Sleep

How interesting to see the results of the last poll I put up, concerning how much sleep you get on a typical night.  Responses were very evenly spread between the low of less than five hours and the high of more than eight hours.  I usually get just over six, which you probably could have deduced from the way it was bang in the middle of the responses I offered you in the poll.

People who can get by on less than five hours amaze me.  If I did that I'd be a shambling wreck.  Missing sleep makes me very tired and irritable, which does worry me a bit when I think forward to the first few years of my postgrad training when I'll be very busy and tired most of the time.  Try not to get sick for a few years after January 2012, that's my advice.  Apparently Napoleon and Kevin Rudd both get/got by on very little sleep.  Both of them are raving lunatics of course, but I suppose that's the price you pay for being the greatest leader of your era.  Kim Jong-Il probably stays up watching Rage on the weekend too.  Just imagine if they got him on as a guest programmer.

It's probably a common fantasy to imagine how great life would be if you didn't need to sleep.  You'd have plenty of time to get all of that stuff done that you somehow don't ever quite get around to in your regular waking hours.  If I could stay up all night all the time I'd learn to play the banjo.  Although I'd probably need a soundproof room to practise in unless my Smaller Half was also awake all night.  Actually I'd probably need a soundproof room regardless.  I would also write a book about some amazing thing or other (I'd have plenty of time for ideas, okay?), become a master potter, practise touching my toes a lot, and crouch on the roof of my house in the dark so I could ambush those damn possums and fling them over the fence to teach them a lesson.  But as I say, those are common fantasies.

But not sleeping would be a shame because you'd miss the best bit - the hypnagogic state between wake and sleep when your brain goes on autopilot and strange things happen.  I was reading on wikipedia about August Kekulé’s discovery of the structure of benzene (you know the story - he imagined a snake biting its own tail blah blah blah).  I figured that sounded like an easy way to make incredible discoveries and become famous so I tried it myself.  And it worked!  As I dropped off to sleep I could see in front of me a strange and fantastic image: a snake biting its own tail.  And I thought to myself, "That must be what benzene is like."  So I'm the second person to discover the structure of benzene.  I'm the Buzz Aldrin of benzene.

Try it yourself tonight.  It's so easy.