cow-sadly: on the evolutionary scale, what was the first organism to require sleep?
JR Moosack: depends on your definition of sleep
JR Moosack: if it is something that happens on a diurnal cycle
cow-sadly: yes it becomes difficult to define
JR Moosack: or if it is something that simply implies periods of relative dormancy
JR Moosack: vs. relative activity
cow-sadly: I guess I mean instead of inactivity, a brain state that is what we as humans would call sleep
JR Moosack: what i don't understand, really, is why humans require sleep
JR Moosack: what is it about sleep that is so refreshing
cow-sadly: it's really weird if you think about it
JR Moosack: you'd think we are a machine
JR Moosack: if we keep feeding energy into the machine
cow-sadly: yeah, what is resting?
JR Moosack: it should keep going
cow-sadly: it's not the entire brain
JR Moosack: obviously, the lack of movement allows recovery time for musculars and whatnot
JR Moosack: but really, being sleepy has very little to do with muscular fatigue
cow-sadly: yes but it's really your brain that "requires" rest
JR Moosack: but what's interesting
cow-sadly: yep
JR Moosack: if you keep yourself up on speed for about 4 days
JR Moosack: you can get to the point where your muscles start to fail
JR Moosack: that's pretty interesting
cow-sadly: hmm
JR Moosack: even if you spend most of that 4 days sitting down
JR Moosack: at a computer
JR Moosack: working on a shuffleboard web site while you should be studying
cow-sadly: maybe it isn't the brain that requires sleep, it's that the brain senses that the body muscles need rest and so it kicks in a side program to make you rest
cow-sadly: shuffleboard website?
