Sky News is reporting that the transfer of sovereignty in Iraq is being moved up to today. (Er, tomorrow. Monday.)

Connecticut’s Stamford Advocate has an excellent article about an issue that was once near and dear to my heart: sleep deprivation among teenagers.

“Teenagers,” [Dr. Edward O’Malley] explains, “are hard-wired to have a different sleep cycle than adults (or younger children). It’s a biological reality that they want to go to bed later and sleep later.”

What’s not normal, said O’Malley, is expecting the typical teen to get up at the first light of day, head off to school and function at peak levels on the road and in class. …

One reason teens in Fairfield County - and many other parts of the country - are not getting that kind of quality shut-eye is because high school starts so early, O’Malley said. …

“It’s only worse in Fairfield County because parents sort of accept that kids have to keep these crazy schedules to succeed,” says Dr. Saul Rothenberg, who is affiliated with Greenwich Hospital’s sleep center. “For a lot of kids and their families, there is no room in their long list of priorities for sleep. Instead, it’s, ‘I have to go to ballet. I have to go to soccer. I have six or seven hours of homework.’ Parents tolerate it because they think that kind of pressure is normal and they almost expect it.” …

O’Malley has been traveling the state in recent months, visiting any school district willing to consider the problems he says are wrought by teenage sleep deprivation, including inattention in school, poor grades, depression, caffeine dependence and, in worst cases, auto accidents.

O’Malley notes that national statistics show that most teenage car wrecks don’t happen at night but between 7 a.m and 9 a.m., “when they are going to school.” …

While many school systems argue that parents prefer to send younger children to school later than adolescents, O’Malley notes that kids in elementary school are much less affected by an early start time.

“They naturally get up earlier,” he says. “Really the ideal solution, in many communities, would simply be to switch the times the younger children start with the times the older children start.”

This really is a big problem. Kudos to the Advocate for tackling it.

The national Green Party has decided not to endorse Ralph Nader, choosing David Cobb instead. And unlike Nader, Cobb has the right idea:

Cobb…has said he will campaign for other Green candidates in all 50 states, but for himself in only the 40 states he deems “safe.” In the battleground states, where votes for him might tip the balance [between Bush and Kerry], he said he would ask voters to let their consciences guide them, a suggestion that was interpreted by Nader’s supporters as permission to vote for the presumptive Democratic nominee, John Kerry.

The whimpering sound you hear is Karl Rove crying.

We still haven’t hit 110° in Phoenix yet this year, but the official high yesterday was 109°, and today we topped out at 107°, as my “surface of the sun” post suggests. Bottom line: as Dick Cheney would say, it’s f***in’ hot.