Reebok and Kool-Aid have just partnered up to tap into the sweet tooth of kids and love for sneakers. Reebok packed each of the kicks with extra flavor by creating scent-infused sockliners. Starting February 1st, you can buy your kids sweet smelling Reebok sneakers. The first trio of flavors to launch that day will be Grape, Cherry and Strawberry.

Cherry

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“Man is a magnet, and every line and dot and
detail of his experiences come by his own attraction.”

— Elizabeth Towne

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One possible treatment option for insomnia seems to be paradox: You should try to restrict you sleeping time! This can help to reduce the time you spend awake in your bed and all the worrying about the problems to fall asleep. Restriction of sleep will cause you to become tired again and to establish new routines to fall asleep.

Usually one starts sleep restriction therapy at first with only a very short period of sleep during the night. Then this time will increase until a normal sleeping time is achieved.

To start this kind of treatment you have to stick to a strict regime and stay awake even if you feel sleepy or have problems to spend the time in the late evening. If you start with a sleeping time of 4 hours you would have to stay up until 2 or 3 am if you decide to go up at 6 or 7 in the morning. And this not only for normal working days but also weekend or public holidays. If you find sleep for this short period you can increase the sleeping time by 15 or 30 min until you finally reach a normal sleeping time according to your personal needs.

* Don’t go to bed until you feel sleepy, even if this is later than your normal bedtime.
* Set your alarm clock to wake you about 6.30 am, even if this means you only get a few hours sleep for the first few nights.
* If you don’t fall asleep within 30 minutes, get up until you feel sleepy again.
* Avoid napping during the day, so that you are very tired at night.
* As your sleep improves gradually go to bed earlier and continue to get up early so you get a full night’s sleep and establish a regular routine.

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Definition: Adj. 1. busted - out of working order.

2. A way to describe a very ugly female, who can barely be described as female. A “busted” female is not even considered for Mercy Sex simply because they are so ugly.

Creating a passion for reading is one of the greatest gifts you can give to an African American child. The African American Child book can be the key to enabling enthusiasm for reading in the community. I came to this conclusion not from formal training in any the educational sciences (as matter of record my background is in technology and project management) but as a parent who just happened to be a Sci-Fi fan. Science Fiction opened my eyes to the cross synergies between the African American reading gaps and African American images.

In today’s world media comes at you from all directions. The internet the PC, cable TV, Video Games, IPODs etc. The exposure to all of this media for today’s African American Child is a given fact, you can not avoid it, the fact that is not so obvious is how this impacts African American reading gaps.

CASE IN POINT

I am a Sci-Fi media fan. One day while I was enjoying a episode of Star Trek – The Next Generation on TV with my then 6 year old in my lap when she turned to me and said,

“Daddy why do the black people on the show look strange?”

Before I tried to explain to my daughter that Worf was a Klingon and he hailed from a different planet and that Geordi was blind and his funny looking glasses allowed him to “see” I paused and asked myself

“Why DO the Black people on the show look strange?”

I then tried to look at the screen from the point of view of a 6 year old African American child.

I see 2 black faces and 1 white face on the TV screen:

* The African American character named Worf has the physical facial features of an animal and is from a race of warriors that loves to fight (violent) .
* The African American character named Geordi job is to “fix” and maintain things on the ship (the maintenance man)
* The 2 African American lead actors do not look human (see picture).
* I see the whitest face on the show (character Lt. Data the android ) is the strongest and most intelligent character on the show.
* The android actor who is not human “looks” human.

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Certain variations in a gene that helps regulate stress response offer protection against depression in adults who suffered abuse when they were children, a new study says.

Adults who were abused as children and didn’t have the protective variations of the CRHR1 gene had twice the symptoms of moderate to severe depression, compared to those with the variations.

The researchers interviewed more than 400 adults and tested their DNA. About one-third of them had the protective variations in the gene that produces CRHR1, a receptor for the stress hormone corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH).
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The Matchstick Garden Set will have you planting like Johnny Appleseed in no time. Disguised as a book of matches, the tip of each match are seeds mixed and ready to grow. Choose from an assortment of wildflowers or herbs. Also makes a great gift for the gardener in your life.

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A 45-minute midday nap can help boost your memory and remember facts, but only if you learned them well in the first place, a new study suggests.

This type of memory is called “declarative memory” and applies to standard textbook learning and knowledge, in contrast to “procedural memory,” which applies to skills. Sleep appears to help “set” these declarative memories and make them easier to recall, the researchers said.

“Sleep appears to have an impact on what is learned well, but not so much when one is not motivated to learn,” said lead researcher Matthew A. Tucker, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School’s Center for Sleep and Cognition.

For the study, 33 people were trained with certain declarative memory tasks. After the training, 16 took a non-REM nap, while 17 stayed awake and watched a movie. Later the same day, all the participants were tested. The tests included memorizing words, memorizing a maze and memorizing a complex line drawing.

Tucker’s team found that over three very different declarative memory tasks, taking a nap improved performance compared with staying awake. However, napping only worked for people who had really learned the task well in the first place.

“The nap group performed better overall than the awake group, but the difference wasn’t significant,” Tucker said. “However, when we looked at individual performance during training, we found those who did better during training benefited from napping,” he said.

In addition, people appeared to perform well on one task only, but not all three, Tucker said. “There is likely a basic level of learning that has to be attained before sleep can have an impact on performance,” he said.

The findings were published in the Feb. 1 issue of the journal Sleep.

Tucker thinks that taking a nap may actually improve one’s memory of facts if one is motivated to learn. “There is a lot of data starting to come in that there are benefits from naps on memory,” he said.

Sara Mednick, an assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego’s Laboratory of Sleep and Behavioral Neuroscience, said the new study is further proof of the role of sleep on memory and learning.

“This paper is further evidence of how sleep, specifically naps, can be a tool for memory consolidation,” she said. “Interestingly, the data shows that not all subjects utilize sleep for consolidation to a similar extent.”

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The newest sensation at the center of Hollywood’s fashion scene isn’t a famous designer or starlet. It’s a 56-year-old homeless man who spends his days dancing on roller skates.

John Wesley Jermyn has been a fixture in West Los Angeles for more than 20 years. Nicknamed “The Crazy Robertson” and “The Robertson Dancer,” he is a constant presence on a stretch of Robertson Boulevard that has become the city’s trendiest shopping corridor and a prime strolling spot for tourists and movie stars. Among locals and online, there’s much speculation about Mr. Jermyn’s personal history, including one oft-repeated rumor that he’s a secretive millionaire.

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