Sunday, August 05, 2007

Sleep, the nectar of the Gods

Kevin Drum today:

Of the many things I hold against conservatives, one of the less cosmically important is that so many of them seem to belong to the annoying eager-beaver wake-up-at-the-crack-of-dawn club.


Yeah, I'm deeply suspicious of the crack-of-dawn crowd myself. (The fact that I may be becoming one of them is of no import, because nobody is more deeply suspicious of me than, well, me.)

The ultimate cautionary tale against this "Early to bed, early to rise" nonsense is philosopher Rene Descartes, who all his life had the habit of staying in bed until noon -- that is, until he was hired by the Queen of Sweden to be her tutor. Sadly, she required him to be up at the crack of dawn for her study sessions, and within a year, Descartes had ceased thinking, and therefore being, altogether.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

As someone who is deeply unhappy about being up and at my desk trying to be productive at 9am on a Monday, your post greatly cheered me up and gave me the closest thing to a smile this morning.