In the second post from her ‘Weird and Wonderful World’ column, Charley Allen warns us of the dangers of ‘sleep texting’.
It is a well-known fact that people are becoming more and more glued to their mobile phone, but replying to texts in your sleep is a bit too far-fetched surely?
Apparently not, experts are saying that it is becoming more and more common for people to respond to a message in a sleep-walk fashion, something we can refer to as “sleep-text”.
Does this scenario look familiar? All photo credits to Sam Howzit
Dr. Elisabeth Dowdell, a nursing professor at Pennsylvania’s Villanova University, claims this manic night-time behaviour often happens between 90 minutes and 2 hours into your sleep cycle. She told CBS earlier this week, “The phone will beep, they’ll answer the text. They’ll either respond in words or gibberish.” There are still no scientific studies on sleep texting to tell us how often, or not, this is happening but more and more doctors are hearing about it and the trend seems to be on the rise. Well, this can be rather dangerous can’t it? You drop off peacefully to sleep and wake up in the morning to a text from your best friend you secretly fancy asking you why you texted him about beaches and skinny dipping. Oh dear.
But fret not; there is a simple solution so you can sleep in peace. Just take the plunge and do that almost unheard of act; turn your phone off! Besides, it will do you good to switch off for a while and will stop your parents from worrying about you being too wired and not sleeping enough. Unless you really are an extreme example of our tech-dependent society and you go searching for your phone to turn on in the middle of the night, this should do the trick.
Got an interesting story to tell about sleep texting or maybe a confession? Please send us a comment below.
Nasal hair plays an important role in filtering what we breathe in. Picture credits: murkotik
Exeposé Features Online’s newest columnist, Charley Allen, shares a bizarre campaign to raise environmental awareness for her ‘Weird and Wonderful World’ column.
Think you’ve seen a weird campaign to raise awareness? Think again. It doesn’t get much more bizarre than the latest campaign launched in China. The “hairy nose” campaign was launched in December last year by NGO Clean Air Asia as a humorous way to make people aware of the worsening levels of pollution in Asian cities.
The idea is that nasal hair is actually pretty important in filtering out the harmful things that we breathe in. Last year Popular Science reported that “nose hairs trap dirt, viruses, bacteria and toxins until we blow them out, sneeze, or swallow.” From this idea Clean Air Asia have made an interactive hairy nose map showing the levels of pollution in cities not by boring air quality graphs but instead by showing how long your nose hair needs to be in order to deal with it. It ranges from excellent where your nose hairs can remain nice and trimmed to critical where your nose hairs need to sweep the floor!It is eye catching that’s for sure and has certainly got people talking. One person who can profit from this is famous hair artist Fan Qi who yes, you guessed it, styles nose hairs in weird and wonderful ways. You have to watch the video.
This is one way of adapting yourself to pollution but as Sophie Punte, Executive Director of Clean Air Asia pointed out in an article by Campaign Brief Asia, “People look at air pollution like the weather. You complain about it but you cannot solve it”. Some people have started wearing masks, fitting in air filters in their homes and even moving from heavily polluted areas if they can afford it. But as we all well know, it is better to actually do something about pollution rather than just avoiding the problems.
Picture credits: SighlentJ
This funny campaign acts as great bait and then the NGO goes on to provide all sorts of information and advice on fighting pollution like using public transport or not leaving your car engine running unnecessarily.
A great idea for a campaign in my opinion and I’m thinking I’d like to see where Movember activists could go with this!
In the first article for her column, Alethea Osborne provides a critical look at Syria today, still in the midst of conflict.
Picture: Free Syria
In recent weeks, key diplomatic events have taken place in the development of Syria’s conflict. Bashar Al-Assad presented his first speech in seven months last Sunday at the Opera house in Damascus to a very carefully chosen and thus passionately supportive audience. In it he described the opposition groups as followers of Al-Qaida, along with being “enemies of God and puppets of the West”. The Syrian opposition groups perceived the speech, particularly Assad’s rejection of peace talks, as a renewed declaration of war.
The UN and many foreign powers, including the UK have acknowledged the speech as discouraging and simply another attempt to cling to power; the USA described it as “detached from reality”. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was “disappointed that the speech by President Bashar al-Assad on 6 January does not contribute to a solution that could end the terrible suffering of the Syrian people”. While the UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said of the president’s speech, “the speech rejected the most important element of the Geneva Communique of 30 June 2012, namely a political transition and the establishment of a transitional governing body with full executive powers that would include representatives of all Syrians.”
It is generally understood that there will be no organised peace process accepted by the opposition groups until Assad agrees to step down. The head of the opposition group, Hassan Abdel Azim, put forward the first condition of talks with the regime during a news conference in Damascus: he declared “we will not take part in a national dialogue before violence stops”.
He further stipulated that any dialogue be preceded by the release of prisoners, a guarantee to ensure humanitarian aid is delivered to areas hit by the violence and the publication of a statement on the fate of missing Syrians. “Any negotiation – not just a national dialogue – must be held under the aegis of the UN-Arab League envoy,” he said, before stressing that “there won’t be direct negotiations or dialogue with the regime”.
Ban Ki-moon: “disappointed” by President Bashar al-Assad’s speech on the 6 January. Picture: Yaiza Gómez
The UK government announced on Tuesday that a conference would be held on Wednesday and Thursday, hosted outside London by the British Foreign Office, to discuss a plan for Syria in the period after the ‘inevitable’ fall of Assad. Experts from around the world including academics in post-conflict stabilisation and representatives from the Syrain opposition groups attended.
The organisation of the conference is indicative of the rising concern regarding the potential situation in post-Assad Syria as experts fear there could be more bloodshed due to religious and sectarian rivalries which could further destabilise not just Syria but other countries in the already volatile region
The conflict, in which it is estimated at least 60,000 people have died, is swiftly turning into a humanitarian crisis with the UN estimating that the number of registered refugees has risen by 100,000 in the last month to number nearly 600,000. The UN’s food programme has announced this week that fighting in Syria has made it unable to reach a million people in need within the war zones. It estimates that there are 2.5 million in need, of which it can only distribute food to 1.5 million every month. The danger of working in the areas of fighting has meant the staff from the World Food Programme (WFP) have had to leave Aleppo, Homs, Tartous and Qamisly.
“Food needs are growing in Syria,” said Elisabeth Brys, a WFP spokesperson. Understandably, after nearly two years of continuous conflict it was increasingly difficult “to reach the hardest-hit places”. The WFP works with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent and a few local NGOs to help distribute the food within the country, however these efforts are increasingly limited by a ‘lack of capacity’ along with the danger of working amongst the escalating violence.
The desperation of the situation of many refugees was clearly displayed on Tuesday when refugees in the Zaatari camp in Jordan attacked aid workers in frustration after their tents were destroyed by howling winds and heavy rain. The weather across the region has made the situation for many refugees living in temporary camps inside and outside of Syria far harder with biting cold winds and constant rain. However, there is a certain mantra amongst all Syrian refugees that they will return home soon, a determined streak of hope as the conflict enters its second winter.
The Syrian Red Crescent is working with the WFC and local NGOs to help distribute food in the country. Picture: IFRC
It is becoming increasingly accepted, even by nations such as Russia who originally supported the Assad regime, that the only way that a peace process may begin to be achieved is if Assad steps down. Despite the hazy and somewhat concerning prospect of Syria’s future post-Assad it is undeniable that the horrors of the current situation, in particular the situation for those innocent citizens, many of which are displaced, caught in the middle of the fighting, are mounting to an international humanitarian crisis.
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