KO

The pursuit of sleep; or rather, my lack of pursuit. I wish I didn't have to sleep. There are so many other things I would rather be doing, like writing blogs on sleep. I find it so interesting that human beings and most other animals need sleep. How could so many species evolve, yet maintain the need to be unconscious for 1/3 of their lives? I'm shocked that the animal that wasn't tired one night didn't eat all the animals that were tired, thereby dominating the evolutionary race. Now, I must confess my ignorance of the biology behind sleep and its evolution link. I'm sure good explanations exist. Maybe it isn't too dissimilar from the NRA's platform of "an armed society is a safe society:" as long as all animals are "armed" with the need for sleep, no animal can dominate. But think about how silly sleeping humans would appear to visiting aliens. There we are, just sprawled out with our mouth open making gurgling sounds, twitching our arms about like some sort of flagellum. And WE are the ones searching for intelligent life? I doubt science will eradicate the need for sleep in our lifetime, but trust me, they're working on it! If there are any group of people abhorring the need for sleep, it's scientists and medical doctors. In fact, there is a known positive correlation between the class ranking of a medical student and amphetamine abuse. Regardless, being unconscious seems to be so important that the intricacies of "why" will likely take decades to decipher. For example, rats that are deprived of sleep die after about two weeks. But die from what? Red eye? I haven't read the scientific papers with these details (assuming there are details), but evidently death is more likely to occur from not having sleep, than from being eaten by intergalactic hungry aliens.