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8 - Orono Weekly Times Wednesday, January 26, 2005 Basic Black by Arthur Black Snoozing is good for you So I'm humping through Vancouver's International Airport, already jet-lagged and frantically searching for Gate 47A so I can catch flight 8960B which I'm pretty sure, if I can decipher the drone on the public address system, is in the final stages of boarding. I round a corner and behold... three snow-white sarcophagi splayed out on the terrazzo. They look like something something out of Star Trek. Large global pods with what looks like a single bed jutting out of one side, each pod big enough to engulf a human body. Indeed, one of them has the.. better part of a man's pair of trousered legs sticking out of it. What the hell is that? I ask. "That's a Metronaps Lounger," Lounger," the smiling attendant explains, handing me a brochure. I read the fine print. For a mere $15 I can buy 20 uninterrupted minutes to recline in one of these gizmos, wherein an assortment of vibrations and 'sounds from nature' will block out the hustle-bustle hustle-bustle and the hurly-burly of the world around me allowing allowing me a microsnooze. A quick nap in the middle of a crisis-heavy day, smack in the centre of a busy airport. Sounds daft, but some experts say it's an idea that's overdue. Experts like Bob Stickgold, assistant professor of psychiatry psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Stickgold says that all of us need more sleep than we're getting. He warns, in fact, that an appalling percentage percentage of us are little more than walking zombies. Our banzai lifestyle is leaving us seriously seriously sleep-deprived and that's not good for us--or for the people around us. "You're phenomenally stupid stupid when you're sleep deprived, and you're too stur pid to realize it," says Stickgold. "We (humans) are the only known organism that sleep deprives itself." And it costs us big. The Exxon Valdez oil spill was blamed on a captain who was groggy from too much booze and too little sleep. The Chernobyl nuclear disaster was caused by overworked and under-rested reactor personnel. personnel. We'll never know how many plane crashes, train wrecks and highway collisions collisions could be chalked up to simple human fatigue. It seems like a cruel joke. Our ancestors would have killed for the labour-saving devices that we take for granted. granted. But the irony is, our ancestors, ancestors, overworked as they were, got 'way more sleep than we did. They napped regularly and by and large, they went to bed and got up with the sun. They didn't have alarm clocks to jangle them awake in the pre-dawn murk or electric lights to keep them up after dusk. They didn't punch time clocks or pack Blackberrys on their hips and they didn't mainline coffee for a chemical buzz to get them through the nine-to-five. Which is another thing our ancestors didn't have--a nine- to-five template to fit their working hours into. That's a regime that works well for factories and offices, but not so well for the average human body. We all have biological clocks and they operate in a completely different time zone. Left to our own devices, without artificial stimulants like fluorescent lights, looming looming deadlines and a baleful boss staring meaningfully at the office clock, most of us would probably fall asleep between one and four in the morning and one in four in the afternoon. That's when our eyelids naturally get heavy, pur body temperature drops significantly and our Inner Cro-Magnon starts subconsciously subconsciously looking for a cozy cave- and a nice sabretooth tiger skin rug to curl up in. But we're not allowed to. It's against the rules. So we suck back another espresso, rub our eyes, go back to the grind and make one more deposit in our sleep deprivation deprivation account. Which goes a long way to explaining the presence of those power nap chair pods I saw in the Vancouver airport recently-^-and which, I've learned, are destined to eventually eventually show up in shopping malls, office lobbies, train stations, stations, bus depots and anywhere anywhere else frazzled folks might be tempted to buy a little little peace and quiet. So did I go for it? Did I spend 15 bucks for 20 minutes of intense napping? Are you kidding--and miss my flight? Besides, I had an ace in the hole and I knew it. I was heading for Mexico. Land of the siesta. ill the Oron Times MORRIS FUNERAL CHAPEL LTD, SERVING DURHAM REGION SINCE 1841 ALL FUNERAL SERVICES PREARRANGED AND/OR PREPAID BURIAL - CREMATION - TRANSFERS "WHERE PROFESSIONAL ETIQUETTE IS IMPORTANT" FUNERAL DIRECTORS PAUL R. MORRIS DOUG R. RUTHERFORD GARY M. CONWAY DEBRAD. CAMPK1N 905-623-5480 4 DIVISION ST.. BOWMANVILLE ■ AT QUEEN ST. -Q '-v You say you'd do anything for them? Prove it Every year, thousands of Ontarians stop smoking. For themselves. For their families. For life. You can too. So set your quit date. And lor help, call Smokers' Helpline: 1-877-513-5333. Ontario