Scientists Finding Out What Losing Sleep Does to a Body “A large, new study, for example, provides the latest in a flurry of evidence suggesting that the nation’s obesity epidemic is being driven, at least in part, by a corresponding decrease in the average number of hours that Americans are sleeping, possibly by disrupting hormones that regulate appetite. The analysis of a nationally representative sample of nearly 10,000 adults found that those between the ages of 32 and 49 who sleep less than seven hours a night are significantly more likely to be obese.”
20 of your unusual words “So far as I’m aware, no other language has anything equivalent to the Icelandic ‘setja upp gestaspjot’, a verbal phrase denoting the action taken by a cat when cleaning itself, with its body curled tightly in a circle and one back leg sticking directly up in the air. Literally it means ‘put up a guest-spear’ and when a cat was seen doing this it was supposed to indicate that visitors would be turning up.”
Vonnegut, on politics, presidents and librarians “The America I loved,” he writes, “still exists in the front desks of public libraries.”
China to Develop Its Own DVD Format “Up to 80 percent of DVD players are made in China, but makers have to cough up around 40 percent of the cost of each player to license holders, according to Chinese reports.” Good leverage.