Lady Gaga Sleeps! People can and do sleep anywhere. Botticelli’s Venus first arrived on earth popping from a half shell, and now a human desiring to be her avatar, the Lady Gaga, has “birthed” from a resin egg during the Grammy Awards. She enjoyed her egg-placed “meditation” so greatly she now wants to sleep in […]
Can naps make me smarter? (3/22/11)
Can Naps Actually Make Me Smarter? Probably. You’ll certainly be able to learn better. Matthew Walker is an Englishman who teaches and researches at UC Berkeley. Along with others like Robert Stickgold and Sara Mednick he’s shown that learning consolidates with naps. Now his recent work make it look like naps don’t just consolidate learning […]
Does sleep loss make you take bad risks? (3/21/11)
Gambling With Time Las Vegas at night cools outside, but not inside. The desiccated desert air does not affect environments designed and run as separate worlds where the temperature, the atmosphere and the staff’s friendly glare never change. There are no clocks. Some years ago I returned to Las Vegas after decades to see what […]
The doctor as drug (3/16/11)
Doctors or Technicians? “I don’t feel like I’m a person anymore, just a bunch of numbers. All she wants to talk about is tests and drugs.” That’s how patients describe some of their doctors these days – technicians. Bright, intelligent, often concerned, but technicians – purveyors of tests, gatekeepers of other technicians who will eventually […]
Cut your light at night (3/9/11)
Light is a Drug If reading this at night, you might want to dim the lights. Q: What is the drug everyone is sensitive to? A: Light. (Some, but not all blind people are exceptions – more below) Q:What does it do? A: Change body clocks; in the daytime improve mood and create vitamin D; […]