Reader’s Digest
This month’s Reader’s Digest had two articles I found really interesting, so I scanned them (about 300kb/article). The first is on the topic of sleep and raises some interesting points about it. How you can fall asleep for a few seconds, even with your eyes open (and how they experimentally determined this), how sleep affects health, lifestyle, mood and quality of life. It also explains why most people feel really awake at 9am and 9pm, with a trough at 3pm. Right now I have a sleep debt so large I might as well declare bankruptcy.
The second is about shyness and social phobia – what causes it, what it means, how to get over it etc. If you see the “spectrum of shyness” on the second scanned page, I’d probably be very close come under, believe it or not, “extreme shyness”. In certain, very very specific situations, maybe even social phobia. Or maybe that’s the product of low self-esteem? Or lack of sleep? Or all three :)
“Shyness is a nearly universal human trait. Almost everyone has bouts of it, and half of university students surveyed describe themselves as shy. But at some life juncture, according to one study, one out of eight people become so timid that they suffer from social phobia. During certain kinds of encounters, the heart races, palms sweat, the mouth goes dry, words vanish, thoughts become cluttered and an urge to escape takes over.”
4:50pm (GMT +10.00) tomorrow 
