Beyond The Wall of Sleep 3

The link between bad sleep and Alzheimers makes insomnia a clear and present danger to the human race. Below are the contents of emails I send out to friends who have trouble sleeping - it has worked for me for years and it works for most of them too.

See previous posts on this

Spoken Audio for Sleep

I’m often recommending the effectiveness of using podcasts to get back to sleep, and how they need to be a strange combination of interesting enough to stop you thinking at 3am and boring enough to send back to sleep. I find that something with a single speaker on a non-e motive subject is good. Podcast discussions are ok up they are upbeat, lousy if they are full of unexpected jingles, ads and music.

Vital aspect to you is that it has to be interesting enough to gauge your attention. If your mind wanders onto areas that you shouldn't be thinking about..

- and in my experience no conclusion reached 2.30am-6.30am is worth a damn -

..the audio you are listening to is useless and you should find something else

Audio books

Here is a brilliant resource - free classic audio novels read by volunteers

http://librivox.org/

I suggest an uncomplicated unabridged reassuring old classic, maybe start on Kipling's Man Who Would Be King (not too long) then some H Rider Haggard. Like Sherlock Holmes? How about AC Doyles Lost World?
 Worth mentioning a friend just listens to the BBC Lord of The Rings every night to go to sleep on an iPod, and has been doing that every night for at least two years. I've been suggesting to his wife that she dress up as a Balrog and surprise him to see if this is having any long term effect but so far she isn't convinced (though as an inquisitive Persian with a scientific background I think her curiosity will get the better of her before long)

Podcasts

My current favourites

When Diplomacy Fails Podcast

which has a single upbeat speaker on a vaguely interesting subject

Pritzker Military Podcast

My perennial favourites

Dan Carlin (both)*

Guardian Football weekly*

MSNBC Rachel Maddow Show*

Best Of the Left*

(*All of the above have gotten so good I save them for when I'm awake)

Serious snooze favourites

Anything from BBC Radio 4 is good to fall asleep to
ESPN FC Soccer show

NPR is  Radio 4 on the other side of the pond

Note - NPR is even more soporific and sleepy than Radio4 ....somehow I find it easier to fall asleep listening to Americans - maybe because subconsciously I think they are all fictional creations :-)

and  moving into
the class A drugs of sleep inducing podcasts

- Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time
- of which actually I'm a huge fan!
At the tail end of my horror weekend in wintery storm ripped Tangiers I was only saved by Melvyn Bragg and co.
<I'll be brief>
Storms meant the only return to Gibraltar was from a Morrocan container port 50 miles down the North African coast, aboard a half a century old ex-scandinavian ferry (ABBA era decour was past its best) in the heaviest seas I ever want to see. It was like living The Poseidon Adventure with the original interiors from The Golden Shot. Nightmarish, and only a stack of In Our Time on my Ipod got me through it.
I'll type up the words written after the Tangiers trip when I recover - though its two years and counting so don't hold your breath.
IOT is a National Treasure.

and finally from 2011, again part of my Gibraltar coping strategy

I believe I have found the ultimate example of Podcasts for sleep, in the latest and greatest episode of ‘The History Network.’ I’ve mentioned this podcast before as a great combination of an incredibly dull, boring man trying to explain the potentially interesting. If Melvin Bragg’s In Our Time podcast is (usually) a sleeping pill, the History Network is a full course of Rhino tranquilisers.

The latest episode could be the ultimate example of the form. “A History of The Rocket Troop” is a description of how the British army started using large primitive rockets to fire at people in the middle of hectic environments (Battle of Waterloo) long before they were safe or practical to do so. How could that not be interesting? How could anything with ‘Rocket’ in the title be not interesting enough to keep you awake?

It seems impossible, but the sonorous military podcast historian manages to start with just enough detail to stop you thinking about life at 3am, before strangling the subject dead with dull military lists of postings long after you have sailed into the black velvety comfort of sleep. I swear I woke an hour later in a foetal position sucking my thumb.

Highly highly recommended - for sleep.

Final note on classic audio books to sleep to - HP Lovecraft (even the Dreamlands) is not good and Poe is a complete no-no!

Pics are from the much loved Chaosium table top game

War on Insomnia - iPods for Sleep 1

Beyond The Wall of Sleep 2

(apparently I covered this before)

The link between bad sleep and Alzheimers makes insomnia a clear and present danger to the human race. Below are the contents of emails I send out to friends who have trouble sleeping - it has worked for me for years and it works for most of them too.

Though it might seem an assumption that regular readers of this blog are strangers to nodding off, my life in one area, sleep, has improved hugely over the last ten years and bearing in mind the horrific news mentioned above I think it's my duty to cover the subject properly for the benefit of others. I have actually blogged about this before - How I Learnt To Sleep

You'll need an iPod, iPhone, or some music audio player with a sleep timer function. Smart music players like the iPod are the tool our parents never had in dealing with insomnia. Steve Jobs must have saved about a year of sleep for me already. Thanks Steve.

Your War On Insomnia
I think I've fallen asleep listening to so many military history podcasts everything now is a military campaign.

• First off you'll need an iPod, iPhone, or some music audio player with a sleep timer function. Smart music players like the iPod are the main weapons our parents never had in dealing with insomnia. Steve Jobs must have saved about a year of sleep for me already. Thanks Steve. 

• Download some interesting Podcasts (see next post for suggestions). You would think music would be the best thing to fall asleep to and many times it is - but if you have woken and are being bothered with thoughts at 3am the mind needs to be occupied with a subject, not given a soundtrack.

• Get some comfortable good inner ear headphones that you can sleep with and won't leak noise and wake your partner (why does noone invent and market earphones for bad sleepers?) I love Sennheiser ear buds. This is me on the discovery of Sennheiser earbuds while I struggled to sleep in Gib

just slept ten hours two nights running feel AWESOME

I've got new inner ear buds for Ipod that are so comfortable you can sleep all night with them

I am still waking up at 2 and 5am but I reset Ipod for timer to cut

out after half an hour - I rarely last more than ten mins each time

has to be vaguely interesting audio for me to fall asleep to it.. if

its boring I think about other stuff and stay awake ...how mad is that

• Buy an eye shade. They look a bit 'fabulous daahling' - (the look is described as 'Zorro' in lifestyle advice classic Get Him To The Greek but they work for me). When it's cold a beanie hat rolled down over the eyes is even better. Even when it is dark enough in your bedroom to not need an eyeshade the gentle pressure on your eyelids will eventually be a sign to your mind that it's time to show the test card and shutdown.

• Exercise every day without fail no matter how trivial. Suggestion: start with walking up your high street for ten minutes every day at least. Maybe at night about an hour before bed? Take a radio the iPod so it doesn't get boring. Has to be daily routine. Long term.  Find a running shop, get some decent running shoes and slowly jog up and down your neighbourhood before dinner each evening. Again has to be routine but low intensity. 

• Finally, have sleep munchies (bagels, bananas) ready for 3 am snacks if required. A slightly full stomach gives just that extra boost to the contentment level to push you over the edge and down into that long silky drop into dreamlands.

War on Insomnia - iPods for Sleep 2

Murray Walker's 21st Birthday Party

In the midst of all this Hunt/Lauda fuss (see Rush review) something about Murray -

Murray Walker and James Hunt

Remember when ITV first got F1 and started trundling the F1 coverage downhill ?
BBC had lost the coverage and not long after the death of James Hunt his veteran co-commentator Murray Walker had to make the transition across to the commercial channel.
In an attempt to play up the comedy potential of the fuddy duddy long time F1 commentator they put him in a two seater F1 car and blitzed him around Silverstone - and were then waiting on hand with a film crew to get the reaction of this 60 year old man exposed to serious G.

"What did you think of that Murray?!" asked some ITV muppet jamming a phone into his face as soon as his lid was off "Was that the scariest thing you've ever done!?"

"No - but was the most exciting experience since my 21st birthday" replies Walker

"What was that?" asks the ITV muppet with obvious disappointment

"A tank battle just outside Normandy"

RUSH to judgement on modern Formula One Racing

RUSH, which needs to be seen on a big screen, is Star Wars where all previous car racing movies were Logan's Run, and is the best sports movie of any kind since Clint Eastwood's Invictus. That admission about racing movies is actually a big one for me as I've defending Tony Scott's Days of Thunder ("better than Top Gun") as a fun movie years, to varying degrees of ridicule!

Like Pacific Rim I mention Star Wars again, this time not because of reaction from kids in the cinema  audience but for the action sequences. The breathtaking racing action really is a quantum leap over previous attempts at the same. I wonder if the hyper fast cutting and internal combustion porn is influenced by the hyper-real montages of Top Gear?  Rush also includes more honest  petrol head detail than I've heard even in recent F1 coverage. The only real minus to this movie is the title, which is as forgettable as it is generic - I'd hate to think this movie is ever confused with Driven or Rush or Rush.

For the visuals I guess we have to thank again that Oscar winning Cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantel (Slumdog Millionaire, Festen .... Dredd). This time with Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost/Nixon, The Damned United) supplying the words.

Ron Howard brings his Apollo 13 form as director, telling a compelling true story largely based on fact with no villains, in which virtually every character comes out well. A wild soundtrack and believable period soundtrack includes Slade, Thin Lizzy, Mud and Bowie.

Familiar faces from now portray familiar faces from then. Stephen Mangan and Julian Rhind-Tutt pop up briefly and for a while it looks like there might be a Green Wing reunion  (it would be nice to see Hunt handle the females from Green Wing and Smack The Pony but this never happens sadly). An almost unrecognisable Olivia Wilde ('13' from House) appears as Suzy Miller, an eternally optimistic 1970s super model who somehow escapes James Hunt to go to Richard Burton. Apparently Director Ron Howard originally intended for Russell Crowe to make a cameo appearance as Richard Burton for a brief scene where he confronts James Hunt.

The principal actors make the two prickly characters like able though bending the truth slightly to make them more antagonistic in an otherwise incredible story obviously helps in this regard. Chris Hemsworth as Hunt and Daniel Brühl as Lauda are absolutely convincing and the various back scenes stories are almost good enough to make the actual racing an intrusion. The story of Lauda meeting his wife on the way out of a party in Italy (played by Alexandra Maria Lara) is worth the price of admission alone.

You have to look twice to notice this is not Hemsworth and Bruhl

Nice to see Murray Walker in pic at the end, he was the only glaring omission and a reminder of how much we miss a sports commentary team that was under-appreciated at the time. (Next blog post will have a Murray Walker story)

Anyone tired of seeing dusty tired props in period movies will adore the old F1 hardware, taken from museums and private collections and raced to the limit. It looks absolutely sensational and the recreations of old circuits and stories look suitably mythic. There are almost as many shots of the six wheeled Tyrell as there are of Hunt boozing, and even Mario Andretti's beautiful black and gold Lotus gets some attention at the end.

It really makes F1 today look like the identitikit non spectacle it really is. I have no problem with modern F1 drivers who look like personalities to me and I'm sure would get up to the same hi-jinks as their predecessors if allowed. I've definitely no problem with F1 safety, I remember we were quite glad not to see some of the F1 races live at the time because of the constant expectation of death.

Main problem I have with modern F1 is with the cars. F1 is the interface of science engineering nerd enthusiasm and sport - and the yet the modern hardware spec makes the cars virtually identical apart from a paint job.
"Oh! The Renault V8.. Has a deeper degree of V than all the others!"

Really? That's a bit lame compared to Brabham Fan Car and the  the six wheeled Tyrell isn't it?

Request for Peter Morgan and Anthony Dod Mantel - any chance of Barry Sheene vs Kenny Roberts next? Hell why doesn't someone remake this ?

Unspoken Tea Party Deficit Solution : Repeal the Bush Tax Cuts

I think I now understand the Tea Party mindset. Or at least the mindset they claim to have.

I must have read hundreds of comments from Tea Party supporters this week all blaming Obama for the deficit and claiming he will only add to it (despite the fact he is paying it off)

"I don't care about the poltics or the government in power. Republicans and Democrats, they are all the same. Government needs to be shut down because it is out of control. Sensible spending is all that matters at this point"
You know, I can see some of that. The deficit is a national security issue and there are parts of the US government that seem to think buying even more tanks the US Army does not need
is somehow sensible when the money to do that is being borrowed from the Chinese.

So I get spending is out of control and needs to be reigned in. Apparently dealing with the budget right now is so vital it is worth risking another credit downgrade*, and senior US politicians on both sides, Democrat and Republican are to blame and must be ignored to push through (more) tough cuts to the Federal government.

So, Tea Party people, if you are so in favour of fiscal responsibility, and so above petty distractions like conventional politics, where we you on the Bush tax cuts?

If you are so in favour of cutting the US budget, were you for the gigantic tax cuts for the super rich that took the Clinton era budget surplus and flushed it down the toilet? They alone are at least 20% of the US deficit!

It is an important question, because if you were in favour of the Republican's disastrous attempts at trickle down economics you are not as above conventional politics as you would have us all believe
- and your grasp of budgeting isn't entirely reliable.

*For those not in the know - the last credit limit crisis only ended when the elected US President (who had run on repealing the tax cuts) gave in and let the Tea Party have them.

New word of the day : "Neo-Confederate"

In what might turn out to be the pivotal moment of the political stand-off of the decade, an anti-Obama crowd, containing Tea Party leaders Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz, stands  outside the White House. One of the demonstrators carries the flag of the Confederate states of America.

To European eyes this is just an old flag from the Civil War, to American eyes this is still an open wound and the debate on various websites covering this is already more virulent and nasty than I have ever seen.

Foreshadowing events later (I'm sure) half of the Republican response is "it must be a Liberal plant" and the other half is "what's wrong with the Confederate flag anyway?" (Answer : it is the symbol of military revolt against the US government and institutional racism and slavery).

It will be very interesting to see how the hyper patriots on the American right explain how it is that their core support seeks to undermine the United States itself. I think the old Republican party as we know it received a mortal wound at this event.

Neo-Confederate is a term used by some academics and political activists to describe the views of various groups and individuals who have a positive belief system concerning the historical experience of the Confederate States of America, the Southern secession, and the Southern United States.

The Daily Mail : what the rest of the world thinks of it

Guardian today publishes letters of support from leading foreign newspapers after The Daily Mail accuses it of being 'The paper that helps Britain's enemies'. Amid lots of platitudes aimed at the Grauniad, some choice words about The Daily Mail from the world's leading newspaper editors
"Abhorrent"
"appalling"
"The Mail has a right to be the government's toady. We'll look elsewhere for actual journalism.."
"worst kind of intellectual philistinism"
"... an absurdity: a professional forgetting the very purpose of his profession."

from

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/10/guardian-democracy-editors

London Underground map of Daily Mail obsessions, courtesy of The Poke