Sounds right:

What is the secret to getting a solid 7 to 8 hours of sleep? Head for the kitchen and enjoy one or two of these 10 foods. They relax tense muscles, quiet buzzing minds, and/or get calming, sleep-inducing hormones - serotonin and melatonin - flowing. Yawning yet?

Bananas. They’re practically a sleeping pill in a peel. In addition to a bit of soothing melatonin and serotonin, bananas contain magnesium, a muscle relaxant.

Chamomile tea. The reason chamomile is such a staple of bedtime tea blends is its mild sedating effect - it’s the perfect natural antidote for restless minds/bodies.

Warm milk. It’s not a myth. Milk has some tryptophan - an amino acid that has a sedative - like effect - and calcium, which helps the brain use tryptophan. Plus there’s the psychological throw-back to infancy, when a warm bottle meant “relax, everything’s fine.”

Honey. Drizzle a little in your warm milk or herb tea. Lots of sugar is stimulating, but a little glucose tells your brain to turn off orexin, a recently discovered neurotransmitter that’s linked to alertness.

Potatoes. A small baked spud won’t overwhelm your GI tract, and it clears away acids that can interfere with yawn-inducing tryptophan. To up the soothing effects, mash it with warm milk.

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Glenn Greenwald lays it out:

Glenn Reynolds points to this article from The Independent which reports that a “leading Islamic doctor is urging British Muslims not to vaccinate their children against diseases such as measles, mumps, and rubella because they contain substances making them unlawful for Muslims to take.” Reynolds’ response:

 

JUST THINK OF IT AS EVOLUTION IN ACTION

I don’t think there is any evolutionary theory that celebrates or finds purpose in the death of children as a result of stupid actions taken by their parents. This just seems instead like a good excuse for pointing out how primitive Muslims are and how they deserve death (what else does it mean to say “Just think of it as evolution in action”?).

And it would be one thing if the people at risk of death were the adults who refused vaccines for themselves on religious grounds, but what kind of person has this reaction to reading a story about the lives of children being endangered as a result of a denial by their parents of necessary medical precautions? “Evolution in action”? That’s just deranged.

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Click a photo to enlarge, then click the enlargement to switch back and forth between “before” and “after” — and yes, it’s quite obvious which is which.

It took me a couple of viewings to understand that he’s not moving the candles, he’s lighting them and putting them out. Cute.

with 60 miles of road:

Wiltshire’s Secret Underground City: the 35 acre subterranean Cold War City that lies 100 feet beneath Corsham.

Built in the late 50s, this massive city complex was designed to safely house up to 4,000 central Government personnel in the event of a nuclear strike.

In a former Bath stone quarry the city, code named Burlington, was to be the site of the main Emergency Government War Headquarters - the hub of the Country’s alternative seat of power outside London.

Over a kilometre in length, and boasting over 60 miles of roads, the underground site was designed not only to accommodate the then Conservative Prime Minister, Harold MacMillan, but the entire Cabinet Office, civil servants and an army of domestic support staff.

The site was so top secret that many of the civil servants, who had been allocated a desk at Burlington, had no knowledge of it.

Blast proof and completely self-sufficient the secret underground site could accommodate up to 4,000 people, in complete isolation from the outside world, for up to three months.

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And why you should be happy about that.

Here’s how you can make a giant Klein bottle for yourself. Great weekend project—make several for surprise Xmas gifts.

I could never be a coupon-clipper—too many coupons that are irrelevant to me—but this approach, using a coupon broker, might make it worthwhile.

I think I’ll try that four-container method. Here are the tips.

No surprises here, but good to review anyway. (I corrected the error—alas, common—of using “healthy” in place of “healthful.”)

This year, millions of Americans made the resolution to lose weight. However, many will get frustrated and give up before their goals are reached. Contributing to this problem is the host of bad information regarding diet and exercise circulating through gyms, workplaces, and the Internet. Julie Bender, a dietitian with Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas, and Phil Tyne, director of the Baylor Tom Landry Health and Wellness Center “weigh in” on the most popular diet and exercise myths:

1. Crunches will get rid of your belly fat. False. “You can’t pick and choose areas where you’d like to burn fat”, says Tyne. “In order to burn fat, you should create a workout that includes both cardiovascular and strength training elements. This will decrease your overall body fat content”.

2. Stretching before exercise is crucial. False. Some studies have suggested that stretching actually increases muscles’ susceptibility to injury. They claim that by stretching, our muscle fibers are lengthened and destabilized, making them less prepared for the strain placed upon them by exercise. “You might want to warm-up and stretch before a run, but if you are lifting weights wait until after the workout to stretch the muscles,” adds Tyne.

3. You should never eat before a workout. False. “Fuel” coming from food and fluids is required to provide the energy for your muscles to work efficiently even if you are doing an early morning workout. “Consider eating a small meal or snack one to three hours prior to exercise. Load up your tank with premium ‘fuel’ and choose some fruit, yogurt, or whole wheat toast,” says Bender.

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Take a look. Very strange. Good science-fiction material, though.

From CQ:

National Security Whistle Blowers: The ‘Undead’?

By Jeff Stein, CQ National Security Editor

You’d think a guy who helped bring down a corrupt congressman would get the thanks of a grateful government.

But you, of course, would be wrong.

Like so many other disillusioned ex-CIA, FBI and other erstwhile spooks, Haig Melkessetian’s career was derailed for telling the truth.

Today, he’s another casualty of Iraq, one of the growing number of national security “undead” in Washington’s intelligence demimonde, “entities that are deceased yet behave as if alive,” according to Wikipedia’s take on the horror flick creatures—“animated corpses,” bureaucratically speaking.

Melkessetian, a former security aide and Arabic translator to Jerry Bremer, the first American proconsul in Iraq, now works in a far lesser job for a U.S. government contractor in the Virginia suburbs.

His first sin: Telling Pentagon officials how screwed up things were in Iraq.

A Beirut-raised former Special Forces operative, Melkessetian told Pentagon officials early in the war that the contractor he worked for had sent unqualified personnel to Baghdad. It was typical of the war’s mismanagement, he said.

Half the linguists he worked with did not speak fluent Arabic, he reported. One was a Russian linguist who spoke no Arabic at all.

That contractor he was working for was the now-notorious MZM, whose president, Mitchell Wade, had an unusually close relationship with then-Rep. Randall “Duke” Cunningham, R-Calif., a member of the House Intelligence Committee, and other high-level politicians with national security connections.

When Wade tried to involve Melkessetian in an MZM scheme to put together a congressional delegation to Saudi Arabia, led by Cunningham, to brush up the kingdom’s post-9/11 image, the former soldier balked: There were too many Saudi connections to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Eventually, of course, Cunningham went to jail for steering contracts to MZM in exchange for $2.4 million.

Wade, too, will almost certainly go to jail, after he finishes telling federal investigators about every palm he greased on Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, and perhaps the CIA, as part of his plea agreement.

Meanwhile, a federal prosecutor in San Diego has given the House Appropriations, Armed Services and Intelligence committees a Jan. 31 deadline for turning over records related to Cunningham and contractor earmarks.

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8apps seems to be a mash-up of a social networking app with a productivity app. This review gives good examples and screenshots, and even has a success story. It begins:

Last year I had selected the task management solution Orchestrate as a top pick in 25 To Do Lists to Stay Productive. Now Tokyo based startup Jonkenpon, creator of Orchestrate, has launched a service called 8apps which aims to be a social network for productive people. The idea is to create a community where users can not only meet new people but work with them in a suite of productivity based applications. There are currently three applications available in the 8apps suite with five more to come. The first three applications are Handshake, Orchestrate and Blueprint offering social networking, task management and brainstorming. In a blog post announcing 8apps, Jonkenpon explains that they do not plan on competing with offerings such as 37signals or Google Docs but rather fill in the gaps where they lack in productivity with a suite of small, focused applications.

What makes 8apps special is the concept of applications within a social network. Essentially, it’s a social network that you join to be more productive. It may sound strange at first, but I think 8apps is onto something. The 8apps social network is called Handshake and serves as a place to connect with co-workers, meet new people, and show your stuff. Any user that you connect with in Handshake can ultimately collaborate with you in any 8apps application. You can, for example, search for a developer to connect with and brainstorm about a possible project together without leaving the site. In fact, someone has already come in contact with Tim, one of our editors, for possible design work. Not bad considering that we’ve only been registered to 8apps for a week!

More at the link, including screenshots.

Via Lifehacker: Quizlet looks to be an excellent tool for learning basic facts: foreign words, state capitals, chemical elements, vocabulary review/extension, English measures (how many furlongs in a rod?) — anything along that line. And it’s free, with some quizzes already set up. (You set up your own for the more exotic fare.)

It occurs to me that someone teaching, say, Latin could set up quizlets for the students to give them a leg up in learning each assignment. Same goes for history. Etc.