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We’ve had items about our ancestors’ sleep patterns before. Before It’s News has a post.
Ok, maybe your grandparents probably slept like you. And your great, great-grandparents. But once you go back before the 1800s, sleep starts to look a lot different. Your ancestors slept in a way that modern sleepers would find bizarre – they slept twice. And so can you.
The History
The existence of our sleeping twice per night was first uncovered by Roger Ekirch, professor of History at Virginia Tech.
His research found that we didn’t always sleep in one eight hour chunk. We used to sleep in two shorter periods, over a longer range of night. This range was about 12 hours long, and began with a sleep of three to four hours, wakefulness of two to three hours, then sleep again until morning.
References are scattered throughout literature, court documents, personal papers, and the ephemera of the past. What is surprising is not that people slept in two sessions, but that the concept was so incredibly common. Two-piece sleeping was the standard, accepted way to sleep.
“It’s not just the number of references – it is the way they refer to it, as if it was common knowledge,” Ekirch says.
An English doctor wrote, for example, that the ideal time for study and contemplation was between “first sleep” and “second sleep.” Chaucer tells of a character in the Canterbury Tales that goes to bed following her “firste sleep.” …
I Stacker posts on how doctors can’t insult patients face-to-face without their knowledge. Further proof Pickerhead will read anything.
Medical lingo can be confusing—but maybe ignorance is bliss. In his new book, The Secret Language of Doctors, Toronto-based ER physician Brian Goldman decodes the slang that doctors and nurses use to talk about their jobs, patients, and each other—and some of it is far from flattering.
Of course, not all slang is derogatory. In some cases, it’s a way to pack a lot of information into a single phrase, or to warn colleagues about a potentially difficult patient. A surgeon might say “High Five,” when entering the OR to let other staff know they’ll be operating on someone with HIV. Sometimes slang helps hospital staff sound more professional during awkward situations; a nurse might refer to “Code Brown” during a miserable shift with a man who is having constant diarrhea in bed.
In other situations, the book reveals, slang is therapeutic, a form of comic relief that builds camaraderie between overworked doctors and nurses, and which helps them get through long, emotionally heavy days. “The inability to laugh on rounds in an environment like our ICU, where there’s very little to laugh about, is going to be tragic and injurious to safety and to the quality of care,” one respirologist told Goldman. “You need to have those moments where you take a little break and reset.” In any case, check out a selection of lingo below, all pulled from Goldman’s book, so that the next time you’re in the hospital you know what your doctor really thinks of you.
The Bunker: This is a room in the hospital where medical students, residents and their attending physicians meet behind closed doors to rest and talk about their days. There, one might laugh about the patient in the “monkey jacket,” or hospital gown, who had a case of “chandelier syndrome,” practically leaping up toward the ceiling in surprise when she felt the cold stethoscope. A surgeon might cringe while recalling a “peek-and-shriek,” an operation in which she opened a patient’s belly to find something unexpected, like cancer, and quickly stitched up again. …
Newsweek on the value of dirt. More proof here, too.
There was a glorious and liberating moment for parents about 10 years ago when we were told the job had got too clean. All that mollycoddling was doing more harm than good: we should let them take risks, play in the dirt, go in the sun bare-skinned and pick their noses. The last was a particular joy – ever tried to keep a toddler’s finger out of their nose? It fits perfectly, which tells you something.
The science was convincingly simple. The bacteria collected in the nose-pickings were essential, when they found their way to the mouth, to help small humans cultivate antibodies, resist diseases and avoid allergies. So bogeys and mud were in – all that anti-bacterial wiping and antibiotic guzzling was over. Another 20th-century folly. The clincher came when it turned out that nut allergy had soared once we stopped small children eating nuts.
Science writer Alanna Collen’s fascinating study of the intertwined lives of microbes and humans, 10% Human, is a manual for the new, healthy way of being dirty. …
Now for some serious fun. We have three items on the caddie who was on the bag for Jordan Spieth the new Master’s Champion. The first is by Brian Costa in the Wall Street Journal.
The man who celebrated with Jordan Spieth on the 18th green at Augusta National Golf Club on Sunday made his first trip here only three years ago. Michael Greller wasn’t even a professional caddie at the time. He was a sixth-grade math teacher who won a lottery for Masters tickets and spent the day following Rory McIlroy. “I had a few beers and enjoyed the walk,” he said.
Greller’s path from standing outside the ropes to carrying the bag of the Masters champion is far more improbable than Spieth’s impressive victory. And it reveals both the randomness of the caddying business and the way Spieth has approached the game.
When Tiger Woods won the Masters in 1997—at 21, the same age as Spieth—the man carrying his bag was Mike “Fluff” Cowan. With more than two decades of experience caddying on the PGA Tour, Cowan offered the kind of in-depth course knowledge that Woods, for all his prodigious talent, lacked.
But in hiring Greller, 37, at the start of Spieth’s career and sticking with him as he ascended to this point, Spieth prioritized personal chemistry. That he went so far as to hire someone who had caddied only occasionally for amateurs ranked as one of the bigger upsets in pro caddying. …
Seattle Post-Intelligencer claims Michael Greller is a home town boy.
Jordan Spieth had quite a weekend. The 21-year-old Dallas native led wire-to-wire at the Masters to become the second-youngest golfer to win golf’s biggest tournament, tying Tiger Woods’ course record of 18-under in the process.
His caddie had quite a weekend, too.
Michael Greller, 37, is from GigHarbor, and was there on the green in Augusta, Georgia, as Spieth’s final putt fell. He embraced Spieth, 16 years his junior, after the young man’s bogey putt clinched a four-stroke victory over Phil Mickelson and Justin Rose. …
… In the last 30 days, Spieth has competed in four tournaments, winning two and finishing second in two. If Greller is on a typical caddie salary, according to Golf Digest, he has likely made about $375,000 in the past month. …
Last and always least, NY Times.
The caddie Jim Mackay took the golf bag and moved it out of the path of the foot traffic in the scoring area. He picked up the pin from the 18th hole at Augusta National Golf Club and placed it against the bag.
Mackay’s golfer, the three-time Masters winner Phil Mickelson, had cobbled together a 14-under-par 274, which would have tied or bettered the winning number in the four Masters after his last title run here, in 2010. But on Sunday, the score left Mickelson tied for second with Justin Rose, four strokes behind the winner, Jordan Spieth.
Over dinner the previous night with Spieth’s caddie, Michael Greller, Mackay discovered their paths had first crossed here in 2012, two years before Spieth had shared second place in his Masters debut. The story Greller told was so sweet, Mackay was happy to help Greller in any way he could. And after acing the big test, Greller needed a hand with the extraneous stuff, like where to drop the bag so it was not in the way and when to double back to the 18th green for the green jacket presentation.
“Michael’s a wonderful, wonderful person,” Mackay said of Greller, who was teaching sixth grade math outside Seattle in 2012 when he won the Masters online ticket lottery, which enabled him to buy two tickets to the Tuesday practice rounds.
He arrived with his brother, and they made their way to the 16th green, where Mickelson and Mackay, whose nickname is Bones, happened to be standing. From outside the ropes, Greller posed so that Mickelson and Mackay were in the background, and his brother snapped a photograph.
“I need to find that picture,” Greller said, adding: “Obviously I was a huge Phil and Bones fan. I still am.” …