h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I understood that my friend, who was diagnosed as a narcoleptic, could never get any real sleep. As a result, he kept falling asleep in class, and couldn't help himself. Of course, I never got to get in-depth with him on the subject, since he disappeared right after the diagnosis.

I can do that thing you mentioned earlier about programming to wake up! No idea how, but I set the alarm for something - say half five for an early outing - and I'm sitting on the edge of the bed waiting for the alarm to go off at 5:25. It works in other time zones as well. Don't believe in psychic so what's going on?

When the kids were small we had a white-noise/heartbeat tape(affectionately known as the digger tape) that was supposed to help them stay asleep or drift off. Only limited success. J - now 16 and capable of sleeping for England - didn't sleep through a sensibly long night till she was 30 months.

My standard method of getting to sleep - read something really difficult but not gripping. The harder you try to concentrate the quicker you drop off. Reports from work, or something philosophical, work perfectly.

I can also program myself to wake up at a particular time. I guess the body just has an inbuilt way to keep track of time, the biologic clock, and it keeps operating while you sleep. I agree - philosophy is a good cure for insomnia, especially eighteenth or nineteenth century philosophy!

For a while my favourite was "the last days of socrates" but more recently it has been daniel dennett and douglas hofstadter, which sort of count as philosophy. Unfortunately they have been a bit too interesting. Normally difficult enough to nod me off tho.

>Don't believe in psychic so what's going on?>

Hehehehe

Call it auto-suggestion then.
I can do this too.
I set my alarm for 6 every morning that I was on my local radio quiz.
I awoke between 5.45 & 5.55 each time I set my alarm & was able to switch it off before it even started.

Yes that's it exactly. I can believe you can keep an unconscious idea in your head of roughly when you want to wake up but it's amazing that your sleeping brain can get it right to a few minutes over 6 or 8 hours. It should be possible to do some experiments. I wonder if availability of a visible clock near the bed makes any difference? I wondered if it was just light sleeping and clock checking without remembering afterwards... but I think I remember situations (like in a hotel somewhere) waking up in the dark and turning light on to check watch and seeing it was a couple of minutes to alarm time.

That "waking up on certain times" seems to me to be fairly common. I remember it was also in the books about those four children that found a flying carpet and Phoenix. I don´t see any reason for a supernatural explanation, it is probably just the inner clock. I read about a hypnosis experiment. A woman was put under hypnosis and was told to do something in a certain number of minutes. Not just a few but hours away, or maybe days. And she was taken out of hypnosis, and a few days later on the excact time she did what she was supposed to do. Shows that our inner clock is more precise than we thought.

Yep, the waking up thing is pretty common. I heard that it was actually a case of waking up lots of times during the night (only momentarily) until the correct time occurred.

On a similar note, I occasionally wake up about 5 seconds before my alarm clock is due to ring or radio come on. Now that does feel weird!