|
11th May, 2008
DAVID
ADAMS
They come in the dead of night armed with the implements of their trade; single-minded in their effort to accomplish their illicit mission. They’re the “guerrilla gardeners”, a secret army of people working in cities around the globe to bring a touch of beauty to the lost wastelands of our modern metropolises. “In the case of guerrilla gardening, the soldiers are planters, the weapons are shovels, and the mission is to transform an abandoned lot into a thing of beauty,” writes David Tracey, Canadian-based author of the book Guerrilla Gardening: A Manualfesto. One of the earliest examples of guerilla gardening took place in Britain in the mid-1600s when groups known as the Diggers planted vegetables and crops on public land. The idea was resurrected in the UK in the 1970s and in recent years has again gained impetus. Richard Reynolds has penned a handbook on the practise - On Guerrilla Gardening - and runs a website guerrillagardening.org where he provides details of guerrilla gardening projects aimed at ‘fighting the filth with forks and flowers’. “There is no manifesto,” he says in a recent article in The Sunday Times. “Having some greenery and creating a better environment has many positive benefits.” In another article, Mr Reynolds says that while guerrilla gardening is a crime in Britain - under the law, it’s considered criminal damage - “common sense”, he says, “would suggest it is quite the opposite”. Closer to home, Australian Bob Crombie spends his spare time cleaning up and planting out public green spaces in Sydney. In an article in the Sydney Morning Herald earlier this year, Mr Crombie describes himself as a ‘bewilderer’, an old term which he told the newspaper, meant ‘to be become connected to life, the source, the spirit, God”. "Bewildering is much more than just planting trees, greening and hugging koalas," he tells the newspaper. "It is a very deep human response to our relationship to our world, especially our immediate environment, that recognises our place in it, our dependence upon it and our responsibility to it."
FOR YOUR
SAY ON ALL THE TRENDSPOTTERS, CLICK HERE
OR SCROLL
DOWN TO THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE...
PREVIOUS
TRENDSPOTTERS...
TOTAL RECALL?
27th March, 2008
DAVID
ADAMS
It started with the handwritten diary - think of Englishman Samuel Pepys’ famous work from the seventeenth century - but advances in technology have brought about whole new ways in which people can record their lives. Yes, we’ve seen the explosion of blogs and social networking pages like Facebook and MySpace but now comes a trend that takes things to a whole new level. It’s called Lifelogging and it involves recording and storing all of life’s moments - the mundane and the extraordinary - for posterity. Lifeloggers use a range of technologies to achieve their ultimate aim - audio recorders, digital cameras, GPS devices and health-related sensors to name a few. Lifeloggers - and there have been a few including US-based computer scientist Gordon Bell - say that lifelogging has obvious benefits: being able to recall the name of the person you just met and what was discussed, the ability to analyse yourself and your behaviours to, for example, better improve work productivity, and the monitoring of vital statistics to provide better warnings of health troubles. And while some believe lifelogging will one day be ubiquitous, there are some issues which will need to be resolved first, among them how lifelogging connects with the privacy rights of those people you encounter in your day-to-day life as well as social etiquette issues and technologically-related issues such as how to ensure that your life archive can still be read 20 years down the track.
PICTURE: Agata Urbaniak (www.sxc.hu)
A RUSTING WORKLIFE?
18th January, 2008
DAVID
ADAMS
So you’ve got your work/rest/play balance in order and have managed to avoid the stress of burn-out. But, if you’re finding you're spending your workdays watching the minutes tick slowly by on the clock, it may be that you’re among the thousands of workers suffering from 'rust-out'. As the term (which apparently first began to be applied in the business world in the Eighties) implies, rust-out is the opposite to burn-out. Those affected don't go down in a blaze of stress-related frenzy; instead they become so bored and apathetic about their unstimulating worklife that they simply ‘rust’ away. The causes are many and varied - perhaps someone missed out on a promotion they were qualified to get; perhaps changes to the workplace have meant their job no longer provides the challenge it once did. But whatever it’s cause, rust-out does have a serious side. It can be expressed through such things as a person’s unkempt appearance and lack of punctuality or productivity, and even, say experts, lead to serious depression or substance abuse if not addressed. And the first step toward doing so is all about simply acknowledging the issue. It may mean taking on new responsibilities, stretching yourself in new ways, setting new goals or simply varying the monotony of routine. In short, looking at how you - and, if you’re an employee, your boss - can work to re-energise your working life.
PICTURE: Jean Scheijen (www.sxc.hu)
A :-) 25 YEARS!
21st September, 2007
DAVID
ADAMS
Feeling :-), :-( or maybe :-o? They’re called emoticons and they’re used in this, the information age, to succinctly illustrate exactly how we’re feeling via our electronic communications. While emoticons have a long and interesting history (the ubiquitous yellow smiley face, for example, was created back in the Sixties as part of a campaign to bolster the employees of an insurance company), Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman is generally credited with the creating the widely used :-) emoticon 25 years ago. Professor Fahlman posted a message, recovered during an “archaeological” computer exercise back in 2002, onto an electronic bulletin board on 19th September, 1982, during a discussion about how to identify comments meant to be taken lightly. The message apparently read: ‘I propose the following character sequence for joke markers: :-). Read it sideways.” The same message records that he also came up with the idea of using :-( “for things that are NOT jokes”. The use of emoticons exploded with the arrival of the internet, particularly used in forums or instant messaging, as well as the growth in use of mobile phones and these days text-based emoticons are often replaced with small graphic images, sometimes animated. Yet, for some, the challenge of inventing a new emoticon, using just the keys on a standard keyboard, is what it’s all about. One dictionary, Txtr’s A-Z, reportedly includes 16 pages of emoticons including the delightful {:-( which apparently stands for “toupee blowing in the wind”.
HACKING OUT A WAY TO A MORE EFFICIENT LIFESTYLE
29th July, 2007
DAVID
ADAMS
It’s the idea that by just making small changes in your life, the overall picture will get better. Taking it’s name from the small change or ‘hacks’ software programmers make to improve computer programs, ‘life hacking’ is all about applying the same basic principles to your life. The term was invented by British technology journalist Danny O’Brien after he looked at how super-productive software programmers - what he terms “alpha geeks” - managed to work so fast and found that they tended to use a range of technical shortcuts - known as “hacks” - to get the job done. Popularised through the blogosphere, a plethora of life hack- dedicated blogs and websites appeared - including 43 Folders, LifeHacker and Lifehack.org - and the term quickly expanded to refers, according to Wikipedia, to “anything that solves an everyday problem in a clever or non-obvious way” (although doings faster and more efficiently is also important). Examples include everything from shortening the length of meetings by making people stand (they’re less likely to waste time if on their feet) and prioritising the things you need to do the next day on a short list every night through to letting phone calls go through to the answering machine and then replying to them in batches instead of answering every time the phone rings. But beware, life hacking does come with pitfalls. Some life hackers have been known to get so caught up in finding life hacks that they’ve actually decreased their productivity!
PICTURE:
Sarah Williams (www.sxc.hu)
WHEN 'WASTE NOT, WANT NOT' BECOMES A WAY OF LIFE
1st
June, 2007
DAVID
ADAMS
“Are
you going to eat that?” It’s a common-enough asked
question at dinner tables around Australia and, while for
some it might simply represent a chance to get hold of another’s
tasty treat, for others the phrase can expose their desire
to cut down on what might get thrown in the bin. Taking the
idea the next step are the ‘freegans’. Described
as a reaction to waste and the 'injustices' that go into producing
goods, the movement sees people looking for alternative ways
to meet their needs in a bid to cut down on waste. This can
mean everything from recycling clothes and furniture, squatting
in abandoned properties and even rummaging through rubbish
bins for food, part of a practice known variously in freegan
circles as “urban foraging”, “dumpster diving”
or “skip dipping”. The word itself is a combination
of ‘free’ and ‘vegan’, though not
all are vegans - meat-eaters can apparently be known as “meagans”.
According to the website freegan.info,
freeganism represents “a total boycott of an economic
system where the profit motive has eclipsed ethical considerations
and where massively complex systems of productions ensure
that all the products we buy will have detrimental impacts
most of which we may never even consider”. This, it
goes on to say, means freegans try to avoid buying anything.
There’s a growing number of organisations to facilitate
this, including the organisation Freecycle where you can pick up goods that others have donated free
of charge. Some freegans also hold “freemeets”
where they bring goods which others can take and vice versa
. Allied to this is the growth of the Really, Really Free
Market movement, based on what they call a “gift economy”.
PICTURE:
Kenn Kiser (www.sxc.hu)
RUNNING
FREE IN THE URBAN JUNGLE
26th
February, 2007
DAVID
ADAMS
Those
who have seen it will recall the scene close to the start
of the latest James Bond film, Casino Royale, in
which Bond pursues a man in an incredible chase scene through
an urban environment in Madagascar. The scene, which took
the chase to incredible heights and dexterity, has its inspiration
in “free-running”, a physical discipline which
involves navigating the urban landscape using moves which
appear more akin to acrobatics, gymnastics or even martial
arts than what we typically think of as running. (More than
that, the scene actually features Sebastien Foucan, the founder
of the sport, as evil bomb-maker Mollaka). A derivative of
the similar discipline of parkour (which was founded in the
Parisian suburb of Lisses about 15 years ago by athlete and
childhood friend of Foucan, David Belle), free-running is
all about getting from A to B. However unlike parkour - which
is about doing so as quickly as possible - free running is
all about doing so with as much flair and pizazz as possible.
When it comes to free-running, aesthetics count. “The
main difference then between parkour and free running is that
parkour is defined by purpose ‘get somewhere quickly
and efficiently using the human body’, and free running
is defined by the activity or art of moving through your environment
however you want, moving your way, following your own path,”
explains a statement on the website American Parkour. The
‘sport’ - which Foucan said in a 2003 newspaper
article is all about “ being creative in the way you
move” - has attracted a considerable following around
the world (and its share of criticism - critics complain about
the dangers involved in activities such as leaping from rooftop
to rooftop although Foucan has said that people don’t
need to take risks to be a free-runner). For some practitioners,
free running is more than just a sport. “It is not just
a game,” Foucan has been quoted as saying. “It
is a discipline because it is a way of facing our fears and
demons that you can apply to the rest of your life.”
PICTURE:
Paul Farmer (www.sxc.hu)
TAKING FRUSTRATIONS
OUT ON A MOUSE - IT'S ALL THE RAGE
22nd
December, 2006
DAVID
ADAMS
It’s
that time of year - shoppers running amok in a last minute
bid to grab Christmas presents or trying to snap up a bargain
in the Boxing Day sales. Despite exhortations to remember
the true meaning of Christmas and all that it really represents,
there are still times when it all gets too much for some.
It may simply mean making a snippy comment to an assistant
at a retail outlet or, at its worst, completely losing the
plot after having waited for half an hour in a queue only
to find the shop is now out of the turkey that you wanted
to adorn the Christmas table. Well, sadly, those frustrations
have now migrated online and with them have come a new syndrome
and a term to describe it - “mouse rage”, or MRS
as it’s known to insiders. The UK-based Social Issues
Research Centre has reportedly identified the syndrome after
studying the habits of 2,500 web users and yes, like road
rage before it, its symptoms include increased heart rates,
teeth clenching, hitting something (in this case, the mouse)
and yelling at the screen. The SIRC study identified five
different website flaws that can cause the problem - slow-to-load
pages, confusing navigational layouts, excessive pop-ups,
unnecessary advertising and that old “site unavailable”
message. The message here is twofold: while those who create
websites need to make sure they do their utmost to provide
a simple and smooth web experience, we, the websurfers also
need to take a deep breath. As you feel the frustration setting
in, stop. Maybe it’s time to take a break from the computer
for a moment or two - make yourself a cup of tea, take a walk
in the fresh air. And, remember, try and take it easy on your
mouse. After all, what did it ever do to you?
PICTURE:
Richard S (www.sxc.hu)
'BUSYNESS'
THE NEW STATUS SYMBOL
19th
November, 2006
DAVID
ADAMS
Noticed
recently how being busy is the new status symbol? Ask anyone
how they’re going these days and the one thing they’re
almost certain to say is ‘busy’ or ‘swamped’
as though by admitting that we were any less so would be somehow
the equivalent of shamefacedly admitting we’re not living
life to the full; that we're somehow missing out. There’s
no doubt that many people these days do lead busy lives -
long working hours and the many other demands in our lives
means many exist at a frenetic pace. But is that all there
is to it? Writing in the pages of an Australian newspaper
last year, social researcher Hugh Mackay mused whether our
increased busyness was, in fact, “the great escape from
emotional engagement with the rest of our lives” and
quoted the Roman poet Ovid - “You who seek an end of
love, love will yield to business: be busy and you will be
safe”. So what to do? Well, while many people now talk
about getting “balance” in their lives, our apparent
busyness has also spawned a plethora of books with titles
like Too Busy to Live: The Addiction America Applauds
and The Busy Christian’s Guide to Busyness.
Then there’s organised movements like that of “slow
food”. For those who haven’t heard of it, slow
food is all about taking your time - stepping aside from the
hustle and bustle of our lives and taking time to enjoy the
moment. There’s even an international association -
Slow Food International - with chapters in various countries
which describes itself as a “non-profit, eco-gastronomic
member-supported organisation”. Founded in 1989, it
now boasts 80,000 members and has the stated aim of counteracting
“fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local
food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the
food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how
our food choices affect the rest of the world”. It’s
all part of what some have termed the “slow revolution”
and, somewhat ironically, it seems to be gaining ground fast
as more and more people choose to opt out of their busy lifestyles.
PICTURE:
Henning Buchholz (www.sxc.hu)
'X' MARKS
THE SPOT?
9th
October, 2006
DAVID
ADAMS
It’s
an updated version of the old-fashioned treasure hunt. Geocaching
involves using a GPS (Global Positioning System) device to
track down hidden 'caches' - usually a waterproof container
holding a logbook to record times and dates of finds and a
small trinket which the 'geocacher' exchanges for something
else of similar or higher value - all just for the thrill
of the hunt. Geocachers - and we’re talking thousands
of people across the globe here - get the co-ordinates for
their hunts from dedicated websites like Geocaching.com
(this particular website also has helpful tools like a tutorial
for hiding caches and a guide to finding caches) and the Australian
site Geocaching.com.au.
Armed with a GPS device - these start at a couple of hundred
dollars - they then set out on their treasure hunt. Geocaching,
which follows on from the earlier tradition of letterboxing
in which participants follow written clue to find the treasure,
first emerged in the early Noughties after the US Department
of Defence kindly decided to turn off the scrambling affecting
their satellite navigation system which, up until then, had
limited civilian accuracy to about 100 metres (turning off
the scrambling meant accuracy could now be pinpointed to around
10 metres). So popular has the phenomena - which some argue
should be called a sport - proved, that there are reportedly
geocaching communities in more than 200 countries, including
Australia, with an estimated 250,000 caches now hidden across
the globe. Some people even plan their holidays with geocaching
adventures in mind.
PICTURE:
Damien (www.sxc.hu)
'VIRTUAL' REALITY NO LONGER
12th
August, 2006
DAVID
ADAMS
We’ve
surely all adjusted to the idea of virtual worlds - places
where you can pick up a sword and lead your army against nasty
armies or just spend time hanging out in whichever Sims environment
you’ve elected to live in. But recent years have seen
a new twist. Virtual worlds are becoming real. There’s
a growing number of online worlds appearing where people in
our offline reality are paying over hard cash to purchase
virtual property. Take the Entropia Universe. Originating
from Sweden in 1995, it’s a futuristic world in which
players or colonists can explore and develop parts of the
world of Calypso using a currency called PED which allows
players to buy virtual land and equipment. Doesn’t sound
too different to SimCity yet? The difference is that in the
Entropia Universe there is a real cash economy meaning PED
can actually be converted into real US dollars at a rate of
10 PEDs to 1 US dollar and can now even apparently be withdrawn
at real world ATMs. Transactions to date include an Asteroid
Space Resort bought for $US100,000 by Jon Jacobs aka Neverdie
in an auction and a somewhat mysterious egg bought by the
same person for $US10,000 just last month. In July alone more
than $210,00 worth of real estate was sold at public auction.
And the Entropia Universe - which reported a turnover of $US165
million last year - is not alone. Another of the virtual world
games called Second Life was recently reported as having more
than 200,000 users who in January spent more than $US5 million
dollars on virtual world transactions. Characters there are
able to spend money on Coke and beer at a virtual bar and
listen to music purchased at stores and uploaded to virtual
iPods. Expect more to follow. It’s a whole new world
out there.
PICTURE:
Tom Denham (www.sxc.hu)
CYBER-SLACKING
AT THE OFFICE
6th
February, 2006
DAVID
ADAMS
Almost
everyone who works in an office and has unrestricted access
to the internet has probably been guilty of it at some stage.
Cyber-slacking, defined as using the work computer to surf
the net or email for non-work related reasons, is a trend
many companies across the world have been eager to address.
Known by various other terms - cyber-bludging to name one
- results of a study released by Monash University researchers
early this year showed that workers are spending more than
a quarter of their time connected to the web for non-work
related reasons. Dr James Phillips and Kerryann Wyatt from
the university’s School of Psychology, Psychiatry and
Psychological Medicine examined the internet use of 83 people
and looked at five personality traits - neuroticism, extraversion,
openness to experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness
- to see what potential each had for predicting internet use.
They found that extroverts sent more work and non-work related
emails. People with less agreeable personalities were likely
to spend more time on the net and those open to experience
were more likely to spend time searching on the net for work-related
reasons. “Extroverted employees particularly are abusing
their internet privileges, spending reduced amounts of time
working and so reducing productivity,” says Wyatt. ”Whether
this is simply to socialise or procrastinate or to stimulate
themselves is not clear, but it is likely to have a significantly
negative impact on the workplace.” They suggest that
a lack of supervisor awareness or inadequate policies for
dealing with internet use are possibly to blame. The term,
which the researchers say has been around since 2001, was
added to the Oxford Dictionary back in 2003 along
with reality TV, SARS and “lovely jubbly”.
PICTURE:
Emin Ozkan (www.sxc.hu)
A SYNDROME
FOR ANGRY MEN?
9th
December, 2005
DAVID
ADAMS
Apparently
it’s not just old men who are grumpy. Experts are starting
to provide evidence which supports what many - particularly
women perhaps - have suggested for years: a condition known
as irritable male syndrome (IMS). The phrase - which was apparently
coined by Gerald Lincoln, an academic at Edinburgh University
who used it to refer to a condition he identified in male
sheep a few years ago - is the title of a book (The Irritable
Male Syndrome) released last year by US-based psychotherapist
and author Jed Diamond who told an Australian newspaper earlier
this year that perhaps as many as 30 per cent of all men suffer
from the problem. According to Diamond, there are as many
as 50 common signs to help diagnose the condition including
the depression, anger, fatigue, moodiness, anxiety, lethargy,
low libido and confusion as well as an increased use of sarcasm,
the feeling of being overworked and an urge to drink caffeine.
Sound like anyone you know? Diamond told US magazine Newsweek
recently that IMS commonly affects men aged between 15 and
28 years and those aged between 40 and 55 years - both periods
in a man’s life when they are going through “hormonal
changes and changes in their male identity and sexuality and
relationships”. So what to do if you do have IMS? Diamond
told Newsweek that counselling can be helpful and
exercise and diet are also important. He believes testosterone
treatment may also be an option. The upshot is that next time
you come across an angry man, spare a thought that he may
just be suffering from IMS. Go here
to see if you suffer from IMS.
PICTURE:
Robert Driese (www.sxc.hu)
A TRULY
GLOBAL LANGUAGE?
4th
August, 2005
DAVID
ADAMS
It’s
called Globish and some are hoping that it will be language
of the future. Essentially a stripped down and simplified
form of English, it’s the latest bid in a quest for
a truly universal language (and, some might argue, a last
attempt to stem the tide of English expansion). While at least
two versions of the language have been developed, the version
which has received the most attention is that promoted by
a linguist and former IBM marketing executive, Jean-Paul Nerriere.
The Frenchman, who has published a couple of texts on the
“language” - Speak Globish and Discover
Globish (the former introduced the concept while the
latter, published in May, deals with the issue of grammar),
has stripped language back to about 1,500 words. Starting
with able and ending with zero, it’s apparently all
one needs to be able to communicate effectively at a basic
level (not bad considering the Oxford English Dictionary
contains more than 400 times as many words - 613,000 or so).
In a recent interview with the International Herald Tribune
newspaper, Nerriere described Globish as a tool and not a
language, saying it was simply a “means of communication”
and not a cultural vehicle. As well as the 1,500 words, Globish
relies on gestures and repetition and has been described as
“English-lite”. Nerriere reportedly developed
the language after seeing the way people from non-English
speaking backgrounds but different countries drew on elements
of English to communicate. In an interview earlier this year,
he said that unlike previous efforts to develop a global means
of spoken communication - such as Esperanto - Globish is “not
artificial”. “It derives from the observation
that some kind of English is spoken everywhere,” he
said.
PICTURE:
Murat Cokal (www.sxc.hu)
PLAYING
THE NUMBERS GAME
25th
May, 2005
DAVID
ADAMS
It
started in Japan as an alternative to crosswords, has swept
across Britain and now has made it’s way to Australia
where newspaper publishers are falling over themselves in
their efforts to capitalise on the phenomenon. Called Sudoku,
it’s a deceptively simple numbers game that some are
calling the biggest puzzle craze since the Rubik’s cube
of the early Eighties. The game consists of a series of nine-by-nine
square grids and requires people to arrange the digits one
to nine so that they appear in each row and column. Sounds
easy? Think again. The game’s origins have apparently
been traced as far back as the 1780s when a blind Swiss mathematician,
Leonhard Euler invented a grid puzzle he called Latin Squares.
The game then sat on the shelf, so to speak, until the 1980s
when it appeared with the new title of the “Number Place“
game in the US. Spotted there by a Japanese puzzle magazine
employee, the game was taken back to Japan and modified. Known
as Sudoku, SuDoku or Su Doku (all of which can be loosely
translated as “single number” - a reference to
the fact that the game only uses single figures), the game
then made the transition to Britain thanks to a retired New
Zealand judge, Wayne Gould, who created a computer program
to generate new puzzles and set up a website to publish them
(he now supplies puzzles to papers across Britain and around
the globe - from New York to Estonia). Aside from the newspapers,
there’s dedicated Sudoku websites - www.sudoku.com
is one - as well as books and magazines and talk of national
championships (in the UK at least). Versions for mobile phones
are also available and even the possibility of dedicated TV
shows have been raised. Enthusiasts say that the game’s
appeal is in its apparent simplicity not to mention the fact
that it doesn’t require maths skills of any sort, just
the ability to count to nine - a factor sure to encourage
those for whom maths wasn’t a strong suit at school.
PICTURE:
Joao Estevao A. de Freitas (www.sxc.hu)
MEET THE
'KIDULTS'
4th
February, 2005
DAVID
ADAMS
We’ve
all no doubt heard of the social phenomena which involves
older children either remaining at home well into their 20s
and, yes, even 30s, or returning home time and again after
moving out for brief stints. Now brace yourself for the raft
of names being cleverly coined to describe the group. Recent
efforts in the United States (where the Census Bureau estimates
that as many as 40 per cent of young adults return home after
moving out compared with 20 per cent 50 years ago), include
“boomerang children” (as in, they come back),
and “kidults” (adults who enjoy activities, such
as playing computer games, which are typically seen as being
for kids). Time magazine recently ran a cover story
about the phenomena in which it referred to the demographic
group as “twixters” (apparently from being “betwixt
and between”), describing them as “young adults
who live with their parents, bounce from job to job and hop
from mate to mate”. “They’re not lazy, they
just won’t grow up,” the magazine quipped in a
recent cover line. Other names doing the rounds in cyberspace
include “rejuveniles”, “youthhood”
and “adultescence”. In England the group is apparently
referred to as “kippers” (which stands for the
rather long-winded “kids in parents’ pockets eroding
retirement savings”) while according to Time,
in France they are referred to as if suffering a disease -
the “Tanguy syndrome” (apparently referring to
a 2001 film about a bloke who refuses to move out of home
despite his parent’s best efforts). Which name eventually
sticks remains to be seen.
PICTURE:
Joshua Blake, iStockphoto.com
SLASH/SLASH
12th
November, 2004
ADAM
KELSALL
Slash/slash:
for many this new term may hark back to a saying about...erm...going
to the toilet that was coined somewhere in the Eighties. In
fact it has nothing to do with that. You are most likely
to fall into the shadow of a slash/slash at a social occasion when
the old corker "so what do you do?" falls
from your lips. The slash/slash will reply "Oh I am a
computer program designer/reclaim the night campaigner/occupational
health and safety rep/sessional at blah blah university".
Each slash differentiates another of the roles your new friend
carries out. Living in the Noughties where job and business equals
status, a slash/slash seems to be a very valuable commodity
indeed. They also make discussion easier: the more slashes
they and you have, the easier it will be to find common ground
for a discussion. Praxis: write down all your responsibilities
and count the amount of slashes. If it's less than five
then maybe it's time to start bustin' out some new roles.
PICTURE:
Anssi Ruuska, iStockphoto.com
CYBERCHONDRIA
2nd
November, 2004
DAVID
ADAMS
Blurred
vision? Hmm, things aren’t as sharp as they should be.
Fatigue? Yawn...yes. Headaches? Uh huh. Dizziness? Woah, is
the room spinning? Chills? Brrrr, yes. Anxiety? Well yes,
and increasing as I work through this list I found on the
internet and realise that I seem to have a number of the symptoms
of hepatitis. As far as I know I’ve got nothing of the
sort but maybe I’m one of those people who a recent
study identified as suffering from ‘cyberchondria’.
British researchers believe there are people who are incorrectly
self-diagnosing themselves with a range of conditions after
reading about the symptoms on the web in the same way people
once did after reading medical books. “We found that
people using these sites can take on board medical advice
which is incorrect - an obvious concern,” says Dr Neil
Coulson, who led the research team at the University of Derby.
“Indeed, the health profession has coined the phrase
‘cyberchondria’ for people using the internet
for self diagnosis and presenting this misinformation to their
GP.” While noting the net can be a great source of comfort
for people looking for support - particularly for carers -
the researchers have recommended that health professionals
need to post corrective information when they come across
something they believe is incorrect. Meantime, I’d better
go and lie down. This cyberchondria might just be catching.
PICTURE:
Mark Strozier, iStockphoto.com
Your Say
|
Comment left by Peter Wilbourne
Sudoku is a logic exercise rather than a numbers game, the numbers are just convenient familiar shapes to use in the puzzle, so counting to nine is not mandatory.
I got round the elderly eyesight and fiddly little numbers problem by writing a sudoku helper, and it worked quite well so I put it on a free to use on line website at http://www.pewterweb.com. It must work ok, over 20000 people have used it in the past few weeks. |
Comment left by joshua coleman
with the STANDBY/ON (standby button) what modem is that button on send me back a message my email adress is josh_coleman96@hotmail.com thanks bye |
Comment left by Todd
Where do i find more information on Jean Scheijen? |
Discuss this article.
Enter your name and message to make a comment. You may need to refresh
the page to see your message appear.
Due to recent spam problems, messages that contain links are moderated
before they will appear. |
Spotted
a new trend? Send an email to trendspotter@sightmagazine.com.au
|