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Ask Well I love my partner
I love my partner, but the rumbling snores keep me awake. Any solutions for people like us? Sharing a bed with someone who snores can be a challenge. It's also a common one — up to half of adults in the United States snore regularly, some data suggests, and their partners can suffer. Experts say the first step to getting some rest is understanding what's causing the noise. When the muscles that keep your airway open become relaxed while you sleep, your airway can narrow, causing the soft tissues in your throat to vibrate with each breath, said Daniel Vena, an assistant professor of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School. "Those muscles go to sleep when you go to sleep," Dr. Vena said. Also, people who are overweight tend to snore because extra tissues in the tongue and throat can hinder airflow, he said. Congestion can also constrict an airway; some people snore because of a cold or allergies, said Dr. Kuljeet K. Gill, a clinical assistant professor of sleep medicine at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. For partners who snore regularly, the first step is to rule out obstructive sleep apnea. This is a potentially serious condition that occurs when the airway collapses enough during sleep that it blocks airflow, temporarily pausing breathing and causing people to wake up gasping for air. Untreated, sleep apnea can increase the risk for heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and certain cancers. Most people with sleep apnea snore, Dr. Vena said. But not all people who snore have sleep apnea, so get a proper diagnosis. A sleep specialist or an ear, nose and throat doctor should be able to help, said Dr. Omar G. Ahmed, an E.N.T. sleep surgeon at Houston Methodist Hospital. Lifestyle changes like losing weight or quitting smoking — or the use of continuous positive airway pressure machines — may also curtail snoring. in addition, consider these tips: DISCOURAGE MOUTH BREATHING If your partner has a blocked nose, he or she is probably breathing through the mouth instead, Dr. Gill said. That can lead to snoring, she added. To promote nose breathing while sleeping, your partner can apply nasal strips or clear the sinuses with a nasal rinse before bed. If there's a more permanent blockage, like a deviated septum or nasal polyps, surgery might be an option, Dr. Ahmed said. PROMOTE SIDE SLEEPING When sleeping on your back, gravity can cause your airway to narrow, which results in snoring, Dr. Vena said. To help your partner, try placing firm pillows behind his or her back, said Heather E. Gunn, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Alabama. Or you can make rolling over uncomfortable by sewing or taping tennis balls or other objects onto the back of a shirt, said Wendy Troxel, a senior behavioral scientist at the RAND Corporation, a think tank whose research includes public health. TUNE OUT THE SOUND Covering your ear with a pillow is one way to stifle the noise, but you'd most likely need to adjust it during the night, Dr. Gunn said. Instead, try wearing earplugs, running a fan or playing white noise, she said. TRY A SLEEP DIVORCE If all else fails, try sleeping separately from your partner, perhaps in a spare bedroom (if you have one) or on the couch. A "sleep divorce" might seem bad for your relationship at first, Dr. Gunn said. But inadequate rest can also sink a relationship, Dr. Troxel said. Offset the time apart with quality time together during the day. Caroline Hopkins Legaspi
Started by Dan Eggleston @
fonts ampersand
Much of what one needs to know about the history and beauty of a font may be found in its ampersand. Done well, an & is not so much a character as a creature, an animal from the deep. Or it is a character in the other sense of the word, usually a tirelessly entertaining one, perhaps an uncle with too many magic tricks. Although long treated as a single character or glyph, the ampersand is actually two letters combined - the e and the t of the Latin 'et' (the word ampersand is a conflation of 'et, per se and'). It is the result of scribes working fast: its first use is usually credited to a shorthand writing method proposed by Marcus Tiro in 63 BC. The biggest and most noble demonstration of its unifying potential came in early 2010, when the Society of Typographic Aficionados (SOTA) released 'Coming Together', a font consisting of 483 different ampersands. This cost $20, with all proceeds going to Doctors Without Borders to assist with the Haiti earthquake appeal. Almost four hundred designers from thirty-seven countries contributed one or more glyphs, ranging from the Caslon-esque to the almost unrecognizable. It was the fourth FontAid event, the first three benefiting Unicef (26 letter pairs), the families of victims of September 11 (a collection of question marks) and those affected by the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami (400 floral ornaments known as fleurons). Coming Together swiftly became a bestseller at the digital font agencies that offered it. This is the best thing about the ampersand - its energy, its refusal to sit still. It is almost impossible to look at one and not think about its shape, or to draw one and not think about liberation. Simon Garfield "Just My Type" (2010)
Started by Dan Eggleston @
halberstam deming & quality
He hated waste, and he felt that America had become a wasteful country, not only of its abundant natural resources but also of its human talents. It was a nation, he believed, about to squander its exceptional blessings. He mocked American management, finding it responsible for most of the nation's woes, and he liked to tell audiences that the one thing this country must never do is export its managerial class - at least to friendly nations. He had little tolerance for fools (and he thought most American managers fools), especially those who pretended to care about his principles but had no intention of changing their ways. He was for most of his career virtually unknown in America, a prophet without honor in his own land, but he was one of the most important figures of the second industrial revolution, that is, the challenge of East Asia to the West. As much as any man he gave the Japanese the system that allowed them to maximize their greatest natural strength, their manpower. His system for quality control provided them with a series of industrial disciplines mathematically defined, and with a manner of group participation that fitted well with the traditions of their culture. It was in essence a mathematical means of controlling the level of quality on an industrial line by seeking ever finer manufacturing tolerances. What Deming and the other leading American authority on quality control, Joseph Juran, were telling the Japanese was that quality was not some minor function that could be accomplished by having some of the workers at the lowest levels attend a class or two, or by appointing a certain number of inspectors to keep an eye on things. True quality demanded a totality of commitment that began at the very top; if top management was committed to the idea of quality and if executive promotions were tied to quality, then the priority would seep down into the middle and lower levels of management, and thus inevitably to me workers. It could not, as so many American companies seemed to expect, be imposed at the bottom. American companies could not appoint some medium-level executive, usually one whom no division of the company particularly wanted, and, for lack of something better to do with him, put him in charge of something called quality. The first thing that an executive like that would do, Deming said, and quite possibly the only thing, was to come up with slogans and display them on banners. If the company treated quality as a gimmick or an afterthought, then true quality would never result. Above all, he was saying, quality had to be central to the purpose of a company. The America of the fifties and sixties had scorned Deming and his teaching and in effect driven him abroad to find his students. America in those years was rich and unchallenged, the customers seemed satisfied, and in most important fields there were few competing foreign products against which a buyer might judge the quality of an American product and find it wanting. The theory of management then asserting itself in American business was a new one: managers should no longer be OF the plant. They should come from the managerial class, as it arrived from the best colleges and business schools, and they should view management as a modern science. Their experience should not be practical, as it had been in previous generations, but abstract. Practical experience was, if anything, a handicap. They were not men who knew the factory floor, nor did the people on their boards of directors know it either. Later, after Japan became immensely successful, too much was made, Deming thought, of the fact that an ordinary Japanese worker had a lifetime contract with his company; too little was made of the fact that the Japanese manager had a comparable contract – he would stay the course, remain absolutely loyal to the company and thus to the product, and his restraint on his ambition might be its own reward. Too little was also made, Deming believed, of that fact that the Japanese manager's roots were typically in science and engineering, as were those o
Started by Dan Eggleston @
herzog aguirre prep
WHAT PREPARATION DID YOU DO FOR FILMING IN THE JUNGLE? The calibre of some films is decided by pre-production, and preproduction on Aguirre was meticulous. Before I took the crew into the jungle I bought the most primitive and cheapest of cameras - some tiny Super 8" plastic thing with a wide-angle lens which I couldn't even focus - and went to Peru, where I scouted locations. It was the first time I had ever been in the jungle. I did reconnaissance on a small steamboat, then had a nimble balsa raft constructed. For several weeks an oarsman and I drifted down the Urubamba, Nanay and Huallaga tributaries, sleeping on hammocks and rarely leaving the raft. From the first to the last tributary was a distance of nearly fifteen hundred miles. I was trying to develop a feeling for the river's currents, searching for those that looked spectacular but weren't too dangerous. Several stretches were clearly too hazardous for a film crew. At one point the raft struck some rocks and was split in two. The half we were on became caught in a whirlpool; what saved us was getting stuck in a strong current and being swept several miles away. It would have been a disaster to have made the film without having gone down there beforehand to test things out. It was crucial to be in physical contact with the rapids before I started filming, not unlike a few years before, when I took the actors and crew around the fortress before we shot Signs of Life. I had to create some tactile connection to the place, and wanted everyone to be familiar with the environment before we started filming. "We aren't going to pull out the equipment for at least two days," I said, and asked them to walk around, touching the walls and feeling the smooth surfaces, which is how I had experienced the fortress myself when I first encountered it as a teenager. Peru was governed by a military dictatorship it the time we made Aguirre, but a left-wing one that had nationalised various industries and instituted a vast land-reform programme. President Juan Velasco Alvarado was of Native Indian descent and controlled a regime very different to those of people like Stroessner in Paraguay and Pinochet in Chile. We weren't offered much assistance by the Peruvian government, though the army supplied us with an amphibian aircraft and established a radio station, which meant we could be in contact with the nearest big city, providing the electricity didn't fail. Shooting permits were needed, otherwise showing up at conspicuous places like Machu Picchu would have been problematic. The government representatives we worked with appreciated that the strongest force in Aguirre is the Native Indians with their ancient heritage, fighting the imperialist invaders. They are the ones who ultimately survive, not the plundering Spanish conquistadors. Once production started, we built an encampment for 450 people on Rio Urubamba, including the 270 Indians from the mountains who acted as extras. It was so big I decided it needed a name, so I called it Pelicula a Muerte [Film or Death], which is a joke version of the Cubans' cry of "Patria a muerte" at the Bay of Pigs. For a time I slept in a nearby hut owned by a hunchback dwarf, her nine children and more than a hundred guinea pigs, which crawled all over me. We eventually moved to Rio Huallaga, but with a much smaller group of extras because throughout the story so many characters drop away like flies. Filming took about six weeks, including a whole week lost when we took the cast and crew from one tributary to another, a distance of more than a thousand miles. Once we arrived at Rio Nanay we lived on rafts that had been especially built. There were less than ten in total, and on each was a small hut with a thatched roof and hammocks inside. We weren't able to set foot on dry land because in the flat lowlands the jungle was flooded for miles around, so at night we tied the rafts to overhanging branches. They floated in a convoy about a mile behind the one we were shooting on, which meant we could film the river without having any other rafts in sh
Started by Dan Eggleston @
herzog aguirre footage
About halfway through" shooting Aguirre, it looked as though everything we filmed had been lost in transit to the laboratory in Mexico, where the exposed negative was to be processed. The plan was for everything to be transported to Lima, and from there to Mexico City. Our only form of communication with the lab was a telex machine, but they insisted no negative had been received. Only my brother Lucki and I knew that everything might be irretrievably lost; we told none of the actors or crew because they would have instantly freaked out. We knew it was an absurdity to continue shooting because we had no insurance, so there was no choice but to muster our nerve and carryon with our work. I thought perhaps the lab had accidentally destroyed everything, but had a hunch there was a problem with the shipping company in Lima. They insisted the material had been sent to Mexico, so I asked Lucki to head down there and told him to enter their offices if necessary by force. He eventually scaled a high fence and found all the footage thrown away, scattered inside the sealed-off customs area at Lima airport, baking in the scorching sun. The shipping agency had bribed various airport employees to stamp the documents, which "proved" our negative had left the country. Apparently it was too much trouble to actually send the material. Lucki grabbed everything and took it to Mexico City himself. So I you all now: whenever you have to, Jump the Fence. And if you can't do that, barbed wire is easy enough to get through; just set about it with wire cutters. Razor wire is something else. Find a mattress to cover it before making the leap. Werner Herzog "Werner Herzog A Guide For The Perplexed" (2015)
Started by Dan Eggleston @
hitch on radio
Wanger endorsed putting Hitchcock on radio mainly for the promotional value - at that point he and Hitchcock were talking about a long-term association - whereas the Selznick Agency was motivated by the financial considerations. Myron's brother David, as usual, was the chief skeptic. Wasn't radio declasse? Wouldn't a radio series take too much of Hitchcock's time - time better spent on prestigious Selznick films or better-paying loan-outs? And if Hitchcock did apply himself to radio, wouldn't DOS be entitled to his usual cut? Throughout the spring of 1940, the director squeezed in meetings and phone calls and memos, dreaming up an Alfred Hitchcock radio series. Radio producer Joe Graham saw Hitchcock as emcee of a weekly anthology program presenting the favorite detective stories of famous people; the first episode, hypothetically, might be based on a story of President Roosevelt's choice. But Hitchcock told Graham he wasn't a fan of detectives per se - he was generally more interested in the victims and criminals – and the concept evolved, after a few meetings, into a series of mystery melodramas of Hitchcock's choosing, with him introducing and producing. The series would be called Suspense. But the meetings and preparatory work were suspended after DOS decided he didn't want his director wasting valuable energy on a radio profram over which Selznick International exerted no control, and for which it was unclear who would receive the payment. Myron tried to budge his brother - this is one instance where the agency aggressively pursued Hitchcock's wishes - but, as was becoming typical, without effect. DOS was was adamant: No radio series. Because the contract with DOS was ambiguous when came to nonfilm activity, Hitchcock wasn't convinced it was the producer's prerogative. But lawyers for the director and the agency warned him repeatedly against skirting the contract. Shrewdly, then, Hitchcock floated an idea: What if he exercised his acquired rights to The Lodger for radio? Not only would that help him establish a foothold in the broadcast medium, but a well-done radio show would enhance his prospects of remaking the film. DOS reluctantly okayed a radio production of The Lodger as a onetime experiment. Hitchcock borrowed two of the main actors from Foreign Correspondent: Herbert Marshall as Mr. Sleuth (the Lodger) and Edmund Gwenn (whose English currency had helped secure the rights) as the landlord. (This was an in-joke: his brother Arthur Chesney had played the part in Hitchcock's silent film. The Lodger was broadcast as an audition in the Forecast series on July 22, 1940. Patrick McGilligan "Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light" (2003)
Started by Dan Eggleston @
Ask NYT Climate How can I lower my climate risk when buying a house
Ask NYT Climate How can I lower my climate risk when buying a house? When thinking through your home-buying decision, it's useful to think in terms of two categories of risk, according to Jesse Keenan, a professor at Tulane University who studies the effects of climate change on real estate. The first is what could be called climate shocks. As humans burn more fossil fuels, causing global temperatures to increase, extreme weather events like hurricanes, floods and wildfires are becoming more frequent and intense. That means the risk of your house being damaged or destroyed by a disaster is growing over time. The second category is climate stresses, Dr. Keenan said. More frequent and severe disasters are forcing local governments to spend more on infrastructure services that are funded largely through property taxes. "Taxes are only going up with climate change," he said. Climate stress also affects the cost of home insurance. The amount of money that households paid for insurance rose faster than inflation between 2014 and 2023, according to data compiled by Benjamin Keys, a professor of real estate at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, and Philip Mulder, a professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Business. And don't forget the potential effect of climate change on your home's long-term value. Properties in areas at greater risk from climate change "are also at risk of seeing a thinner pool of buyers," said Sam Chandan, founding director of the Chen Institute for Global Real Estate at New York University's Stern School of Business. There was a period not long ago when people talked about "climate havens," places where some mix of geography, topography and weather patterns meant the risk of climate shocks would be, if not zero, then close to it. People in Miami would say that if the seas rose, they would move someplace safe, like Asheville, N.C. Then Hurricane Helene came for Asheville, emphasizing in the most painful way that no place is immune. But that doesn't mean all properties are equally exposed. Rather than think in binary terms like risky or safe, prospective home buyers should get comfortable with idea of degrees, Dr. Keys said. All that said, does this mean a house is a bad idea now? Not necessarily. Experts stress that homeownership remains, in general, a good way to build wealth. The point is, you should ask questions. Start by assessing the amount of risk facing the property you're considering, according to Sheila Foster, a professor at Columbia University's Climate School. One important thing to do is check whether the property is in a federally designated flood zone. But being outside a flood zone doesn't mean your risk is zero. You should also consider your home's exposure to heat. Neighborhoods with plenty of trees and green space will give you more options during a heat wave, keeping your home cooler in general, and especially if your power fails. If you're looking at buying a condo, ask about the building, Ms. Foster added. Does it use efficient forms of heating? Does it meet recognized standards, like LEED certification? Buying a home was never a financial slam dunk, even before climate change became a growing concern. Any number of things could cause the value of your home to fall. Climate change just adds to the uncertainty. But in some cases, that additional risk may be too much. Dr. Keenan said that in high-risk areas like coastal Florida, he would rent rather than buy. Take the money you would have spent on insurance, maintenance and other costs, and put it into the stock market, he said. "Your rate of return is going to be greater." If you're looking at a place facing an existential risk from sea-level rise, like the Florida Keys or the Outer Banks of North Carolina, "you need to go in really clear-eyed," Dr. Keys said. "These assets are not there for the long haul." As for other places, Dr. Keys said to find out how much insurance costs now. Then, consider whether you could still afford your monthly costs if those insurance premiums doubled or tripled. If the answer is n
Started by Dan Eggleston @
jeppeson toilet
My bladder's always full at break time, so I make my way to the men's room at the end of the hall. There's no plumbing, just a waist-high tiled sink filled with water and a small bucket on the side. After pissing, I go to the sink, fill the bucket with water, pour it in the urinal. If you shit in one of the two squat toilet stalls, several trips from the sink to the toilet are required to clean up after yourself. Travis Jeppesen "See You Again in Pyongyang: A Journey into Kim Jong Un's North Korea" (2018)
Started by Dan Eggleston @
halberstam cold nissan
Katayama and Kawazoe had direct personal knowledge of the car's problems, for in the beginning theirs was truly a shoestring operation; if a Datsun broke down - and one often did - and everyone else was busy, the sales manager himself might have to drive the repair truck to pull it off the road. Katayama and Kawazoe, in fact, sometimes ended up doing the repair themselves. If worse came to worse and the car could not be fixed, they might even lend the enraged owner their own cars. Nor was it just the Datsun that was terrible; the first Toyota to enter the American market, at about the same time, was such a bomb that Toyota took it off the market, went back to work on it, and did not come back into the U.S. market until 1964. There were those who worked for Nissan in America who believed that Tokyo, realizing how bad its car was, had declined to put the company's name on it, calling it not the Nissan but the Datsun, so that if the car failed, there would be less loss of face. Only twenty years later, when their cars were demonstrated successes, did the company go through the clumsy and expensive process of changing its American name. The worst thing about the Datsun was that its engine was simply too small. Its displacement was only 1000cc. Even the VW's was 1300, and the smaller American cars in those heady pre-oil-crunch days were coming in with engines of 5OOO and 6000cc displacement. With the Datsun's little engine, its acceleration was poor, a real problem on the entrance ramps of the California freeways. Also, the brakes were weak. That was not all. The Datsun was designed for Japanese winters, which by and large were milder than American ones, and the car was very difficult to start in the winter, in part because the battery was too small. For the Datsuns in the northern sections on each coast, this morning sluggishness was a major problem. In the East, the Datsuns were selling mainly to blue-collar people who could not afford better cars. Generally, were people who got up early, when the engines were coldest the batteries weakest. Masataka Usami, one of the Nissan executives, who lived in Greenwood Lake, New Jersey, and whose own car would not start in cold weather, reported back to his port team in Tokyo that Nissan could not have a car that started only two out of ten times. Tokyo was not very helpful. The alleged starting problems were impossible, they insisted, since they had checked and Hokkaido - the northernmost of the Japanese home islands, where Datsuns started without difficulty - was just as cold as New Jersey. David Halberstam "The Reckoning" (1987)
Started by Dan Eggleston @
A&P boxes, canned goods
In the early 1880s, though, name-brand groceries still lay in the future. Their arrival, and the spread of retail food chains that would follow in their wake, awaited two inventions so prosaic they were quickly taken for granted: the cardboard box and the tin can. The cardboard box was the result of an accident at the Metropolitan Paper-Bag Manufactory in New York. The paper bag had been invented to replace cotton bags unavailable during the Civil War, and Metropolitan's founder, the inventor Robert Gair, developed the earliest method of mass-producing bags printed with the name of a retailer or manufacturer. By 1878, Metropolitan's eighteen-page catalog included such offerings as oyster-fry boxes and candy boxes, all of which were meticulously folded by hand and were far too costly for general use. Early the following year, one of Gair's workers ruined a print run of paper bags by placing a rule too high above the plane of his printing form, so that instead of printing a line it cut clear through the paper. The mishap led to an inspiration: Gair realized "that if he arranged blades at different heights, some could slice through cardboard to create the template for a box while others could simultaneously score the cardboard, without cutting through, where folds were required. In addition to providing a cheap, convenient form of packaging, Gair's boxes offered surfaces that could be decorated with pictures, logos, and brand names. Instead of asking the grocer for a pound of soap powder, the shopper could now request a particular variety by name. Canned goods, like cardboard boxes, were an old idea that became economical only in the 1880s. Canned goods were first used to feed Napoleon's army in 1795, and the first U.S. canning plant was established in 1819. But cans were expensive: each was made of tin pieces individually cut with shears and then soldered together, with a skilled can maker turning out a hundred cans of day. The industry got a boost from military orders during the Civil War and the start of salmon canning on the Pacific coast in 1864, and by 1870 the United States had over a hundred plants canning fruits, vegetables, fish, and oysters. The key inventions came in 1874, when two Baltimore men, A. K. Shriver and John Fisher, found alternative ways of controlling temperature to avoid explosions during the canning process. A new machine to cap cans was introduced in the mid-1880s, reducing the need for skilled cappers, and the first successful labeling machine was invented in 1893. Automation made canning cheap: one man could cook five thousand cans of tomatoes a day in 1865 but four times that many in 1894, at a lower daily wage. More than a thousand canneries were operating in 1890, and expansion was so rapid that by 1900 food processing accounted for one-fifth of all manufacturing in the United States. Cheap canning provided grocers a wide assortment of branded merchandise to sell. Cardboard boxes and tin cans appealed to a public increasingly concerned with hygiene and sanitation. The use of sealed containers alleviated at least some of the worry that the flies constantly buzzing about grocery stores would contaminate food and spread disease. Canned goods were often insalubrious - "the consumers thereof are exposed to greater or less dangers from poisoning from copper, zinc, tin and lead," a government study warned in 1893 - but for many consumers the risks of metal poisoning from poorly made cans were minor compared with the advantages of being able to buy peaches or tomatoes any time of year. And as George H. Hartford quickly recognized, the new packaging made it possible for the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company to carry branded products that were on sale nowhere else. The A&P brand was soon applied to condensed milk, then to spices and flavorings, then to butter. By the early 1890s, Great Atlantic & Pacific was making the shift from tea company to grocery chain. Marc Levinson "Great A&P & The Struggle For Small Business In America" (2011)
Started by Dan Eggleston @
grandin Motivating Students
Motivating Students One frequent characteristic of individuals on the autism/Asperger's spectrum is an obsessive interest in one or a few particular subjects, to the exclusion of others. These individuals may be near-genius on a topic of interest, even at a very early age. Parents have described to me their ten-year-old child whose knowledge of electricity rivals that of a college senior, or a near-teen whose knowledge of insects far surpasses that of his biology teacher. However, as motivated as they are to study what they enjoy, these students are often equally unmotivated when it comes to schoolwork outside their area of interest. It was like this with me when I was in high school. I was totally unmotivated about schoolwork in general. But I was highly motivated to work on the things that interested me, such as showing horses, painting signs, and doing carpentry projects. Luckily, my mother and some of my teachers used my special interests to keep me motivated. Mr. Carlock, my science teacher, took my obsessive interests in cattle chutes and the squeeze machine to motivate me to study science. The squeeze machine relaxed me. Mr. Carlock told me that if I really wanted to know why the machine had this effect, I would have to study the boring school subjects so that I could graduate and then go to college to become a scientist who could answer this question. Once I really grasped the idea that to get from here to there-from middle school to graduation to college and then to a job of interest to me - I realized I needed to apply myself to all my school subjects, boring or not. This understanding fueled my motivation to complete the work. While students are in elementary school, teachers can easily keep them involved by using a special interest to motivate their learning. An example would be taking a student's interest in trains and using a train theme in many different subjects. In history class, read about the history of the railroad; in math class, involve trains in problem solving; in science class, discuss different forms of energy that trains utilized then and now, etc. As students move into middle and high school, they can get turned on by visiting interesting work places, such as a construction site, an architecture firm, or a research lab. This makes the idea of a career real to the student and they begin to understand the education path they must take early on in school to achieve that career. If visiting a work site is not possible, invite parents who have interesting jobs into the school classroom to talk with students about their jobs. Lots of pictures to show what the work IS like are strongly recommended. This is also an opportunity for students to hear about the social side of employment, which can provide motivation for making new friends, joining groups or venturing out into social situations that might be uncomfortable at first. Students on the spectrum need to be exposed to new things in order to become interested in them. They need to see concrete examples of really cool things to keep them motivated to learn. I became fascinated by optical illusions after seeing a single movie in science class that demonstrated optical illusions. My science teacher challenged me to recreate two famous optical illusions, called the Ames Distorted Room and the Ames Trapezoidal Window. I spent six months making them out of cardboard and plywood and I finally figured them out. This motivated me to study experimental psychology in college. Bring Trade Magazines to the Library Scientific journals, trade magazines, and business newspapers can show students a wide range of careers and help turn students on to the opportunities available after they graduate. Every profession, from the most complex to the practical, has its trade journal. Trade magazines are published in fields as diverse as banking, baking, car wash operation, construction, building maintenance, electronics, and many others. Parents who already work in these fields could bring their old trade journals to the school library. These magazines would provide a win
Started by Dan Eggleston @
hitch kim novak
Hitchcock's chagrin over losing Vera Miles kept him from going wild over Kim Novak. Novak annoyed him, even before he met her. At her first wardrobe meeting with Edith Head, the actress informed Head that she was disposed to wearing any color "except gray" - which was the color of Madeleine's suit in the book and film. Head recalled: "Either she [Novak] hadn't read the script, or she had and wanted me to think she hadn't. I explained to her that Hitch paints a picture in his films, that color is as important to him as it is to any artist." Her assistant stuck "the sketch of the gray suit off to the side so she wouldn't see it," while Head showed her "some of the other designs." After Novak left, the costume designer called Hitchcock, "asking if that damn suit had to be gray, and he explained to me that the simple gray suit and plain hairstyle were very important, and represented the character's view of herself in the first half of the film. The character would go through a psychological change in the second half of the film, and would then wear more colorful clothes to reflect the change. Even in a brief conversation, Hitch could communicate complex ideas. He was telling me that women have more than one tendency, a multiplicity of tastes, which can be clouded by the way they view themselves at any particular moment. He wasn't about to lose that subtle but important concept." "Handle it, Edith," Hitchcock said, "I don't care what she wears as long as it's a gray suit." Coming to lunch at Bellagio Road in late June, Novak persisted her with conditions. She didn't care for Madeleine's prescribed hairstyle or color; she didn't wear suits in real life or on camera - especially gray suits. Hitchcock didn't blink. "Look, Miss Novak," he said, "you do your hair whatever color you like, and you wear whatever you like, so long as it conforms to the story requirements." (As Hitchcock later told Truffaut,"I used to say, 'Listen. You do whatever you like; there's always the cutting-room floor.' That stumps them. That's the end of that." Sam Taylor was also present for the Bellagio Road lunch. To Novak's consternation, Hitchcock steered the discussion toward "everything except the film - art, food, travel, wine," the writer remembered, "all the things he thought she wouldn't know very much about. He succeeded in making her feel like a helpless child, ignorant and untutored, and that's just what he wanted - to break down her resistance. By the end of the afternoon he had her right where he wanted her, docile and obedient and even a little confused." At her next meeting with Head, Novak seemed chastened. Brunet hair (for Judy) and a gray suit were now acceptable. There was one point of principle she refused to surrender, however: the buxom actress often preferred to go without a brassiere in life, and wanted to do the same in some scenes on screen. Though he preferred to dictate ladies' underwear too, that was all right by Hitchcock. (When, in their first interview sessions, Francois Truffaut complimented Novak's "animal-like sensuality" in the film, Hitchcock gave her credit for that, at least-linking Truffaut's comment with her refusal to wear undergarments. "As a matter of fact, she's particularly proud of that," he said.) Patrick McGilligan "Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light" (2003)
Started by Dan Eggleston @
580618b Sweet is revenge, especially to women
Sweet is revenge, especially to women (Byron, Don Juan) By? Byron. I ask that because the authorship of this plays rather a large part when it was said at another time by a family whose name is Glum. I don't know if that rings a bell in any way. But there was a young man called Ron Glum. And he has a fiance called Eth. And they have been engaged for seven years because they'd made a pact not to get married until he got a job. And while they're waiting for him to get a job for them to get married naturally they try every means possible to raise some money. And they're rather addicted to go in newspaper competitions . And they go in for these thigns and very unsuccessfully. One day there was a competition in the newspaper for a new after-shave lotion. Now I don't know if you notice with after-shave lotions that they do a rather special thing with these men's toilet preparations. With women's stuff they rather go into rather lyrical, provocative names like Surrender and Caress and Suave qui Purr. With men's after-shave lotion there are rugged names like Saddle Cloth and Dreadnaught and this new one, which was actually called Revenge. And they were offering a competition as to who could think of the best slogan to sell this after-shave lotion for Revenge. At any rate Ron thought it was worth going in for. So he went and bought a bottle of the after-shave lotion and he tried it. In fact he drank half the bottle before they'd explained to him how it was used. But his father said, "Well, I'll tell you what, here's an easy way to do a slogan. Let's get a dictionary of quotations and we'll look up all the the quotations about revenge and see whether we can send one of those in." So they looked it up, "And I have tasted revenge" and so on. It didn't say whether or not they'd tasted it. And then suddenly Mr. Glum, he saw this quotation, " Sweet is revenge, especially to women." And he thought just the thing for an after-shave lotion, so he said to Eth, "Now you send it off in your name and I bet we win." And the prize was a very good prize. It was two hundred and fifty pounds plus a washing machine plus a year's supply of dirty washing, which was worth having for a young engaged couple. So Eth said, "Do you think we'll get found out?" And he said, "No. No. Not a chance of getting found out. Nothing risque, nothing gained." And they sent it off. And sure enough they got a letter, "Our representative will be calling on you." And the representative called on them and he didn't have a check. And they said, "Well, why not?" He said, "It was a very good one. It was, no doubt, the very best one we got. But it is not original." So Mr. Glum shot up in what he called high dungeon, "What do you mean, it's not original?" The man said, "It's not by Eth." "No, but it is by Ron." Denis Norden 580618b (The Glums were the subjects of Take It From Here, which ran on the BBC for 11 years. The show's writers were Muir and Norden)
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Ask Well I've heard that women need several hours more sleep per night than men do. Is this true?
Ask Well I've heard that women need several hours more sleep per night than men do. Is this true? If you browse social media for information on healthy sleep habits, you may stumble across one of the many posts arguing that women require more sleep than men - "dramatically more sleep," some even claim. The reasons given vary, including hormonal differences and the notion that women have faster-working brains than men do. As it turns out, we don't have any legitimate research that suggests these claims are true. "There is no evidence that there is a fundamental biological reason women need more sleep," said Dr. Suzanne Bertisch, a physician specializing in sleep disorders at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. On average, women do seem to spend several more minutes in bed every night than men do, but that doesn't mean they require more sleep, she said. Only a handful of studies have evaluated differences in sleep duration among men and women. In a landmark study from 2013, researchers analyzed survey data from more than 56,000 adults in the United States. When participants were asked how they spent their time over a recent 24-hour period, women reported devoting an average of 11 minutes more to sleep the previous night than men did. This didn't necessarily mean that the women actually slept for 11 minutes more than men, however. As the study explained, the time participants reported also included the minutes they spent attempting to sleep - and women are far more likely than men to experience insomnia, said Rebecca Robbins, a sleep scientist and assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. The 2013 study also found that women were nearly five times as likely as men to report sleep interruptions as a result of caregiving, usually for a child. Research suggests that women experience lower-quality sleep, on average, than men - whether they're caregivers or not. In a 2023 online survey of more than 2,000 adults from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, for instance, researchers found that women were nearly twice as likely to say they rarely or never wake up feeling well rested. As for why women tend to sleep more poorly than men, researchers don't have clear answers. But they do have some theories. The hormone progesterone is linked with better sleep, and when progesterone dips just before menstruation, women tend to sleep more poorly, said Shelby Harris, a clinical psychologist in New York City who specializes in sleep disorders. Women often report sleep difficulties during the time leading up to and after menopause, too, when hormone levels change. Compared with men, women also tend to do more caregiving and housework, which could make it harder for women to fall and stay asleep. Remembering to pick up the dry cleaning, check in with relatives, take the kids to school and schedule doctor's appointments - "all of those little things can contribute to worry, and worry and stress are two of the biggest disruptions to our sleep," Dr. Robbins said. Sleep disorders like insomnia, sleep apnea and restless leg syndrome become more common in women as they age. Women with sleep apnea often go undiagnosed, because they aren't as likely as men to have certain telltale symptoms like snoring or waking up gasping for air, said Dr. Rachel Salas, a neurologist and sleep medicine specialist at Johns Hopkins Medicine. The length of time people sleep - and the quality of that sleep - doesn't tell us anything about how much sleep they should be getting. "Those aren't necessarily the same thing," Dr. Robbins said. The National Sleep Foundation says that adults generally need seven to nine hours of sleep each night, but the exact amount can vary from person to person, Dr. Harris said. "There's no one magic number," she said. Dr. Robbins added that it can be helpful to track your sleep with a smartwatch or other tracking device to ensure you're getting at least seven hours a night. But often, the best way to tell if you're getting enough sleep is to gauge how you feel during the day. If you're regularly exhausted, that could b
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Jeppesen young kim
We cross the Taedong River into east Pyongyang. There, on the banks, we are greeted with the glass-windowed facade of the large Ryugyong health and recreational complex, which kind of resembles a middle American corporate office park. It's a series of buildings that include the Golden Lanes bowling alley. a hamburger fast-food joint, an upscale espresso bar popular among expats, indoor and outdoor skating rinks. More recently, a large sauna complex has been opened for the donju. It boasts ground-floor shops selling foreign luxury clothing brands, a gym, an indoor swimming pool, and men's and women's saunas crowned with an expensive restaurant and bar. The first time I visited, on my way upstairs to the restaurant, I was greeted with an unusual large framed photograph. In the middle of the frame, what appeared to my eyes was a stout butch lesbian wearing an ugly apron and sullen frown, dangling a dead fish over a frying pan. It took a long squint for me to decipher that it was actually a young Kim Jong Il with his glasses removed, demonstrating his culinary genius. So unlike the standard propaganda portraits you see of smiling Kim Jong Il everywhere else you look in North Korea, you have to wonder what they had in mind by installing it here. Again, I saw proof that they're aware of the inherent vulnerability of such images; as I raised my phone to take a photo, a guard who had been seated at a desk partially hidden behind a wall in the hallway emerged and ordered me to stop. Travis Jeppesen "See You Again in Pyongyang: A Journey into Kim Jong Un's North Korea" (2018)
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Halberstam delorean
It was the sixties, and Pontiac was pushing cars for young people. He not only knew how to appeal to the new generation, he became part of it. He shed his first wife. He redesigned his hair, which became noticeably less gray. (He went gray years later, when it was time to raise money for his own company and he needed to look more distinguished.) His ties disappeared. His suits, on those occasions when he dressed formally, were of fashionable Italian cut. He wore loafers without socks and carefully shaved the hair around his ankles. He lifted weights to build up his body, and changed his diet to lose weight. His marriages increased his celebrity: His second bride, a girl of nineteen, was Kelly Harmon, daughter of the famed football player Tommy Harmon. The match gave him Ricky Nelson, son of Ozzie and Harriet, as a brother-in-law.) That marriage lasted two and a half years. (When he seemed depressed by its breakup, some of his good buddies in Hollywood hired a bunch of what might generously be called starlets, got makeup men to style their look as much like Kelly's as possible, and made them available to the saddened auto executive. The message was implicit; There were a lot more fish in the sea.) His third wife was Cristina Ferrare, one of the most beautiful models in the country. In an environment where ego was always supposed to be controlled, his burgeoned: As a kind of Christmas card he sent General Motors dealers thousands of posters of himself posing with his adopted son, Zach. His friends now included the great and famous of Hollywood, all of whom lived lives faster than those of his Bloomfield Hills colleagues. For his new business friends, he chose self-made men of minimal restraint, maximum glitter, and extraordinary access to money. Unlike the titans of Detroit, who had to hide their pleasure as part of the covenant of Detroit success, his new friends had FUN. It soon became obvious that DeLorean was bored with Detroit. He took to insulting his GM superiors first by his manner of dress - blue jeans, cowboy boots - and then, when that seemed inadequate, with the condescending profanity of his tongue. Soon he was gone from GM. (His business practices had become bothersome to GM officials, and he did not leave of his own volition) General Motors, which always took care of its own, particularly its own senior executives, was extremely generous to DeLorean; it gave him a Cadillac dealership in Florida, which in those days was like giving someone the right to print money. Nonetheless he promptly collaborated on a scathing indictment of GM as an institution, which confirmed most of the darker visions the company's critics had long harbored. (When, during his brief tour as the head of a company, his own behavior seemed to fall considerably beneath that of the GM executives whom he had denounced, one of his colleagues, Bill Haddad, said of DeLorean, "He is what he condemns.") His post-GM business ventures did not do well, and he left behind a trail of bad feeling and litigation. Having been ousted by GM, he longed now to return to the automobile world and create his own sports car. His would be, he announced, an ethical car company. He played Britain, which wanted the factory for Northern Ireland, off against Puerto Rico – the underemployed of the world competing desperately for the right to have those jobs. The British won, if that is the word, and put up some $90 million for him in start-up money. His predecessors some seventy years earlier had been passionate men who had poured their entire savings into their mechanical dreams and had literally lived out the creation of their cars. DeLorean was different. He put relatively little money of his own into his car and though he was starting a company, he continued to live in high style. As he readied his car, he bought expensive property for himself - a duplex in Manhattan, and a twenty-five-room house on a 430-acre spread in the most exclusive part of New Jersey. (They were worth by 1985, when they became the center of a keenly contested THIRD divorce, an estimated $9 m
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casablanca lorre pranks
When Lorre wasn't in front of the camera, he was often cooking up pranks on the set. Among his favorites was taking an eyedropper dipped in water and using it to put out Curtiz's cigarette whenever he'd leave one in an ashtray unattended - anything to fluster the director. He once got the obsessive Claude Rains to believe that he hadn't studied properly for a nonexistent scene that Lorre made up. And Paul Henreid tells how Lorre managed to persuade the studio's sound guys to wire the room in which Curtiz was known to have his afternoon trysts with young actresses, as if taking a page from Captain Renault's lecherous playbook, thus projecting the amorous sound track, as it were, over the set speakers (his booming voice, heard throughout the corridors: "Oh yes, yes -oh God, yes"). Although they do not appear in any scenes together, one of Lorre's favorite partners in crime, Sidney Greenstreet, with whom he was paired in more than half a dozen films at Warners, was generally at the ready to assist in these schemes. In Hollywood Unseen, a recently published photo album, there's a magnificent shot, snapped a year or two before Casablanca, of Greenstreet dressed as Santa Claus and Lorre behind him wielding a baseball bat, bulging eyes trained on his would-be target's head, looking determined to decapitate Father Christmas. It seems somehow fitting that Greenstreet, The Maltese Falcon's "Fat Man," was born in a town called Sandwich, in southeast England, in 1879. A former touring member of Ben Greet's Shakespearean Repertory Company, he enjoyed interrmittent success on the English and American stage before, at the age of sixty-two, he crossed the Atlantic and shimmied his way into the studio interiors at Warner Bros. Starting with The Maltese Falcon, he acted in a staggering twenty-four films in eight years. "It has always been a convention of the film industry," writes David Thomson, "to 'introduce' potent new players. But few introductions have been as dramatic as that. Noah Isenberg "We'll Always Have Casablanca" (2017)
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grandin Medication Usage
Medication Usage: Risk versus Benefit Decisions There has been much publicity lately about the hazards associated with certain medications such as antidepressants and pain-relieving drugs for arthritis. It has raised concern among parents whose children already use medications, and has made more ardent skeptics of those who already hesitate to use drugs with their child. All medications have risks. When making decisions about medication usage, the benefits should clearly - not marginally - outweigh the risks. Common sense dictates that drugs with a higher risk of bad side-effects should be used more carefully than drugs with a low risk. A reasonable approach is to try drugs with a lower risk of side effects first. To approach medication decision-making in a logical manner, it is best to adhere to the following three principles. These principles assume that non-drug approaches have been tried FIRST and proved unsuccessful in alleviating the challenge. A child should NOT be given medication as the first course of treatment when presenting behavioral challenges. Exhaust other treatments first. Try one medication at a time so you can judge its effect. Do not change educational programs or diet at the same time a new drug is cried. Allow a few weeks to a month between starting a medication and changing some other part of the individual's program. Keeping a journal of the child's behaviors, demeanor, and levels of activity can be helpful in spotting possible side effects and/or assessing the degree of improvement, if any. An effective medication should have an OBVIOUS BENEFICIAL EFFECT. Giving a child a powerful drug that renders him only slightly less hyper would probably not be worth the risk. A drug that just takes the edge off his hyperactivity, but makes him very lethargic, would be equally bad. I am really concerned about the growing number of powerful drugs being prescribed to young children. In little kids, I recommend trying one of the special diets and Omega-3 (fish oil supplements first, before giving the child powerful drugs. If an individual has been on a medication that is working really well it is usually not worth the risk to change it for a new medication. Newer is not always better. Pharmaceutical companies promote their new drugs while they still have patents. After a drug goes generic, they no longer promote it. Many of the older generic drug are very effective and cheap. However, use care when switching brands of generics. Find a brand that works well and stay with it; The way the pills are manufactured may affect how fast they dissolve, which may change the way the drug works. To make good decisions, parents need to know ALL the risks involved with the major classes of medications. The following section summarizes the uses and risks associated with the six most commonly used medications. 1 Antidepressants (both SSRIs-selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors such as Prozac - and older tricyclics) should be given at lower doses to people on the spectrum than to the general population. Some individuals with ASD need only one-quarter to one-half the normal starter dose. Giving too high a dose of an antidepressant causes many problems such as insomnia and agitation. The correct low dose can have very positive effects. I know many design professionals who take Prozac and they have done some of their best work while taking it. However; I have heard several complaints about memory problems with Paxil (paroxenne), Prozac (fluoxetine) or Zoloft (sertraline) would probably be better choices. In a meta-analysis Prozac came out hs having the best evidence for use in individuals with autism when compared to other SSRIs. However, if you are taking Paxil and doing well, it would probably be best to keep taking it. Antidepressants work really well for anxiety, panic attacks, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), social anxiety, and racing thoughts. _Most antidepressants have a "black-box" warning of a slightly increased risk of suicidal thinking during the early period of use - the first eight weeks on the drug. Doctors usu
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hitch grant lobby
Eva Marie Saint already felt transformed by her handpicked wardrobe. She recalled that all Hitchcock offered her were three simple instructions: "Lower my voice; don't use my hands; and look directly at Cary Grant in my scenes with him, look right into his eyes. From that, I conjured up in my mind the kind of lady he saw this woman as." He must have been right: Saint's performance - the epitome of playful chic - stands up for all time. Cary Grant didn't require Hitchcock to pick out his wardrobe. Cary Grant gave grooming tips, and Hitchcock usually told him just to "dress like Cary Grant." And like Jimmy Stewart, Grant didn't need acting advice, either; he picked his roles to fit him like his custom-made Saville Row. During the location work in New York, Grant hid out in a suite at the Plaza Hotel, the very place where Thornhill is spotted by the thugs who mistake him for a spy. One day, the actor was summoned from his suite for the quick shot where Thornhill strolls across the hotel lobby. After he came down and did his bit, a visiting journalist, interviewing Hitchcock wondered aloud how Grant could play the scene without conferring with the director. "Oh," Hitchcock quipped, "he's been walking across the lobby by himself for years!" Patrick McGilligan "Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light" (2003)
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580618a All Our Geese are Swans
All Our Geese are Swans (Richard Burton) All our geese are swans. Now this was said to me fairly recently. Because I have a boat in which I cruise the rivers and inland waterways and on it I take my children and my wife, whose name escapes me for the moment. It's . . . I've been working rather hard, Polly, my wife, Polly. And we were on this boat with our children and my wife said to me,"You know, going up and down these canals is lovely wild life, but one thing I'd really like to have available is a water otter, or, as they're called, geezers." Because we had no means of heating our water at all on the boat. We actually used to boil our water in a gumboot on the stove. It's really very primitive. My wife would get up and make the breakfast and scrub the boat down and fill the engine up with oil and run it and warm it up and cast off. And I would supervise from my bunk. Very often the duty of supervising was so onerous I used to fall asleep and feel fatigued. And I said I really didn't think we needed an otter because just using the gumboot would be done. But then my son came up to me and he said, "Daddy." His name's Jamie and he looks after himself; he's very fit; not a gray hair. And he's five and a half. And he said, "Daddy. Let's buy mommy a geezer and make her work easier instead of spending your money on silly things like food and clothing." And I sort of playfully hit him around the ear with a boat hook and passed over the awkward situation. Then later that night, my little daughter, who's a slim well-preserved three, she came up sadly, and she sort of rubbed, as I was lying on my bunk, I'd been very exhausted watching my wife cast off. And she ran her fingers through my hair, leaving in it a half-eaten toffee, and she said, "Daddy. We want the geezer." So I knew my goose was cooked and a geezer had to be bought. So the following day I went into the town and sought out a geezer shop or as they call them in France, a geezerie, and I said to the man there, "I want a geezer for my boat; I don't know much about geezers." It was an interesting chap; sort of gray hair, sort of laugh lines under his eyes, Denis Norden had been in earlier and sort of made some jokes and written them on the chap. And he said, "We can thoroughly recommend our geezers, sir, actually." So I said, "How does one tell a good geezer from a bad geezer?" He said, "You tell it by the sound it makes. A geezer should start out with a shhhhhhhhh and then go sort of ahhhhhhhhhh, like a water falls And end up with a crisp pssss. Now cheap geezers, pssh wssh donk donk donk bang. And he said, "Now, Our geezers shhhhhhh ahhhhhhhhh pssssssssst." Frank Muir 580618a
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