responsive and concise in Dynamic driving mode. The Q8 is fitted with a standard 48v mild hybrid system, which helps it achieve moderate 7.2l/100km combined fuel efficiency despite its 2,195kg weight.

Powering various ancillary and electrical systems, and harvesting energy from regenerative brakes and the combustion engine, the Q8’s 48v hybrid system is not designed to contribute to driving the vehicle, but can provide a 5lb/ft torque boost back from the starter-generator when necessary.

Responsible for 0.7l/100km fuel efficiency saving, the 48v system allows for the engine to automatically switch off for 40-seconds between 55 to 160km/h, and for
stop/start system operation from 22km/h. Renowned for its tenacious traction, the Q8 Quattro four-wheel-drive system meanwhile drives with a 40:60 front-to-rear power split, but can re-apportion 85 per cent power rearwards or 70 per cent frontwards when needed for agility or road-holding.

Unexpected agility

Ascending through Jebel Akhdar’s tight and seemingly endless winding corners, it was the Q8’s optional four-wheel-steering system that most impressed. Aided by selective braking torque vectoring, the Q8’s four-wheel-steering allowed for uncannily tidy handling agility and road-holding that belies its size, height and weight, the Q8 dispatches quick hairpins without a hint of tyre squeal. Turning 1.5 degrees along with the front wheels for highway stability and responsive lane changes, the Q8’s rear-wheel-steering turns 5 degrees in the opposite direction at lower speed, or as necessary. Turning into corners like a smaller and lighter car, the Q8’s rear-wheel-steering acts to simulates a shorter, more manoeuvrable and nimble wheelbase.

Highly grippy and unexpectedly nimble through corners, and as stable, refined and settled at speed as expected, the Q8’s optional adaptive air suspension, meanwhile,  well compensated for its huge and firm 285/40R22 tyres on all but the sharpest and most jagged road imperfections. Taut and well controlled in Dynamic mode through corners, the Q8’s air suspension is meanwhile significantly smoother and more supple, forgiving and fluent in Comfort mode. Taking the edge off of rough gravel routes, the Q8’s air suspension is also a useful off-road tool and can raise ride height to 254mm for improved clearance and approach, break-over and departure angles.

Committed and comfortable

Designed for on road use, the Q8, however, delivers more off-road ability than is expected in its particular segment, and during test drive dispatched somewhat steep dirt road inclines with ease, and proved manoeuvrable, committed and adjustable driving over loose surfaces. A comfortable ride in most circumstances, the Q8 would have been more so with base specification 19-inch alloy wheels were they available for Middle East markets. Steering is meaty, quick and direct, but thinner wheels would improve road feel, while braking proved effective and resilient, if working hard downhill. Meanwhile, driving position is supportive and comfortable with good in-class visibility, aided by an optional 360° reversing camera.

Finished with an abundance of soft textures, leathers and rich optional black Alcantara roofline, the Q8 is designed in an elegant and user-friendly manner. Refined and quiet inside, the Q8 offers good cabin room, front and rear, for an SUV with a low coupe-like roofline, while luggage capacity is generous at 605-litres. Featuring twin large stacked infotainment screens with black glass haptic touch buttons, configurable Virtual Cockpit digital instrumentation, panoramic roof, Isofix child seat latches and Side Assist and Pre-sense safety system and four-zone climate control, it can also be equipped with seat ventilation, parking assistance and HD Matrix LED headlights.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 3-litre, turbocharged, in-line V6-cylinders

Bore x stroke: 84.5 x 89mm

Compression ratio: 11.2:1

Valve-train: 32-valve, DOHC, direct injection

Gearbox: 8-speed automatic, four-wheel-drive

Drive-line: self-locking centre differential

Power distribution, F/R: 40 per cent/60 per cent

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 335 (340) [250] @5,000-6,400rpm

Specific power: 111.8BHP/litre

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 368.8 (500) @1,370-4,500rpm

Specific torque: 166.9Nm/litre

0-100km/h: 6.2-seconds

Top speed: 250km/h (electronically governed)

Fuel consumption, combined: 7.2-litres/100km 

CO2 emissions, combined: 168g/km

Fuel capacity: 85-litres

Length: 4,986mm

Width: 1,995mm

Height: 1,705mm

Wheelbase: 2,995mm

Overhang, F/R: 978/1,013mm

Track, F/R: 1,679/1,691mm

Ground clearance: 254mm

Approach/departure angles: 22.1°/23.8°

Aerodynamic drag co-efficient: 0.34

Headroom, F/R: 1,044/981mm

Shoulder room, F/R: 1,512/1,486mm

Loading height: 820mm

Luggage volume, min/max: 605-/1,755-litres

Unladen/kerb weight: 2,195/2,270kg (est.)

Steering: Electric-assisted rack & pinion, four-wheel-steering

Steering ratio: 14.6:1

Turning Circle: 12.3-metres (as tested)

Suspension: Five-link, adaptive air dampers

Brakes: Ventilated discs, 375/350mm

Tyres: 285/40R22

Price, starting from: JD101,193

There is something we desperate dieters have in common: we often happen to be our worst enemy when it comes to sabotaging ourselves. Just when we need to be our best advocate and coach, our inner critic never gives us a break. 

We can’t even take a compliment without wondering what the motive is behind the well-intentioned person giving it. Yet, we are so ready to receive criticism and to believe negative comments others say about us without even challenging those thoughts. 

‘Stinking Thinking’

Living like this long enough causes us to develop patterns of what I call “Stinking Thinking” that does nothing but erode our internal dialogue and leads us to believe things about ourselves that simply are not true. These adopted beliefs that we allow to go unchallenged become self-fulfilling prophecies because, all of the sudden, we have labelled ourselves as Desperate Dieters who just cannot seem to take control of managing and controlling our weight. We become obsessed with food, calories and scales all the while the child inside of us is wondering whatever happened to just eating food when we are hungry and taking out all the emotions from this equation!

Is food our pacifier?

If we challenge ourselves beyond our comfort zones and ask ourselves some tough questions, then maybe we can get somewhere as desperate dieters. Have you ever asked yourself that maybe we are desperate dieters because we have desperately neglected to address deeper issues in our lives? These issues are more loaded than a piece of chocolate cake! We choose the easier road of eating that cake because we just do not want to deal with facing other issues we should be addressing.

For the desperate dieters food is the “go to cover” that pacifies and gives immediate comfort. For the smoker, it is the cigarette, for the drinker, it is the liquor, for the gambler, it is their favourite game but ultimately it is a high that ends with the lowest of lows, leaving one feeling empty, worthless, depressed and ready to check out again and so the vicious cycle repeats. The beginning of any healing must start with facing the painful reality of what current conditions we are facing.

Honest self-evaluation

We need to train ourselves to step out and take an outside look at ourselves as if we were someone else watching to get an objective view of what is happening and how we are responding to the stresses and challenges of our lives. Are we reaching inward or outward to replenish and restore our souls? If we fail to do these periodic self-examinations with honest and authentic objectivity, then we are choosing a losing battle. How else are we going to get better if we do not do these honest self-evaluations to see what mistakes we are making over and over again? At least then we can accurately diagnose the problem and adopt a smarter strategy to start moving forward.

Dive in!

My challenge for us this hot month of June as it is swim season is to get in touch with the kid inside us and dive right into the things that we are really passionate about. Each of us can make a list of all the things we truly do enjoy doing so let us start spending more time doing them! Life is too short to spend it obsessing about food. Let us for once act like kids and be able to take a compliment at face value and learn to say thank you when someone gives it. Let us get up from the sofa and put on our favourite music and move to our favourite beats that we used to listen to when we were active teens. Let us dare to dream again that there is hope for a better version of us. It starts with our inner thought dialogue and what we allow ourselves to believe about who we really are and not who someone else says we must be. 

My top 10 favourite things to do

I make sure to do at least one of these everyday no matter how busy my schedule gets. I now give myself permission to just be who I am and enjoy doing the things I enjoy doing! I find myself reaching less for those comfort foods since I am finally showing myself some compassion and kindness. I am finally listening to myself and what my body is really craving: quality time wellspent, doing the things that will take better care of me! I am more in touch with my feelings and I’m thriving — not constantly needing to check out and zone out! 

1. My morning walk with my best friend and my nature walks in the evenings

2. Reading

3. Family drives

4. Dancing to favourite oldies

5. Watching mystery movies

6. Going to the movies

7. Playing chess

8. Swimming

9. Playing tennis

10. Connecting with friends and loved ones

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine

Bad Girls of the Arab World

Edited by Nadia Yaqub and Rula Quawas

Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017

Pp. 239

The word “bad” in the title of this book attracts attention and demands explanation. Co-editor Rula Quawas offers the following definition, showing that bad is used ironically: “The woman who dares to trample societal boundaries she had no part in creating in order to reclaim the power of her mind is likely to be labelled a ‘bad girl,’ improper and transgressive… Those who express themselves, refusing to be silenced, clear the way to equality and justice for others.” (p. 32)

Put in another way by Miral Al Tahawy: “’Bad girls’ do not peer fearfully around themselves, nor do they give great importance to their images in the mirrors of others; they do not consider red lines too seriously because they are more tolerant of their own faults and trained in toughness”. (p. 216)

As the other co-editor, Nadia Yaqub, points out, “women may choose to transgress social norms, or transgression may be thrust upon them”. (p. 3)

Alongside the daring women who purposefully brave the boundaries, are the “reluctant bad girls”, such as female orphans who are negatively labelled because of being born to an unwed mother with the father shirking paternal responsibility, leaving them without a legal status or family name. Another example of “reluctant bad girls” are the Palestinian mothers who were falsely accused of sending their children to die during the Second Intifada. 

Fortunately, Rula Quawas saw this book through to completion but she never actually held the finished product in her hands. Reading her chapter “Inciting Critique in the Feminist Classroom”, one realises just how much women in Jordan and elsewhere lost with her untimely death, but also how much knowledge and inspiration she imparted in her all-too-short life. As she describes her teaching, “Through the critical thinking of a feminist theory class, some Jordanian students gradually learn to empower themselves and recognise their innate capacity for self-reflection, self-determination, and consciously guided action. By rebelling against conventional, deep-seated assumptions and value judgements, they acquire a new and better understanding of women’s reputations and how society conceptualises female goodness and badness.” (p. 28)

This can be a joyful process which Quawas expressed in a poem: 

“Here we will stay. Jordanian women, uncovering the veils of ignorance.

Removing them from our souls, emerging as a fountain of hope, and holding the sun in our hands…” (p. 35)

Other chapters explore the experience of returning to an Arab country to teach after studying abroad, the difficulties of reconciling feminism with nationalism, the interplay between being female and other identities a woman may carry, and the conflicted relations between Arab and some Western feminists. Thinking out-of-the-box is typical for all the chapters in this book, but one in particular stands out for upending some common assumptions by addressing the conflicting narratives that arose in the wake of the Arab uprisings. While some lauded women’s strong, overt participation, others contended that this had not empowered them. While seeing truth in both these narratives, Amal Amireh contends that things are “less likely to change if revolutionaries insist that gender and sexuality are not central to the revolutionary process”. (p. 113)

To show that questions of gender and the body were intrinsic to the uprisings, Amireh examines the cases of four women who became famous during these events, including Fayda Hamdi who allegedly delivered the slap that drove Muhammad Al Bu’azizi to suicide and thus ignited the Tunisian revolution and showed the way for others. Her careful analysis reveals that gender did play a major role but in a much more nuanced and complicated way than usually assumed.

Two different chapters address outstanding writers, Samar Yazbek of Syria and Suhair Al Tal of Jordan, who broke with the traditions in which they were raised to write and act according to their convictions. Another chapter covers “Reel Bad Maghrebi Women”, filmmakers who depict “a new type of female protagonist who redefines the terms of her own oppression and possible emancipation”. (p. 167)

There is also a chapter on women singers in the Sudanese diaspora, whereby “alternative visions of Sudanese identity have emerged, and creative new artists have flourished beyond the reach of the state”. (p. 189)

The chapters in this book are varied in style, including personal experience, academic analysis and artistic contributions; they cover different Arab countries as well as Arab women abroad, different time periods and contexts, but they all converge on disputing, directly or implicitly, Orientalist notions that the oppression of Arab women is rooted in beliefs fundamental to Islam and Arab society. “Such culturalist analyses ignore how patriarchy as practiced in the Arab world today has grown out of colonial and neocolonial encounters with the West and the particular forms of modernity that have resulted from those encounters.” (p. 13)

Yet, in the afterword, writer Laila Al Atrash looks back at years of Arab women’s struggle for liberation, and queries: “I wonder how it is that we are still leading, decades later, the same fight against this attack on women and their accomplishments. How has our role, past, present and future, been eroded in the onslaught of politicised religion?” (p. 212)