{"id":240,"date":"2008-06-04T13:25:37","date_gmt":"2008-06-04T21:25:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bayesianinvestor.com\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/06\/04\/counting-sheep\/"},"modified":"2015-10-14T14:53:46","modified_gmt":"2015-10-14T22:53:46","slug":"counting-sheep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bayesianinvestor.com\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/06\/04\/counting-sheep\/","title":{"rendered":"Counting Sheep"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Book review: Counting Sheep: The Science and Pleasures of Sleep and Dreams by Paul Martin.<br \/>\nThis book makes convincing claims that most people give too little thought to an activity that occupies a large fraction of our life.<br \/>\nIt has lots of little pieces of information which can be read as independent essays. Here are some claims I found interesting:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;sleepiness is responsible for far more deaths on the roads than alcohol or drugs&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li>Tired people rate their abilities higher than people who slept well do.<\/li>\n<li>Poor sleep contributes to poor health a good deal more than medical diagnoses suggest, but hospitals are designed in ways that hinder patients&#8217; sleep.<\/li>\n<li>Idle time was apparently a status symbol up to a century ago, now being busy is a status symbol. This should have economic implications that someone ought to explore in depth.<\/li>\n<li>People in a vegetative state have REM sleep. This sounds like cause to re-evaluate the label we apply to that state.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>While the book has many references, it doesn&#8217;t connect specific claims to references, and I&#8217;m sometimes left wondering why I should believe a claim. How can boredom be a modern concept? When he says &#8220;no person has ever gone completely without sleep for more than a few days&#8221;, how does he know he can dismiss people who claim to have not slept for years?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Book review: Counting Sheep: The Science and Pleasures of Sleep and Dreams by Paul Martin. This book makes convincing claims that most people give too little thought to an activity that occupies a large fraction of our life. It has lots of little pieces of information which can be read as independent essays. Here are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[22,29,2],"tags":[97,116,81],"class_list":["post-240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-health","category-misc","tag-consciousness","tag-sleep","tag-status"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p80O1l-3S","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bayesianinvestor.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bayesianinvestor.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bayesianinvestor.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bayesianinvestor.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bayesianinvestor.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bayesianinvestor.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":602,"href":"https:\/\/bayesianinvestor.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240\/revisions\/602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bayesianinvestor.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bayesianinvestor.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bayesianinvestor.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}