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February 21, 2006
The Great American Nap Out
How much of the world has been asleep at any one time? Was there ever a point when 50% of the world or more was asleep? Maybe this happens the day after New Years. I like the idea of the entire world deciding that it’s time for a nap. I didn’t participate in Hands Across America or Hands Around the World but I’d be keen on World Nap 2006.
When I’m interested in trends in mass behavior, I turn to aggregation tools such as the Moodgrapher. It tracks the mood tags used in roughly 100,000 LiveJournal posts and provides a mood/ trend indicator for middle and upper class college educated internet accessing often crunchy folks who maintain a weblog. This is, I know, an exclusive group, but where else an I going to find a poll of 100,000 people sampled every ten minutes on the spot?
Visiting the site, we can see that sleepy spiked only once in the last year, around 9 December, followed by a drastic fall by the 13th.
Why 9 December? It was a Friday but the spike runs far higher than any other Friday during the year. There are no major holidays associated with the 9th. In the Julian calendar 13 December was the shortest day and longest night. This year (Gregorian Calendar) the winter Solstice occurred on 21 December. Are we all still closer to Julian at heart?
Looking in the Wall Street Journal archives, the Nap Out appears to have been a slow news day. Were there events that impact college students? Final exams were at least a week out. No major television events. I haven’t pulled an American Climate map for 9 December but the weather in Boston sat in the 30’s—nothing out of the ordinary. Apparently, the internet-addicted portion of the United States decided that it was time to get some sleep. Tuesday could wait until Wednesday.
Time to follow that lead today.
Jibber Jabberin | By jb | 11:21 AM