10/18/06
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Imagine waking up in the middle of the night to find an intruder standing in your bedroom. You try to react. You try to scream. But your body is literally paralyzed. All you can do is watch in fear.
That's what Shelley Carson experienced night after night for three months when she was in her twenties. She was on a new assignment as a flight attendant, flying all-nighters across the country, sleeping at odd hours of the day and of the night.
SHELLEY CARSON, HAD SLEEP PARALYSIS: It was about 4:00 in the morning and I saw a man standing in the frame of my door looking into at me. He was back-lit from the light in the hall so I couldn't really see his face. But he was looking at me.
GUPTA: As vivid as the intruder's presence felt it was actually a hallucination.
CARSON: This was my worst nightmare. Somebody has broken into my apartment and I am absolutely paralyzed and I can't move. This happened night after night, somewhere between 20 and 30 occurrences over a three-month period.
GUPTA: The hallucinations were a rare symptom of sleep paralysis, a common disorder in which the mind is partly awake while the body is still caught in the dreaming stage of sleep called REM sleep.
The body remains immobile except for the eyes, which are actually wide open. It usually lasts for seconds or minutes at the most. About 30 percent of us have at least one episode of sleep paralysis in our lifetimes.
RICHARD MCNALLY, HARVARD PARASOMNIA SPECIALIST: The person's wide awake. They can see the room. But they're still paralyzed and they notice that they're still paralyzed. And this can be quite a startling, frightening experience if you don't know what's going on.
GUPTA: Scary and disorienting, especially for the five percent of sleep paralysis sufferers who have extremely vivid hallucinations. The most common vision: an ominous presence in the room. That's most likely expression of the fear created by being paralyzed.
MCNALLY: The mind is sort of creating some sort of a situation to match the mood of fear.
GUPTA: A study by McNally's team also found that people claiming to have been abducted by aliens probably experienced sleep paralysis instead.
MCNALLY: People will hallucinate different things that are congruent with the culture. The aliens coming into one's bedroom and abducting oneself is merely the latest contemporary gloss up on a universal psycho-biological phenomenon.
GUPTA: We're not sure why sleep paralysis happens, but researchers suggest that during non-REM sleep, the brain releases the neurotransmitters normally active during this period. But it also continues to release its REM sleep neurotransmitter. That results in a combined state of wakefulness and paralysis. Even though the brain is sending a signal down the spinal cord for the body to move, those signals get confused and the body remains immobile.
MCNALLY: They're emerging into wakefulness and the motor neurons are still inactive. And you happen to notice that fact.
GUPTA: Sleep paralysis does not have direct negative effects on the body, but extreme cases can interfere with sleep and can treated with certain antidepressants, better sleep habits. And avoiding daytime naps and night shift work can bring lighter cases under control.
NY Daily News
June 15, 2006
He was forced to apologize yesterday after more of his E-mails found their way to my inbox and exposed the host of MSNBC's "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" as insulting and frequently obscene in an acrimonious exchange with two viewers who taunted him.
Olbermann's antagonists, who asked not to be named, repeatedly claimed in their June 8 E-mails that dead Al Qaeda terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was Olbermann's "hero," prompting the television star to advise: "Hey, save the oxygen for somebody whose brain can use it. Kill yourself."
After I forwarded that and other E-mails to an MSNBC exec, Olbermann wrote: "I apologize to anyone who might take offense at my part of this correspondence. It goes without saying that I should not have replied to these abusive and hateful E-mails, but I wonder how many of us could receive literally hundreds of them questioning our patriotism, religion and ethnic origin, without succumbing to the natural wish to confront such hate?"
Here are some examples of Olbermann "confronting hate":
- "Go fuck your mother."
- "You 'Americans' still watching that evil fuck O'Reilly?"
MSNBC declined to comment yesterday, but Olbermann is scheduled to return to work on Monday.
Jun 12th 2006 12:36PM
www.tmz.com
TV personality Dan Abrams has been named General Manager of MSNBC.
The stunning announcement means Abrams will no longer host his afternoon legal show, 'The Abrams Report' on the network.
It is a bold move that no one saw coming.
Abrams, who graduated from Columbia Law School, became a commentator and host for Court TV, then moved to NBC where he made a national name for himself during the extremely tight presidential election of 2000.
Abrams will continue on as the Chief Legal Correspondent for NBC, where he makes frequent appearances on 'Today,' 'Nightly News' and 'Dateline.'
The network has lagged behind the other cables, and the gamble is that Abrams, who is considered creative with substantial experience at MS, can change the tide.
Abrams replaces Rick Kaplan, who was booted recently as President of MSNBC.
(gawker.com)
Eff Anderson Cooper...his lover is hotter
http://andyisoldjuliosnot.blogspot.com/2006/05/julio-cesar-recio-is-da-man.html
via Drudge - originally from an interview with Details magazine - Aug 2003
Nov 8 - Hannity & Colmes