[wordup] Barn raising in Iraq & Sleepdep screws you up fierce

[Adam Shand]

From: http://boingboing.net/#200159786
More: http://www.journalsleep.org/citation/sleepdata.asp?citationid=2198

It turns out that skipping a few hours' sleep a night will affect your
cognition and performance as though you hadn't slept in days. I really
think that we're all on the edge of bugfuck and have been since the
invention of the electric light.

     Chronic restriction of sleep periods to 4 h or 6 h per night over 14
     consecutive days resulted in significant cumulative, dose-dependent
     deficits in cognitive performance on all tasks. Subjective
     sleepiness ratings showed an acute response to sleep restriction but
     only small further increases on subsequent days, and did not
     significantly differentiate the 6 h and 4 h conditions.
     Polysomnographic variables and d power in the non- REM sleep EEG—a
     putative marker of sleep homeostasis—displayed an acute response to
     sleep restriction with negligible further changes across the 14
     restricted nights. Comparison of chronic sleep restriction to total
     sleep deprivation showed that the latter resulted in
     disproportionately large waking neurobehavioral and sleep d power
     responses relative to how much sleep was lost. A statistical model
     revealed that, regardless of the mode of sleep deprivation, lapses
     in behavioral alertness were nearlinearly related to the cumulative
     duration of wakefulness in excess of 15.84 h (s.e. 0.73 h).

Irony moment: I decided to catch up on my blogging instead of going to
bed.

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From: http://boingboing.net/2003_04_01_archive.html#200158555
More:http://doc.weblogs.com/2003/04/16#proposedABarnraisingForCivilization

Doc Searls proposes a barn-raising for civilization
Doc blogs:

The art historian and archaeologist John Malcolm Russell on The 
Connection... just called the sacking of Baghdad's museums The greatest 
catastrophe ever to befall a cultural institution in the history of the 
world. More than the burning of the library in Alexandria? This guy is 
in a position to know. Long after everything else from this war is 
forgotten... this is the one thing that people will remember, he says. 
Well, I'm thinking, we're part of civilization, too, presumably -- "we" 
being everybody in the world who goes to the trouble of making it better.

So here's an idea for the U.S. and British governments, for Coalition 
Forces, for anybody else in a position of authority in Iraq right now -- 
plus the rest of us who care:

Devote one TV and one radio station in Baghdad entirely to the recovery 
of pilfered antiquities. Staff it with concerned Iraqi citizens, and put 
scholars on the air, where they can talk about (and show, if photos are 
available) these stolen artifacts and their importance to Iraqi and 
world culture. Do this by re-puposing old stations if they're available, 
or by creating whole new ones. There's plenty of equipment available. 
Commercial broadcasters in the U.S. shed old gear all the time. They 
could easily make tax-deductible donations of studio and transmitting 
equipment, and would be proud to brag about it on the air too, I'm sure. 
Create an .iq (isn't that a perfect country code... .IQ!) Web site 
devoted entirely to aggregating and displaying photographs of Baghdad 
museum properties, and of lost or damaged Iraqi antiquities. Perhaps the 
British Museum (which has already pledged help) or British Petroleum 
(its Web site sponsor) could run this thing -- or fund somebody else 
willing to run the thing. Doesn't matter as long as it gets done. The 
rest of us should start aggregating (or choose the appropriate verb) 
cultureblogging around the same issue. (...)