Slashdot Mirror
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."
And here I thought the lack of interaction with people was a positive aspect of staying up late.
I would guess a lot of slashdotters fall in to this category or at least at some point have. But the difference is that I enjoy the quiet and alone time during night and hence would stay away from sites like Facebook. You get insane amount of work done during night time - there's no people chitchatting all the time nor can you really go out somewhere so you don't get lazy. It does however lead to weird sleeping patterns, but as long as you don't need to go anywhere in the morning it doesn't really matter anymore.
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.
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?
I don't use facebook. I am up late a lot nd a bit of an insomniac
Still I have classes in the am.
need to gotol bed, but duno if I will
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.
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!
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...
Calling it a disease is wrong. Saying it can be cured is like trying to bleach a black man white or beating a gay man with officially approved porn.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
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.