Newt Gingrich is going to be the next President of the United States.
With his nominees the Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade and the conservative majority will last for decades.
Mother Earth is screwed. Well, she would be if she cared, which, being a planet, she doesn't. But anybody living on a low lying island is.
My record at predicting the future stinks.
Friday, January 20, 2012
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Leaf Painting
Still not fine art, but getting better. For an introductioin to leaf painting check the post for January 11, 2009, titled First Conversations.
Do you get the little tiny joke?
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Sleep
I fell asleep a few weeks ago while driving on the freeway. It wasn’t for long as almost immediately I was running over those buttons that separate the lanes and that brought me back to consciousness. Soon after that my wife took the wheel. Although this is the only time I have actually dosed off, I have been plagued by drowsiness while driving for several years now. It may be related to my practice in my non driving life of dropping down for a nap at the very slightest sign of fatigue. I’m not practiced at staying awake. As I write this it is 2:10 AM, an hour at which I am routinely lying awake in my bed. As I don’t struggle to stay awake in the day, except while driving, I don’t struggle to stay asleep in the small hours of the night. I generally accept the inclination of the moment. I do think about it though.
It is notable that we can’t directly experience sleep. Being awake means being aware of yourself in the moment and being asleep is the opposite. The instant you fall asleep you lose your awareness. The way we experience sleep is deductive. You are lying in bed expecting to sleep and the next thing you know it is sometime later and you are awake in your bed recalling that you had been in bed expecting to sleep. You deduce that you must have slept though you didn’t consciously experience it. The closest we come to experiencing sleep directly is when we dream. When we awake after a dream we can be pretty sure we have been asleep because that is when dreams occur. We are aware as well of going into sleep and coming out. But by its nature sleep itself eludes our conscious experience.
We have the experience of the sleepless night, tossing and turning with a hyper awareness of being awake. In the morning we might say, “I didn’t sleep a wink.” For some time now I have questioned the accuracy of such perceptions. What I suspect happens is that we sleep much more than we realize, but since we have no direct experience of sleep, if we miss the sense of waking up we don’t know that we have slept. It seems as if we are passing sleepless hours, but it may not be so. In fact last night I had my first confirmation of my theory. It was one of those nights when I seemed to be continuously awake after about 2:00. I was very aware of the comfort of my warm blankets and of my repetitive turning over. At a certain moment I was thinking about how much time had passed without sleep when I realized that I had just had a dream, in fact quite a clear and memorable three part adventure. Thus I had to have been asleep, even though I thought I had been continuously awake.
It’s now 3:28. I guess I will join any would be readers, in sleep.
It is notable that we can’t directly experience sleep. Being awake means being aware of yourself in the moment and being asleep is the opposite. The instant you fall asleep you lose your awareness. The way we experience sleep is deductive. You are lying in bed expecting to sleep and the next thing you know it is sometime later and you are awake in your bed recalling that you had been in bed expecting to sleep. You deduce that you must have slept though you didn’t consciously experience it. The closest we come to experiencing sleep directly is when we dream. When we awake after a dream we can be pretty sure we have been asleep because that is when dreams occur. We are aware as well of going into sleep and coming out. But by its nature sleep itself eludes our conscious experience.
We have the experience of the sleepless night, tossing and turning with a hyper awareness of being awake. In the morning we might say, “I didn’t sleep a wink.” For some time now I have questioned the accuracy of such perceptions. What I suspect happens is that we sleep much more than we realize, but since we have no direct experience of sleep, if we miss the sense of waking up we don’t know that we have slept. It seems as if we are passing sleepless hours, but it may not be so. In fact last night I had my first confirmation of my theory. It was one of those nights when I seemed to be continuously awake after about 2:00. I was very aware of the comfort of my warm blankets and of my repetitive turning over. At a certain moment I was thinking about how much time had passed without sleep when I realized that I had just had a dream, in fact quite a clear and memorable three part adventure. Thus I had to have been asleep, even though I thought I had been continuously awake.
It’s now 3:28. I guess I will join any would be readers, in sleep.
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