Eideard

Anyone contemplating Botox treatments for excessive sweating might want to consider the case of a U.S. teen-ager.

The 17-year-old girl, a typical whiz at sending text messages from her phone, had Botox injections to control excessive sweating on her palms — and afterwards, she couldn’t text as well, according to a case study published in Archives of Dermatology.

Doctors who use Botox said they had never heard complaints of texting impairment from patients, but they added that it wasn’t entirely unexpected since the injections have been linked to muscle weakness.

“I would definitely discuss this with my patients going forward as a specific potential side effect,” said Julia Lehman at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, who treated the teen-ager.

The case “shows the importance of thinking about modern-day activities and how our treatments could potentially impair some of these modern-day activities such as texting.”

Even if the priority assigned to those activities is stupid!

Lehman’s patient suffered from excessive sweating, or hyperhidrosis, on her hands for several years. Prescription antiperspirants are usually the first treatment step. But when the teen didn’t get any better, Lehman moved on to Botox — which, given in tiny injections on the palm and fingers, blocks the signal that causes sweat to be released.

But it also relaxes other muscles not related to sweating in the process.

A week after getting Botox, the patient sweated much less, but her texting skills had decreased as well, Lehman reported. The impairment lasted for about six weeks, although the patient did not need a new Botox injection for several months…

Lehman said that since Botox is now being used in younger patients, this may require doctors to be in tune with side effects that, like texting, mostly affect that group.

I wonder if such Botox treatments might affect other oft unmentioned teenage preoccupations – like masturbation?

The TTC bus driver was texting on a BlackBerry-like device while driving around 50 km/h when passenger Mike Schmitz took an iPhone photo of him.

The shot, taken on a 165 Weston Rd. North bus that was “full of people”, shows the driver focused on the device, and the orange needle of the bus speedometer pointing upwards…

The driver would alternate between holding the device with both hands and steering with his forearms, and driving with one hand while holding the device with the other and texting with his thumb, he said.

“This is incredibly serious,” said TTC spokesman Brad Ross, who got a glimpse of the photo on Thursday. “It would appear … that he’s doing at least 50 km/h while texting, and his eyes are not on the road.”

The TTC has “a clear policy” when it comes to prohibiting its drivers from using personal electronic devices — such as cellphones, BlackBerrys and iPhones — while on the job, Ross said. “This is a serious breach of public safety,” he said, adding that drivers are not allowed to talk on cellphones or text even while the vehicle is stopped…

As of Oct. 26, 2009, Ontario drivers have been banned from talking on cellphones, texting or using hand-held electronic devices of any kind while behind the wheel.

A bit more than an oops! No one needs to see bus drivers volunteering for a Darwin Award.

Texting – old school

In a bid to bring the life-saving emergency service 911 into the 21st century, the FCC is looking at letting citizens report crimes through text messages and even stream video from their mobile phones to emergency centers.

Established as a national standard in 1968, 911 handles more than 230 million calls a year — 70 percent of which now come from mobile phones.

The last real overhaul of 911 by the FCC came in 2001, when mobile carriers were required to allow 911 to identify the location of callers either through GPS or cell-tower data…

But the 911 system still can’t handle text messages, multimedia messages or streaming video, all of which could be very helpful to first responders.

A system that could handle those messages would also allow people to report crimes without being overheard, which could be useful in situations ranging from kidnapping to seeing someone being robbed on the street…

It’s not clear yet where the money will come from for the upgrades, whether they will be federal requirements states and cities must carry out or if they will simply be suggestions.

Perish the thought our politicians adopt useful, constructive protocols like this without giving every local hack a chance to get in on an opportunity to be “lobbied” by equipment vendors.

Push comes to shove, the Federalist rationale supports small-time graft as well as it does the Congressional flavors.

Dr. Frank Ryan, plastic surgeon to Heidi Montag and other celebrities, was sending a Twitter message about his border collie just before his fatal car accident, his ex-girlfriend tells PEOPLE.

“He lived up in Malibu on a tiny street and he was texting while driving and he accidentally went over the cliff,” Charmaine Blake says.

Blake, a celebrity publicist, says Ryan’s family was told by investigators that the Tweeting caused the wreck on Monday.

The dog, whose name is Jill – Blake’s middle name – was in the car at the time of the crash and survived injuries to the head, eye and paw.

The California Highway Patrol confirms Ryan was texting before the crash, but investigators have not officially determined the cause of the accident.

“It is one of the elements that we are investigating,” CHP Officer Steven Reid says…

She adds that she hopes other people learn from this tragedy that “people should not text and drive at all.”

Golly gee, thanks for the tip, lady.

Drivers of commercial trucks and buses are prohibited from texting under federal guidelines that U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced Tuesday.

“We want the drivers of big rigs and buses and those who share the roads with them to be safe,” LaHood said in a statement. “This is an important safety step, and we will be taking more to eliminate the threat of distracted driving.”

The prohibition is effective immediately. Truck and bus drivers who text while driving commercial vehicles may be subject to civil or criminal penalties of up to $2,750, the Department of Transportation said in a news release.

One of the nation’s largest groups representing professional truck drivers — the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association — expressed support for the goal but dismay at its implementation.

“We very much share in their goal, but their legal justification for taking immediate action raises many concerns.”

Let’s follow the model of Congress and waste several more years talking, talking, taking and providing guarantees for insurance companies.

A 22-year-old man was jailed on charges he shot another man after the two strangers exchanged a series of hostile text messages.

Scott Allen Elder faces an aggravated assault charge in the 2:30 a.m. shooting of Brian Matison, 24, at a CVS parking lot on Edgewater Street, near Montgomery Crossroad, said Veda Lamar Nichols, Savannah-Chatham police spokeswoman.

Matison was in serious condition at Memorial University Medical Center by midday Tuesday, Nichols said.

Elder and Matison had argued through phone calls and text messages after a misdialed number, Nichols said. The pair arranged to meet at the CVS lot, she said.

“They allowed a text message conversation to escalate to physical violence,” Nichols said. “It was just one of those senseless things.”

Just in case you managed to forget for a moment or two just how idiotic human beings can behave.

The head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales is concerned that excessive use of emails and mobile phone text messaging is creating shallow friendships and undermining community life, according to an interview published today.

Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster, also said that popular social networking sites led young people to form “transient relationships” which put them at risk of suicide when they collapsed…

The Archbishop, 63, said too much use of electronic information was “dehumanizing,” leading to a loss in social skills and the ability to read a person’s mood through their body language.

Isn’t this one of the usual rationales against letting people learn how to read?

Furthermore social networking sites encouraged children to place an excessive importance on the number of friends they had instead of the quality of their relationships, he said.

On the one hand, anyone who thinks the head of a medieval religion is required to teach people how to function online is sorely out-of-date. By about six centuries. These are essentials that kids should be learning from parents and school.

On the other, the exaggerated concern is further depiction of how out of touch with reality religious “leaders” actually are. Something from Alice in Wonderland would be about as accurate – “alack-a-day”.

Which finger do you use to press a doorbell? Your answer will reveal your age almost as accurately as wrinkly hands, the way you dance, whether and where you’ve been pierced, and if you think “being poked” means a) a jab in the ribs, b) saying “hi” online, or c) something unmentionable.

If you’re over 30, you’ll probably press a doorbell with your index finger, while anyone under 30 may well use their thumb. That’s because they’ve spent so much time flexing their thumbs when sending text messages on cellphones and gunning down baddies on games consoles. Thanks to all of that exercise, those thumbs have become stronger, nimbler and more dexterous, which is why they’re likelier to use them more than their index fingers.

Frisky thumbs aren’t the only legacy of the latest round of design innovations. The type of products and technologies we use not only affects the development of our physical skills, but mental skills too. Mostly it does so surreptitiously, because we make the necessary changes instinctively.

Just think of all of the skills that, if (like me) you’re over 30, you learned years ago, but rarely use now because something else does the job for you. Who needs to learn how to spell when you can use spell-check software? To read a map in the age of sat nav? To be good at math when there are calculators? To remember exactly where that great antiquarian bookstore is in Paris when it’s so easy to Google it? Those old skills haven’t suddenly become useless, just less useful than they would have been 10 years ago. What have we replaced them with?

Multitasking, synthesizing, visualizing…are some of the qualities Rawsthorn offers for further discussion; though, she seems transfixed by dextrous thumbs.

What dilettantes call multi-tasking I think best describes people with the attention span of a cricket.

A pair of US inventors are bringing to market a computerized car key that prevents people from chatting on mobile telephones or sending text messages while driving.

Key2SafeDriving adds to a trend of using technology to thwart speeding, drunken driving, and other risky behavior proven to ramp-up the odds of crashing.

Once slipped into a car’s ignition, the key created by US university researcher Xuesong Zhou and Dr Wallace Curry sends a wireless signal to a driver’s mobile phone blocking calls or texting.

Traffic statistics support arguments that mobile telephones are on par with alcohol use when it comes to hurting judgment and reaction times of drivers.

They’re all correct; but, I still chuckle over a mate of mine who was busted while steering with his knees, hamburger in one hand, slurpee in the other. He saw a couple of cops he knew – going the other way in their police car – and he raised the slurpee to say, “Hi” – while taking a bite out of the hamburger at the same time.

They let him go after he finished lunch.

A fatal moped accident occurred Sunday night, and police believe that the driver was text messaging minutes before the crash. Douglas Flores, 41, was killed when his moped crashed into a telephone pole. Flores’ vehicle was seen driving off of the road before the crash at around 9:00 p.m. Sunday.

Witnesses also told deputies that he may have been trying to text message while driving the scooter.

The sheriff’s office said that the investigation may include looking at Flores’ cell phone records at the time of the accident.

Right now, the sheriff’s department has not been able to locate his cell phone at the scene of the crash.

I imagine that cellphone traveled a pretty fair distance before landing. The telephone pole didn’t move at all.

Oh, one TV report said he wasn’t wearing a helmet, either.