Here's another thing to worry about while you're up all night tossing and turning because you can't fall asleep because you're worrying about stuff too much: Norwegian researchers recently found that "people who had trouble falling asleep had a 45 percent increased relative risk of heart attack" compared to people who didn't have sleep problems. Oh, but also, scientists in Colorado have discovered the chemical secret to the healthy elasticity of python hearts, and have have had success in transferring it to lab mice. So in the future, we may prevent heart attacks by drinking the blood of giant snakes. If that helps you to relax.

"Alabama’s reputation has also taken a huge hit just when it is trying to lure international businesses. No matter how officials may try to tempt foreign automakers, say, with low taxes and wages, the state is already infamous as a regional capital of xenophobia." READ MORE

"Are 18- to 34-year-olds too young to be nostalgic? Evidently not. Starting next Monday, TeenNick, part of the Nickelodeon family of cable channels for children, will start rebroadcasting old series from the 1990s that are considered classics by young adults. That’s right: classics from the 1990s." READ MORE

"The Times newsroom, like most corporate nerve centers, is a labyrinth of intrigue, gossip, back-biting, rumor, false piety, rampant ambition, betrayal and deception. Those who play this game well are repugnant. They are also usually the people who run the place." READ MORE

"Mary Maioriello, an employee at O. D. Heck until she resigned this year, said a culture of abuse continued. Ms. Maioriello was hired as a trainee last year, and witnessed several disturbing episodes. In one case, two employees played a game they called 'Fetch,' throwing French fries on the floor and laughing as one resident dived to get them, while another jumped out of his recliner and a third ate them off the floor." READ MORE

The Capitol in Madison has become Kafkaesque. On Sunday, an order that the building be cleared by 4 p.m. brought hundreds (maybe thousands) flooding into the dome in the afternoon. A good many of these protesters had taken the measure that identified them as prepared to be arrested: ACLU's phone number written on a body part, in ink. READ MORE

In the most-recent New York Times Book Review came an attack on the memoir. Well, technically it was an attack on the memoir written by anyone outside the circle of the “memoir-eligible.” It goes: "There was a time when you had to earn the right to draft a memoir," and then proceeds to savage three recent memoirs. The author, Neil Genzlinger, yearned for a now-distant day, when “unremarkable lives went unremarked upon, the way God intended." READ MORE

Sometimes, when I am eminently bored, I like to scour the New York Times archives for racial slurs. This weekend, hungover and manageably nauseous in a trendy Silver Lake coffee shop, the search term was "nigger," and I came across my greatest find yet: "'Nigger Day' In a Country Town." READ MORE

"Will.i.am has recused himself from the questions. He’s just rocking his club, and not badly." READ MORE

If you're like me, you've spent the past 24 hours unable to think about anything other than the fourth puzzle of Kryptos—the encryption sculpture that stands on the lawn at C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Cryptographers all over the world have been obsessed with deciphering the messages hidden in the 865-character text since it was erected twenty years ago. The first three sections were solved in 1999. They say stuff about illusion and buried secrets and the excavation of King Tut's tomb. But the last part, the final 97-character puzzle, has remained a mystery, confounding some of the world's greatest minds. Author Dan Brown referenced Kryptos in his bestselling novels The Davinci Code and The Final Symbol. The code has proven so difficult that its creator, cryptographer and sculptor Jim Sanborn, has provided a tantalizing clue to the New York Times: Characters 64 through 69, the letters N-Y-P-V-T-T, are decoded as B-E-R-L-I-N. READ MORE