The Hardest Job In Politics: Being Michelle Obama

The wife of the former Prime Minister of Japan swears her soul was once beamed up by a triangular- shaped UFO and shipped to Venus. Miyuku Hatoyama reported Venus to be “a very beautiful place” and “really green”. Perhaps not surprisingly, her husband lasted eight months as Japan’s Prime Minister.

Panama’s former First Lady Ana Mae Endara told country protesters they could stick their vote “you know where.” Panama’s voters did not oblige, however, giving her husband a mere 2.3 % in the next election.

And the First Lady of France looks like this:

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RIP: The American Manly Man (1776-2010)

The American Manly Man, known the world over for centuries of bravado and gritty ingenuity, passed away during the Sunday evening season finale of HBO’s “True Blood”. He was 234.

His death was confirmed by American pop culture. The cause of death is still under investigation, and the U.S. Department of Health is awaiting the results of toxicology testing. Girls’ obsession with vampires, Justin Bieber, and the Snuggie are believed to be preliminary suspects.

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11 Other Things You Learn At Business School

This is the second part of a four part series “Things You Learn At Business School”. See the first part here.

Dear Dad,

Summer semester was fun. I “learned” how to price bonds and got really good at networking. And by networking I mean partying on boats. I learned the stock market has been mired in the driftless Summer doldrums. So, my smart investor friends bail when the Dow crests at 10,500 and come aboard again when the Euro/U.S. housing market/jobless claims anchor sinks it back down to 9500. My classmates also wonder if we’ll see a double-dip in a) the U.S. economy (33% chance) and b) in my GPA (significantly higher).

Here are eleven other things I learned last semester:

1. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. You have to sit through at least 30 minutes of a consulting firm workshop to get it.
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Don’t Sleep So Much

In hindsight, my high school Algebra teacher may have been certifiably insane. The first day of class he wandered off on a tangent about a Medieval prince who loved his sleep. This prince loved his sleep so much he decided to sleep five minutes longer every night: 8 hours, 8 hours 5 minutes, 8 hours 10 minutes … until he slept over 24 hours. Then, he died. Class dismissed, Professor continued. Don’t forget the quiz on polynomial expressions this Thursday.

I asked around, and no one has ever heard of this prince’s cautionary tale. I did, however, find a bizarre news story about 15-year old British girl named Louisa Ball. My friends sleep through half of every class (but still get better grades). And I’ve been known to sleep through flights. But Louisa sleeps through entire family vacations. Louisa is stricken with a rare disease called Kleine-Levin Syndrome, dubbed Sleeping Beauty Disease, that makes her sleep for weeks. Her longest snooze was 13 straight days. Baffled doctors can’t stop it, so Louisa’s parents must her wake up once a day so she can eat and use the bathroom.

In spite of Louisa’s affliction, people today sleep less than ever before. According to an American Cancer Society study, Americans slept 8 hours a night in 1960. Today? 6.7 hours. That’s a groggy 15% drop in sleep within 50 years—despite NBC’s late-night lineup’s best efforts. In our defense, our grandparents/parents didn’t have the following distractions: sensationalized 24-7 news-cycles, Red Bull, the Internet, and late-night SportsCenter reruns. National Geographic pegged the costs of our national “sleep debt” at $15 billion dollars in health care expenses and up to $50 billion in lost productivity (or Syria’s nominal GDP).

As usual, our grandparents were right. Eight is the correct answer for number of sleep hours. Sleep more than that and you are more likely to die sooner. With modern life getting busier each year, the average age of people not getting enough sleep is slowly dropping down. The advent of technology that is easily in our hands has made it even easier to get immediate satisfaction in expense of one’s sleep. College students are spending more time late at night studying, opting to get Modafinil they can get from https://buy-modafinil-online.org to stay awake and focus as they cram through the exam weeks. Children are spending way too much time on mobile devices during the night unattended.

A University of California San Diego psychiatry study found “sleeping more than 7 to 8 hours per day has been consistently associated with increased mortality.” But beware of sample bias here. The guy who sleeps 11 hours a night is more likely to be lazier and/or unhealthier.
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Up In The Air And Terrified

This isn’t normal. Glasses aren’t supposed to roll off the flight attendant’s table and shatter on the floor. The pilot isn’t supposed to sound so shaky on the flight PA. We’re 32,000 feet over the icy North Pacific Ocean. A butterfly-in-your stomach dip later and we’re 31,800 feet up.

Your whole life is supposed to flash in front of you in moments like these. The big events—graduations, weddings, Super Bowls. And the even more memorable, smaller events—sleepy Sunday brunches with the favorites, Chinese checkers games with the grandparents.

And I did think about all that. Eventually. But at that moment—at the very moment when my life hung in the balance—I was thinking about college basketball. I was wondering if Duke had enough inside presence to survive the ACC. I was thinking about March Madness brackets and why some company didn’t just offer $1 billion to anyone who correctly predicted every game AND the championship game final score.

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