The science of sleep

Inki has had a bit of trouble getting comfortable enough to fall asleep the last 24 hours. What finally worked last night was reading her Brian Greene's Elegant Universe, this generation's PBS physics extravaganza. Today when she wanted to nap I put on the DVD of Carl Sagan's Cosmos series -- the last generation's PBS physics extravaganza. She was asleep in under a minute. Sagan's odd, lulling inflection certainly helped matters.

Now I own the Greene book and borrowed the Sagan DVDs from the local library because I enjoy physics. (You might even say it's my job.) Inki, on the other hand, was forced to take two semesters of physics in college in the States to get a comp sci degree, and she still holds a grudge. Not that she didn't get an A both times, mind you, but she did it grudgingly, with the absolute minimum of work and maximum of ranting, and made a point of forgetting everything she had learned as she was walking out of her final exam.

Usually, if some ill-fated person is unfortunate enough to broach the subject, she will start by asking when she will need to know at what speed her computer will hit the ground if she throws it out the window.

It's always me ranting about stuff that irritates me, and God knows I don't know when to let things go, but this is her one and only hobby horse.

Finally, though, she has some use for physics, if only as a general anasthetic.