The Citizen, 1996-07-31, Page 5International Scene
By Raymond Canon
THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JULY 31, 1996 PAGE 5.
It takes planning
Maybe I'll
sleep on it
The development of the mind requires a
great deal of sleep. Civilized beings ought
not to rise in the morning before seven
o'clock, unless they have gone to bed before
nine. An adult should have eight hours, a
youth 10, and a child 12. Lack of sleep,
while it is one of the first symptoms of
insanity, is often one of the causes as well.
Classes of the community, whose occupation
prevents a full time of sleep, furnish a very
large percentage of the insane. ,
Isn't that priceless? It's written by a crank
physician named Earl Hurlbutt Stafford. I
found it in a mouldering copy of the
Dominion Medical Monthly, published in
March of 1898.
Of course, that's nearly a century ago.
Medical practitioners back then still swore
by mustard plasters, sulphur baths and
prescribed bleeding. We are infinitely
smarter than that now. We know that
anybody can get by nicely with five or six
hours of sack time a night, right?
Maybe not. Medical authorities are just
beginning to cotton on to the idea that
How honest
are we?
It is generally believed that some nations
are more honest than others. In Italy, for
example, cheating on one's income tax
(keeping a second set of books) is almost a
national pastime, while in Canada we are
much more prone to declaring as correctly as
possible how much we earn and how much
tax we have to pay on our earnings.
There is also the question of underground
economies. Again countries such as Greece,
Italy and Spain do about 30 per cent of their
business under the table as it were, while in
Switzerland it is probably less than five per
cent. Canada is in about the middle of the
pact at slightly more than 10 per cent.
This may also say something about how
honest we are but it is, at best, only a partial
picture.
However, the question remains, and time
and time again I have been asked my
feelings about honesty in a certain country. I
am extremely reluctant to give any concrete
answer since I cannot say that people in one
country have been any less or more honest to
e • 7 me than in another.
I bring all this up because recently I read
about one of the most unique ways to test
honesty that I had ever come across. It seems
that the Readers' Digest was intrigued about
the level of honesty in Europe and hit upon a
method of testing this honesty in a rough
way. They "accidentally" dropped 200
perhaps we're not getting enough sleep. In
fact, there's a growing consensus that much
of the human population is seriously sleep
deprived — that we are walking zombies who
are acting irrationally and making a lot of
bad decisions that lead to everything from
business failures to traffic accidents — all
because we're just too damned tired all the
time.
Fortunately, advanced medical research
has come up with a prescription that might
go a long way towards alleviating sleep
deprivation.
It's called the nap.
That's right, doctors are coming around to
the idea that Dagwood Bumstead had it right
all along — there's nothing like a half hour
snooze on the chesterfield to put things right.
Spaniards, Italians and most South
Americans figured this out centuries ago.
They call it the Siesta — a couple of hours of
R and R right in the middle of the afternoon
to recharge the batteries.
Maybe it was our Puritan work ethic —
maybe it's just too much coffee, but
somehow the idea just never caught on in—
North America.
Well, not for most of us, anyway. There
have been a handful of famous flappers
through history. Albert Einstein liked to put
a pillow over his head for an hour or so
every afternoon. So did Napoleon and
Winston Churchill. U.S. President Bill
Clinton sets aside a space of time each day
for a catnap.
wallets, each containing about $75 in cash,
some family photos and the telephone
number of the alleged owner of the wallet.
These were dropped in 20 European cities,
10 in each city and in a variety of places
such as zoos, supermarkets, gas stations,
telephone booths and restaurants.
They then sat back and waited to see what
happened. When the dust had cleared, 58 per
cent of the wallets were returned.
Interestingly enough, the three most honest
places were in Scandinavia. All the wallets
dropped in Oslo in Norway and Odense,
Denmark, were returned as were eight of the
wallets lost in Lahti, Finland.
On the other end of the scale, only two
were returned in Weimar, Germany,
Ravenna, Italy, and Lausanne, Switzerland. I
was surprised to see a Swiss city so low
down; I would have thought that it would be
nearer the top.
What really surprised me was that the
other Swiss city chosen for the experiment
was St. Gall. This is my old stomping
grounds and I know it like the back of my
hand. To my dismay only five of the ten
wallets left there were returned, and I can
only surmise that a thieves' convention was
taking place at the time.
I have to tell you that Switzerland did
relatively poorly in the test as did Italy and
Portugal. Britain and the Netherlands were
in the middle while Burgos, Spain, the only
city in that country to be honoured with the
test, did relatively well, returning seven out
of 10 wallets.
A couple of side notes. One of the two
wallets returned in Lausanne, was handed in
by an Albanian. One wallet, deposited in
Even Lance Ito, the Los Angeles Superior
Court Judge who handled the O.J. Simpson
trial, made a practice of retiring to his
chambers each afternoon to saw logs.
Not that it improved his performance
noticeably.
I'm a big fan of the afternoon nap, but it's
hard to indulge in the hurley burley, helter-
skelter lifestyle we've evolved. Other
niggling and petty concerns have a tiresome
habit of intruding.
Like bosses — "Whaddya think we're
running here, Black — a motel?"
And kids — "Hey Dad, don't forget you
said you were gonna take us to the zoo this
weekend."
And wives — "I thought you promised that
you would clean out the eavestroughs this
afternoon."
The best thing about a nap (when you can
get one) is that it allows you to shift
concerns to the back burner. Let 'em
percolate there for a while. Income tax
overdue? Take a nap. Grass need cutting?
It'll keep for another half hour. Deadline
looming? Haven't planned the dinner menu?
Think that front left tire could use a little air?
Go test drive the hammock. You'll feel
better.
I'm thinking of starting a movement to
Bring Back The Catnap. We could call it the
National Association of Procrastinators.
NAP for short.
It would take some planning of course.
Maybe I'll sleep on it.
front of the International Court of Justice in
The Hague, Holland, was never seen again.
All over Europe men were just as prone to
hand in the wallets as were women; the same
goes for the young and the old.
A similar experiment was carried out in
the United States but only 12 cities, both big
and small, were chosen. Sixty-seven per cent
of the wallets came back; compared with 58
per cent in Europe.
I'm sure there were a few raised eyebrows
at the offices of the Readers' Digest just as
mine were.
I took it almost as a personal insult that
only half of the wallets left in St. Gall were
returned. The next time I go back I'm going
to have to call the whole city together (all
80,000 of them) and lecture them on
personal honesty. In the meantime I'm trying
to think of a way that we can remove this
blot on our honour.
As for Weimar, Germany, this is the home
of Germany's two greatest writers, Goethe
and Schiller. I assume that both of them are
turning over in their graves at the news of
the lack of honesty shown in their city.
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The
short
of it
By Bonnie Gropp
Seeing a job well done
I appreciate perfection. I love looking at
and listening to that which is aesthetically
pleasing. A Libra, I enjoy balance and
harmony.
And as someone who has never had a
problem taking it easy when time and need
allowed, I have always taken a great deal of
delight in watching others do a job well. I
would not consider myself lazy, as I usually
get my work done before pursing this
passive pastime, but my warrior will tell
there are many times when I have found
contentment, sitting by without a modicum
of guilt, while he slugged away at one odd
job or another.
There is something satisfying about seeing
people take on a challenge and make it
appear easy, whether at work or play. With
these feelings you can imagine what a treat
the Olympics are for me. Notwithstanding
the buffed bods, seeing these athletes push
themselves to the max, conquering weakness
that would thwart them, with mind over
matter, a focus and a goal to achieve, is
compelling.
While I am typically able to ignore that
vast wasteland in my living room, this past
week or so, I have left much undone to sit
mesmerized in front of the television as it
showed time and time again the strength and
determination of which some are capable.
Running on bandaged feet that have been
ravaged and blistered by 1300. sand, feeling
your heart ready to burst, then giving it one
more surge to keep your opponent from
passing, so tired you can not lift your arms
after rowing to a gold, then coming back a
day later to do it over again are all part of the
Olympic mettle.
Obviously, winning a medal is the high
point of these games, but when I think of the
dedication, the endless, and for most,
thankless hours of hard work put into the
dream I know that it goes beyond my margin
of patience, my scope of endurance. Of the
thousands of hopefuls who have put their life
into this vision, only a handful will be
remembered by name.
Watching our rowers one day last week,
the pain in their face evident, I was behoved
to ask, "Why?"
"For an Olympic gold, Mom," my son
explained. My response of a shoulder shrug
and a"Phht", then prompted him to counter
with a tone of mild scorn, "Well, it's easy to
see why they're there and you're sitting in
front of the television watching, huh?"
He's absolutely right. As it takes a special
kind of person to sit hidden, camera in hand,
waiting for perfect nature shot, so does it
take a special kind to remember the menu
and each diner's order. While one person can
stare day in and day out at a computer
terminal, it takes another to spend a day of
work at hard physical labour. The talents of
an Olympian are more obvious than most.
They are expected to publicly display them
and be the best. The rest of us go about
doing our business to the best of our ability.
We may not necessarily be number one in
our field, but for the most part we strive to
do the job right.
Observing someone who has mastered
their task is an opportunity to understand a
lot about the person doing the job. It is also,
for someone like myself a chance to
appreciate a job well done.
Arthur Black