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dear prudence Sexy Cougar or Dangerous Predator? Dear Prudence offers advice about a May-December encounter that the victim deems harmless--during a live chat at Washingtonpost.com. Posted Monday, Aug. 8, 2011, at 3:47 PM ET Emily Yoffe: Good afternoon--I hope everyone is having a good economic meltdown! Q. Yikes, My Boyfriend and His Lost Virginity: My boyfriend of two years recently told me that he lost his virginity at the age of 12 to a family friend that was 30 at the time. He swears that he is the one that seduced her and that it is a very happy memory for him; I have no reason to doubt him and he is "older" than his years and has always dated older women. But I'm very grossed out by the woman in question. I'm picturing myself allowing a 12-year-old to seduce me (I'm 30) and the thought is disgusting to me. I really don't think she is a predator and my boyfriend really does seem to have quite an effect on older ladies--they all just want to take their pants off for him. My question is mainly that I don't know how I'm going to face this woman--we see her about three times a year at family events and one is coming up next month. I am not great at keeping my facial features neutral so I'm worried she's going to figure out that I know. I don't want to "out" her. I'm definitely not going to touch a drop of booze that day because I don't want to get tipsy and say something I'll regret. I really just don't know what to say to this woman or how to act in front of her! Help. To continue reading, click here. Emily Yoffe is the author of What the Dog Did: Tales From a Formerly Reluctant Dog Owner. You can send your Dear Prudence questions for publication to prudence@slate.com. (Questions may be edited.)Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Dow Plunges in Aftermath of S&P Credit Downgrade The Serious Economic Blunders European Banks and American Politicians Keep Making The Guy Who's Single-Handedly Making Kids Better at Math and Science | Advertisement  |
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moneybox S&P Is Right. It's Congress' Fault. The politics of sovereign-debt ratings downgrades. Posted Monday, Aug. 8, 2011, at 3:47 PM ET
This analysis strikes me as mostly correct, and the markets seem to agree. Since Friday, investors have blithely shrugged off S&P's suggestion that U.S. Treasuries are getting riskier. Indeed, demand for them has risen: Spooked by the sovereign debt crises in Europe and the specter of declining corporate profits stateside, traders are fleeing stocks for the warm safety of American bonds. The United States is borrowing for the cheapest rates since the 1960s, downgrade be damned. To continue reading, click here. Annie Lowrey reports on economics and business for Slate. Previously, she worked as a staff writer for the Washington Independent and on the editorial staffs of Foreign Policy and The New Yorker. Her e-mail is annie.lowrey@slate.com.Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Dow Plunges in Aftermath of S&P Credit Downgrade The Serious Economic Blunders European Banks and American Politicians Keep Making The Guy Who's Single-Handedly Making Kids Better at Math and Science | Advertisement |
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| By Adam Dachis How I Achieved Better Sleep with the Help of Technology
There are plenty of opinions about how you can sleep better, and most of them are probably right for someone, but it's hard to know which ones are right for you with all the variables in the mix. You could pay to spend a night or two at a sleep clinic, but that's going to cost you quite a bit and it'll never feel like you're sleeping at home. Seeing as you can't watch yourself sleep, however, that was pretty much your only option until recently. Now there are a few sleep tracking tools that actually provide you with a pretty good picture of what's happening while you're unconscious. While these tools may not be as detailed as a sleep clinic, they can give you a good overview of how restful the night was and you can use this information to figure out what causes sleep problems for you and how you can have a more restful night. I tested four different sleep tracking products that ranged from free to almost $200, all of which are sufficient for the task. I'm going to walk through how they worked for me and what I learned, and then we'll talk about using them to figure out how you can sleep better. The Sleep Tracking TechI tried four different sleep trackers which can be split into two pairs: smartphone apps and dedicated sleep tracking gadgets. The Cheap Method: Sleep Tracking Apps
While the apps don't differ much, Sleep Bot Tracker offers slightly more analysis than Sleep Cycle (like sleep debt calculations) and a few added features (such as a homescreen widget and multiple alarms). Sleep Bot Tracker can also completely silence your phone while in use, which is a big help. (Trust me, it's not fun waking up to a vibrating pillow.) That said, they both get the job done for either no money or hardly any at all. The Slightly Better Method: Sleep Tracking Gadgets
The Wakemate is the cheaper of the two because you're essentially paying for a wristband and nothing else. To use all the functionality it provides, you need an Android phone or tablet, Blackberry, iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. You wear it around your wrist at night, set an alarm on your phone (if you want to), and sync up the data in the morning. It's very easy to use and you only have to charge the battery (via USB) every few days. When you sync your data with your smartphone or tablet, the free Wakemate app uploads that data to their servers where you can log in and view a detailed analysis of your sleep. The Zeo is more expensive (by $130) because you get everything in the box. It comes with a very nice alarm clock that also charges the sleep tracking headband you wear at night. The clock saves your sleep data on an SD card automatically and you can use the included card reader to transfer the information to your computer for further processing. When you wake up in the morning and take the headband off, you can just place it on top of the clock and magnets will hold it on the charging platform. Both devices offer alarms that attempt to wake you up when its sensors detect you're in a lighter phase of sleep, track your motion and activity during the night, and provide a detailed analysis of that data through their web site. The difference that mattered the most to me—and what I think will matter most for the majority of people—is that the Wakemate is worn on your wrist and not around your head. While the Zeo is more comfortable than you'd expect, you can only be so comfortable with a plastic device strapped to your head. The Wakemate sits around your wrist and I found very pleasant to wear at night. It was the first sleep tracker I tested and I continued to wear it while testing the others because, after awhile, I felt like something was missing when it wasn't there. The Wakemate also transferred its data wirelessly to my phone, which is a device I already knew how to use. While the Zeo isn't complicated, it still has a slight learning curve. You also probably don't want to take a large clock with you when traveling. The Wakemate will fit in your pocket. While both devices were perfectly serviceable, the Wakemate was more comfortable, a little easier to use, and a lot cheaper. How to Actually Use Tech to Improve Your SleepThese devices will give you a good overview of how you slept but they can only tell you so much about how to improve. You have to be proactive in using the data to figure out what's working for you and what isn't. I tried a lot of different things and was surprised by what I learned.
How can you figure out what you need to do? Tag Your Sleep
Figuring Out What Tests To Try
The important thing is that you put in the (minimal) effort to track your efforts and try many different things—even things that may seem irrelevant, like altering the temperature in your bedroom. While I'm still continuing to collect more data to find the perfect environment and situation for my perfect night sleep, I've already learned a lot of useful information in the past five weeks. It takes patience and a bit of work, you can use these tools to help solve your sleep problems so long as you're willing to take the time. You can follow Adam Dachis, the author of this post, on Twitter, Google+, and Facebook. Twitter's the best way to contact him, too. 
| August 8th, 2011 Top Stories |
Once upon a time—a very long time—I used to sleep well. After too many restless nights, I decided something needed to be done. I changed my diet, my exercise routine, and a lot more to try and figure out the problem, but without any hard data it was all speculation. A few key pieces of technology helped me figure out what I was doing right and wrong, and how pretty much anyone can do it, too, for practically no money. 
I looked at two sleep tracking apps: 
In the gadget department, I tried the 
What actually impacted my sleep came down to three factors: environment, light, and time. I live in Los Angeles, where the air quality is famous for its unfriendliness to human health, and so it wasn't surprising to find that my sleep score went up quite a bit when I was in Minnesota. I even slept on a couch, in one of the hottest summers to date with no air conditioning, and that change bumped my sleep score up by about 30%. I also learned that I'm very sensitive to changes in light, and move less when I sleep if there is little to no light in the room. Finally, I found that when I slept had practically no impact on the quality of sleep. I've lived my entire life assuming that if I went to bed after 1:00 AM I'd be tired all day. As it turns out I can go to bed at 4:00 AM, wake up at noon, and I will sleep just as well.
I discovered what I need to do by testing popular suspected causes of poor sleep and keeping track of how they impacted me, personally. It's very easy for you to do the same thing with any of the tools previously mentioned. Overall, the Wakemate makes this easier to do because you can add tags to each day before (and after) you go to bed. You can add a tag for your location, how stressed out you feel, whether you ate too much, too little, or just poorly, and so on. Once you've tagged all your data, you can sort it on the Wakemate site and see which tags are most commonly in the good nights and the bad nights. (In my case I learned that I need blackout shades and, probably, an air purifier.) If you're not using the Wakemate, you can still track your progress this way by keeping a simple tag log in a text file. It only takes a few seconds and is the best way to determine what's working and what isn't.
Find problems in your life and change them for a period of time so you can see if those improvements help you sleep better or not. Does your diet suck? Try 
