John Leo shares news from the cutting edge of on-campus student care: 

This has been a big year for sleep at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. The Shapiro Undergraduate Library cleared away some dusty and disposable books on the first floor and six cots were installed, offering weary students “a safe place for brief spells of restorative sleep,” or “naps,” as they are known in campus shorthand. These brief spells have been limited to 30 minutes, and the space, in a well-trafficked area on the first floor of Shapiro, was equipped with vinyl cots, disinfecting wipes, disposable pillowcases, and lockers.

Best not to linger on the need for disinfectant wipes. Or instructions to “wipe down the cot when you are done.” 

Detractors observed that throwing out all those books so that students could sleep during the day was an unfortunate bit of symbolism, particularly since most students… already had safe places for brief spells of restorative sleep, usually known as “dorms.”

However, even these comforts may be insufficient for our awfully fatigued thinkers of tomorrow. And so,

Last month, the university library started testing a MetroNaps EnergyPod (in English: a nap machine) that looks like a dental chair encased in a plastic egg and sells for just under $13,000.

Behold its magnificence. 

The EnergyPod comes with a hemispherical privacy visor “for additional seclusion,” an adjustable timer, and speakers, from which you’ll hear “specially devised rhythms to facilitate relaxation.”

It can vibrate gently and wake you up slowly to soothing music. Google and several colleges have them. St. Leo College in Florida has installed them in dorms so commuters can use them and dorm-dwellers don’t have to go all the way upstairs to take a nap. After all, what is college without a $13,000 vibrating nap machine?

If $13,000 vibrating nap machines sound a tad indulgent, it’s worth bearing in mind that the University of Michigan was noted here previously for hiking tuition, pledging fiscal responsibility, then spending $400,000 to relocate one tree.

Photographic evidence of Michigan’s sleep-deprived students and the terrible crushing pressures of academic life can be found here. Readers are advised that some scenes may be distressing.

Be strong. Take tissues. 

Because you’ve always wanted an electronic whistling machine. 

With the humans out of the house, the animals set to work. // Bathing. // Orderly beaches. // How to make magazine nunchucks. // Chocolate records. Play them, eat them. // Ohio Amish barn-raising. // Colours used in films. // Cat furniture. // A cliff house isn’t for everyone. // Fish spits light. // French fry pizza. The cheese acts as glue. // Parents, get your teenager one of these. You’ll never tire of it. // Let’s talk about toilet paper orientation. // Super Looper. // The evolution of headphones. (h/t, Things) // The history of the car in 178,000 images. // Historical gifs. // He makes miniature engines. // Dashcam footage of note. // Dentistry of yore. // And finally, feel the pain of sad dads at a One Direction concert. 

To accommodate the entirety of Mr Shatner’s talent.

By Nick Acosta. Via MeFi.

For newcomers, more items from the archives.

When the Onion is Redundant. 

Paul Krugman and Polly Toynbee are awfully concerned by how much you earn. Themselves, not so much.

When very well-heeled ‘progressives’ decry income inequality as at the very least something to be fixed, and fixed urgently, at what point can we expect the people saying this to act as if it were true? I mean, act individually, themselves, in accord with their own professed values and imperatives. Curiously, the most typical position is to do nothing whatsoever unless the state acts coercively against everyone, thereby deferring any personal action aside from the usual mouthing. And so inevitably that mouthing looks a lot like chaff, a way to divert the envy and tribalism they’re so happy to inspire in others: “Yes, I’m loaded, but look at those people over there – the ones who disagree with us – they have slightly more, or almost as much. Let’s all hiss at them.”

Clinging to the Teats. 

Gender studies lecturer Hila Shachar doesn’t think the public should have any say in how its money is spent.

Dr Shachar is careful not to explain the “contribution to society” made by her own work, or by the humanities research projects that were highlighted as examples of non-essential spending, including a $164,000 grant for studying “how urban media art can best respond to global climate change.” Or by the boldly titled research project Queering Disasters in the Antipodes, which hopes to probe the “experiences of LGBTI people in natural disasters” and ultimately provide “improved disaster response” to gay people, whose needs in such circumstances are apparently quite different from those of everyone else. The princely sum of $325,183 has been spent on this endeavour.

Their Mighty Brains Will Save Us. 

The Guardian unveils its hot and sassy trainee journalists. A snapshot of the nation and its everyday concerns.

There’s Emma Howard, 26, who studied English in Leicester and Strasbourg and lists her credentials as “community organising” and “having fun with other social activists,” which, we learn, “can mean standing on the street with placards.” “I think about power a lot,” says she. Podcast enthusiast Fred McConnell, 27, is the sole male in a group of ten and tells us that, “After university I headed to Afghanistan to produce multimedia for a skateboard charity.” As one does. And there’s Hannah Jane Parkinson, 24, who “performs poetry” and whose areas of expertise are “lifestyle and pop culture.” Ms Parkinson is “from Liverpool, but moved to Russia to drink vodka and play at being Lara from Dr Zhivago.” She moved again, to London, “for a great job,” one in which she “got to look at cat gifs.” “I couldn’t be happier at the Guardian,” says Ms Parkinson. “It’s where I always wanted to work.”

There’s more, should you want it, in the greatest hits.