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Insomniacs, the Phantoms of the Internet
theodp writes "Ever since she was a toddler, freelance writer Lily Burana has been a Stay Up Late kind of girl. When her kindergarten teacher asked students 'What time do you go to bed?,' young Lily felt compelled to lie rather than rat out her own mother by saying, 'Oh, between midnight and 1 a.m.' She still suffers from insomnia, but has discovered that Facebook is the Promised Land for the awake and alone. She finds comfort in the company of others who, like her, live counter to the conventional rhythm of a sunny-day world."
Wow... am I the only one in this thread at this time of day?
before those 1am facebook sessions or Mark Zuckerberg is gonna read all her emails
..but their PRs damned quick to put out some crap on how simply lovely its togetherness is anywhere theres a big, bad story on how its founders steal your passwords and go through your emails. RESPECT!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook
And here I thought the lack of interaction with people was a positive aspect of staying up late.
meh
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
How about making the US of A into a GLOBE shape so we can dot people around it in successive "timezones" that way Americans could be on facebook 24 hours a day. Using this concept some people would be awake in the original US of A when on the other side of this GLOBE some of them could be sleeping!
Hahaha..Facebook again
Once forums, IRC channels, and other websites that are driven by user-created content reach a certain size, there is no longer a difference between "daytime" and "night time" because while Americans slumber, Europeans are waking up, and Australians are coming home from work. "Peak" time ceases to mean anything once you're factoring in physical location and have at least two "peak" times. You use the same forum as others, but probably know different mods, OPs, and key players.
It is important that the Internet hang-out be user-driven, because groups who select content to publish tend to originate in geographic proximity, and a single time zone becomes favored.
Facebook isn't a place where it's easy to intrude on a social network in a geographical location outside your own, so I don't understand why the author isn't using a broader term.
Insomnia (307.42, DSM IV, pg. 599) [doesn't every geek have a copy of the official guide to crazy human behavior?] is not the word I would use (I don't have a problem getting to sleep or maintaining sleep). I'm a night owl. My whole life I have basically lived ~8 hours behind wherever I live (i.e. I go to bed at 4-5am local time), and I sleep for 8 to 8.5 hours like a clock (seriously, my primary experience of sleep is I put my head down and then *poof* I'm awake, rested, and it's 8 to 8.5 hours later). Fortunately I have found a way to use this to my benefit (tech writer/minimal interruptions, cover stuff that happens at night). But honestly the though of a "regular" 9-5 existence sort of ... well horrifies me (when do you normal people run errands? and rush hour, like WTF? you realize that you can belt across a city at 2pm in like 15 minutes, but at rush hour that will easily take an hour). Also added advantages: the internet (locally) is faster (the normals are asleep), no phone/email/SMS/IM/etc. interruptions(the normals are asleep) and as a result I am far more productive.
She was a stripper, is there anything else I need to know? I probably won't hear anything else after the word stripper, anyway....
I'll be here all night.
Lily Burana is the original name of the tune for "rock-a-bye baby".
Assuming that everything genetic can be explained as having an evolutionary purpose, does anyone know of an evolutionary purpose to a large group of people having a different schedule than everyone else?
I assume that the owls are meant to be sentinels for the tribe, watching late at night making sure that no one's on their way to attack. But perhaps there are more reasons I haven't thought of yet.
Assuming that everything genetic can be explained as having an evolutionary purpose, does anyone know of an evolutionary purpose to a large group of people having a different schedule than everyone else?
Maybe they are suppose to be the stronger of the genetic pool and replace the weaker day walkers?
You could always learn a foreign language of those on the opposite side of the globe. Never have to worry about no one being up the more languages you know.
As I write this, I am at work at 11:30 PM. I got to work at 8:00 PM. When my coworkers come in in the morning, I'll be heading home to sleep.
I have been this way for as long as I have had conscious memory. My mother tells me that I have been this way since I was a newborn in the hospital.
Lots of treatments have been proposed with many studies being done, some with thousands of test subjects. Not one single treatment has ever been demonstrated to work in a statistically significant way.
Thus the best advice that the medical community can give us "Night Owls" is to find some way to accomodate it. That's why I took up computer programming in the first place. My degree is in Physics, but I'm afraid that teaching morning classes just doesn't work for me.
I have lots of friends who have DSPS as well. I met most of them by hanging out at Dennys at three in the morning.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Explains it perfectly - Staying up late to Man the Internet
The article makes an interesting point: her husband "keeping up a soldier's rhythm". I suffered from exactly the same problem during childhood and adolescence, until the Dutch Marines made the error of accepting me in their ranks. It totally cured me. ( Being daily kicked and yelled out of your bunk at 5 am is a sort of a horse's medicine, but Gawd - did it work !! )
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
This is obviously a desperate cry for help from Lily - she's never been able to escape the shadow of her more famous sister, Carmina.
#DeleteChrome
I'm not insomaniac, but for various reasons I used to sleep at about 2am. And then it became 3am. And then it became 4am. after a while the sliding window slid so much that I started sleeping at 8pm. There was a time I got used to be awake at about 4am, but this time not before bed, but after. It was terrible when I was trying to keep my working day life with my 4am nights, until i realized that if I let it run its course, I could decide where it should stop.
conventional rhythm of a sunny-day world
My problem goes a step further. I like to stay awake for 20 hours and then sleep for like 10. I spend the same amount of my life sleeping/awake as a normal person, just in longer chunks. Trouble is, left to my own devices, I effectively "stay up" 4 hours later each night untill I wrap back around. Before I had a job I could actually live like that. It was kind of a strange sensation brushing my teeth with my roommate at midnight; She was going to bed, i just got up.
Hikery.net - The best hiking site ever. Made by yours truly.
I have never seen anything about this mentioned but I have always wondered if acceleration could have an effect on people who "live counter to the conventional rhythm of a sunny-day world." People could react differently to it.
I wonder if acceleration could play a role. A fact is that at around noon standard time, our bodies decelerate at the highest rate especially when standing close to the equator. At midnight, our bodies would be accelerating at the highest rate. This is due to the way the Earth rotates on itself while rotating around the Sun.
Standing at the equator, we are moving at a surface speed of about 1700 km/h. This makes us move in space 3400 km/h slower at noon than at midnight !!
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
She could just start fight club, like a normal person!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Just this weekend I decided that I must ensure I get enough sleep every night. I'm part way back to normal, but when I got home from work Friday afternoon, I was totally wrecked. It's going to take a few more days before I'm back to normal.
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I wish I'd noticed the article earlier, seeing as I've just been awake all night. Aw well, off to work.
"These lumivores reject the safety of darkness and appear to seek out light. Sickening !"
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
I find this same comfort on 4chan's /g/, having flame wars with neckbeards at 4am in the morning.
*clicks*
3:15am :) haha
> "It was kind of a strange sensation brushing my teeth with my roommate at midnight; She was going to bed, i just got up."
Have you never heard of a toothbrush?
I know it's off-topic and all, but please check out Bob the Angry Flower's take on Atlas Shrugged.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
As a university student my sleep patterns aren't really patterns, in fact sleep is something I barely recognize anymore. Bed time; does that count time in bed with laptop or other reading material? Oh, if you want really awesome dreams, on like 4 hours of sleep, eat peanutbutter before bed. Best Dreams EVER!
Like making surprise attacks on other tribes?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I stopped taking naps when I was three, and have had insomnia ever since. Luckily I have discovered the joy that is amitriptyline.
"Assuming that everything genetic can be explained as having an evolutionary purpose"
- A patently false assumption - humans have had no evolutionary purpose for an appendix for millions of years - but our DNA hasn't gotten rid of it - even though, prior to modern medicine it was in fact a detriment (it can get infections and kill you - dead people don't breed). Evolution is the PRIMARY driver of genetic factors but by no means the sole one. Often a genetic factor will survive or develop which is good for one use and be kept despite occasional disadvantages. One example is the sickle-shape of red-blood cells, this shape has certain anti-infection advantages which let it develop and survive despite the fact that it's not the ideal shape for their job (when it goes too far - you get sickle-cell anaemia).
Having said that, evolution remains the primary driver of genetic change and preservation and in this case there are numerous evolutionary advantages to having a small percentage of the tribe in a sleep-cycle directly out of synch with everyone else. You mentioned acting as sentinels - indeed, some being awake at night would make them more readily aware of threats to the tribe - and they could then wake up others up, regardless of whether it was a conscious plan or just coincidence - it added survival.
Moreover the gene would have other obvious survival advantages. Ability to steal food and mates when the majority of the tribe is asleep for example. Reduced competition for resources since most of your fellow tribesmen aren't around to chase you off.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
My brothers and sisters I've finally found you!
I had a sleep study done (lots of wires and other sensors, on infrared camera).
The doctor told me that I should not get up before 11AM.
The genes that regulate your sleep phase are known, and there are alleles that not only shift some of us later, but also there is advanced sleep phase disorder.
There is currently no cure (it would take a retrovirus, most likely), but some people can deal with the day better if they get DAILY (no skips), strong, early, solar-spectrum light.
Because we are constantly stressing our bodies with out-of-phase wakefulness in the industrialized world, there is a higher incidence of stress-related illness.
I'm one of these folks. I use solar-spectrum bulbs in my bedroom that are on a timer to come on early in the morning. This puts me on a normal sleep schedule with the rest of US Central Time when I need to be. Otherwise, I sleep in until 10-11am and don't go to bed until 3-4am.
I have worked at two companies that did that. Typically I'd come staggering in at 10:05 looking like I just crawled out of bed, because I really did just crawl out of bed.
If I ever made my 10:00 AM meetings on time, it was usually because I had been up all night working. I would then go home to sleep after the meeting.
I've been a coder for twenty-two years now. Other than those two companies, no one has ever had a serious problem with it. Lots of employers have expressed annoyance with the hours I keep, but the quality of my work has always been a persuasive argument.
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What does insomnia have to do with being nocturnal? Night owls still sleep, they just sleep in the daytime! Insomniacs can't sleep at all, the poor buggers. It figures, it was written by a journalist. They aren't the sharpest pencils in the box, you know.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
They are our night sentinels!!!!!
4chan predates Facebook by four months, and has a lot more active chatter during the night hours than Facebook.
she's fat
There are "ultra-larks", too (delayed sleep phase and advanced sleep phase syndromes).
If, in a group of 30-50, there were a couple of people up and (naturally) awake 'til 3-4 AM, and a couple who woke up naturally at about the time those went to sleep, then invading humans, and, in earlier times, other predators, would have less chance of catching the whole band napping.
Pure supposition, of course.
Could be nothing more than simple SNPs. If it were to confer some hunting advantage over a better prey than other wakeful times, then, presumably, nearly whole bands might have shifted.
Given the regimentation of most modern societies, it will nearly always be a mating disadvantage, but just successful enough to remain in play.
So far, lefties haven't been exterminated, either, despite some rather concerted efforts in the US and elsewhere, and the higher incidence of industrial accidents.
That Wikipedia article says that Agomelatin is undergoing clinical trials in the US. I wonder if there is some way I can get myself included in the trials.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
humans have had no evolutionary purpose for an appendix for millions of years - but our DNA hasn't gotten rid of it
Logic fail. Our appendix has been useless, but there is no evolutionary pressure to actively remove it (apart from a handful cases of appendicitis, it essentially causes no harm at all), so it stays in it's redundant state.
Article From WikipediaModafinil
I'm an earlybird, and a nightowl. In the middle of the day I tend to get really sleepy. I often wondered wether the eight hours model really fits everyone. Two sets of four hours would suit me way better. I finally did some research, and found that page pretty much by accident - the only other article that links there on Wikipedia is "Siesta".
There is an interesting drug to treat daytime sleepiness, Modafinil. There could be added effects from it - weight loss & mood elevation. Sounds too damn good to be true - or healthy.
Full plate and packing steel! -Minsc
Insomniacs can sleep. We just take much longer to get to sleep and wake at the drop of a hat, and so never get the amount of sleep we need. Oh, and I live in EST
I work the later half of the day (5pm to 1am) so I just shift my entire day over. I get home around 1am, and do most of my programming until around 4 or 5am, then wake up at 1pm and start the process over. I find the quiet of the night perfect for getting rid of distractions, and none of that pesky sunlight to give me glare!
People who sleep weird hours are not insomniacs. An insomniac is someone impaired by inability to sleep.
For me, it is common to be awake from midnight to six a.m. or not, depending on my mood. I sleep when I am sleepy. I usually get eight or more hours of sleep a day, when you add the time up. If I wake up and "can't sleep," I go "yippee!" and get up, whatever the time. I am not an insomniac.
I hardly ever go to Facebook. I have better things to do.
IANAD, but your example of the appendix is not a clear cut case. How most of the human body actually functions on a microbial level is not understood. The appendix could serve a function that is perhaps redundant, but helpful.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermiform_appendix#Possible_secondary_functions
Roughly half my comments are never submitted. You may be reading the better half...
Logic fail yourself amigo. A handful of people who die from appendicitis before breeding > Zero people who get any benefit from having an appendix.
It's a small evolutionary pressure indeed, but it's non-zero. Well it used to be, since we invented appendectomy's the evolutionary pressure in humans have effectively become zero since we can entirely prevent the negative aspect from impact on the likelihood of breeding.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
On the other hand good chance that it is a trait that is not a disadvantage. There are quite some oddities found in animals that seem to have no function, but are also not in the way of normal functioning. Thus the trait remains in the gene pool.
Facebook has peak activity during working hours, where people try to multitask and "network". For me it's often a relief in between stuck moments to help to put my thoughts for a minute off the task that's blocking or I'm not progressing in to come back "reset", while keeping current with my network (most of my "facebook friends" are professional relations)
At night, I end up reading and studying, sometimes until 3am. Nothing specific, just following curiousity: facebook is dead around that time, my friends in the US and Canada start to get active around those hours but by then I'm not too interested in socializing, I rather withdraw at night and recharge after a day of being social in the workenvironment and performing as a consultant.
My insomnia has given me an extra edge though, while it takes a while for me to get kickstarted (only around midday I start to get productive, before that it's following up, answering emails, meetings, drinking lots of coffee and waking and define my priorities for the day..) but my productivity goes way up in the afternoon until about 19:00. After which I sport until 22:00, have dinner and study until 3-4am. Usually, I'm working on seperate projects, giving me about 5-6 extra hours in the evening/night while others "rest in front of their tv", "raise their kids", "please the wife" or sleep and catch up in the weekend (I usually go out partying on fridaynight until saturday morning and catch up sleep the rest of the weekend while I prepare for the week to come.) In all honesty though, I only can put out that amount of working (extra projects) for 3 months straight after I crash and need a while to recuperate, so I try to keep it in less extremes yet I do get at least an additional 5 hours out of my day.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Hey old man, what's a pencil and why does it need to be sharp?
Okay, I'll concede that it may have unknown benefits - we know that there is no measurable negative side effects to removing it (and a massive positive in that it can save your life if you have appendicitus) but we don't know for sure that it may not have some unknown secondary effect that remains useful.
One thing that becomes clear if you actually study what we know about evolution though is that a great deal of things are used for different purposes to what originally let the mutation survive - evolutions is an unpredictable (emergent) process that can and will take any available path (if only because animals will use any advantage they can to survive - those that don't fell out of the chain right at the start).
I read an article a while ago about a piece of research that found that genetically the human crab lice which most slashdotters never need to fear getting are descended from the lice species that gorillas carry all over their bodies - only, there is a major catch. Human and Gorilla lines split up some 9 million years ago - but crablice only split up from gorilla lines some 5 million years ago. the best theory as to why suddenly 4 million years later the lice would split off into a species that attacks humans - and then only in one area, is that humans didn't evolve pubic hair before that point. The bare downy fur we got is not suitable for lice - and so we were basically immune to them - until hair that is quite ideal for lice infections returned to us - in a localized growth. Chances are those early infections came from sleeping in abandoned gorilla nests - and soon, we had our own species that spread primarily through sex.
Which raises the very interesting question - if we didn't have pubic hair once we started thinning our fur, and getting them made us a target for a parasite we had previously become immune to - why would we get it later on ? Most likely explanation is that it serves another purpose which is a much more definite advantage. Doctors still argue about what the advantages and disadvantages of pubic hair are though (most viable theory to me is that it acts as a friction absorber preventing chafing of the pubic area during sex, thus allowing more frequent sex).
The article ended with the suggestion that this means the current fashion for shaved pubic areas may have a bona-fide health-benefit by making us significantly less likely get crab-lice infections - if indeed friction control is the primary purpose of having them in the first place, our other major evolutionary power (known as "the ability to create technology") provides a wonderful alternative in the form of KY-jelly :P
Anyway - enough semi-serious science and sex jokes (alliteration FTW) my point originally was simply that evolution isn't intelligent and it's not easy to predict, it doesn't have to make sense or make an easy-to-tell story. Unlike creationism ... it has to describe what HAPPENED, there is no natural law that bends natural history to fit our sense of narrative. We can identify likely advantages or disadvantages that a given gene may have had at a given time - but we can't ever say "we evolved X because of Y" - because the real world just isn't that simple.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
In that case our eyes should be better.
Human eyes are not bad, but also not very good at night. With a full moon we can see quite well but otherwise not. When it is overcast, or no moon, we're lost.
Many animals that hunt at night have eyes adapted to night vision, we don't.
Now it is also known that higher-educated people (typically higher IQ) tend to start work later than lower-educated people. Construction workers are happy to start at 7 am, but at the university the researchers start at 9 am earliest, they hate getting up so early. And I have never heard about a reasonable explanation why that could be.
Oh and I don't think that an eight-hour shift means you're super-gifted or so :)
"Put it in, take it out, put it in, take it out...
:-D
I am the monarch of the sea,
The ruler of the Queen's Navee,
Whose praise Great Britain loudly chants,
And we are his sisters, and his cousins, and his aunts!"
HMS Pinafore ---> Stewie Griffin
There are others up late for non-insomniatic reasons. Here's a vote for "new parents"*, cast while feeding the little bugaloo at 4:40am (after 1:30am, after going to bed 'round 11:00pm, night after night for 3 months so far). Oh yeah I could/would/should sleep right now no problem, save for "[nudge] honey, the baby's hungry."
* - yes, some /.ers are proof geeks can ... 'nuff said.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Now it is also known that higher-educated people (typically higher IQ) tend to start work later than lower-educated people. Construction workers are happy to start at 7 am, but at the university the researchers start at 9 am earliest, they hate getting up so early. And I have never heard about a reasonable explanation why that could be.
I think its an over generalisation. I wake up naturally at 7. I am often at work by 8. I leave at 5 and slide into tegretol induced unconsciousness between 22 and 23. Some people I work with arrive for the day at about 12, and leave around 8 but they get up at the same time as me. Its just that when I wake up I have to get to work while they are having breakfast (what's that?) pottering around the house and taking the dog for a walk.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
But the difference is that I enjoy the quiet and alone time during night and hence would stay away from sites like Facebook.
I think the author of the fine article is an insomniac who would like to fall asleep but can't. This was the case for me, when I was a kid.
Sometimes I wonder if I became a night owl because of insomnia. I'm still a night-owl, even though I've figured out how to fall asleep quickly & easily, and I agree that this time of day can be a very productive period.
As a child, I tossed and turned in bed until I finally passed out. I was 5 when we moved from the house with the swimming pool, and I remember being an insomniac then.
When I was seventeen I learned that normal people are able to "relax" their bodies, while keeping their mind awake. This is something like when you sit awkwardly and pinch a nerve, so that a leg falls asleep. When you stand up again, you know your leg is supporting you, but you can't feel any of the normal sensations. Relaxation was said to be something like that (before the pins and needles start).
Thenceforth, I tried to relax every night in bed while trying to go to sleep. I was never successful because I usually passed out first. I didn't complain - 'tis better to pass out quickly than toss and turn for hours.
Sometimes people can't relax because their body doesn't have enough of the "relaxation mineral", Magnesium. Being magnesium deficient (61% of the population, according to the link) makes it difficult to relax, no matter what you do. Magnesium didn't help me fall asleep, but it was worth trying.
Sometimes people have trouble sleeping because the sympathetic nervous system (fight-or-flight response) is over stimulated. Many different conditions can trigger the fight-or-flight response, and for some people, this state of "red alert" becomes a habit.
I build a stress-relieving device that can potentially help balance the two aspects of the autonomic nervous system (fight-or-flight and rest-and-digest). This was mentioned in a comment to the recent slashdot story on Dr. Nakamats, who has his own way of balancing the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.
I have a client who was an insomniac, and is definitely NOT a night owl. On a bad day, he passed out in his recliner around 7:30pm. He stumbled off to bed at 9pm, and woke every morning at 1am or 3am. He was tired, but incapable of going back to sleep.
He went to the doctor, who gave him a sleeping pill. The side effects were not acceptable for someone of his profession (doctor/surgeon). He went to a sleep specialist, who ordered a sleep study. The study showed that my client stopped breathing frequently, and he was diagnosed with sleep apnea. The CPAP machine helped a little, but did not provide a satisfactory sleep experience.
First I helped the client deal with some old emotional traumas. A few weeks later I supplied the Radial Appliance. He uses it every night - if he wakes up at 1am (sometimes the dog wakes him up), he'll move, re-attach the wires, and go right back to sleep.
I talked to his wife recently, and she said the most amazing thing happened last week: she woke up at 6:30am, and her husband (my client) was still asleep. It was the first time that she'd woken first in the 7+ years that they've shared a bed.
but as long as you don't need to go anywhere in the morning it doesn't really matter anymore.
Agreed - I ditched my 8am-5pm job recently, and am much happier sleeping on my own schedule.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Where we having varying amounts of sunlight ranging from sun never going down during midsummers and not seeing the sun for a week during midwinter. While I do sleep more during the winter time, I find it REALLY hard convince myself to adhere to 8-4 (normal in Finland, instead of 9-5) working schedule. My body requires less sleep during summer and more during winter, as is probably the cause with many others, although other people seem to have an uncanny discipline regarding this and living with the 'normal rhythm'.
My mother was, and is a late sleeper as well. Some say its hereditory, but who knows, might just be inherent laziness instead of sleepwakewhatever syndrome. If I'm let to roam freely, I'm awake about 16-17 hours and sleep for 8-9. This is only if I've got active stuff to do, though. If im in an environment where I don't have access to a computer, but instead my environment cues my attention to, for example, physical sports and rigid healthy lifestyle [this time, northeast Australia] and has a reasonable ratio of light/darkness during the day, then I go form dawn (birds singing) to a dusk+3-4 hours. If, however, a solid access to infinite amount of information is added to the equation (internet), then my sleeping pattern quickly deteriorates into what it was in Finland. I stay up as long as I can and eat up all the information possible, then sleep until I've processed the mesh of random data and get up.
Having a clear, well defined time for breakfast, lunch and dinner really helps keep your rhythm. Complete that with regular (preferably daily) exercize and you should be able to keep whatever schedule you wish. Eventhough the mind works all day when programming etc, you really need to make your body work as well to get good sleep at "regular pace", following an approximate 24 hour schedule.
rambleramble..
And yet your wrong yourself. Appendix seems to have purpose after all. It stores usefull bacteria in case of you should need renewall (food poisoning etc.). At least that is something I read somewhere.
The condition is widely thought to be genetic, but the precise gene has not yet been isolated.
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I've spent most of my life living ina constant state of fighting my own body, I like to sleep during the day, and work at night.
My doctor says I have "insomnia" and I need to "adjust my sleep patterns", I'd have thought after 25 years of trying to do so, something would have changed....
Couldn't it be feasible that some people are just meant to be awake at night?
Not a purpose . . . that's not why evolution happens. Evolution happens because a particular change doesn't get the organism killed, not because it has some intended purpose for the change.
Politics and foreign wars. All the weather, all the scores.
That's the World News Polka!
Business news from Tokyo. Stuff you saw on Koppel's show
That's the World News Polka!
It's late at night, you're wide awake and you're not wearing pants.
So grab your World News Now mug and everybody dance!
Have some fun. Be a pal. Every anchor guy and gal,
Do the World News Polka!
Who cares what the network thinks? Or the sponsors, too?
And if your neighbors call the cops, here's all you have to do:
When they yell "It's half past three!," tell them "Hey, it's news to me!"
That's the World News Polka!
They make us work the graveyard shift.
That's why we go for broke. So why not tune in ABC,
And join our little joke?
Five whole days, every week,
We're here with our tongues in cheek.
That's the World News Polka! Not lipsync...
Do the World News Polka!
Getting up at 4am is a great cure for insomnia.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It's great to welcome the sun and then go to bed for a while. Noone notices somebody sleeping between 8 and 12am :-)) Though the world outside is like a beehive, noone disturbs your sleep. It's great. The only drawback is my eyes being comfortable with little light and therefore a bright sunlit day is hell.
cb
insomnia is a mark of depression or anxiety or a number of physical problems
if you are an insomniac, you have a problem that will eat into your ability to carry on with your jobs or your relationships
additionally, your health will suffer: many normal physical processes are tied into circadian rhythms, such as cholesterol production, and fat burning
insomnia is not a mark of subculture pride, it is a danger warning
treat your insomnia, it is not in any way cool
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Sleep out > sleep in = insomnia!
Just go to bed earlier you lazy bums!
(Just a joke, I have been a night owl fighting the morning society all my life. I'm also kind of fat despite not eating much.)
Yep. This is clearly an article about a Night Owl, not about an "insomniac". And if she CAN'T live on a daytime schedule, then it's actually an article about someone with DSPS.
I really do wish the journalists would just do a tiny bit of research (Google would be more than sufficient) before they publish something so blatantly wrong. In the process, they'd be raising awareness for those of us with Circadian Rhythm Disorders.
She should try going to a support group for the terminally ill, and making soap out of liposuction clinic waste.
And, if anyone ever wants to race in Burnout Paradise at 4:20am Chicago time, look for me. My handle is "Vlad the Impala"
You are welcome on my lawn.
Well, the appendix is a good example of the conservative nature of evolutionary change. There are more than a few genetic traits that have no evolutionary advantage and yet still persist, like attached earlobes or the ability to roll your tongue.
>or the ability to roll your tongue. :P
Only somebody who has never learned how much a perfectly execute tongueroll kiss can improve your chances of getting laid (not to mention improving oral skills) could possibly think that it does not have an evolutionary advantage... but then again, what did I expect from slashdot ?
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
That's an interesting perspective on the ability to roll your tongue.
Everyone will look back and think how crazy we were to synchronize ourselves to the sun, rather than [to] what our ship's central computer demands.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
In the two coutries that I've lived in in Europe, the minimum number of days leave of your choosing is 23. I've usually had more. I'm not sure if that minimum is in the law or in the workers collective contracts (things negociated by the unions and which apply to everyone even if no one in your company is part of the union - unless your company exlicitly opts-out).
In addition, there are usually 11 public holidays.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
There are always differences between people, and even countries. Germans in general are earlier than Dutch (it may help that they are more east in the same time zone, so the sun is up earlier for them, but that doesn't explain the full difference).
However from my direct experience lower educated workers often start work early. Construction starts already at 7 when I wouldn't even consider getting up. And while I was working in the university as post-grad student I would now and then arrive before 9 only to find a still almost completely empty building.
Of course like with all generalisations there is easily 20% that does not follow it.
I'm a night owl and I've always assumed this is the reason why my penis is so much larger than any weak day walker penis I've seen.
I've been suffering from insomnia for a while now. I can fall asleep without much trouble. The problem is I only get about 3 hours of sleep before waking up. Then I either cannot fall back asleep, or I go on a cycle of sleeping for 5-10 minutes and waking up again, over and over all night long. By the time morning arrives, I am completely exhausted, I get no REM sleep, and basically cannot function at all during the day.
Rather than waste time on Facebook, a better use of nights awake is to contribute to an open source project. Since their communities are so diverse, you are bound to find someone else awake at the same time working on the same thing.
I'm just posting this out of idle curiosity, so please indulge me.
As a 33 year old, I currently sleep between 3-5 hours in a day on average. Today I went to sleep around 5:10 AM, and woke up around 7:59 AM (one minute before the alarm, happens frequently). Though I am somewhat grumpy for the first 10-15 minutes, I quickly 'wake up' and feel refreshed and alert. This is normal for me. Back during college, I would often go 2 or 3 days without sleep, though it's more likely I'd take a nap somewhere between 9-11 am (depending on my schedule). I even work out and take martial arts classes to get regular exercise since my job is pretty sedentary.
Is there anyone else out there like this? Where sleep is this annoying intrusion into your schedule that you only allow when you're physically exhausted? Maybe you can help me figure out why people hear me describe my sleep cycle and say they're sorry, like this gift of another 1/6'th or more of my life to live is terrible compared to those people who voluntarily give up 1/3 of theirs.
Other random items; ... ... just curious to hear if there's anyone else out there like this.
- According to doctors way back when I was 6 or so, I'm 'Hyperactive' - though I guess today it'd be called ADD or ADHD or something
- Only time I feel sleepy/awkward/wrongish is sometime around sunrise and the next 2-3 hours, but it goes away. On cloudy or foggy days, I may not experience this at all. It appears I have to actually see the early morning sunlight to really be negatively affected by it.
Assuming that everything genetic can be explained as having an evolutionary purpose
Oh, you and your silly assumptions. "Purpose", ah. Implying intent... very droll.
Anyway, the reason why evolution would retain a range of sleep rhythms is that a monoculture is weaker than a plurality of options: Maybe there is a threat in the morning and an opportunity in the evening, maybe it's the other way around somewhere else,maybe both. If your species can take advantage of the opportunity but not defend against the threat, or vice-versa, you won't be making it big.
You can't take the sky from me...
did Mark Zuckerberg hack into /. and post a news article to plug Facebook and its many uses?
His words were actually interesting, unlike the crap most of you arrogant Slashdot readers spew forth. Where's the link to his wares, then, asshole?
Everyone on this site is always trying to come across as smarter or sharper than everyone else.
I really need to stop wasting time here.
In contrast, Seattle averages 158 rainy days per year http://www.see-seattle.com/weather.htm and an average of 294 cloudy/partly-cloudy days per year http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/online/ccd/cldy.html.
The vast majority of human existence has been spent in small tribe-sized groups in the wild. I imagine that a tribe and its genes would benefit greatly by a few who were willing and able to stay up all night watching out for dangerous animals and attacks from rival tribes.
With such a schedule, please make sure you get enough vitamin D3 (the sunlight vitamin), like from supplements and have your vitamin D3 levels checked with a 25(OH)D blood test:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
"""
We predict that treatment with physiological doses of vitamin D3 (between 4,000-10,000 IU/day from all sources, including sun, food and supplements) along with periodic monitoring of blood calcidiol and calcium levels will become routine. [Zittermann A. Vitamin D in preventive medicine: are we ignoring the evidence? Br J of Nutr. 2003;89:552-572. Holick M. Vitamin D: A Millennium Perspective. J Cell Biochem. 2003;88:296-307.] Research indicates it will help several vitamin D deficiency-associated diseases such as: autism, autoimmune illness, cancer, chronic pain, depression, diabetes, heart disease, hyperparathyroidism, hypertension, influenza, myopathy (neuromuscular disorders), and osteoporosis.
"""
Most people in the USA are vitamin D deficient from our indoor lifestyle, but a schedule like would just about ensures it.
My wife is a night owl, and I'm not, another set of issues... I stayed up late a lot when I met her, and she just assumed that meant I was a night owl. :-) With that said, I've seen both her and my sleep patterns shift over time in different ways, including when having a kid... So, these rhythms can changes sometimes. But, there are advantages and disadvantages to all sorts of things. Getting up late on, say, the US East Coast means you can better connect to people in certain other timezones. Because we both work at home, and I need somewhat less sleep than her, we see a lot of each other anyway. If we both worked outside the home, this would be much more problematical. She has trouble getting up for a 9-5 job (she needs many alarm clocks) -- which her mom growing up probably saw as laziness; but she can happily work very hard on stuff long into the small hours of the morning after everyone else has given up for the day in exhaustion...
We homeschool, and our kid is following her sleep patterns... And it creates another issue, since while we're happy to do afternoon and evening things, many homeschoolers, like most people, seem to be early in the morning kind of people...
And sadly, night driving is several times more dangerous as far as frequency of accidents, since many drivers get tired late at night but push it anyway, and even with good headlights, you see a lot less at night than during the day.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/01/21/car-accident-times-forbeslife-cx_he_0121driving.html
"Nationwide, 49% of fatal crashes happen at night, with a fatality rate per mile of travel about three times as high as daytime hours. Of people killed at night, roughly two-thirds aren't wearing restraints. During the day, the percentage of unrestrained fatalities tends to be under half."
So, my advice for night owls:
* Use vitamin D supplements or UV-B lamps and have regular 25(OH)D blood tests;
* Marry someone with a similar schedule (or, work at home together), and don't assume about people you're seeing;
* Homeschool; and
* Drive a Volvo or other extra safe car and wear your seat belt.
Well, I'd say those same advice for anyone, :-) but those all can be a bigger issues for people with different rhythms.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Londoners should feel right at home here in Victoria, BC then. Apparently we get 142 days of rain a year, with 608mm of rain. However we have an average of 2183 hours of sunshine each year, and we average only 2-5 days with at least 5cm of snow on the ground.
Mind you, our weather is far better than Vancouver's, they manage 170 days of rain apparently. :P
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
for the sake of the younger folk who think they are immortal
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Are you gonna cum all over yourself?
You mean a second time?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
In the words of Cory Doctorow:
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Chances are those early infections came from sleeping in abandoned gorilla nests
Oh come on. Even my boyfriend comes up with better excuses than that. We all know what really happened.
It's the raveled SLEAVE of care, not SLEEVE of care.