There is more than one way to extend the total work and leisure enjoyed during one's life. In addition to living longer, one can sleep less if it doesn't degrade the rest of the hours. Not too much research on the latter. Here's a gem in this week's Economist; the good news:

With the help of Chiara Cirelli, who also works at the University of Wisconsin, Dr Tononi has created a mutant fruit fly that sleeps only two or three hours a night. (A normal fly sleeps between eight and 14 hours.)

...though the mutant fly is capable of learning things, it forgets them within minutes. Healthy flies retain learned information for hours or even days.

Would you trade your memory like in Johnny Mnemonic, Memento or Paycheck for an extra six hours every day? It's like living an extra 25 years.

What was the question, again?

What's the point in having a long life, if you don't remember it?

This is an interesting philosophical question.

If you cannot take your memories to the grave, are they relevant to enjoyment of the last moment before death, and the second to last? If a tree falls in the forest and people can hear it but not remember it, has it really fallen? I'm a memory addict. I don't even like taking Versed which cuts off memory temporarily. But instead of figuring out how to get the body to remember without sleeping, what about externalizing memory to a computer?

It is an interesting philosophical question. But is it new or just reworded?

Most human philosophers have mulled the quality of life. Is it better to be rich for just a few years and die young or better to live long and be poor.

I'm not sure where fly philosophers fall on the issue. Are there differences in the philosophies of fruit flies and green bottle flies? Long days short memories, lots of sleep long memories.

We may never know.

Rotten fruit and fresh cow pies will be served after the seminar.

This sounds like a load of crap. There's a guy in Vietnam by the name of Hai Ngoc who after a brain injury hasn't slept in thirty years. He's reported to have an excellent memory.

The Boss Said.What's the point in having a long life, if you don't remember it?

This is an interesting philosophical question.

Johnathan Swift, in Gullivers Travels addresses a subset of one of his foreign hostitlers, who live forever, and Gulliver praises the idea of immortality. Only then the minister who is educating him, explains that "immortality, is not eternal youth" That book had more to do with me fearing old age, than anything the "Who" sang.

> There's a guy in Vietnam by the name of Hai Ngoc who after a brain injury hasn't slept in thirty
> years. He's reported to have an excellent memory.

Or so it has been reported on the Internet. None of the reports seem to provide medical references or other colloboration, however. It's possible the man in question sleeps very little and does not remember sleeping. (There have been a number of such cases over the years.)

The officially recognized record is approx. 11 days and led to "moodiness, problems with concentration and short term memory, paranoia, and hallucinations."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Gardner_%28sleep_deprived%29

There are documented cases of people remaining awake longer due to Fatal Familial Insomnia, but that leads to dementia and death.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_Familial_Insomnia

Be careful what you ask for.

(I personally start to notice minor memory problems when I have been awake for around 48 hours.)

In my opinion... uh, huh, what?

I've been working deep nights, 12 hour compressed shifts here lately. I'm usually home by 8 a.m. and stay up till 10:00 or 11:00 a.m. Sometimes I get restless and start doing chores and don't get to bed till noon or 1 or so. Which means at times I'm going on 4-5 hours of real sleep.

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But in reality the thing that seems to wake me up the best in the aftermorn-noon is a protein smoothie. I got one of those Magic Bullet smoothie blenders (I knew staying up all night would lead to infomercial brainwashing) and man does that thing rock.
http://www.buythebullet.com/

Handful of ice
1/2 a banana
handful of blueberries
handful of strawberries
6 oz of soy milk
2 oz of pomegranate juice
scoop of soy protein powder
up-to a 1/4 cup of vanilla yogurt.

The cup is full to the brim but that little blender pulverizes the mixture into a smoothie in less then 10 seconds. Get a nice immediate kick from all the sugar and then the protein kicks in for a meal replacement on the go.

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