Pretty neat.  Anyone hear about this National Geographic documentary, Extraordinary Animals In The Womb airing last year in the States?  Maybe it was just in the UK? I would have watched it if I had known about it. More fascinating photos posted in the original i09.com article. There’s more about the documentary in the original Daily Mail article as well.

In its documentary Extraordinary Animals In The Womb, National Geographic captured rare highly detailed images of animals at various stages of gestation. Now you can see fetal dog, elephants, penguins, and dolphins still inside the womb.

In-utero elephant fetus gestating in the womb

What's going on when you snore

Maybe it’s the weight gain, or the onset of old age.  In recent news, I’m snoring. A lot. This isn’t a dainty snore once in a while that women find attractive.  This is heaving snoring every night, and apparently disruptive to very beautiful women who attempt to sleep next to me. I can’t believe it, though.  I’m actually snoring. 

I tried one of those sleep strips you get from the store and attach to my nose, but that did nothing.  The deal with my snoring is that I can feel part of my throat resting lower, partially blocking my airway, and resulting in that snoring noise.  My wife is a light sleeper to begin with, so this has resulted in my wife getting very little restful sleep, and often driven her to another room.  Not fun.

If you see the diagram on the right, I realized that this is what is happening to me. No sleep strip is going to alleviate the problem.  What I saw on the PureSleep infomercial and website made a lot of sense.  Last week, I ordered the PureSleep. It arrive this weekend, and I tried it out Saturday night. 

The PureSleep

It’s basically much like a a retainer that teenagers and some others have to wear in one’s sleep all night.  You boil the PureSleep device in hot boiling water for 60 seconds to make it malleable.  Wait 10 seconds for it to cool down slightly, then stick it in your mouth, and bite down hard for 45 seconds.  This makes an impression of your teeth into the device.  Take it out, and cool it down in cold water for a bit, which makes it harden up.  This whole process is important in order to customize it for your mouth.  In addition, the harder you bite down, the better the device and your teeth lock while you sleep.  With a proper fit, your mouth and the device lock, and this keeps your lower jaw from slipping backwards when you sleep.

I tried it Saturday night, and while it took some getting used to, I was still able to fall asleep, and it certainly worked. I had to take it out around 6am as a break, but I apparently started snoring again.  On Sunday night, I was able to keep the PureSleep in my mouth all night, and my wife told me she was able to sleep all night.

If you’re snoring, and you’re driving your spouse bonkers at night, do yourself and your spouse a favor.  Try the PureSleep. So far, it’s working great for me, and my wife is practically ecstatic.

I’ve been testing out Apple’s Safari 4 web browser for a few days.  Personally, I’m a Firefox man myself, but I’m always interested in new shiny things.

Safari has some cool features built-in, like a coverflow history browser, and a visual display of your most-visited websites (with a star against the ones that have been updated recently.)  The browser has nice features, and it’s fast, so I’ll continue to try it out.

Apple's Safari 4

Seriously, Tivo has been around for 10 years now.  Of course, I’ve only had Tivo since May 2004.  I liked our original Series 2 Tivo back in 2004, because it was so different and advanced (compared to my VCR.)   Two tuners would have been nice though!  A couple of years later, the Tivo died, and we picked up a dual-tuner version.  Dual tuners?  Great.  However, it was incrementally better, nothing more.  I know they tried to roll out the Series 3 (for an obscene what-were-they-thinking? price), and other HD Tivos.  However, nothing would really impress you.  I was impressed by the Series 3, but there was no way I was going to spend $800 on that, plus subscription fees.

Turns out I’m not the only one out there wondering what the hell the Tivo folks are doing.  Engadget sorta celebrated Tivo’s 10 year anniversary by thinking out loud about all the cool things Tivo should have, and needs to have to survive.  I agree on all the points, especially the need to innovate.  Maybe it’s because the old competition (ReplayTV of yesteryear)  is gone, but there’s plenty of competition from other vendors, including the cable and telecom companies.

Engadget: Ten years of TiVo: how far we haven’t come

I read an article this week by a Dr. Nick Neave out of the UK, titled Sorry, but women are dependent on men. I’m going to open the topic up for discussion.   The writer is an evolutionary psychologist from Britain’s Northumbria University. He has arrived at the conclusion that not only do women need men, they are fundamentally programmed to depend on them.  I don’t know if I fully agree or disagree with the good doctor, but he raises some interesting points.  Heck, I was listening to a Trisha Yearwood song earlier, “There Goes My Baby”, and she was singing about abandonment.

You’re a successful woman with a job to die for, a fabulous home and a supportive husband, but do you ever get the urge to check his mobile phone for love messages? Or his bank statements for intimate meals a deux that you didn’t share? And do you lie awake at night worrying how you’ll cope if the worst happens, your fears are proved and your husband walks out?

Don’t worry. Your suspicion is only natural. At the risk of sounding extraordinarily sexist, I’m convinced that women, even in the happiest of relationships, are programmed to worry their men are going to abandon them.

And they’re terrified – in a way that most men find it frankly impossible to imagine. What’s more, if their forebodings come true, women are more inclined to forgive an affair than a man if the shoe is on the other foot. That’s not because they’re nicer, more easygoing individuals. It’s simply because their primeval urge to hang onto a male provider is so strong.

After reading the article, what do you think?  Okay, now discuss among yourselves, and post back.  I’d like to know.

Slate’s Green Lantern column (personally, never heard about it until today) answered some reader’s question about washing containers before throwing them in the recycling bin.  I never bothered, but I know my wife has done it on occasion when she feels like it.  Reading the article, Clean Jar, Clean Conscience, it turns out, it is not necessary, which doesn’t change my life at all.  There’s also some interesting tidbits about the recycling process as a whole, so it’s worth a quick read, if you are interested.