An interesting sleep study addressing that age-old question:

[Daniel Kripke] compared death rates among more than 1 million American adults who, as part of a study on cancer prevention, reported their average nightly amount of sleep.  To many his results were surprising, but they’ve since been corroborated by similar studies in Europe and East Asia.  Kripke explains. [...]

Studies show that people who sleep between 6.5 hours and 7.5 hours a night, as they report, live the longest.  And people who sleep 8 hours or more, or less than 6.5 hours, they don’t live quite as long.  There is just as much risk associated with sleeping too long as with sleeping too short. [...]

Morbidity, [or sickness,] is also "U-shaped," in the sense that both very short sleep and very long sleep are associated with many illnesses - with depression, with obesity, and therefore with heart disease and so forth. [...]

One of the reasons I like to publicize these facts is that I think we can prevent a lot of insomnia and distress just by telling people that short sleep is OK.  We’ve all been told you ought to sleep eight hours, but there was never any evidence.  A very common problem we see at sleep clinics is people who spend too long in bed.

It’s always sort of bugged me that I tend to wake up after 7 or 7.5 hours of sleep.  I sometimes go back to sleep and sleep longer than 8 hours, but I never sleep just 8.  But I guess it’s no problem after all.

There’s an interesting episode of Mega Disasters called "Oil Apocalypse" that runs on the Discovery channel.  Here are some details and quotes that I transcribed from it:

In the US, nearly 100% of cars, farm equipment, trains, and planes run on oil.

Oil provides nearly 50% of all our energy needs.

Petrochemicals are the base of many of our day to day products including plastics, asphalt, tires, polyester, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals.

The US produced 10 million barrels per day in the 1950s, but only consumed 7 million, so we exported the surplus.  World consumption was 20 million barrels per day.

Today the US produces 8.3 million barrels per day, but consumes more than 20 million, so we import about two-thirds of the oil we use.  World consumption is now 84 million barrels per day.

Saudi Arabia produces and exports 10 million barrels per day, and has reserves of between 160-260 billion barrels.

The world has consumed 1 trillion barrels since 1859; there are an estimated 1-3 trillion barrels left, but it’s harder to extract than the first 1 trillion, and it’s being consumed much faster now.

Ethanol has for years comprised about 10% of most US gasoline, to reduce engine knock.

Most US ethanol comes from corn, which means that its use as a fuel is hard on our food supply.  Ethanol is expensive to produce, takes lots of energy to produce, and still produces pollution.

Hydrogen fuel cells are expensive, and they aren’t technically an energy source since the hydrogen in them takes energy to produce.

Most of our electricity is currently provided by coal.  Nuclear power provides 20% of US electricity; solar and wind provide less than 1%.  The US is "the Saudi Arabia of coal."

Canada is the US’s primary supplier of foreign oil (surpassing even Saudi Arabia) partly due to the oil sands in Alberta.

Venezuela exports 2.2 million barrels per day, but it is mostly heavy oil considered inferior to middle eastern light crude oil; it needs more refining to be usable.  But the reserves could be hundreds of billions of barrels.

Colorado’s oil shale has more oil than all of Saudi Arabia’s reserves, but it’s probably not feasible to extract/convert it.

I think there are 3 reasons for this.  The first is in the article and men just want women like their "mum". 

The second is because career women don’t have time for a family.  Men want off-spring and we don’t want it to coincide with our mid-life-crisis. 

The last reason, which I think is one of the biggest amongst many males:  Men find dumber women more attractive for some reason.  I believe that this is because smarter women intimidate dumber men.  This reason perturbs me the most.  Men should be grateful to have a smart woman to back them up.  I know I am.  I’m pretty sure Anthony is (just kidding man).  Just suck it up men.  You don’t have to be the best at everything.  And if you are out for looks, those will fade in 10 years.  In 20 years they will be pretty much gone.  The "person" inside those looks will be there forever.