Sleep however you feel like

A while back, there was an idea that swept through social media that there is this thing called biphasic sleep. People naturally tend to wake up in the middle of the night, that historically there was a thing called “first sleep”, and then people would wake up around 2am and putter about and use their bedpans or pick up a quill pen and write a sonnet or whatever, and then go back to bed for “second sleep” before rising at cock-crow. I found this reassuring, because as I got older I was shifting from continuous night-time sleep to an interrupted sleep that fit that pattern. It’s OK! It’s not just age and stress, this is how humans are supposed to sleep, I could tell myself.

Hold it right there, not so fast: it’s probably not true. There isn’t one way you’re supposed to sleep.

But humans have never had a universal method of slumber. A 2015 study of hunter-gatherer societies in Tanzania, Namibia, and Bolivia found that most foragers enjoyed one long sleep. Two years later, another study found that a rural society in Madagascar practiced segmented sleep. Two years after that, a study found that the indigenous residents of Tanna, in the South Pacific, largely had one uninterrupted sleep.

Even within preindustrial Europe, sleep contained multitudes. Reviewing the diaries of European writers such as Samuel Pepys and James Boswell, Ekirch found several allusions to unified sleep. Summarizing this complicated literature, he told me that “patterns of sleep in non-Western cultures appear to have been much more diverse” than those in Europe, but that they were truly diverse everywhere.

There is no evidence that sleep was universally segmented, and there is also little evidence that segmented sleep is better. A 2021 meta-analysis of studies on biphasic sleep schedules found that segmented-sleeping subjects actually reported “lower sleep quality … and spent more time in lighter stages of sleep.” One reasonable takeaway is that biphasic sleep is like anarchical foraging: Both might have well served some ancient populations some of the time, but neither of them offers a clear solution to modern problems.

I find that even more reassuring. Don’t hold people to the one true way they’re supposed to do something, everyone is different, different cultures lead to different behaviors, and there’s nothing wrong with being a bi or a mono-sleeper. Individuals can even change! The only norm is that we have diverse patterns of activity.

Although “like a baby” is a pretty good ideal.

A time to talk & think about something other than genetics

I’m going to be pumping out these genetics videos three times a week (!), but they’re really not intended to be popular fodder that will generate hordes of clicks and views. I’ve intentionally put title screens on them that are horribly bland, because they’re really intended for my students. I’m also so tired from keeping up with my classes every day — in part because I decided to restructure and rewrite the entire semester — that I’ve had trouble planning anything outside of class. So, just to keep my channel alive, I’m going to try something structureless and informal — I’ll just ramble for an hour or so on Friday night and see if anything interesting dribbles out of my mouth. Tomorrow, then, I’ll turn a webcam on my homely face and talk for a while, without much preparation.

As you can see, I want to kick Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson a bit more, but also there’s this new paper on the evolution of the inner ear in bats, so I intend to say a few things about it off the cuff. Or about whatever else springs into my tired brain.

I really do have a plan

On my to-do list for today is:

  1. Organize all the supplies for the fly lab.
  2. Record a video summary of the fly culturing procedure.
  3. Figure out why my audio recorder did such a crap job on Wednesday, & fix it.
  4. Re-record the audio for Wednesday’s lecture.
  5. My lecture room has been moved to a smaller space, with a different arrangement of screens and whiteboards. Figure out how everything works in there.
  6. Go home, edit the fly culture video.
  7. Start polishing up Monday’s lecture.

So far, I’ve managed to complete #1. That’s it. I’ve been scurrying up and down stairs, hauling microscopes around, sorting out media, laying out materials on bench tops, and basically doing a lot of physical labor. Hey, aren’t I an elderly professor? What’s with all the sweating?

Right now I think the best I can do is go home, take a stab on #4 from my office chair, and start #7. Then I’ll come in bright and early and maybe not so winded to start with #2. There goes the weekend.

Meat Loaf is dead

We’ve lost an epic heldentenor — Marvin Lee Aday, better known as Meat Loaf, has died. He was such a fierce, athletic, passionate performer, and has in the past collapsed on stage a few times, due to dehydration…but really it was because he threw himself into his work so thoroughly and exhausted himself. I’ll consider his actual cause of death to be that he was always going full throttle and couldn’t just slow down and take it easy, ever.

By the way, his obituary unfortunately seems to think his weight was a salient point to make repeatedly. Nah. He was a big man, but that was the least important part of his identity.

It me

This survey doesn’t surprise me in the least.

Earlier this fall, a McMaster University research team published the findings of a broad survey that sought to take the temperature of the university and college workplace almost a year-and-a-half into the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the major findings won’t come as a surprise to academic staff: many of the 475 respondents reported that the COVID-19 distancing restrictions had eroded productivity, as labs closed, field research activities ceased and parents of young children, particularly women, found themselves juggling domestic and professional duties.

But two other findings offered a more somber and textured look at the impact of the pandemic. More than half of those surveyed said they thought more or much more about death than they had before the World Health Organization declared a global state of emergency in March 2020.

I didn’t always have to fake enthusiasm about going in to work; I am in my dream job. Right now, though, the only things keeping me going are the students — they’re a good bunch who deserve my full attention. I just have to work to make sure they get it.

I survived the asteroid! And the first day of classes!

It wasn’t much of a surprise that I emerged from the lab and the Earth was still here. Maybe a little disappointing, but I’ve come to expect that.

My classroom face, sans mask

Class wasn’t that bad, I put on a performance worthy of Sir Lawrence Olivier, or possibly Soupy Sales, and managed to put on a convincing, I think, façade of enthusiasm and optimism that may have fooled the students. It helped that they were an earnest and cheerful bunch, too, but maybe we’re all pretending deep down inside. Now it’s just a matter of repeating the act over and over until I die.

Like tomorrow. And the day after. And endless days stretching into eternity.

Nah, it wasn’t that bad. I’ll probably get through the term without collapsing into a sobbing wreck. I got one day done!

Feeling rather doomy, but the spider did cheer me up

Sweet dreams.

I didn’t have any such dreams — I could barely sleep last night. Today classes resume, and what I feel is mainly dread, as if this were the day of my execution. We shouldn’t be teaching in-person right now, for one thing. For another, I’m completely revising my approach to the class, because I have to be flexible to changing circumstances, and I have to be prepared to teach students who may have to periodically go into isolation. That means I have to write all new lectures, all semester long. For one more, I have lost all confidence in the university as a place I can trust to support me or my students.

And now I’m tired.

Right now I’m just writing on the walls of my jail cell…and being melodramatic. Everything will be fine, I tell myself, and it probably will be. It’s just going to be hard to get out there and act (teaching is show biz, you know) cheerful and enthusiastic while not feeling that way at all.