Recent stuff on the net and things from my Google Reader starred list. (And when did I begin to use Reader? Well- I'm not quite sure but the first starred item is from April 18, 2007. Uh yeah- the digital closet needed cleaning.)
Chernobyl 27 years later The disaster itself happened April 26, 1986.

Cab drivers meet all kinds. And there are all kinds of cabbies. Here's a great story by a great cabbie from a Sept 2008 post I'd saved.

How about some double-mint stuffed Oreo cookies?

Or how about Reese's Overload (for sure) cake?

Along the food line but not so sweet this time- English Muffin bread. Is there any bread quite as yummy as an English Muffin? I think not. 

Alzheimer's prevention? Little Anecdote #1: My friend and cohort Lillian used to try to beat me to the crossword (and here's the thing- she was a lot older than me and I'd let her have first crack, usually). Do crosswords, she'd say. Prevent Alzheimer's. In 2000, I left the US and didn't see her again until the fall of 2005. By which time she no longer knew me and often didn't know what she'd just done. I've wondered since if she knew back in '97 that something was up. That there were things going missing. I still enjoy the crossword. Now if we only knew if Angry Birds or Words With Friends are good for keeping your mind active. The second one maybe. hmmm

Abandoned mansions from around the world. The first one's from Ukraine...which is basically why the article made it into this post (but stuff like this always catches my eye. There's the mansion down in Kentucky, visible from a major highway. The story, as I remember it: Rich Man builds it for his wife. Wife divorces him. Rich Man loses everything and isn't able to finish the 'house'. When I saw it, someone had fenced it and was pasturing cattle on the grounds. Right up to the house. Which truly was magnificent. That pic often comes to mind. How sad we humans can be sometimes.). Ukraine has quite a lot of old fortresses/castles/the likes. Unfortunately, the country has no idea, for the most part, of how to capitalize on this potential wealth of tourist dollars.

"A satirist is a man who discovers unpleasant things about himself and then says them about other people." (Peter McArthur- whoever he is) 

and this remodeled saying: "Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll buy a funny hat. Talk to a hungry man about fish, and you're a consultant." (Scott Adams this time)

And another- from Mark Twain: "If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything."

One way to figure out what to set the alarm for (this came in a newsletter):
The Best Part of Waking Up...

... Is Sleepyti.me, a Site That Maximizes Restfulness

We all wish for a little more shut-eye, but the truth is sleeping longer isn’t always better. Let us explain using Sleepyti.me, a barebones website that calculates the optimal time for you to go to bed or wake up depending on your current sleep schedule. But first, a quick science lesson. Sleep is broken up into 90-minute cycles, and it is much easier to wake up at the end of a cycle than in the middle of one. Hence, shortening your beauty sleep to accommodate this cycle actually leaves you feeling more rested. That’s where Sleepyti.me comes in. Tell it when you need to wake up, and it tells you when to fall asleep, counting backward in 90-minute increments. Skeptical? We were too. But in our tests it worked. Sleepyti.me can also work in reverse, helping you set your alarm if you are going to bed right now. In which case, you should probably get off the computer.