A local teacher, getting annoyed at one of her 5-year-olds not obeying her instruction to sit down, said to him loudly and firmly, “SIT”.

The boy looked at her straight in the eye and replied “WOOF”.

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Women-only carriages were launched in Jakarta last week in response to public backlash to repeated cases of groping aboard the city’s public transport systems. And the city’s rail system is planning to increase the number of overall carriages this year, with carriages catering only to females included in its procurement programme. So far, the company operates around 20 women-only carriages attached to 10 engines, according to the Jakarta Post.

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Comment at the Human Rights Diversity Action Forum in Christchurch last week:  A Kiwi Muslim saying he took what was best from the country’s culture and avoided some of the worst aspects. What was one? The treatment of old people.

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Robert Butler, the man who invented the term ‘ageism’ passed away in July. Baby Boomers and the elderly in general have a lot to thank him for. As a research psychiatrist at the American National Institute of Public Health, he led a ten year study into the processes of aging. He found that senility was not inevitable, but rather a consequence of disease. He discovered that apart from disease, other contributors were socio-economic disadvantage or even personality, but not the result of ageing  per se. His work during the 1950s and 1960s revolutionised the way people thought about the elderly and helped them to recognise they could and should live healthy and active lives. It’s a legacy which   you see everywhere today as babyboomers and those much older, retain their inner Peter Pan…