08.02.06
Tips for better sleep
I sleep well, The Wife has her struggles. Here’s an article on sleep deficits and tips on sleeping. It begins with a series of rather personal questions:
Do you tend to hit the snooze button on your alarm clock several times before getting out of bed? Does it take you forever, on certain days, to get yourself together before you leave the house? How many mornings have you decided that you need an extra cup of coffee just to get started, or an afternoon slug of espresso to make it through the day?
Do you ever take catnaps at your desk during lunch hour? Are there times when your patience runs so thin that you can barely listen to the stories of a colleague whose company you ordinarily enjoy? Do you recall snapping at your supervisor or your partner only to regret it moments—or days—later? Do you fall asleep in front of the TV when you come home from the lab? These can all be signs of a sleep deficit, which can cause a number of different problems if you choose to overlook them.
The article includes a sidebar with these tips:
- Sleep only as much as you need to feel refreshed the next day.
- Get up at the same time, 7 days a week.
- Exercise regularly.
- Make sure your bedroom is comfortable and free of disturbing light and noise.
- Make sure that your bedroom is at a comfortable temperature during the night.
- Eat regular meals and do not go to bed hungry.
- Avoid excessive fluids in the evening. Cut down on caffeine products.
- Avoid alcohol, especially in the evening.
- Smoking may disturb sleep.
- Don’t take your problems to bed.
- Train yourself to use the bedroom only for sleeping and sexual activity.
- Do not TRY to fall asleep.
- Put the clock under the bed or turn it so that you cannot see it.
- Avoid taking naps.
I recall from a Science News article some years back the importance of having a truly darkened room for sleep. Even minute light sources keep one from enjoying the deepest sleep. If you can’t get the room fully dark (and that’s difficult in cities), a sleep mask can help. The photo shows the best I’ve found: very effective and very comfortable. It has a wide elastic band with a Velcro fastener: once you find the right tension, you don’t undo the Velcro, just slip the band on and off your head.
War crimes immunity sought
Via Dan Froomkin’s column today, this Salon article (you have to wait through an ad) reports on how the War Crimes Act got passed and how the Bush Administration is trying to get rid of it. I’ll provide just the beginning of the article, but you should read it all.
Retired Navy pilot Mike Cronin knows enough about torture to know it doesn’t work. After being shot down over North Vietnam in 1967, he spent six years enduring interrogations in the Hanoi Hilton, the notorious holding block for American prisoners of war. His neck and ankles were bound together with rope, causing him to lose consciousness. The nerves and bones in his wrists were crushed. His shoulder was ripped out of its socket. He was forced to talk, but he never gave the North Vietnamese the information they wanted.
“I told lies,” explained Cronin, 65, in a telephone interview from Cape Cod, Mass., where he is spending the summer. “When you put people in that position, the information you get is not reliable.” Read the rest of this entry »
GOP promises: “We’ll do nothing about global warming.”
ThinkProgress has the story: The GOP has promised not to take any action in response to global warming or climate change:
House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said he would oppose global warming mandates if Republicans control the 110th Congress. “I think the information is not adequate yet for us to do anything meaningful,” he said.
He does not say what “adequate” information would be. As it is, thousands of scientists have agreed that global warming is happening—and at an accelerating rate—and we certainly can take steps now to minimize or even reverse it. But not if the GOP remains in control.
Interesting anti-virus thought
Via Boing Boing, this article suggests that the most popular anti-virus software may be the least reliable. Why? Because virus writers test their work against the best-selling anti-virus packages:
… the actual reason why the top selling antivirus applications don’t work is because malware authors are specifically testing their Trojans and viruses to make sure they can bypass these applications before releasing them in the wild.
“The most popular brands of antivirus on the market… have an 80 percent miss rate… So if you are running these pieces of software, eight out of 10 pieces of malicious code are going to get in,” said Ingram
Read the article for a possible counter-measure: using an unpopular anti-virus program…
UPDATE: But to install the Karpensky anti-virus program, I have to uninstall the Symantic anti-virus program. That’s a conundrum. I fear I lack the faith, and will stick with Symantec. So far, it’s worked to keep the viruses out.
Are you ready to stand trial?
If not, no problem: your trial can proceed without you. See below.
The government wants to expand its power to haul citizens before their tribunals and detain them indefinitely:
A draft Bush administration plan for special military courts seeks to expand the reach and authority of such “commissions” to include trials, for the first time, of people who are not members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban and are not directly involved in acts of international terrorism, according to officials familiar with the proposal.
The plan, which would replace a military trial system ruled illegal by the Supreme Court in June, would also allow the secretary of defense to add crimes at will to those under the military court’s jurisdiction. The two provisions would be likely to put more individuals than previously expected before military juries, officials and independent experts said.
The draft proposed legislation, set to be discussed at two Senate hearings today, is controversial inside and outside the administration because defendants would be denied many protections guaranteed by the civilian and traditional military criminal justice systems.
Under the proposed procedures, defendants would lack rights to confront accusers, exclude hearsay accusations, or bar evidence obtained through rough or coercive interrogations. They would not be guaranteed a public or speedy trial and would lack the right to choose their military counsel, who in turn would not be guaranteed equal access to evidence held by prosecutors.
Detainees would also not be guaranteed the right to be present at their own trials, if their absence is deemed necessary to protect national security or individuals. Read the rest of this entry »
More cover-ups
From today’s Washington Post, a report of more cover-ups:
Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept. 11 panel concluded that the Pentagon’s initial story of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public rather than a reflection of the fog of events on that day, according to sources involved in the debate.
Suspicion of wrongdoing ran so deep that the 10-member commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, according to several commission sources. Staff members and some commissioners thought that e-mails and other evidence provided enough probable cause to believe that military and aviation officials violated the law by making false statements to Congress and to the commission, hoping to hide the bungled response to the hijackings, these sources said. … Read the rest of this entry »
Megs in cubby…
The cubbyhole turns out to be comfortable enough (or uncomfortable enough—you know kitties) for a nap. Megs leaps at the chance, as it were.
