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Showing posts sorted by relevance for query daylight. Sort by date Show all posts
How Did We Survive?
Yesterday, we traveled from the evergreen forests and vast meadows of the Grand Canyon's North Rim all the way to the red rock desert of Sedona . . . it was 48 degrees in the morning at the North Rim, and 95 degrees at noon in Sedona . . . but the biggest difference was technological: we had no wifi at the North Rim-- and these are the things we wanted to look up during our stay up there:
1) the veracity of the word "spackler," we were playing lots of Bananagrams and I used that word . . . but it looks like it's not a word;
2) the exact genetic origins of a mule . . . more on this tomorrow in a profanity-laced description of the North Kaibab trail;
3) the actual time . . . apparently, Arizona does not subscribe to Daylight Savings Time (but the Navajo Nation does) and so every ride was a crapshoot, because the GPS took this into consideration . . . sometimes . . . and we were operating with four different times-- the car clock said one thing, Cat's phone another, my phone a third time, and the clock in our cabin had a fourth (correct) time, but we never bothered to set anything to the correct time;
4) birds . . . we saw little blue birds (probably Pinyon Jays) and little birds with red heads and yellow bodies and all sorts of hummingbirds and we couldn't identify any of them;
5) the name for a group of ravens . . . everyone knows a group of crows is called a murder, but we kept seeing groups of ravens (usually consuming roadkill) and we didn't know that we could have referred to them as a "conspiracy" or an "unkindness" or a "constable";
6) what a decoy spider looks like;
7) if we could see Phil Torres getting attacked by a spitting cobra on a reality science show which never aired . . . we learned about this on a podcast called Talk Nerdy and the episode is great but you can't see the footage.
1) the veracity of the word "spackler," we were playing lots of Bananagrams and I used that word . . . but it looks like it's not a word;
2) the exact genetic origins of a mule . . . more on this tomorrow in a profanity-laced description of the North Kaibab trail;
3) the actual time . . . apparently, Arizona does not subscribe to Daylight Savings Time (but the Navajo Nation does) and so every ride was a crapshoot, because the GPS took this into consideration . . . sometimes . . . and we were operating with four different times-- the car clock said one thing, Cat's phone another, my phone a third time, and the clock in our cabin had a fourth (correct) time, but we never bothered to set anything to the correct time;
4) birds . . . we saw little blue birds (probably Pinyon Jays) and little birds with red heads and yellow bodies and all sorts of hummingbirds and we couldn't identify any of them;
5) the name for a group of ravens . . . everyone knows a group of crows is called a murder, but we kept seeing groups of ravens (usually consuming roadkill) and we didn't know that we could have referred to them as a "conspiracy" or an "unkindness" or a "constable";
6) what a decoy spider looks like;
7) if we could see Phil Torres getting attacked by a spitting cobra on a reality science show which never aired . . . we learned about this on a podcast called Talk Nerdy and the episode is great but you can't see the footage.
I May Have Finally Defeated Daylight Savings Time
The only way to short-circuit the absolute absurdity of "springing ahead" is to stay up really late the night before the clocks change, destroying your circadian rhythm, so that you can go to bed at 7:30 PM on Sunday to prepare for the ugly Monday morning wake-up (but even though I did this, I still felt like shit all day Monday . . . which isn't that unusual for a Monday, so I don't know what to think).
Stop Reading This And Go To Bed!
Here are some of the things I learned while reading David K. Randall's book Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep . . . and while his lessons are often commonsensical, he provides descriptions of how these truisms were scientifically proven:
1) We often dream about what bothers us;
2) We often dream the same thing over and over;
3) While dreams don't have symbolic meaning, they can help us solve actual problems in a creative fashion;
4) Better to sleep than to cram;
5) The West Coast team has an advantage when playing Monday Night Football;
6) You need sleep to synthesize new information;
7) If you are deprived of enough sleep, you die . . . from lack of sleep;
8) Friendly fire deaths in the military are most often caused by fatigue;
9) The biggest hurdle in the military is not technological, it is sleep deprivation;
10) If you didn't get a full night's rest, take a nap;
11) You can kill someone in your sleep, and depending on the interpretation of the law, you might either get life in prison or get off scot-free.
12) Teenagers have different Circadian rhythms than adults;
13) Highschools that pushed their start time to 8:30 had higher SAT scores, better attendance, less fights, and a number of other quantifiable improvements;
14) Some popular prescription sleeping pills don't actually improve sleep all that much, they just give the sleeper temporary amnesia, so that it improves the perception of how one has slept;
15) The electric light, the TV, and the computer are enemies of sleep, because they fool our brains into thinking it is still daylight, and thus ruin our Circadian rhythm;
16) Before the advent of the electric light, the computer, and the TV, humans had two sleeps: a first sleep from when the sun went down until around midnight, then there was an hour or two of wakefulness, where people often ate or fornicated or talked, and then a "second sleep" until morning;
17) Sleep apnea is scary . . .
and the final thing to take away from this book is that sleep is really, really important for humans-- important for our health, our minds, and our stress levels-- yet even though we know this, married couples usually share a bed that is too small for the two of them and sleep together despite snoring, flatulence, kicking, blanket-stealing, late night reading, and general disruptions . . . and studies found that women primarily do this because they want to feel safe and that men do it because you never know when you might get lucky, and nothing improves your luck more than proximity.
Dreams Are Dumb?
I've always been a proponent of the Anti-Freudian "dreams are dumb and indicate nothing" school-of-thought (and may COVID-19 kill me dead if this blog becomes a dream journal) but I woke up at 2 AM this morning-- possibly because of an earthquake-- in the midst of a particularly vivid and possibly symbolic somnolent vision; here's what happened:
I was trekking through the jungle at sunset and came to a spot where I could see through the dense foliage and I spotted a hippo in the tall grass, and the hippo's wet skin was reflecting beautiful streaks of red, purple, and orange from the waning daylight and then a jaguar walked out of the jungle and he hopped up on top of the hippo and just stood there, posing (and there was also a random llama in the background) and so I grabbed my phone and took a picture of a JAGUAR ON TOP OF A HIPPO (with a llama in the background) and all three animals were magnificent, iridescent from the setting sun in this wild tableau and then I raced back to camp to show Catherine the miracle I had witnessed and when I tried to find the pictures on my phone, they were gone-- total technical failure-- and it was my fault, I had pressed something and lost them all, the greatest nature photos ever snapped . . . and that's pretty much how school feels so far this year.
Fell On Black Days
Sunday was the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, and thus the shortest day and longest night of the year-- if you care to know how any of this astronomical crap works, here is a link-- but don't ask me about it, because I was too tired to comprehend any of the details of the article due to the fact that the lack of daylight sends me into a semi-dormant, totally idiotic state; on the bright side, the days will be getting longer now, but if you live in New Jersey don't get too excited-- because spring is rainy, cold and miserable (a fact I always forget) so not only is it going to be a long winter, but there won't be any decent weather until next fall.
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