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Sleep is having its moment in the sun — or, more appropriately, its moment in a darkened room, with blackout shades drawn, the temperature somewhere between 60 and 67 degrees Fahrenheit, all smartphones and tablets banished from the room and maybe a white noise machine softly whirring in the corner.

You’d have to be severely sleep-deprived not to see evidence of the new sleep revolution. Everywhere you look there are articles about the benefits of sleep and the downsides of lack of sleep, tips on how to get more sleep and new devices and apps to help us disconnect and drift off to sleep and then monitor and track different stages of our sleep. Of course, those of us at HuffPost have been eager participants in this revolution, having passionately promoted the importance of sleep for over eight years now.

Though the need for…

Friday 28^th November 2014

I didn’t get to sleep until 0300hrs – this time myself to blame!

I’d been Facebooking last night and when I came to closing down, I had a try at getting the laptop to allow me to watch dvds off the net – and blimey.. . it let me.

Unfortunately I’d tried to open an original 1959 ‘The Invisible Man’ TV episode to watch and I was hooked and spent the next 4 hours watching them. Tsk!

I forced myself away when I kept nodding off while watching at about 0310hrs.

Didn’t stir until 0715hrs – and tried again to watch em, but the laptop was back in ‘Frustrate Inchcock mode’ and wouldn’t let me.

I recalled some of the dreams I’d had and wrote the bits I remembered down to record here:

I was a jailer of some sort I think and I had…

Does it freak you out sometimes I watch the cars as they pass me by and imagine them crashing into me?

Or the fact that I used to open my mom’s medicine cabinet and try to figure out how many aspirin it would take to stop my heart?

I would wake up everyday and be scared to live.

I would consider death to be one of my best friends, it will always tell me the truth, that nothing ever lasts.

Life is cool and all, with it’s up and downs… but the end is true freedom.

I will no longer be bound by the chaos that chains my soul.

How on earth can I make such good grades, and care about people… yet let darkness consume my thoughts?

Does it make you sick to your stomach to know that I am depressed yet a believer of God?

Jesus died…

Huffpost Black Voices

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From 12 to 50 it’s assumed we’re packing, assumed that like the Hulk or zombies we possess superhuman, virtually unstoppable destructive power. So where an average citizen may disagree, even argue and berate a police officer, treating them as the public servant that they indeed are, a black man, if he wishes to continue living, must channel his ancestors. His slave ancestors. He needs to forget there is a black president and remember that the default position of cops, cop wannabes like George Zimmerman, and the population at large is to view him as a perpetual deadly threat.

Our slave ancestors understood this acutely. They understood that paddyrollers, the armed militias employed to ensure wandering slaves returned to their plantations, were all too willing to use lethal force. Every slave in the South knew to make no sudden movement, keep your…

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Scuba enthusiasts will want to keep an eye on the Scubus S — a tricked-out underwater mask that hopes to bring the promise of Google Glass-type wearables to a coral reef near you.

Currently in development — a crowdfunding site is scheduled to launch November 10 — the Scubus S looks to be an alternative to high-end pro scuba systems. The most notable feature is a built-in, heads-up display that shows time, depth, water temperature and a limited chat function for communicating with other divers.

The chat thing is interesting. Because near-range wireless technologies like Bluetooth don’t work underwater, the Scubus S uses an acoustic wave system with a range of around 100 meters.

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Click link below for story and slideshow:

http://news.discovery.com/tech/gear-and-gadgets/digital-scuba-mask-features-heads-up-display-141105.htm

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More autumn colours! Living in Tokyo, I’m spoilt for access to some of the best autumn foliage, and I was pleasantly surprised to find out about a new place to visit – Okutama. This area has many rural villages, forested mountains, hills, rivers and gorges and, even though it’s 80km west of central Tokyo, is still within the metropolitan city limits.

One of the many tunnels through the mountains

After 2 hours on the train from Shinjuku, I hopped off at Hatonosu Station to start walking along the river towards Okutama.

Hatonosu Valley

I was lucky to catch so many leaves still in such bright colours. The trail along the valley is clearly signposted and takes you across Shiromaru Damn on the way.

Hatonosu Valley

From Okutama, I took a bus back down the river towards MItake, to take the cable car up Mitakesan (Mt. Mitake). On the hillside…

This post covers a brief history of the Universe from the Big Bang until the the present day. This, as I am sure you’ll agree, is a pretty big topic so I can only give a outline of some of the key events and when we believed they happened. This post is the second in my series about cosmology, which is the study of the origin and evolution of the Universe as a whole. To view my previous post click here.

Before I start talking about the history of the Universe I first need to give a brief overview of atoms, which are the building blocks of all matter – with a notable exception which I will explain below.

What are atoms ? 

An atom consists of a nucleus, which has a positive electric charge, surrounded by negatively charged electrons. Atoms are very small, typically around 0.0001 microns in diameter (a micron is a…

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Someday soon, cyclists might never again have to worry about running out of water on a hot and humid day.

A gadget created by Kristof Retezár, an industrial design student at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, collects and condenses moisture from the air while a bicycle is in motion. It then fills up a water bottle attached to the bike frame.

Named after the Roman god of wells and springs, “Fontus” uses the principle of thermoelectric cooling, in which an electricity-powered heat pump transfers heat from one side of a container to another.

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By Kristof Retezar

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Click link below for article:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/17/water-from-air-fontus_n_6160136.html?cps=gravity

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When I rate a movie 10 or close to a ten, it means I found nothing wrong with the movie.  The acting, the plot, the ending, special effects, substance and the message.  I take off a point for each one that I feel is a problem.  Fury is a near perfect movie.  I took off a half point because I felt the ending could have gone a tiny bit further.  Fury tells a story that is so profound it had me in tears.  Imagine a young christian boy thrown in the middle of WW2.  Of course he has never killed anyone but now he being told to kill as many Nazi’s as he can, without batting an eye.  This kid has to learn to be a killing machine in a matter of minutes.  To survive, he has to comply with his leader’s commands, despite his feelings.  On the other side of the coin, without…

Huffpost Healthy Living

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U.S. regulators have strengthened their warning against use of a once-popular device for gynecologic surgery that can spread unsuspected cancer, saying its risk is only justified in a fraction of patients.

The Food and Drug Administration is updating its April safety warning, now saying doctors should not use the devices, called laparoscopic power morcellators, for performing a hysterectomy or removing uterine fibroids “in the vast majority of women.”

The FDA’s Dr. William Maisel says there are safer options for the procedures for most patients — but he said the device may be appropriate for some women.

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7activestudio via Getty Images

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Click link below for story and slideshow:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/24/laparoscopic-power-morcellators_n_6212528.html

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