Insomniacs, the Phantoms of the Internet 234
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."
Fuck facebook (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook [guardian.co.uk]
Re:Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome is the right word (Score:5, Informative)
Sleeping drugs won't fix it, they will help short term but you will build up resistance to the point your natural cycle again takes precedence.
I've had this all my life (a 3am-11am sleep window) and it can be altered by staying up an hour or two later a day until you hit where you want to be and then sticking to it, but those weeks of work are undone if you stay up late just once, and your body reverts to its natural cycle of 3am sleep (or whatever yours is).
It's really just better to work your life around it than force yourself into unnatural (for you) sleep patterns.
I find smoking weed helps if I need to get to sleep & wake early, otherwise staying awake all night is better than trying to sleep early if I absolutely must be alert and active before noon.
Re:anyone know of an evolutionary purpose to owl-i (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Anybody here? (Score:5, Informative)
The issue is not so much the amount of rain that falls. It's the number of days with rain or with lotsa clouds. I've lived in the Provence, which is reputedly dry, and in Brittany (the small one, west of France). Both get about as much rain, but
- the Provence gets it over a few days, pretty much always at the same time (spring, autumn, and a few thunderstrom is summer), with a clear build-up of clouds where you can see it's gonna rain tomorrow, gets hammered by a great big rain, and then goes for weeks without rain.
- Brittany gets its rain any day, any season. Any day can start off sunny with no clouds, and rain by midday. It often will be a pitiful drizzle, that counts for little water, except is f***ing wet and takes the fun out of doing anything outdoors.
Yearly statistics (http://www.worldweather.org/010/c00032.htm)
Number of rain days in London: 139, total rain = 600 mm, number of pure sunny days = N/A
Number of rain days in Marseilles: 55, total rain = 554mm, number of pure sunny days = N/A
So yeah, Marseilles gets as much rain as London. No, it is not, and does not feel, any way near as rainy.
insomnia is not a joke (Score:5, Informative)
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
23 days is the norm here (Score:2, Informative)
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.