[Previous entry: "Movies"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "Map kinase kinase kinase kinase kinase..."]

05/01/2001 Archived Entry: "Sleeping monkeys"

Last night, due to unforeseen circumstances, I got to bed very late. This is unusual this term considering that I've been doing very well with regards to getting a proper amount of sleep, but still, emergencies do crop up. Anyway, as I was going about my lectures today, I started thinking - surely there must be some kind of equation or general rule governing the relationship between how much extra work you get done by staying up, and how much your work performance is degraded the next day due to your tiredness.

This obviously varies from person to person, and there must be some kind of optimal period when you get extra work done at night, but are still feeling good the next day. Definitely bears thinking about.

Speaking of mammals, we watched a 80-90 year old video in Evolution and Behaviour showing a monkey trying to stack boxes up so that it could get a banana hanging from the ceiling. Not particularly informative or educational, but hugely entertaining. The poor monkey didn't have any grasp of balance or centre of gravities (not that most people do) and kept on gamely trying to balance the boxes on top of each other.

What got the most laughs though was that occasionally another monkey would amble into view, sometimes dragging a box of its own, or it would sit and watch the box-stacking money in bemusement, as if to say, 'What the hell are you trying to do with those boxes?'