SCHOLAR ISLAND
Sleep
"Oh Sleep! It is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole."
Coleridge
O magic sleep! O comfortable bird
That broodest o'er the troubled sea of the
mind
Till it is hushed and smooth."
-John Keats
"In sleep we receive confirmation-I cannot find another, more fitting word. We receive confirmation that we must go on living."
Andrey Sinyavsky
A Voice from the Chorus
"O magic sleep! O comfortable bird,
That broodest O’er the troubled sea of the mind
Till it is hushed and smooth! O unconfined
Restraint, imprisoned liberty, great key
To golden palaces, strange minstrelsy,
Fountains grotesque, new trees, bespangled caves,
Echoing grottoes, full of tumbling waves
And moonlight; aye, to all the mazy world
Of silvery enchantments."
Endymion
"Very naturally some who have been wise enough to arrive at correct notions of the truth, have described sleep as a thing to teach us to meditate upon death, and a shadow and outline of the resurrection which is hereafter to follow, for it bears in itself visible images of both conditions. For it removes the same man from his state of perfection and brings him back to it."
Philo of Alexandria
"What are we? Just little animals that need to fall unconscious every twenty-four hours in order to even keep living."
Jane Shapiro
"What do the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, the near meltdown at Three mile Island, the environmentally disastrous oil spill by the Exxon Valdez, and the loss of the space shuttle Challenger all have in common:? They were all caused by people who were making mistakes because they had too little sleep."
Stanley Coren
Sleep Thieves
"Human beings seem to be fighting the evolutionary pressure to sleep. Despite the fact that sleep plays a vital part in our health and our efficiency, we seem out to abolish sleep. The first step in this process was the invention of the electric light bulb, which eliminated our main excuse for stopping our work at the end of the day, namely, that it was too dark to function. Next came the continuous conveyor belt, which encouraged factories to operate 24 hours a day. Now the continuous access to information provided by the Internet and other computer communications links keeps us from our beds at all hours of the night. The work ethic we have adopted today says that we should do away with sleep, or at least eliminate as much sleep time as possible. The movers and shakers of the world don’t waste their time sleeping. Yet too little sleep can kill us out right or can cause a gradual deterioration in our health. Too little sleep can make us clumsy, stupid, and accident prone. Too little sleep can destroy our psychological motivation and put us into a deep depression."
Stanley Coren
Sleep Thieves
"There are sleepy people driving trucks, cars, planes, and trains. There may be a sleepy doctor trying to decide what emergency treatment one of your loved ones must have. There may be a sleepy investment manager groggily making a decision that will effect your life savings. There may even be a sleepy person in the White House deciding the fate of a nation. Each year sleep-related errors and accidents cost the United States over $56 billion, cause nearly 25,000 deaths and result in over 2.5 million disabling injuries. Running up a sleep debt can be very expensive indeed…."
Stanley Coren
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Book: "The Insomnia Kit: Everything You Need for a Good Night’s Sleep." By Chris Idzikowski
Book: "How To get a good Night's Sleep: More than 100 Ways You can Improve Your Sleep" by Richard Graber w/ P. Gouin
Book: "The Promise of Sleep: A Pioneer in Sleep Medicine explores the Vital Connection Between Health, Happiness, and a Good Night's Sleep." by W.C. Dement & C. Vaughan
Book: No More Sleepless Nights, Revised Edition" by P. Hauri & S. Linde
Book: "To Sleep, Perchance to Dream" Photos by Ferdinando Scianna